riadsala

Underwhelming ends to games/playthroughs

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I'm sure most of us will agree that a lot of strategy games suffer from poor endgames. Another common feature of strategy games is a long playtime, and the possibility of losing after investing many many hours. I thought it might be fun to share some experiences/bitch about design.

 

I'll kick us off with what I think is a Ck2 bug. I just finished the Legacy of Rome based game I started last Xmas holdiay (when I bought the DLC in the sale). For a while the game was going well... I started as a Duke in the empire and ended up with a big enough territory to become independent. Then somehow gained control of most of Christian Spain. Towards the end of the game I was slowly losing all my territory to the large Muslim territories, but I had 30-40k points and had a fun game. The game has been going on for months as with Ironman, the really terribly slow autosave is a real killjoy, but I was determined to stick it out.

 

I lose my last territory a few years before the end of time, and am greeted with this screen:

 

is this a bug? What happened to all my points? And what happened to all the characters I played? Why is it saying that Mayor Jacobo ruled for 385 years?

 

What a let down.

 

 

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XCOM. As a game it's about the journey rather than the finale but still that final battle was just so underwhelming considering how you get there.

also I can't help thinking that the old short videos when you win Civ 2 were always more satisfying than the short box you get these days.

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I had a terribly disappointing experience with Endless Legend. I used the pointbuy thing to build a custom civilization optimized for a One City Challenge, science victory approach. The game makes public announcements when any player is nearing completion of one of the victory conditions, so I had been preparing a defensive army. The game announced "Ninety-Three has researched two of the five top-tier technologies required to win the game!", I nervously shuffled my armies, and nothing happened. More science rolled in and it announced I had four of five technologies with none of the other players having gotten even the first victory progress announcement. At this point I had been pouring all my industry into making more and more soldiers for the inevitable moment when the AI dropped everything and rushed to stop my scientific victory.

 

It never happened, the AI just sat there being friendly, and I won my scientific victory without resistance. I was so convinced it was going to happen. Why wouldn't the AI drop everything to stop a winning player? It's the obviously correct decision, so I just assumed that of course they'd do that.

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I had a terribly disappointing experience with Endless Legend. I used the pointbuy thing to build a custom civilization optimized for a One City Challenge, science victory approach. The game makes public announcements when any player is nearing completion of one of the victory conditions, so I had been preparing a defensive army. The game announced "Ninety-Three has researched two of the five top-tier technologies required to win the game!", I nervously shuffled my armies, and nothing happened. More science rolled in and it announced I had four of five technologies with none of the other players having gotten even the first victory progress announcement. At this point I had been pouring all my industry into making more and more soldiers for the inevitable moment when the AI dropped everything and rushed to stop my scientific victory.

 

It never happened, the AI just sat there being friendly, and I won my scientific victory without resistance. I was so convinced it was going to happen. Why wouldn't the AI drop everything to stop a winning player? It's the obviously correct decision, so I just assumed that of course they'd do that.

 

Endless Legend AI is dumb as a knob. It always disappoints me that I even bought it, because I don't really ever get the chance to play it online.

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Kairo. The tone and the AV was so pitch perfect and then the ending is a complete 90° turn from the rest of the game tonally and visually.

It was well intentioned but damn if it wasn't jarring as hell.

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Its not an RTS but Tom Clancy's HAWX 2 was a standard arcade flight simulator until the last mission where instead of a crazy final battle you spend most of your time dodging lasers from space. As for CK2 the ending of a game is like the goals in the game, you make your own. I rarely play to the end date. Right now I am achievement hunting so for example my game end in whatever year my Hindu empire conquers Mecca. Much more rewarding than ending in 1453.

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As for CK2 the ending of a game is like the goals in the game, you make your own. I rarely play to the end date. Right now I am achievement hunting so for examole my game end in whatever year my Hindu empire conquers Mecca. Much more rewarding than ending in 1453.

 

 

That's probably good advise :)

 

I look forward to picking up my next DLC (Old Gods) and starting a new playthrough :)

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Not necessarily underwhelming, but most frustrating was vanilla (or was it after 1st expansion?) Hearts of Iron 3.

 

Played a game with USSR in 1936 scenario, and beat Germany for the first time so that felt nice til the result of the surrender came in....

 

Entire France and Germany turned into USA occupied land cause the game at that time didn't have proper victory for USSR set in.  I was PISSED.  Good thing the game was relatively easy to mod so I went on week long spree of modding in my own Germany surrender event for USSR...

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My name is Rob and I hate Civ games. When I start these games I always pick at the tech tree with the idea that the order and techs chosen will result in some event or come to provide the character of my civilization. By the final half of the game the realization that I'm just picking +1 culture or an extra worker when I select something makes me wish that someone would make the game that's in my head. Paradox's grand strategy games have come the closest to being that, but the 4X genre will always be one that I cannot enjoy because it is so abstract. 

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Amnesia. A fucking boss battle? Give me a break.

Ha! I only ever got about 30 minutes that game the. Gave up before I widdled myself. I wouldn't worry about what forum you've posted in either, we don't bite in here.

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Not necessarily underwhelming, but most frustrating was vanilla (or was it after 1st expansion?) Hearts of Iron 3.

 

Played a game with USSR in 1936 scenario, and beat Germany for the first time so that felt nice til the result of the surrender came in....

 

Entire France and Germany turned into USA occupied land cause the game at that time didn't have proper victory for USSR set in.  I was PISSED.  Good thing the game was relatively easy to mod so I went on week long spree of modding in my own Germany surrender event for USSR...

 

I ran into a similar thing and I haven't played HoI3 since. I wish that Paradox didn't rely on these big triggered events. Watching streamers they end up looking in the wiki to find the trigger states for everything and that doesn't sound fun.

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I ran into a similar thing and I haven't played HoI3 since. I wish that Paradox didn't rely on these big triggered events. Watching streamers they end up looking in the wiki to find the trigger states for everything and that doesn't sound fun.

 

Oh the surrender events were the worst.  I hope they make HoI4 more organic, like EU4.  I mean obviously WWII scenario demands lot more structure than EU4, but I think there are lot from EU4 that can be applied.  The maps are looking sexy as hell though for sure.  Eagerly waiting for it and I'll probably plunge into Common Sense til then :)

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