Endless Space - How good is the dev plan?

[DD Commander]

In case no one has heard, Endless Space is an Alpha game about controlling a space empire. I seem to get the vibe that it's basically the Space stage of Spore if that was its own game, and not awful. http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/

So my discussion is this: The dev plan is that players who own the game and have a forum account get points which they use to spend on dev polls, which affect the game's development. I'm not sure wither this could tailor a game to the players' standards, or fuck it up so bad it would have a fucking cover system in a space sim. What do you guys think?

Captcha: crime of passion. "but I wanted a cover system!!"

 

[Hal10k]

It depends on how far the devs want to go on player input. They could either:

A) Restrict the dev polls to asinine subjects like "What color do you like spaceships to be?" or "Does this spaceship look cool, awesome, or radical?"

B) Actually make core design decisions based on poll decisions, which essentially turns the whole thing into a design-by-committee affair, which is the same thing a lot of people disregard AAA games for.

They'll probably go with A, simply because at this point they've either worked out the essential aspects of the game and drawn up alpha coding for them, or the game isn't going anywhere in the first place.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well if it's just polls then they will obviously limit the selections to what makes sense and then implement it so the parts all work in a consistent manner.
Otherwise it would be a complete clusterfuck of awful, everyone has their own crazy idea and if the input could be anything then people would first test the extremes that could break it all, because that is just more fun.

In any case this will all be very experimental and noone can really be sure what will come of it, but I would like to see how it turns out.

 

[Praetox]

I've been playing the alpha for a bit, and so far I quite like what I've seen. It plays a lot like a space version of Total War

 

[Therumancer]

In case no one has heard, Endless Space is an Alpha game about controlling a space empire. I seem to get the vibe that it's basically the Space stage of Spore if that was its own game, and not awful. http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/

So my discussion is this: The dev plan is that players who own the game and have a forum account get points which they use to spend on dev polls, which affect the game's development. I'm not sure wither this could tailor a game to the players' standards, or fuck it up so bad it would have a fucking cover system in a space sim. What do you guys think?

Captcha: crime of passion. "but I wanted a cover system!!"

The space phase in "Spore" was like a simplified RPG, sort of like an MMO without the other players. It reminded me of Star Control more than anything to be honest. This is more of 4x game from the looks of it, sort of like "Master Of Orion" or "Galactic Empires", which is something I get heavily into.

It's impossible to say what their policy is going to turn out like. For the most part I'd imagine that they are just giving lip service, because pretty much every time I've seen a game developer talk about community control and input, they typically wind up doing whatever the heck they want to do anyway. I'd get involved if you like the game, not because you expect the company is going to listen to your input, if that winds up happening so be it, but it's not something I'd ever bank on, no matter the size of the developer.

 

[DD Commander]

Thanks for the responses. I have some more info. You are supposed to post in a specific forum area. At this point your idea will be read by the devs, and they will "track" your idea if it balanced and such. The devs have their own thread to list ideas that they are tracking.

Tracked Ideas (a few):
Free Camera during combat
Combat replay
Add resources for when you start (now you start with 0)
Post-release: Ground COmbat
Boarding enemy ships
Custom races
Skill-based Hero Upkeep (now it is based on level)

These are the type of changes being looked at by the devs. These aren't "PINK SPACESHIPS, FUCK YEAH!"