What is the problem with SE5?

President_Elect_Shang · #1 January 23rd, 2007, 05:01 PM

I have read a lot of complaints about the game and while I admit there is work to be done I also strongly voice my faith that things will work out and SE5 will become a top notch; if not the top notch 4X game. Till SE6 that is! Anyway what I don't understand is just what the main complaint is here? I hear 20 people give 20 different answers each for a total of 400 answers and many of which are repeats. So I want to get my misunderstanding cleared up once and for all!

Without a lengthy discourse as to the nature of the problem what is the ONE problem you have with SE5? The one and only one that eats you up more than any others?

Please repeat others if you must; however, if you repeat a problem that is your one and only answer so don't give another. What is my goal here you may ask? Well mainly I don't seem to have the problems others are having, although I do have my complaints they are "game breakers" not "game slowers" or "hinderers", or whatever! You know what I mean! Also I would like to clearly see what the problems are so I can tell if they are things modders can work at fixing. Please lets try to keep on topic and not have this devolve into an argument over which game is better or anything like that.

Shadowstar · #2 January 23rd, 2007, 05:45 PM

As I understand it, the main gripe is that most people don't want to play a game that's so buggy out of the box. These people don't see modding potential and typically never bother looking at what the community is doing. They see the stock game, play it for about 15 minutes, and give up at the first bug they run into. SE5 isn't as skin-pretty as some of the more mainstream games, and unfortunately that is what gets most gamers hooked. If it doesn't have a nicely polished exterior with 5,000-particle explosions, pixel shaders, and fancy ragdoll physics (or water simulation), and especially if it has any bugs you can find within the first 5 minutes of playing, most gamers tend to lose interest pretty quick.

This is also why SE5 gets bad reviews. Reviewers may spend alot more time with a game than Joe Sixpack (the good ones have to - even if they hate it), but in the end thier primary audience is still the casual gamer since they are responsible for the majority of business in the industry. Reviewers who enjoy mods or patched versions of an initially buggy game will still give it a bad review because they understand that most of the people who are reading thier reviews don't have the patience to dig into the game's community or look for patches. The best reviewers will still mention the game's modding potential, and its dedicated community, but only as an afterthought and it will not affect the score they give.

There is precident for a properly patched game to get "re-reviewed" later on and get a better score. CGW re-reviewed X3 after it had been patched quite a bit and gave it a better review than they did initially. So there's still a chance for SE5 Gold to be a big hit right out of the box, but alot of that depends on us, the modders. (This is speculation, I don't know if there will be an SE5 Gold, but it could be a good business move, if it can include enough content to be worth going to retail).

Azselendor · #3 January 23rd, 2007, 05:55 PM

My point of view is that most people are....

1.) Upset about about the number of bugs.
2.) Upset with the interface.

My point of view is that Aaron will either fix all of these problems in SE5, or by in SE6 - but personally I think Aaron needs to consider taking SE6 in a more modern direction than the other games.

Ironmanbc · #4 January 23rd, 2007, 06:01 PM

Quote:

Azselendor said:
My point of view is that most people are....

1.) Upset about about the number of bugs.
2.) Upset with the interface.

My point of view is that Aaron will either fix all of these problems in SE5, or by in SE6 - but personally I think Aaron needs to consider taking SE6 in a more modern direction than the other games.

3.) They bought MOO3 (they were moo2 fans)

Phoenix-D · #5 January 23rd, 2007, 06:01 PM

Define a "more modern view"

Azselendor · #6 January 23rd, 2007, 06:06 PM

To me the interface of SE5 could be a lot simpler and a lot more modern by embracing the concepts of usability and accessibility that are being adopted across various tech industries.

Arkcon · #7 January 25th, 2007, 02:35 AM

Azselendor said:
but personally I think Aaron needs to consider taking SE6 in a more modern direction than the other games.

This statement is intriguing -- you may have reached the very question we're searching for. How, specifically, do you think SE6 should be made more "modern" than SE4 or SE5?

Azselendor · #8 January 25th, 2007, 03:23 AM

By Forced Simplification.

This process basically dictates that every aspect of the game's interface needs to be reduced to a point where as little thought as possible is needed in the determination of how to do something.

For example, component placement in ship design in SE5 requires you to click on a component, then place it on the ship schematic, then click to install it (i guess that's the word?) on to the schematic and so on.
Forced Simplification would force it to operate via drag and drop with the computer also able to allow us to double click a component to automatically install it into the design.

Another would be to remove the panning, zooming, and scrolling buttons and allow the player to merely right click and drag the camera while holding it to the position and angle the user desires, zooming would of course be handled by holding the right mouse button and spinning the scroll wheel back and forth.

And similar steps could be taken across the interface to reduce the insane number of mouse clicks required to do a single task.

Phoenix-D · #9 January 25th, 2007, 03:56 AM

Using right-click for the camera would remove it for the UI, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Fyron · #10 January 25th, 2007, 04:00 AM

Azselendor said:
Forced Simplification would force it to operate via drag and drop...

Except that drag and drop is the same number of operations. Mouse down, move, mouse up, versus: Mouse click, move, mouse click. I'm not sure how that makes the interface any simpler to use?

Though really, drag and drop is a lot more operations overall, because in the current system you can do simple shift-clicks to add multiple copies of the same component without moving back to the component list and reselecting it. Double-click for auto placement beats both though.