Are people who demand the wheel back selfish?

Hear hear! 

My view is that we still have the code and if people like a feature it's really not that big a deal to add it back for those who want it.

It has also served to discuss the general economic system of the game which is really invigorating.

I don't think they're being selifish for lobbying for a feature that was previously in the game.  It would be helpful if people would acknowledge that the system was a bit broken though. Someone getting 2,000 tech per turn from their planets must, at some level, understand that that's kind of game breaking.

While I don't think it was your intention, this thread is borderline flamebait.

I don't think it's selfish to feed back to the developer that they're unhappy with a change. After all, there were other ways to achieve the same result without remove a feature that a significant number of players enjoyed, and most of them would have done the job better. My own favourite would have been a massive production nerf, reducing building bonuses by about 25%, nerfing adjacency into the ground, and probably halving raw production and stripping it off colony hubs, too. 

As for this forum constantly being full of economic debates... well, yeah, the economy was broken as hell. It was going to be spoken about a lot. And the wheel change was a massive change in gameplay, and so was also likely to get some air time over the months before it's arrival. The AI couldn't use it, which was making the AI suck. The player was able to manipulate it so effectively that he could produce insane levels of output (you still can, to a lesser extent, since the major problem with it is excessive populations - a limit to maximum pop based on planet size rather than just farms would be a good move here I think). 

Funny thing is, we'd been moving much more into debating Diplomacy over the past couple of weeks, partially because it's the next big thing to be changed, partially because it's in need of a lot of work, and partially because we finally figured out how the hell it works so we were able to start discussing what was broken with it and how. Wider economy threads were running low, because we all knew the wheel change was going to sort out a lot of balance problems. 

No one should be considered selfish or a troll for expressing their opinion or wishes.  Just because someones view doesn't match yours doesn't make them selfish. The developers can chose to listen or not. Listening to the minority is often not the best way to go, but it can't hurt to consider it.

IMHO, fun and engagement should always have priority over realism.

Just to clarify, I'm not trying to start a flame war. Secondly, I feel like it is disingenuous to say that I'm calling expression of opinion selfish. If you have a problem, by all means express it. However, the degree of emotion and volume of these opinions about something that is without a doubt a feature used by a small minority detracts from discussion about features the majority could use. When you see the forum clogged with posts about economy and the wheel, there's a problem and at that point it becomes selfish to elevate a minority issue into one that obscures majority issues. But as Frogboy has clarified, it isn't taking away much development time which is fine then. Nevertheless, these threads should die down now.

I don't mind having it both ways. Where I can have the wheel if I want it. Here's my question regarding the economy if the wheel breaks the economy then how is this different from having controllable taxation in two which is the same reason you took away controlling taxation from a game that had a superior economy from two to three. How will this fix a problem where you also said was more or less broken in a superior game. If you are not confused I'm comparing two to three, and quitting from feedback that Brad only let founders, and founders elite. My point I'm making is this will not fix the economic problem with three. There will still need to have work done. You can make the wheel optional. Just explain to me how to put it in the game. I might have to make the file how do I do that. Give me an example file I can modify to do that. As far as modding options are concerned I think that should be as flex able as possible.

I'm really surprised to hear that only a small percentage of people were using the wheel... (How was this measured btw?)

Planet-local specialization was boosting your efficiency by at least a couple of hundred percent total... How did you ever reach the higher tech tiers without it?

So, if you are in the minority, you should not passionately express your opinion? How does it detract from other discussions. People with the other opinions and ideas can start another thread, and the devs can then direct their attention where they feel they get the most bang for the buck. Over the years, I've seen plenty of minority opinion threads that the devs don't bother posting in. But in no way does one thread detract from another thread. It's not a zero sum game.

These kinds of discussions always arise whenever you take something away from the game. Don't integrate stuff into the game, esp. if it's overpowered and players use it in order to play/win the game, if you'll have to take it out or nerf it at some point. Remember how forums went hot on the CargoSensorboat-dilemma? It's much better to do it the other way round, esp. if the quality or strength of specific thing is yet foggy: Introduce weakly and subsequently buff until a balanced state is reached.

However, a game that is under constant development, on xpacs etc, will introduce completely new stuff which will demand to rebalance older things - things that previously were balanced. Hence, you'll always encounter the crybabies that don't understand the greater scope of it.

Percentage of users who press the govern button.

That 2000 per turn research would require quite rare circumstances I think. Think best I've had was 1500 from one big(ish) planet which had favourable geometry, a pretty healthy population and every 'one per race' tech building I could stack on it (research capital, temple of enlightenment etc)  plus the 5 per colony bonus from the benevolent ideological tech line. Its not very reproducible really. Also if you have got to the point where you have 2000 tech per turn from one or more planets the game was probably over long ago effectively and you have just been mucking around. You can do a lot of things to try and pad your numbers after the fact if that's what you're into. Do we really need to balance around such outliers? Would be interesting to know if that was before ultra terraforming got taken out of game as well because that would be a factor for sure.

Hard caps or building/production nerfs would seem to target that problem more surgically though.

As to the OP, why it feels like a big issue to me, is that having spent quite a while evolving a play style to be competitive against the higher AI levels, I found that having local planet control and playing the adjacency game were crucial to remaining relevant against opponents that had 8 times my raw production and a host of other bonuses besides, especially in the early game to mid game. So its not just some peripheral feature its an integral part of a playstyle into which I have devoted many fun hours. Playing the game without local planet control feels a bit like controlling the game with your feet, its kinda the same game just a lot more awkward and clumsy. You obviously did not learn to play (like that) so the change seems insignificant to you but for those who did it is quite a big deal hence the potential for some emotion (helpful or not). 

Can we adapt to playing with our feet, I guess. I suspect that dropping the difficulty level down to where the AI plays its best but with reduced production bonuses  and learning to play over from scrathc might keep the game fun but I miss how the game used to be, to be honest.

The issue for many of us who want the wheel to come back is that there was NO reason to remove it in the first place. Sure, it required some balance and there was plenty of things that could be done to reduce the micro management it caused for those that didn't like it but still, there was NO reason to remove it. Dev hours were wasted removing a feature which only required some balance changes and a few UI buttons to fix. Now more dev time is being wasted re-implementing it in 1.5? You complain about us being selfish for wanting the dev's to waste time reintroducing a feature they removed without blaming them for wasting time removing it for no reason in the first place?

I confess I have pressed half a dozen time the govern button, just to see how the AI works with that or for captured backward planets. Do I enter the stats as 'don't use the wheel'? Because I used it for 95% of my others planets.

Now, I have no problem with not using the wheel, because planetary focus gives +25%, so that's good enough for me, even if having a fledgling colony having points in research is always a bit irritating. It's just that I wonder if the % of people using the wheel is not underestimated?

The wheel was a massive reward for micromanagement in a way that was simplistic and duplicative.

As to it being simplistic, you gain the most from a planet by maximizing one particular asset, the depth of this fact applies even to having a single manufacturing structure.  Short of a heavy bonus, you're far better off paying for structures on non manufacturing planets, and using all merchandising planets to fund the construction.  The wheel was a matter of setting it to 100% for whatever factor you set the planet up to produce.  No thought was required

As to it being duplicative, this is true both in impact and realism.  You already gain more from specializing planets, without the wheel, specialization is thus already a bonus, and simply becomes that much more effective, narrowing the game to only one effective way to manage planets.  The realism of having a populace focused on research is already obtained by building all research buildings, again negating the need for the wheel.

Specialization should be a benefit when a planet is weighted towards a particular factor, not simply the only effective way to manage planets.  The wheel greatly detracts from the depth of the game by amplifying what is already a system weighted towards one effective means of playing, while adding nothing worthwhile.  You may like having your super planet chock full of research or money production because it lets you win more easily, but you're simply exploiting a very poor design that the AI isn't utilizing, one which would be the only possible way to win were they to start.

Sure, it totally was. It was too rewarding with only drawback of some micro. It was too much of a chore to manage every planet manually in huge galaxies. And yes, from immersion standpoint - ruler of galactic empire (or republic or whatever) must not personally oversee every planet. So Governors are quite useful.

As far as i see, when people ask Wheel back they don't ask to throw away governors, they don't ask for wheel in it's original form - they want a concept that allows them to have a few heavily specialized planets they have total control over, even with some serious drawbacks.

Are those registered users only?  Or can you see everyone that owns the game?

Do focuses really change that, though?

The best planet layouts remain heavily specialised.  The player is still basically following the same process, too - set specialised products cation,  lay out specialised buildings. Production is now more in line with costs, but really, not much else is different. And the way it's been achieved is by coercing the player into a wasteful spending pattern that he's helpless to avoid. That's the real point. Few of the arguments in favour of focuses over the wheel actually stand up to scrutiny aside from ones that openly admit it's just a Nerf. 

"selfish"?

That's needlessly incendiary.

I didn't like the wheel because using the wheel was not really a strategic decision. You either micro-ed for a huge advantage or you didn't. That's not the kind of choice I like to have in my strategy games, especially when the "no-brainer" choice takes up a significant amount of time.

Would you have read the article if the headline had been phrased more mildy? We live in the age where peoples attention spans mean they crave inflammatory discourse or reactionary critique, hence the success of click-bait articles.

Social commentary aside, I think it's a necessary part of the discussion regarding how this game develops going forward. Whilst I'm of the Jim Stirling view of 'if you release a product as 'released' it's fair game to judge it as is on release day' and I think it's fair to say that GC III was not what was expected of it upon release based on its promotional material, but as that ships sailed, we can now hope that this game will see iterative improvements as time goes on after release. I feel that the wheel debacle has prompted a necessary discussion in terms of what people want out of the game. A lot of focus of GC III has so far focussed on min/maxing production, and I feel the immersion and civ management side has taken a back seat.

As Brad has recognised with his feedback here on the removal of the wheel, it became apparent that the wheel only further moved the game away from a civ management game and more of a very pretty, adjustable excel spreadsheet to get the most out of your production. The lack of finesse of the civ management side has I feel allowed those players more intruiged by the min/maxing side of the game to come to the fore, hence the massive backlash on these forums when a system instrumental to that play style was removed. 

Are they selfish? No. Are they right to kick up a fuss about removing it? Absolutely. Whilst I don't mourn it's absence, having a part of your audience complain at sudden, fundamental changes to the gameplay mechanics is all part of a healthy creative process. Yes, SD are set to lose some people by doing this, but it's also allowed them to rethink how to implement these ideas to accomodate everyone. Brad stating that he will re-add the wheel as a racial trait I think is a great half-way house for keeping those who enjoy the production management play style available, whilst allowing for a better way to play the game from a civ managenent perspective is a shrewd move, and one that ultimately wouldn't have emerged if those who disagreed with the changes had not been so vocal about it. 

Is this the percentage of users who have completed at least one game? Or does this include users who bought the game when it was on sale and have not even launched the game or played past 50 turns? I'm genuinely curious because it seems remarkable that an overwhelming majority of the players have not been using one of the strongest tools in the game.

Also, it creates some improbable situations. Do they not adjust their planet's manufacturing after completing all the buildings? How do they let their research planet focus on researching instead of wasting points on credit generation or spare manufacturing (regardless of your opinion on whether that's wastage or 'unrealistic coercion')? Or do these players just not specialise their planets and build an assorted bunch of buildings on their planets like the AI does?

They play differently than you do.  They specialize differently than you do.  They realize you can still do a lot with less than 100% control, sort of like dealing with human beings.  That does not make them sub-human, or improbable. Are you the only person who plays the game?  For example, am I a figment of your imagination, an improbable situation?

Sounds like you would like to explain

So do give me an in-game example of how you specialise differently in the game without the planetary wheel. Do you just build specialised planets (all research, all manufacturing, all wealth) without realising that adjust the planetary wheel multiplies your output from that planet or is it more an acknowledgement that it is there but you choose not to do it out of your own principles/laziness/whatever reason?

Also, it's not the people who are improbable, it's the situation. Is it improbable that someone playing basketball plays the whole game while hopping around on one foot? Yes. Cause depriving yourself of the use of one leg for movement in basketball noticeably reduces your chances of being an effective player. So if you're playing to win (as people who usually play games intend) then why choose to handicap yourself by hopping around on one foot?

Focuses are lower on the micromanagement and the impact, but no, they're still a duplicative mess of uber specialized planets.