First of all: I think it is great that you are trying to make your dreams come true, and I hope you will achieve it. Do not forget NOT to make a MoO2 Clone. I bought not long ago the new MOO and .. i like it. It plays kind of as the old MoO2 but I also did not invest that much time into it. it bores me. I am always looking for more, am never are satisfied. I bought the new MOO in suche a way that I could play also the three old MoO Games and guess what: I started to play MoO3 again. Well, I had to look again for all the patches (got the vanilla patch and patched the exe with all the things i felt i needed) and find out again how to play it right and how the menues open and close the way that it works (you have to say in the options menu that the menue animation speed is OFF od at least lightning). This game could have been much better and was thrown onto the market a bit too early. BUT, this game is made to be played as a ruler of many many stars. so you really can start with some planets and can overwatch it and also have hundreds of them and still control all of the, (development plans). And it has also some very good new things implemented. Maybe you can get there also some good ideas out of it. I mean when you look at stellaris it also is made the way that you start with some planets, and later on, you combine planets to regions. stellaris - i bought it but i did not like it that much. right now i play MoO3 and really like it more than any other Space Game.. So what I wanted to say in short: iit is worth to invest the time to get MoO3 going and think about the good inventions it has to offer: - the Development plans - the sitrep with working links - the 3D universe - the technology matrix and the always new shuffled techs and the way research is going - the system how planets have different regions And to be honest and what i also wanted to tell you: dont forget that your posession concerning the good old MoO2 and how you could make a better MoO2: if you remember for instance how good an old movie was (in your memory!) and then watch it nowadays, you might be disappointed. so really, time has changed, you changed, we all changed and so it is impossible to make everybody happy. what I wan tto say is, that maybe you invest much time for a game, that in the end and after years and years is just not feeling right an dMOO2 still plays better than your game. at least i would have doubts if I would do such a task. also, the things you forgot about the game, the bad things, you forgot maybe and your brain fills these gaps with someting, lets say some good feeling.. but it never existed. at least me myself am sometimes playing old games and after a while, the memories come back and I remember why i stopped playing it, uninstall it, just to install it some years later again. because when i look at the shelf and look at the game, it gives me a good feeling. unfortunately, our memory is making things in the past nicer than they were.. when you remember those times, you have a feeling in your heart, have a feeling in your stomach like in spring, can smell the air and so on.. you know, all those games had their time, and back then they were good.. just a few are, lets say, timeless. i am still looking for a space game that is kind of minecraft in space. yes, there is starbound, but this is not quite right in my eyes. but some points of this would also be nice ti be implemented. and the ability to build you own space ships like star ruler 2 offers. P.S.: How can i change my name from rxnnxsa to rxnnxs? It was a typo, did not check twice because I was eager to write this P.P.S.: please apologize my bad language, this is not my native language and time is money :-/
Hi, First of all, thank you for your impressions and thoughts. You raised some very pertinent questions about trying to repeat a formula in a way too-much connected with the original. We aim to build a faithful successor in spirit to the series, but one that manages to offer something new. This is key for us. In the following dev diaries everything will become more clear and we hope that you can provide your contribution for the discussion. PS - I will change your username from from rxnnxsa to rxnnxs in a while. Same password.
I would echo the OP's cautionary statement, "Don't forget MOO 3". Don't forget how dismally and horribly it failed in every way that a game can fail. Don't forget how many MOO fans hated everything about it, the bugs, the head-scratchingly bizarre design decisions, the eyeball-bleeding GUI, the sterile stillborn gameplay, everything. Don't forget the universally terrible reviews it received. Don't forget how the name became synonymous with the worst, most disappointing 4x space game ever made. And most importantly Don't make the exact same mistakes. MOO 3 should definitely be remembered, just so you know exactly what to avoid if you want a successful game.
I liked in MoO3 that those tiles at planets were not used again. it was kind of abstract and also left many things to our own imagination. surely there was sooo much done bad and unfinished, it was such a waste of time and i was really really angry at all that were involved in selling this piece for a full price. i was more angry at that time than later about the sword of the stars 2 crap. also, like i said, i like to use my imagination and not some fancy grafix that just overdo it. and i did not like in so many ganes the distance in relation to the size of the ships. so many games do it very wrong in my opinion and it does not feel right: I like to compare it to naked gun (see attachment below). i would like to get a feeling for the distances, at what those ships would be shooting at. this happend at stellaris and mostly all of the others. i prefer fights that look like moo2 with round style or a very basic 3D style where we can pause, slow down and speed up. space empires 5 didi this in my opinion very well. of course, the whole SEV was kindof user unfriendly and had spped problems. even nowadays the turn times are the reason i stopped playing it.
Can't remember last time I tried that game, must been at least a decade ago. There were definitely something I liked about it... can't remember what =D but it was something implemented correctly in a good way unlike most other systems in that game. But remembering the game, that's mandatory, it was the direct successor to MoO2 after all, and one needs to also recognize the strengths of the game and what they were trying to do so differently in the MoO formula.
MOO3 had a handful of interesting ideas, even if the overall game was a terrible mess. Like WHAT, you ask? Well, the five artifacts you could hunt for (and get bonuses from) were a nice alternative victory condition that you don't see in most 4X games. I wouldn't mind seeing something like that in a better game. Or the backstory. MOO3's manual had all this fluff about the galaxy's history (before even the Orions and Antarans rose to power) that went on page after page... and ended up having almost nothing to do with what the player actually does in-game. It'd be neat for a 4X game to have an epic backstory that is relevant to the gameplay. Or... ...okay, that's about all I've got. I didn't say it was a long list.
It is almost impossible to envision what Moo3 would have been had accounting not pressured the release of the game before it was actually finished. Did it have some interesting ideas? yes but it also had some others that were an instant turn off. In my opinion a great gam would be a re-write of moo2 with not a single feature removed. Improved graphics and a competent AI should be a must. Once that is achieved the developers could spice things up by adding some enhancements, even if they do originate from moo3.
I didn't read this thread yet, but I just want to quickly say: I actually really like MoO3. Yeah, it has some major issues. Yeah, it doesn't feel like a MoO game...but...if you can past that, and don't consider it a MoO game except for the races being listed, then I think the game is a lot more fun. I think it does a pretty decent job with the scope and scale of space combat (though, graphically and some other aspect of it, are done quite bad). I enjoyed the planetary management, felt it was a bit different than just build a structure on every plant.
Just a thought: How about thinking MOO2 Merged with X3, Porting the best of Moo2 into a X3 style of Universe. Along with UI an AI improvements, with an Eye to Easy modding entry points, would be awesome. Please try to forget "Rebirth of an Ego", which is a great example to what happens when you do not listen to the Fan Base, and go off the rails.
Like many modern releases they were going for the "Dumb-it-down-for-the-casuals-and-screw-the-fans" approach to make as much money as humanly possible and like many franchises they basically shot themselves in the foot with their rampant greed. Well deserved IMO.
I understand your point. I own and have played all three Moo(s) and there were indeed some very cool concepts in the third. Unfortunately the execution of those concepts was poor at best and the interface seemed to have had functionality added at the last minute in a manner that made navigation poor. This is one of just a few reasons why I can't play 3 for long, it's frustrating. Incidentally, I work in technology and have designed some applications where one of my primary goals is always to make the U.I. as friendly as possible as I understand that the my "concept" can easily be killed by a horrendous interface
just dont make it like this new ... this new.. i dont wana mention it.. btw.. hi to all and greetings from the anus of the europe
MoO 3 was thorn between being gamey Master of Orion and Distant Worlds simulation. I gave it chance, looked past it's bugs, played it about a dozen times and replay value simply wasn't comparable to MoO 1, let alone to MoO 2. I had more fun reading about game mechanic then actually playing the game. Development plans If a player is better of automating part of the game then why does the game have that part at all? I guess it's OK in simulation but I liked the simplicity and abstraction of MoO 1 more. On top of that development plans didn't really work that well in MoO 3 either. Once DEAs were built they were there to stay. When you start getting technology for terraforming and lower mineral consumption you start needing less and less farming and mining DEAs and there was no way to automate converting them to something more useful like industry and research. Sitrep MoO 3 sitrep was the best ever! No seriously. Being able to invoke it and dismiss it with a single tap on space bar key and being able to filter out uninteresting events made it a great feature. Too bad newer games went for mailbox system where you have to empty inbox every turn and hunt read messages through 9 UI levels. 3D universe Again OK for simulation, too fiddly for gamey game. Doesn't bring nearly as much to the table and makes orientation difficult. For me Master of Orion game should prefer clarity and agency over realism. Like chess it should be more about which choice you make then how real battle looks like. Technology matrix Well that's pretty much same as MoO 1 tech ladder with added slightly delayed application (if you get bug fix mods, otherwise progressively more delayed). I'm more inclined to MoO 2 approach but have no objection to ladder system.
