Raising The Bar...

[Elmo]

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

[Richard]

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.

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Sarge is coming...

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

[ColdSteel]

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.

[Poddu]

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.

[WhiteHojo]

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.

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

[Richard]

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 .

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 .

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Sarge is coming...

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

[Emperor Zodd]

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).]