General impression of BERT so far.

It's far too early

This is about the only thing I think we can agree on for now. It is too early, certainly far too early to assume any of these things are going to be worthwhile changes. I'm as optimistic as the next guy but vanilla BE has made me more than a little wary of being too enthusiastic before I've had time to experience the game for myself.

You've failed to mention changes to diplomacy and faction traits.

It's also entirely possible the changes and new features added to the game, like the artifact system and the diplomacy changes, could alter how the core game is played, optimally or not.

Again, it's way too early to be assuming any of this. All this gaining and switching of traits and so on still feels far too mechanical and not as organic as diplomacy really should be. The biggest things that were missing from the diplomacy system in vanilla BE were personalities and flavor text to give us an idea of what kind of leaders we're dealing with. The devs so far seem to still think that we need to know the internals of it all and know the "why" behind what leaders think and decide.

I maintain that I'd rather see more of their personalities and backstories on display in the dialogue while their actions speak for themselves. That's why I'm skeptical after seeing the new diplomacy screen, which still looks rigid and sterile as hell. Remember, these are the same guys who thought "favors" would be a good addition to the diplomacy system and we all know how that turned out. Sorry, but I'll be taking their ideas with more than a grain of salt from here on out.
 
Favors could have been a good addition, they were just implemented poorly with an inconsistent, and often not worthwhile, rate of exchange.

The new Diplomacy system may be more rigid, but ideally there will be more of a point in engaging in it now.

It was rare for me to have any meaningful interaction with the AIs in BE because I couldn't really get anything from them in the old system.
 
Remember, these are the same guys who thought "favors" would be a good addition to the diplomacy system and we all know how that turned out.

Well favors themselves are a good feature to have in civ diplomacy. The problem was not the favors but how they were implemented.
 
I do think it depends a lot on the type of player. If you are the player who only cares about the optimal strategy and you think that the "academy spam" is it, then I can see how you won't care so much about new BERT features unless they affect the "academy spam" strategy. But if you are like me and are more casual and don't care if you win on turn 350, then you might be more interested in the new features for their own sake.
 
I do think it depends a lot on the type of player. If you are the player who only cares about the optimal strategy and you think that the "academy spam" is it, then I can see how you won't care so much about new BERT features unless they affect the "academy spam" strategy. But if you are like me and are more casual and don't care if you win on turn 350, then you might be more interested in the new features for their own sake.
Well, it's not "Either you only play the most optimal thing" vs. "Or you enjoy doing whatever the hell you want!" though, a lot of players are somewhere in-between and unfortunately right now balance is rather black-and-white with many options feeling a lot like gimping oneself by a lot.

I would be very surprised - and upset - if they didn't at least try to bring the things that people have called out to be lacking balance again and again closer together in the prepatch or the expansion itself.
 
Well, it's not "Either you only play the most optimal thing" vs. "Or you enjoy doing whatever the hell you want!" though, a lot of players are somewhere in-between and unfortunately right now balance is rather black-and-white with many options feeling a lot like gimping oneself by a lot.

I would be very surprised - and upset - if they didn't at least try to bring the things that people have called out to be lacking balance again and again closer together in the prepatch or the expansion itself.

Oh, I know that there are a lot of in-between players. I am optimistic that they will try to fix some of the balance issues too. After all, there will be a big 2.0 patch that will go along with the expansion. There is still a lot that we don't know about the expansion.
 
I am cautiously optimistic but really these guys need to prove something before I believe anything they sell. People were more willing to give G and K a shot because CiV had undergone a much more significant patching process. Those patches actually started addressing some of the fundmental problems with the game and gave a hope G and K would really help. The change of design lead also helped since it meant the team was not as wedded to old choices.

The patch history here is much more scanty and shows very negative trends. I would be a lot more optimistic if the wonder patch had actually improved wonders. In CiV there was one wonder, Angkor Wat, i felt was quite weak. In BE there is one wonder I actually feel like getting, Master Control. They solved the quest issue by just breaking it. They solved the affinity unit spam by just nerfing them to uslessness. They made no substantial balance changes to virtues. They did nothing to make stations non-useless. I didn't have to run multiple mods in CiV to make city states do SOMETHING. They put in basic controls for trade routes a beta test would find the need for in 1 day. Their patching is just reflexive nerfs and bandaids.

What do you expect from the 2.0 patch. They completely tore diplomacy apart for the new expansion and its a main selling point. Diplomacy in vanilla is what it is most likely. You don't abandon a system then work on it when it'll make you no money. Maybe they put in the quest and victory changes if they don't tie into the new systems too much. No expedition changes as they will tie into the artifact system. Maybe some unit rebalance but the new aliens and hybrid units will almost certainly be expo bait. I am expecting practically nothing from the patch. 2.0 was abandoned for BERT.
 
You do realize that the new diplo system HAS to be on the game regardless you buy or not the xpack, dont you? Unless they want the vanilla players to be literally unable to interect with the xpack players.
 
Well, multiplayer with Non-RT-Players will probably only work in a Non-RT-Environment, just like Civ 5... but I don't see a reason why it would be a BERT-only feature. It's basically...

"Oh great, the addon got the fixes and the base game got nothing? Yeah, no way I'm going to get back to that."
vs.
"Well. That's some nice changes they made here and Beyond Earth is a lot more fun now, I'll get the expansion for the new features!"

...unless they think the new Diplomacy is really the "Main"-Feature of that expansion and that a ton of people would not buy the Expansion for all the other stuff they're adding.
 
The patch history here is much more scanty and shows very negative trends. I would be a lot more optimistic if the wonder patch had actually improved wonders. In CiV there was one wonder, Angkor Wat, i felt was quite weak. In BE there is one wonder I actually feel like getting, Master Control. They solved the quest issue by just breaking it. They solved the affinity unit spam by just nerfing them to uslessness.

They made no substantial balance changes to virtues. They did nothing to make stations non-useless. I didn't have to run multiple mods in CiV to make city states do SOMETHING. They put in basic controls for trade routes a beta test would find the need for in 1 day. Their patching is just reflexive nerfs and bandaids.

Pretty much. I don't want to be too negative or anything but I'm honestly more than a little concerned that the lead designers still aren't entirely sure what the inherent flaws with BE actually were.

With all this emphasis on water gameplay and new alien types and factions, I'm still not convinced they've done enough to address the core problems having to do with a lack of a feeling of discovery and exploration and variety.
 
I'm still not convinced they've done enough to address the core problems having to do with a lack of a feeling of discovery and exploration and variety.

That is what the new artifact system seeks to address. Instead of generic expeditions that give the same bonuses, we actually get specific items. Now, when we do an expedition, we'll actually get a specific old earth earth relic, an alien sample or a specific progenitor device with a picture of what it is and a backstory. Plus, there will be lots of different ways to combine different artifacts for different bonuses which will encourage players to explore more. And players will want to explore the ocean now too for the pods and artifacts they can get there. So, I think it is a step in the right direction to make discovery and exploration more varied and interesting.
 
I agree. But I hope they also realized that tech- and affinity-progress have the same problems and found ways to translate that same concept into both of them.
 
And players will want to explore the ocean now too for the pods and artifacts they can get there. So, I think it is a step in the right direction to make discovery and exploration more varied and interesting.

Hope so. That said, I think it's unfortunate that in the only gameplay video they've released so far, we saw a pod yield yet another round of research bonus points. Great. It can't even be like prior Civs where there's a chance of getting a free settler or worker or combat unit or upgraded weapons.
 
You can't get Settlers or Workers either in Civ 5, except on very low difficulty settings. And the "upgrade unit"-system doesn't really work for BE. I think it's quite obvious that Resource Pods need "smaller", more general bonuses, because of how many you can gather. Relics on the other hand are limited by Excavation charges.
 
That's what I'm saying though, they've boxed in the gameplay in some ways without really opening up other options. Pods should be able to yield at least a free explorer. I remember being so excited when I saw a pod give a free solar collector satellite. Turns out that's extent of the cool stuff. The rest are just resource points.

What would've been neat is if they gave you a free unique unit that harkened back to an earlier stage in the Seeding Program, a more primitive rover than even the ones you start out with and so on. SMAC found ways to make its pods really exciting, you really had no idea what to expect. Sometimes they would have already been infested by aliens and so you unwittingly unleash a swarm of them near your base.

I mean come on, why couldn't they use their imaginations a bit more and really expand the narrative in the process? They just seemed to go for a more "Paint by Numbers" Civ experience instead, which is why players often feel like the game had "no love" or "no soul" in it.
 
Hope so. That said, I think it's unfortunate that in the only gameplay video they've released so far, we saw a pod yield yet another round of research bonus points. Great. It can't even be like prior Civs where there's a chance of getting a free settler or worker or combat unit or upgraded weapons.

But the new artifact system gives the player bigger bonuses. We saw the screen where the player gets extra research, extra energy and a unique unit ability for combining 2 specific artifacts. So the game does now give you bigger bonuses. You have to look past just what you get from a single pod.
 
That's what I'm saying though, they've boxed in the gameplay in some ways without really opening up other options. Pods should be able to yield at least a free explorer. I remember being so excited when I saw a pod give a free solar collector satellite. Turns out that's extent of the cool stuff. The rest are just resource points.

What would've been neat is if they gave you a free unique unit that harkened back to an earlier stage in the Seeding Program, a more primitive rover than even the ones you start out with and so on. SMAC found ways to make its pods really exciting, you really had no idea what to expect. Sometimes they would have already been infested by aliens and so you unwittingly unleash a swarm of them near your base.

I mean come on, why couldn't they use their imaginations a bit more and really expand the narrative in the process? They just seemed to go for a more "Paint by Numbers" Civ experience instead, which is why players often feel like the game had "no love" or "no soul" in it.

Well, I'd say that's a case of Balance vs. "Imagination". The Solar Collector is already very strong and a start where you get one versus a start where you don't get one play out VERY differently. A free Scout, spawned far away from your starting area, especially with that additional Excavation charge and pods that can give other "cool bonuses", would also be a huge bonus over not getting one.

And as once again Pods are purely random and don't have any limiting factor built in a good start vs. a bad start would become completely dependent on randomness and luck when scouting. Right now resource Pods are a good bonus to empire development, but they're not "game-breaking".

I really think that's how it should be. Pods give generic, relatively weak bonuses but are readily available and "auto-grab". The cool stuff can and should come from relics, because they a bit more of a "normalized" system that doesn't allow one Civ to "get them all".
 
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