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Rob Zacny

Episode 364: Pet Peeves

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Three Moves Ahead 364:

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Pet Peeves

Certain sins are unforgivable. Poor interface, an over-abundance of tooltips, and apparently ship designers. Let's get one thing straight: I - Michael, who writes these notes every week - like ship designers. I liked Gratuitous Space Battles, I like them GalCiv, I like them any way I can get them. So while I've never been on the show to defend my case on this particular topic, I'm writing the notes. Do I get to editorialize? Sure I do. Who's going to stop me? Troy? Ship designers are always a delight. If you don't like them, then this week you can listen to Rob, T.J. Hafer, and Rowan Kaiser go through their lists of strategy game pet peeves.

Gratuitous Tank Battles, Stellaris, Crusader Kings 2, Total Annihilation, and many more

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I think they refer to "Vicky 2" at some point, but in context it seems like it is not a paradox game. Are they referring to Paradox's Victoria 2? Or something else? 

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They were talking about Victoria 2. While Paradox generally has an iterative engine and game design concepts, there was a pretty big jump between Victoria 2 and Europa Universalis 4. EU4 brought a substantial update to the UI and game engine. Vic2 had some of the most interesting concepts of all their games but could be considered part of their “previous generation” of games. Between this and the fairly different concepts that the game had (relative to EU, HoI, or CK), it sort of stands on its own on the sidelines, like EU: Rome.

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This is a topic invented for discussion.

 

I share your disgust for customization, guys - it's a part of tactical combat problem, you either made it redundant or everything else is redundant unless you're XCOM. I also have an addition.

 

Games that promise unique content irritate me. You know when you start as Rome in Total War game and you get intro video, texts, units, all that stuff. You think you'll have same level of uniqueness for other factions. No you won't. I remember how Crusader Kings 2 disenchanted me. First I got those diplomatic messages like "In fact, I won't even step inside the same room as you" and such. I thought this stuff depended on person and I won't get different responses dependend on character stats, traits, relations, culture. Nope. Only religion seem to affect the result. Muslims have much better insults. That's a lost opportunity and it doesn't seem like it would be hard to implement. Similar to seeing faction units being just recolored versions of default units.

 

Stellaris is much better in this regard, by the way. There are still few of unique personalities but I hope for the best.

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I am from the "School of Thought" which takes teaching you to play a game as a priority, not an afterthought.
 
Remember being a kid, playing with other kids or with adults, a new game? Part of the enjoyment is to learn, to understand, to try out the game and it's mechanics for the first time. 
 
If the game developer and designers are only interested in their 'own' enjoyment, understanding their idea of 'game language' from playing decades of video games, without any effort to teach new players, they failed miserably, in my book. Everyone defending those games has "Stockholm(sic!) Syndrome" tattooed all over their face.
 
"What is obvious to you, is not obvious to me."
 
Making a tutorial is NOT trivial. Should not be an afterthought. Something you find in a brief manual, or in random 'tool tips' or - the worst - expecting me to seek information online, making me watch YouTube Let's play videos. You do this as a game designer, you failed as a game developer. Period.
 
Tell me something, show me something, make me DO something - one trick at a time.
 
Companies like Blizzard and Valve are the masters of teaching you to play their games.
 
I also agree on the first Homeworld game tutorial. Exemplary teaching - from camera controls to unit formations. You could skip the tutorial, but you could not skip inside the tutorial, until you did the thing that the friendly voice was asking you to do. It registered your input. Quite new, around 1999/2000.
 
And the way Blizzard teaches you units in Starcraft 2 should be a blueprint for (almost) every game designer?
 
Every Single Player mission introduces one new unit. The whole scenario is designed about showing you how this specific unit is useful. They also figured out a story for each unit, making them memorable, making them 'feel' unique. In doing so, sticking some neurons in your brain. Teaching at it's best.
 
Beyond the 'unit teaching', you get to play multiplayer 'training' missions vs AI, at different speeds. If you click on building something too early, the game tells you that. It tracks your progress. It teaches you - over time - how to get better, and faster at the game. It prepares you for multiplayer vs humans.
 
It has training missions explicitly teaching you which unit is efficient vs which other unit. You have a limited, specific amount of units vs enemy units. 'Beating' that 'mission' is like solving a puzzle game. Which units to use vs which else and how many are enough for an assault/defense. You remember it, because you played it.
 
Paradox "Interactive" games are the opposite of that.
 
[i will not talk about it. I could write a book about what they are doing wrong. It angers me to a degree that I want to quit my retirement and let them hire me to teach them how to make a proper tutorial or rethink their UI 'design' - not to let their 'new' CK2 tutorial mission, they crated, still overlap with the tool tip popups, etc, etc - or how to streamline their MS Excel spreadsheet UI data dumps on people.]

Of course, 'real' strategy (not just tactical) games, especially strategy war games, on a bigger scale are a hard nut to crack for developers and for new players to understand. To show them what is possible is to play the game. Nobody anticipated the economic war games withing EVE Online, for example. But to play the game one needs to understand 'what' is possible, where the limits are.
 
A 'guided' experience is especially hard, since the developer has to deal with game illiterates to expert Gary Grigsby players.

Some - experienced - players just know what to expect, when they see a game the first time. They can just hop in and figure things out for themselves. It is their part of enjoyment.
 
Other players prefer to be taught the 'flow' of the game and gameplay. A guided experience until they themselves feel comfortable enough to ride the bike, without the invisible, helping hand behind their back. 
 
There is no 'one' solution for all. But, to think about it, to think really hard(!) about it, as a game developer and designer is the least one can expect?
 

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- One thing that kinds bother me is the lack of morale system (specially in historical strategy games), I was looking that short video about Cossacks 3 and seeing the units "dissolve" (since they won´t run away and will fight to the last man) when in contact was strange, I do understand it in older games, but in modern ones is kind weird.
 

- The thing about customization (of ships of something else), is that to really work it should be well tied with the game and does present interesting choices, not just in system and rules level, but even in visual level. Per example, many game which allow you to play around with a "dress up" element when customize something, often fail to deliver good choices*, instead all you got  make your ship or character look horrible (MMO3 was champion in this, because of the ridiculous small size of the ships you could barely see anything). Battle for Middle Earth allowed you to create your own heroes, which was kind cool, however, there was almost no option to customize them, which was a huge let down (and half of the option didn´t even appear to fit correctly in the models).


- I don´t have a problem with Elves, more games should have them, specially in the future, instead I often have a problem with bad design races in many 4x, which often are "exotic" just for the shake of it (to the point of stop begin exotic and start looking just plain bad), without tying it to presentation or gameplay. MMO3 had a species of creatures which where crystal (or stones or something), which on concept looks very alien and its cool, but guess what? they play exactly like everyone else, which bring more questions that answers (like, how they build anything without arms? how can their ships begin boarded? how the hell a species of talking stones can carry guns? why and how they could became monarchy?). Star Ruler 2 kind suffered from that too. Also why humans in space 4x often have the most vague or generic design?

 

Also, I am curious on what game exactly Rob was talking about breaking the fourth wall, the only ones which came in mind, are some space 4x which often feature a "humorous" alien specie (I guess a left over from Star Control, which did that really well...),

Now good examples are games likes Endless Legend/Space, since created interesting factions and proper deliver them in both gameplay/visuals, even Stellaris is ok, they look "alien" without going in the absurd territory (so even if limited in gameplay difference, they still work).

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Heh, I nearly asked a backer question along the line of this show.

 

My personal peeve - games that give the AI an advantage through wall/map hacking. The biggest culprit: Company of Heroes. The single player campaign was not so much the D-Day invasion with its bold attacks out of Normandy as it was building the maginot line every 10 meters - so as to stop the Germans finding the one single gap in your line and slipping through to assault your production facilities. I found the production facilities entirely emersion breaking too.

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I thought the same of CoH. The first time I played, I was disappointed when I found out there were bases and not just field outposts/placements.

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I do agree that customization amounts to tending toward samey and optimal rather than zany and different.

 

I think the problem with Ashes' controls is that the units are too concrete and low-down for that kind of control scheme.  If the units were, say, Napoleonic battalions instead of individual tanks and howitzers the presentation would be a lot more palatable.

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