v1.03, +10 PQ Ability has been nerfed

I'm not going to use 1.03, too drastic changes. Why oh why don't they leave a GOOD game alone and make additions to it not NERF the game to make it harder than it already is? This is turning into Everquest. Nerf any fun that comes along. Quick, quick before someone has some fun Nerf it!!

I don't think that Toaddog understands balance....

Um.. if you are having difficulties at the 'fool' level, you are in trouble to begin with. Nerfing something that is clearly an exploit is NOT a nerf, it is a BALANCE. There is plenty of 'cheese' tactics left if you want to use them.

And comparing this to EQ.. that is just WRONG! *shudder*


fleabitfox

Look, playing now with 5 AI, 2 bright (good and evil) 3 normal (neutral) huge galaxy, tight groups, uncommon planets and without my 15% PQ at the start I would be on exactly 3 planets with PQ higher than 20 with both the early PQ techs. As it is I'm just barely holding. Drengin (bright) have just about subjugated the rest of the galaxy. I look at their best planets, 30's and high 20's.

The only reason they are leaving me alone is I rushed to Battleship while they fought. I had no resources within planetary sectors so I had to build resource Starbases and defend them outside my sectors along with the Starbases within my system.

This game is extremely good and extremely fun as it is and I welcome balance changes but not changes because someone whines that their little fingers can't help cheating.

To compare what is happening to Everquest to correct. Not that the game is the same but that 1 or 2% of the people are determining the direction of the game while the rest are happily off playing, we come back and find the game is harder or our well-honed strategy no longer works. Give us a chance to play the game and not have to switch directions every other week.

I mean this, too many games have been ruined by "top-ending" them before they are even understood by the rest of the players.

Look at this, I have had the game for several weeks so know a little bit of what makes it tick by playing. If I was a new player and had just started with the latest version would I find it fun or too hard or too easy and would I hang it up instead of learning it? My bookshelf here is full of games that didn't quite make it and I think twice before buying from those company again.

If what is being done is part of the creators "vision" fine, he has to live with his decisions, if it is being done to please complainers, remember this, you will never please them and they will continue to nit-pick this game to death.

No, Toaddog, the problem is purely within your playstyle, as I have no problems taking on 5 Intelligent AIs with no PQ bonus at all. And FWIW, the AI is just as 'nerfed' by this change as you so quit your crying.

I used the PQ 15% ability everytime I played and am glad they got rid of it, now I'm going to have to come up with another set of abilites to use.

If you've got a problem with the patch and you're happy with the game "off the shelf", just pretend the patches don't exist and don't patch it -- ever. You'll be a happy soul, and those who want changes can deal with whatever comes out of the patch pipeline. Since there is no multi-player, everyone is free to do as they please without worrying about losing anything.

~SDC~

Miclogic, but then he's going to be one sad puppy when Brad starts adding in new units and releases the expansion pack but he can't use them since they took away his *only* strategy. The whining will only get worse.


He also doesn't understand what a real nerf is versus altering game balance which happens in every game during it's first weeks.

A nerf is when Blizzard took away the telekinesis ability from single player sorceresses just because of what a bunch of jerks online were doing. That's a nerf: taking away a perfectly non-abused ability from all players because of what a minority are doing.

The +15% PQ just gets too powerful regardless of player -> it's an "exploit" for everyone, so it goes bye-bye.

miclogic: There's several changes that are going to have serious effects on my strategy. Problem is, as near as I can tell, you can't roll back to a previous release. You can roll back to the current release from a beta, but hasn't 1.03 been released?

I really want to try 1.03 to find out how much it affects my strategy (mostly early on due to SB maintenance fees, I can usually grab 4 resources on a large or larger map long before 20BC/turn isn't a major burden.

Then again, I doubt that I'd *REALLY* want to roll back to 1.02, I'd just miss it a little, and work hard on adapting my strategy.

I was just about to bump up to the next level, but I think I'll stick with challenging until after I've played at least a game or two with 1.03 to make sure I'm not gonna get clobbered.

what if you want some of the patch does but not all of them. like could the patches alot of booster shots not gene theripy or like a food court pick what you want not a beef or checken wedding dinner choice.

I don't agree with Toaddog's attempt to categorize a game balance fix as a nerf, but what's with all the sneaky personal attacks directed at him in this thread? I know it's natural tendnecy for certain posters, but I would have expected more from others.

Toaddog:

I suspect Brad took a look at the metaverse data and noticed an inordinate number players taking advantage of the PQ bonus so he decided to fix that. By removing the option to pick such a powerful bonus, players are encouraged to explore other aspects of the game and pursue different strategies. That is a good thing for the game I believe. While it can be argued that players can opt to ignore the PQ bonus personally, the fact remains that most will simply take the most powerful pick and would not change their behavior without some coercion.

miclogic:

What would you have people do if they didn't like the PQ tweak but wanted to see the improved AI for their single player game experience? You can't pick which features of a patch to apply, so that's a moot argument you're making.

I'm all for removing that. I tried it and it grossly outbalanced the game. And I like it when strategies that I use are eliminated because they're cheeseball. It makes me come up with more interesting strategies. That's what the fun is. I mean, who wants a game where you always do the same cheese tactic over and over?

Well then this is a decision Brad has to make. Is he going to make a fun game or cater to the whiners? That's Brad's decision and it's his wallet. I already bought the game so they have my bucks whether I play or not.

This is just like the thing when they went after smokers, EVERYBODY thought that was good but when we said this is only the start they WILL come for your favorite vice too nobody listened. Can you say FAT TAX?

So don't hold onto your favorite "vice" in this game THEY will come for that too.

I'll try the new version when I finish this game and if I find it good I will post as such. It really doesn't matter since I about played this game out anyway.

You can be assured I may not open my wallet for a pay expansion by then this game will be collecting dust on a shelf someplace.

If you are wondering I am 48 years old and I am certainly able to speak with my wallet an well as my mouth.

Ichimaru, such a system would be a nightmare for the devs. How could you ever do any further development on the game if 3% of the players had these stats running, 4% had those, 16% had this set, and so on. Being able to test and balance future units, techs, AI tweaks, etc. require that everybody be on the same playing field.

I'm sort of surprised at these responses. I've yet to see a game that didn't use the first 1-2 months as an extended beta test (and Brad's so slick, I just paid him another $20 to officially beta test upcoming patches, go figure) unless the game simply wasn't supported at all. One of the side effects of going from a small beta to full out commercial sales is you get a lot more monkeys banging at the typewriters and issues you didn't forsee become evident. Once they're evident, if the devs care about the longterm health of the game, they get addressed, end of story.

In this case the devs were faced with two different choices given how powerful the +10, +15 PQ abilities were: either rebalance the AIs to almost always go for these and force all the players to also always chose them to keep up with the 'improved' AI, or take away the imbalanced elements of the game. They chose wisely and if you want to keep seeing new changes and game elements you're just going to have suck it up and accept it.

Toaddog, since the expansion is free to registered users, you won't be speaking very loudly.

Just a note: The option to change one's planet quality ability was only added in 1.01. It was not part of the 1.0 released game. So players are still ahead of where they were with the released version.

So if we're going to talk what's canon, I'd go by 1.0. And in 1.0 there was no planet quality adjustment at all.

We added the PQ ability adjustment in the 1.01 DOWNLOAD and we quickly concluded that such massive adjustments to planet quality were harmful to the game. There are a couple dozen abilities in the game to tweak and people were overwhelmingly just using that one and it was overpowering.

BTW, no one "whined" for that to be changed. We just recognized a play balance problem from metaverse data and our own play testing.

"I've yet to see a game that didn't use the first 1-2 months as an extended beta test"
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Personally I don't usually play a strategy or RTS game much longer than that unless it's a persistant pay-as-you go world like Everquest or a RPG like Baldur's Gate if it take that long. The few exceptions to that were MOO1, MoM, Civ2 and Age of Empires. All good games and groundbreaking in their time. BTW MoM was full of cheese and exploits, they were there if you wanted that type of game and didn't need to be used if you didn't. GC has the capability to be groundbreaking too.

Like I said before if this is Brad's vision of the game well then change it, he has to make his decisions and live with them.

I don't have to like them and can refuse to buy any further Stardock products or I can buy them as I like. That is something he will have to decide but as a comsumer that is my choice.

There is no sense going on with this, I made my statement and this is a forum for making statements.

If the change makes the game too hard for you, why not just turn the difficulty back down?

Toaddog, the PQ cheese was very smelly and had to be thrown in the bin.

It gave the player an effective monopoly on class 14 planet systems (and there's usually quite a few of them around) which could be bagged at his/her leisure without the threat of the AI getting there first.

What makes Galactic Civilizations such an interesting game IMHO is that a particular planet or resource is desired by *all* races. This creates the conflict which fuels the gameplay.

I'm buggered if I know how to beat an v1.03 Intelligent AI, but that is due to the 1-dimensional strategies I've been using up to now.

I'll just have to come up with a better gameplan - but isn't that the whole point of a *strategy* game.






~SDC~

Well, I will readily admit that I used the PQ bonus in almost every game. I LOVED it.

However, if it is unbalancing I have no problem with it being removed/nerfed. It's kind of hypocritical to tout the game's good AI and then forsake our own starting strategy by constantly using the most overpowered trait.

I don't want cheese. I want a challenging AI and a level playing field.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion. If you enjoy this aspect of the game, simply don't upgrade. Download the standalone 2.0 patch, and run from there.

I think it is terribly unbalancing myself. It is almost guaranteed victory, since you can so massively out-everything the other AI's. It would not be a problem to keep in, except for the Metaverse. So it *should* go. Has nothing to do with whiners, but just helps people get cheese high scores on the Metaverse easier. That.. and it really *is* overpowered. LOL

fleabitfox

Hehe, back here again.

My whole point here was this was optional just like the difficulty levels. You didn't have to use it if you don't want to, just click them off and they will never bother you anymore. Those who want that type of game can use it to any degree they want.

What is wrong with that? I 'll tell you, it's the Metaverse, in any other game a ladder, and when you have a ladder people will ..... we all know the answer to that.

I see no problem with having options as long as they are selectable and the more the merrier. We should have starting money options too. Why should anyone care how someone else plays the game unless it's a competition. I happened to like that option it made the game fun for me, if you don't like option turn it off then the game is fun for you. This is so difficult to see?

As for turning down the AI, then we don't get to see the better antics. I never saw the I-League till that that game above. I like an enjoyable game without having to pull my hair out and consult charts and statistics to have a chance at winning. I don't like to min-max my games, my pleasure is in the playing. That's why MOO3 and TOAW sit on my shelf collecting dust.

It's not really worth the effort arguing this, what will be, will be. I spent my 15 minutes saying what I like. If those likes aren't in line with the vision here so be it. I'll know next time.

Yeah thongor - PQ + sensors every game. I always felt a bit guilty using it though. Glad the temptation's been removed.

~SDC~

I chose either speed or PQ ability picks exclusively due to their power. Both have been tweaked. Which is great IMO as I can now seriously consider other abilities which are more balanced.

I believe the concern here is whether these game balances would "spoil" the game for casual gamers. I think the different difficulty levels make the game accessible to all varieties of gamers.

On one end of the spectrum there's QuickSilver - took what, 2 months to release a "data" patch for a frightening troublesome title. On the other end of the spectrum, Stardock is listening to its community and releasing updates and balancing the game on a WEEKLY basis. Toaddog, you freaking amaze me. It wasn't just someone who whined about PQ, most everyone can agree that it was cheese which needed to be nerfed. Stardock is doing something unequalled in today's gaming. It's just incredible how some people can be so unappreciative of what they have. Really, as OneInTen said: If the game is too hard for you, tone the difficulty down until you gain some more experience.

~SDC~