>developer of Warhammer 40k Gladius is making another game
>it's literally just Warhammer 40k Gladius except without the Warhammer IP
>post-apocalyptic humans vs aliens vs AI setting
Thoughts?
 It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
 Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
Their game before Gladius was also just Warhammer 40k Gladius without the Warhammer IP. I hate Gladius for its monetisation model, but the Zephon concept of inter dimensional invaders vs rogue AI with humans caught between is pretty cool.
Huh? the game before was an Alpha Centauri imitation
I'm slightly interested, Gladius was fun, and this is more with diplomacy and extended research.
So maybe will be good
it looks exactly like Gladius, AI cant really handle the complexity of positional combat of 1 unit per tile, i wish they went back to their Pandora game aka SMAXC copy where you have full 4X game with empire building (shared between city pop growth system sucked ass though) with unit stacking its easier for AI to handle army movement.
It's so fricked that they didn't even change the UI for Gladius. I'm sure they are a small team, but goddamn do they seem like lazy c**ts. Their games are just barely good enough but they could be good if they put a bit personalisation into them.
I always was curious about this, was it good?
Pandora?
Nah, not really.
Looking forward to it. Gladius is the only 4x you can play in multiplayer without any desyncs whatsoever, i hope they don't drop ball on it with zephon too.
It will be ok but it will fail commercially because there wont be wh40k audience to eat it up. WH40kgays will eat up even biggest slop, on its own Gladius was ok/good game but not great.
that color palette is atrocious
Demo comes out today. I think you can play the first 50 turns.
I think the demo is an alpha build, not sure.
I'm cautiously optimistic.
>pre alpha dev demo a year before release
While i am curious to see the game i don't really get the reason of doing something like that. Do they really need playtest feedback that much this early?
I liked gladius
demo was fun
I thought a single play through was enough for gladius. Repetitive as frick, no research or city dev essentially killed the game
Gladius is just a wargame where you pay 20 dollars to use your favourite WH40k army. There's not a whole lot to it. I'm hoping Zephon is more of a 4x this time.
the game legit looks like it came out of an ai's butt
The IP felt more constricting than enhancing in Gladius.
Maybe with free form growth it will play even better.
There is also similar in theme game coming up Revival the Reconolization. But this feels a little tighter and better developed from the start, probably because devs are more experienced.
I found Gladius too shallow to enjoy but I think relatively minor changes could have made it much better, so I'm hoping a second shot at the formula lets them actually nail it this time.
After playing the Zephon demo, the combat system seems (unfortunately) like a carbon copy of Gladius. Unit design and balance seems a bit better, but I expect to see the same problems if they don't change anything before release.
They do seem to have added complexity to the economy side of things, which is nice change. More units, more resource types, and research items that give upgrades to production buildings.
How is the narrative event system? Is it similar to how the Endless games handle their faction questlines?
I didn't see much of it in my one playthrough. I got a single event about halfway in that threatened consequences if I failed, but I succeeded and didn't get anything else after.
really hard to judge due to demo's 50 turn limit combined with random appearance of the events and also somewhat random outcomes with some of the options
Yeah on the combat system, like, the core idea in my opinion works very well. But the actual balance and implementation of it in gladius was awful, and this game is maybe sliiiightly better, but still shit. In Gladius they were kinda limited to making units work similar to their original IP counterparts, I'm hoping here they can be more creative. If i were to say how to fix it, I'd say units need more abilities, passives, weapon modifiers etc. No unit (except maybe the militant, which lets face it with access to all those grenades and rapid fire isn't really that bland anyway) should be bland. All of them should have multiple tricks and shit. Like the outrider right now is just a boring, generic recon transport, i feel like it needs more.
Oh as an example of what i mean, the abkluth riders can research extra damage vs biologicals, can tame enemy abkluth and get a bonus moving through forests/ruins. The abkluth one feels almost like a flavour ability, one of those need to be researched, so they basically run fast. And until you get that research, their spear and abkluth bite have the exact same damage profile. Giving them something like bonus damage after moving on the spears (lance charge type shit) might help give them more of a "role" beyond just a melee unit, and you can specialize them into anti-biological with that research.
The cyber infantry, the ishin enforcer? Its not only tanky, but its weapon doing half damage if you fired it last turn, and it having a self healing ability leads to it having a clear gameplay pattern of move up, shoot, heal if you took damage back, shoot again, then as its heal is now on cooldown, it can be eventually worn down. That seems like a much better design than "just move up and attack i guess". Its upgrades giving cover (which can be ignored by melee or cover ignoring) rather than generic armor (which is just always good unless you are overpenned) and the "ishin buff each others accuracy" encouraging you to run them in a tight formation helps continue to give them an identity.
Also why the frick do the Abkluth riders get nothing bleed related? The Abkluth aren't just immune to bleed they heal in it. Abkluth Riders should get some benefit like abkluth can guide them through the bleed, so the movement penalty is removed and the damage is halved or something.
>generic armor (which is just always good unless you are overpenned)
This (and high-pen weapons without downsides) were by far the biggest issues with the Gladius combat system. You end up with high-armor units with high-pen weapons fighting other high-armor units with high-pen weapons. Nothing else can compete.
There are so many easy fixes to this that it boggles my mind that the design team doesn't seem to have implemented any of them in this sequel.
Agreed 100%. On the other hand the human t1 vehicle felt very versatile already. Good movement, scouting ability, 1 transport slot and researchable mines (early game strategic infantry killer)
But thats exactly the unit i listed as boring. I feel either its gun or defenses need a rework. The transport for cyber can go on water, heal troops, has a missile pod so not similar to infantry, lets units move after disembark etc. Outrider feels like it's a generalist jack of all trades.
Playing the Demo, i feel a lot more satisfied with this than i did with gladius. I think partly its because the mechanics fit the setting a bit better, but also because having factions be variants of one core tree rather than entirely distinct seems to fit their gameplay model better. Also generally some stuff like the UI has improved, and the new setting is interesting.
GME stocks confirmed.
I'm the architect so i went planned economy, can't have my precious experiment outside of my control. Gives -10% to all influence gains (not sure if its in this city or all cities as i don't have a second one yet) but +1 loyalty. Its permanent, not timed.
Will it have voice acting? I hate how fricking quiet and dead Gladius feels. May as well just play a physical board game.
yes, i saw on steam forums one of the devs complained its costing them a lot of money, imo if you spam 20 paid dlc for indie game with barely any content you lose all right to complain about such thing.
Fricking christ, Gladius did really well for what it is. What are these spurgs spending the money on. Unless they have a shitty deal with GW and they didn't make anything off it.
The units talk in the demo. The leaders don't for diplo etc. Stuff like "this isn't the world i knew" or "im here,or whats left of me is" typical strategy game unit selection lines
Is Gladius no longer going to get new stuff?
>Thoughts?
really? You're asking if we're okay with getting scammed? Why would anyone pay for Gladius 3 times its a shit shallow game anyway
emotionally scammed*
game isn't out yet
>get Reaver event
>was expecting Reaver units
Also this is giving me Tiberium vibes despite the fact that it's about Skynet vs Cthulhu.
That and Motoko Kusanagi is a hero unit.
Its very Command and Conquer by Neill Blomkamp, with David Kronenberg handling the aesthetics.
The human/cyber/voice split reminds me a little of civ beyond earth.