GimpyJ

Join Date 04/2003

Fundamental issues

There's been a lot of discussion about under-powered Units, overpowered Champions, and issues with the tech tree, and while I think these are very important discussions, there are a couple of fundamental problems that I'm seeing in the beta that would kill the game for me regardless of the outcome of the balance discussions.

Interface issues: basically this is in issue that carried over from WoM and I'm finding even more annoying now. Frequently, in the 3D world view - and occasionally in the tactical map - I will right-click on one square, and my unit will move to a different square, sometimes quite a distance away. I end up wasting several turns, rotating the map and eventually zooming back to the cloth map in order to get my guys to go the right place. This may seem minor, but it is a constant annoyance.
Multithreading: Multithreading is a great thing; it allows a game to process a lot more in a short amount of time. However it needs to be handle properly, basically what I'm complaining about is when the game tries to process several events in a short period of time and keeps interrupting itself. Some recent examples include:

Having a city specialization popup interrupted by a meaningless diplomatic popup, and leaving me without the option of choosing a special building for that city.
In the worst case I've seen, I had two different champions moving toward two separate quest locations and they both happened to reach them on the same turn. I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but I think a tactical battle launched which I autocompleted and I immediately went into a tactical battle for the second champion. This tactical battle got interrupted by the results/loot/level up popups from the first battle, and when I dismissed those I ended up on the world view with neither quest marked as complete but both were removed from the world and the second champion's army and the army he was fighting were both on the same square of the world map. I couldn't select this army, and I could end the turn.
I've seen enough similar but more minor issues as well

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legaceez

These are very important. Luckily,they should be fixed during Beta. Problems like these don't worry me because they are obvious errors. I'm more concerned with elements of gameplay, since changing aspects of the design and implementation are actually controversial and will always require extensive balancing.

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I know some work has been done to fix these issues. Hope fixes to these things make an appearance in .78 next week.

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Both of these have been around since WOM, so I wouldn't be so quick to assume that they're fixed already. They really need some love. The popups interfering with each other is really easy to reproduce, and both of these problems are really disturbing when they interfere with the playing of the game, and they do.

In my last game, a battle which I would have fought manually was auto-resolved because of the popup ordering problem, another time, I missed seeing the results of a quest, and I don't know how many times I lost moves for units that were trying to leave one city that was behind some mountains because of the first issue.

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I don't think anyone is assuming anything. I just think that these sorts of issues are obvious, significant, and technical in nature. Nothing controversial or debatable. So like any other technical issue, I am confident that they will be fixed in beta. So it is very important for us to continue to bring these issues up, I just but I can't imagine them not fixing them.

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Good points. I run into both these issues frequently.

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These concurrency issues are the worst, and some redesign and implementation is needed indeed. (1-2 months of work)

1. Level up: why do it with a pop up? make a little arrow or + appear on the unit frame, have the user click it when he can and do the level up.

2. City spec: same as 1.

3. Quest events: these really need to go in the event queue on the side, the relevant stack should be frozen in place until they are resolved.

Concurrency is HARD for multiple reasons. Never take it lightly in a project.

Stardock is moving all the pieces simultaneously like they did on Galciv. This is not the same game!!!!

Galciv didn't have quests-events on tiles, leveling up, or planet spec. it doesn't work like that.

Also there's the issue of ambiguity: 2 stacks auto move at the end of turn to a single destination. Which one triggers the event-quest FIRST? (both stacks have champions). Another solution would be to implement an "enter event" command. However that would only work for voluntary event triggers.

I noticed these issues way back. I don't think they will fix em. it's beyond their budget, Perhaps in an xpac and even then I doubt it.

[edit: spelling]

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Lord Reliant

Join Date 03/2006

+39

Agreed. I posted suggestions on both of these same issues a few weeks ago with some "I agrees" from others. The UI and timing of events really needs some lovin'.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

These are indeed legitimate issues that are on the list of things that we're working on.

It is not accurate to say that they are "carried over" from WOM (beware the placebo effect -- there's a lot of that here on these forums, if people realized how different the code base was for FE, they'd be shocked).

The fundamental issue is what the OP mentioned -- FE is extremely multithreaded and so getting the UI manager to properly synchronize user events from various threads with different time stamps can be challenging.

My personal biggest pet peeve isn't one I saw listed here, it's when a battle is occurring and something up jerks the camera. Drives me insane(r).

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Lord Reliant

Join Date 03/2006

+39

Thanks for the confirmation it's on the "fix it" list, Brad!

While we're on the topic of the camera, I have difficulty with the camera in tactical when casting a spell with an area effect (like fireball). Often I'm further away from the enemy than what is displayed on the current zoom level. Since tactical doesn't edge scroll (unlike the stategic view), the only way to target without causing the spell to fire is to zoom out. Annoying and hopefully something addressed.

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