Raising The Bar...
 

First let me say that I think SE IV is the BEST conquer the galaxy game that I have ever played. However upon close inspection there are a myriad of things that need to be fixed in order to make this a time tested classic.

Having purchased the full Version of SE III years ago and watching the development of that game I am sure MM will make the corrections necessary and advance the present game beyond our hopes.

However I do think that MM needs to raise the bar on customer service. Now before MM or the loyal SE IV community take offence, please hear me out. I fully understand the obstacles that need to be overcome when operating a small business. For the Last two years I have had a struggling enterprise that for the majority of that time was staying afloat barely on a month to month business. However when the Last half of 2000 put us firmly in the black I invested that profit into adding more value to my existing product line and services.

As I stated in an early post ..when MM decided to take a short break during the Christmas holidays I felt that it was probably a long overdue and well deserved rest. I would also not be surprised to find out that MM probably could not enjoy their entire break without occasionally thinking about their product and the many things they would like to improve and enhance.

SE IV has apparently done very well. Selling out is always a good sign that a product is in demand.

SE IV was sold to us at the average going rate for a full commercial/retail software product. However they did not have the expensive of a pretty box and box art, nor did they invest much in their manual. Nether MM or Shrapnel has had to invest much if anything in advertising, and MM does not have the typical 12+ man crew for R&D. In a nut shell I would guess that financially things must be looking pretty good for all involved.

This is why I think that MM and Shrapnel need to raise the bar in regards to customer service and support . MM came back from their rest on the 4th and here it is the evening of the 10th and we have not heard a single word from them. I know that they are under staffed and working hard on the ongoing development of SE IV but , how hard would it be to drop by once a week and just give us a short progress report and answer a few of the questions that the people on this board have had.

In addition to this they need to get a better service provided that will not shut down their ability to receive emails. These are all things that are the cost of doing business. They need to take some of their profits from this game and invest it back into the company. Perhaps hire some help. I am sure they could get some inexpensive help from some people right here in the community. As much as I love SE IV and I think the team at MM is great. They need to start thinking big and expand their horizons. SE IV could be a runaway hit if they had a box with great cover art and a decent manual. I need not point out how fantastic the cover art for upcoming "Stars: Supernova" looks and thus gives the impression of a fully fleshed out and professional product. Just for the record I hated the original "Stars" game.

As it stands only the most dire hard fan of this genre will take the time and energy to pour over this game and absorb the vast wealth of material that is needed to be learned in order to have a satisfying experience.
Have I not played SE III and thoroughly read their wonderful 300 page manual for that game. I would be totally lost. There are many things that are not answered in the hard copy manual and the Online manual. Too many things are left to be learned from these message Boards and by trial and error. I would be willing to pay extra for this manual even though I feel we should have been given it in the first place.

There have been many positives reviews of SE IV and that will give the potential of many new sales for MM & Shrapnel. However since this is a mail order only product, many people will visit this board and others like it and I'm afraid that the number of unanswered issues, lack of a decent manual, occasional inability to email MM,and lack of timely progress reports, may hold back potential customers and leave the visitor with a negative impression as to what they can expect.

Nigel Wulf

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

I must say, that is one of the most professional post I have ever had the fortune to read. Very well stated. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

Well put. I totally agree. Some more information given to us would be real nice, too. How about a list of known and worked-on bugs?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Atrocities:
I must say, that is one of the most professional post I have ever had the fortune to read. Very well stated. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

But I think this is where reality and fantasy diverge...

The problem is that YES the game is doing well but you know what as well as it is doing Shrapnel only has one full time employee and me as a part timer. Even with the sales we have not made enough money to have me quit my day time job. Neither has it made enough for Aaron either. And yes we have spent quite a bit of money on advertising for the game. The problem is folks do not understand how expensive most advertising is. Web advertising is not that bad, and that is where we spent the most money.

We respond to each and every email we get and Aaron does, I get tons of good email about how well Aaron responds to his community. The problem is since this is STILL not enough for us to quit what we do full time Aaron is still doing this after he gets off from work. Because of that the patch process is slower, at the same time though can you even get close to this much feedback with the lead programmer of any other game? If so I would like to know because I doubt it.

As far as access to the testing forum we discuss things that are trade secret in nature in there and thus we could never open it up for read only access. As it is I think we are fairly open and honest with you guys and so far have listened to all input.

------------------
Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

Although I completely understand the points expressed in this topic, in fairness to MM I think you need to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Just reading and answering emails alone can be an all day job. I know that when I'm off for a week I need at least several days just to catch up on the emails and voice mail and I'm sure Aaron's gets far more of that stuff than I do. It's likely he's still trying to wade through both the emails and the Posts (a ton of both) and determine what needs to be worked on in the next patch. If we haven't heard from him on the forum it's probably because he's buried and playing catch up.

There's only so much you can do when you're essentially a one man show like MM is. I'd rather have him concentrating on what needs to be done and popping his head up to say hi and tellus what's going on only when he needs a break from the programming grind.

I'm sure he does read our emails and stay in touch with the forum topics but there is only so much one man can do. He'll get SE4 to where we all want it to be eventually, its just going to take time.

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

I gotta add my 2 cents here.

Although a new face here, I've played computer games for quite a while. And I can understand that a few people can only do so much, and you must prioritize your work. But if you want to create a classic, its not advertising that will do it, but *word of mouth*. I'm relatively sure that [for example] Sid Meier's Colonization had a larger ad budget than Civ did, and it had a player base from Civ to get it going, but that didn't matter. Civ is well remembered, Colonization much less so.

Why? .. word of mouth ..

As an older player, who played Civ and Moo when they first came out, and happily informed fellow shoppers to "buy this game", I find myself unable to do the same here without caveats about how hard the game is to learn to play well. Thus, my main gripe is the shameful manual/Online manual.

Every review of this game has dinged the manual. And understandably so. The interface is confusing to the new player, and the Online manual is cumbersome as well. Nothing so well illustrates this than trying to refit/retrofit a ship. Question 19 of the Q & A: "How the ---- do I retrofit a ship?" The wording of this reflects not only humor, but the confusion and frustration of the player having to tunnel down through several mouse clicks to do what should be a simple thing. It's easy to understand in hindsight, but certainly isn't intuitive when you're trying to do it the first time.

The Tutorial could be expanded to alleviate this, but, currently, does not take you far enough into the game to illustrate the many features that the game does offer. Note that if this title were released by a major vendor, it would lose several points ranking, because one would have to buy the strategy guide to find out how to do basic things in the game which should have been covered in the manual, and this is currently and rightfully deemed a rip-off.

The cumbersome interface is another big drawback. You're always clicking. There are no windows in this windows game. You cannot move or resize a window and you cannot have two open at once, which would oftentimes be useful. This compartmentalizes information. For example, when inspecting an enemy ship that you have fought before and have in your enemy designs screen, you must go to this screen to see what should be in the large ( and empty) ship report window.

Another classic is "Why doesn't my new colony have any people on it?" This is covered in the Tutorial, but is so anti-intuitive that anyone who just jumps into the game can't figure it out, and comes here to post. [One could argue that a colony ship should automatically have people on it, just as a warship automatically has ammo on it. Imagine if you had to load ammo manually unless you used the Attack button while your warship was at at one of your planets.]

But, I digress .. Give us a good manual and a streamlined interface, and the game will advertise itself.

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

Poddu has some valid points in regard to the poor documentation in the game and the effect that has on vairous players and their willingness to recommend this game to others.

I do have a counter point to his view on colony ships being automatically loaded w/colonists. Some situations can find you in the position to expand quickly but not have the population on most of your colony worlds to fill all the colony ships you build. I solve this by building CS wherever I have a shipyard, regardless of the pop of the planet, then move the CS to a move heavily populated planet and load up the colonists. This prevents the removal of all but 1M colonist on worlds w/small pops when building CS. While this is verrrrry unintuitive (a word?) it does, I feel, serve a purpose.

------------------
Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

I think there are things both Malfador and we can learn from this release. The manual was certaintly below our standards but to be honest I have to wonder how we could have taken all of the necessary info and not had a 500 page book http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif.

As far as the interface I actually like it. I think it is FAR more intuitive than say MOO2's interface. Yes there is clicking but I like the way that a lot of common info is in ONE area so I don't have to search for it. It makes micromanaging much easier.

As far as Aaron goes I just spoke with him and he is going through his email SLOWLY http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif.

------------------
Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

I never played SE3 and then I found the SE4 demo and loved it. It was fun learning the game using the demo while I waited for my copy in the mail. I got the hang of this game in just a few days. When my copy came I wasn't upset with finding a small paper manual. I read the HTML manual and discovered I knew everything already from playing the demo. Some people are slow learners and need everything spelled out to them in manuals. I find this game very easy and straight forward,and I only wish the A.I. was improved,plus a few tweaks here and there. The Last thing on my wish list or mind is the manual. When I had the demo and had no manual,half the fun was learning the game by playing it.

[This message has been edited by Emperor Zodd (edited 11 January 2001).]

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

Poddu is totally wrong about the colony ships. Because, for example, sometimes my spaceyard is on a planet with O2 breathers but I want to colonize an H2 planet. I will colonize it with an empty colony ship, and bring a transport with H2 colonists. Or maybe pick up the H2 colonists with the colony ship. If the colony ship were automatically filled, then I'd have to jettison people.

If you want the colony ship auto-filled, use the colonize button. That's what it's for.

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

There are times when I load zero or just 1m population. Usually when I colonize a distant tiny planet that has ruins.I would not want to be stuck with a auto full load system. Besides whats so hard about hitting the colonize button to get a full cargo load of people? Maybe thats too advanced for some people.

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

On the manual issue, I've suggested to MM that they turn their HTML manual into a right-click, context sensitive help file that can be accessed directly from the game.

The hard part is done, all they'd need to do is link the indexes to the objects in the game code.

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

Well, I seem to be in a singular minority about the Colony Ships. So be it ... it's a small issue, but here are some replies anyway.


WhiteHojo:

Yes, I understand, but why does the Colony Ship have to be full? You can colonize a planet with just a few million people, and have it be quite productive. This is a function of there being very little production penalty on a near-empty planet. You can send a Colony Ship to a new planet, build a Space yard in 5 turns, and build a Colony Ship 2 turns later. Even with only a few million (or even 1 Mil) people left on that planet, I can still crank out Colony Ships every 3 turns [only 1 extra turn], and send then off with a couple of million colonists. If there were a major production penalty involved it wouldn't be viable, but as it is, it works.

Richard:

About the manual issue, there is a similar comment in the user guide where Aaron says he would have needed over 350 pages to tell us all. It seems to me that there is a World Of Knowledge between what we have and these dense tomes that you propose. For example, when you are first playing the game, you might wonder what the differences are in the advanced traits. "Hmm", you say, "I wonder what is the difference between a Psychic race and a Deeply Religious race." When you look up "Empire Setup - Advanced Traits Window", you get a picture of that window and find out that this is where you select advanced racial traits. Yes, I figured that much out. But where do you get a brief description of what kinds of abilities or technologies are involved? I don't need a 20 page detailed description, but how about a 2 or 3 paragraph overview? As it is, one learns if a trait is interesting or useful to your type of playing style by investing an hour or so playing a game with it.

dmm:

Yes, this can happen, but usually by the time that it does, one has multiple spaceyards on multiple types of worlds, and one can systemize colonization. If the default were a filled colony ship, then once in a while one would have to offload and reload colonists. But the vast majority of the time, you'd be good to go. I'd rather micromanage the occasional exception, than every colony ship .. but, I can see that it cuts both ways.

Zodd:

Maybe you're right. Maybe, as you so kindly point out, some of us are just "slow learners" and need things "spelled out in manuals." Things like ... "which is better,computers or a real crew?" Things like ... "When you select to give the computer players a bonus, what exactly to they recieve?" We all have some questions, Zodd, and maybe a better manual would help some of us. Unlike yourself, I have not "discovered I knew everything already from playing the demo."

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

No manual is going to tell you how a race design plays, methinks. It's going to be heavily affected by the quadrant setup and your neighbors, and by your personal playing style (going for the quick conquest, building up first, etc). The same goes for many other questions, like Master Computers versus crew (in a Finite Resources game in an Ancient quadrant, for instance, you might want to be very, very miserly -- those MCs are expensive. But in a more normal setting, but surrounded by the Psychic Enemies Network, you'll probably want them. And so forth).

However, certain things *could* be extrapolated from the data files, and...

Perhaps a race trait's description should also include the names of the tech areas that require it? This could be automatically generated by the engine -- no need for hardcoding.

A certain amount of documentation could probably be auto-generated from data files, like a tech tree, complete with costs based on the game settings. This can also, of course, be studied by a user reading the files.

What can't be, are the details "under the hood", like --

- how do Ministers make their decisions

- what specific abilities mean (Some aren't that clear. For instance, looking at face value, it's unclear to me why the Economic Disruption op is more costly than the Resource Theft; presumably the Resource Destruction ability applies some multiplicative factor, or has some other hidden advantage, because otherwise it looks like it destroys no more than the Theft op steals).

- what occurs in a turn, and in what order

- how do the strategies work; e.g. what does "optimal range" optimize, when multiple weapon types are present?

and so forth.



------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

I have to ask, how many people who have trouble learning SE4 have little or no experience with turn-based strategy games?

I know that I've been playing them since Empire back in the days of mainframes and that these days, if you play one, you know 80% of the controls for all of them. Most of the basic strategies work the same across the board as well. I needed less than 5 minutes to learn SE4, and whenever I need to access a feature for the first time, I have no trouble finding it exactly (or right near) where I expect it to be, based purely on assumptions from my experience with Emperor of the Fading Suns, Civ, Alpha Centauri, Galactic Civlizations, Star Control I, Moo, etc., etc., etc.

Of course my mindset also predisposes me to like many features. Take the colony ship thing. When I first discovered it, my reaction was, "Wow, cool! I get to choose how many people to put on my colony ship, or I can load it up full and send it on its way with just a single click! That's so handy."

------------------
Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

Very well put. I made a suggestion to SG and MM back in early December to let registered Users have "read-only" access to the SE4 beta forum so that we could learn from all the trial and tribulations of the past 6 months.

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

Guys

Whenever I have sent email to MM I always received a timely reply from Aaron. When I had a problem with my SE IV order I received prompt attention from Shrapnel. So my experience with both have been excellent so far.

Elmo

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

I agree that what is not in the manual would probably make a much larger book than what is in the manual (printed and CD). But for myself I enjoyed the game more when I was learning these things than I do now really. I still enjoy the game and I am still learning things (I am playing a temporal race for the first time in my current game). There are so many different combinations that it would be very difficult to put it all in a manual. But I do think that if the game goes on store shelves to a wider audience that a much better manual will be needed. On average the audience that is playing it now is much better prepared for this type of game than the person that can just pick it up off the shelf.

Myself I played SEIII for a month or so before the Demo for SEIV came out so it wasn't totally new to me. A lot of the technologies were familiar some are a bit more or less powerful in this Version but still I knew generally what they do.

An idea that has been suggested before is a help section like SEIII where you could get a lot of answers in game. That could be the best of both worlds those that want to know can look it up while they are playing and those that don't can just find out on their own. And it wouldn't have to be a printed manual.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 12 January 2001).]

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

I just wanted to re-address what this thread was about.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>First let me say that I think SE IV is the BEST conquer the galaxy game that I have ever played. However upon close inspection there are a myriad of things that need to be fixed in order to make this a time tested classic.
Having purchased the full Version of SE III years ago and watching the development of that game I am sure MM will make the corrections necessary and advance the present game beyond our hopes.

However I do think that MM needs to raise the bar on customer service. Now before MM or the loyal SE IV community take offence, please hear me out. I fully understand the obstacles that need to be overcome when operating a small business. For the Last two years I have had a struggling enterprise that for the majority of that time was staying afloat barely on a month to month business. However when the Last half of 2000 put us firmly in the black I invested that profit into adding more value to my existing product line and services.

As I stated in an early post ..when MM decided to take a short break during the Christmas holidays I felt that it was probably a long overdue and well deserved rest. I would also not be surprised to find out that MM probably could not enjoy their entire break without occasionally thinking about their product and the many things they would like to improve and enhance.

SE IV has apparently done very well. Selling out is always a good sign that a product is in demand.

SE IV was sold to us at the average going rate for a full commercial/retail software product. However they did not have the expensive of a pretty box and box art, nor did they invest much in their manual. Nether MM or Shrapnel has had to invest much if anything in advertising, and MM does not have the typical 12+ man crew for R&D. In a nut shell I would guess that financially things must be looking pretty good for all involved.

This is why I think that MM and Shrapnel need to raise the bar in regards to customer service and support . MM came back from their rest on the 4th and here it is the evening of the 10th and we have not heard a single word from them. I know that they are under staffed and working hard on the ongoing development of SE IV but , how hard would it be to drop by once a week and just give us a short progress report and answer a few of the questions that the people on this board have had.

In addition to this they need to get a better service provided that will not shut down their ability to receive emails. These are all things that are the cost of doing business. They need to take some of their profits from this game and invest it back into the company. Perhaps hire some help. I am sure they could get some inexpensive help from some people right here in the community. As much as I love SE IV and I think the team at MM is great. They need to start thinking big and expand their horizons. SE IV could be a runaway hit if they had a box with great cover art and a decent manual. I need not point out how fantastic the cover art for upcoming "Stars: Supernova" looks and thus gives the impression of a fully fleshed out and professional product. Just for the record I hated the original "Stars" game.

As it stands only the most dire hard fan of this genre will take the time and energy to pour over this game and absorb the vast wealth of material that is needed to be learned in order to have a satisfying experience.
Have I not played SE III and thoroughly read their wonderful 300 page manual for that game. I would be totally lost. There are many things that are not answered in the hard copy manual and the Online manual. Too many things are left to be learned from these message Boards and by trial and error. I would be willing to pay extra for this manual even though I feel we should have been given it in the first place.

There have been many positives reviews of SE IV and that will give the potential of many new sales for MM & Shrapnel. However since this is a mail order only product, many people will visit this board and others like it and I'm afraid that the number of unanswered issues, lack of a decent manual, occasional inability to email MM,and lack of timely progress reports, may hold back potential customers and leave the visitor with a negative impression as to what they can expect.

Nigel Wulf<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Again, very well stated. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif



------------------
"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Patric Stewart as Captain Picard
UCP/TCO Ship Yards

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Richard:
Because of that the patch process is slower, at the same time though can you even get close to this much feedback with the lead programmer of any other game? If so I would like to know because I doubt it.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The only other game I know of who has the programmer and such reponding to the board like this is Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord, a wargame by another indie company. The support by both companies has been superior to anything I have seen at other game developers/publishers (pathfinder gives a raspberry to Microprose/Hasbro).

Could it get better? maybe....*shrug*

Just thought I would put in my 2 cents.

Now back to the game.



[This message has been edited by pathfinder (edited 12 January 2001).]

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

You know, as much as there are many improvements that could be made to SE4, at least it is not Reach for the Stars, a game in which the designer unequivocably stated that was designed so that people could NOT modify it in any way, not even changing artwork, is still buggy after being out6 months, and has very little, if any, designer support.

I'll stick with SE4, thankyouverymuch http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Derek

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

Unfortunately I bought Reach for the Stars because I loved the origional (on my C64) and Version 1.2 (on my Amiga2000) but the new Reach for the Stars is in no way comparable to either of those classics. I would rather break out my C64 and play the origional. Yes it still works http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif. Oh no the theme music from the origional is haunting me Da da, da da, da, dot dot da.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 12 January 2001).]

Re: Raising The Bar...
 

Empire of the Fading Suns has comparable support from Holistic Design. They've given out parts of the source code to the fans in order to allow better modifications. They even gave one guy permission to create a completely new display window that shows "EFS Version 1.5 Nova Version 2.6" Where Nova is the fan mod Version number displayed in the game. They also shared the sub routine they used to create the game maps, and are still patching the game even though it's three years old.

Blizzard also did an above average job of patching StarCraft and BroodWars to tweak playbalance between the races. Even going so far as to get input from the top tournament players about what needed fixing and how much to tweak things to get them fixed.

Now, to give credit where it's due, Aaron is much better about feedback and replying to e-mail than any other game designer I'm aware of, and he puts out patches way faster than anyone else. But there are a few companies that care enough to try.

I think more of them would be willing to if they could only get permission to engage in what their bosses will consider a non-profit activity.

------------------
Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.