I was one who paid for the beta...a year subscription which kept getting extended because they would hold servers down for periods of time to update game to newer versions.
As for the game itself, the idea is one that could have made it a good play if not for some (in my opinion) major design issues/flaws. Although you may think placing a cap on amounts of ships or cities to build is unrealistic, in my opinion, it is this LACK OF A CAP on the number of units you could have is what killed the game for me. Although some swear by it that its the best thing because it strives to be realistic. And this issue is a totally great one to bring up in here if your looking to create massive style games, whether games should have caps on amount of units a player can have or not.
Anyways...
Imagine players who have been playing months if not up to a year before you. They have researched all possible types in the game, from city's to ships and have managed to build a lot HUGE cities to generate income in the millions of credits A DAY!!(consider a single ship may cost 100 credits and you start off with 1 ship). Now that they have the income coming in daily they can build HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of ships to completely annihilate anything you have if u piss them off. BUT even worse....there are so many ships in your veiw that your COMPUTER CRASHES FROM THE OVERLOAD OF OBJECTS ON THE SERVER and your system(and infact servers where crashed because of the huge size of these players fighting one another). And there are GUILDS of many players with astounding size like this. Sounds fun until you cant even log onto your system to control your ships while the other is off blowing things up.
Let me also mention the huge amount of time you must spend just trying to manage to manage your systems with say 3 planets each. Yes, not all planets or systems have what u need so you may be spread out among different sectors of space...very time consuming to switch between them. Not to mention moving huge numbers of carrier fleets from one destination to another is totally ridiculous. The massive size a player can get is totally appealing and thats why many have kept playing it. It reminds me of when playing everquest when i waited to heal LONGER than i actually PLAYED the game, except for mankind i was spending all my time moving ships from one planet to another gathering endless amounts of resources to sell...blah, i felt like i was at a job. The user interface and teadious resource gathering were not designed to work well together and this is why moving transports took forever to do..in my experience.
The guild structures where probably the better of it, meaning the players definately formed guilds with a particular motto in mind(like keepers of peace, or the exact opposite, create anarchy). It was this human dynamic which made the game possible of some exciting interaction. Of course its all fun until 500 carriers carrying 30 ships each fly into your sector of space and you know its from one of them guilds who LOVE to totally destroy all your work youve spent the last 100+ hours building...just because they are bored.
I played for about 4 or so months and this was about a year ago, so i can only attest to what was happening them. So, things may be improved in some respects since then so this is a warning about its past...you go from here.
aka John M.
Never give up. Never surrender!
Edited by - GalaxyQuest on January 11, 2001 6:43:04 PM
