Gaizokubanou

Well, if you play hardcore and push yourself to the hardest difficulty you can possibly clear then you are essentially treating it like a rogue-like, which is very cool. But my experience with the game (1 2 and 3) and its community is that good majority seem to play the game for the 'phat-lewt', and that the best way to get it is find the difficulty (for d3, d2 farming was obviously more simpler cause of limited difficulty scaling and etc.) you can clear fastest and then to clear it as fast as possible over and over and over. Hence the famous stuff like "mephisto run", 'baal run', 'cow level run', (sorry for d2 exclusives, kinda hazy on d3 names for some reason despite it being more recent :x ) which were all about getting the key monsters killed as fast as you can, as frequently as you can. That is pretty classic example of trash mobs I think, because you are repeatedly killing the same entities you have complete mastery over for tiny bit of progression. And that's kinda similar to how I and all the people I met that played D3 doing that weird portal what was it called umm Edit: Oh yeah, rifts.

JRPGs are not alone in this though (but probably most famous/notorious?). Best poster-child for this would probably be Diablo franchise. It is disgustingly unabashedly shameless about its embracing of killing trash mob for slow progression as core attraction, that I'm not remotely weirded out by that string of adjectives I put together to describe it. Then F2P games adopted and thrives on this (free to RPG, pay to skip forward), so did FPS (unlocking perks is so commonly identified as RPG inspired system)... now I am aware that way I'm talking is becoming close to being circular because I'm appealing to the raw appeal of it, but I suppose that is what I am saying kekeke My point, yes JRPGs have faded but whenever we see this game design trope, I just think it is so commonly referred to as 'the-RPG-system'. I mean, what is the most common genre associated with character (to exclude games like say, city builders) progression via repetition? If yours is not RPG then I am genuinely curious as to what your own answer is. Since this is definition discussion obviously none of us are right or wrong here beyond the scope of what is more common and what is less common but that is very much a worthy and interesting aspect of discussion I think?

That being said, I think Twig's original point still stand that RPGs as a whole have embraced 'trash clearing' as a norm, at least much more so than other genre (except for cookie clicker which is way ahead in this aspect). Sticking with two provided genres, let's examine the shooter. Yes, I think shooters can have 'trash clearing' moments. However, the difference is that it is often a point of criticism. People will comment on how the game is dragging on, how pacing is too slow, enemies are too dumb, etc. And they make those points because the expectation is that it should not be so. But in RPGs, bit of farming (very easy enemies for resource gathering) is so expected of the genre. In fact this aspect of progression through repetition is so heavily built into the name RPG, that when people talking about taking some RPG elements in for other genres, you can almost always bet that they are talking about progression through some repeatable tasks, not the actual 'role-playing'. To get back to the source of this... I think I agree with you SAM on the first note, but not with the second. I agree with the first because any task if we break it down into small enough piece, we always end up with a trivial task. Shooter can be broken down into moving a mouse. RPG can be broken down into pressing a button (guess all games currently out, out side of kinect games (which are its own kind of trash, hurhur ) can be boiled down to this). Those tasks, when described in isolation, are of course easy. The issue with these hyper isolation specifics is that we are no longer talking about actual user experience but rather, pieces of it and then trying to compare to user experience (which of course doesn't measure up). Kinda like trying to analyze the difficulty of learning how to drive while focusing on how turning the handle is easy and how stepping on the brakes is easy and how looking at the road is easy... And getting back onto the broader topic on what constitutes a 'trash mob', I think everyone agrees it is something that is trivial... in that sense everything can become 'trash mob'. Any enemy can be mastered and can be turned into a 'trash mob' status, sort to speak. However, like I was previously saying to explain why I agree with Twig's original statement, RPG genre stands out because it popularized this design where the game encourages players to go back to the areas that player have mastered. And by popularized I mean it is something that players expect out of RPG system more so than other genres, and when such system is in, it is often synonymous as RPG genre itself. Any other genre you try to pull this off and it would rightly be called out for being boring. But attaching repetition with incremental rewards is what RPG genre is one of the most famous aspect of the genre, more so that actual role-playing ironically. Contrast to this is rogue-likes, where no encounter is meant to be 'trash' and that alone has earned a different genre recognition from RPGs (maybe sub-genre but still, difference is noted). Apologies if this is bit rambly as I didn't have enough sleep but this is really interesting topic~!

Well that certainly made that question not as good then : /

I googled that and what I saw was clearly a sandwich. Edit: On the topic itself, what is trash and isn't trash encounter would depend on the person then. I played enough classic JRPG so that pretty much any games that follow that design would automatically devolve into series of trash encounters (unless game was tuned really high but IMO most classic JRPGs were pretty forgiving). That wasn't the case when I first played them as a babby or for someone totally new to the genre. Same for FPS, depends in the game and person's skill level. My trash isn't yours nor is your mine~

Well said unimural. I personally prefer asymmetry when it comes to single player, but it should speak the same verb as the player, if that makes sense. The list you put together are pretty good examples of what I had in mind, but probably more than what Endless Legend did, but not to the point where the AI is spawning stuff out of the nether, etc. This is part of the reason why Paradox games are so strong, is that AI plays by the rule (I mean they do cheat but cheating is still done within the rules, just that they get more resources, etc.) but then they ignore the meta rule that player goes by and commits to different rule - role playing their roles as historical entity. So the asymmetry is created but the game still speaks the same verbs regarding the technical details, just that AI doesn't care for world domination or some other abstract goal... it's just trying to behave moment by moment in a way that it's historical counterpart would have liked to do. What a good question. So glad that you wanted to clarify it unimural. Such interesting topic.

Yeah, I guess it's that eternal snowball question of strategy games and expanding. Growing is always useful but makes the game less 'fun', so how to increase challenge for growing? Certainly not in the way that vanilla Rome 2 did though, which was to apply passive penalty to buildings. I think solution is to change the game from outward focus (grab more land) into inward one, and most definitely not in an whack-a-mole sense like rebels popping out of the ether that you have to occasionally kill. Rather, the internal dissent should be actively managed... think I have a clever work around with this but before it gets too plug-y I should stop and refocus on Shogun 2 :x The advice you mentioned, as horrid as that is from history perspective, I actually love that compared to the bloated drab that Rome 2 Emperor Edition (the fixed and functional Rome 2 where you actually do get to build high lvl buildings)~ I'm both history fan and gaming fan but I guess with games I do lean much stronger towards interesting game, and I always find those borderline exploit strategies very interesting. The edge cases of the rules basically. Very fun~!

Actually the campaign economy has another super deep flow that I just recalled now that you mention it... So province growth (a vague economic value that provinces get and grow over time, I think it started in Empires) is affected by two things. Your buildings (including your castle size, this is the important one) and the surplus of food in your faction. Remember food surplus is factored in faction wide, while all the buildings are local. So the best thing to do economy wise is to... never develop your non-unit producing settlements, and focus exclusively on farm upgrade so that your global food surplus rises. By mid game you can see about 20+ growth per turn, and right before realm divide you can see up to 40+ growth per turn. That's 40+ taxable income (so like, 4 ~ 5 actual profit???) per province. Before realm divide IIRC you can have pretty sizable faction, like 20 provinces or more? So just by spending less money on your econ, the stronger your global economy gets. Much less of a problem in a short game but still, kinda glaringly bad economy-building design IMO. Still, I prefer this broken economy design over what was in Rome 2... in Shogun 2, at least it worked out like a mobile version of 4X game (watch your econ grow over time woo hoo I actually really liked watching my econ grow) but in Rome 2 omg really hated that whole awful building scaling where higher tier building ate more food but didn't produce enough happiness to compensate for ratio so you were almost always best to leave all the provinces at very basic buildings, same as Shogun 2 but without that permanent econ growth which I freaking loved. They did fix the buildings a lot in Emperor edition though, which is most definitely somewhat enjoyable TW game, still kinda bloated and messy though.

Senpai noticed me and now I can go back to work all happy

??? There is noone like him in the game, and the game plays out completely different. You end up with two completely modernized faction clashing in epic late 19th century combat. It's awesome dude~ For the first time ever, having good navy feels very satisfying cause it can directly tie in to your land battles. Fuck now I want to reinstall FotS again :x

So this just happened. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/eu4-dev-diary-july-9th.868985/ Does this now mean that EU4 will now cover more of the 4X territory by having bigger focus on world exploration?

If that's the movie that I think it is, then I do. It's been like 16 years since I have seen that movie... Bring on the nostalga for meee~

That is interesting! On the flip side Hans von Luck (author of Panzer Commander, very relaxed read I recommend it) was shocked during his African tour because American soldiers had chocolate and cigarettes on them. Like, him and his soldiers were blown away that front line troops would be supplied with ration of such luxury goods. So much agreement for this. It's especially odd considering that the most ground breaking, world politics shattering secret weapon was developed by... USA. Which is also interestingly tied to this weird video game myth that China and Russia (and not USA) uses nukes, while only USA actually deployed them in non-testing capacity.

Now you see why I was so going on about how awesome Shogun 2 was! Except for naval battle. And Realm Divide. And agents (too powerful). Try tweaking the ini so that you have double unit size. It's pretty freaking fantastic~!

StG44 and MG42 being strong is like... kinda faithful though? Didn't realize their rifle did more damage. CoD oddly enough didn't fall into that trap cause I recall M1 Grand being pretty rad because you could fire 5 shots semi auto, which was actually a rad feature IRL I think. Also PPSH freaking owned so hard. Gah forgot about imbalances in CoH2. Tells you how much multiplayer I played in that game. Yeah those are pretty awful and CoH2 just had really bad representation of the Soviets too to further cement this elite german feel. Perhaps I played too much RO2 where there was like zero glorification of German hardware. Any game that remotely glorify SS division stuff is probably most damning because they were downright criminal in their very origin. Which game are you thinking of when you say they get a 'starring' role? HoI series I am bit hesitant about how to evaluate that one because that game has this weird issue because it is difficult to model France's military failings properly so they ended up buffing Germany and nerfing France to ensure historical outcome for the onset of the war... and game just plays better as Germany than say, USA cause it's just more active (for all the politically wrong reasons but for wargame fight is what we are looking for). I can definitely relate to some sense of "nazi tech fetish" thing going on (personally big fan of MG3, which is just modernized version of MG42) in games but it always felt very gear centric cause eventually you end up just slaughtering the Nazis in so many games so thankfully their soldiers don't quite get that same rep in gameplay language. So yeah I can see how that is coming dangerously close to bleeding off into more dangerous romanticism about Nazi Germany, just had trouble thinking of specifics. Thankfully my ethnicity kinda makes it blatantly illogical to give it any sort of political romanticism but yeah, I do feel there is this weird reverence about the third reich. I do think that facist had a cool group fashion going that they obviously ruined it by being so evil and associating themselves with it. Kinda related but interesting tangent is how this actually plays out even stronger in Gundam... where Zeons are basically Axis and the franchise ended up giving lot of ammunition to appreciate Zeon as a faction despite them being really closely analogous to Axis... like they get the cool experimental weapons, most of cool named aces are Zeon, etc.

I didn't mean to claim that you were advocating to vet everyone's past. I was saying that's what Merus seem to be focused on so that your response (which was NOT advocating to vet everyone's past as I understood it, just advocating that we try to remain critical of everything) to his post felt bit like you two weren't talking about the same topic. In a way what two of you are talking about could be relevant but so far from what I've seen it felt like... say you were talking about taste of fruit orange, and he would be talking about color of fruit orange. Both of you are talking about fruit orange, but about something completely irrelevant from each other. Because in a way yes both of you are talking about criticism... but he's talking about hyper criticism with social stigma attached to it, while you are discussing much more individual approach of staying critical. Both are about criticism, but completely different aspects of it IMO.

With more bromance and stuff adjusted to reflect difference in culture and era, but yes that sort of standalone does sound awesome~

But being poor does very little to change a person's horrible actions and opinions. It just changes how they cope with stress... wealthy has the option to go on hedonistic spree of some sort, while poor have less options to vent. I am just not getting this kind of reading from what Merus wrote thus far... Merus' position has been pretty explicit in that he sees everyone with problems. But the crux is that he is OK with that because it is just so... common. Don't see where he's trying to accept their words as gospel. Better explained version is how natelite put it... it's not about painting someone as perfect despite their questionable past, it's just question of do you really want to spend so much of your energy picking away at someone's past when we all know we got dirty and flawed aspects in our lives? Obviously this is matter of degrees because surely Merus wouldn't come to defense of say, Pol Pot (bless this name for not being overused like Stalin and Hitler kekekeke) but the idea that every wrongdoing must be pointed out at every moment is just... absurdly tiring and vindictive (which ends up betraying even more fundamental social justice tenet, that is to ultimately better the lives of everyone) and that's the aspect that I suspect that Merus is pointing out here.

Oh you mean standalone. Yes that would be great but that would probably be a whole new game then?

!!!!!!! Wouldn't the time frame be too early for CK2?

Hey Edie, if you are still interested in HoI3... To get the very basics, doing Spanish Civil War is a good place to start (start as Spain in 1936 and I believe you can choose which faction to control when it fires?). SCW is a good place to get hang of game's rather dense interface and mechanics. Once you got the basic hang of things, I recommend jumping straight into Germany first since it is a very powerful country that has very nicely scaling opponents as war goes on. Core concept is building army and fighting mobile encirclement focused warfare. This basically means you have your infantries holding the line while tanks and motorized troops try to break through the line and encircle enemies to cut off supplies for huge wins. So first thing I would recommend is, play as say, Germany in 1936 and do the following. Research doctrine techs Research manpower and IC boost techs Then focus on these units only Infantry - Artillery Medium Armor Interceptor Tactical / CAS (I prefer CAS since it shares research with Interceptor as small frame crafts but TACs do more bang per wing) Create really basic divisions of 3inf 1art for your infantry divisions 2 med arms and 1 mot for tank divisions (later add SP-art but that's way down the road so don't worry about it) Those two will be your land force. Bulk of your army will be infantry divisions and you want at least 10 tank divisions Interceptors will keep your sky clear. TAC / CAS will give your army more concentrated firepower. Everything else is either really tangential or beyond the immediate scope (some players for example, prep carriers to eventually invade UK and USA but for learning curve I say focus on stomping Poland and France). So first is Poland-Germany border is setup to help you appreciate the power of encirclement... the border starts you off already ready to encircle western part of Poland. Try having your tanks punch through north and south, meeting up in center and watch the cut off Polish army in the west just melt away. That is the core essence of HoI... make army and then encircle other armies with it. France is not so obviously shaped and is lot bigger but same principle applies and it's still quite weak compare to what you should have. Then the eastern front is where the main course of this game is at. Remember geography matters a lot. you want to try to find a plain terrain with no river crossing or your tanks suffer some abysmal penalties.

While this statement feels true, I can't think of a single WWII themed game I played (CoD, CoH, HoI, RO, DoD, MoH... granted most of these are FPS where Nazis are more cannon fodder-y) where Nazi Germany just had better stuff... I mean there is always the ace Tiger tank fetish going on but that's very specific.

Yeah, infantries are really simplified but having played lot of CoH2 Ardennes Assault recently, I am actually really glad that Eugene took this route over Relic's most frustrating implementation for a infantry behavior. I really want to just say some nasty things about whoever thought it was good idea to implement cover hopping (like hopping over fences) but not make it automatic. Or how squad sometimes just split and dash across the screen into no cover cause vehicle was moving nearby. OMG vehicle and infantry movement coordination is baffling how bad it can get and ruin what could otherwise have been superb series for me. Also glitched invincible Ostwind can go straight to garbage chute. Earrggghhh I do want to try but it's really hard when I can't even get my fellow Korean friends to try Starcraft board game during height of SC2's popularity.

So computer games are for the most part, controlled by user clicking on keyboard or using mouse to click on mouse button to click on simulated buttons... Keeping this constraint in mind, what games did you think had notably more 'authentic' control scheme than its peers? Like for example, most traditional RTS has very un-authentic control scheme, right? I mean you have this omnipotent bird's eye view over anything with impunity, give out orders instantaneously, and orders themselves are hyper location specific. Then there are abominations like Total War's "general camera" which simply sticks your camera to your general without adjusting anything else in the game so giving out simple move command becomes impossibly difficult. Like were there any game that took something like TW's general cam but then instead had you issue out orders via say, flag carriers? Or RTS games that put more thematically consistent restrictions around your control, like say, Company of Heroes did with suppression or Wargame does with intel?

Gah another board game, maybe one day I could muster up some friends locally to try those games out... What are people's thought on Wargame franchise BTW? I thought the actual combat was dealt with surprising amount of 'grit' and certain 'felt' very much like what I imagine modern conventional combat would look like (minus some range tweaks but still, this is best I've seen by far outside of DCS which needs tons of fiddling cause AI is non-existent)... but it also features this clearly gamey control points and reinforcement system and units are still relatively balanced around their role. But still, most of game encouraged players to do this intel based fighting which also 'felt' very authentic. This is all in context of me being a complete noob in real life war stuff, like I have never been conscripted or drafted or took courses in modern military tactics. And the way the game represents aircraft was the best I have seen of how modern air power could be modeled in real time... since GDI ORCAs from original C&C. Ones from Supreme Commander had lot of elements (like idea of refueling station was there) that could have made it great, but ultimately summed up to more fiddly then 'gritty', disregarding the super sci fi aesthetics of course. Now that I have actually mentioned it, what are people's thought on DCS as well? I mean that's foremost a simulation game above all, but does good simulation make something inherently historically accurate? Or is simulation inherently missing out on any sort of 'perspective' to make them historical in any sense? By that I mean, technical accuracy is important for historical accuracy, but history is more than just sum of technically accurate specs... history has a narrative, interpretation and judgement that's built on the specs of fact, so how do games like DCS fit into this?