1729

They have a diversity of genre but increasingly overlapping IP: characters and settings shared across games. Hearthstone recycles WoW and HoTS recycles everything across their properties. Also Blizzard seem to be going in the direction of being overly accessible and streamlined to a fault. For many the accessibility (can play Overwatch while barely needing twitch shooter skills at all) is a perk while others may miss the interesting opportunities that unpolished and rough edges create.

1730

Blizzard also has an overlapping, stylized art style: all their games look like Blizzard games. And Blizzard has a (generally well-deserved) reputation for producing polished games.

1731

Quick question I can’t find the answer to. If I have 3 colonies and one shipyard, is there any drawback to having all 3 colonies sponsor that shipyard? It’s just wasted resources if I don’t assign them correct? Does distance have any affect?

Thanks.

1732

You lose production based on distance.

1733

Thanks, I just found that in the wiki. The problem with the wiki is most of it is pre-Crusade. Since you no longer allocate between different types of construction, it seems even if a shipyard is distant, it is better to use it as a sponsor than not at all.

1734

Yeah, we’re working to get the wiki updated.

1735

[quote=“Wo1verine, post:1725, topic:73564, full:true”]
Interesting to hear Brad’s opinion on Paradox. I personally avoid them like the plague and would only purchase from them if I know the game series or it gets an overwhelming good review on here. The destroyed the SOTS series[/quote]

I loved SOTS1 but I don’t think that is fair to Paradox. They did stop funding the game and the developers were forced to dump it on the market, but I’d have to put most of the blame on the developers. From the results, it’s clear to me that they were just in over their heads. If they had taken more on incremental approach, starting with SOTS1, adding the much improved graphics, beefing up the economy and diplomacy, add new techs, some new races, the game would have been great and more within their grasp. But they instead started over completely and changed a lot of basic things about the game, and it just didn’t come together. It was just a big muddled mess. I think the fault lies more the Kerberos than Paradox.

1736

Don’t want to hi-jack the thread with this, but the fact that Paradox slammed a communication ban on Kerberos was suspicious. Kerberos accepted a lot of things they did wrong and were willing to work hard to correct them, but they were silenced and ordered to stop work (including patches). If everything was Kerberos’s fault, why would Paradox take that approach?

1737

Because they were likely the ones paying for it at the end of the day.

1738

Is there a Crusader Manual? Assuming no, where are the changes documented

1739

Ludicrous Update out!

1740

That’s ludicrous!

1741

Beat you to the punch again. Boy, I missed that. :-D

Also:

1742

Is there an “Upgrade entire fleet to latest revisions of their designs” button? Because holy shit, having to upgrade everything one ship at a time is a real pain in the ass.

1743

I have t checked. It it seems like the ga e should have a thing in the govern screen that lets you take all ships of type X and turn them into Y. I don’t know if that’s the case, but the game ne do that.

I also think the ga e badly needs something like the Civ V advisors and a Built in Civpedia.

I’m building a long list of things I want the team to work on as I pivot over to Star Control.

1744

Blaming things on marketing is, I think, the easy path.

Broadly speaking, Blizzard games are superior to Stardock games in quality.

Stardock games may have parts that are better, but as a full package, Blizzard succeeds because they make excellent games while Stardock makes games that are excellent in some areas.

Paradox makes such a good case study because for so long, their games were mediocre. But then, they began to focus on just a few games and make games that had both excellent parts but of overall high quality.

There are people who won’t forgive Paradox for Sword of the Stars II (And yes, I blame Paradox for that). Stardock got the blame for Demigod even though we were the publisher that actually came in and tried to save it even after release. You take people’s money you owe them something in return.

But Paradox and Stardock are a case study of opposites in a specific area: What to do with a sudden influx of capital.

Paradox took the millions they got in investment prior to going public and made a top to bottom improvement to the quality of their games, marketing, and community engagement.

Stardock took the millions it got from selling Impulse and funded a new type of engine called Nitrous (and provided the capital to found Mohawk and Oxide and invest in Mothership and…ahem, BonusXP).

So in 2017, Stardock has its new engine but it is still pretty raw. But it is the only 4th generation engine (other than arguably Frostbite) and that may matter a lot in 5 years.

Paradox used its capital to create a world class catalog of content on 3rd generation engines.

Stellaris and ES2, for instance, are higher quality games than GalCiv III (imo). I think Crusade is a substantially better game than either but you have to be willing to overlook flagrant lack of polish and finish that aren’t just eye candy but rather important parts of providing a complete gaming experience.

The success of Blizzard follows that same path. The Blizzard games are excellent games but are fundamentally better gaming experiences for most people. It’s not due to marketing but rather they deliver a better gaming experience than Stardock, Paradox, Amplitude, etc.

But like consoles, PC games go through their own generations, we just don’t really notice it. Stardock has its 4th generation engine. The question is whether it can utilize this technology advantage to deliver a quality gaming experience before others are able to catch up and that question won’t be answered any time soon.

So many things will happen between now and say GalCiv IV and Stardock RTS 2 and what not. What is Steam’s future? The sales numbers of recently released major titles is not promising. Developers and publishers are very concerned about the future of that platform and whether it can deliver customers to real games versus dispersing a finite player base between endless amateur unity games.

Meanwhile, Blizzard has its own platform delivering high quality games that are being developed by highly talented teams. If anything, I think Blizzard’s future is brighter than ever.

For Stardock, I think you’ll see its focus become more about a core set of games:

  1. GalCiv III
  2. Sci-Fi RTS (Ashes)
  3. Star Control: Origins
  4. Space RTS (future Sins games - no I’m not announcing anything here)
  5. OTC

Until the Steam stuff gets sorted out, I’m a little bearish on new IP on Steam. Unless SteamSpy’s numbers are totally wrong now, I’m not liking what I’m seeing.

(sorry to meander, I’m at an airport)

-brad

1745

would you consider an Elemental RTS instead of a space RTS. I really think a LH-styled would work well as a Kohan-styled RTS, that Stardock could avoid some of Timegate’s mistakes, and I think there’s a real market for such a game

1746

If I had time, I would like to create an Elemental Ultimate where I would release Elemental as it was intended to be but also have links to Elemental: Fallen Enchantress and Elemental: Sorcerer King to tie it all together.

I’m not sure about a fantasy RTS. If the historical RTS market wasn’t so risky (there be giants lurking) I’d tackle that.

There’s a lot of great game ideas that become possible once you suddenly and literally have 8X the CPU power just by switching engines.

1747

I’ve given some real thought into how you guys could do it during some downtime.

You’d have to do something different gameplay-wise in the genre- that’s why I suggested Kohan as inspiration, since that style of RTS hasn’t been done, and I still see a few folks longing for it. MOBA fans might also like it.

Your engine tech would allow for some large armies- you wouldn’t have to abstract it the way the original series did. Your unit AI from Ashes would probably help as well- one of the weakness of Kohan was that the unit AI couldn’t handle certain stuff. The limited unit control, streamlined building/lack of peons, and limited number of units to control I think would attact folks because the game wouldn’t be super-hard.

Many of the heroes from LH could convert into RTS-style general heroes, and you’d have an idea about the type of characters they are already- that might save you some design work,

Also, many of the bonus buildings you’d want in this style of game- there are already Elemental equivalents - things like the iron mines, lost libraries, aparies, crystal mines, etc. You’ve also got a large beastiary you can use for neutral creeps for folks to level up on/loot.

If you needed an unlock system to keep folks playing and around (which I think is a good idea)- you could do that through uniform parts/art customization. People love to play toy soldier. I do think MP-centric games do need some form of gamification to prop up the playerbase these days, especially in a crowded market.

Because of this, I’d probably throw in as a design feature lettings folks not only select faction, but their leader within the faction from all the heroes to be your “sovereign”.

1748

While blizzard games are certainly far more polished, I do not think that is the issue. There is always a way for a new company (not that Stardock is new) to create a new game and take off like a rocket.

While I hate to say this, but I think the reason that Stardock’s games do not take off is that there isn’t anything really new in terms of game-play. However, even if there is, the “new” thing may not be very good.

Lets take Stardock 4x game, of which I have played all of them I think. Look at the galactic civ series, the space 4x. What is really new between GC 2 and 3 in terms of game-play? I can’t think of anything really. By “new” I am not limiting this to what GC 3 has that GC 2 doesn’t, but what does GC 3 have that NOBODY ELSE does?

I think endless space 2 is an example of a space 4x that brings new elements to play. It has a bunch of races that play by different rules and mechanics. Where as in the GC series, some race has a +X% bonus to one thing while another has +X% bonus to a different thing. While the idea of asymmetrical races is not new, the execution of it can lead to something new and interesting to play.

You can say the same thing about the elemental line of 4x games. There is little difference in the races beyond small statistical tweaks. Compare this to AOW3. Playing as a wizard is very different than playing as a dreadnaught vs a warlord vs etc… AOW3 brought a lot of new stuff to the table even though the lore and whatnot was already familiar.

I guess what I am saying is, as a gamer, what attracts me and keeps me are new experiences. A game that simply is a polished bag of old experiences will not hold my interest all that long. It will not excite me very much, and I will not be telling my friends that they really need to check out the game, whatever it is.