What is the problem with SE5?

[President_Elect_Shang]

Now there is the winner. Thank you PvK! Oddly enough the ship system doesn't stall my very old computer; however, ships moving in asteroid filled systems does. One thing you said gives me a new thought. How would you implement the retreat feature if you could?

[Uncle_Joe]

That may be true for you but that won't help to make it fun in the future. What I would like to do here is start to understand the problems that can be addressed. Just saying it ain't fun isn't going to improve anything. Not that I am saying your opinion is less valid than a person who specifies a bug with examples. To you it is a valid point.

Well, you've got to make up your mind what you are looking for. You want ONE REASON?...the game isnt FUN. I can make a laundry list of WHY the game isnt fun for me, but you seemed to want one and ONLY one thing to point to.

If you want the laundry list, then Slick did a pretty good job of covering it. Like he said, any one or two of those things isnt a game-killer, but taken as a whole, it sucks the fun out of the game IMO. The game feels very poorly paced. It feels like a pile of features that never quite gelled into a cohesive game.

And again, as Slick mentioned, I'm trying to like the game. I think it if was just some random game from someone I had never heard of before I would given up on it and written it off as wasted money. But I enjoyed SE4 quite a bit and I had extremely high hopes for SE5. So, for now, I'm hoping that the game can be 'saved' by either patches (unlikely considering that 'stock' will probably never be that great) or modders (which, I again agree with Slick that the game seems to be tilted towards).

[Slick]

I'm not going to defend who I speak for; I speak for myself with reference to the extremely numerous comments I've read on this board. There have been several threads about this game (I had a poll or 2) where the majority of responses were hopeful, but not positive. Check out the big threads since the game was released last year.

As for bugs, I wish I could provide more, but when the game suddenly gives me an exception error or some such giving some memory address that is meaningless to me and goes to the blank screen that can only be closed with ALT-F4, it is kinda hard to provide feedback to get them fixed. I have to admit that the number of crashes under 1.20 has lowered significantly, but they still happen, they still seem to me at least to not be very reproducable, but once I get one, even if I load a previous saved game (auto save on) the game still tends to crash around the same point even when I try to figure out what the problem is and change numerous settings/orders/whatever.

If you are not experiencing crashes then you are lucky and/or not performing the same operations that lead to the crashes as other people; which again seems impossible to reproduce or narrow down. I sure don't have the time to meticulously bug hunt. At 3 months past (overdue) release and 20 versions past release, soon to be ~24, I would be embarrassed as a developer to still have hard crashes. Besides, this whole thing is a side issue; crashes are getting admittedly rare, but they do contribute to the overall frustration and lack of fun.

The key here is fun, "just one more turn", looking at the clock and saying "<EXPLITIVE DELETED>!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE I'VE BEEN PLAYING SO LONG!!!

SE:IV had all of these for me and SEV has none.

Lastly, PES, from your tone, it appears I have offended you in my last post even though I hoped not to. If so, I am sorry and it is not my intent. Please keep in mind that all opinions here on these boards are part of a terrific community who is just DYING to enjoy this game. Trolls die here from lack of food, so don't forget who the "good guys" are...

[thorfrog]

I have to agree with Slick too. Those reasons and many more are why I will not invest in SEV. This game should be challeging and fun right out of the box. Plus it should be some what balanced. As it stands right now it ranks up there with other big strategy let downs like MOO3.

Right now I'm having a blast with GalCiv2 because its fun and has that next turn appeal. Plus the support is incredible. Looking forward to the expansion.

Aaron should be looking at what Stardock is doing to get this game back on track. SEV should have dominated. I still hope a year from now this game will be on par with SEIV.

[Captain Kwok]

To be fair, at least Stardock has an actual staff which makes it easier to provide great support. I don't have any financial knowledge of MM's situation, but I think having a person on the payroll to handle time-consuming tasks like manuals, modding guides, and data file work would have made a significant difference to the current condition of the game. I can't even count the hours I spend working/testing on the Balance Mod, let alone imagine having to write manuals and descriptive text for everything in it. It's a monstrous bite to chew...

Overall I am optimistic about the future of the game and what it can offer, but unfortunately the rate at which it will take to bring it all together is too slow for some. Outside of the need to finish the AI's scripts, my main area of improvement for the game would be the little UI things. Such items would include condensing units in planetary/ship cargo (as it already has been done elsewhere), adding drop list boxes in place of pop-ups when possible, and copy/paste functions in text fields.

[Demorve]

AI is the biggest problem I have with the game. I can live with the rest of the problems, but knowing that I have just won the game when I meet another race's 5-6 ship fleet with my explorer ship and blow them all up without a scratch.

[Uncle_Joe]

Stardock's problem IMO is that they constantly dismiss (out of hand) the multiplayer market for TBS games.

I remember them pointing to a poll that they conductd on THEIR SITE about wanting multiplayer or not. They said the results were overwhelmingly against. Well, if you ask on a SINGLE PLAYER ONLY forum, its not likely that you will terribly many MP players hanging around to participate in your poll, are you? And they refer to this completely biased opinion poll as gospel (even the way it was stated was biased...ie, "would you want to see multiplayer capability added to the game instead of other cool features?")

Ahem...sorry...side rant. But IMO to release a strategy game without multiplayer capability in this day and age of connectivity seems silly. Of course, they are being successful and you can't really argue with success. But its the smug attitude they take towards it that totally turned me off.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Oh wow Slick, no I wasn't offended. Maybe I tried a little too hard to sound neutral. I'm not trying to take sides or say anyone is right or wrong or anything of that nature. I am trying to understand why it is so bad. Call it a number of factors not the least of which is I don't seem to be having the same number of challenges/problems/crashes.

Uncle_Joe you are right I did want one thing that was more frustrating than all the others. I changed that a few posts ago because I haven't seen anyone who can answer the question as I posed it. It's down there in one of my posts, if you skim you will see it.

I hope this game will surpass SE4 and I have faith that it will. What can be done to make that happen? Any suggestions on how to fix the problems? So I don't want to offend anyone and please don't think your answer will offend me. I posed the question because I want to understand.

Edited in: Actually Uncle_Joe I am surprised that you totally missed the comment to open it up more. It's in the very same post you quoted. Read that post over and look at the last sentence.

[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.