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[BurnedToast]

I have to disagree. Meaningful complexity is good, but not all complexity is meaningful.

The problem is you're not even describing playing games at all. You're just... I guess, playing make believe. I don't mean that as an insult, there's nothing wrong with it, but the whole reason games exist is so people can play them. It's like... I don't know... saying a picture book is better than a novel because you like looking at the pictures and imagining stories based on those pictures and picture books have more pictures to look at. Sure that's fine - that's ok if that's what you want to do, but it has nothing to do with reading books you know? You're not doing the same activity the rest of us are doing.

Or I guess, another way of looking at it. All those different ways of interacting with the game that you imagine are so neat? They don't exist. Most of them wouldn't work, or if they worked they would work very poorly. I'll give you a very simple example, consider a simple xcom-style tactical game. No powers, just one gun, not much depth right? Now you add the choice to capture aliens and take them back to your base - it's harder than killing them but you get bonuses for doing it. That's depth, right? Now you have a choice to make. Do I risk my soldiers capturing these aliens for bonuses?

Now consider the mechanic is poorly implemented. Capturing the aliens is almost impossible, and the bonuses it gives are so small they don't change anything. It's not a meaningful choice anymore is it? You never capture the aliens because it's never worth it.

The version of the game that lets you capture aliens is unarguably more complex. There are more options, more things to do. But it's not deeper - it's the exact same game in practice. Because the complexity added is meaningless - you can sit and fantasize about how the game would be like if you captured the aliens all you want, but that does not change the fact that it's not a real meaningful gameplay option.

You say the execution is just rote, but I think that's exactly because you've run into the problem I'm describing and you don't realize it. Complexity without depth creates rote, uninteresting situations. Depth (with just enough complexity to support it) creates unexpected emergent situations that are fun to play through. You'd probably enjoy actually playing games more if you played better games, instead of needlessly complex and shallow games like distant worlds.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

That is one of the most toxic and narrow-minded replies I have read... and your argument, frankly, is entirely subjective. Listen man, you are 100% free to not like DW, but like... stop blasting people for enjoying it.

[feelotraveller]

I don't understand the hype for the series. There's a lot of moving parts, but most of it is essentially cosmetic as there's very little meaningful interaction. All the parts that actually do something are extremely simple and basic. It's one of the most shallow 4X games I've played.

If you found it that shallow, why are you here?

The game has a very complex simulation going on under the hood, I wouldn't call it shallow. It's far more nuanced than many other titles held up as gold standards for the genre

The problem is that the "very complex simulation" is shallow. Which sounds like a contradiction, but it's not.

What I mean is, let's say for example you build some giant complex rube goldberg machine with a thousand moving parts, but all it takes is one button to activate it... that's shallow, you know? The moving parts don't matter if you can't meaningfully interact with them.

So take distant worlds, and it's like... how does population and tax and stuff interact? I have no idea exactly, it's complex. But it does not matter, because the only real option is 0% tax (or as close to 0 as you can sustain) until population is full then max tax. It's so much better than anything else there's no meaningful decision there.

Or take another example, mining outposts. How do they work? I don't know exactly, there's lots of moving parts. But I do know that there's a cap on how many resources you can get, and the lowest tier harvester can collect that much if you put 2(?) on the blueprint. So researching upgraded harvesting technology, or building lots of harvesting modules on a giant outpost is a total waste. There's no meaningful decisions, you put 2 on every blueprint and ignore it.

Or research. How does research work? No clue. Even the internet does not seem to understand, I've seen so many contradictory posts. You can't interact with it because it has so many moving parts that nobody understands and the game never bothers to explain it. There's no meaningful depth there, nothing to manipulate, no choices to make. You just research stuff according to some arcane formula that nobody can figure out exactly. Zero depth, even though there's (probably) a lot of moving parts.

etc, etc.....

The other problem is that the game is clearly designed for automation, everything can be automated, and there's so many numbers to tweak and things to micromanage you're practically forced to let the AI handle it. So why is that a problem? The AI is goddamn horrible, like holy crap it's stupid - so you either accept micromanagement hell or you assign stuff to the AI and then constantly get frustrated as it ruins everything with it's idiocy. One example is that I was tired of building new ships myself so I let the AI build new ships. It promptly spent literally all of my money and built so many ships that I had a huge negative income and had to scrap a bunch of them. Why would it do that? I have no idea!

I had really high expectations of the title based on how much B12 praises it, but it's just.. it's not even mediocre, it's probably the worst or second worst 4x I've played.

As for why post if you didn't like it, everyone likes to bitch it's human nature.

Edit: Here is a short article on depth vs complexity. TL;DR summery:

Depth is “the number of emergent, experientially different possibilities or meaningful choices that come out of one ruleset.” Games with high depth are still strategically interesting and fun even after you have mastered the game’s rules.

Complexity is how difficult it is for the player to understand the rules and their implications. If the game requires the player to track multiple rules at once, it makes it harder for the player to appreciate the depth of the game.

Distant worlds is complex, but lacks depth.

So many straw men. It is clear that at best you gave the game a very cursory play through, either that or you have little ability to recognise 'complexity' where it exists.  Rather than talk in the abstract with far fetched stories about 'complexity' that might exist in other games I'll reply to your three examples:

1. Taxes.  Actually the best or your points. The mechanic is simple - more tax or more pop growth.  90% (or 99%) of the time zero tax until max pop is best.  The decisions/complexity come when money is needed and then it is a matter of where to raise taxes.  And of deciding just 'how much' money (i.e. tax and lower pop growth) is needed to explore your surrounds, or have a military, or buid more bases. Try a harder start with a single world, or a small empire almost immediately at war with a zenophobic neighbour and you'll see what I mean by 'needed'.  That said the real driver of population growth is luxuries; it is interesting that you have missed or omitted that, either way.

2. Again with the straw man.  To take on your point directly often most of my mining bases only have a single extractor - even with starting level tech.  Why?  Because the limiter in the production of resources in the game isn't extraction it's transport.  A ship has to pick up and transport stuff and generally they are way overloaded with work.  Which means the real choice is how much storage you build on your mining base so that it can keep extracting for longer before shutting down because it is full.  Another concern, which is usually secondary, is the cost.  Yes it is costs of the civilian sector (so not 'your' money) but it is very important because the more money they have the more freighters they build to ship goods around, allieviating somewhat the transport crunch.  One extractor doesn't make much of a difference but multiply it by a hundred or a thousand and it adds up.  And every extractor needs other components to support it compounding the problem.  The real choice is how much storage to have, more means the potential for bigger loads when a freighter does arrive but also greater costs of maintenance so less freighters. (Stepping back a bit there are also the larger questions of which bases to build, when and where.)

3. Research is relatively simple in broad principles and there are definitely very good outlines of how it works if you go somewhere like the distant worlds forum.  In broad brush strokes research capacity is set by population size - more people equals more potential science.  But it is only potential, one also needs lab capacity up to the population potential to actuallly do the science.  The complexity comes on top of that.  There are three types or fields of science.  Science gets produced (base number) in proportion to the number of labs you have in each field.  So one possible manipulation is unbalancing your labs to produce more in a given field (at expense of the other fields). Bearing in mind the costs of money/time/resources to build or tear down labs it is possible to rush science in one field then another as priorities change.  Then there are the scientist bonuses: which scientist characters do you keep/fire and where do you put them?  And the use, or not, of the bonus science (%) provided by certain locations.  Is it worth sticking a research lab with you best scientists out on/beyond the fringe of your empire to claim the best bonus at the risk of them all getting killed, or do you play it safe with a lab in a lesser location in a 'safe' highly militarised system and be satisfied with less science?

Honestly as others have said if you don't like the game that's fine but don't pretend to be in a postion to damn something without first having properly investigated it.

[Vivalas]

My counterargument would be that, complexity for complexity's sake is good, actually. As you noted, we're on the B12 forums and Dwarf Fortress practically epitomizes complexity at the cost of depth, it's basically DF's entire niche. I slot Distant Worlds into the same category as Dwarf Fortress, Aurora 4X, Cataclysm DDA, etc: the joy is not in playing the game but in exploring the intricate systems. There are so few games out there that actually pursue complexity as a virtue in itself. If I can spend longer reading tutorials and help documents than actually playing the game, that's unironically a plus: I play games to stir the imagination, to consider and contemplate and ultimately understand the workings of novel mechanics. Actually engaging with those mechanics long after I've explored them? Meh. The possibilities are what's interesting, the execution is just rote.

This sticks out to me because I've realized lately this is really my entire appeal to video games. I've noticed my favorite games are ones with ridiculous complex mechanics because I simply enjoy reading and learning the mechanics, building the complex systems, and watching them interact. Once I've explored all the mechanics the game is indeed less interesting than it was before.

My favorite games are also the ones that stoke my imagination the most. The ones where I can create a story in my head and get immersed in it. I would caution shunning this aspect of games as "make believe" because storytelling ia one of the most powerful aspects of human engagement. Take a look at all the AARs for these types of games, the popularity of people like Kruggsmash, the popularity of very complex emergent games like Rimworld or SS13. Traditional tabletop RPGs. Playing make believe, digital escapism through creating an interactive story, hell, it's arguably one of the most powerful aspects of gaming; although this last statement verges into more opinionated than not.

Of all communities, liking games solely for complexity and the thrill of learning and mastering that complexity, well, it's certainly a niche section of the gaming world but I would say a sizable demographic of Bay12 falls directly in that niche.

That being said I also don't see the need for the shunning people who are for / against Distant Worlds. We can all agree to disagree.   

[Nelia Hawk]

i thought i add this in here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/261470/Distant_Worlds_Universe/

distant worlds universe is 90% off right now... 6 bucks for it

[axiomsofdominion]

...

[Journier]

wooo Distant Worlds 2 guys, its coming! Cant wait.

[Knave]

Same - lots of previews and first looks going around today have me pretty optimistic. Definitely seems like they went the route of fix, optimise and improve the original.

Imagine I'll be spending a lot of time with this one. Hopefully they're able to expand the number of races with patches or expansions.

[Journier]

distant worlds universe 2 is gonna be banging.

[axiomsofdominion]

I'd like them to add a ton of new simulation stuff but I'll easily settle for a drastically refined DWU with major expansions on the horizon.

[Knave]

Just noticed they've put the game up for preorder (with a 10% discount) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1531540/Distant_Worlds_2/

full price is 57 CAD, so I imagine 40-45 USD?

[Akura]

It's showing up as $50 USD base price for me,  $45(10% off) for the preorder sale. A bit much for most, but actually quite low for a new, highly-anticipated release from Slitherine.

One thing turning me off a bit about this game is that planets won't orbit around their stars(and moons, their planet) like they did in the first game. A shame, too, because I liked that bit... except when I design a ship too slow that it cannot keep up with a planet's orbital motion somehow.


EDIT: Australian Youtuber Rimmy did a video on this game, having been given pre-release copy to do a video on. From what I've seen, it does play differently in some respects to the original. Ship design now appears to have limited slots for components, whereas in the first game ships were limited entirely by mass. Likewise, ship classes are locked behind research, where in the first military ship classes are largely for how the AI utilizes them(maybe) and how the player intends. In the first game, only two ship classes were locked behind research: carriers and resupply ships.

I'll note that the battleship that he was attacked with near the end of the video was likely a salvaged ancient ship, rather than one the enemy built themselves. Ancient wrecks, and especially ship graveyards, were a good source of powerful ships early on in the first game.

[Journier]

I would wait to see the perfomance problems mid game, the streams already look to be laggy in mid game. I loved DW 1 except for one problem, performance toward the late game became terrible. Im sitting out on any preorder of this game, plus they are planning multiple expansions of releases which is fine, but why bother when 6 months from now im gonna feel the need to buy the expansion for the DW 1 universe races.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah while I am excited about the game, there is no reason to preorder. I'll wait for some reviews and see how the performance looks before buying

[Il Palazzo]

What, no reviews yet? Not even first impressions?