As a community-oriented game, MOO is far better suited to a less formal SG than to a more formal competitive setting.
Why do you say that? Fundamentally, the gameplay lies in the same plane as Civ. You expand, you grown, you build, you research, you spy, you fight, you make and break deals. There's a calendar to count the turns.
Competition gives shape to the events and adds drive and intensity to the motivations behind playing, but in all forms, it is still single player gameplay. For any SG format, there is coordination. For any tourney format, there is comparison. I don't see anything from the gameplay that would stand in the way of successful competition.
The purpose of events is to add depth to the gaming experience and to journey together through these experiences. Thus, the essential ingredients are folks with a desire to play the game who feel their enjoyment will be enhanced by doing so within a community framework.
We would never attract a large audience. The game is simply too OLD.
Well, we don't exactly have a LARGE audience for anything we're doing. Epics play is measured at best in the dozens. We've never approached a hundred, never exceeded fifty to my knowledge. If there were a dozen interested and each playing on average half the events, that would be six players per event. Anything under four is probably too thin to sustain. Could we reach a level of four players or more playing and reporting on a regular basis? I don't know, but it's within the realm of possibility, I'm sure.
You may be underestimating the persuasive power of a good spot report. People can smell big fun. I think the chief question would be, is the game really as good as we remember it? I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that one.
I also know that while most Descent players moved to Descent 3, with its graphics more modern by four years, the number who stuck with the original for its stronger balance and its gameplay was significant. And that, too, is a 640x480 resolution game. The lack of graphics might prevent attracting even a single person from the public, but I don't think it would be a deal breaker for most RB veterans. I think a number of folks would still be happy to play Diablo (the original) but for having done everything there is to do with it.
If gameplay is your priority and the quality level of modern games is not up to par... Well, I concede your points without conceding the notion that these disincentives would kill the idea. There are an awful lot of folks who still enjoy a good game of chess, even though it doesn't have many knobs, no dice, and few rules. Classic games are classic for a reason.
It's visually unappealing after all these years, which is a significant turnoff for attracting any but die-hard players.
Depends on the vision. If we can, through reports, communicate the full measure of the game's balance and beauty, we might just persuade a few more than you imagine to stop dating their current (admittedly good looking) bimbos and take this classy old gal out for a spin.
The gameplay is very simple in some ways compared to more modern games
But that's precisely its strongest selling point. That is GalCiv's strongest point, and why it pulled me away from Civ for half a year. Abstraction works. Players don't get caught up in unimportant or meaningless tasks, don't spend all their time managing minutiae.
The one area of possible concern would be the combat, which has a few notable loopholes. We would have to do some work to ensure the best quality.
this could be a turnoff for some potential players used to more modern games.
Perhaps. But as I often say, fortune favors the bold.
MOO's balance between energy, space, miniaturization, and cost in ship construction was better than any game since
That's right. And why has no game since ever been able to duplicate it? They've piled on more features. The more features and rules and options they pile on, the more loopholes they create. Cracks form in the spaces between options, and the weight of all that crap stresses or breaks the game.
MOO doesn't have gimmicks. No wonders, no trade goods, no heroes, no leaders, only minor events. There's almost no trading. There's a cost to doing business. Talk to the AI's too much and it hurts relations. Upgrade your treaties too often and they never turn profitable. Fiddle with your research sliders every turn, and you lose the bonuses that carry forward from turn to turn that encourage split research by PENALIZING the kind of researching I do in GalCiv.
It's the very lack of flash, the absence of gimmickry, the blessedly low number and degree of random factors, that makes the game the best ever of its kind. And nobody out there seems to get that yet. They all want to ADD. Add add add add add. But good writing is more about what you leave out than what you put in.
As it stands, we might get some participants for a MOO SG, but how thinly do we really want to spread everyone's gaming time?
That's not the question. The question is, what am I going to be doing with MY gaming time. If I'm going to be doing MOO anyway, then why not open it up and see if others would want to ride along. If they don't, no problem. A majority of RBCiv players never decided to give GalCiv a try, or have postponed their decision. That didn't stop me from getting and playing the game, and stirring up some group activities. That may have pulled some folks away from Civing, to some degree, but that hasn't done any harm.
The best thing I can do for RB GalCiv players right now is to be uninvolved. I had a great run with GalCiv but it is now essentially over because the AI poses only certain kinds of threats and I've run the full gamut. Six months of high level fun and very little frustration was more than my money's worth there.
With my Civ3 interest levels on the fence, pending more patch changes, and my turn at GalCiv over, I need a good game to be playing. Forgive me if worrying about how others will split their gaming time is not a major concern for me at this point.
- Sirian
