[PC] Master of Orion

[christian]

2214547-masterorion.jpg (329.89 KiB) Viewed 1733 times

[christian]

Why There Will Never Be Another Master of Orion - http://www.garath.net/Sullla/MOO/mooeditorial.html

I would argue that the original Master of Orion is so brilliant precisely because it went in the opposite direction from virtually every trend currently taking place in the gaming industry. It was done by a small team (I think about ten people) working on a small budget in the early 1990s. Good luck seeing anything like that from the "full HD / full voice acting" MOO 2016 reboot! At a time right now when every game wants to emphasize how many doodads and extra bells and whistles can be crammed into the product (hello blatantly unnecessary DLC!), Master of Orion was a relentlessly streamlined experience, cutting out everything extraneous. I don't even think it would be possible to replicate the original design in today's marketing environment. Can you imagine if the design team of MOO 2016 went to their publisher Wargaming and said, "We're only going to have one victory condition, the Galactic Council, and that's it." Something tells me the publisher wouldn't be too pleased. They would probably say, "Only one?! Civilization has five victory types, we need AT LEAST that many!" And that would miss the point entirely, since the simple dynamics of MOO's Council setup are outstanding. Adding a tech victory and an economic victory and an "excellence" victory doesn't improve the gameplay - it detracts from it. But due to the way that modern game design and marketing efforts work, those extra victory types will always, always have to be added. MOO 2016 is competing with Civ5 and Galactic Civ 3 and all the Paradox strategy titles, so anything in their games must also be in this one, good gameplay fit or not. The marketing blurbs define the gameplay, not the other way around.

In other words, because it was made in 1993. Since the new MOO is coming out in 2016, and will have to compete with the other big name strategy titles, it will necessarily suffer from bloat and other such abuses at the hands of a major publisher.

There's more than a little intellectualism at play here, especially evident in his disdain for "mass-market games" and his conclusion, "If there is hope, it lies with the indie designers", which has led him to saying that "FTL is the single best strategy game released in the last five years."

[christian]

http://sirian.warpcore.org/moo1/player.html

This game's creators knew what they were doing. It shows at every turn, in a thousand small details. They never lost their focus, never got overtaken by feature creep, never allowed attachment to pet ideas to override what was best for the game. Truly a masterpiece. I only wish somebody would come along and make a new game that is half as good. Better yet, a remake. Remake this game, just as it was, with new graphics, a few upgrades to the tools for empire-wide management, a stronger AI, a few bug fixes, an editor, and more options for setting up games and crafting scenarios. Is this likely to happen? No, but one can dream.

[christian]

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/mini-game ... or_morons/

So what I want is all the world's most ambitious and talented developers to stop designing newer, more complex games, and go back and endlessly rehash decades-old games, only with shinier, higher-resolution graphics, gritty, realistic proportions, and perhaps random motion-sensing gimmicks. Yes, that's what I'd like! In other words, I want the videogame industry to halt all progress and instead endlessly repeat itself

[christian]

Stellaris feels like a game made by EA. - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/in ... ea.930339/

I don't think EA is the right analogy (EA games are much more polished), but [Stellaris is] definitely a thin version of Master of Orion.

Highly recommend Master of Orion 1 & 2 to anyone interested in a more complex 4x experience, by the way! These games are from the early '90s but there's a lot more meat on their bones, plus they have better AI (e.g. AIs don't send 1 assault troop at a time to fortified planets).