Posted by: Corey
« on: April 11, 2013, 06:40:00 PM »Like a few other topics, I've wanted to respond to this for a while but haven't had a chance since I've been busy. Sorry.
Anyways:
I'd disagree with this characterization, and say you have it backwards. Phoenix Rising is, of the two mods, much more similar to how the original game plays and I'd say with fewer innovations.
What PR has always been good at (certainly better than us) is context and presentation, primarily in the form of documentation, even when it's not actually changing anything. They'll make what effectively end up being smaller changes to bring things more in line with how they feel things should be canonically, and do large amounts of public documentation about it. This ends up just being stat changes that I wouldn't call innovation. This isn't criticism or a value judgement about whether or not I think it's a good thing, but I think it doesn't really qualify as innovation. If you look through the news archives and the manual for Phoenix Rising, a lot of the major focal points of the mod are not so much changes to the gameplay, but changes in what that gameplay is built using. For example, canon armaments vs non-canon armaments. These changes are technically pretty small, but the way they're described in the mod give the impression of being much larger.
Where we're more likely to work out our system for planet values, put it in, and then say we've done it without really talking about the exact reasons for our values publically or to make it a focus of the mod, with Phoenix Rising you're more likely to get something like this post. Does that mean their system is more innovative? Honestly, I'd argue that it isn't, it's just better presented.
If you look at what we've done, by comparison, I'd say there's a bigger attempt to bring the gameplay away from what you'd get in the base game and to implement new features or remove those we think don't work in a productive way. I think this comes from having two different approaches to the basic design of the game, and to a certain extent to how we approach canon (in Phoenix Rising it's impossible toseperate the two). With our approach to both gameplay and canon, we take a more to-down approach. We have an overall view, and we impose that then adjust the individual elements to fit it, and put canon secondary to gameplay. We wanted the galactic map to focus on multi-region conflict between many groups, so we implemented changes like three-way galactic conquest battles, have a stronger focus on minor factions, etc. Part of the emphasis on gameplay over canon is shown in how we handled unit armaments as well. But where on PR, the aim was to put in all the weapons and determine an uprade path for each ship, then try to shape the gameplay of the mod around that, we decided on what we saw as a good range of hardpoints, what ship roles needed to be filled, and then built the representative system around that. This way we still had the same number of armaments proportionally, but we felt the end result was more conducive to fun gameplay.
Anyways:
Quote
This mod focuses more on improving the original game, and does so with much success. Phoenix Rising, on the other hand, focuses more on new innovations, again with success.
I'd disagree with this characterization, and say you have it backwards. Phoenix Rising is, of the two mods, much more similar to how the original game plays and I'd say with fewer innovations.
What PR has always been good at (certainly better than us) is context and presentation, primarily in the form of documentation, even when it's not actually changing anything. They'll make what effectively end up being smaller changes to bring things more in line with how they feel things should be canonically, and do large amounts of public documentation about it. This ends up just being stat changes that I wouldn't call innovation. This isn't criticism or a value judgement about whether or not I think it's a good thing, but I think it doesn't really qualify as innovation. If you look through the news archives and the manual for Phoenix Rising, a lot of the major focal points of the mod are not so much changes to the gameplay, but changes in what that gameplay is built using. For example, canon armaments vs non-canon armaments. These changes are technically pretty small, but the way they're described in the mod give the impression of being much larger.
Where we're more likely to work out our system for planet values, put it in, and then say we've done it without really talking about the exact reasons for our values publically or to make it a focus of the mod, with Phoenix Rising you're more likely to get something like this post. Does that mean their system is more innovative? Honestly, I'd argue that it isn't, it's just better presented.
If you look at what we've done, by comparison, I'd say there's a bigger attempt to bring the gameplay away from what you'd get in the base game and to implement new features or remove those we think don't work in a productive way. I think this comes from having two different approaches to the basic design of the game, and to a certain extent to how we approach canon (in Phoenix Rising it's impossible toseperate the two). With our approach to both gameplay and canon, we take a more to-down approach. We have an overall view, and we impose that then adjust the individual elements to fit it, and put canon secondary to gameplay. We wanted the galactic map to focus on multi-region conflict between many groups, so we implemented changes like three-way galactic conquest battles, have a stronger focus on minor factions, etc. Part of the emphasis on gameplay over canon is shown in how we handled unit armaments as well. But where on PR, the aim was to put in all the weapons and determine an uprade path for each ship, then try to shape the gameplay of the mod around that, we decided on what we saw as a good range of hardpoints, what ship roles needed to be filled, and then built the representative system around that. This way we still had the same number of armaments proportionally, but we felt the end result was more conducive to fun gameplay.