Official Thread - General Positive/Negative Feedback

[marine436]

also i love netural npc's attacking all or joinning one side, best implemntation ever.

[Darthscharnhorst2]

I have to say that I love the overall feel of the game.  The graphics, the sound, the level of detail far exceed my expectations.  

 

However, like some of the above posters, I am deeply concerned about the overall speed of the game.  I hope that the rate one can build ships was sped up for the demo and will be toned down quite considerably in the final product.  Otherwise I think keeping track of "day" played lacks purpose as the quick build utterly destroys the strategic atmosphere.  While I realize that the RTS and strategy crowds look for different features in a game, I feel that they can in fact coexist.

 

I have noticed that the player can slow down and speed up "game time" therefore I cannot fathom the necessity for the unrealistic, dare I say game breaking, ship build times.  While another poster asked for at least a five day build time I would request at least 5 months (still very short for a ship the size of a Star Destroyer.  Since there is a Unit Cap, an extended bulid time would force the player to "think ahead" and make each space battle count and each defeat really hurt.  If this is not possible or unwarranted, please include/add the option to use "realistic or hardcore settings" or the ability to mod it as I am sure that a signifigant percentage of the people who purchase this title desire a *deeper* strategic scope to the Galactic map.  Along with many other gamers who have been awaitng this title, I was looking forward to the strategic element as much as the rts gameplay.  However, with the build times in the demo I fail to see how much *real* strategy can be employed if the player can rebuild a fleet of star ships as quickly as they lose them. 

 

For a lot of us gamers who grew up on C&C and starcraft and who have moved on to games in the vein of Rome Total War and Hearts of Iron, Empire at War appeared to be the next step in the evolution and blending of the genere.  I seriously hope it does not prove to be two steps forward and one step in reverse.

Edited January 19, 2006 by Darthscharnhorst2

[Deadeye31_pff]

there is one thing I noticed. When you can still bomb things that are inside the shield. If you click on a point just outside the generator, some bombs will still fall inside and blow things up. I did this to the shield generator on tatooine. It felt very unrealistic and sort of a waste of time to see the shield at all when it was so easily bypassed.

[Darth Tyrant]

AMAZING, thats the word for this demo. Forget that it was too short. Don't forget that the purpose of it is to leave you the feeling of wanting more and more. That was the mistake Microsoft did with AOE III demo. They gave the people a demo with two skirmish maps and 2 campaigns, what happend?, people did it over and over, till when the game was released, me and some other people didn't found the same fun when we got it, because we play the demo so much that we got tired of it too soon; so I agree with Petro on making the demo short, to keep the excitement alive.

[Tenel]

BUG REPORT -

 

I had paused and alt-tabbed.  When I alt-tabbed back in, Han Solo in the Falcon was still flying around blowing things up. Everything else was paused since it was at the menu screen but the Falcon wasn't.  Happened twice in 2 seperate accounts.

[MD351]

Also a bug report! (I Think):

 

"Runtime Error!

 

Program: C:\Games\Star Wars Empire At War Demo\GameData\sweaw.exe

 

This Application has requested the runtime terminate it in an unusual way.

Please contact the applications support team for more information."

[Cobra848]

Remeber in this demo they give you lots of money so it is easy for you to rebuild a fleet very fast.  I am going to ait to play the final game to jugde if build time is to fast.  Plus being able to change it, helps too.  With the demo I can't really tell, but I like it so far.

_________________________________________________________

 

My biggest wishes is in the keyboard controls.  I wish I had more option.  Don't get me wrong, there are a lot, like the ones for each special  ability.  I haven't tryed the ones in the game let to see how they really work.  But I would like to choose commands like all starfighters, bomber, gunships, oe battleships.  So I don't have to put them into groups before battle.

 

End of battle assessment, doesn't show every enemy  unit that was destroyed.

 

I had the speed set at max, and a funny thing happen.  I selected my x-wings and I wanted to order them to attack a tie group.  But I missed two or three times because their icon was moving around to fast.  Not a  big deal, since the x-wings would have taken it out by them selves  (I just wanted to make sure they knew they were there).

 

Battle Camera seems to be a 50/50 deal for me so far.  Half the time it is great, giving me the best angles, the other half is, showing me something that is almost nothing happening in the battle.  But I kept hitting space till I find the angle I want.  So it works out in the end.

 

I hope there will be a higher zoom in ground battles (I just need a little bit higher).  With units like the walkers and Rebel Artillery with it's long range. 

 

Great job!!!!! Can't eait to play the full game.

[shadowsfm]

if units are too fast to click, its a good idea to pause the game, sence you can give commands while paused

[Wiking_pff]

Two things I thought of during the night:

 

1. bombing runs are too powerful. They can literally disintegrate an entire army if it would happen to stand in the way of an attack run.

 

2. battles are too chaotic, especially land battles. managing units is too difficult under fire (can't operate with more than one unit at once effectively), but even so, the battles seem too easy. I have yet to lose a single unit.

[Sven]

Here are some first comments from the users of cncforen.de.

We made a thread to collect user input and comments from german players who prefer to post in german.

So I'm translating those and posting them in here:

First of all: Got a shock, file not found error

 

Solved: Installed DirectX 9C from the demo over the existing DX9C - running the game now.

 

Personally I think that the battles in space are extremely confusing with all those little hectic X-Wings...

 

 

In space, the camera view is bouncing from side to side in an hectic way. I'm sure this is not as it's intended to. Can anyone please try to reproduce that?

 

Graphicscard: Radeon9800XT / Catalyst 8.172.0.0

WinXP Pro SP1

Athlon 3200+

 

Will install a new VGA driver and see if that will fix the problem.

 

I'm experiencing a bug at Tutorial 2: Clicking 'Begin' won't do anything. I had to restart the demo in order to continue.

 

A typical C&C in 3D look. The graphical highlights the screenshots provided are not really present and only to be found in the cinematic view (where you can not play in - why is that anyway?)

 

Also the battles in space are only 3D. Increases the ability for handling though.A But why the heck one needs a fleet in space? The Millenium Falcon is powerful enough to destroy everything around on his own.

The interface is practically the same as C&C, Hhalth indicators, grouping, deploying etc..

 

The galactivc view is not a real eye candy and reminds me of the 'hexagon' games. The building options are bad, in this area a lot improvements could have been done.

 

All in all it was fun playing the demo, it's not a space opera, it's a typical RTS in a Star Wars dress.

 

My personal comments:

On both, space and land, using the highest zoom-out (great that a zooming factor like this was implemented at all ), triangles are appearing at the edges of the screen, flashing towards the cursor. As soon as I zoom in again they are gone.

I experienced the same while playing HL2 and I assume it's because of WinXP 64bit (as I haven't had that using WinXP 32). But I'm going to install the demo on WinXP 32 as well to make sure it's related to the OS.

 

Next thing:

The engines suffers from high objects on planets, such as rocks. It stucks a little then while I'm scrolling. But this is something every 3D RTS Engine has.

 

And one more:

Using the 'Auto Detect' button in the video settings will set a resolution of 1024x768 with with details in the lower third of the bar. Having an AMD Athlon 3200+ 64bit, 1GB of RAM and a GeForce 6600GT this is weird.

I'm playing on 1280x1024 with full details and it's running flawlessly.

 

Besides this it's a great game as far as I can tell from playing the demo.

Petroglyph made their promise come true. The game seems to have a lot of the good things that the name 'Westwood' once stood for.

I'm very, very excited and can't wait for the release of the game!

Compare this to Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2? LOL!

[CommandoGamer]

The Game is great and i love the space combat for some reason

hmm the demo was way to easy  and i hope there will be a map builder in EAW

9/ out of 10

9/10

[Junker]

Where is the Thread to report bugs?

 

As I used the video modus in space and on ground the whole map was revealed to me. I was able to see everything on the map without discovering the map.

[Cain]

Look in the feedback forum

[Wiking_pff]

At the battle on Tatooine, Boba Fett just stood there and didn't even fire back until he died.

[Teradyn_pff]

Another thing I wanted to point out is the time factor for travel.  Someone had mentioned this before but I wanted to state it in this thread.  The speed of hyperspace is too fast, plus, you can increase the speed of a fleet by having Han in it, which doesn't make sense... the fleet should move as fast as the slowest unit.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn 889]

you know that Boba Fett is mant to do waht he wants we're not meant to be able to control him.

[Teradyn_pff]

Boba Fett was working for the Empire, he should have been AI controlled.  This is what Wiking is complaining about.  I didn't see him do much until he tried to retreat when the base was almost gone.

[Cain]

My Boba Fett was hitting like a mad man my troops and running away when he was in difficulty. He was quite a problem.

 

He was trying to take over landing spots but was not choseing were to attack wisely nor he was supported by imperial troops.

[Teradyn_pff]

Hmm, the AI may not be the final version in this build (or at least I fervently hope so).  At any rate, I don't see the single player as anything but practice for what I will be doing with the full version of the game, MP.

[shadowsfm]

took me 18 hours to try to download it. no fun at all. the game was sweet.

in the astrod field, on the rebel compain, it says its good for rebel fighters, does that include imp fighters? and the movie cam would always disingage, and it shakes alot like running against an invisable wall. in this system.

 

the first armor upgrade the rebels get in the tute is worded like as if it belongs to the imps.

 

in galactic map there was a sound bug, sounds like some one trying to blow a horn unsuccesfuly. and i zoomed in and out of planet details so fast that the camra moved over that i can see the planets no more (wich fixed itself when the camra focused on the next planet)

 

is there a run feature?

 

the lock on unit is nice, but not fast enough in close up.

[Seewolf]

i think the fast movemend of the fleets and troops will be there only in the demo and tutorial who wants to wait some long minutes for the next practise in the tutorial

 

in my sigth the demo was great. i order the game today evening ^^

 

so to the demo. some of the others sayd already that the ai were not aktive. they dont attack aso. it were be some nicer if they had attack or counterattack the asteroid fields so that we have to see how will it be handlet if we were attack. in my view the units died a littel be to fast for me. and the enemy reproduce a littel fast his troops. in the space battel. after i have shot down a tie fighter or bomber squadron the next squadron comes already out of the space stadion or from one of the two bigger ships. i mean its ok that a space stadion will have some defent squadrons like 3 or 4 but not huge fleet. the same is on the ground after some short timeperiode (1 to 2 seconds) there cames 1 atst after the next atst out of the factory.

 

for the tutorial the idea from the small story about invasion of kashyk aso is great. but it will be have some more fun if you can make the complette tutorial with 1 of the both fraktions

 

for the ground battels. the idea for the building pads is not bad but how will it be in the end of the game. did we pay them with the money with we have in the galaktik mode? or did we have some amount of money at the starting of the map? the next things have i already sayd some earlier. at the first tutorial mission we get the small repel base. i dont know if it was a bug or not. after i have build the anti inf turret and the bacta tank there cames a lot of troops out of the barrack. and in the ende it seems that i only need 1 troop as a garisson to defent the planet. because there will comes a lot of troops out of the producion buildings.

 

mhh the last thing. is my pc to low for the game at my standart solution 1240 x 1024 with 75mhz and full of detail and anti aliasing the game were slowered down and down

(amd64 3500+ with 1Gig Corsair and a Radion X800GT) ^^

[Deadeye31_pff]

there's one more gameplay issue I have. If you send a smuggler or Han and chewie on a steal credits mission, there seems to be no way to call them back. Unless this will be in the final game, I just thought it was odd.

[Blackjack2]

The demo has defiantly done its job. After playing the demo I have put Empire at War on my must have list. Having said that I’d like to discuss some of the issues I had as I played the game. I don’t have many but, to me they are important.

 

Issue #1: I was not able to Pause the game during the real-time battles. I noticed a pause button to the left of the interface but it seems to be disabled during battles and only available in galactic mode.

 

There were many occasions when the battles got a little frantic, especially on during my assault on Tatooine. I would love the ability to pause the game, assign my units a task which they will attempt to complete when I un-pause. At one point, I had my heavy tanks and artillery advancing on a turbolaser position, then all of a sudden Boba Fett made an attempt to sneak in behind my main force with his jet pack and steal my original reinforcement point. Han and Chewie were there and an epic Hero battle ensued. This was extremely cool. The problem was that I felt like I was “fighting the game” a bit to keep track of the hero fight and my turbo laser assault at the same time. I feel a pause feature would have alleviated this for the most part. Not to mention that I don’t know what I am going to do in the heat of battle when the phone rings or nature calls.

 

Issue #2: I was a little disappointed in the Cinematic Mode. It seemed to miss the action more often than not and the camera cut to a different shot way too quickly. I think these two things are related in that the cinematic mode cuts to a new shot before it gets to the action.

 

Ideally, what I’d like to be able to do is select a unit(s), i.e. The Falcon, engage Cinematic Mode and then have it follow the Falcon around in cinematic mode. I would prefer for not to cut to a new view on its own.

 

These were my only real issues with the game at this point. Otherwise, everything I saw was pretty good.

[Darth Tyrant]

At the battle on Tatooine, Boba Fett just stood there and didn't even fire back until he died.

 

Not to me. As soon I landed Han Solo and Chewbacca,  he came flying using his jetpack to hunt Han down( I like that very much ).

 

After playing the game for the fourth time, i can be more specific on the things that I found on the demo.

 

1) The game has been done very carefully, the details of the graphics and the gameplay are amazing, the movie camera is awesome and the zoom in is great.

 

2) Both factions are very strong, it took me like two times to defeat the empire on capturing tatooine.

 

3) Boombing runs are out of this world and the down timer is just right.

 

4) Planetary creatures are cool, although I'm interested on learning how to take control of the rancor ;D, like it shows in one of the movies.

 

5) I love the fact that you don't have to build a base in order to attack, like aoe III and c&c Genereals. Some people don't like that, but look at the bright side. Now you don't have to rush to win, in here you can enjoy the game. On generals and aoe III, people just rush in and don't take the time to enjoy the game . In EAW you concentrate on building your fleet and army, you don't have to collect gold or cut some wood and that is what make this game great. Is like a new and fresh type of RTS.

 

6) I love the side missions, thats awesome. being able to use a smuggler to steal money and a bounty hunter to kill him is cool.

 

7) Mini heroes like fleet commander and army commanders are great, because they really make a difference  on the battlefield. (imagine the main heroes ;D)

 

The AI interaction is very interesting and more real. Although I found that it could be alot better, because AI don't take in consideration your rank for what I saw on the demo. For those of you that already played the demo have notice that for the rebels, Mon mothna gives you the orders and for the empire some officers is the one that is giving you orders. Notice that at the last tutorial as the empire when you win the officer that gives you orders tells you that: " Grand Moff Tarking will be pleased with my success". He takes all the credits for himself, not that is wrong, because thats how the empire work, but they should include a ranking system were you can gain ranks and AI interaction with you change, like for example: if you are an imperial, the higher your rank, the more respect AI will have towards you and let you receive orders for higher ranking officers like Grand Moff Tarking, Lord Vader and the Emperor himself.

 

9) Space station and capital ships explosions are out of this world. I can't wait to use the Death star to explode a planet.

 

So Far in my opinion I cant find anything wrong or bad with the game. Honestly is a work of art. Some people complain that the demo is to short, but thats the purpose of it, to make it short and leave you with the feeling of wanting more and more.

 

For the expansion I would love to see the game integrate the expanded universe, from episode 6 and after, see heroes like Grand Admiral Thrawn and more infantry like darktrooper and more fighters like the tie interceptor, tie defender and the E-wing

[aliff69]

I have a small problem with the demo.  I can't target 2 key points on the starbase in the conqust and the camara can't rotate up and down.  Is there a glich in the demo?  Cause every time I go agnist the starbase I can't blow it up.

 

Brad