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[Majestic7]

In case you dudes & dudettes haven't noticed, there has been two big updates. One added the United Empire, which is a production-heavy faction. The latest update added Horatios. They have a hilarious backstory (a rich narcistic dude created a civlization by cloning himself). In the game their thing is stealing genes; they can literally steal genes from other races and put them into their own, thus gaining extra abilities for their base population. This heavily favors snowballing.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah I loved the Horatio backstory from ES1. I'll have to try out the new update. Thanks for the heads-up

[Retropunch]

How close is it to being playable? I'm happy to support amplitude with Early Access because their games are great quality (even if Endless Legends went a bit heavy on the DLC) but I don't fancy spoiling myself with something that's completely half finished.

Is it feature complete but with some nice extra stuff missing, or is basically still early alpha?

[forsaken1111]

I feels far more polished already than some 'released' games. I haven't played the latest update yet but a few versions ago everything was in, subject to balancing, aside from the technology victory goal and several races. I can't say if its feature complete since I don't know what else they'll be putting in. Some way to control what population goes where would be nice though.

[Wiles]

Endless Space 2 came out of early access recently and I just want to warn anyone who was thinking of buying the game away from it for now. It should still be in early access as it is currently buggy and broken. There are game ending bugs in it that apparently the devs knew about but released it as is anyway. Just look at the steam reviews - there are a lot of people (myself included) that cannot finish the game.

It's a real shame too, If it weren't for the bugs I think the game would be one of the better 4X games out there.

[Majestic7]

What are these bugs? Are they hardware dependent? I haven't ran across any, not even any game crashes.

[Wiles]

Turns that do not end. It is not just isolated to me, check out the steam review page. The game doesn't freeze, it just doesn't process the next turn.

[forsaken1111]

I too have had zero issues other than one weird bug? where I was told some unknown empire was four turns from winning the game. This was on a large map where I had not even meet a single other player yet... Fortunately the game did not actually end after four turns

[Wiles]

I have run into many bugs and most of them wouldn't have bothered me so much since they are fairly minor. For example I ran into many text bugs where instead of naming an empire or minor faction it would have something like $minorfactionname. The Sophon main quest also bugged out on me after the last quest. I could have overlooked those bugs because the rest of the game is pretty solid. But bugs that end games you have invested 100+ turns in are inexcusable.

Don't just take my word for it though, here are some excerpts of steam reviews from players suffering from the same issues.

At some time after you start playing the game (about turn 100) will freeze at the end of a turn or when calculating a battle and it never resolves. No workarounds. Unplayable.

End the turn and it sits at pending forever after 100 or so turns

When this is fixed it will be a perfect game but i cannot play it past a random number of turns.

This is, after "release", still an alpha level early access game. It has game-breaking bugs, both in the tutorial (best not to use it and learn the game from third party sites), and out of it - I am on my fifth game, three of the previous four were stopped by the same bug where combat cannot be resolved and stops you progressing the turn, not a win or loss. There are glaring balance issues, and a few UX snags that will really annoy you once you actually figure out how the game and its UI works.

The game has a lot of nice concepts and good ideas, but unless you want to support the game's development or something, it's best to wait with actually buying it.

And there are many more reviews where people suffer the same issues...

[forsaken1111]

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, just that I haven't hit those issues yet. It might be some specific hardware profile causing it or something? I haven't had any misnamed races or anything like that. When I say I haven't hit bugs I mean I really haven't, other than that one weird occurrence with "unknown empire will win the game in 4 turns".

[Wiles]

Sorry, I don't mean to come off as argumentative. I don't believe it is hardware related though, they just released an apology about the game where they go over many of the issues and when they talk about the never ending turns they mention it has something to do with the AI.

Here's a link to the apology if you are interested: https://steamcommunity.com/app/392110/discussions/0/1291817208502275202/

I think this game could be one of the best in the genre when all the kinks are ironed out, it is certainly more interesting than NuMoo (though to that games credit it was very well polished and I never ran into a single bug).

[forsaken1111]

I just hit my first never-ending turn I think? Turn 151, I hit end turn and it goes to pending but just sits there. We'll see if they release a patch or something soon I guess. I've played other games much further than turn 151 and not had an issue. I wonder what AI hangup is causing it

[aristabulus]

...
Here's a link to the apology if you are interested: https://steamcommunity.com/app/392110/discussions/0/1291817208502275202/
...

The detailing of the known issues seems solid; no BS or spin while also acknowledging that software can be horribly complex.

I read some of the steam reviews prior to the burst of activity in this thread...  Some of them seem a little extra salty in the way that steam reviews tend to traffic in hyperbole, but I totally get why those feelings could also be genuine.  Save file and completion bugs are the absolute worst; if any parts deserve extra QA, those are definitely at the top of the list.  The last couple times I clearly recall problems with save files were Torchlight (1?) and a couple sloppy Minecraft modpacks.  Having the record of your efforts simply disappear is _not_ _fun_.  >_>

-----

I feel like ES2's launch woes are yet another data point on a terrible conundrum for the industry.

When games launch buggy as hell, it dissuades people from making the leap early & at full price.  The economics dictate that in many cases, some number of people _must_ make the leap if there's any chance of things getting fixed; if launch revenue isn't good, layoffs often follow, reducing the roster of available bug-squashers.

What happens when all the goodwill has been spent, industry-wide? Sure, there will always be new young & naive people flowing in that haven't been burnt yet...  but not so many as to shoulder the burden of keeping the whole industry (as it currently exists) afloat.

Amplitude seems like they're doing alright at doing the right things, overall, which is some consolation for this title.  The post-launch support for previous titles has me hopeful that ES2 will get sorted.  ...and they were smart enough to get out from under the Guillemotine brothers, right?  That's gotta be worth something.

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EDIT/ADD:  While I was typing, it seems there's been a hotfix released (numbered 1.0.52).

[forsaken1111]

That hotfix seems to have fixed my pending turn issue, so yay

[Retropunch]

What happens when all the goodwill has been spent, industry-wide? Sure, there will always be new young & naive people flowing in that haven't been burnt yet...  but not so many as to shoulder the burden of keeping the whole industry (as it currently exists) afloat.

I'm already there, and a large number of r/Patientgamers are basically there for the same thing. I'm sick of games going on sale and then being buggy and unplayable - Sega seems to be a top offender for pushing stuff out unpolished, but others are similar.

The main issue is that buying games at launch becomes too speculative - you don't know if it's going to do well enough to actually be fixed, and 95% of all games need a number of patches to be playable.