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Post by axe99 on Mar 4, 2016 15:14:24 GMT -6
I've just finished my seventh or eighth game of RtW, and it's freaking brilliant. Always play it all the way through, really enjoying it, and it got me thinking that the gameplay 'loop' in RtW is really, really good. The way that the strategic layer, technology (so you're always facing different design challenges each game) and tactical layer (where you see how your answers to those design challenges performed) is a big winner as a game, and not just as a naval warfare simulation (although it looks pretty good at that as well, although I'm barely qualified to comment on that level  . So it got me thinking - and it's just a thought, and probably one NWS have already talked about, but has their been any thought to hiring a few extra people, giving the UI and visuals some spit and polish, add in some more tooltips and trying to get it up on Steam or Matrix games or similar? Note, I'm just a random person on the internet - if you think about this seriously, do research and cost-benefit analyses and whatnot - but I can't help but feel that with the right UI that helped people that weren't into ships as much, it could find a wider audience (and I mean no offence at all, but if it hadn't been for word-of-mouth I wouldn't have known RtW existed). Deffo no offence intended if it's a "no way in hell" for whatever reason, was just a thought, as you've got a freakin' awesome game here (and, I will admit, the idea of you having more sales so more resources to invest in RtW2 would serve my interests very nicely, so I'm not a completely disinterested observer). |
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Post by hidraulicodasilva on Mar 4, 2016 19:20:47 GMT -6
Even without the spit and polish the game is pretty addictive even to unsuspecting crowd. My brother has zero interest in history or ships, much less dreadnoughts, still plays the game.
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Post by marcorossolini on Mar 4, 2016 19:35:07 GMT -6
My main issue with trying to recommend this game to my tiny gaming group is that it just looks like you're playing a spreadsheet from the Screenshots. :/ If that could somehow be alleviated, then I can see them becoming worryingly addicted.
Another (likely extremely difficult) area would be multiplayer. With the ability to DIY build your own ships and micromanage them so well, with all a spot of randomness from the events etc, I can see this having an awesome competitive multiplayer community. 1v1 to start off with, but perhaps even a 7 player free for all as well ultimately, with the rest of the players spectating like foreign observers on the two player's battles.
I think Director's hawking of the game on Paradox forums has had a pretty positive effect however.
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Post by axe99 on Mar 4, 2016 20:39:13 GMT -6
Even without the spit and polish the game is pretty addictive even to unsuspecting crowd. My brother has zero interest in history or ships, much less dreadnoughts, still plays the game. Oh aye, this is what I'm getting at - it's not just a great naval game (which it is), but it's a great game, full stop. I'm sure it'd do alright on Steam 'as is', but I reckon with a bit of spit and polish (as MarcoRossilini well says, it's aesthetic has a bit of 'Microsoft Office' to it) it could get a lot more attention. No skin off my nose, and I could be way off the mark, but with a bit more prettiness (not much more - I'm not talking 3D with effects and what-have-you, just a bit nicer 2D, with a bit more user-friendliness to the UI) and I reckon* it could get a decent amount of interest in the strategy/PC gaming crowd. * and it's just "I reckon", I haven't done a study - as per my original post, always assess things more deeply than one random guy on the internet's post. |
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Post by thatzenoguy on Mar 4, 2016 20:56:28 GMT -6
I personally think the GUI is pretty decent.
This game should have full screen though...My taskbar covers some of the lower areas of the screen, which is annoying.
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Post by marcorossolini on Mar 4, 2016 20:56:59 GMT -6
* and it's just "I reckon", I haven't done a study - as per my original post, always assess things more deeply than one random guy on the internet's post. Axe, I must admit that the purist in me is raging at the idea that a game would need prettying up.  |
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Post by director on Mar 4, 2016 21:46:30 GMT -6
Crowdfunding!
Multiplayer and slick graphics would be super. But I was thinking the other day... no, you don't need to hide under the table. It's not USUALLY dangerous.
So I was thinking... make up a dozen races, generate a stellar 'map' and come up with some replacement words for the weapons and you've got a brilliant space strategy and combat game.
But honestly I'd love to see a crowdfunded RtW.
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Post by marcorossolini on Mar 5, 2016 0:03:26 GMT -6
Crowdfunding! Multiplayer and slick graphics would be super. But I was thinking the other day... no, you don't need to hide under the table. It's not USUALLY dangerous. So I was thinking... make up a dozen races, generate a stellar 'map' and come up with some replacement words for the weapons and you've got a brilliant space strategy and combat game. But honestly I'd love to see a crowdfunded RtW. Gnnn... I'd rather we stuck to 1900-1925. Sci-fi is (to me anyway) not something i really care for, it's been done often enough. I'd rather we'd make what we have here better.  I completely agree about crowdfunding, but I'm not sure what superduper new future we'd actually be trying to crowdfund. Saying "minor improvements" isn't going to get people all that excited about paying a decent sized sum to the game. That said, whatever RtW puts up in terms of kickstarters I'll be there. |
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Post by axe99 on Mar 5, 2016 18:15:56 GMT -6
* and it's just "I reckon", I haven't done a study - as per my original post, always assess things more deeply than one random guy on the internet's post. Axe, I must admit that the purist in me is raging at the idea that a game would need prettying up. Hahaha, totally sympathise, and the prettying up wouldn't be for me, but I know a lot of people are influenced by aesthetics (its part of how we're genetically programmed, and 'oldies' have the benefit of being conditioned to things like this (hell, at one point, RtW would have qualified as cutting-edge visually in terms of the games I played, although that would have been a few years ago now). It's not just prettying up though - things like better tooltips and the like I think could go a long way to making the game more accessible without influencing the design (I'm not, absolutely not, suggesting dumbing down the gameplay, but I think the chance of NWS doing that isn't high ) I like the idea of crowdfunding as well Director, although if it were me crowdfunding it, I'd probably get some prototype 'concept' screens done to give an idea of what people were getting, or it might end not broadening the audience that much. |
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Post by smacktoward on Mar 7, 2016 16:20:34 GMT -6
I'm not sure that crowdfunding would solve the problem. The graphics aren't the only thing about RTW (which, to be 100% clear, I am enjoying the heck out of) which feels out of date.
This is a game that wants to install itself into the root of my C: drive. The standard behavior for Windows programs for 20 years now has been to install into the Program Files directory, which may be on C: or may be somewhere else. This helps the user by letting them set up their hard drives however they want without having to worry about one particular partition being a magic place where programs have to live. Program Files is where Microsoft has been telling Windows developers to put their programs since Windows 95. But RTW doesn't do it that way.
This is a game that wants to keep its saved-game files in the same directory as its executable and other program assets. The standard behavior for Windows programs for 20 years now has been to separate user data out from program data by storing user data in the user's My Documents directory. This makes for cleaner installs & uninstalls, allows users with non-admin privileges to play the game as long as an admin installs it for them, and lets users of shared machines each keep their own collection of save files. But RTW doesn't do it that way.
RTW has a lot of great game design ideas, but it's all wrapped up in a package that feels like it missed the last couple of decades of software development on Windows. It doesn't surprise me that the UI feels like it's straight out of the Windows 3.1 era when the rest of the package does so as well. And that's not something that comes from a shortage of funding -- it's just a sign of a development approach that became frozen in amber a long time ago.
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Post by marcorossolini on Mar 7, 2016 19:01:07 GMT -6
I'm not sure that crowdfunding would solve the problem. The graphics aren't the only thing about RTW (which, to be 100% clear, I am enjoying the heck out of) which feels out of date. This is a game that wants to install itself into the root of my C: drive. The standard behavior for Windows programs for 20 years now has been to install into the Program Files directory, which may be on C: or may be somewhere else. This helps the user by letting them set up their hard drives however they want without having to worry about one particular partition being a magic place where programs have to live. Program Files is where Microsoft has been telling Windows developers to put their programs since Windows 95. But RTW doesn't do it that way. This is a game that wants to keep its saved-game files in the same directory as its executable and other program assets. The standard behavior for Windows programs for 20 years now has been to separate user data out from program data by storing user data in the user's My Documents directory. This makes for cleaner installs & uninstalls, allows users with non-admin privileges to play the game as long as an admin installs it for them, and lets users of shared machines each keep their own collection of save files. But RTW doesn't do it that way. RTW has a lot of great game design ideas, but it's all wrapped up in a package that feels like it missed the last couple of decades of software development on Windows. It doesn't surprise me that the UI feels like it's straight out of the Windows 3.1 era when the rest of the package does so as well. And that's not something that comes from a shortage of funding -- it's just a sign of a development approach that became frozen in amber a long time ago. I'd like to think you're being overly harsh there, since it's almost a one man operation, I think there's certain areas which just have to be left by the wayside for lack of time (and c'mon, it's only about 20 mb at best, who's going to care?). I sincerely doubt even if this game suddenly had AAA funding that it'd go over a gigabyte or two. |
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Post by smacktoward on Mar 7, 2016 20:14:52 GMT -6
I'd like to think you're being overly harsh there, since it's almost a one man operation, I think there's certain areas which just have to be left by the wayside for lack of time (and c'mon, it's only about 20 mb at best, who's going to care?). I sincerely doubt even if this game suddenly had AAA funding that it'd go over a gigabyte or two. It's not about the size of the files, it's that it makes life harder for the user for no good reason. Even if you assume that everyone in the world has a single hard drive and it's always drive C, there's no practical benefit to the user in forcing the install into the root of the C: drive. In fact it could make the user's life harder, in that doing the wrong thing can trigger various measures the system has in place to protect itself against misbehaving/malicious software -- things like UAC prompts, anti-virus software, etc. And it's not like doing the right thing is hard, either. You can get the location of the user's Program Files and My Documents folders just by asking Windows for them. This is not something that takes a team of engineers to figure out or implement, it's been Windows Programming 101 stuff since Bill Clinton's first term as president. I could understand programmers getting this wrong when these things were now, but now that they're nearly old enough to vote there's really no good reason to not have picked them up. I'm not trying to be harsh on NWS here (honest!). Like I said before, I like RTW a lot. You can read my review of it if you don't believe me. But when you put the out-of-date UI next to the out-of-date installer, out-of-date handling of user data, out-of-date online sales experience (I have to wait 24 hours after giving my credit card data to get an activation code? Seriously?), etc., it's hard not to think that the problem is less that NWS lacks the resources to do things right and more that they just don't care all that much. And you can't break into the mainstream if you're not willing to sweat the small stuff on things like this. The wargaming niche may be forgiving of that kind of slackness (which is why so much wargaming product is abysmal, IMHO), but the mainstream market certainly is not. |
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Post by flyingtoaster on Mar 8, 2016 2:15:39 GMT -6
I remember the installer giving me a choice of where to install files, so I put it in c:\games, which I prefer. I also generally prefer all the game files, including saves etc., to be in one spot. But then, I never have to deal with issues of multiple users, admin rights, and so on.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2016 3:07:26 GMT -6
My PC is mine! There are many in the world, but this one is mine and mine ALONE. Nobody else is allowed to touch it!!
Hmm although... There does seem to be a point. I wouldn't mind the install directory etc. but the UI certainly could be better to keep it from a clickfest.
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Post by williammiller on Mar 8, 2016 11:06:37 GMT -6
I'd like to think you're being overly harsh there, since it's almost a one man operation, I think there's certain areas which just have to be left by the wayside for lack of time (and c'mon, it's only about 20 mb at best, who's going to care?). I sincerely doubt even if this game suddenly had AAA funding that it'd go over a gigabyte or two. It's not about the size of the files, it's that it makes life harder for the user for no good reason. Even if you assume that everyone in the world has a single hard drive and it's always drive C, there's no practical benefit to the user in forcing the install into the root of the C: drive. In fact it could make the user's life harder, in that doing the wrong thing can trigger various measures the system has in place to protect itself against misbehaving/malicious software -- things like UAC prompts, anti-virus software, etc.
The above statement is incorrect. The installer does allow the choice to install the program where-ever you want, there absolutely is no "forcing the install into the root of the C: drive"...so indeed you can install the program to wherever you want, including the 'program files' folder if you wish.
The reason why the installer does not use the "program files" location by default is this: We have seen many, many reports over the past few years of users having difficulties that turn out to be with Windows security/permission/UAC issues when third-party programs are placed in the 'program files' folder...I have personally seen this myself with both our software and others software as well. So, the default location to install our software is not, by choice, the 'program files' folder, but elsewhere.
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