[Santiago]

Playing Devil's Advocate.

"Yes, the bugs are annoying and inexcusable but I am confident they will be fixed (reminding some of these new players that SE4 went all the way up to 1.94!) so I feel confident that SE5 will do the same."

I am sure that will happen judging by Aaron's past history

"The point I want to make is that I do not believe Aaron set out to create a game with uber-AI. Reading the type of fixes, and the type and scope of modding that can be done within the code, I think Aaron in this version set out to create more of a game *system* less than a pure, singular *game*."

"Of course he would need to provide some semblence of a SP game for those who don't use/can't be bothered with mods, but this game was made all along for people like us - people he knew would one day create the greatest 4X game from his shell in gaming history. And this is the point I think people ultimately miss."

If that's true that he set out to not to create an Uber AI or even a decent AI, and that this is more of a sandbox type game, then it should be advertised as so. It doesn't say on my box that you need to play multiplayer or use mods to play. Nor does it say that the stock AI's are pushover's. For players new to SE, this comes as quite the surprise, just read the SF forums.

You end up alienating some new customers and also get mediocre reviews, which you may think is neither here nor there, but they matter to an extent in that retail outlets which purchased the game (ie Best Buy, GameStop, EB etc) won't buy more or pull them from the shelves and will have second thoughts about dealing with SF again.

There was a post or rumour awhile back that Aaron was doing this full time. For this to work effectively long term, you need sales. So keep that day job in sight.

"for those who don't use/can't be bothered with mods, but this game was made all along for people like us -"

While this may be true, it comes off sounding elitist. What it comes down to is that:

SEV is great for modders, but for players it sux.

As for modding, I hope I'm wrong but I forsee less modders for SEV than there were for SEIV. Why? Slightly more complicated- some people who previously modded but are not programmers see "Scripts" and walk away. Even worse for shipsets- now you need to be a 3d modeler. It would have been better to leave the game 2d with combat being 3d. I'd bet the game perfomance would have been a lot better and less graphics headaches overall.

And I'm sure a lot of you will say modding and shipsets are no big deal, but to a lot of us it is a big deal, whether its lack of skills or lack of time. I didn't want to pay $40 to be a Beta tester. I just wanted to play the game advertised on the box and I can't.

I didn't miss your point I just don't agree with it.