Throw a hampster in a spacesuit and call it a race?! WHY?

[meghostryder]

Seriously. What bugs me most about these 4x games is the rediculous races. The devs go all out on hi-sci-fi tech, ship customization, galaxy maps...etc etc etc ....and then when it comes to the actual game LORE they spend about 5 minutes each on a bunny race, a lobster race, a cat race....uhhhgggg!

Why not take at least the same effort on the races? and lore as they do the rest of the game? The only serious attempt was way back in the 90s with Emperor of the Fading Suns.

Read Dune. Read deep sci-fi. Enough with the cartoon races. Every 4x game goes this easy cheap route and the only way I'd buy yet another "kill bugs bunny" is the ability to easily mod in something decent.

Call me crazy, but i like to care about the race I'm playing, and that's awful hard when I just ate them at Red lobster the night before.

[Einkommensteuerrecht [GER]]

If there only was a convienent way to fix that, like being able to implement your own races and write your own lore, maybe with something handy like a race customisation option ?

[meghostryder]

That helps, but the LORE part requires a lot of modding on the user's part. What I've read here about this game from the dev's is some kind of story arch addition via a campaign...that almost made me laugh. I mean really, your going to have a story surrounding these corny races too?

It seems dev's everywhere want to reinvent the 4x formula in every area except when it comes to the world the game takes place in. From MOO onward, be it Space Empires, Endless Space, Stardrive, Cal Civ or even Distant Worlds--they revamp everything except they all go with dumb race and lore setups.

I'm not expecting the next Mass Effect from an indy dev, but I would like some effort made to revamp this area, enough at least to the point one might think a race would be interesting to play, the story of them interesting enough to explain the universial war and so on.

The stand out RPGs of late have done this-- from Fallout to The Witcher-- throwing out the classic take created from AD&D--and it's a welcome change at that--it's so long overdue in the 4x gendre I am surprised no one has attempted it. The only title to come to mind is Sins of a Solar Empire--where the 3 main players were at least Humanoid with thumbs--something you'd think would be absolutely neccessary for any intelligent being to have to be able to build the ships in the first place.

Perhaps along the lines of Alpha centuri or Pandora First Contact-where instead of the standard cats, mice, bugs--having thier own set "abilities' as the defining factor-- you can have BELEAVABLE races with ideology. Beliefs, ideas, ideals, principles, ethics, morals -- seem far more interesting to me. And it sure would help with immersion. There's no immersion killer greater than talking to roach in a 4x game.

[solops1]

Lore, shmore. Work on gameplay, forget lore. That kind of fluff can be added at any time and is a waste of resources until there is a game worth playing that merits that level of chrome. This game is still in alpha.

[Ludicus]

Originally posted by meghostryder:

Seriously. What bugs me most about these 4x games is the rediculous races.

You are quite right. Thre is a general tendency to attach considerable importance to crustaceans,molluscs, birds, bears, plants, cats, dogs, chameleons, not forgettting the famous Tyrannosaurus rex.

[DevildogFF]

You guys ever play Ascendancy? That game had some TRULY alien races. Would love to see more like that...

[Proxima]

Originally posted by meghostryder:

I'm not expecting the next Mass Effect from an indy dev, but I would like some effort made to revamp this area, enough at least to the point one might think a race would be interesting to play, the story of them interesting enough to explain the universial war and so on.

In The sword of the stars game I realy liked the races...as specialy because they had unique techs and diffrent play styles too bad they screwed up the 2nd game...it had huge potential.

[Axe]

does dune even have any intelligent alien races when youthink of dune aliens its gonna be sandworm but i never heard of any sandworm faction

[meghostryder]

No dune had "houses" as did the formentioned Emperor of the Fading Suns. It was as if however politically they never got far past Kings and queens and the whole mediieval setup- which meant again it was the "idealogy" that drove the world -

This 'classic' take all go down doesn't even mix well with the rest of the game-which seems hi-tech focused--and then Fritz the cat is supposed to be the masterminds using it all.

It's just lazy. LORE MATTERS. No matter how good the design-without it the game goes flat.

[WarRaven]

This might be picky but, I would think the race designs are more the work of the project designers / modelers not the devs. The devs work with what ever meshes they are given.

[Axe]

i dono why the hate for alien races soudns zenophobic to me

to me this doesnt really seem to be a major issue when you can jsut make up your own lore to stuff

[Kazeck]

I want to say afew things.

The Saurions have thumbs, (on their second pair of arms) and very 'humanoid' hands to go with them. So they are a very plausible space faring race, and unlike the reptiles in many settings look realistically aggressive.

The Machines obviously should be excluded. The aquatic race has thumbs as well on several of their shown body types.

The only race matching your described 'hamsters' or other ridiculous races are the feline/cat like people, I agree I dislike seeing that type of race, but they are actually not that bad they seem to have thumbs if you look at their hands. My only gripe is them being a technocratic race instead of a warrior race or something more fitting to felines.

Please go post this at the stardrive 2 or distant worlds forums not here. We have good races here.

[WarRaven]

I guess if I was designing the races I would do the cat race somewhat like the kilarthi in wing commander, they would be aggressive, stealthy, and sneaky. I would do the reptilian like the gorn in Star trek 1- powerful but slow , and the brain race like the asgaurd in stargate.

[meghostryder]

"This might be picky but, I would think the race designs are more the work of the project designers / modelers not the devs. The devs work with what ever meshes they are given"

in small indy situations that may be the same guy. The whole team may be the same guy. This isn't EA--or a unionized outfit- again LORE matters. Do you think for a second a WWII strategy game would be as good if they replaced the germans with a cat race, the russians with an insect race and the Americans with a toad race? Perhaps if you were aiming at a light comedy setup, but I think Bohemia would go out of buisness if this was how Arma 3 was set up.

Most may not remember Emperor of the Fading Suns, but the GUI was a nightmare, the complexity made the learning curve atroscious, the bugs and poor A.I. were everywhere-but people played the heck out of it-and many still would like a successor--because the LORE was so compelling-you simply put up with it all.

It's sort of like The Witcher series to me. Here, the interface is horrendous, the combat more console action than RPG , but the LORE is so good you put up with it -

The races are the game. The world IS the game. You can't sidestep or try to seperate the two. The system in it certainly should be good-but first and foremost the World should be worth experiencing. If you don't have that what's the point of the rest?

[WarRaven]

Ok I agree it distracts from the game enjoyment if the characters are phony looking but I think we are mixing real time simulation (WWII we know what the Germans look like) with SCI FI creations. Know one knows what a "real" alien would look like should there even be any.If we did it would take a whole lot less "Imagination" to model them. It may be that there are one man teams making games and to that point I'll yield as I'm just getting into the game dev thing lately for personal enjoyment(Unreal 4). However with my limited experience with game creation so far I really don't see how a single person can be a writer, artist, designer, modeler, and Game Dev all at the same time. Not for anything production worthy. My hats off to any out there that can/do or are currently doing that.

[monsterfurby]

Originally posted by Einkommensteuerrecht GER:

If there only was a convienent way to fix that, like being able to implement your own races and write your own lore, maybe with something handy like a race customisation option ?

That's why I generally don't play 4X games without customization. In the time it takes me to understand what the author of the setting was going for, I could just as well build my own.