Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?

[frightlever]

I was pretty vocal back in the day about how much SEV sucked. I recall saying some pretty bad things about Atrocities. Oh, I'm not apologising, just recollecting.

I see a lot of people who were optimistic about the game getting fixed back then, have changed their tune.

I hope Aaron has a back-up career, because his current project seems doomed. He never really made a decent or interesting game outside of the SE 4x games, and nothing really since SEIV, which is around ten years old. Now he doesn't even own the franchise.

I don't know whether World Supremacy is aiming for Risk or Hearts of Iron, but whatever it is, it's a crowded field. So is Space 4x these days, but that wasn't really the case back when SEIV came out. Nowadays you have everything from Sins to Distant Worlds, with a whole bunch in between. And they're being made by professionals.

I've been following the discussion over on Legacy. Laughable. I really hope they put something out but the minutiae is up their *** at this stage. I'd love to see an open source SEIV with a flexible, moddable engine. Once Shrapnel got involved with Legacy that didn't seem so likely. Fancy selling out, before you even have something to sell. Nice.

So, back to the title of this tirade.

If SEV had never happened would SEIV still have a vibrant community, or did it kill the joy entirely for most people? I can't even think of opening SEIV without getting a shudder of disappointment thinking back on SEV. More so, because there were improvement in SEV that could have made SEIV better.

OTOH I dug out my cherished copy of Stars! the other day and happily lost a couple of evenings to it. And that was made by ex-Microsoft Excel programmers in the 90s.

[Arkcon]

I don't think SE5 absolutely killed the Space Empires franchise. I seem to recall, just a little bit, that at the very end of the SE4 patch cycle, people on this board just weren't talking about it as much. When, just a couplea years before, this board was really jumping, constant stream of questions, new mod ideas, etc. Maybe ... maybe, we all just grew up?

[Gandalf Parker]

I think it did.
On the other hand, there are a couple of active project to recreate SEIV as an open source project. I have high hopes there.

[Xrati]

IMHO SE5 did to SE what Vista did to micro$oft! The GAME sucked but all the modders kept pushing it, till no one was left to listen. I installed the demo, played through a little and uninstalled it, all in one day. Not enough time you say? Enough time to realize the UI was not smooth and that's where the game IS played!

[Arralen]

Crap.
The UI is far from being "smooth" in SE4, with the missing of the right-click and all.

All in all, SE5 is the better game, because
- the AI is actually using scripts, not simple to-do lists
- those (and many more) scripts are accessible to modders

Do not play the demo, use Kwoks Balance Mod and watch in awe when the AIs actually take some sensible decisions!
(What you'll never see in SE4, as the AI does not really "decide" anything there ...)

What killed the SE series was not SE5 in itself, but the absolutely dumb idea to sell it to Strategy First:
They won't fund the still needed patch (and come one, no game is really finished, ever), they don't even react to email and the support form on their website does not work
Without that last patch, there are some bugs with show-stopper potential, which cannot be worked around completely.

Nevertheless, I've switched to SE5, and only go back to SE4 very seldomly ... and I always find its not worth it, no matter which mod I use ...

[Q]

Originally Posted by Arralen

What killed the SE series was not SE5 in itself, but the absolutely dumb idea to sell it to Strategy First:
They won't fund the still needed patch (and come one, no game is really finished, ever), they don't even react to email and the support form on their website does not work
Without that last patch, there are some bugs with show-stopper potential, which cannot be worked around completely.

Nevertheless, I've switched to SE5, and only go back to SE4 very seldomly ... and I always find its not worth it, no matter which mod I use ...

I agree completely. We still have here a working forum, while the Strategy First forum is down since weeks!
But as Arralen, I do play SE V because of the much better AI (modded of course), but I don't play SE IV anymore as the AI cannot be improved to an acceptable level.

[Captain Kwok]

I prefer SE5 over SE4 as well for a variety of reasons. There's a lot of potential left in the game, but unfortunately its also held back by some performance issues and a few niggling bug/interface issues. If you have the game and haven't played it for a couple of years, try the latest patch (v1.79) and give it a go. There's still a lot of players enjoying quality games.

SE5's shaky release didn't really help to re-invigorate the Space Empires community and by the time it had been patched to a respectable state, many players had already moved on. Unfortunately, I think Strategy First kind of left MM to dry on this one, not providing (or perhaps insisting on?) the resources that were needed for the game to be a success.

There's still a decent crowd at Fyron's Spaceempires.net site, with the most active SE forums around for both SE4 and SE5.

[Azselendor]

As for the drop in activity here, that's just Forum migration. It happens when a game migrates from one developer to another or when the focus of the community shifts.

I agree with kwok about the game's release. Strategy First left Aaron to wither on the vine while plucking SE from him. Now if there is another Space Empires game it'll either be by another developer at strategy first or when someone makes one to fill its vacancy, but I don't think it'll come from Aaron. Strategy First strikes me as the kind of company that'll buy all the rights to a brand and dump the original developers.

[gregebowman]

I loved playing SEIV, once I discovered it's existence. If it wasn't for a small article in one of the computer game magazines, I would never have heard of it. I played it for a couple of years, then sort of lost interest once I lost my internet server. then I discovered the public library here in Tampa had computers with internet, so I was able to catch up and regained my interest in the game. I think by then, SEV was coming out or had come out, and bought it, probably much later than the rest of you. I loved it, much better than SEIV. I didn't know much about how Strategy First got their hands on it, but I went with the flow and played, after downloading the most current mods and shipsets. But again, I've kind of lost interest. Maybe because there's not much on this forum anymore. That's what kept me interested in the game, the camaradre (?) I was getting from this forum. The helpful advice and tips on the game also kept me interested. But now, I think this is the first time in months I've visited this site. I don't know what it will take to get me back into the game. There are other games I'm playing, plus I recently started playing hte Dungeons & Dragons on-line game. Hey it it's free, it's for me! And if I could get a credit card, I'd probably be playing the Star Trek online game too. Maybe they'll have a free version one of these days. Maybe I'm just burned out on the game, or it's format. I don't know. If there ever is a SEVI, I'd buy it and hope for the best.

[Dorjan]

Been a fan of Space Empires since III. I've never actually modded the game or downloaded mods or even got involved in the communities!

But I'm still playing V now with a friend even though I stopped playing just after release (too many show stopper bugs) but now I'm enjoying it again.

What mods make the AI "better"? I've never done mods :S