Kamino72 wrote:I really love this kind of games. I gave Cap Lab a try.
The good :
- there is no other recent game in this category
The bad, the worse first :
1) far far too much micromanagement,
2) too many hidden datas and mechanics,
3) poor city modelisation,
4) lack of flavor.
Sorry if you find this harsh, but this is exactly how I feel it.
The only way for this game to have a future, imho, is to fully open it for modding and to hope a community will build upon.
This is not the kind of game you think it is.
Cap 2 consistently rates 8.5 by critic review, and usually over 9.0 by user review. CapLab hasn't broken anything yet, so I rate it slightly better.
1) It's expected to be somewhat micromanagement heavy since it's a management game. It's not nearly as heavy as it could be... you don't have to train each worker individually. I'm not that into the micro, so what I often do is play only one city at a time.
2) Don't know if you're just being facetious, but none are "hidden". The manual gives a lot of information, more than I would have expected even back when games had good manuals. Of course there are some surprising points (such as, demand for tobacco decreases), but sometimes you just have to ask. Did you read the manual? Honestly, I don't know the last time I saw so many specific formulas. In almost all games from SimCity to GuildWars, the underlying mechanics have to be derived by the community base. Contrary to what you claim, this game offers almost all of them up front.
This point about detailing the mechanics mostly conflicts with having less micromanagement ... usually only somebody who like micromanagement likes all the fine data. For example, I guess it's impossible to get an exact number of units sold, but the actually beside the point: Only the revenue and profit matter. So, I'm actually kept on course by ignoring some details, rather than falling headfirst into the near-sightedness of too much info.
3) It's a great bit better than Cap+. Regardless, I'm the guy that would be happy playing this in text only. But I wonder if the point to be made here is that this is not (yet) a City Building game and -- based on Cap and Cap+ -- it wasn't meant to be. But people have expressed interest in those features tho, so some are being implemented. I don't mean to be presumptuous, but this is not the game were you plop down a house and watch residents move in, and I hope it never is. I want to be a business manager, not a city planner.
4) Idk. Maybe. It's easy for me to agree, actually, because Cap+ had three different product set Themes, and this only has one. But, I also favor having one good product set rather than any number of inferior sets. But all-in-all, "lacks flavor" is very unspecific. What kind of flavor?
To respond to your closing, do you realize that
we are the community building this game? The Enlight team is responding to all our suggestions, and there are implementing our changes very quickly. You're speaking like it's a dead game, and I guess it's a bit ironic, because this game was dead 10 years ago. It's now come back to life. When I first found CapLab, I thought it
was somebody modding Cap2. So, I think that's sort of spot on, but what you state is the future is actually the present. This community is the future of CapLab.
So, welcome, and good-bye, I guess
But if you cared enough to post feedback, perhaps you'll stick around. Have fun whatever you do!
