Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Distant Worlds is a vast, pausable real-time, 4X space strategy game which models a "living galaxy" with incredible options for replayability and customizability. Experience the full depth and detail of large turn-based strategy games, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game. Now greatly enhanced with the new Universe release, which includes all four previous releases as well as the new Universe expansion!

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HsojVvad
Posts: 1036
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 9:21 pm

Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by HsojVvad »

I keep reading new posts asking about DW. I am a lazy person, and a forgetful person, so I keep saying different things in different posts. So what I will do next time, someone asks about what we think of DW I will link them to here, or I will copy and paste, if I am not feeling too lazy [:'(].

A little about me, I love 4X space games. I love the MOO series the best. I also love Call to Power 2 and like Sid Mier's Civilization 1, 2 and 4. 3 was such a huge disapointment, I try to forget that it was ever made. I am not a RTS player so I guess that is why I never bothered with Brian Renoylds Civ game. I love Alpha Centauri and wish there would be an Alpha Centauri 2 game. I am more of a turn based gamer as you can see.

I herd of DW from another forum, The Birth of the Federation. It's a Star Trek MOO type of game. Actually BotF is actually MOO 3, made by the same people and produced by the same people who did MOO and MOO II. I am greatfull someone mentioned DW there, since I am starving for a new 4X space game.

So when I did research for DW, I was horrified it wasn't a turn based game. I really do not like RTS games because you can't pause them and it's usually a clickfest game. But I found out, you can pause it when ever you want. I went "phew" that is great, it should play like Hearts of Iron or Europa Universallis. I always wundered how a 4X space game would play like that, so I got more interested in DW.

Long story short, I really like DW. I think it works great. It's the 4X Space game I have been looking for in a long time and I am enjoying it immensly.

Now for the long story [:D]. Since I lost my job, I am playing it 4 or more hours a day. I havn't had this much fun in a long long time. Civ 3 was a disapointment. Civ 4 was a lie at the begining. By that they lied about the specs you need to really play the game. After many patches and finally a new computer, I could finally enjoy Civ IV. Looking forward to Civ V btw [:)]. I was disapointed with MOO 3, and thanks to the modding community, it was a good game to play. Before DW came out, I was playing BotF quite alot to get my 4X space game fix.

What a breath of fresh air, DW is. I guess it plays like a RTS game, but dosn't. Since I don't really know how an RTS games play, and what I did play, this is not a click fest game. I guess it's because I pause alot so it does feel more of a turn based game. I play at slow speeds as well, and keep restarting because I love the feel the game has at the begining. I sort of roll play my games, thinking how if I was a space explorer right now, how it would play out. I guess I love the begining of the phase of the games more than the end phases of the games.

I love of beautiful most of the planets look. I love how most of the moons look. I like how the stars look. It's really a beautiful looking game, when zoomed in quite close wich is usually the opposite in other games. I love how when I zoom up close, I hear the space station being constructed. I love depending on the order of how the space station is built, it can have it's construction bays being built first, so it can start working on ships. It can have it's weapons online before the station is finished. I like how the mines exhaust fumes and how the ships have running lights on. This game is a living game that is not static. For me at least, zooming in and out is seamless and I have not much problems. I do have a minor annoyance when I am zoomed out, and I zoom in, sometimes it zooms all the way in. I hate it, but it's a minor annoyance.

I use to hate making ships in DW. But now that I have read the sticked AAR on how to make ships, I love it now. Quite alot of options. I don't like how much range you get with fuel tanks, but that can be controlled by me at least. I just take off 3 or 4 fuel tanks making my ships not to be able to travel so far. I nerf them myself, just a personal thing. I don't think you should be able to travel half way over the galaxy at least not in the begining of the game. I rather have the AI be able to attack me, but I nerf myself, and not the AI. I wish the design screen was more prettier or easier on the eyes. Bigger fonts, and if I pick 5 armour, it would say Amour X 5 instead of having amour written out 5 times. Hopefully this will be fixed in a patch.

This brings another thing. Patches. I believe a game should never be patched. I hate the release now, patch later mentality of the gaming industry. That was MOO 3, Civ 3, and Civ 4, for shure. Release now, patch later to make the game better. But for most people, DW is playable right out of the box. Well, I downloaded so I have no box but you get the idea. This is no excuse, but given how the industry is now, CodeForce is a small comapny. I was shocked to learn that they are a tiny company, but made a huge game. So the way the industry is, I cut them a break now. They are like Paradox, or Stardock. They take part of the forums here, and help us out if we have any questions, or need help. They are active on the fourms, very active. Nice to see a company we supported in buying a game to support us with feed back and help as well. Again, DW is playable, for I say 99% of the people. The 1% that has trouble, Erik and Elliot do try and help. There is a few extreme cases where someone is not happy at all, but that is another story. We all have our opnions, good or bad. That is why I love these forums as well. No matter if you have a bad opnion of the game, Matrix lets you vent your oppnoin, good or ill.

It's all the small things in DW, that make the game great. Like I said before, the flashing lights, the sound effects, I can name my spies. Lots of options for the spay game. I love it. The only thing I am disapointed in the spy game is that when you steal tech, you can't. You steal research points, but no technology. But hey, give them credit, they are making a different version of a 4X game, and not a clone of MOO or something else. I don't like the research game either. But it's their version of how it is. Hopefully they will change it in an expansion. I can't really explain why I don't like the research game. When ever I get a new tech, I go oh well. I guess, it's because I already have it. I just have a better version of it, but I don't SEE the better benifits of it. For example. I have better fuel tanks now. Who cares, because all I had to to before, is just add more fuel tanks for longer range. So what is the big deal of having better fuel tanks. Now if a fuel tank had a capped range you can travel, then I can see being excited for having a new fuel tank version, not just holding more fuel or what not. Same goes for weapons. I already have a weapon, but when I get a different version of it, or a newer version of it, I don't go YES! like I did in MOO because all I have to do is just put in more of my older weapons. So I either have 10 old weapons doing the same damgae as say as 3 newer weapons. Who cares. Maybe if I can only put in so much on a ship that might make a difference. The only difference you have is how big your space ports can build. The only thing I get excited for is having bigger construction yards. Now I am no longer stuck at making size 200 ships, now I can build size 300 or what ever ships now. Now I can be excited for something.

I do give them credit for something though and wich keeps me in the research game. All weapons and stuff have names. It's not laser 1, laser 2, or shields 1, shields 2, shields 3, they all have different names. That is good. I like the randomness of what techs you get in a game, but I don't like that I can't pick what I want to research. I can see this is designed, for us being a military ruler, not a civilian one. But I love to choose what research I can. I love how in MOO that research is random there and I might not get the same one from game to game, but at least I can pick what I want. Do I research the lower ones first, or do I go for a higher one, to get the next higher one, and by pass all the lower ones. I guess what I am asking for, is just having more options for the tech or research game. For a game that has so many options, we don't have much when it comes to research. Yes I can build more weapons research stations, or industry research stations, but if I can't pick what weapons I want, who cares. I don't care about building a better hab moduel when I wanted construction yards. See there is no excitement when you discover something when it dosn't mean anything to you.

I use to hate combat in DW. There is no strategy just point and click. But now I am very greatfull for it. In the begining when there is not much to control, it's great having battles, but in the mid to late games when you can have combat after combat, it gets tiring, and I love the simplicity to it now. So it's a catch 22. Combat not much fun in the begining, but then when you have alot of combat, at least for me, I don't want to deal with it all, all the time.

Automation needs to be done better, but they are doing a great job in fixing on how it works, and works better now with the patches. Still a few things need to be worked out, but very playable.

MY only major complaint about DW, is when you colonize a planet, it dosn't feel like I have a planet. I can't put in new buildings to make the population bigger. I don't put in any buildings to make them more happy. You put in a stupid little thing called a med bay, or entertainment bay to make the planet happy. I just find this so disapointing. But again, this is their version of the game, and want to make it different from other games. I just think it failed that's all, but they have acknolwadged this, but it might change, might not change. Right now they are working on making this game fun and playable as it is now, so I am hoping in 6 months to a year there willl be an expansion pack that will correct this.

Other than that, I love this game. I was floored the first time, my home planet, was a moon. A freaking moon. You can colonize planets, and moons. Sadly you can't colonize asteroids, but they are in there as well. But you can put bases on asteroids though, so I guess it's life like. Who would live on asteroids anyways? No terraforming sadly, but hey that is what expansions are for these days.

As others have said, this is a gem that needs polishing. Look at GC II. Look at Civ IV. When these games came out, they were not great. But after 2 or 3 expansions, and many many many patches later, they are great games. I say DW is a good game right now out of the box. After 2 or 3 expansions and many many patches later, I can see this being a great game as well. I can see that DW is Elliots vision of the game he wanted to make, but I also see how he takes in our input as well. Time will tell on what will be out next. But as is, this game is great to play now, and lots of fun. There is a few ways to play the game as well. I will just give one example. You can automate the game for everthing, and just take control of one ship and be it's captian, if you are so inclined. I forgot to mention about the automation, but I turn them all off, so I can control it on how I like it. Maybe that is why I do so poorly, but at least I learn how it's done.

So if you like 4X space games, I suggest to buy the games. If you like HoI and EU and space games, then this is a must buy. If you don't like the play style of HoI and EU, then you might not like this game either. But these are my opnions, lots of good things, a few not so good things. But it's been agaes since I played a game where I want to keep playing. There is no one more turn here, but it's one more minute now. I loved Civ II, and MOO and MOO II where I coudn't stop playing the game. DW is almost like that. I just keep playing and playing.
Vlad77
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Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2010 1:12 am

RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by Vlad77 »

Davor,

It is GREAT to see your positive post on here about Distant Worlds - especially after some of the whining and whinging of late of some folks here.

So, a bit about me though nobody cares :)

I am a graphic artist, professional entertainer (music, magic, mentalism, hypnotism), grad student in education, and an incurable gamer who leans heavily to sci-fi and fantasy titles. Like you, I have been looking for the space 4X fix for a LONG time since MOO2. And I have bought virtually all of them. Remember Ascendancy? Fun game but at times a bit dodgy and not much of a tech tree. MOO1 was SO cool and MOO2 was simply nirvana. Then, the ONLY game that ever was successful on the dreaded OS/2 platform came to us in Windoze land in the form of Galactic Civilizations. Loved the game and the Altarian Prophecy expansion and the gazillion mods made for a long playing experience. Imperium Galactica II was beautiful for its time and STILL not a bad game at all, but, it lacked scale. I am not going to list all of the 4X games I have played because again, nobody cares!

Anyhow, GalCivII and its expansions had come along and I thought, ok, this is about as close as I will ever get to MOO2. BOTF was cool, but it was never fully fixed, I could never get it to run on XP even with the XP fix, so, dead in space there. Besides, the memory leak was atrocious. MOO3 on release was a DISASTER. I still weep at the lost potential. It took end users to make it a decent game.

Lost Empires: Immortals finally brought SCALE to the table. Yes, GalCiv II has humongously splendioferously large galaxies, but, they looked more like globular clusters :) LE:I looked like a GALAXY. Fans made it a better game, but GalCivII was still my baby. Space Empires IV was fun, Space Empires V was (never mind, Erik would shoot me for cursing here). Suffice to say that while I DO respect Aaron Hall as a designer, this was a disaster - all the more so because it REEKED of promise.

I actually learned about Distant Worlds from another 4X section of Matrix Games: Armada 2526 - which by the way I DO like. Nitronium has said to expect some cool new stuff in the next patch so I am pretty excited.

Finally, Distant Worlds was released. I do not CARE if people think me a fanboy or not. This game is TRULY the one I have waited for. The sense of scale, the freedom to play as I wish to play just blows me away. And all of this from a tiny company in New Zealand. I think one or two peoiple developed this at MOST? You detractors need to take a chill pill and cut them some slack. This game IS going to develop into a CLASSIC and to those who say PC gaming is dead, I only need point to this bad boy to prove otherwise.

Now I am going to blow my cred here a bit. Laugh if you will but I love Spore. Yes, they took a LOT out of it - blame EA for THAT decision, not Will Wright. But, as an artist, I love the creative possibilities, and I have adjusted to the quirkiness of the game. There are times when I still laugh out loud - it is a fun, light hearted game and what's wrong with that? (Paul McCartney allusion there)

So, Davor, THANK you for your wonderful post! I was getting really upset at people who were saying DW is broken. What a load of unsubstantiated (expletive pre-emptively deleted by me)!

It's a GAME people!! And already a FINE one and the heir to MOO2. Have some patience and you are going to be so very happy because you will be playing a game tht will be known as the best of the genre.

Vlad
HsojVvad
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Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 9:21 pm

RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by HsojVvad »

Thanks for the kind words Vlad77. Yes I remember Ascendency. Never did play Spore though. I might try it out later. Right now DW is all the gaming I play right now. When I have DW overload, anywhere from 4-8 hours a day, (jobless, only good thing about being jobless is lots of DW time) I play Civ Rev on the 360. At least I can finish a game in a day at least. [:)] Other wise, it's playing with DW, or on the forums, trying to learn new techniques that other people post about it, and then back to DW and trying them out.
mllange
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Joined: Sat Feb 05, 2005 1:35 am

RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by mllange »

Thanks for taking the time to enlighten us all. Good luck in your search for employment.
There's a simple answer to every complex question - and it's wrong.
-Umberto Eco
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EisenHammer
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RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by EisenHammer »

I agree with most of what you said, the parts about research and the range of the spaceships is something that I hope they will fix in the future also. DW already moved up into my top four favorite 4x space game with MoO 1, MoO 2, and SotS.
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lordxorn
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RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by lordxorn »

ORIGINAL: nim8or

Thanks for taking the time to enlighten us all. Good luck in your search for employment.



You just confirmed my earlier accusation of your activity here in the forums, you are a troll.

Now on to the thread,

I agree Vlad and Davor DW is a nice breath of fresh air despite it's issues, and I also loved Ascendancy. Anything to feed my crack addiction to MOO2 was good enough. Anyone remember Fragile Allegiance?

I think given enough time with the great support Matrix gives it games, DW is destined to be great. I wish I could say the same for Armada, only time can tell.

I just hope this game brings enough success to warrant a sequel (I know we just got DW, and don't pull a Napoleon Total War), I would even be willing to purchase a second copy to help achieve this aim. [:'(]
astote
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Apr 07, 2010 5:30 am

RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by astote »

I <3 trolls, they are funny (dramatic irony) and good ones far more skilled than they appear. but nim8or is not trolling here unless you read first sentence as referring to Davor's unemployment and 2nd as a sarcastic remark. Just as easily you could read the first sentence as referring to Davor's opinions of DW and the second sentence as well wishing. it's vague, therefore trollage not confirmed.

also, thanks Davor.
Fishman
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RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by Fishman »

ORIGINAL: Vlad77

Lost Empires: Immortals finally brought SCALE to the table.
Speaking of which, why is it that LEIM can save and load with even a 5000-star galaxy nearly instantly, while DW takes FOREVER to do the same thing and often runs out of memory and barfs doing it?
Gertjan
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RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by Gertjan »

Interesting posts. Thanks!
Sigh
Posts: 74
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2010 5:07 am

RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by Sigh »

ORIGINAL: Fishman
ORIGINAL: Vlad77

Lost Empires: Immortals finally brought SCALE to the table.
Speaking of which, why is it that LEIM can save and load with even a 5000-star galaxy nearly instantly, while DW takes FOREVER to do the same thing and often runs out of memory and barfs doing it?

They missed this during testing

...
Gertjan
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Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2009 12:05 pm

RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by Gertjan »

How does LEIM play? Is it any different from DW?
deanco2
Posts: 75
Joined: Thu Apr 01, 2010 4:53 am

RE: Davor's Opnion of Distant Worlds

Post by deanco2 »

Just the fact that the game can provoke a long post like that is, in itself, a testament.

I don't think DW is a great game.&nbsp; I'm not even sure whether it's a good game.&nbsp; However, it is a DIFFERENT game, unlike any other 4X that I've played.

If I try to describe my feelings about DW in one sentence, it would have to be, 'I really like where you're going with this'.&nbsp; It's certainly not there yet, but I'm convinced it's heading in a good direction.

Now, I'm going to complain about the UI in the wish list thread.&nbsp; :)


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