What is the problem with SE5?

[AstralWanderer]

I'd also put the UI forward as the biggest problem - it slows everything else down and takes the fun out of SEV. If all the UI issues were magically fixed, then AI would be the next problem.

I do have to say that I am stupified that Aaron doesn't play his games. It's a bit like an artist painting blindfold ("Hey look, I managed to get a blob of paint on the canvas!") or a builder not checking for structural integrity ("Ha! I'm not going inside that pile of junk, let someone else deal with any collapse!"). If this is the case then it's a minor miracle that SEV was even able to gain the lukewarm reviews it's had so far.

As an aside to Uncle_Joe's post, I'm also one of those who don't do multiplayer (and GalCiv would likely have been worse with it added) and I think Stardock have a valid point in seeing single player games as the majority market. Half-Life is the most popular online game according to GameSpy stats (with a peak of 75,000 players online in December '06 - see Online Gaming Zeitgeist) yet this is tiny compared to the total number of gamers out there.

[Ragnarok-X]

The UI turns me off. All once in a while in turn on SEV. I play 5 turns, and quit.

[Kana]

Yeah I can't believe Aaron hasnt played the game he created, that would be like SJ making CB mod, and never playing it...

[Captain Kwok]

Kana said:Yeah I can't believe Aaron hasnt played the game he created, that would be like SJ making CB mod, and never playing it...

Again, a slightly misconstrued reference - but I will say he probably doesn't get much of a chance to play for fun...

[PsychoTechFreak]

...besides playing GalCiv.

...I mean, only for the purpose of investigation of course.

[Suicide Junkie]

Captain Kwok said:

Again, a slightly misconstrued reference - but I will say he probably doesn't get much of a chance to play for fun...

Although it took only a few months of implementation, CB did simmer for years in the planning stages. Then another long while of upgrades and refinements.

And CB is just a mod, not a game engine.

[Azselendor]

I believe a more accurate comparison would be steve jobs at apple using windows instead of a mac

[Uncle_Joe]

If they're content with their current, single player market, and that market has no interest in multiplayer, why do they need to implement multiplayer?

and

As an aside to Uncle_Joe's post, I'm also one of those who don't do multiplayer (and GalCiv would likely have been worse with it added) and I think Stardock have a valid point in seeing single player games as the majority market.

And IMO if they want to do a single-player game then thats fine if it works (which it appears to do). But what bugs me about it is the attitude that they are so right because of their 'poll'. If you conduct a 'poll' under heavily weighted conditions, then you can get the results to favor whatever premise you choose. And thats what I feel happened there.

For example, if you went the PBW forums and asked if MP capability was important in a 4x game, I seriously doubt you'd get the same response! So to go to a game forum where mostly single-player gamers are present and conduct such a poll is equally worthless IMO.

But I do understand what you are saying ('why bother adding what their majority of their CURRENT customers dont find important?'). And it makes some sense. But the way it was presented at the time (and since) really rubbed me the wrong way. And unfortunately, it does NOT tell them how much of a market they lost by not having MP capability (and it might be tiny or it be much greater, but that 'poll' still cant measure it since the sampling is mainly of people for whom MP capability has lesser value).

[Phoenix-D]

That and its not like implementing MP takes much time or effort (with the exception of TCP/IP play).

[AstralWanderer]

Phoenix-D said:
That and its not like implementing MP takes much time or effort (with the exception of TCP/IP play).

Doesn't that really depend on the game design? Multiplayer can raise issues like simultaneous changes to (and visibility of) game elements, robustness and security (to prevent cheating), data structure size (who wants to have to download several gigabytes of data for a single turn?) and even basic features like whether a player should be able to pause at will. For some games, MP is certainly going to be simple but for others it could require fundamental design changes.

Uncle_Joe said:
And IMO if they want to do a single-player game then thats fine if it works (which it appears to do). But what bugs me about it is the attitude that they are so right because of their 'poll'. If you conduct a 'poll' under heavily weighted conditions, then you can get the results to favor whatever premise you choose. And thats what I feel happened there.

Well any poll they conduct is going to have some element of bias. As long as the poll is open to all though, that is about as fair as a website can get. Also Stardock have produced several MP games prior to GalCiv (e.g. Stellar Frontier, The Political Machine) so they are likely to have plenty of experience with the issues involved.