major mistakes in Moo3

Talk about strategy games like MoO series, Civilization, Europa Universalis, etc.

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gb207
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Re: why you forget about the most important thing?

#16 Post by gb207 »

miu wrote:Moo3, i I didnt mind UI, lack of proper shortcuts, AI, battles, diplomacy, lack of statistics etc. I found ways to cope with them, get the AI do what I wanted and run and play my empire well enough. But the major thing thas put me off after playing it for a while was the IMMERSION, or the total lack of it.
No graphic showing your citizens, no spacemonsters, poor random events, no landingraph when colonising, no pictures of the cities I've made, every race sayin same things in diplomacy screen. I didnt feel I was there, neither did the galaxy feel alive and living. It felt like spreadsheets in space. Felt very little emotional connection to my empire and race. And personalisation level was poor, (couldnt choose your empire color, couldnt choose the ship type, name the planests etc..) I want that my choices have visible effect in gameworld.

In my view this is one of most import things when designing the game, people are willing to forget about minor mistakes in gameplay as long as the game makes them feel and care. That is what makes people to stay with game.

for Immersoion and personalisation!
.Miu
In my opinion, they should have gotten Steve Barcia to make MOO3. He and Ken Burd were the designers of MOO2. And Steve Barcia also designed Master of Magic. Steve Barcia is a gaming genius. And yet, it seemed that some of the people on the MOO3 forums, were dismissive of MOO2. It seemed the developers were dismissive of MOO2 as well. I would probaly call that dismissiveness arrogance.

Steve Barcia wisely put in a lot of "mini-movies" whenever major events occurred. I agree with you miu. The developers of MOO3 were far too concerned with complexity (that is ok as long as everything else is right) and not enough concerned with the graphics (which MOO2 definitely got right). To be honest, I was expecting MOO3 to be a graphics powerhouse - that's what I wanted from MOO3. For complexity, I feel MOO2 complexity is sufficient. The MOO3 complexity that MOO3 has is really good, but then they didn't seem to have enough time to lavish on the graphics.

Seeing is believing I guess. So as proof of my debate I put forward GalCiv as proof. GalCiv didin't have the complexity of MOO3 and yet it still was a success. So, I'd say from GalCiv that extreme complexity is not essential.

Daveybaby
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#17 Post by Daveybaby »

Aquitaine wrote:Alan Emrich wanted to do MOO 2.5. He's been in this business for twenty years; he knows his stuff. But when he pithced MOO 2.5, Infogrames said that they wanted to do the biggest game they'd ever done; they wanted to go all out for MOO3, and they asked him if he could do it. He said yes.
I think Moo2.5 is a pretty unfair description of the original aim of the thing (from what i've read) - it was more like they originally pitched Moo3 (which was effectively to be a true successor to Moo1, rather than a sequel to Moo2) but were asked to produce Moo4.

Aquitaine wrote:Some years later (I forget the exact amount of time), but around April or May of 2002, they panicked and lost faith in the risk they were taking. So they released Alan and tore the guts out of MOO3 and tried to make it MOO 2.5 at the last minute. I suspect that several other parts of the QSI team left or were released at that point or around the release time, given their statements to the effect of 'nobody here understands the diplomatic system code' and similar things.
TBH... i think a lot of the blame can be laid at Alans feet for not having a bit more self control. The role of a lead designer isnt just to come up with cool ideas - its to have the strength to say : "feature X is cool - but we're not going to implement it".

The difficult bit is ALWAYS to focus on the core design of a game - to know what cool features will actually make the game better, and which ones to cut. ANYONE can come up with 100 cool ideas. The tricky bit is knowing which ones to pick an which ones to leave, to make your design a coherent whole.

Aquitaine
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#18 Post by Aquitaine »

Well, I haven't read the original pitch, but Alan told me "I originally pitched MOO 2.5," so that's what I posted. :)
Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Daveybaby
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#19 Post by Daveybaby »

Heh, well i havent read it either... but ive read lots of stuff by people who have read it... so...

... i guess that getting it from the horses mouth trumps my 'large amount of third hand information' ;)

Its just that i've always considered 'Moo2.5' to be the worst insult imaginable to a moo-a-like. Aim for that in your design, and you'll end up with another Space Empires IV.

Edit : BTW - in my previous post - should probably substitute 'Alan's Fault' with 'The fault of whoever was ultimately in charge of the design' - although i had always assumed that *was* Alan.

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Krikkitone
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#20 Post by Krikkitone »

I'd have to say the two worst things were

1. UI (poor feedback, repetitive decision making necessary, etc.)

and

2. Immersion

Without 2, the failures in 1 become obvious, because repetitive decisions and poor guesses are all you can interact with in the game. The actual mechanics are, while FAR short of the design, not bad, but most of the rest is. (simply putting in pictures of your planetary leaders, or empire leaders into mini movie SitReps.. transposed from the diplomacy engine would have been good)

Extremepumpkin
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#21 Post by Extremepumpkin »

I personally thought moo3 was okay, mind you, i played it almost exlcusively on multiplayer lan. Compared to some games (Civ:Call To Power anyone?) MOO3 had a "Halle Berrie with Pie" UI. after playing with Civ:CTP I still cant figure out how to build things. The CD now resides in the dark recesses of Hell, err My desk drawer, it's only friends are paper clips, and AOL CDs. MOO3 on the other hand, still resides on the "shelf" area. where games, that I occationally play reside.

On the other hand, I'm not saying moo3 is perfect, by no means. Single player is down right tedious. the UI is fairly convolted (I'd kill for moo1s UI simplicity again. it was so much easier and fun) The music was annoying drab and boring. i would often leave it in a diplomacy window, as the music was marinally better in there.

The Orion Senate, with the senate victory off, it was useless, with it on, it was like playing a demo, after an alloted time you'd loose (if out side the senate) or win (within the senate). The "great orion smackdown" turned out to be milder then most wars, they would often only peg one of my planets then move on.

The thing that drove me insane: The multiplayer chat (before alt-tabbing worked) you couldnt chat when most people would normally do so! while you were waiting for others.

Anywho, MOO3 for me was mediocre, I still do play a few lan games, but its just not that dream game it could've been.
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guiguibaah
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What I love dabout Moo3

#22 Post by guiguibaah »

I don't know about the rest of you, but I really loved the sound effects for moo3. Most especially, that REALLY LOUD SOUND OF A FILING CABINET BEING SLAMMED OVER AND OVER while everything else was (beep... ...... )

It drove my roomates crazy. Crank up the volume, and start opening and closing the diplomacy window. Eventually one would break and scream "STOP SLAMMING YOUR F*^&%&ING FILING CABINET YOU F%$#%!!!"

Ironically, that was about my extend of moo3 interaction.
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KurtGodel7
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#23 Post by KurtGodel7 »

One of the biggest flaws I see with MoO3 is the lack of specials. From a MoO1 perspective, there are no ship specials to be discovered in MOO3. Moreover, there are fewer race pick specials than in MOO2. Further, the effect of the specials that do exist (such as natural engineers) is harder to understand in MoO3 than race picks in MoO2.

In the first two MoOs; there would be the following sequence: 1) pick specials, 2) try them out in space combat to get feedback, and 3) adjust ship design as indicated to adapt to what I saw. Combining various types of specials allowed me to enact various ship or race pick strategies. However, the creativity opportunity of choosing specials, as well as feedback opportunities, have been denied to the player of MoO3, both for space combat and empire-affecting race picks.

In MoO2, I would usually have a rough idea as to how ship A would be likely to do against ship B. In MoO3, this is harder to figure out. I remember one discussion in which people debated whether armor thickness would affect its deflection value. In the previous MoOs, the ship's deflection equivalent would be more easily understood.

Shivetya
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#24 Post by Shivetya »

From a design standpoint.

1. Real time space combat. This did not belong in any game using the MOO name. Worse, as implemented you did not have the time to determine if a particular design was worthwhile.

2. Spy system. The limited queue, short lived, and too many mission types hampered what could have been a fun portion of the game.

3. Races having abilities and disadvatages that could not be changed. Some were pretty hideous.

4. Mobilization centers. What a preposterous idea. Ruined the game for me. Insta-teleportation of ships. Worse was the "Penalty-box" ships went into when disbanded - even in systems with MCs.

5. HFOG. While not a stupid as CIV3s corruption it was stupid. Not every type of government would suffer from it, but in MOO3 they did.

From usuability/playability

1. UI was a shambles upon release, subsequent patch gave us many short cuts that were desperately needed. (iow access to build queues). Overal it started out right, but the planet level had too many panels to convey limited useful information.

2. Ground combat was a cruel joke. It definitely looked out of place from the rest of the game. Worse, the inability to use troop ships effectively.

3. Lack of relevant information. MOO3 is chock full of numbers and information, unfortunately most of its the WRONG numbers or information.

4. Combat. Real time combat sucks. Worse was the way they implemented it. No ability to pause of adjust speed. Combined with lack of information on what was used to establish initial range to targets didn't help much. There was no real feedback on which of your designs really worked. Too many MP games devolved into sissy missile barges that dumped and stayed on outside of screen.

5. Leaders. Only 4? Considering how much they went out of their way to spit on previous MOOx game ideas I can't believe they held on to this.

6. Diplomacy. How many times would you like to improve your X treaty? No ability for you to have an empire surrender to you. That was a big mistake.

Roanon
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#25 Post by Roanon »

One of the biggest design flaws in MOO3 was the decision to discourage micromanagement. Basically a good thought, but the solution should be to create tools to make micromanagement unnecessary by good macromanagement controls. Instead they created management by AI, which is just crappy as should have been easily predictable, and an UI that makes it very painful to manage anything.
Yes, I do not want unnecessary clickfeasts like manually building every newly researched facility on every planet I own. This is not a decision, this is not even micromanagement, this is just ambiguous. You could as well pop up 50 windows with the question "Do you want to win this game? - YES NO".
But, in a 4x game, I want CONTROL. I do not want to sit back and watch anyone else, especially an AI, managing my empire. I want to be able to make decisions that influence the outcome of the game (which IMHO is the core of every game). If you think it is too much clicking to manage something, do not put it in the game, period. Do not make huge efforts to install something which is totally uninfluencable by the player but controls a major part of the fate of the player's empire.

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