MikkoM wrote:However, even in this option almost the exact same species are popping up in all of those different galaxies.
No - those galaxies are seeded deliberately by the Experimentors.
eleazar wrote:I'm not claiming that we need an explanation for why the game starts as it does, just that a good one would be a plus, and that players are not disposed to judge meta-game aspects harshly-- if they care at all.
If we have such an explanation, it's better if it's coherent, works for multiple instances, and isn't absurdly improbable.
"The Experimentors did it" is great for this, because:
- It can happen over and over again, differently in different galaxies and still make sense
- Nothing is left to random chance, so the player doesn't have to suspend his disbelief (not that most players really have a problem with that, but it is, as you said, a plus)
- The premise is based on the motivations of one of the precursor races, which links it to the overall storyline
In the hypothetical FreeOrion universe, if all the different instances of gameplay that the player experiences actually happened, what could the cause for it be? The answer seems very natural - we have a practically all-powerful race with insatiable curiosity for experimentation, which gives it the means and the motivation to create all of these scenarios.
Tortanick wrote:eleazar wrote:FO is not supposed to be a story-telling experience, like Spore. Sure we could give them a text field for the description of custom species, but making all the "backstory" text fields editable in-game really misses the point of what FO is all about: it's a 4X game.
Why not? It dosn't have to be a literacy epic but surely we could do something like Battle For Wesnoth, a nice simple story for each campaign. Each campaign takes place at different points on a long timeline.
I think he was referring to the "classic mode", not the story mode. Naturally, the campaign mode will have a robust storyline.