Ok, so recently I decided to finally make the step up to mars on one of my live worlds as it seemed like a good way to get ready for GBGs. I could setup with a bunch of VF goods producing event buildings and then move up to cover current goods (as producing large amounts of OF was going to be a challenge since half my good event buildings already were VF). No problem there.
But I'd long been lazy on story - still back in the middle of OF somewhere. Continent had become largely unimportant since goods boosts no longer really mattered and I had plenty of expansions. Knowing that mars changes that, I knew I had to get caught up and so I started blowing through story.
And holy crap, I thought I was bad for giving up story - but apparently the developers gave up on story too! Through the last parts of Oceanic Future it had turned into basically an alternation of 'take X province' 'do something else' 'take Y province' and since the map was largely linear the fact that the province you were being asked to take was often 3,4,5 provinces away from where you actually were was ignorable - just keep scouting and taking the next province til you find it. But in VF it really sank in. You had the big rich maps of the old world continents with multiple paths for potential progression and the story reads 'take X province' 'well where the hell is X province?' *checks wiki* - 'oh in that far corner of the map'.
While I can't confirm the absence of multiple lines as that'd involve getting a second city that far along, it seems unlikely given how generic all the story quests seemed. What ever happened to choosing sides or leaders it gave you a benefit to be nice to and other leaders that myciena would be gnattering in your ear 'i'm not sure how i agree with how you're handling this...'
Adding the colony interaction for mars continent was a good idea to give it relevance again - but if you're going to have story take prominence again you might want to consider a better effort than throwing together 40 provinces filled with random crap and a 20 quest linear "story" that doesn't even string them together in a coherent manner.
But I'd long been lazy on story - still back in the middle of OF somewhere. Continent had become largely unimportant since goods boosts no longer really mattered and I had plenty of expansions. Knowing that mars changes that, I knew I had to get caught up and so I started blowing through story.
And holy crap, I thought I was bad for giving up story - but apparently the developers gave up on story too! Through the last parts of Oceanic Future it had turned into basically an alternation of 'take X province' 'do something else' 'take Y province' and since the map was largely linear the fact that the province you were being asked to take was often 3,4,5 provinces away from where you actually were was ignorable - just keep scouting and taking the next province til you find it. But in VF it really sank in. You had the big rich maps of the old world continents with multiple paths for potential progression and the story reads 'take X province' 'well where the hell is X province?' *checks wiki* - 'oh in that far corner of the map'.
While I can't confirm the absence of multiple lines as that'd involve getting a second city that far along, it seems unlikely given how generic all the story quests seemed. What ever happened to choosing sides or leaders it gave you a benefit to be nice to and other leaders that myciena would be gnattering in your ear 'i'm not sure how i agree with how you're handling this...'
Adding the colony interaction for mars continent was a good idea to give it relevance again - but if you're going to have story take prominence again you might want to consider a better effort than throwing together 40 provinces filled with random crap and a 20 quest linear "story" that doesn't even string them together in a coherent manner.