Slitherine

As a lot of commenters have noted, the lack of any sort of game-spanning narrative is really hurting things. After the initial early game excitement, I'm afraid I find it a bit of a chore to keep playing. This is a problem in a lot of 4X games, but I think this is especially pronounced here because the lack of a game-long narrative is exacerbated by very bland and arbitrary victory conditions and the lack of faction-specific gameplay options or special projects to create game defining moments. I think reviewers are really going to focus on this at release.


So what's the answer? A major hurdle is that Alpha Centauri has already snaffled up the best idea here: a sentient planet that becomes more and more hostile as the game progresses, and eventually has to be subdued to achieve victory. I wonder if you didn't go down that route because you were afraid you were already hewing too close to that game? But by doing so I think you've managed to strip out most of what actually made Alpha Centauri interesting without offering up much by way of replacement.

I think there are a ton of possible fixes, ranging from simple to more involved.

A couple of examples, so as not to clog things up too much:

1) I think there's a lot more that can be done with the ruins. At the moment they're just free stuff. And so I think the player will very quickly stop thinking about them in the context of the setting and just see them as shiny treasure chests to be gobbled up without thinking. Could there be a choice when we explore them? e.g Strip the ruin for resources (+minerals/food) or leave it intact and study it (resource bonus). That's the most obvious example, but there are dozens of cool choices you could do there. Even Alpha Centauri didn't make much of this.

Even if this doesn't have long-term consequences (although it's easy to imagine a mechanic where it would), it adds a little more context and makes it easier for the player to think of them as part of a setting, rather than just a game mechanic.

I also think it's odd that you can immediately explore the sea ruins. Narratively, it feels like that should be a very difficult undertaking, one that needs its own tech. That would add a small amount of interest later on, rather than just having the ruins hoovered up as part of exploration, which the player should be doing anyway. (And in general it feels like there ought to be mid-late game play that involves the sea tiles)


2) Faction-specific flavour is also really low, which is contributing a lot to the blandness. Whether Dan's dialogue is the right tone for the game isn't really relevant either way: diplomacy can't be the sole source of faction flavour. It's too rare.

Faction-specific techs, buildings and units are the obvious option here, and are hardly worth mentioning beyond that. The benefits speak for themselves. One idea that I don't think I've seen elsewhere would be to have faction-specific techs that provide a mildly useful bonus unit or building, but which COMBINE to provide something more powerful. The only way to get access to this tech would be through trade or domination. Trade could be mutual (i.e. both players would get the benefit of the combined tech) or exclusive (i.e you either have to take it by force offer offer a huge amount in exchange), depending on what sort of feeling you want to create in game. The tension of the second option seems very interesting, but it's a bit trickier to justify narratively. Either way, this would encourage interaction for reasons other than "something to do".

Even if you didn't want to have faction-specific stuff, this could be incorporated into the randomised research tree design - at the beginning of the game each faction would be assigned one of the unique techs at random. Or there could be some unique features on the map which are the tech requisites, and the players each spawn by one of them. This would give players more incentive to care about their capitals.



3) As far as game-wide narrative goes, I think I'd like three or four different possible long-term "disaster" tracks, one of which would be chosen at random at the start of the game. The result would be hidden, and the player would only gradually come to learn which counter was in effect during gameplay. One of these would be the sentient/angry planet scenario, but there would also be other options (e.g. dormant, extremely powerful alien unit). Like the Armaggedon counter in Fall from Heaven, certain actions (like the ruin choices from above, wiping out hives, polluting etc.) would advance the counter more quickly, and some factions might even be actively trying to increase it. Unlike Fall from Heaven, the counter wouldn't be immediately visible, instead requiring research to reveal. There'd be four or five game changing events on each counter track (with duplicates to reduce work and to not give things away too soon), with the last one being very difficult to survive. The main advantage of having different possibilities is the interesting mechanic it would introduce: do you invest resources trying to find out where the game is headed so you can prepare or do you spend these resources on other stuff to get ahead and trust/gamble that you'll be fine when disaster inevitably strikes? Do you leave the disaster mitigation up to the other players in the hope of getting a free pass, or do you ensure your own safety even as it helps the other players? Do you all selfishly refuse to contribute and nothing gets done? To me, that's a LOT more interesting than building bigger and bigger units. It's a Tragedy of the Commons scenario. It would also allow for a lot of unique diplomatic options (badgering other players to help, arranging investment pacts to mitigate disaster, pooling information about the impending disaster). Reviewers are always complaining about the blandness of diplomatic options, and something like this would really win favour without actually requiring any complicated AI.

One thing I thought would be really nice is if the disaster counter combined with the tech idea from earlier. What if there was a combo tech which could easily save you from disaster, but only one of the two factions providing the tech halves could make use of it? How much would it be worth to give up your half of the tech early on, given that you can't be sure that disaster will strike, but you're screwed if it does? Do you both stubbornly hold on to your useless tech halves and go down in flames? These aren't choices we see often in video games, even though they're common elsewhere.


Anyway, that's just three ideas off the top of my head to create some desperately needed immersion/tension. There's no shortage of other options, from new gameplay mechanics to entirely text-based solutions (I've talked about editing the flavour text, but you could also completely rewrite some of it to be faction specific. Just focus on the ones that each faction is most likely to see/have something interesting to say about. Time consuming, but simple, and it isn't going to break or unbalance anything).

It's just a case of whether you think it's a problem worth fixing.

I agree with you on most parts.
It would be nice to incorporate the aliens a bit more into the players strategy.
For example: a component lets you harvest them to gain a special resource which allows you to build or research special techs/units.
Or something along those lines.

Agreed #2. I'm not motivated to play beyond the Xpantion phase as I'm not invested in myfaction or conflict with the others. Devs should know backstory people read once and a few voiceovers people tune out after the first few times arnt going to solve this. mid/late game needs random events and faction flavor that engage the player in the conflict.

Bit of a wall of text..hopefully the devs are just skimming these so stick to short points. who is Dan?

I Agree Too!

This game is made by coders for coders, needs more background. It's not an Alpha centaury like, it's more a red alert like.

-Factions have too similar choices in tech, they need to take their own way to reach their goal.
-Fongus is just decorative here, it's the true power of this world it should have his own indentity like an extra player in the game.
-Fongus and his extension the creatures should be part of experimentation not just in tech but also in special buildings Xcom style.
-Tech tree is too long and too messy, best to take more time to find a 'real' tech that will made the difference by the choice of it.
-This game needs random events, too linear for now.

Graphics are nice, the game is well coded but it seem like no scenarist was in the team at the time it was made. For this kind of game the scenar is the earth of it.

Sorry to be a bit harsh, but everything is here for something very good, but at this this time it's just good.

"By coders for coders" is a very pithy description! (I'm not sure I understand the Red Alert comparison, though, unless you just mean the jokiness of the dialogue. Red Alert had a lot of the asymmetrical fun people seem to think is missing.)

It's certainly a very strong foundation, as you say. And it feels like there's an enjoyable optimization problem in here, if that's your kind of thing. (And judging from the responses it seems like that IS a lot of people's thing, which is great!) But players who like to bask in setting and flavour, and don't particularly care about balance issues as long as its not too extreme and there's plenty of interesting stuff to compensate, are really being ignored. Importantly, there's no risk in thinking about these people: catering for them won't alienate the first group. If you don't like a strongly implemented setting, you can just ignore it, or treat it from a purely gameplay standpoint. But that doesn't work at all the other way round.

The problem is I'd venture that the second group is going to be much larger than the first, even if the first contains all the hardcore and vocal fans who put in hundreds of hours of play. If you went on the Civ V forums, for example, I think you'd get a very distorted idea of what the average player wants.

Since you brough up the civ comparison, one thing I've been chewing on is that Civ can depend on world mythology/history to engage and connect the player with his/her faction. Players are fine playing the Egyptians or the Chinese even if they have similar passive mechanics (which are augmented by unique buildings/units) because they can fall on back story and myth practically everyone knows. No one wants to play the Xikwinki tribe of eastern Bagladesh though because they arnt engaged or familar with it. Thast how I feel with these Pandora factions. I dont have the SMAC experience and every part of my faction has 1) already been chosen for me 2) is completely passive back story that doesn't show up in the game. In pandora, other than nostalgia for SMAC, there is nothing actively enganging a player with their faction and getting them to care about the complex story happening on this planet.

Yes. It's not cheating to let the player's imagination do much of the work. Actually it's better; pre-scripted stuff in games can break immersion. More importantly, it really doesn't take much detail before the player's imagination takes over. As you rightly point out, the very thin world-building in the Civ games feels stronger than it is because players will recognise most of the buildings/improvements/techs/wonders etc. What's needed is strong, memorable details that the played can link together to form a simple narrative. The power there is that it will feel unique to that playthrough, even if it the individual elements have been seen before in a different combination.