What Is More Important To You?

[StarShadow]

Gameplay. Where do I pick up my membership card?

[Santiago]

You really need somewhat of a balance between graphics and game play.
In general terms

Great graphics and poor gameplay = quick game death. Word spreads quickly.

Great gameplay with poor graphics = a loyal but small following with little incentive for the programmer or publisher to continue.

In the SE series, if it wasn't for MM's dedication SE would have died long ago.

As far as SE V specifically, I prefer SEV's gameplay over the poor graphics. I've tried SEV on 3 different machines and have gotten 3 different results. If the UI and the main system view can be fixed the game would be a lot better off.

Sometimes I think an expanded SE IV graphics with SE V capabilities would have been the way to go.

[frightlever]

Well yeah, Gameplay but the single player gameplay isn't there yet for SE5 anyway. Perhaps MP is working better.

I played through a SE5 Balance game last week (first time I'd stuck it out - 1.17 makes a big difference) and the AI is still pretty poor and no disrespect to the Balance mod should be implied but that's how it is RIGHT NOW.

[Gusset]

Gotta be the gameplay. My imagination can fill in the graphics if needed.

Why else would I still be spending large amounts of time playing MOO2 online, a game that was released in 1996?

I am hopeful that SE5 will be the "next MOO2" for me, and it will be gameplay that makes that happen or not.