Humanity has risen!
SasqWatch
Like I said, someone released excellent patches to improve the AI. The thing he wasn't able to improve was the pathfinding code.
Worlds of Magic - PC Version Gone Gold
- Thread starter Couchpotato
- Start date
Like I said, someone released excellent patches to improve the AI. The thing he wasn't able to improve was the pathfinding code.
I have not played the game so I cannot judge myself; but here is a very recent post from steam forum (with a lot of people agreeing with the poster):
http://steamcommunity.com/app/265970/discussions/0/617328415054751393/
--
To be fair (not posted here) if you go to page four you will see the developer response and it is quite sane but my gist of the reading is the game has potential but more than a few months of work remaining.
-
1 Hour In - This Needs a LOT of Work
I'm not about to write a full blown review after playing a 4x game for only an hour. I can do that in a side scroller, but not a strategy game. It's not fair to the genre. But as a new player, I think it's important to see how the game makes its "first impressions" to a new customer.
Disclaimer #1: I realize this is Early Access. No, you don't have to tell me that the game is not complete, blah blah blah. I know perfectly well what EA means. I also know that this game is supposed to be released in 29 days, so it should be close to being "release ready".
Disclaimer #2: I'm not passing judgements about whether the game is good or not in its current state. Let me say that again. I'm not making judgements about the overall game at this stage. I'm simply posting problems I've encountered and how this game makes its first impressions to the gamer.
PS: I wouldn't bother writing this if I didn't want to see this game succeed. I'm a TBS 4X junkie. I love MoM. So yes, I'd love to see a great remake of MoM. I haven't played this enough to know whether this can be a great remake.
Ok, on to some early issues:
- The biggest one - bugs, bugs, bugs. I've seen "null reference error" probably about 20 times in the last hour. The game crashed during the start of a turn, when I tried to load a quicksave and when I tried to go back to the main menu. Every one of those were accompanied by a "null reference error", so that's a pretty strong sign that it's internal to the program and not a driver conflict (yes I am using the latest video drivers). That's why I stopped playing - well, the game stopped playing and after the 3rd time I shut it down for the night. As such, I can only conclude that at this point the game isn't stable. This is not a good sign with less than a month to go, especially in light of the other basic issues encountered.
- The map zoom - yeah, this has been hammered over and over again on these forums. I'm not going to beat a dead horse. I can play around it so it's not a game breaker, but it's limiting and annoying. Let's move on.
- The UI is kind of confusing. Right click some things, left click others and buttons that are needed are scattered all over the place. The city screen in particular is an abomination. For instance, there's no reason for a seperate tab for what's currently being built and what's in the queue. The build buttons should be more obvious. Stuff like that needs work.
- The diplomacy screen is another abomination. I literally can't tell what the color is of the other wizard I'm speaking to. How is this not a piece of information in this screen? Never mind knowing how they feel about me, whether or not they're likely to accept my proposal, what their personality is…none of that seems to be here. If this remains as-is (and unless I missed some magic UI button that gives me all of this information), diplomacy will be like throwing darts blindfolded. Not good at all.
- I don't want to get into too many questions since documentation is one of the last things that get done. But for instance I don't even know if cities expand in size. From what I've seen on the map they don't appear to. But I can't tell. The percentages in tile yields is pretty confusing too. What are the base yields? Is +1.5% good? There's no real reference. Maybe this was the way MoM handled things, but I haven't played that game for about 20 years. I can't remember that stuff. Stuff like these issues seem to be totally unexplained and these are pretty basic concepts. There's a lot of tooltips and help that needs to be written before release.
- Pathetic/nonexistent spell animations and sounds. I figure these are forthcoming, but many of the spells don't seem to have a sound and most of the animations I've seen are pretty unimpressive. Heck, you can't even hardly tell if something like "Good Harvest" even cast or not!
- Doesn't use some basic standard conventions. Most 4x games are smart enough to know that spacebar means skip a turn. That doesn't work here. It should. It makes me wonder what other basic 4x conventions were ignored. Maybe many. Maybe none. But after what I've seen, that's concerning.
Now I haven't even gotten into balance, AI, pace, endgame, other planes of existence or a host of other things I haven't had a chance yet to experience (in part because the game is crashing). I'll hopefully have time to do that in the near future. But givent hat some of these things (like the AI) are still being rolled out, I don't have a lot of hope that these will be even passable the first time around.
CONCLUSION: My oh my does this need a lot of work. There is no possible way this will be ready to launch in 29 days. None whatsoever. Right now WoM does not make a favorable impression and if it's like this on release both gamers and reviewers will tear it apart. Releasing this in March will be a disaster on par with Stardock's Elemental release. Here's hoping that Wastelands Interactive continue to make improvements and don't release until the game is in a more polished state.
Last edited by Blackadar; Feb 18 @ 9:26pm
Showing 1-15 of 59 comments
< 1 2 3 4 >

ioticus  Feb 18 @ 9:36pm
I completely agree Blackadar and have been saying the same thing. Ronniebranch was also trying to say the same thing and he got banned. I hope they do delay the game because I feel it will be a disaster on the level of Elemental (maybe worse) if they release in March.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/265970/discussions/0/617328415054751393/
--
To be fair (not posted here) if you go to page four you will see the developer response and it is quite sane but my gist of the reading is the game has potential but more than a few months of work remaining.
-
1 Hour In - This Needs a LOT of Work
I'm not about to write a full blown review after playing a 4x game for only an hour. I can do that in a side scroller, but not a strategy game. It's not fair to the genre. But as a new player, I think it's important to see how the game makes its "first impressions" to a new customer.
Disclaimer #1: I realize this is Early Access. No, you don't have to tell me that the game is not complete, blah blah blah. I know perfectly well what EA means. I also know that this game is supposed to be released in 29 days, so it should be close to being "release ready".
Disclaimer #2: I'm not passing judgements about whether the game is good or not in its current state. Let me say that again. I'm not making judgements about the overall game at this stage. I'm simply posting problems I've encountered and how this game makes its first impressions to the gamer.
PS: I wouldn't bother writing this if I didn't want to see this game succeed. I'm a TBS 4X junkie. I love MoM. So yes, I'd love to see a great remake of MoM. I haven't played this enough to know whether this can be a great remake.
Ok, on to some early issues:
- The biggest one - bugs, bugs, bugs. I've seen "null reference error" probably about 20 times in the last hour. The game crashed during the start of a turn, when I tried to load a quicksave and when I tried to go back to the main menu. Every one of those were accompanied by a "null reference error", so that's a pretty strong sign that it's internal to the program and not a driver conflict (yes I am using the latest video drivers). That's why I stopped playing - well, the game stopped playing and after the 3rd time I shut it down for the night. As such, I can only conclude that at this point the game isn't stable. This is not a good sign with less than a month to go, especially in light of the other basic issues encountered.
- The map zoom - yeah, this has been hammered over and over again on these forums. I'm not going to beat a dead horse. I can play around it so it's not a game breaker, but it's limiting and annoying. Let's move on.
- The UI is kind of confusing. Right click some things, left click others and buttons that are needed are scattered all over the place. The city screen in particular is an abomination. For instance, there's no reason for a seperate tab for what's currently being built and what's in the queue. The build buttons should be more obvious. Stuff like that needs work.
- The diplomacy screen is another abomination. I literally can't tell what the color is of the other wizard I'm speaking to. How is this not a piece of information in this screen? Never mind knowing how they feel about me, whether or not they're likely to accept my proposal, what their personality is…none of that seems to be here. If this remains as-is (and unless I missed some magic UI button that gives me all of this information), diplomacy will be like throwing darts blindfolded. Not good at all.
- I don't want to get into too many questions since documentation is one of the last things that get done. But for instance I don't even know if cities expand in size. From what I've seen on the map they don't appear to. But I can't tell. The percentages in tile yields is pretty confusing too. What are the base yields? Is +1.5% good? There's no real reference. Maybe this was the way MoM handled things, but I haven't played that game for about 20 years. I can't remember that stuff. Stuff like these issues seem to be totally unexplained and these are pretty basic concepts. There's a lot of tooltips and help that needs to be written before release.
- Pathetic/nonexistent spell animations and sounds. I figure these are forthcoming, but many of the spells don't seem to have a sound and most of the animations I've seen are pretty unimpressive. Heck, you can't even hardly tell if something like "Good Harvest" even cast or not!
- Doesn't use some basic standard conventions. Most 4x games are smart enough to know that spacebar means skip a turn. That doesn't work here. It should. It makes me wonder what other basic 4x conventions were ignored. Maybe many. Maybe none. But after what I've seen, that's concerning.
Now I haven't even gotten into balance, AI, pace, endgame, other planes of existence or a host of other things I haven't had a chance yet to experience (in part because the game is crashing). I'll hopefully have time to do that in the near future. But givent hat some of these things (like the AI) are still being rolled out, I don't have a lot of hope that these will be even passable the first time around.
CONCLUSION: My oh my does this need a lot of work. There is no possible way this will be ready to launch in 29 days. None whatsoever. Right now WoM does not make a favorable impression and if it's like this on release both gamers and reviewers will tear it apart. Releasing this in March will be a disaster on par with Stardock's Elemental release. Here's hoping that Wastelands Interactive continue to make improvements and don't release until the game is in a more polished state.
Last edited by Blackadar; Feb 18 @ 9:26pm
Showing 1-15 of 59 comments
< 1 2 3 4 >

ioticus  Feb 18 @ 9:36pm
I completely agree Blackadar and have been saying the same thing. Ronniebranch was also trying to say the same thing and he got banned. I hope they do delay the game because I feel it will be a disaster on the level of Elemental (maybe worse) if they release in March.