What is the problem with SE5?

[Uncle_Joe]

To be honest, that post sounded kind of snarky (as in 'no one knows how to read'). So, I just followed what you had originally were looking for.

But at this point, most of the relevent issues have been mentioned already.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Uncle_Joe said:
To be honest, that post sounded kind of snarky (as in 'no one knows how to read').

Ha-ha-ha; no not me. I still don't read it that way even the third time; but no big deal. misunderstandings are bound to happen when you read what someone else is trying to say in words.

[se5a]

What slick said, and also to some extent spaceempires suffers from the same thing as what uncle joe said, "most of the buyers play single player"

[Q]

At the moment (I might have answered that differently at the release of the game) it is definitely the extremely weak AI.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Awesome Q thanks! I think the AI needs work too and us modders can do that. I haven't taken a good look under the hood at the AI part yet but it looks sort of nuts. Anyway the AI can be improved in updates but there is nothing we can do about the out-of-box sale. I was under the impression many more people played this game in MP than solo. In fact I thought I was one of the last solo players left. In fact I have always been playing with myself ( no pun meant) since I first found this game. I didn't even pay attention to a MP option till SE4. Maybe I should take a pole because I can't really agree with you there. Now had you said most members play mixed, some MP and some Solo I would agree wholeheartedly. Maybe I will start a pole later today, or someone else here can.

[Azselendor]

The Reason why I bring up UI as being the key flaw in SE5 is that without an easy, intuitive interface, the overall playability of the game dies off rapidly. Atrocities touched upon most of the UI issues.

As for things like bugs, Aaron is directing his efforts onto that and the AI can be fixed by us --the we can form an angry mod and force Aaron to adopt it into the next patch.

Another issue I'll point out is something that SE5 inherited from Starfury is the lack of ease in developing new race styles for the game. If Aaron does an SE5 Gold, it must MUST have a ship-modeling program that exports to SE5.

[Slick]

I'll also add these questions with no intent to hurt anyone's feelings:


Given the following:

- SEV was built from the ground up to be extremely moddable. (As I mentioned above, maybe even at the expense of making other things better.)

- Everyone agrees that the AI could be much improved.

- I am not a modder due to time constraints and just not finding it fun.

- It has been shown in SE:IV that even with lesser modability, the AI can be greatly improved (TDM, for example)

- We would be hard pressed to make a list of SEV mods longer than a 10. I'd hope that all this modability would be embraced by more than a handful of people.


My questions:

Why is it that, now, 3 months after release it appears that nobody or at most very few people are working on improving AI's? (This doesn't count the time that the beta testers had access to the game, nor should it due to their duties to support testing.)

Do you think that MM wasted time putting in all these text files to be modded buy just a handful of people seem to be using them?

Do you think that people are:
a) waiting for the game to get better (patches) before attempting AI improvement?
b) just too frustrated with the game to bother?

[Tim_Ward]

Actually, the major problem for me at the moment is how sluggish the game feels on my machine. The glacial turn processing, and the infi-small delays whenever you click on something, really detract from the experience. All the other problems people mentioned don't help either.

I think the fundemental problem is that Aaron is trying to achieve something with SE5 that can't be achieved by one person in any realistic time frame. I hope he hires a few people for SE6, if there is to be one.

[Santiago]

For me the UI mainly, but as others have said a lot of little things add up rather quickly.

As for Mods- Mods should enhance the playability of the game, not become the game.

[thorfrog]

So what Aaron's take on what is going on with SE5? Is he reading this message board? It would be nice to hear his thoughts on the game as it stands now.