This game is boring as hell

[Trollified]

Let me get straight to the point. I love the endless series and own all of them. The problem i have with this game is that there is literally no reason to go past mid game.

By then you either won or lost and there is no reason at all to continue because nothing will change.

I havn't finished 1 game yet. Always rerolling to see if I can make a different strategy work.

This game needs a huge change in pacing with the expansion. Namely, mid game CRISIS. We need SOMETHING to happen. Anything. Something big that must be dealt with.

Right now there is nothing once you are ahead. Atleast in Stellaris, the whole Universe can explode, totally ruining your PERFECT game.

[Holy Athena]

I find the same problem for me.

Then again I didn't much like Endless Space 1 either, and bought this one thinking it would expand on the game, not pretty much be teh same thing in a different wrapper.

The game is too linear and restrictive. If you really want to play, you HAVE to be a warmonger, trade is confusing and linear, and the political thing is confusing, and linear as well. Regardless of how you want to play, your political party will always end up being war/industry due to that being the only real way to win/play.

Doesn't' help the game maps are so small too...

[❗️❗️ Annex ❗️❗]

Uhh OP, that is true for almost every 4x game ever made. You reach a point where youre big enough and powerful enough that nothing can stop you. Gal Civ series is the only one ive seen try to remedy that by having smaller/losing empires join/merge with other empires to suddenly create a much more powerful entity. But ES2 and everything else ive ever played doesnt do that, so once youve explored everything, researched everything, and gotten powerful enough, everything beyond that is a mop up operation. Do you need to keep playing after that point? Not really, consider that a victory and start a new map.

Certainly the devs could implement features to try to counter this like making other AIs hate you more and more the stronger you get, eventually creating an alliance opposed to you, or something else to that regard to provide new and greater mid and late game challenges, but honestly I wouldnt hold my breath given how badly buggy everything from diplomacy to starting locations are. They have bigger fish to fry...

[Holy Athena]

Originally posted by ❗️❗️ Annex ❗️❗:

Uhh OP, that is true for almost every 4x game ever made. You reach a point where youre big enough and powerful enough that nothing can stop you. Gal Civ series is the only one ive seen try to remedy that by having smaller/losing empires join/merge with other empires to suddenly create a much more powerful entity. But ES2 and everything else ive ever played doesnt do that, so once youve explored everything, researched everything, and gotten powerful enough, everything beyond that is a mop up operation. Do you need to keep playing after that point? Not really, consider that a victory and start a new map.

Certainly the devs could implement features to try to counter this like making other AIs hate you more and more the stronger you get, eventually creating an alliance opposed to you, or something else to that regard to provide new and greater mid and late game challenges, but honestly I wouldnt hold my breath given how badly buggy everything from diplomacy to starting locations are. They have bigger fish to fry...

That's not true at all for any good 4x game.

Civilizations 4, 5, and 6 all attempt to do it (albiet the worst of my examples)

Stellaris does it very well in most cases

Galactic Civilizations does it

and I have other examples of great games that do it.

Distant Worlds: Universe is one of the best 4x games ever imagined and created. It will challenge even the biggest empires to stay stable, and always give a challenge one way or another.

[Bishonen]

I have about 40 hours in the game. Some from release, some from the last couple of days where I have no lifed two play throughs. One as Unfallen the other as United Empire. I did not have nearly as much fun playing on release then I did the last couple of days. The game has grown immensely and I'm really happy to see how many updates the developers have done since launch. However I really can see the pretty big flaws in this game with my two recent playthroughs. It is a little too linear in a lot of places. And pretty confusing in others, like specializing planets. Though the confusing thing about that is a good confusing, you cant just pick it up right away. (atleast for me)
But just playing through twice I realize the game isnt done. Even though it's been released. And looking at launch from now I think it's gonna be updated with a lot more content, fixes, and overhauls.

Pretty much I'm saying it's missing something that I think they'll add in down the road and it'll be a really good game.

[ForesterSOF]

Mid-game events:

Radiation storm makes some planets uninhabitable.
Quarantine a system. virus
New race shows up and destroys 1/4 your planets before you react.
Protests cause a planet or system to leave.
Research/industrial accident makes planet uninhabitable.
10,000 asteroid storm coming to a system.
Food stores destroyed and crops only produce 1/2 what used to.
etc etc etc

[❗️❗️ Annex ❗️❗]

Stallaris does it? In the nearly 400 hours I put into that game it was no different than ES2. By mid game id have a good third+ of the galaxy firmly under my control and have enough fleets that I could cripple any AI in just a few minutes of a war. There simply werent enough end game events to break up the monotny at that point. Plus every tiny bit of new content they immediately put behind a paid DLC.

[Holy Athena]

Originally posted by ❗️❗️ Annex ❗️❗:

Stallaris does it? In the nearly 400 hours I put into that game it was no different than ES2. By mid game id have a good third+ of the galaxy firmly under my control and have enough fleets that I could cripple any AI in just a few minutes of a war. There simply werent enough end game events to break up the monotny at that point. Plus every tiny bit of new content they immediately put behind a paid DLC.

Then Play Distant Worlds: Universe.

So many different things in that game. You can even play as pirates many different ways. Trade, Civilian AI controlled parts of your government. You literally play a "government" Where you have government owned and civilian owned sections. (Not sectors like in Stellaris). But actually work like real life would work. They go out and mine, bring it back, look to expand their own avenues, and buy ships from you.

That's just a small %.

[❗️❗️ Annex ❗️❗]

Originally posted by Holy Athena:

Originally posted by ❗️❗️ Annex ❗️❗:

Stallaris does it? In the nearly 400 hours I put into that game it was no different than ES2. By mid game id have a good third+ of the galaxy firmly under my control and have enough fleets that I could cripple any AI in just a few minutes of a war. There simply werent enough end game events to break up the monotny at that point. Plus every tiny bit of new content they immediately put behind a paid DLC.

Then Play Distant Worlds: Universe.

So many different things in that game. You can even play as pirates many different ways. Trade, Civilian AI controlled parts of your government. You literally play a "government" Where you have government owned and civilian owned sections. (Not sectors like in Stellaris). But actually work like real life would work. They go out and mine, bring it back, look to expand their own avenues, and buy ships from you.

That's just a small %.

I appreciate the suggestion but even though ive pointed out the shortcomings of ES2 and Stellaris I still favor those games above all others and simply recognize their weaknesses and work around them. Once the galaxy is half mine its a guaranteed win at that point and time for a new map. My point in being involved in this thread is to point out to the OP that ES2 isnt unique in this mid/late game aspect and that most games have this problem.

[Groo the one]

Originally posted by Holy Athena:

Then Play Distant Worlds: Universe.

Keep in mind, Distant Worlds: Universe is some kind of niche game - not the taste of many players. And it had time to grow since about 7 years now... still waiting for next big patch in case of ES 2. ES 2 is now close to 5 months from release (release state was still alpha, we all know about, not ?).

[Holy Athena]

Originally posted by Groo the one:

Originally posted by Holy Athena:

Then Play Distant Worlds: Universe.

Keep in mind, Distant Worlds: Universe is some kind of niche game - not the taste of many players. And it had time to grow since about 7 years now... still waiting for next big patch in case of ES 2. ES 2 is now close to 5 months from release (release state was still alpha, we all know about, not ?).

Just sounds like something he might like. It's only 20$. Buy it, try it, refund if he doesn't like it.

[Hate Bear]

>playing Stellaris

[Boag]

Originally posted by ForesterSOF:

Mid-game events:

Radiation storm makes some planets uninhabitable.
Quarantine a system. virus
New race shows up and destroys 1/4 your planets before you react.
Protests cause a planet or system to leave.
Research/industrial accident makes planet uninhabitable.
10,000 asteroid storm coming to a system.
Food stores destroyed and crops only produce 1/2 what used to.
etc etc etc

New race showing up mid game would actually fit in REALLY well with the current game. Yknow with the acadamy that you probably only ever saw pop up and say it was discoverd and then you forget about it, well actually there is a entire questline to it and you can win via it. Which i didnt know till 35 hours in the game, the reason im talking about this is because its really ♥♥♥♥. Like really ♥♥♥♥, basicly you have to send ships to certain systems and depending on your actions you either resurect a anciant alien race or not. If you changed the questline so when you discoverd it it was like a ticking timer, and their were some things you could do to slow it down, like donate dust or do certain challanges like produce X amount of science in X system by X turn during the earlyish game, then eventually the big scary alien race can come along and start invading with the acadamy as their home system. Would replace a boring ass system that basicly no one knows about with something that actually has tention on if you can hold the coming alien invasion of long enough just to be able to prepare. Trying to push dust and production into preparing while also trying to put it off.

[DimensionHatross]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean numbers will always be a thing and the empire with the most and the strongest will be more likely to win than others, and why wouldn't it be this way? But having said that, you can still turn things around.

I was playing an 8 empire map where 3 of them were invading heaps and well ahead of the peaceful empires (threatening to wipe out the Unfallen and Sophons), so I started to send them free tech and resources to make up for their low system count, built up our relationships and formed a 4-way alliance. For such a long time we were just hanging on but eventually we were able to slowly expand out and eventually win.

I know you can file this under "Cool Stories", but I guess I'm just saying that the results aren't as locked in as they seem.

I think catch up mechanics need to be well thought out so as to not invalidate a player's time getting into a strong position in the first place. The Blue Shell is frustrating in 5 minute Mario Kart game- imagine how frustrating it'd be to see your empire that you'd spent hours on building into what it was, shut down by a game mechanic designed to give the weaker players a leg up and draw out the game.

Why put the time into a game that would do that to you?

[Trollified]

Originally posted by ❗️❗️ Annex ❗️❗:

Stallaris does it? In the nearly 400 hours I put into that game it was no different than ES2. By mid game id have a good third+ of the galaxy firmly under my control and have enough fleets that I could cripple any AI in just a few minutes of a war. There simply werent enough end game events to break up the monotny at that point. Plus every tiny bit of new content they immediately put behind a paid DLC.

lol. you just said stellaris doesnt throw monkey wrenches in campaigns. TOO FUNNY.

Good luck with that early game war in heaven when you barely have 100 fleet power going against doomstacks of death in a giant space civil war.

[Trollified]

Originally posted by DimensionHatross:

Yeah, I don't know. I mean numbers will always be a thing and the empire with the most and the strongest will be more likely to win than others, and why wouldn't it be this way? But having said that, you can still turn things around.

I was playing an 8 empire map where 3 of them were invading heaps and well ahead of the peaceful empires (threatening to wipe out the Unfallen and Sophons), so I started to send them free tech and resources to make up for their low system count, built up our relationships and formed a 4-way alliance. For such a long time we were just hanging on but eventually we were able to slowly expand out and eventually win.

I know you can file this under "Cool Stories", but I guess I'm just saying that the results aren't as locked in as they seem.

I think catch up mechanics need to be well thought out so as to not invalidate a player's time getting into a strong position in the first place. The Blue Shell is frustrating in 5 minute Mario Kart game- imagine how frustrating it'd be to see your empire that you'd spent hours on building into what it was, shut down by a game mechanic designed to give the weaker players a leg up and draw out the game.

Why put the time into a game that would do that to you?

I don't think there should be catch up mechanics. I think there should be Monkey Wrenches thrown into campaigns that make everyone react. Endless return kicking peoples faces in. Civil war. Minor Faction gains too much power and starts expanding. Natural Disasters, etc