The Conquest of Go - A Videogame featuring Go Gameplay

3rd Party Apps for OGS
290

Great release. Great game. Can only recommand this.

Still after opening this game again after a while I do have some subjective feedback I’d like to add here. Not sure if you have a Trello or something like that but it’s easier to just post here.

I. Board Themes
The available campaign themes are: forest, farm, snow, desert. Great. But the game has been in development since 2019 and I think the good and fun themes are one of the USPs of this product. So why not add: dark forest, space, under water, clouds, on the water, mountain, etc. you name it. I think there could be way more interesting themes by now.

II. Animations / Stones
I mean I get it the initial concept was having stone wall like stones that then create a group and crumble when attacked. Good idea and good implementation. But why not add more fun here. How about: exploding stones, stones falling through the ground, stones getting sucked into another dimension, stones cracking like eggs, etc.
I would pay huge moneys for a DLC that gives me StarCraft Broodwar or HighFleet like explosions when detroying a stone.

III. The new Online Mode Campaign
In general I like the idea and that was one of the reasons for me to open the game again after quite some time. I think the Campaign Mode is the second USP this game has. BUT I do not really think the concept (referring to the online mode, playing against bots works great) works quite well in its current implementation. As is listed in the release notes:

The automatic campaign difficulty adjustments after playing matches and reviewing matches will not take place for online campaign matches since online ranks are separate from AI difficulty and handicaps.

This is kind of an issue. I think the game’s campaign works great when playing against bots, there are resources that can be used, the difficulty is adjusted in a way that is meaningful to the campaign and going through reviews gets me stone advantages. This is all great. But it does not work well with humans. When I just go through standard matchmaking I will always just get an opponent that fits my rating. There are no stone advantages through reviews, there are no resources and the strength of my opponents continuously adjusts to my strength instead of integrating with the campaign. The experience lacks the continuity you would expect from a campaign.

IV. Small point: The impact text when doing reviews
This has bothered me for a while. When I’m doing reviews and jumping to a move recommendation, just tell me what the impact is and maybe show the paragraph on hover. The way it is now I always get the same paragraph of text having to find the one number I’m interested in somewhere in there.

Conclusion
Still a great game that every Go fan should buy. These are just a few things I came accross after spending many hours with it.

2 Likes
291

Thanks for the feedback. New themes/animations may be a possibility in the future though they’d likely fit in with the existing aesthetic (no space, scifi etc.)

On online campaign mode matches, yes, the difficulty adjustments are disabled because OGS already handles difficulty adjustment with your online ranking. Although it depends on the player, many players are usually seeking mostly even matchups (adjusting to the player’s strength), even against the existing AI opponents. Obviously all of the assistance features are disabled for online play to keep matches fair for online opponents, there’s nothing that can be done to avoid that. The way I see it is that the online matches are just another optional type of match in the campaign, like AI matches, ally matches, and invasions, and also even similar to how its optional to increase your advantage after completing a review. The online matches aren’t required and are there for people who wish to use them, even if that’s not everybody, such as yourself. For those that are seeking even matchups, the standard online ranked matches will likely work well for them. Even if that’s not what you’re seeking, you may still find use in the online matches such as playing online bots of any rank, unranked matches, and playing against your OGS friends.

For the reviews, I assume the number you’re most interested in is the score loss value from the paragraph? This can likely be streamlined a bit.

1 Like