Question for the Developers/ Rich Edwards

[General High Ping]

Are you capable of implementing meaningful gameplay mechanics and understanding their impact on the gameplay itself or has the overall strategy been to overplay and somewhat mislead customers over a weak remake of the first Evil Genius?
After watching all the development streams,blogs etc i could find, i'm under the impression that the developers genuinely believe they've aimed high with their expectations.
Is this a case of lack of ambition or a lack of ability to achieve what you set out to?

[Obiwan]

Don't blame dev's as a blanket - the issues with this game lie primarily with design and thus it is the lead design and the choices that were made that should be focused and questioned.

Design is where pretty much everyone is making complaints. Specifically mission design and core gameplay.

[General High Ping]

So Rich Edwards as the lead designer is who you'd say is mostly responsible.
Often things that are identified during development should go back through the design stage so that makes sense.

[Harris]

My explanation is there are only two kinds of people working on EG2:

1) Mobile phone games team - who took their Facebook game assets and ideas from EG Online and hastily tried putting a PC game together - with no prior experience of making games for PC or understanding of what makes them tick

2) Marketing team - who are focused on selling the game to the widest audience possible, with little regard for the fact the game they are selling actually doesn't exist - and won't exist for many more months until it sees polishing, balancing tweaks as well as "exciting new content"

[YesMan]

It's like, there is not even a play test for a single playthrough,
or they just did play test with people directly involved in development, who understand too much about the game, just checked if the codes are working, but ignored the mechanics synergy and human factors.

[YesMan]

Originally posted by Harris:

-skip-

2) Marketing team - who are focused on selling the game to the widest audience possible, with little regard for the fact the game they are selling actually doesn't exist - and won't exist for many more months until it sees polishing, balancing tweaks as well as "exciting new content"

When you watch the "Sandbox mode revel trailer", and look at the current version of 'sandbox mode': just infinity money, no customization options, no quest and thus no henchmen, no loots and no super agent related stories.
They made sandbox mode as a hightlight for advertising, but seems they don't even know what they are actually selling.

[Inixus]

I really believe they did not playtest this game or allot of the things that ppl complain about would have been fixed before release. (just my opinion, not here to start drama)

[Synical]

Unfortunately this is just another cyberpunk 2077. The fundamentals of what the player thinks are driving the game are all just text based. Once you realise its all a big lie and there is no punishment for heat or suspicion, you see how we have all been fooled out of our money.

[Mandemon]

Originally posted by Harris:

My explanation is there are only two kinds of people working on EG2:

1) Mobile phone games team - who took their Facebook game assets and ideas from EG Online and hastily tried putting a PC game together - with no prior experience of making games for PC or understanding of what makes them tick

Game has nothing to do with EG Mobile. Go ahead. Go look up it's gameplay. It's pretty obvious you are just spreading this lie because you want people to believe it.

This is what EG Online looked like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKMkLnekAY8

Now compare EG2 to that, then to EG1. It's clear which one was "base" that was build form.

Originally posted by TheButtler:

Are you capable of implementing meaningful gameplay mechanics and understanding their impact on the gameplay itself or has the overall strategy been to overplay and somewhat mislead customers over a weak remake of the first Evil Genius?
After watching all the development streams,blogs etc i could find, i'm under the impression that the developers genuinely believe they've aimed high with their expectations.
Is this a case of lack of ambition or a lack of ability to achieve what you set out to?

How were people mislead? There was plenty of reviews, plenty of gameplay shown before the release. Quite frankly, it's on customers for not paying attention.

And they have clearly tried. Not everything works perfectly, but this game is pretty clearly superior to EG1, unless you are of the people who can't laugh without engrish chinese man shouting about "western pig dogs"

[SpellSword0]

I feel that underneath everything, there is a semblance of a good design here. It's almost like all the pieces are present, but just disconnected. What we ended up with, I feel, has signs of something that went wrong somewhere during development, and they had to hot glue what ever they could together in a very messy way.

I believe the game is salvageable. If you take these pieces and put them in the right positions, all the gears mesh and start turning as they should, and the true design starts to reveal itself.

I wouldn't be quick to blame Rich or the rest of the team without knowing more about what happened behind closed doors. I understand why people do though. But I'm certain that given time, they can fix it! And if they don't, I'm just as certain modders will be able to easily.

[kasnavada]

The entitlement is strong in this thread.

[No gf]

There's absolutely no reason for design flaws such as "Research halted, Research resumed" to exist if the developers have played their game for even just one single playthrough. Its pretty obvious that EG2's development was on a tight schedule and the team doesn't have time to revise their own game and have to push out a relatively bug-free beta as the final product. They started the project, they brain-stormed everything that needed to be done, they made the first beta of EG2 based on precisely that, and instead of playing their own beta to see what works and what doesn't then go back to refine their formula and create a 2nd, more polished version of the game, they just push their college first-draft out the doorway and move onto the next project.
It's understandable that despite developer gave their best effort and passion the game came out mediocre due to time and budget constrain, but still, it's such a shame that a childhood memory has to go this way.

[kasnavada]

Originally posted by No gf:

There's absolutely no reason for design flaws such as "Research halted, Research resumed" to exist if the developers have played their game for even just one single playthrough. Its pretty obvious that EG2's development was on a tight schedule and the team doesn't have time to revise their own game and have to push out a relatively bug-free beta as the final product. They started the project, they brain-stormed everything that needed to be done, they made the first beta of EG2 based on precisely that, and instead of playing their own beta to see what works and what doesn't then go back to refine their formula and create a 2nd, more polished version of the game, they just push their college first-draft out the doorway and move onto the next project.
It's understandable that despite developer gave their best effort and passion the game came out mediocre due to time and budget constrain, but still, it's such a shame that a childhood memory has to go this way.

Wow. That's actually the complete opposite - the game tells you you're doing something wrong and you're blaming the game for not using it properly.

You're only going to have these warnings if:
- you don't build multiple research apparatus
- you don't have enough scientists
- you don't build decorations to reduce smarts and morale consumption
- you don't build items to boost smarts of scientists to 100.
- you trigger the alarm.
- you fall out of power.

Yes, researching consume smarts & morale. When all scientists researching have no smarts & morale, they leave their post and it triggers this warning. All of those are into your control. It's explained, there are side quests, dialogues, warnings, and interfaces that actually show all of this. You just didn't bother using the game properly nor listening to it. In other words: "the game doesn't work exactly as I think it should and it should bent to work as I think it should, so it's badly designed".

As for the remaining of your post, it really speaks for itself.

[No gf]

if it works for you, good for you.

[General High Ping]

Originally posted by kasnavada:

Originally posted by No gf:

There's absolutely no reason for design flaws such as "Research halted, Research resumed" to exist if the developers have played their game for even just one single playthrough. Its pretty obvious that EG2's development was on a tight schedule and the team doesn't have time to revise their own game and have to push out a relatively bug-free beta as the final product. They started the project, they brain-stormed everything that needed to be done, they made the first beta of EG2 based on precisely that, and instead of playing their own beta to see what works and what doesn't then go back to refine their formula and create a 2nd, more polished version of the game, they just push their college first-draft out the doorway and move onto the next project.
It's understandable that despite developer gave their best effort and passion the game came out mediocre due to time and budget constrain, but still, it's such a shame that a childhood memory has to go this way.

Wow. That's actually the complete opposite - the game tells you you're doing something wrong and you're blaming the game for not using it properly.

You're only going to have these warnings if:
- you don't build multiple research apparatus
- you don't have enough scientists
- you don't build decorations to reduce smarts and morale consumption
- you don't build items to boost smarts of scientists to 100.
- you trigger the alarm.
- you fall out of power.

Yes, researching consume smarts & morale. When all scientists researching have no smarts & morale, they leave their post and it triggers this warning. All of those are into your control. It's explained, there are side quests, dialogues, warnings, and interfaces that actually show all of this. You just didn't bother using the game properly nor listening to it. In other words: "the game doesn't work exactly as I think it should and it should bent to work as I think it should, so it's badly designed".

As for the remaining of your post, it really speaks for itself.

Except in every one of my playthroughs, i'm still being constantly bombarded by the research alerts with 10+ science minions and multiple research apparatus because the likelihood of every minion being at 100% stats is unlikely and even if they are they'll then drain their stats at the same time and stop researching at the same time.
If you have spare minions the likelihood of them being right next to equipment is low as they tend to mill around your base if they haven't been assigned a specific task.
Alot of the time dialogues for other more important alerts don't play because they are drowned out by research alerts.
Research pausing isn't you doing something wrong, its going to happen naturally because of the games design. Its also part of the games design to tell you constantly every time it stops and starts.

[YesMan]

Originally posted by TheButtler:

Originally posted by kasnavada:

-skip-

Except in every one of my playthroughs, i'm still being constantly bombarded by the research alerts with 10+ science minions and multiple research apparatus because the likelihood of every minion being at 100% stats is unlikely and even if they are they'll then drain their stats at the same time and stop researching at the same time.
If you have spare minions the likelihood of them being right next to equipment is low as they tend to mill around your base if they haven't been assigned a specific task.
Alot of the time dialogues for other more important alerts don't play because they are drowned out by research alerts.
Research pausing isn't you doing something wrong, its going to happen naturally because of the games design. Its also part of the games design to tell you constantly every time it stops and starts.

And if your vault is already full, and spend just a little bit gold, 'Vault is full', 'Vault is almost full' just keep non-stop triggering

If something is really wrong, a vocal announcement is welcomed. However, EG2 just keep vocal bombarding the player with insignificant issue, and those 'issues' are actually part of the intended design, and players have little to no control, like take a break from job to restore stats, while the other minions are still on the way, 'Research is paused' triggered. The tolerance is poorly set for the announcement trigger.
Or IRIS just keep giving very vague reminder of nothing indicative. And no option to customize what should be announced.