I think part of the problem is the switch to the new interface and refusing to continue supporting the old interface. That's a glaring issue, since the new interface (sorry to all you guys who work on it a lot) is just inferior in ALMOST every way. It's clunkier, many things are less easy to understand (I always have to remember the mineral order because something that looks kinda like a D, a +, and an m don't always click in my mind, for example), and when I actually DO try to play it on my phone, it's impossible to do things like transfer cargo between ships and some other things because the interface popups are too large and extend off the screen, meaning I can't get to those things.
...this is also a problem on PC when dealing with a large amount of ships at the same location. I finally found out there's a scroll bar on the right side of the popup window, but it's SO narrow, it's almost impossible for me to click and drag it. I do like a few things, such as the ship motions at the start of your turn (also, if you watch closely, you can see the ion storms move as well), but the old site seems to do almost everything just as well. I've been using the new one for convenience, but I don't really see it as an upgrade. More of a side-grade that hasn't had all the bugs worked out yet.
I don't mind the Kin change, since anyone wanting to spend $10 for 50,000 Kin to buy campaign advantages doesn't matter to me if I'm playing Classic or MvsM games anyway (which is what I've been doing so far).
...but I don't get the Horwasp at all, honestly. They're weird, confusing, and seem to be ridiculously OP while their race advantages list them as under powered in terms of numeric race advantage. But they just look like they'd be REALLY annoying to have to fight, and very confusing to learn to play.
Considering how many other Sci-Fi races are out there that could be added to planets like the Covenant/UNSC (Halo), Confederacy/Old Republic (Star Wars), various Warhammer 40k knock-offs, Centauri/Mimbari/etc (Babylon 5), the Farscape empire-like race (I forget their name, but they had some cool ships and tech), the Asguard or Gould or even the Humans from Stargate (after the Humans got their ships up and working for interstellar travel), etc etc:
There are PLENTY of options for other races that could be added to the game that would function using the same basic systems as the classic 11 - a set of ships, tech levels, and racial advantages - that it seems would require less new game code and cause less balance issues than the Horwasp do. Someone told me something about the Horwasp being an idea of Tim himself, but I've never seen any documentation to support that, and it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me considering just how different they are from the rest.
I get wanting new things, and I get people who like change - but not all change is GOOD change. Getting shot in the leg is a change. Is that a thing you should accept having done to you or just "soldier through" for some supposed future good? Maybe sometimes...but not ALL times. the idea that "the world changes, accept it" has never made rational sense to me. Opposing changes that are bad isn't being "backwards", it's being rational.
Moreover, people that work on big changes like these tend to become married to them and feel they must defend them (even once they realize the aren't so good), which creates some perverse incentives (in the behavioral theory sense) to keep pressing them through, even if they appear to be bad changes. For example, forcing people to use new systems/"upgrades" (smart phone companies do this a lot - Apple even got in trouble for forcing OS upgrades that INTENTIONALLY made older phones slower so that customers would be forced to buy new phones!) is almost universally bad. The only reason to force people to use the new system is if you fear the old system might be better and you don't want "competition" from your own prior system, which makes your new system look bad when lots of people are using/prefer the old one (this is one reason why Blizzard has taken 10+ years to create WoW Classic, even though people have been demanding it for a decade already - they didn't want to acknowledge the fact that people liked Vanilla WoW better than basically any of their new/fancy expansions that they talked up as the best thing ever.)
This is why a mixed/balanced approach is best. Do the new, but segment the old, and keep supporting the old, alongside it.
And if you're going to add new races - COOL! I love new races...in THEORY - just add new races that people want and that play in ways that are kind of in-line with the others. Again, my list above - Halo, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Warhammer, Farscape, Stargate, etc - already have plenty of examples that could be added and make fun races to play without the insanity of the Horwasp, and that would be FAR easier to balance by making small tweaks to their advantages and race lineups. |
Show Media Item - Does anyone know if there is a place to play more of the...
