Three Moves Ahead 398 - Taking the L

[Rob Zacny]

Three Moves Ahead 398:

Taking the L
Rowan, Sean, and Rob discuss what goes into a "satisfying" setback as opposed to something that sends one running to the quickload button. Rowan possibly solves game design.

Crusader Kings, Steel Division, Patrician, EUIV, Darkest Dungeon

 

• Listen on the Episode Page
• Listen on Soundcloud
• Listen in iTunes

[04048]

Thea: the Awakening rewarded play, regardless of whether a game was a win, loss, or abandonment. 

I'd probably play a lot more RogueLikes if I got goodies for sticking it out. 

[riadsala]

I'll be listening to this on my walk home. Looks like a topic that's close to my heart, although a shame it's looking like it's focused on Paradox again - here's hoping the panel have some new stories to tell (I really like Ck2, but I think I've heard everything I need to from the 3MA regulars on it.

 

A few of my fav examples of set-backs in games that I'm guessing aren't mentioned:

 

- Civ IV with the Legends of the Revolution "commercially viable" expansion pack. It did a good job of having civil wars, and if your empire got to large, it could splinter.

- multi-player Blood Bowl leagues. Working out how to struggle to the end of the season without having any more players die, then take a demotion to a lower league, and build up over the next season!

- Solium Infernum! 3MA covered this years and years ago. A fantastic multiplayer indie game in which the rug can be pulled out from under you at any time. 

- Frozen Synapse - playing a friend, and down to one guy. Can i keep him safe, out of sight, and pick off enough lucky kills to steal the victory? Usually not, but with a bit of second guessing my opponent, quite possible.

- Going from an early lose in Diplomacy, to becoming king maker.

- losing a group of stones in Go, but then working out how to make it a meaningful sacrifice and force my opponent to over commit to one area.

 

Keep up the good work

[ilitarist]

Sad to see Game King to be so objectively wrong. Constant progress in a strategy game is boring. It's not so bad in EU4 cause gameplay changes with new unlocks; in the beginning you're looking for any way to grab some land and by the end you manage truce timers for another war with your rivals as well as grabbing all the smaller countries with Imperialism CB. But still EU4 becomes boring if you had mastered it; I treasure setbacks when they happen. Civ is bad in that regard as you guys have said, if you don't progress you just lose, especially on higher difficulties where AI gets a head start instead of greater boosts to contend. Good strategy gives you stories and comebacks, let's you deal with a bad hand, allows handling new unexpected threats. Even Stellaris is good about it presenting you with an end boss scenario, powerful guardians and other things like that.

 

When you talked about XCOM and Dankest Dungeon I had Battle for Wesnoth pop up in my head. It had a bad case of save-load syndrome: most of the time your hit chance is around 50% and even the most perfect setup can result in 0 damage to the enemy. Losing high-level units may cost you a campaign - so, just like in Panzer General you can reload till you get what to do and dices roll your way. Games like that feel like an excercise in patience. XCOM in theory has lots of tools to help you deal with bad situations - upgrades that can save a dying soldier, improvements to a new rookie soldiers etc. Still in practice it doesn't work as an Iron Man experience unlike, say, Massive Chalice (underrated game! Though it has a problem with a spoiler final battle that should have been explained before it started) where your people are supposed to die of old age after 3 battles or something.

 

Good episode, by the way.

[Ebenezer]

I liked this episode. Recently I got into AI War: Fleet Command, an absolutely huge game in which a single match can take 10 to 15 hours. It's a game of multiple sittings, in other words, but if you construct your defenses poorly, then at any time, one of the two AI players can send a small strike force through your defensive turrets and destroy your home command center, defeating you. This is a pretty unsatisfying way to lose compared to the huge, protracted battles which characterize the endgame. Losing in Hour 14 because you lunged for the AI's beating heart and missed is more fun than losing in Hour 10 because you didn't expect a Raider Mk. IV to slip through your turrets. I load a previous save when there wasn't a real fight, but I accept it when there was a struggle, because the latter makes for a better story, and it's easier on my ego to recognize that my bad strategy led me to lose in that particular way.

[preciousgollum]

There are two major problems with XCOM  reboot series.

 

1. The campaign difficulty increases on classic, as well as the battle difficulty, compared to normal, which can make the overall campaign act as an always grueling wrapper around tactical battles (which might be fun on hard.)

 

2. Xcom reboots designs are scripted to the point that even the 'random missions' are always the same when starting a new campaign, meaning that by the time the campaign opens up in the mid to late game, it is guaranteed that you would have seen the same mission types pop up in the same sequence, for about 2 hours, and then have the same aliens appear around the same month; this eventually destroys the ability to have fun starting a new campaign, or any form of procedural discovery.

 

If the battles were more random, but the overall campaign more forgiving, then the game would have had more replayability in a way that it doesn't feel like an arcade game.

 

P.S a lot of people probably play Classic for Xcom, but people forget that in the original (1994) X-com there were FAR more soldiers than aliens at the beginning, whereas XCOM (2012) on Classic will always have more aliens on the battle map than there are Soldiers, meaning that the game is balanced around Normal difficulty, but only because of the limitations imposed on the missions (I.e 4-6 soldiers). The whole setup feels conceited, because the campaign 'map' is less involved than a Total War game from 10 years ago.

 

The 'Continental' panic mechanics on Classic are ALWAYS a penalty (even when a battle is won). Always with the external pressure. Chaos is a ladder.

 

... then sometimes Xcom seems to be balanced around Classic, with hidden or veiled  extra player concessions added to normal.(Goddamn AIM BONUS ON NORMAL!!!)

 

XCOM SOLVED.