Hello everyone,
Reading player feedback is always an enriching experience, even if it can sometimes be a difficult exercise. Some opinions are expressed with passion.
That's why we always strive to go beyond words to understand the substance of your criticisms and suggestions.
We're fortunate to have an involved community, which often shares detailed, well-argued feedback. These discussions help us to better understand your expectations and refine Memoriapolis accordingly.
Of course, we're not immune to mistakes 🙂
For example, it turned out to be a bad idea to display an end-of-early-access panel after the medieval period. We've always envisaged the game as a coherent whole, with a beginning and an end. However, the systems we've put in place struggle to work well when they only cover half the game. We're actively working to improve this aspect!
Today, we'd like to take a moment to address the concerns raised by some of you. It's not a question of justifying ourselves, but of explaining our design choices and responding honestly to comments that we feel need to be explained.
QUESTION: Why an age-based city center?
💬 REVIEW : “Because I had to place the medieval and renaissance city centers so far away from my previous settlement even the main idea broke down - the settlements of the different ages didnt really grow into each other, instead I built three separate, segregated towns.”
💬 REVIEW : “After all, there is no one city passing through the epochs. Because when you move to a new one, game suggest you build a new city center and, de facto, a new settlement. And you can't redo the old (see the first part)”
OUR APPROACH: We explored several options before making this choice:
- Have a single town center that changes with each age.
- Build a new town center at each age.
We opted for the second option, as a single town center would have posed several problems
- With each age transition, the new city risked completely obliterating the old one; both for cultural buildings and residential areas.
- We wanted your past to remain visible, whatever decisions you made over the ages.
The city center is a trace of the past that you must preserve throughout the game. You can also anticipate its evolution by leaving room for the next town center.
What's more, certain cultural buildings, called “mixed” in the game, can evolve from one age to the next and transform neighboring districts.
The choice is yours:
- Either mix the neighborhoods to form a single large city.
- Or develop a new part of the city next to the old one, as in many European cities.
QUESTION: Why can't I destroy everything?
💬 REVIEW: “Not being able to erase roads or fix them, makes it really chaotic and annoying.”
💬 REVIEW: “To begin with, there is no way to redo a section of the city, which means that the pottery workshop, which becomes obsolete almost immediately, is with you until the end of the game.”
OUR APPROACH: Memoriapolis is based on an algorithm that autonomously generates neighborhoods to recreate complex, coherent cities. It's not perfect, and it can sometimes produce unexpected shapes, but its aim is to prevent each city from resembling an overly rigid grid.
We've already modified elements of the game to address these issues:
- The player can destroy cultural buildings, which was not the case in earlier versions of the game.
- The player can position a building on a road, and the road will automatically adapt to the player's needs.
If everything could be freely modified, the risk would be to spend your time redoing everything, without ever being satisfied-which would run counter to the experience we want to offer.
Finally, no building becomes obsolete, especially production buildings.
QUESTION: What are my objectives?
💬 REVIEW : “No challenge, and you end up just sitting and waiting for your numbers to be big enough to place the next mildly impactful building while your city grows "organically"..”
💬 REVIEW : “The gameplay simply consists of placing a building, waiting for houses to be placed around it, then placing another building and waiting for houses to be placed around it.”
💬 REVIEW : “I feel I have no control over the development of my city, and I don't like the race against time and timed objectives,”
OUR APPROACH: This subject has come up a lot, and we've put a lot of work into it. Memoriapolis spans four ages, but for the time being, only three are available in early access. This can make it more difficult to understand what's at stake in the long term.
Nevertheless, we've taken your feedback into account: the game lacked intermediate objectives and clear feedback on the impact of the player's actions. Here's how we've reworked it:
The objective is to remain at the head of the city until the end of the Age of Enlightenment. To do this, you have to prevent too many districts from closing, or risk being deposed.
How to avoid these closures:
- Factions must not become too powerful.
- Citizen satisfaction must remain high, as unsatisfied needs provoke incidents that can lead to neighborhood closures.
Finally, the Esplanade plays a key role. It's a gathering place where certain groups express their expectations. At each age, they intervene 4 times. If you meet their demands, you'll get a valuable resource to make your city unique at the end of the game.
QUESTION: What kind of game is it?
💬 REVIEW : “I've been ripped off, so don't do the same, move on and come back to Ages of Empire.”
OUR APPROACH: Memoriapolis is not a real-time strategy (RTS) game, nor is it a war game. It contains no combat. Unfortunately, we seem to have miscommunicated certain elements, leading some players to believe that Memoriapolis contains combat.
The fact of changing age may also have misled some players, who thought that this mechanic would enable them to evolve their units, a bit like in a famous 4X game which has just released its seventh opus...
Not so.
Memoriapolis is a City Builder, where the main challenge is to maintain balance and control over your city over the centuries. Every choice you make influences its future, not through war, but through the management of factions, neighborhoods and historical events.
If you like management, urban planning and building a city that evolves organically, then Memoriapolis might surprise you.
🙏 Thanks for your feedback and happy playing!