Pandora First Contact, and what CIV BE can learn to do better/avoid from it.

ZTZaorish

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So,

As of lately I have gotten tired of achievement hunting in BE, and have reverted to playing CIV V. When taking breaks from playing, I started randomly browsing around steam looking at 4X strategy games.

So, I notice that CIV BE has a 52% on STEAM, and PANDORA has a 70%. I would say this is a significantly higher score, wouldn't you? This really shocked me, that a Dev team formed from 2009, managed to beat firaxis at making a futuristic CiV game, and release the game 11 months before Beyond Earth as well. ( I am aware, they may have started the development earlier) One would think that Firaxis would have seen the good and bad this game had and perhaps planned on making a better game.

Anyways, I haven't played this game and I probably won't since I personally think CIV BERT will fix enough of the current game to be better than this PANDORA game.(Unless maybe it goes on 90% sale somewhere, which is doubtful after the summer sale)

That being said, I do believe this game must have done some things right to merit a score that is quite a bit higher than CIV BE.
Additional Support:
Current Metacritic User score BE: 5.5 (Release Date: Oct 24th 2014)
Current Metacritic User score Pandora: 7.4 (Release Date: Nov 13th, 2013)
I don't go by Metacritic: critic scores, although BE's score is 81, whereas Pandora is 68. I think BE got an easy pass since it's a Sid Meier title.

I ask this here, because my guess is, that all of you here at civfanatics, are big fans of this genre, and have most likely played the game and can enlighten us on where this game has done better/worse, and maybe how BERT or future CIVBE expansions/DLC's/Patches can do better.

I also hope that firaxis heeds what you have to say, and maybe this helps them see different options on how to fix this game.

P.S: These forums are fairly dead as of late, hopefully this will spark some discussion. Hey DanQ, if this thread blows up, mention on Polycast please!

Sources:
Proxy Studios: http://www.proxy-studios.com/
Pandora First Contact Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/287580/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1
Pandora Metacritic Page: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/pandora-first-contact

Civ BE Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/65980/
BE Metacritic Page: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sid-meiers-civilization-beyond-earth
 
I won't make claims about what size the effect is, but a fair number of BE negative reviews on Steam, especially the early ones, are, at least in significant part, "it's not SMAC".
 
I won't make claims about what size the effect is, but a fair number of BE negative reviews on Steam, especially the early ones, are, at least in significant part, "it's not SMAC".
Also, in general, people give indie developers an easier pass because they lack the resources bigger developers like Firaxis have, plus is attracts a more niche audience.

In other words: people who buy Pandora are people who are likely to like it and the pitch it made. People who buy Civ:BE might be people who buy it because they were interested in the PR and/or Civ5 and/or XCOM and trusted Firaxis to put out something similar again.

For Pandora itself, it does ride the coattails of SMAC while Civ:BE deliberately steered away from some of SMAC's design decisions, adding to the "it's not SMAC" phenomenon.

I'll add some thoughts about the game itself in a bit, but the short summary (for me) is: It's a flawed but interesting game. Perhaps more flawed than Civ:BE but makes up for that by being more bold with its mechanics. It's a lot more micro-management intensive, though, a direction Civ has steered away from for a while, meaning it probably captures the favour of those who want to go back to the "good old days".

It's definitely a game everybody at Firaxis should play, even just to study and understand it to see what else is out there in terms of 4X mechanics.
 
I havent't played Pandora, but my guess would be that the game falls into the same category as Endless Legend: It's a flawed game, but done by a minor studio at a lower selling price, so people will be more forgiving.

From what I have seen, Pandora seems closer to the original SMAC vibe than CIV:BE, but inferior in terms of gameplay and production value.
 
I think Pandora and BE have 2 totally different design concepts. Pandora is extremely combat-heavy and doesn't really have much depth in city- and empire building - and if my impression from when I played it (<- Which basically boils down to a few hours by a friend) is right, then it HEAVILY favors tall, which is bleh imho!

Overall... Pandora didn't hook me. It's a neat product in itself, but I don't think it has too many lessons that BE could pick up on, other than maybe how to make the planet be "dangerous" until later in the game, if they really want(ed) to achieve this.
 
Pandora is a cross between Civ 4/5 and Warlock 1/2. My biggest issue with it right now is the color palette. But otherwise, it's a solid game, especially with the recent 1.6 patch.

I am hoping the Rising Tide does a lot to repair Civ:BE, in the same fashion that G&K greatly improved on Civ 5 vanilla.
 
I think part of it is that Pandora plays heavily to the nostalgia filter, since it largely looks and acts like SMAC with updated graphics. The Pandora factions are pretty much the SMAC factions with the serial numbers filed off:

* Imperium = Spartan Federation.
* Divine Ascension = The Lord's Believers.
* Togra University = University of Planet.
* Noxium Corporation = Morgan Industries.
* Terra Salvum = Gaia's Stepdaughters.
* Solar Dynasty = The Hive.
* Ambassadors = UN Peacekeepers

and they have almost the exact same strengths, weaknesses and gameplay style. In many ways it is also a throw-back to old school micromanagement intensive 4x games and some of the features were poorly implemented; for example, sure you can design your own units like you did in SMAC but actually renaming the units is not an option. So you could end up with ten variants of the same unit and all of them are called "Assault Tank" or "Colonial Trooper" and you have to look real close at the unit icons to let you know what their load-out is. I sincerely hope they have patched that since I last played; it has been a few months.

Now Beyond Earth actually tried to distance itself from SMAC and go in some new directions I think that put quite a few people off who where expecting a true sequel.
 
The Ambassors are the lovechild of the Peacekeepers and the ARC actually.

Personally i found Pandora bleh. There are only like 5 leader quotes on the game and like BE, aliens can get extinct. Perhaps worse because they technically respawn on some out of sight biomass in BE.
 
There are only like 5 leader quotes on the game and like BE, aliens can get extinct. Perhaps worse because they technically respawn on some out of sight biomass in BE.
The writing in the game is hilariously bad, too, especially the diplomacy dialogue. Not to mention that diplomacy is atrocious - if you think random denouncements in Civ5/BE were bad, you haven't played Pandora yet.

Another big problem is that every second tech is something for the unit workshop, military completely dominates the tech tree meaning, unlike in SMAC (and Civ:BE!) you never actually see any changes in your society.

On the other hand the world-spanning events, the national food pool, operations and as well as the design of the aliens are the high marks of the game and really make it feel like a piece of science fiction.
 
To be honest: I prefer Pandora over CivBE.

This is mostly because of the randomized tech tree, combined with an adjustable preview depth. This feature alone brings a lot of replayability, and the tech tree is clean. The bloated CivBE tech web feels like a confusing maze to me. The CivBERT expansion probably will bloat it even more.

I really appreciate what the CivBE designers wanted to achieve with the tech web. However, a great intention does not always guarantee a great result. I hate the tech web maze so much that this feature alone will prevent me from playing more than a few rounds of CivBERT.

I want to feel comfortable in games.
I do not want to fight with the interface.

Rule No.4 of Sid Meier's design lessons:
"The Player Should Have The Fun, Not The Designer Or The Computer"
 
I think it's more about expectations. BE was almost double the price of Pandora at release, had a far larger marketing (and general) budget, and was the heir to the reputation of one of the most beloved strategy franchises in PC gaming.

Pandora didn't have any of that, except a passing resemblance to SMAC, so those who bought it didn't feel like they got as bad a deal when it didn't turn out to be great.
 
  • Citizen assignment interface.
  • Actually does what you tell it to do and is incapable of being inefficient.
  • Industry leader.
 
I want to feel comfortable in games.
I do not want to fight with the interface.
That's rather personal, of course. I like the tech web a lot more because the leaf techs create logical groupings for each branch tech while the randomly organised tech tree of Pandora feels a lot more cluttered and like a disorganised, non-sensical mess to me - it works but is nothing to write home about from my point of view (one of the reasons I didn't even touch tech in my points above).

However, something I actually like from its tech system is the three clearly outlined eras with changing building/unit icon colours and styles. That feels like a bigger step than the many incremental affinity steps or rings in the tech web of Civ:BE (there are distinct affinity "eras" but putting a name to it like "Transcendence Era" makes it more explicit and "real").

On the other hand, that brings me to my real bugbear with Pandora: the victory conditions are bland, discovering a certain percentage of all techs? Gaining a certain amount of money? Controlling a certain percentage of all population? They... work, I guess, but really don't capture my imagination whatsoever.

Pandora starts fun but slowly peters out after the first era and a half or so (the fact that so much of the game is centred on the military doesn't help). Lobbing black holes at your enemies and invading aliens are fun, though.
 
To be honest: I prefer Pandora over CivBE.

This is mostly because of the randomized tech tree, combined with an adjustable preview depth. This feature alone brings a lot of replayability, and the tech tree is clean. The bloated CivBE tech web feels like a confusing maze to me. The CivBERT expansion probably will bloat it even more.

I really appreciate what the CivBE designers wanted to achieve with the tech web. However, a great intention does not always guarantee a great result. I hate the tech web maze so much that this feature alone will prevent me from playing more than a few rounds of CivBERT.

I want to feel comfortable in games.
I do not want to fight with the interface.

Rule No.4 of Sid Meier's design lessons:
"The Player Should Have The Fun, Not The Designer Or The Computer"

My problem with the tech web is that it first appears to have plenty of choice, but beelines and techs that just aren't very useful become apparent later.

Still, I like the idea of it and where it works it is fun.

Aside the first game with it, I never felt like I was struggling with it - though an old mod to color code buildings/ wonders / units worked wonders on its readability.
 
You can rename units in Pandora. You always could, its right there in unit design.

Pandora is far more exciting game than civ:Begarbage.

Aliens is actually pretty dangerous. You can't disregard their existence and treat them like dust to be brushed away.

I loathe the stacks though. But I still find myself spreading the units out to one unit per hex anyways cuz late game is too dangerous for stacks to be around. Them doomsday weapons.
 
Pandora is more fun. more stuff happens each turn. the aliens are a pita throughout the game.

I dislike that air units in Pandora behave in civ2/civ1 style. meh.
the spy mechanic is highly MM intensive. afaik, one spy can only do one hit on one city. the only counter to enemy spies is to always be on the watch and kill any approaching spies. later on, they can get a movement bonus. than a spy can pop out of the fog and reach the city in one turn. very announing.
 
I had high hopes for Pandora and even with the expansion, it still fails to keep my interest and I long ago stopped playing it. BERT sounds much more to my liking and BE may well live on past this expansion, which would please me no end.
 
I had high hopes for Pandora and even with the expansion, it still fails to keep my interest and I long ago stopped playing it. BERT sounds much more to my liking and BE may well live on past this expansion, which would please me no end.

The reason why I stopped playing pandora was the terrible map scripts. All land is circles! Semi circles!

I didn't like that.
 
I tried very hard to get into Pandora but it just didn't do it for me. It feels like I'm playing a much earlier version of a Civ game but with Civ V's hexes. It's much harder to play successfully than either Civ V and especially Civ BE but it's missing so much. And I absolutely HATE the espionage system with a passion. That's SO Civ 2 and out of date. TBH, in spite of the Civ V hexes, the game doesn't look very nice at all. Small studio, I know but sometimes, though not always, graphics do make or break a strategy game and here, they break it for me because it is too close to Civ V to avoid the comparison.

I have never played SMAC but I have read here and elsewhere that Pandora owes very much to SMAC. If that's true, then I would have loved SMAC about 15+ years ago but I wouldn't enjoy it now. I would probably have enjoyed Pandora far more had I not played it after playing Civ BE. I know a lot of you guys don't like Civ BE but I do and, IMO, it's a far better game without expansions than Pandora is with an expansion.

What could the devs learn from Pandora? It probably wouldn't hurt for them to break away from the traditional Civ franchise food model. Having satellites scanning the map and even revealing the map every few turns is a very cool feature. I'm not so sold on the unit customisation though. While it is good to start with, it becomes an unenjoyable chore for me after a while.
 
I loathe the stacks though.
In its defence, I have to say that Pandora handles stacks fairly well, though, with showing the combined unit strength and using small pips that can even display bigger stacks.

I still don't like stacks that much either (why is a discussion for another day), but if you implement a stack system, you can do much, much worse than Pandora.

Another point where Pandora fails hard is the everything not directly related to industrial-military development: diplomacy, social engineering/government systems are barebones or non-existent. This is probably one of the reasons why the game feels so military, a bit like a giant turn-based RTS instead of an empire builder.
 
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