Fleshing out the universe

For DLC and general improvements this is my feedback:

Right now the game has a major issue with replayability.  There are several factors contributing to this:

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1.) Once the main campaign is complete there is very little to do.  There is no reason to explore, few side quests, a small number of easter eggs.  Replayability of SC:O is very very low.  After I finished the main campaign, I haven't booted the game back up.  This is a serious issue because it took me little over 13 hours to complete the campaign.  Although I'm a founder and an original SC2 fan, I can't see how an outside gamer can justify the cost of the game with the current package of content offered.

We are in a post Skyrim world where single player games are expected to be loaded with content, especially in a game with the universe as vast as SC:O.  The reality is, the universe is really quite empty.  In SC:2 there were many aliens to interact with (more than SC:O) and many of them were not integral to the main story.

In SC:O almost all aliens are required, there is no reason to explore outside of the confines of the main campaign to discover new aliens.  Without immediate expansion, I don't think the game is survivable with its current content package.

2.) Lack of challenge.  There are no superbosses, no challenge encounters, and nothing to really draw the attention of the player in terms of completion or difficulty after the campaign ends.  Part of this is due to how laughably OP you can make the flagship.  One of the major problems are deflectors.  Deflectors are so stupid broken you can just load your ship with them and take 1 damage from the most powerful enemy attacks.  This removes all elements of strategy from the game.

Deflectors and the type of hard damage removal they add without any penalty need to go.  There are also some incredibly overpowered weapons (Earthling Fighter) that trivialize encounters.  In the case of SC, no matter how powerful you made the Vindicator an UrQuan Dreadnought or a Kohr-Ah Marauder could still easily kill you.  The Vindicator and the most powerful alliance ship, the Avatar, was also completely useless against the Sa-Matra, forcing you to use other ships to complete the game.  This is a better structure of balance than what we have in SC:O where I pretty much fell asleep taking 1 damage from black hole missiles with my 4 deflectors and cheesing every enemy ship with the gatling laser.

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Expansion of the game is 100% needed right now, there is not enough content to keep players happy.  There are no endgame challenges, no reason for exploration.  There are no alien races outside of the campaign ones.  There are also some fundamental player challenge issues and systems that are downright broken and need to be fixed.

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SUGGESTED ROADMAP:

1.) Nerf the hell out of deflectors next update.

2.) When adding new campaign DLC add easter eggs.  Add new alien races and side quests but DO NOT tell players about them.  Don't even put them in the patch notes.  Let players discover the universes' secrets on their own.

3.) Add some rings to various gas giants.  It's silly that saturn is the only one with a ring.

4.) Add side quests and updates to existing alien races that give the player unique rewards with them (access to more powerful ship types, upgrades to ships of other races).

5.) Expand the Lexite story.  As I suggested before, it may be good to allow the players to start a new arc of the main game from the perspective from the Lexites using a new flagship.

6.) Add some extremely hard alien ships in deeper and unknown areas of the universe.  An example might be an evil Jeff probe called Bob that will just WTF own you without the right setup.  The Harmony and Amorata were good but you can still trivialize encounters with them using deflectors.  There also needs to be tangible rewards for meeting these challenges.

7.) Make player choice matter.  The campaign was extremely linear.  Your choices should have more consequences, leading to alien races leaving the alliance and becoming hostile, alien races being wiped out, or turning former enemies into friends.  There should also be hard choices.  Some races might hate each other and the player has to choose between being friends with one or the other.  The Mukay and the Greegrox is an example, let the player have one but not both.

8.) Dyson spheres.

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ALIEN RACE IDEAS:

1.) The Ouma and Varla.  The Ouma is a race of moth-like creatures that are relatively peaceful and SoS the alliance for help.  They are being attacked by another race of evil worms called the Voor.  The Voor believes they will ascend to the next level of evolution by consuming all of the Ouma.  The reality is that the Voor are larval forms of the Ouma that were genetically experimented on by the Scryve to become soldiers.  They were deemed a failure but continued to multiply, consuming the Ouma to correct their genetic deficiencies.  The player can destroy the spawning pools of the Voor to wipe them out, assist the Voor in consuming the Ouma to become genetically complete, or convince the two races to merge into one new race called the Varla that has powerful ships (best outcome but hardest to reach).  You can see here where player choice matters.

2.) The Sygzy are an alien race that live within a massive dyson sphere.  Their sphere is running out of power and they are travelling to a nearby star in order to consume it and remain operational.  There is a race of fuzzball non-space faring creatures called the Polpik that will be destroyed if the Sygzy consume their star.  The player can intervene by providing the Polpik with a colony ship so they can escape before the dyson sphere arrives.  Alternatively they can destroy the dyson sphere.  If the players evacuate the Polpik to a new system, the Sygzy will later provide technology to the Polpik that allows them to become space faring as reparation for destroying their homeworld.  It is heavily implied that the creator of the Sygzy is Jeff.

3.) The player finds ruins of an alien race called the Memnon, the players follow a breadcrumb trail of empty temples left by them that indicate that the Memnon believed they have found a gateway into their version of heaven and "ascended" from this world.  The players discover that the Memnon gate is actually another origin.  The heaven that they believed they were ascending to was actually the stomach of a quasi-demensional being that is now consuming them.  The players can assist the Memnon generation ships trapped inside the being and free them.

As cwrightc84 mentioned earlier, I also think the replayability of SC:O is fairly limited.  In my case I took around 30 hours to finish the game but I purposely took my time and completed all the side quests.  One idea on increasing the replayability is when you are starting a new game the side quests and miscellaneous alien races are randomised. So the next time round, you will discover different crashed ships or encounter other different species.

In regards to the DLC component: At one point i would have liked to see some of the SC2 races make an appearance, but now I would rather see the stories in this universe be further developed.  By the end of the campaign there were plenty of stories that needed to be continued.  In my case I want to more more about the Lexites and the greater evil that they are running from. (However I would like these new quests to be harder and/or more complex.)

It would also be good if the new DLCs could introduce new mechanics / features for the game.  An example might be to be able to build enemy ships when you destroy enough of them.  So rather than avoiding hard battles, there is an incentive to go blow them up.

Other that its just i need more, more adventures, quests, explorations, boss battles, ships, modules, weapons etc.

Some really good feedback and more importantly suggestions.

I will say, cw, you missed a number of things because species can definitely be annihilated (completely) in the game depending on your choices.  Even the lovable Tywom.   

I'm not sure how well you can really address replayability in an adventure/RPG style game.  But we are up to the challenge provided this rule is adhered to: You are the captain of a ship. Not emperor of a civilization.  I know a lot of our fans come from the 4X community (like me) so we have to be careful that we don't turn the game into a strategy game.

In response to the annihilation, my understanding is that races can be annihilated if you fail to protect them against the <END GAME SPOILER> fleet that is sending annihilation crews after them.  My understanding is that the Phamyshed can be annihilated if you take too long at the end.  These aren't really diplomancy events.  This is simply, not destroying the giant ship headed to their homeworld -which is the same method of annihilation that all the races face.

To be more specific, what we need is more meaningful choices that influence the path that an alien race takes based on diplomacy.  Star Control II and III have the following examples:

A.) Illwrath culture can be completely changed by manipulating Dogar and Kazon, resulting in sending their fleets against the UrQuan or having them align with the Pkunk

B.) Saving the Shofixti is completely optional.

C.) In SC3 you can completely change the Mycon when their new generation rebels.

In SCO, the races seem pretty set.  There isn't too much you can do to really shape their role in the universe.  For the most part, they are essentially MMO quest givers.

I think some of the things that need to be focus on to introduce replayability are:

A.) Hard choices you can't go back on that lead to a branching path.  Maybe you can align with one race but not another.  This compels people to be more invested in their diplomacy AND play the game through multiple times to see what happens if they chose different.  The problem with SC:O is that the choices are all the same, once you play through the game once you know exactly what will happen regardless of how much of a jerk or a savior you are.  This adds to the reason not to play again once you finished it the first time around.  This was also one of the main points SC:O was slammed on by multiple reviewers.

B.) Branching paths and stories that change depending on the order of events that you complete them in.  Again maybe you did quest A, but would have different options if you did quest C first.  This also adds to replayability.

C.) Unique rewards for branching paths that can only be earned if you take X path.  Maybe an unethical decision leads to a powerful weapon, but an ethical decision leads to a new alliance race joining.  Make players choose between reward sets but rarely should a path be punishing.  It should simply be different.  What the player ends up with should be based on their decisions.

What? No, the only thing you could do with the Ilwrath is have them attack the Thraddash.

There are lots of things optional in Origins. Stopping the Drenkend from attacking non-three eared species. making peace between Greegrox and Menkmack, Mu'Kay, Pinthi. Saving some minor species.

I disagree with this. With the Overmind one of the options of allying with is spreading it to some poor non-space-faring aliens, this will most likely lead to unpleasantness in the future.

There is also the fake ice world between the Menkmack and Mu'Kay, which will get you a reward from the Menkmack, but make the Mu'Kay unhappy with you and decrease the value of the reward for Ice worlds.

And if you modify the Pinthi dispersal module to eradicate the Xraki the Pinthi will be very displeased with you.

That is present with the Pinthi. If you have the meat puppet before allying with the Pinthi, you can send it to them to analyze its DNA. Then when giving it to the Phamysht they will have a rather nasty case of indigestion.

That already is present when allying with the Overmind. If you accept the upgrades and later remove the infection from your ship you get a powerful module.

Regardless of whether we agree with some of the observations, I think we can agree on a lot of the prescriptions.

v1.1 has a lot of the balance suggestions implemented.

That said, the most recent Spider-Man game has around 12 to 14 hours of content in it and doesn't have any re-playability after you finish.  I don't think every game should strive for having 400+ hours of content built in.  That sort of thing can come from the community itself which is why the Multiverse DLC is important to us to help with players fleshing out that sort of thing.

Although, I guess one option would be for me to copy the current universe, make the modifications, find a way to get selective amnesia and job done

Here are some random tibits, which I'm sure many people are also thinking about:

Need more icons/info on the galaxy map.  Stuff I usually find myself noting, should be auto tracked.

Progress of Earth's expansion on the galaxy map should also be more noticable.  Mark potential colony sites, and when you expect a colony ship to go there.  Maybe give us option to pick the order in which the planets are colonized.

The expanded planets should have options to upgrade them to provide resoruces/restock.

Some sort of trade network.

I'd love to see one of those minor species expanded into a full blown species with a comm screen. I think that'd be fun, not really necessary at all though.

Also I think it'd be cool if there were more missions, even minor ones, that require us to go into Scryve territory. There's a whole lot of territory there that could be ripe for some dangerous or interesting covert missions and I think that could be fun.

Aye, some updated comm screens would be a great future addition (though I know the voice acting and species modelling probably wouldn't be cheap...)