So... what does everyone think?

[Texashawk]

Haven't yet seen the obligatory 'What does everyone think' thread, and I know we're all still working our way through this massive expansion, but I was curious to know what people's thoughts were.

Myself, I love the new graphics engine, the responsiveness, and the overall allure of playing a small, backward empire among bloodthirsty pirates. I've never been so grateful to see a Precursor wreck and fix it - I badly needed it!

Anyway, your quick thoughts?

[Kayoz]

Stability seems fine. Some crashes, but nothing untoward for a new release.

Balance needs a lot of work. Adamsolo has posted some very detailed analyses of the issues - not only what's wrong, but how other parts interacting with the mechanic are wrong, and some suggestions on how to fix them. Hopefully, Matrix will read these in the detail they deserve and get the changes out quickly. This is not to say there aren't others - just that his seem to be the most useful for Matrix that I've seen.

*edit*
To clarify the above so that it read less like attaching my lips to anyone's bottom...
My point is that Matrix is getting some very good feedback from the community on not only what is wrong, but why it is and suggestions on how to fix it. Erik's history is quite good with taking feedback on-board. I hope he keeps it up.

A diamond in the rough, in essence. But given Matrix's support of their titles, I wouldn't be too worried about the future prospects of the game.

[arkhometha]

ORIGINAL: Texashawk
Myself, I love the new graphics engine, the responsiveness, and the overall allure of playing a small, backward empire among bloodthirsty pirates. I've never been so grateful to see a Precursor wreck and fix it - I badly needed it!

Same here. I love to work from a pre-warp empire. Though it still strange you can't fly off your home system but you understand every race language in game. Would be cool to have language/culture features and research, maybe dependent in cooperation, maybe dependent on capturing enemies and researching their language. Language could cause a lot of interplanetary incidents, and some more hostiles races could have an almost undecipherable language due to difficult cooperation and communication.

A bit disappointed we can't assign individual portraits to individual characters, nor can select specific races to enslave and exterminate in this expansion.

[Rtwfreak]

Heh ironman rules no using precursor's.

[Texashawk]

You are a better man than I sir. [;)]

ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak

Heh ironman rules no using precursor's.

[Seraph86]

i'm still at the beginning of my first game as an empire in the pre-warp age. i love to play with expensive techs, so that progression is slowed even further and the game moves at a slower pace.

my opinion: so far i love it, normally in other 4x space games you start already with the techs to explore the galaxy. until legends you still could just explore the surrounding star system due to fuel shortage, but now it's even harder to explore the depths. it adds much to the athmosphere in my opinion, that and the imminent danger from mysteriously pirates make the galaxy feel more violent and overall darker (love the pirate arts btw!). it really is a struggle at first to get out of your home system, exploring further reaches and finally breaking the chains you got yourself into at the beginning due to the pirate danger is a great feeling. after experiencing the game with this option i think i can't play anymore with another setup.

further i love the refined graphics and the increase in performance!

one thing i would love to see improved is the character system which was introduced in legends (meaning the character portraits!). the system is nice and all but every character has the same portrait and they feel more like clones than real (or fictional) characters. due to that i can't really get too attached to them . that was one thing which master of orion 2 performed well, different characters with different portraits, traits and backstory. yeah sure it would be hard to implement portraits with randomly generated characters, traits and all....but having some spy-like avatars for ..well spies... etc. ... i would actually start too care much more about my governors, leadears, fleet admirals and spies. as it stands now, they are like cannon fodder for me .

back to OP: i haven't tried ground combat yet so can't say much about that but so far the game feels great and the addition of pre-warp era and new pirate characters / pirate system adds much to the gameplay!

ps: as i destroyed one pirate base with my little fleet i tried to tell my destroyers to board the base, but they didn't seem to bother or rather the option wasn't available (and yes they had boarding pods and one troop each).

[Scrove]

ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak

Heh ironman rules no using precursor's.

I always play Ironman, but what are precursor's?

[Bingeling]

There are still things to work on beyond the rather obvious pirate issues. Hopefully the somewhat longer term polish patch can catch a lot of the more involved things.

I ponder the overall game balance, it requires quite a bit of playing to get a feel for that. And it is way too early to judge the new difficulty things, at least for someone as slow in playing as me.

My personal opinions about new stuff:

Resource tracking: Good. It is not perfect but the shortage info adds a lot.
Ground combat: Good. This was not given, but I think it works well.
Difficulty enhancements: Probably good, but too early to say.
New pirates as opponents: Very good, but I miss them working properly.
Performance: Good. It has been improved.
New weapons: Promising
Pirate play: Not too interesting for me personally.
PreWarp: Boring. But it pays off when exiting the system properly.

I look forward to pirates being restored to former glory, they lack stamina at release. But I am not sure how much of a difference that will actually make.

Even if they fix nothing more, the expansion would be a good one. With some tuning it can become great.

[Raap]

I've yet to play anything but pirate mode, but I'm already loving it. Looking forward to trying pre-warp too. It needs a lot of work, but nothing I can't see them handling in time.

[mikeCK]

I'm having a lot of fun with the pre warp start. At this point, I don't know what is a bug, what is imbalance and what is operator error. There is no other space 4x that really compares to DW and I think Shadows only improves it. Even with some issues (haven't read adamsolo's thread) it's a blast. I only have some minor complaints like ringed planets having the edge of the rings clipped off and hard-to-see icons. It's nice to finally have a 4x that simulates early space exploration.

[towerbooks3192]

Great so far and I wished they added a clean slate like this setting before shadows. Its the perfect setting to play and learn the game as there is not a single infrastructure around and building mines from the ground up lets you identify the resources that your empire really needs.

I must also say that I noticed some improvements on lower end systems as it feels smoother on my MBP 13" 2010 intel core 2 duo and nvidia 320m with 4gb RAM though I generated an epic game and it slowed to a crawl as expected but yet to see it on my main PC

[Resan]

ORIGINAL: Scrove

ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak

Heh ironman rules no using precursor's.

I always play Ironman, but what are precursor's?

Those abandon advanced ships you can find around in the galaxy

Edit:
To answer OP.

I'm loving the new pre-warp setting. Really makes finally going to a neighboring star a big thing.

Haven't played as pirates yet. But as an empire they feel a bit toothless most of the time. I have had games where they completely wreck everything, but most of the the time they don't do as much as I would have thought. I'm guessing they are running afoul the same problems PC-Pirates have reported. So might get better in time.

Another small point, even with planets needing strategic resources, they still feel to plentiful to me. Get a few mines of each, don't build like crazy and you don't seem to run out at any time.

[arkhometha]

ORIGINAL: Seraph86
one thing i would love to see improved is the character system which was introduced in legends (meaning the character portraits!). the system is nice and all but every character has the same portrait and they feel more like clones than real (or fictional) characters. due to that i can't really get too attached to them . that was one thing which master of orion 2 performed well, different characters with different portraits, traits and backstory. yeah sure it would be hard to implement portraits with randomly generated characters, traits and all....but having some spy-like avatars for ..well spies... etc. ... i would actually start too care much more about my governors, leadears, fleet admirals and spies. as it stands now, they are like cannon fodder for me .

Yeah, I agree with everything. Imagine if you could, on top of that, make custom medals and give it to them just like in Aurora 4X. Give it to the 1st Fleet Admiral for winning the decisive Aldebaran Skirmish of the Human - Boskaran war.

ORIGINAL: mikeCK
It's nice to finally have a 4x that simulates early space exploration.

Aurora 4X does it better, with exploring systems and such, but it's way more complicated, so I prefer Shadows.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz
Balance needs a lot of work. Adamsolo has posted some very detailed analyses of the issues - not only what's wrong, but how other parts interacting with the mechanic are wrong, and some suggestions on how to fix them. Hopefully, Matrix will read these in the detail they deserve and get the changes out quickly. This is not to say there aren't others - just that his seem to be the most useful for Matrix that I've seen.

To be clear, some issues always get through to release and we apparently made pirate facilities very fragile at some point recently and didn't catch the issue. That's not how they were intended and we're already working to fix that up.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
To be clear, some issues always get through to release and we apparently made pirate facilities very fragile at some point recently and didn't catch the issue. That's not how they were intended and we're already working to fix that up.

Please don't misunderstand me - I didn't mean that as a complaint. Quite the opposite. The community feedback in many cases is detailed and and as helpful as it can be, and Matrix has a very good history of taking feedback into account and making changes. This is in contrast to many companies who release games and then change little or nothing, regardless of the complaints, suggestions and feedback from their customers.

Your track record is excellent, and it's my hope/expectation that you continue as you have done so in the past!