Twitch Live Stream: Sid Meier's Starships with special guest Sid Meier

[NASAROG]

Where did you hear that it's freemium!?

I didn't. I am comparing the difficulty debate to freemium games.

 

[Gort]

I didn't. I am comparing the difficulty debate to freemium games.

Now I'm thoroughly confused.

 

[NASAROG]

Now I'm thoroughly confused.

Okay. Let me explain.

This game highly resembles a his Sky Patrol remake for the iOS platform. In it, he had to reduce the difficulty because the fan base is used to playing freemium games and the difficulty settings in those are directly proportional to how much you pay. The harder the game, the more opportunities for pay2win. Now, since this is a PC game and their aren't any option for you to pay2win (not yet at least), and since it's based on the freemium model, the difficulty had to be turned down.

Why? because he is worried that players will not buy the game if it's hard.

How did I come up with this conclusion?

Simple. A single fleet, because all of a sudden we are incapable to managing multiple fleets. Who is we? the Civ players???? No. The freemium and lite 4X crowds found on iOS (this game will appear there). Our ships don't actually die, they are just disabled when they lose? Same as above. Planets don't really make stuff? Wait.. did I say planet? Yes, because systems would be too complex.

Do you see where I am going with this? Do I know for a fact that what I said it the case? Yes, for the my two main points, and the rest is supposition and extrapolation.

 

[Gort]

Right. I have never heard of Sky Patrol before, or any of the drama that surrounds it, hence the confusion.

I think I'd wait until I heard the first thing about a cash shop in this game before I started getting upset about it. It would be a first for the Civilisation series.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I think the problem is partially that the hardcore Civilization crowd thinks this game is aimed at them. It's not - it's more tactical, smaller scale, "fluffier" in presentation and learning curve.

The impression I get is that it's trying to get people into a naval tactics game, much like XCOM kind of revived the turn-based squad tactics genre and made it more accessible.

I do hope, though, that they don't forget what they learnt in XCOM: options are your friends (difficulty and second wave options) and allow you to cater to a lot more audience groups.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I think the problem is partially that the hardcore Civilization crowd thinks this game is aimed at them. It's not - it's more tactical, smaller scale, "fluffier" in presentation and learning curve.

You are correct that the game is not aimed at the hardcore civ player but can you really blame them for thinking that. After all, the serious civ player still constitutes a significant portion of Firaxis' fan and customer base.

I do hope, though, that they don't forget what they learnt in XCOM: options are your friends (difficulty and second wave options) and allow you to cater to a lot more audience groups.

I recently stumbled on a conference talk that Sid gave several years ago about the psychology of gamers. In it, he remarks that he thought the perfect number of difficulty levels for a game should be 4: a "tutorial" level for the beginner, a casual level, a serious level and a super hard level for the expert player. But he found that in civ, the ideal number seemed to be 9. He remarked that players actually like lots of difficulty levels because it gives them a sense of progress and satisfaction when they are able to advance to higher levels. I find this interesting since Starships goes back to the 4 basic levels. Maybe Sid feels that for the tablet market, his 4 levels theory is good enough?

 

[Hail]

Sid basically lost the combat in this live stream's battle. No one shot kills this time.

We did learn a few things:
- a player's ship is never completely destroyed in combat. When it loses all its hit points, it is only disabled and must be repaired at full cost after the battle. Sid felt that losing ships completely would cause players to rage quit which he wanted to avoided.
- Ships gets powerful promotions when they disable an enemy ship.
- Some missions will require only one ship (like in Ace Patrol where you have to pick only one pilot to fly a mission)
- There is a wonder that gives you stronger shields all the way around your ship (rear of ship is no longer weak spot)
- Only one fleet in a game. Sid felt that multiple fleets would cause clutter (AI would have multiple fleets too). Plus if a player lost a fleet, they would just switch to another fleet so there would less emotional investment in each fleet.
- cross-connectivity with BE is a secret that Firaxis does not want to spoil. Players will have to buy Starships to find out what it is.
- No MP at all!

a ship [it's crew] has a chance to obtain a powerful promotion (+10% to all systems' efficiency) when they disable [destroy] an enemy ship. I believe the ship who deals the finishing blow gets a roll to obtain the promotion.

Link to video.
from 37:43

one fleet per nation, no multiplayer, and the deathblow promotion are all meh.

Sid should play Conquest of the New World. in this game, after each battle, leaders get promotion points. units under their command do get slaughtered in large numbers. I mean, starships can be destroyed. their crew always survives and accumulates promotions.

meh. Starships seem like a shallow game for the iPad crowd. meh

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Starships threads moved to All Other Games forum.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

 

[Lord Tirian]

Maybe Sid feels that for the tablet market, his 4 levels theory is good enough?

I think the "tablet market" argument is, to some extent, a red herring. I rather think that the reasoning is similar to XCOM with "only" four difficulty levels, namely that it's - while replayed - a much more shaped experience than Civilization.

XCOM and Starships seem to have much more defined "timelines", so to speak, while Civilization is a bit less predictable and more open to customisation. A lot of people play Civilization suboptimally because of the implied simulation aspect while XCOM has a very defined goal to strive towards. As you get different self-set goals and different victory condition, added to Civ's somewhat steeper difficulty curve, it becomes harder to find people's "sweet spot".

From all the "implied story" talk about Starships, I get the feeling that Starships will only have one victory condition - probably culminating in a huge all-out space battle.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

From all the "implied story" talk about Starships, I get the feeling that Starships will only have one victory condition - probably culminating in a huge all-out space battle.

It has been confirmed that starships will have multiple victory conditions, including a science victory. But I would agree that a big final all out space battle is likely in most games. For example, if your opponent is close to a science victory, you will still want to invade their homeworld with your biggest, baddest fleet possible to try to stop them.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Link to video.

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Moved to new Starships forum.