Thoughts about the game...

[LordMadDog]

Just for a little context, myself and my dad played The Settlers for days/weeks/months on our Amiga.... We invested a lot of time in to the game, and both enjoyed it, a lot. Here's just a few things I want to say about 'Pioneers of Pagonia' (POP I will call it for ease)....

#Disclaimer, i know the game isn't an end product, and I know it isn't THE Settlers..

1. I'm not a fan of the name. It's not a game changer, but it just doesn't do it for me. I also don't think it's going to sell well with this name, and ultimately, we need a new generation of players to get the game off the ground.
2. The game is too easy. I mean, i smashed through every mission in less than a day, and if we're comparing to The Settlers it falls way short. The thing about The Settlers is that you felt invested in what happened to your Settlers. Every decision could make or break you, especially if you went up in difficulty. I literally took an entire map in less than 2 hours on POP.
3. BRING BACK FLAGS. I don't want 500 carriers, when I can have just 1-2 taking items from one flag to another. It brings an entirely different element to the game. You have to keep the roads flat and short as possible, and avoid overloading one flag.
4. The fighting is... I mean... Do i need to say anything? I much prefer the 1 fight at a time on the doorstep of the garrison, and that arse squeaking feeling of not knowing if your last knight was going to hold out. I sent a garrison of iron covered knights in to a bunch of no armoured thieves the other day, and my guys we crushed in less than 10 seconds.
#On this... troops look really bad. Non of them stand out, or look well detailed, and the fighting is literally a generic sword fight. Don't get me started on the crude effort at placing a corpse on the map.
5. The game doesn't seem balanced and here are a few reasons why...
#Copper is cheaper than iron. You need more of it to make tools, for example. Yet... I can barely find copper, and I can often find more silver, and definitely iron on the map.
# 90% of the time it feels like the miners aren't working. Now you could argue that I'm not building enough production buildings to get rid of it all, but there never seems to be enough production going on to keep the miners going. I could store it all, sure, but why do I need 3 miners to work for 30 seconds, when I could hire 1, and open up mines with other resources? I may not be making much sense with this one, but considering I can expand the map in 2 hours, and effectively have access to all of the resources, I could have a mountain of silver bars in 20 minutes, and silver ore backed up at the mine. Does that sound right?
# We start off with a zillion people.. Don't get it. We are rocking up on a boat, effectively ready to populate a small town? There's literally nothing I have to wait for when I start.
6. Why have limestone at all.. why not just have it as a bi-product of cutting stone and be done with it. Doesn't require an additional building or mine. I know I already said it was too easy, but you've 100% ran out of ore ideas here, and it's pointless. It's a later game resource but it's barely needed.
7. POP is burning my 3060 12gb. Even COD doesn't fire as much heat out of my PC, on highest settings. Maybe the processor is getting a good work out, with all the different elements going on, but god only knows what the game performs like on lesser systems.

Lastly a thought. I'm not speaking for everybody but I suspect many feel the same. When the community say that they want a game like The Settlers... I think what most of us are saying is, keep The Settlers the way it was, but creatively make new buildings, maps, and graphics. The game was absolutely fine. We don't need you to reinvent the wheel (ghost attackers?, constant theft of our items?), but update the game with some new maps, quests, graphics.

[greifental]

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

The game is too easy. I mean, i smashed through every mission in less than a day.

Try a randomized map then. The predefined maps don't use the highest difficulty settings.

[dampf.l]

Game is demanding on GPUs, yes. Tip: Reduce the power limit of your GPU to 70 %. You will lose < 20 % of FPS, but it will be much cooler.

My 3060 Ti @ 120 W (200 W Nvidia default) is still fast enough for 4K Max Details (Multisampling deactivated) @ stable 30 FPS.

3060 12 GB @ 130 W should be as fast and of course much cooler than with 170 W (Nvidia default).

[SlasH]

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

7. POP is burning my 3060 12gb. Even COD doesn't fire as much heat out of my PC, on highest settings. Maybe the processor is getting a good work out, with all the different elements going on, but god only knows what the game performs like on lesser systems.!

Deactivate Antialiasing in the NVIDIA settings, you can set this per game in case you don't know. Also deactivate Tripple Buffering ingame. Helped me a lot when I had the same problem with overheating.

[LordMadDog]

Originally posted by SlasH:

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

7. POP is burning my 3060 12gb. Even COD doesn't fire as much heat out of my PC, on highest settings. Maybe the processor is getting a good work out, with all the different elements going on, but god only knows what the game performs like on lesser systems.!

Deactivating Antialiasing the NVIDIA settings, you can set this per game in case you don't know, helped me a lot when I had the same problem with overheating.

Hi… I thought about messing with nvidia again but to be honest.. I play other games with much more detailed graphics and I’m not getting the same heat. When a game or piece of software seems to be unexplainably excessive on your hardware it’s often the way it’s coded, and not the hardware. FIFA was another great example… every other game was fine, but EA just throttled the hell out of the machine. I would understand it if the game was beautiful to look at, but I have aoe4 and that runs like a dream for me.

[SlasH]

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

When a game or piece of software seems to be unexplainably excessive on your hardware it’s often the way it’s coded, and not the hardware..

Sure thing, but I was just offering a workaround so you can play without worrying about the GPU.

[LordMadDog]

Originally posted by SlasH:

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

When a game or piece of software seems to be unexplainably excessive on your hardware it’s often the way it’s coded, and not the hardware..

Sure thing, but I was just offering a workaround so you can play without worrying about the GPU.

Sorry my bad. I forgot to say thank you for the suggestion. Think I’m a bit burnt out with game disappointment right now. I actually got The Settlers newest version… and immediately asked for a refund. I feel the love for game development has gone, and in turn my love for games. There is, of course lots of good things about the game..like free expansion, and no set areas to ‘conquer’ but then again.. no fishing.. and half a map expansion every garrison.. it’s hard to be positive when it feels like nobody in the Dev team played a map and thought.. wait.. the maps have a ton of water, but we won’t allow a race of pioneers to catch fish? Anyway, back to the point, I shall have a try at fixing the heat problem.

[SlasH]

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

There is, of course lots of good things about the game..like free expansion, and no set areas to ‘conquer’ but then again.. no fishing.. and half a map expansion every garrison.. it’s hard to be positive when it feels like nobody in the Dev team played a map and thought.. wait.. the maps have a ton of water, but we won’t allow a race of pioneers to catch fish? Anyway, back to the point, I shall have a try at fixing the heat problem.

Please keep in mind that this game has just started early access, you cannot expect a complete game with all features. Just check out the road map and see what will come until ~ February. Fishing huts are mentioned there. Until then, try to be patient.

[LordMadDog]

Originally posted by SlasH:

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

There is, of course lots of good things about the game..like free expansion, and no set areas to ‘conquer’ but then again.. no fishing.. and half a map expansion every garrison.. it’s hard to be positive when it feels like nobody in the Dev team played a map and thought.. wait.. the maps have a ton of water, but we won’t allow a race of pioneers to catch fish? Anyway, back to the point, I shall have a try at fixing the heat problem.

Please keep in mind that this game has just started early access, you cannot expect a complete game with all features. Just check out the road map and see what will come until ~ February. Fishing huts are mentioned there. Until then, try to be patient.

I wrote a ♥♥♥♥ hot response to this, hit submit and realised it was a report I'd sent...

I'm a little tired of this early access, beta, alpha, dlc nonsense. It reminds me a little bit of the wine aisle in a supermarket. 50% off, 2/1, 3for2... but what's the actual value of the wine? I came here to buy and play games, that work. I've purchased 'Beta' games that never seem to stop being Beta, it's ridiculous. Is a partly built game worth £22? When other similar completed games are worth £2 more? It's all marketing nonsense to confuse the consumer and drain as much money as possible out of us, whilst putting minimum effort in. Lets take fishing huts. It's a fundamental part of these games, especially in the early part. These pioneers came from the sea, it's pretty important that they know how to fish, right? If they've not yet implemented a fishing hut, I'm not entirely sure why they spent all the time they have on ridiculous ghosts that frighten people in to losing all their equipment. I'm sure it sounded great in somebody's head, but I'd rather they started with Knights/Spears/Cavs and got the basics right with the most important part of the game, which is production and resources. As with a lot of these The Settler spin offs, its like the devs can't help but run with bizarre ideas before asking the people that actually matter. If you're just starting a village from nothing.. or inhabiting a new island, fish is one of the key sources of food imo.

Sorry if that sounded a little aggressive lol but I am opinionated. It's not about being right or wrong, but that's my view. Appreciate yours.

[Roland the Gunner]

I mean you can refund the game within 2 hours if you realise it's not what you want. Especially if you are that awerse to early access. I guess it's too late tho.

Some games benefit greatly from this process and acting on good community feedback can make it much much better, especially that you can tell they are trying to tap into that settlers fanbase while giving it a spin off. If they just remade settlers 2 then might as well buy that.

I'm not a game dev, you are probably not either. The process is long and you can either forget about this game for a year and come back to it with a lot of new stuff, give some reasonable feedback and try to work with Devs to improve it or be negative and change nothing while making the forum miserable.

I appreciate the passion tho.

Edit: I agree the road map seems to be more of a placeholder to artificially give players something to look forward but it seems we will get a good amount of patches in between that will fine tune the game.

[SlasH]

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

I'm a little tired of this early access, beta, alpha, dlc nonsense.

I can understand, but then just don't buy the game and don't complain. Simple as that. PoP will most likely be in EA for ~6 months, at least that's what I read in an interview with the dev.

[LordMadDog]

Originally posted by SlasH:

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

I'm a little tired of this early access, beta, alpha, dlc nonsense.

I can understand, but then just don't buy the game and complain. Simple as that. PoP will most likely be in EA for ~6 months, at least that's what I read in an interview with the dev.

I can buy then complain if I want, and I definitely won’t be told I can’t by somebody who’s looking around on forums trying to target individuals, instead of talking about the game. Early access shouldn’t mean the game is being shovelled out unfinished, it’s literally early access and an opportunity maybe to get some early feedback. The things I’ve mentioned are mostly rookie, poorly thought through mistakes, and deflecting that back on the fact that I dared to by an early access game is ridiculous. If you’re a developer and you are happy presenting unfinished work, you’re in the wrong line of work.

[dampf.l]

It´s described in Roadmap that fishery will be included in February Update.
Did you try to set a 70 % powerlimit on your GPU?

But honestly, if you don´t like the way how carriers and military system work, I´m afraid this game will never make you happy and this has nothing to do with the EA state.

[SlasH]

Originally posted by LordMadDog:

Early access shouldn’t mean the game is being shovelled out unfinished...

I guess you don't understand EA.

[LordMadDog]

You couldn't be more patronising if you tried. Good job trying to goad people on to get your kicks though buddy, we are all super impressed.

[LordMadDog]

Originally posted by dampf.l:

It´s described in Roadmap that fishery will be included in February Update.
Did you try to set a 70 % powerlimit on your GPU?

But honestly, if you don´t like the way how carriers and military system work, I´m afraid this game will never make you happy and this has nothing to do with the EA state.

I guess not.. but I've supported it with the early purchase so here's hoping someone gets more joy out of it :)