Master of Orion 4

[Wraith]

It's coming back.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I'd love to play Master of Orion again, but on the other hand, it's being done by the guys who make the pay-to-win World of Tanks. They use a monetization model I strongly disapprove of.

Figured it was still worth a thread, given that about half of us wound up in this community due to Moo3.

[Steely Glint]

I don't see this ending well, as much as I'd like to be wrong on that.

[Loki]

For a small sum of $9,000, you can win the game the second you start playing!

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/srfuqa...7-119c8d412f99

[RandBlade]

I never played MOO3 (by the time I'd heard of it from the rest of you guys, it was quite old already). If the sequel is any good - and not play to win - then I'll give it a go.

That link doesn't work in the UK and Eire. Though I hadn't realised that Atari had formally gone backrupt and been liquidated. Can't say its too much of a surprise and we're well shot of being out of there.

EDIT: Just watched the YouTube clip and I'm not sure about it. I get the transition was to contrast from the graphics in the original to today but the ending graphics didn't look too great to me. The planets etc looked OK but nothing special, but the ships just look somewhat dated. Makes me think more 2008 than 2015.

[agamemnus]

If it is a money grab, you have options. Galactic Civilizations 3, for example.

[EyeKhan]

World of Tanks is a ton of fun and you don't have to pay to win. The real problem in the game is that it favors players who've logged more play time. Crews gain experience with every battle you play and that experience can be used to acquire special skills. As crews accumulate these skills they get advantages that tilt the 'die rolls' in the player's favor and give other advantages to the player. So even if you're very good at the game, another player equally good with a highly trained crew - ie has played a lot more than you - will beat you every time. You can't use money to buy experience for your crew or to buy the extra skills. You can use money to speed it up a bit, but not that much, certainly not enough to call it a pay to win game.

[Wraith]

Golden ammo.

[EyeKhan]

Golden ammo.

Gold rounds can be bought with real dollars or with the in-game silver that you accumulate by doing well in battles. I have over 7 million silver and I could use gold rounds in every fight if I wanted, all without opening my wallet.

[Wraith]

That's new to me, then. Last time I looked into it, they were real money only purchases.

[Wraith]

Along those lines, though, Wargaming is going against it's traditional business model to keep MoO accessible. "This will not be a free-to-play game and there will be no microtransactions," he said. "We want to preserve the legend and spirit as much as possible."

That doesn't mean there won't be changes, though. Kislyi said that a lot has been learned about 4X gameplay over the years. "We want to take the best pieces of the original game and make it look and play better. We are also addressing issues with all 4X games, as well as combining elements from Master of Orion 1, 2 and 3. It's about common sense and creating things that the predecessors might not have been able to do because of technology."

In the demo we saw of the game, the graphics are indeed beautiful. There are hints of Civilization: Beyond Earth and Galactic Civilizations III in there, but as Kislyi said, positive innovations are good for the game. Among some of the other improvements and changes:

• Changes to a planet can be seen on a closeup of the world when you enter orbit;
• Two new victory condition have been added: Technology and Excellence;
• Each of the 10 race leaders will have more than 100 lines of professionally voice acted dialogue;
• Colonizations will have their own cutscenes based on the type of the ship and the world settled;
• Each race will have it's own introductory video and ship types.

Source

I'm a little reassured about the business model, but still concerned about what the game will be.

There's more screenshots in the link. The Alkari look weird, and I can't believe I still remember what they're called.

[Steely Glint]

Ugh, it's doing that horrible gal-civ thing where planets are visible on a galactic scale map.

[Steely Glint]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015...e/#more-297231

[Wraith]

"making it more accessible"
"not really that interested in the 4x genre"

It's gonna suck, but at least it'll get good reviews.

I'm gonna wind up buy it anyways.

[RandBlade]

Funny I've heard a lot since this came out referring to MoO3 in similar terms to those used to describe X:Rebirth (problematic, ignore it, didn't happen, nobody loved it, stick to the earlier ones) etc - but I thought those of you who came to Atari via MoO did so for MoO3. So it couldn't have been that bad?

[Wraith]

We all came pre-release, not post. I think I had the most favorable opinion of MoO3 of the CCers, but I'll still admit that the game felt unfinished.

[Steely Glint]

If making it more accessible means not having a terrible interface, then I'm for that.

From the description, mechanically the game sounds like an almost direct clone of Master of Orion 2. This is not a good thing.

[Steely Glint]

Oh, and I like Wraith feel Moo3 was judged more harshly than it perhaps deserves. The game actually had a lot of really worthwhile ideas, and it's sad that they've been tainted by MoO3s failure (and the game IS completely broken and basically unplayable without mods), so that now developers feel the way to make a space 4x is to make civ in space or try and clone the Moo2 formula both of which are utterly the wrong approach in my view.

[Wraith]

It's going early-access next week. I'm still very hesitant about it. I've read some stuff about it, though probably not everything, and it looks to me like it's a straight MOO2 clone with upgraded graphics and a couple missing features. I'm not hopeful here, but I'd like to be proven wrong.

I'm pinning all my 4X hopes for the year on Stellaris.

[LittleFuzzy]

I'm not planning on buying it.

[ar81]

I like to pay once for a game. Period.
I do not mind to spend years playing to win for free, if that hurts a "pay for win" monetization scheme.
My bet is I will remove the dust from MOO3, not buy MOO4.

[RandBlade]

I don't mind paying for Expansion Packs (as they used to be called), of which eg Crusader Kings 2 DLC can be a quality example of. True expansions to the game rather than just unlocking new graphics or new bits of what you should have paid for already.

I will never pay to win. That's dumb.

[earthJoker]

So nobody here tried this?

[Steely Glint]

I watched a let's play and was unimpressed

[Khendraja'aro]

The Steam reviews also don't sound promising.

[RandBlade]

Anyone tried this? Popped up in Steam that it was on sale and I was surprised to see that it had quite positive Steam reviews (though I don't know how representative that is).

[EyeKhan]

Anyone tried this? Popped up in Steam that it was on sale and I was surprised to see that it had quite positive Steam reviews (though I don't know how representative that is).

I haven't tried it, but there's a detailed review here:

http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2016...-stars-review/

It gets a 7.3/10.