07-08-2013, 12:05 PM
Since it is the first turn that I will be doing, after I woke up, this morning, I sat down to try and draft a few quick orders, before I head off for the day.
Freshly rested, I again find myself mumbling about the interface, and about the needless way in which certain things are made far more difficult than they have to be.
Having no idea what to access in the Central Command, in order to bring up an overview of my empire's assets, I find myself flying blind. I checked, first thing, to try and download fresh turn results, in case the turn was actually run late last night, but there was nothing new for me to download. Hence, why I am scrambling, this morning, to try and at least get something in under the wire.
Of course, I couldn't find any actual way to tell what the wire - the turn deadline - actually is, but that's another area of complaint, altogether, in and of itself. Apparently, players are supposed to just magically know when the next set of turn orders are due in for processing. Go figure!
The closest play by mail space empire game that I played, back in my golden heyday of playing games of that genre, was Galaxy: Alpha, which was published and run by Intergalactic Games. What crime against the universe have I committed, that has relegated me to suffering through a major increase in complexity, as far as issuing orders goes, while simultaneously being deprived of the enjoyment of feeling as if I have an actual empire, as distinguished from just an unintelligible (and disorganized) clump of numbers and statistics?
My introduction to trying to play Cluster Wars is a sterile, deadening feeling. An absolutely enormous amount of opportunity is being missed by the game, right off the bat. Already, without even having one set of turn orders processed, I am beginning to feel numb about the game - which translates into a feeling of, it really doesn't matter. That's hardly what you want new players to the game to feel, if the grand object is to entice them to play over the long run.
Whomever is in charge of the tutorials for the game should be summarily executed on some distant, lifeless moon of some nameless, unknown planet orbiting a faraway, never-discovered star in some remote and distant galaxy far, far away.
You're making it hard, boys! I want to play a space game - not kill myself fighting with tutorials, software interfaces, and complexity.
I've run out of time, and must depart. I do so at the risk of losing my empire to the misfortunes of not knowing what to do, and no quick and easy way out of the hole that I now find myself in.
Needless to say, morale across my empire plunges.
Freshly rested, I again find myself mumbling about the interface, and about the needless way in which certain things are made far more difficult than they have to be.
Having no idea what to access in the Central Command, in order to bring up an overview of my empire's assets, I find myself flying blind. I checked, first thing, to try and download fresh turn results, in case the turn was actually run late last night, but there was nothing new for me to download. Hence, why I am scrambling, this morning, to try and at least get something in under the wire.
Of course, I couldn't find any actual way to tell what the wire - the turn deadline - actually is, but that's another area of complaint, altogether, in and of itself. Apparently, players are supposed to just magically know when the next set of turn orders are due in for processing. Go figure!
The closest play by mail space empire game that I played, back in my golden heyday of playing games of that genre, was Galaxy: Alpha, which was published and run by Intergalactic Games. What crime against the universe have I committed, that has relegated me to suffering through a major increase in complexity, as far as issuing orders goes, while simultaneously being deprived of the enjoyment of feeling as if I have an actual empire, as distinguished from just an unintelligible (and disorganized) clump of numbers and statistics?
My introduction to trying to play Cluster Wars is a sterile, deadening feeling. An absolutely enormous amount of opportunity is being missed by the game, right off the bat. Already, without even having one set of turn orders processed, I am beginning to feel numb about the game - which translates into a feeling of, it really doesn't matter. That's hardly what you want new players to the game to feel, if the grand object is to entice them to play over the long run.
Whomever is in charge of the tutorials for the game should be summarily executed on some distant, lifeless moon of some nameless, unknown planet orbiting a faraway, never-discovered star in some remote and distant galaxy far, far away.
You're making it hard, boys! I want to play a space game - not kill myself fighting with tutorials, software interfaces, and complexity.
I've run out of time, and must depart. I do so at the risk of losing my empire to the misfortunes of not knowing what to do, and no quick and easy way out of the hole that I now find myself in.
Needless to say, morale across my empire plunges.