Yes, I have a three button mouse. I have a five button mouse AND the super high end video card that the other games require. That has nothing to do with my criticism of GC2.

I don't use buttons #3-5 because every other application on my computer with the exception of GC2 gets back with just left and right click.

Maybe when every other application on the market does things a certain way, it's because it's the best, most intuitive way.

wanna know how many factories? do a search. lots of posts about strategies.

I don't want to do that. Reading a web forum just to find out how to play a game is unacceptable. There's absolutely no reason why the information can't be in the game or at least the manual. Stop making excuses for Stardock.

Clearly you missed this in my previous post, Citizen Heavensblade23, as to an application that was made available to help with some game documentation. It contains mainly research data at this point but is likely to expand more:
http://www.kynosarges.de/Galactopedia.html

Soooo your goal is what exactly with this thread?

-signed the 1m4tur3 pr1ck that called you a troll, and still thinks you are a flame baiting troll.

Finished reading. What he says makes sense, and I can understand his point of view, but at this point i want results and not promises. Saying "We're listening to player concerns" doesn't mean anything to me. I'll believe they're listening when I start seeing some of these issues getting taken care of. Especially when I've seen some concerns waved off as design decisions in prior threads. Which is probably why most companies have PR interact with the fanbase and not the devs.

I've played multiple full games of GalCiv 2 now and I don't think I've even used the right mouse button, let alone the middle one. Am I missing something?

Hell yes!

I agree that there is a huge lack of information about the game mechanics. Overall though, I still think it is very fun. I look at it as a game. I can get over the social spending thing, and I can also get over the fact that I am basically playing with my eyes closed. However, I still have fun with the parts that are great. I have faith that the devs will eventually give us some usefull info on the way the game percentages work. I really hope I am not dissapointed.

I agree!

the UI and ingame documentation needs help.

ingame documentation = non existant.
UI issues
-doing stuff with individual ships while they are in fleets is not possible at all(to upgrade a ship you gotta disband the fleet).
-some windows need to be changed to make the game go faster.
-going in and out of specific windows has to be smoother.
im sure some UI mod or stardock will change this.

a theme I see on this forum is ppl flaming posters who dont like something in galciv2, which is quite sad to see on this forum.

Woah Heavensblade, you sure know how to get a bunch of fanboys riled up

ANYHOW, let me try and take your point under a different light, maybe we can come up with something...

Your point, as I understand them:
- Developpers say they are listening to our requests but they aren't for real
- Game is hard to understand
- Lackluster documentation about the game
- Mechanics that don't make much sense
- You don't like 10% of the game

Is that right? Well, you can correct me later on if you want!

Ok, so Devellopers not listening: To this, I must ask you a question. Can you name another company who has game devellopers to be so active on their forums and so forthcoming with behind-the-scene information? I don't know of many. Even blizzard, which makes really great game, is known to be a tight-lipped "Here-is-our-corporate-reply" company.

Thing is, never any game develloper will -totally- listen to the players. They toiled away months, years on a product, they usually have a clear idea of what the product is and should be (if they don't, it flops bad). No matter what the players ask for, the devellopers might not want it in because it would upset their whole "baby".

On the other hand, the more they listen, the more the player base tends to like them. It's a juggling act. So far, from the changelogs and how much feedback the devellopers are giving back to us, the players, Stardock seems pretty engaged to implement many many things. It's an on-going progress so let's wait for it.

Game UI is too hard to use: Now, I believe this point is tied to "Game mechanics aren't transparent". Let's put it rather bluntly: The UI is utilitarian but not very user-friendly. In more layman's term it means it's very useful but hard to pick up at first. However, I can assure you, once you get the hang of it, it flies like a bird - no information is farther away than 2 clicks (that is, menu -> submenu -> information), sometimes a double-click + a click. The middle mouse button is only used to rotate the camera, as far as I know. The mouse wheel is useful to scroll down or up but it's not required. Have you played other RTS games? Most of them (if not all) make use of the mouse wheel's click function - even empire at war.

Personally, I don't see what your beef is with the 3rd mouse button - most gamers that I know make full use of all their mouse button, whatever the game type (online FPS-ers are heavy users of 3rd, 4th and 5th mouse buttons).

At any rate, it doesn't change the fact that the Interface is unforgiving at first. That's something -I- can live with. I know certain types of people can't. It is not, however, a total piece of shit (I think someone said that?) interface, it just takes a little while to understand at first.

Lackluster documentation about the game: That, I cannot argue. The stuff that comes with the game has many holes. The video tutorial should be watched though, they offer much information. The manual is semi-good but a lot of the information within is outdated (I have a buzzing sensation that GalCiv2's manual is simply an edited version of GalCiv1's manual). No arguements to be had here.

Mechanics that don't make much sense: I'm sorry, they do make sense and they are very easy to understand if you think about it for a minute - I'm able to guesstimate average production, tax and money spending, bonus applications, etc. While you'd need to be a human calculator to get everything down pat, you don't need to.
Here's an example about how your Military manufacturing works (or semi-works, it gets me close enough results)
Say you have a planet with 3 basic factories that can produce 8points each. That's a total CAPACITY of 24 points.
Now, say you have your spending at 100% - that means you are using 100% of your CAPACITY. Then you have individual spending sliders. If you set your military and civil spnding at 50/50 each (and nothing in research) you will be producing -exactly- 12 military production and 12 social production. Get it? To this comes racial bonuses to production, square bonuses, star base bonuses, etc. All of these bonuses are applied to levels that make sense, too. A tile bonus applies to the factory built on it only : If you have one factory on a 100% production bonus tile, it will produce 16 points while another factory on the same planet but with no bonus will still create only 8 points. 24 points total again. Now, say your race has a 20% military production bonus, this means that your total military production will have an extra 20% - in our previous example of 12/12, for the same spending rate you would end up having 14(14.4, but it rounds down) military (12 + 20%) and 12 civic. Now say you add a starbase that gives you an extra 25% production bonus, you will now create 18 military (14.4 +25%) and 15 civic. All this production will cost you 32 BCs -> 1 BC per production. IF you are producing a ship. What doesn't make sense about this? This same logic applies (more or less) to how much money you make given your tax level, population and economics bonuses. Like I said, it's good enough to guesstimate.

Now, your 10% of the game that you don't like... Ok, I could understand that the 10% you don't like make you hate the whole game. I mean, everday in life, little tiny things bug us out of our socks (just watch all those guys that went ballistic on you). Here again, I can't really argue for personal opinion, I'm just trying to rationalise (this post is intended at the fan-boys too!)

Now, I'd just like to say something, in a very well-educated (as much as I can sound educated anyway) manner: Your original post -was- a rant/flame incentive. The fact that you wrote it in good grammar, with pseudo arguements, do not change the fact that you originaly simply said the game wasn't a good purchase because you didn't like/understand certain things - things that you didn't try to explain farther than generalities.

Nevermind anything else, you are entitled to your opinion about this game, I'm quite sure not everyone will like it, No one likes everything and some people like things that most people don't like (I'm talking to all you 5 MOO3 lovers out there!) Yeah, I like stating the obvious and saying stupid phrases that look intelligent but that really don't mean anything

Bottom line is - if you want to discuss what you don't like about the game, DO IT. Discuss it.
Your original post was -not- a discussion (maybe it was 10% discussion, 90% rant - it hinted at underlying arguements and points but they never surfaced)

Now, I've taken a good 20 minutes of my time to write this up, I've tried to get your arguements out of the text and laid them down. Like I said, if i got your arguements wrong, let me know, we can work on it. I'd just ask of you that you don't discard my whole post because I blamed you for writting a rant at first and not an actual discussion.

I agree with Heavensblade23 on certain points.

Personally, I don't understand if the use of third mouse button is that bad. I would rather have customizable hot-keys, but eh.

I do agree on his points about the manual being out-dated and a lot of designs being flawed. Someone was saying that Heavensblade23 should just list the problems instead of just complaining. Again, I agree with him in that a lot of problems are addressed by the Devs but the changes aren't made to the manual.

Having actively watched the forum for the last few weeks, I realized that a lot posts about problems and bugs are result of poor documentation. For example, the question about social production going to waste is mentioned many many times. If the pdf manual is edited and updated, there might be a lot of players less confused about it.

As for

Game is hard to understand

, I don't think that's what he meant. The game is hard to LEARN because the lack of proper information. Take one of the bug that was fixed, the virtual reality center. You happily build one on your planet and think that it will help you with the morale, but ithe morale actually drops when the building finishes. What is up with that? The lack of transparency make it harder to learn the game. Sure, you don't need every single detail and do calculation to optimize the results, but it should be something you can do if you are so determined.

In any case, he mentioned that he had buyer's regret and asked if others had the same feeling. I don't feel like he was particularly 'trolling.' Sometimes I feel some people are too quick to call a person troll. Sure, he may not be providing constructive criticsm, but he should be entitled to his opinions.

I would say.. due to stardock's involvement in the game, the value of GC2 will rise as time pass by. The original retail version may not be worth the 40 dollars, but it will eventually surpass that value.

You ever notice how when someone rants they always say and "most of the people agree with me" or "most of the people I've talked to agree with me". LOL ROFLMAO That most is usually 1 or 2 other people hahah it's not like it's any significant portion of the game purchasers.

This game rocks and if people don't like it, then just don't play it. This is one of those games you can knock, but, it will just keep on rockin cause it's that good overall. I personally don't have or have had any issues with the game, the math or any parts of it that make it complicated or frustrating to play.

I've always found ranting about ones dislikes about a game on the official FAN site is rather silly. You aren't going to convince anyone that just because you don't like the game or find it frustrating or it doesn't have the features you wanted to follow in your footsteps that doesn't already feel that way in the first place.

Of course now if you come in here and make "suggestions" of "improvements" WITHOUT RANTING, then you might get some attention. Otherwise you just get laughed at. LOLOLOLOLOL!

Do you agree with any of the following, psychoravin?

In the retail version:
The manual is outdated
Lack of a neutrality learning center
The lack of responsive tool tips
"What would you trade for this" option would be nice
Auto-adjustment for money/influence for diplomacy screen would be nice
Annoyance in that Social Production Ability did not apply properly
Annoyance in not being able to get the benefit of a trade good/galactic achievement even though you conquered the planet
Annoyance in that designed Ships can not be transferred to the game after the update
A bug had made it so you can't build another starbase after one is destroyed
annoyance in that Social Project never completing


Granted, most of the problems are fixed in the patch. However, if you just played the original version, all these little bits of annoyance would really bother you and make you think that the game is not worth your money. Personally, I was a bit disappointed just like the OP. What kept me going is stardock's quick fixes and updates. That made me believe the game will get better as time goes by, increasing its value. This is what kept me going. Then again, everytime I hear about a new update coming up, I would be hesitant to boot the game up. I would rather wait till I get the update to start a new game because I'm hoping I'll get what the game is lacking.


Now, let me ask you this:
If galciv2 did not have the support and updates as it does now, would you still think that it's worth 40 bucks? If all those issues were not fixed and no future bonus content would be added, do you truly think that it's worth every dollar you paid for?

I have no regrets at all (except, maybe, that I didn't get involved in the beta). For the meager price and the number of hours of fun I've already had, it has been one of my best bargains in gaming yet (right up there with the Civ series).