honest thoughts on demo

[cato12]

hi,

the following are my thoughts of the demo after around 6 or 7 hours of gameplay. i was looking forward to PON but have to admit my enthusiasm has faded somewhat after playin the demo.

the features look fab, it has as much depth as ive seen in any strategy game ive played. the main issues i have are with the GUI as i seem to spend more time than i should have to find information thats important.


trade

asset balance screen,

i like that orders can be placed here but i dont like not bein able to cancel/remove orders. can the right mouse button not be used to remove orders?

what would also be great would be if when an order is placed here a new window would open up with the relevant trade area so i can see what and where the order is.

a list of all buy/sell orders would be really helpful. the manual says F5 should open a transaction list but it opens a strategic map instead, bug?

sales orders to countries also sometimes appear which means im selling goods i dont want to sell. is there a reason for this?


factories,

need more info on why factories close down. upkeep keep could not be paid. is this a financial or resource problem?

several factories keep closing down yet i cant see why. i have a furniture shop thats closed. it needs capital coal and wood of which i have 1010, 50 and 14 so why has it closed? this could just be a game mechanic that i dont get yet but it would be nice if i was told this in game.


ledger,

why cant we click on items in the ledger (towns, armies etc) and be takin straight there, it was in previous AGEOD titles so why take it out? with the added complexity of PON why make it harder to access information.

the regional census screen is the only place to view all our provinces and again why cant we click on a province and be taken there instead of having to scour the map lookin for some obscure place.

the ledger needs to have a list of all factories and sites so that we can see at a glance what sites are active/inactive and why. currently the only way to do this is to go through all the resource icons on the industry page and look for the different colours. the ledger should be more helpfull here.

as above, bein able to click n go to the province in question would be great.


general issues,

tooltips at top of the screen diplaying agricultural mine and industry doesnt seem to be workin. there arent any numbers listed up there in economic mode when playin as france which is obviously incorrect.

sometimes it really difficult to select cities when armies are present, paris seems really bad.


map,

the map to me is really cluttered and not easy on the eye like previous AGEOD games. wouldve been better i reckon to have had less provinces but bigger to include all the extra stuff thats goin.

i realize nothing can be done bout that now, its certainly no game breaker but thought id say anyways.

turn length has been mentioned before but i understand work is being done on this.


to sum up,

the added complexity and depth of PON is great but far to much time is spent finding information that should be more easily accessible imo.


im interested to hear if any of the above improvements can be added to PON.

[PhilThib]

OK, your remarks are duly noted

[cato12]

excellent!

i hope i didnt sound overly critical in my post. the positives for this game are there for all to see, one only has to read the dev diaries to see the potential PON has.

i think i read another post on the forum by someone sayin that as long as criticism is constructive its not a bad thing as it only goes to show that people here really want PON to succeed.

[AndrewKurtz]

I won't pretend to reply for the developers, but I thought your comments were very constructive and well presented. I didn't read them as negative, but as suggestions for improvements, which I think is all good.

An a very positive note, your comments were almost all about better feedback and interfacing, which means the core is strong.

[Seraphim]

Hi,

I totally agree with cato12.

I don’t want to sound overly critical, in fact I still want to buy the game and play a PBEM GC, but I must confess that I’m a little disappointed by the demo.

A lot of the problems I encountered have been already discussed in this forum, so I list them rapidly: the lag, the texts that go out from windows, the struggle with the production system, the unfriendly trade system, the difficulty of selecting cities when armies are present, the ledger underpowered and so on…

For the ledger, and the lack of accessible information, I would add something: for France you have 4 missions (1st army, 2nd fleet, 2nd merchant fleet, largest worldwide producer of luxuries and wine) but how do you know your progression in those tasks?
The 2nd fleet mission asks for a minimum of 30 warships but how many France already has? The ledger don’t show this info, nor the military screen.

And it’s only 30 warships: for the second merchant fleet you need at least 100 ships!
For the 1st army objective: 200 regiments!
I better tell you that I will not count them one by one!
Same for the “largest worldwide producer of luxuries and wine” mission: I have no clue of the ranking of my current production.

The core of the game is indeed strong, and very interesting; however, the interface and the lack of information are really frustrating.

[cato12]

so have any of these suggestions been put in place yet?

i bought PON a week or two after release but i havent touched it as i just know it would to frustrating to play in its current form.

[yellow ribbon]

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam!

yeah, many of the issues are commonly known, some fixed for weeks, some to be fixed in (we hope) the current patch announced for this days...

not free of bugs, but far away from comparable to the DEMO

give it a try after this weeks (hope so) patch, the fellows tested last weekend