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Rob Zacny

Episode 354: Offworld Trading Company

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Three Moves Ahead 354:

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Offworld Trading Company

Game designer Soren Johnson returns to the show to talk about his new game, Offworld Trading Company. Built in spirit of M.U.L.E., Offworld Trading Company is an economic RTS that has the player hunting for resources and playing the market. Soren talks about recent changes to the game, the pros and cons of Early Access, and the benefits of having hyper-competitive players.

Offworld Trading Company

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Very interesting podcast. I followed the development of this game losely from afar. Listening to prior 3MA podcasts, reading Soren's Gamasutra article about EA release. Reading Steam update announcements. I love the concept of the game. I do know, it is sadly not for me. But that's ok:

"Hardcore Multiplayer Community..." (Quote from the Podcast)

 

Three words, that define me not.

 

While I am very glad to hear, there is a Single Player campaign, isn't the core of the game still PvP, which makes especially sense for this game? My backlog of 1000+ games is already smelling funny, so sorry.

 

I am one of those old, lonesome, single player guys, who play strategy games like reading a book - in solitude. Solving puzzles, at my own pace. Using different strategies. Trying things out. Enjoying my own limits vs the game AI. Gladly, I am too dumb to outplay most of them (Wargame AirLand Battle campaign is still too hard for me), so I keep enjoying all these games, I already have. I do understand, human players are the 'real' challenge for competitive games. But I don't like the pressure of other people (even complete strangers, online) 'in my face', while I am alone, at home. And the people I know in real life don't care about 'video games'. So I cannot play with/against them. 

 

On the topic of "Darkest Dungeon" and Early Access = it was one of a handful of games I ever bought on Early Access. I only played an hour of it during the first week and ... left it. I knew, I would like the final product, so there was no need for me to 'play-test'. I see the value of player feedback for developers (esp. metrics/analytics), but - like them - I also see hazard. Players have no clue what the idea behind it really was, or what the final product should look like. Every player has a different idea of what the game "should be" (in their mind) and they tend to have very strong opinions early on (just like those Steam people, who gave Offworld a 'negative review' before last year's PAX, while KNOWING it was not finished, complaining there was 'not enough' content. How stupid are some of these EA-holics? You judge.

 

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@Adam Beckett

I haven't listened to this episode yet, but reading your post I see how much we have in common. I'm horrible at strategy games, but I enjoy them. I've played a couple of games of Command&Conquer against a human player over a decade ago, but single-player is what I buy strategy games for. I've only put in a few hours to Offworld Trading Company's final release, but I've played about 20 hours of the early-access. I haven't played a multiplayer match yet. The single-player campaign feels more similar to Invisible Inc. than it does to Civilization 5. It feels like a mix between both of them though since you are playing against bots who have the same toolset as yourself. I don't know that this is a game that your backlog needs added to it, but I'm not disappointed in the single-player portion of this game at all and wanted to mention that.

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I'm very curious to see how Offworld does. The competitive RTS multiplayer market seems like a very small niche to target. 

 

The SP-value of OTC have certainly improved a lot since the first public betas, but I'm afraid the marketing will remain a problem. The perception of OTC as "mostly just for MP"-label might be very hard to get rid off. 

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This podcast has finally prompted me to pick up this game. The single-player might not be Civ-length, but it's quality.

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On the topic of "Darkest Dungeon" and Early Access = it was one of a handful of games I ever bought on Early Access. I only played an hour of it during the first week and ... left it. I knew, I would like the final product, so there was no need for me to 'play-test'. I see the value of player feedback for developers (esp. metrics/analytics), but - like them - I also see hazard. Players have no clue what the idea behind it really was, or what the final product should look like. Every player has a different idea of what the game "should be" (in their mind) and they tend to have very strong opinions early on (just like those Steam people, who gave Offworld a 'negative review' before last year's PAX, while KNOWING it was not finished, complaining there was 'not enough' content. How stupid are some of these EA-holics? You judge.

 

To be completely fair, I think that Rob (or perhaps his source, Tyler Sigman) mischaracterized the dynamic between designer and fan with Darkest Dungeon. Sure, there was a group of "hardcore" junkies who just wanted the devs to make the game as difficult as possible, much like the people who think the important thing about Dark Souls is that it's hard, but a large percentage of the player base in Early Access objected to many of the changes that were made at the eleventh hour to quash a small handful of semi-dominant strategies that had emerged over months of intensive play. It seemed to me, as someone with several dozen hours in the game when those changes were made, that Red Hook had a vision of the game in which all choices were difficult and they resorted to asymmetrical and unthematic mechanics to complicate the small handful of straightforward choices that existed among the (already numerous) hard ones. Corpses, heart attacks, and the broad buffing of enemy damage and HP were all claimed by Red Hook to be part of the development plan from day one, but they drastically curtailed player agency in pursuit of some nebulous aesthetic of unforgiving claustrophobia, so maybe they should have been dropped from that plan? I think a lot of the snafus on Early Access show us that, not only are fans fairly inflexible in their perception of what a game is, but that devs are as well. At some point, if the "fun" of your game lies in places that your whiteboard design didn't suggest, you have the choice of using player feedback in Early Access i) to build a game that further enhances the fun players have found or ii) to root out the sources of that fun and try to redirect players elsewhere, more along the lines of your original design. I also wonder if the public nature of Early Access means that developers feel less able to change the direction of their design mid-stream, once it becomes clear that players are cheesing the "punishing" part of your game to enable themselves to experiment with different classes, skills, and setups: nothing to be done at that point, just up the difficulty and gut any optimal strategies to ensure that there's no room for players to play the game in a way other than the way that you originally envisioned.

 

Basically, I think that developers and fans are learning, very slowly, how to have conversations about the games that are being made, and I think that few developers are as open or experienced as Soren at keeping the conversation from becoming a lecture. Who knows where it'll go from here!

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Following up on Soren's mentioning how much his wife likes the game: I was playing the soundtrack for my wife last night and showing her a bit of the game, and she immediately said it looked like something she would want to play. She rarely says this, so In my opinion, that is a big compliment to the Mohawk team. Her favorite games are Sim Farm, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Jason Rohrer's Cultivation, and Agricola . :) 

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i worry that this game is too "boring" to appeal to normal gamers, but actual strategy gaming is so dead at the moment that I really hope this reaches whatever audience it can

 

there needs to be something strategic on PC to play that isn't a card game or some poorly designed epic that requires 10+ hours to play

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there needs to be something strategic on PC to play that isn't a card game or some poorly designed epic that requires 10+ hours to play

 

ha, that sums up our goals pretty well!

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there needs to be something strategic on PC to play that isn't a card game or some poorly designed epic that requires 10+ hours to play

 

Don't be hatin' on twilight struggle.

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