norb wrote:
OK, let's get some great feedback here. Cliffy & IronBMike, let's get a honest evaluation of your likes and dislikes of the game. I'm more focused on multiplayer, but any feedback would really be appreciated. Favorite stuff, least favorite stuff (I'm sure the speed of the computer he was using is going to be a negative for IronBMike). How was the AI, mostly smart, mostly ok, mostly stupid? The new toolbar? You guys are the first ones outside of the team to even see this thing running, so any help you can give us is very valued.
You should have seen IronBMike and his friend working together to destroy Matt
They were placing their men together, working closely to shut off any exits. It was very cool, but would be much more difficult if they were forced to communicate with couriers.
Well, I'll just go ahead and list some things here:
1) I didn't like the new toolbar. It was harder to find stuff at a glance than the old one and didn't have a Civil War "feel" to it either. I much prefer the old toolbar, especially the fatigue and morale bars. Actually everything about the old toolbar was better, except for all the nice new buttons we have on the right side.
2) The map screen should close by hitting M again rather than having to click the X. It sounds trivial, but it can save a lot of time and effort. I've thought this about the previous games as well.
3) The AI seemed fine, but since I spent most of my time in multiplayer I didn't really get a chance to work with the AI. Plus I was just playing scenarios, and not Open Plays. But I would hope that the AI is not as aggressive this time around and will actually sit on objective sites and play defense.
4) The new unit pathing where a regiment will no longer walk through another regiment is a nice feature because of the realism aspect, but pathing it automatically to find a way around may cause problems, because if a regiment can't walk through another regiment you may prefer it to not move at all. Perhaps the path it chooses will take it way out of position or run it into enemy troops. I don't know of any solutions for this, except to make it so that units simply physically won't walk through each other no matter how hard you try, thus forcing you to find a manual way around or move the original unit out of the way. But it's not really a big deal, since you can always just hit halt if it takes a path you don't like.
5) The new "roll of the dice" feature on every morale drop is interesting. It certainly adds another element of gameplay that has to be counted, but it seems like attacks could fall apart really easily if one regiment starts hurting. But then again, the same could apply for the defenders. The bottom line is that it takes more out of the gamers control and puts it to chance, which may be realistic because generals couldn't always control what their troops did, but sometimes realism is sacrificed for gameplay. However, I don't have an issue with it because it would take hours and hours of playing to really find all the small details about it and how to manage it. Overall I'm happy with it, plus if it's unbalanced a patch could always take care of it.
6) Multiplayer was fun, and I can't wait for the courier system. Really not too much more needs to be said about that, I don't have any negatives.
7) Time compression, I feel, should always be allowed to be increased in game regardless of whether or not there is fighting.
So to sum up, my three main things I would like to see different are:
- The toolbar
- AI not being aggressive so often
- Time compression
