Michael Austin

That's exactly what I'm saying: I don't want to make my own goals. Games are my brain-dead time. I'm not a kid anymore, so I don't spend my day fantasizing about different ways to play a game, I just shutdown for an hour or two. Remember the casual player: We pay money, we want fun given to us. If I want to choose my own fun, I'll write my own game (yes, I am a software engineer and have written games along with device drivers. I decided game development wasn't fun and device drivers were

Here's the deal: I'm a working guy with a needy wife (they all are). I love sandbox games, but I lose interest after a while because if I go on a business trip for a couple weeks, I lose my context and aren't sure what to do next. With achievements, I can come back and say "Ah, I haven't fried the space ponies yet". And thus I get out my pony-be-gone frigate, attach a galactic size wok, and hunt space ponies. What fun! It's a mini campaign that puts NO constraints on my method or fun. G

Vinraith, I was actually talking about acheivments in a game I LIKED. Acheivements in a game I didn't like would suck, but then anything extending play time there would be a bad idea. Fortanately, Sins is a delight for me, and thus the pleasure derived from acheivements. Besides, achievements shouldn't take that much time to add. I'm sure they are using an event driven system, so the checks would just be added at the appropriate event. Coming up with good achievements (which could be added

It has a system with small challenges: Beat the game with only capitol ships Raid a pirate base Beat 3 enemies, while allied with a forth, and manage to share baked space ponies with all. Just little challenges that make an interesting challenge and context to play the next game. Enough of these, and the games longevity is pushed WAY out there - especially for sandbox games. I didn't like achievements on the Xbox, but they seem to actually work where the game has no "

Anyone else in love with the idea of 100+ acheivements to fight for in TA?

I've played GALCIV 2 and Dreadlords to death, and pre-ordered Twilight. I also just purchased SoaSE and had an unexpected surprise: These sandbox games REALLY REALLY REALLY benefit from a HUGE acheivements list. Instead of a story, or some small trick you can build an entire empire based not on economy or military, but on beating all 8 minor races in a huge universe. Just a thought. That achievements list in Sins is keeping me going on what would have been

I love the above mentioned ideas of anomoly guardians for MAJOR anomolies, and the ability to set a planet to "production", "research", "military", "money", "universal", "Galactic Achievements", and have the planet produce the next improvement that would best achieve those goals. I'm more of a casual player, so these options would make things more interesting, though I understand that there are many more "hardcore" ideas that may make more people happy. I like to macro-manage. <a href

I've noticed a small bug that ends up being an annoyance more than anything else. When in battle against another civ, they will attack your freighters. Good idea - kill revenue - kill enemy. However, if you build the acheivement that protects all of your trade ships (I forget the name - galactic privateer), then the enemy will STILL attack your trade routes. However, when they do so, it takes about 3 - 10(or more!) seconds for the system to realize that the attack is going nowhere. This sho

I have this same problem. I just sent a bug report in from smart exception. I also attached a save file.