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I think the point of this thread is two-fold, circle-jerk about how awesome and amazing it looks/sounds (it really does!) and provide feedback that will either be taken or ignored. Consider the bare-bones limited information we have about anything (because that's all there is or because Kairo doesn't want to somehow get railroaded into making a game he didn't envision etc.); consider and contrast the information we were given before vs. the latest couple gameplay video's. I think people voicing their concerns in light of this is justified. If it turns out to be some extra instant action mode like some people suggest then that's awesome and sure I think it's a cool feature. If that's what the core gameplay is morphing into then... well see my previous post. Kairo doesn't owe me anything, even if I payed him, all he owes me is a finished product, whether or not it's something I like well, I guess I should have thought of that before paying him before it was released. I guess the point is, stop freaking out. A couple of us gave feedback based on a lack of information, whether that gets taken into any sort of consideration well who cares. We're just talking about what we know (not much).
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Apr 28, 2014 06:21
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I'm a little disappointed in some of the recent reveals as well, but we'll see how it turns out. It's ok to be a little disappointed and say so, right? (I'll probably still buy it and play it even if it ships the way it appears now.)
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Apr 28, 2014 07:20
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The one takeaway I had from Flotilla is that deer are jerks and it was a delight to blow them up. Though from the flavor text and the kill-escape-pods mechanic, we are now the jerks.
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Apr 28, 2014 08:24
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It isn't really a surprise to me at all that trying to build a game that was simultaneously Homeworld-style strategy and Space-sim style action turned out to be a bad idea and the strategy elements got folded into the cockpit. I could see the prototype working when a fight is just one or two wings of fighters attacking a target, but the moment any encounter scales up it seemed pretty obvious that you wouldn't be able to have fun shooting stuff down while swapping to the strategic view every 30 seconds to manage your fleet.
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Apr 28, 2014 13:17
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I'd just like to reiterate that the strategy elements are still in and working fine, and you can play the entire game as a Homeworld-esque RTS if you so please, and it's a glorious thing to behold. The only thing cut is the pre-mission planning phase where you assign jump-points and times and initial attack orders. Now you make those calls after landing in-system, but the AI picks appropriate targets if not given any goals.
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Apr 28, 2014 14:02
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Dominic White posted:I'd just like to reiterate that the strategy elements are still in and working fine, and you can play the entire game as a Homeworld-esque RTS if you so please, and it's a glorious thing to behold. The only thing cut is the pre-mission planning phase where you assign jump-points and times and initial attack orders. Now you make those calls after landing in-system, but the AI picks appropriate targets if not given any goals. Oh. It's kinda telling that none of the recent videos have anyone using that system though.
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Apr 28, 2014 14:03
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Right now the Wargames mode is far too easy, so there's not much need to do anything other than fly around and shoot. Kairo has confirmed as much, and is currently tuning it so that enemy forces should gradually outpace you. See the screenshots a page or two back where someone was stomping through the game with an enormous fleet of battleships that nuked everything almost immediately - you don't need strategy, or even AI in that case, because it's so skewed in the players favor that it's impossible to lose. Welcome to difficulty tuning in games with procedurally generated content. It's a pain in the rear end. Especially when the game isn't even feature-complete. Dominic White fucked around with this message at 14:12 on Apr 28, 2014 |
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Apr 28, 2014 14:08
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Alchenar posted:Oh. It's kinda telling that none of the recent videos have anyone using that system though. I didn't think I'd see the day where "the AI is so good you don't need to supervise it" was phrased as a negative.
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Apr 28, 2014 14:12
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Dominic White posted:I'd just like to reiterate that the strategy elements are still in and working fine, and you can play the entire game as a Homeworld-esque RTS if you so please, and it's a glorious thing to behold. The only thing cut is the pre-mission planning phase where you assign jump-points and times and initial attack orders. Now you make those calls after landing in-system, but the AI picks appropriate targets if not given any goals. Basically goons are the loving worst.
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Apr 28, 2014 14:16
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Jabor posted:I didn't think I'd see the day where "the AI is so good you don't need to supervise it" was phrased as a negative. You know perfectly well that's not what he's concerned about. Fart Car '97 fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Apr 28, 2014 |
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Apr 28, 2014 14:16
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Gwaihir posted:Basically goons are the loving worst. God yes. Every single time we get a small developer of a game(or any other creative work) posting here people start reviewing it like they are auditioning for PC loving gamer. I'm not saying it's impossible to do a legitimate critique of a game(even when you have never played it and not even approaching feature complete), i'm saying there is a way to do it that doesn't make you look like an rear end in a top hat. Mr. Crow posted:Stuff This guy has the right idea. Just Offscreen fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Apr 28, 2014 |
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Apr 28, 2014 14:46
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One thing I'll say from watching the vids is that I kind of miss how the really big capital ships in FS2 often essentially acted like terrain. Defending that first station in the Pegasus meant you were often flying around or through the station itself, and runs on capital ships heavily relied on getting so close that guns couldn't hit you, not that they couldn't track fast enough (though there was that). The really big ships acted as huge anchors of "safe to retreat to" and "seriously don't go here until you have a plan to do so" as well as having physical barriers. They just don't seem to have that presence in Enemy Starfighter: everything seems more like Into the Lion's Den, which, the intro with the Sathanas aside, features mostly combat around empty space with a few fighters. Cap ships were huge and took a lot of time to fly across, but the ships I was watching just seem really small. The screenshots from the battleship-spam kind of illustrate what I mean: that many Orion destroyers would a) annihilate a shitton of enemies without difficulty and b) be so massive that flying through/around it would take like a minute, and being far enough away to get that viewpoint would take five.
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Apr 28, 2014 15:06
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Mr. Crow posted:
Gwaihir posted:Basically goons are the loving worst. You guys have an overly-sensitive definition of over-reacting/freaking out. Every concern that anyone has posted in the thread has been really low key and reserved so far. What more could you ask of people? This is probably the most civil thread in games at the moment. At this point you're pretty much telling people "Don't criticize anything at all," which isn't really fair. Fart Car '97 fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Apr 28, 2014 |
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Apr 28, 2014 15:08
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Ravenfood posted:One thing I'll say from watching the vids is that I kind of miss how the really big capital ships in FS2 often essentially acted like terrain. Defending that first station in the Pegasus meant you were often flying around or through the station itself, and runs on capital ships heavily relied on getting so close that guns couldn't hit you, not that they couldn't track fast enough (though there was that). The really big ships acted as huge anchors of "safe to retreat to" and "seriously don't go here until you have a plan to do so" as well as having physical barriers. They just don't seem to have that presence in Enemy Starfighter: everything seems more like Into the Lion's Den, which, the intro with the Sathanas aside, features mostly combat around empty space with a few fighters. Freespace has some hosed up ship classification scale, they're also stupidly huge. That giant rear end carrier in Star Citizen is half the length of a Destroyer from FS2 and has the Colossus clocking it at like 6.5km. I'm assuming Kairo is going for a more subdued approach in ship sizes. A modern'ish battle ship is only around 275m in length with a Nimitz class carrier only being about 50m longer.
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Apr 28, 2014 15:37
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Bolow posted:Freespace has some hosed up ship classification scale, they're also stupidly huge. That giant rear end carrier in Star Citizen is half the length of a Destroyer from FS2 and has the Colossus clocking it at like 6.5km. I'm assuming Kairo is going for a more subdued approach in ship sizes. A modern'ish battle ship is only around 275m in length with a Nimitz class carrier only being about 50m longer.
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Apr 28, 2014 15:51
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Fart Car '97 posted:You guys have an overly-sensitive definition of over-reacting/freaking out. Every concern that anyone has posted in the thread has been really low key and reserved so far. What more could you ask of people? This is probably the most civil thread in games at the moment. At this point you're pretty much telling people "Don't criticize anything at all," which isn't really fair. Not at all- There's nothing wrong with valid criticism, I'm not one of those people that goes OMG PEOPLE DON'T LIKE THING I LIKE? THEY MUST BE IDIOTS! I can deal with people having different opinions, I'm not that far down the internet autism rabithole. This particular post is just all kinds of dumb though, and is the reason that it's really hard for any developer to talk about things in progress at all, because gamers in general have no mode more nuanced than "LEAP TO CONCLUSIONS": http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3530373&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=35#post428869333 Developer releases a very limited alpha instant action preview mode to a very few people and they release all of two videos + a couple screenshots? "  OMG THE DEEP STRATEGY IS GONE." Not "Hm, I wish Scott Manley had shown this or "Is that piece in this preview build yet?", we go straight to "Ugh, game is doesn't have XYZ, game is ruined."That's the obnoxious part. Valid criticism/discussion at this point would be talking about the ship scale like several of the previous posts, or anything based on stuff the people that have /actually played the game/ have said about their experiences, etc. For actual content, I sorta agree with the ship scale feelings- I really loved the freespace feeling of flying a fighter alongside huge fuckoff capital ships exchanging shots larger than my entire ship. On the other hand, if he's going for a homeworld vibe, the ship scales seem pretty close to in-line, although I'd think capships should still be a tad larger. That beam frigate swatting that last fighter out of the sky right as Scott was chasing it down (I think around ~6 minutes in his second video?) was an absolute thing of beauty though. Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Apr 28, 2014 |
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Apr 28, 2014 15:59
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Hey! The reactions here are super fascinating, which is why I've stayed away for a few days. People are more honest when I'm not "around." I don't think anyone is freaking out, or that their criticisms are unfounded, or that they're wrong for feeling disappointed. I didn't think there would be a strong reaction to such an early build. Basically, a few press that I know didn't get a chance to play it at PAX so I sent them the rough build to screw around with. I feel like such a jerk running in here to defend my own game, but some of you wanted info, so maybe this will provide some clarity and we can keep the thread productive/friendly.  Bounties Bounties were implemented to put pressure on the player and make them aggressive, to make them take risks. The game is really fun when you treat the interceptor like a motorcycle and fly like an rear end in a top hat. Speed is your best defense. Some of these bounties won't be won/lost on timer, but on in-system events like a ship reaching the jump node and leaving the system. But for a first pass, timers are the way to go. None of these cause you to fail the mission or the game unless it's absolutely necessary. I know the risks of timed-fail events like this and will iterate appropriately! Strategy/Cockpit Focus Alchenar is right, you do a disservice to either end of the spectrum when you hybridize the combat too much. I feel like if I wanted to make a strategy layer comparable to Homeworld or Nexus, I absolutely wouldn't do a cockpit side of the game. I'd rather make a smarter action game where you're prioritizing targets/subsystems in a pretty robust combat encounter. It's still super useful to queue up commands from the tactical map, or even watch everything play out, but just because Scott didn't do it in 13min of game footage doesn't mean there's any real subtext going on there. Honestly, it's mostly because I ignored a bug to make an onscreen pause/play button in the tactical mode (hitting PAUSE on your keyboard is the only way to start/stop time), so he never played with it. My fault! Planning Phase The planning phase worked way back when because the simulation (AI, etc) was very rudimentary and therefore more consistent. Also, the planning phase let you start anywhere, which is like choosing your spawn point in an MP game and putting it right next to the enemy player's back. It's fun for the first couple rounds, but long term it's not interesting. I recognized this and started working backwards from the problem: How to make this more interesting/challenging? Warp bubble inhibitors? Is the game running while you're planning, and you have to time your jumps? After months of this, I was like, "What the hell am I agonizing over this for?" and decided to let you warp around solar systems EVE-style instead. I'm usually really good at killing my babies, but I spent too long on this. Last Stand/Campaign Last Stand IS a test mode, but it's not like I have some super secret project file with the ENEMY STARFIGHTER CAMPAIGN locked away. I have a stable of individual hidden features I've written/prototyped/polished, but without player feedback it's hard to know where to focus. So I'm carefully dropping features into the mode to push the game in a direction and responding to tester feedback. I'm a huge believer in test-driven design, but without being boxed in by UR conventions. Last Stand will evolve into the campaign which will be something more than Space Risk of Rain. I'm not really happy with the state the game is shown in, but that's completely my fault. But it's probably also good to let a little bit of air out of some of the crazier expectations I've seen floating around. Hope this helps! PS. Scale You guys are right about scale -- a lot of it is due to not having repeating forms in my ships, and not putting enough detail in the right spots on the ships. It's really good feedback and that is being worked on. Also keep in mind that you're moving anywhere from 1x to 4x the speed of ships in Freespace, so these 1km ships seem small. Kairo fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Apr 28, 2014 |
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Apr 28, 2014 16:10
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Kairo posted:Strategy/Cockpit Focus Oh that clears that up. And I wasn't criticizing at all, merely noting the tension there and the fact that testing and iteration will probably change the original design. And yes, I want an action focused game with strategy elements than something that attempts to straddle both worlds equally. PS. I love the look of the speed/scale balance.
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Apr 28, 2014 16:25
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Keep up the good work dude. Glad your back. I think giving out limited copys like this is going to help you immensely. The little things like ship scale can sometimes be missed if you keep it under lock and key for too long. Look at Banished, so many little niggles that he could have avoided had he let a few people play it (other then testers) in later development. Good luck. I can't wait to try it for myself.
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Apr 28, 2014 16:28
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Kairo all I want is for the tutorial scenario to be an homage to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChRWSpodc3A
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Apr 28, 2014 16:30
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Fart Car '97 posted:Kairo all I want is for the tutorial scenario to be an homage to this: Except, given the setting, from the "evil" perspective 
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Apr 28, 2014 16:31
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Kibayasu posted:Except, given the setting, from the "evil" perspective An opening mission titled "Kharak must burn." Would own so hard. Replace Kharak with any random planet name.
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Apr 28, 2014 16:32
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Fart Car '97 posted:An opening mission titled "Kharak must burn." Would own so hard. Replace Kharak with any random planet name. "Karak" I'll take my royalties cheque now 
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Apr 28, 2014 17:00
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Honestly, the game is a solid performer, presentation wise it's perfect, not you can just build whatever game you want on top of it. I'm glad that the spacecraft are fast, and It'd be nice to get proper analogue throttle control. In terms of scale, I know people like flying over structures because they've seen it in Star Wars or BSG, but I don't think there's much room to keep making those ships bigger since the player is going to want those on their team at some point, and slowing the fighter down is just dull. IMHO it would be better to make the scenery closer to the fights, the asteroids seem to be off in a little corner of their own and you never get in the middle of them intentionally, have some giant space stations where you're engaging hostiles and need to hug the structure to take down anti-cap weapons, have battles a planetary rings where there's literally a wall of debris splitting the map in two. Sci-fi provides plenty of tropes. What I find amusing is the Star Citizen zealots who act like the graphic style is a sign of terrible game design rather than an artistic choice.
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Apr 28, 2014 17:50
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ROCKET SCIENCE
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illectro posted:*feedback* This is all good stuff - the landmarks are starved for more interesting things to happen in them. That's on my list too (god it's a long list), but you're right, there are several sci-fi tropes I could be taking better advantage of. Also, I implemented "controls.usessimplethrottle" in a build but forgot to note it. That should allow absolute control on a joystick, but I don't have my X52 anymore so I just try it with a 360 controller. I am working on a control config selector in the options menu at this very moment, so it should be way less painful to try different configs. quote:What I find amusing is the Star Citizen zealots who act like the graphic style is a sign of terrible game design rather than an artistic choice. Yeah, I am glad SC exists because I think the genre needs an AAA game to be taken seriously again, but some people have tunnel vision with it. HOWEVER, most SC guys I've talked to are awesome, and a whole group of them came by at PAX (some did multiple times), and we had a great time talking about space games in general. Some people don't get that we're all on the same side, but the people I've directly talked to absolutely do. I even got a Goonrathi card!
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Apr 28, 2014 18:03
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Gwaihir posted:Basically goons are the loving worst. Pubbies are the worst. Goons are the second worst. Then you're into infectious diseases.
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Apr 28, 2014 18:41
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Kairo posted:I even got a Goonrathi card! The important question is did you follow the QR code to the
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Apr 28, 2014 19:13
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illectro posted:What I find amusing is the Star Citizen zealots who act like the graphic style is a sign of terrible game design rather than an artistic choice. Show me someone that can't appreciate the Homeworld aesthetic and I'll show you someone that is dead inside.
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Apr 28, 2014 19:25
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Gwaihir posted:Not at all- There's nothing wrong with valid criticism, I'm not one of those people that goes OMG PEOPLE DON'T LIKE THING I LIKE? THEY MUST BE IDIOTS! I can deal with people having different opinions, I'm not that far down the internet autism rabithole. This particular post is just all kinds of dumb though, and is the reason that it's really hard for any developer to talk about things in progress at all, because gamers in general have no mode more nuanced than "LEAP TO CONCLUSIONS": http://forums.somethingawful.com/newreply.php?action=newreply&postid=428891948#post428869333 If that's supposed to link to my post, you should check back in the thread. I voiced those concerns before various people got their hands on test builds - the test builds just confirmed those things were gone.
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Apr 28, 2014 20:58
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Gwaihir posted:Not at all- There's nothing wrong with valid criticism, I'm not one of those people that goes OMG PEOPLE DON'T LIKE THING I LIKE? THEY MUST BE IDIOTS! I can deal with people having different opinions, I'm not that far down the internet autism rabithole. You aren't? Gwaihir posted:This particular post is just all kinds of dumb though, and is the reason that it's really hard for any developer to talk about things in progress at all, because gamers in general have no mode more nuanced than "LEAP TO CONCLUSIONS": http://forums.somethingawful.com/newreply.php?action=newreply&postid=428891948#post428869333 Because it sure seems like you are. Nobody has been even remotely as dramatic about it as you're trying to make them sound. One person outright said he was disappointed by what he saw. Fart Car '97 fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Apr 28, 2014 |
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Apr 28, 2014 21:09
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I'm just hoping the enemy, when confronted by a superior force, instead of using more ships like Homeworld 2 and increased the difficulty that way, they should get smarter. Think the utter amounts of bullshit tactics seen in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, more laying of traps and secret ambushes. Perhaps hiding in hollowed out asteroids, or blowing up a gas giant. Then you let that annihilate the player's fleet, making them the underdog again. But now you know some tricks to pull.
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Apr 28, 2014 22:30
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Kairo posted:Yeah, I am glad SC exists because I think the genre needs an AAA game to be taken seriously again, but some people have tunnel vision with it. HOWEVER, most SC guys I've talked to are awesome, and a whole group of them came by at PAX (some did multiple times), and we had a great time talking about space games in general. Some people don't get that we're all on the same side, but the people I've directly talked to absolutely do. I even got a Goonrathi card! Anyone who isn't pumped for SC, Elite, this, the couple other space games coming out isn't a true space sim fan  I'm seriously giddy about the coming year of space games, I hope it's a revival and I seriously hope there's ever a follow-up to Independence War 2 (space GTA). I haven't really followed Elite to closely but it seems like they might be going that direction and/or they might be doing some stupid multiplier stuff I'm not sure. They all scratch various itches
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Apr 29, 2014 00:37
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I want star citizen to be a game but I'm worried the dude is just gonna withdraw a bunch of bearer bonds and go into hiding in south america edit: which is what i would do
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Apr 29, 2014 01:07
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A MIRACLE posted:I want star citizen to be a game but I'm worried the dude is just gonna withdraw a bunch of bearer bonds and go into hiding in south america There are a lot of valid concerns to have about Star Citizen, but anyone who has this one isn't familiar with Chris Roberts. You could hand him 42 billion dollars, no strings attached, and he'd use it to make a space game.
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Apr 29, 2014 01:29
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Mr. Crow posted:...I hope it's a revival and I seriously hope there's ever a follow-up to Independence War 2 (space GTA). I just got control config cycling in the options menu working so I'm actually taking the night off and booting this up for the first time ever, using Dominic White's 360 controller config. It's $6.00 on GoG for anyone interested: http://www.gog.com/game/independence_war_2
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Apr 29, 2014 01:46
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Talking about me (because that's what we do here, right?), I'm going to be streaming some Enemy Starfighter live in just a minute! http://www.twitch.tv/dominicwhite Come get in on chat and stuff. Edit: Stream over. I got to the point where nothing could really hurt me anymore. Enemy capital ships would warp in, only for a dozen interceptors to launch bombs simultaneously. Boom. Fight over. If anything was unlucky enough to survive, it got 7+ capital ships focusing fire on it. Dominic White fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Apr 29, 2014 |
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Apr 29, 2014 01:48
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Kairo posted:I just got control config cycling in the options menu working so I'm actually taking the night off and booting this up for the first time ever, using Dominic White's 360 controller config. It's $6.00 on GoG for anyone interested: http://www.gog.com/game/independence_war_2 I started replaying this earlier last week and am having some good fun with it myself. Why am I playing I-War 2 in this, the 2014th year of our lord? To assuage the blue balls I've gotten from watching development of ES, of course. 
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Apr 29, 2014 02:06
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doctorfrog posted:I started replaying this earlier last week and am having some good fun with it myself. Any hints/tips?
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Apr 29, 2014 02:36
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Haha, I totally installed it this week too. Tried Domic's 360 config but ended up breaking out the joystick, just felt weird playing without it. I've actually got quite a few mods for it, freshens it up a bit
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Apr 29, 2014 02:37
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Kairo posted:Any hints/tips? If you auto-pilot dock to lucretias base it frequently skips the travel time and teleports you straight in (not sure what the specific criteria is to trigger it). You can manually boost out of LDSi fields with W or S by default. Great for getting out of stations space faster, event better when you're trying to run away and get hit with an LDSi missle.
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Apr 29, 2014 02:52
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