Amarna Forum

oyakodon_khan Wrote:The F2P service for the Granblue ArcSys game is interesting, basically prompting poorfags into replacing the role of training CPU. No one likes playing against cheating AI in fighting games and it injects more life into the online lobbies.
I imagine other fighting games will assume a similar system in the near future.

Could you elaborate for those of us who haven't played this? What does it do in particular?

Free version is 3 rotating characters. Paid gives you all the characters. They will add more characters and charge for them in the future.
I imagine they will add characters into Relink like this as well. Cygames is an interesting company...going from a browser game to what it is now is very impressive. Largely on the strength of their character art from what I can tell.

Guest Wrote:Free version is 3 rotating characters. Paid gives you all the characters. They will add more characters and charge for them in the future.
I imagine they will add characters into Relink like this as well. Cygames is an interesting company...going from a browser game to what it is now is very impressive. Largely on the strength of their character art from what I can tell.

Ah. That's how I remember League of Legends working. A rotating roster of free characters while you buy (with money or in game points) characters to keep on permanent roster. I think it's a solid system for multiplayer forevergames.

Have I posted about how Blood Bowl killed itself here? Very cool, solid game that was in a tough spot to survive. Got sold as a complete experience and is warhammer so warehoused so selling to people who believe microtransactions killed gaming. It's a multiplayer game that can run forever on its solid rules and premise that only gets sold once and is complete. See the problem?

To make some more money off of their familiar work after Blood Bowl 2 basically solved this stuff, they go and start making Blood Bowl 3. But Blood Bowl 2 was made after "graphics" were basically a solved issue, and the game is basically static. Everyone liked its ruleset and considered it complete. But to justify a new game they visually restyled everything and created a weird and confusing new ruleset. The result. Everyone is pissed off, the playerbase is divided to the point it's not big enough to sustain either game, everyone is miserable and fewer people than ever enjoy playing bloodbowl online.

It struck me as obvious that the answer to their problem was reworking the game into a competitive freemium MOBA model. What made me think of that was the mention of free rotating characters. I always thought this was how bloodbowl should work. One or two teams a week or permanently are free, with the rest being purchases (which all up can cost more than the regular game purchase, but people use the rotation and only buy what they like or whatever), and add cosmetics on top (the game is brilliantly suited to this as a tabletop adaptation) and you've got a model that can last.

But instead they tried to make a contrived iteration of a fixed product and fucked themselves over.



Warhammer is kind of inherently ugly and pulpy, but Blood Bowl 2 on the whole looked very nice. I think the chosen looks for individual characters are nicer, and the general visual style and colour palette are vastly superior. BB2 has a generally pleasing lighter spread of colours with a lot of blue and light green for the grass, while BB3 is ugly, muddy (more in the sense of a blurred lack of focus than an aesthetic choice, the ugly unreal engine failure look), and brown.





Bit of a tangent maybe, but I don't think it can be repeated enough that gamers CANNOT STOP imbibing completely RETARDED memes, which DO influence people making games in VERY NEGATIVE WAYS. The serf paranoia towards microtransactions and DLC paired with a desire for long term multiplayer games is a kind of insanity. Probably mostly spawned by a fetishistic appreciation of Halo being tied to complete game releases despite most of its playerbase treating it like counter strike or something.

"Gimmick!" is an action game published by Sunsoft and released for the Famicon in 1992, and had a very muted release in Scandinavia in 1993 as "Mr. Gimmick." A cursory glance may lead you to think that this is an iterative experience based on games like Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden, but I think it has more going on than that.

The game was directed and programmed by Tomomi Sakai, and I think he saw himself as an auteur, going so far as to place his name in the intro and attempting to write code that breaks the game if the intro is tampered with (this failed and was repurposed for anti-piracy purposes). In the introduction to the game found in the manual (unattributed but clearly written by someone on the team and probably Sakai), he writes that they developed with the idea of making an action game with attention to detail (my Japanese is lousy, but I believe it also says that's where the name Gimmick! comes from). His examples include that characters have acceleration, and that enemies don't respawn when you kill them, creating a "Gimmick World" that things actually live in. An example I can point to is that birds in a few places that are present there to add to the "world" and not the "game." They make sounds in the background or fly away when you get close to them.

Gimmick! in general is game that was developed with the intention of getting all the graphical and sound power they could out of a Famicom that was entering the end of its shelf life.

https://web.archive.org/web/201603041214...interview/

The visuals rely on clever programming to add more detail. If you're familiar with this game, you're probably familiar with how the Famicom cartridge for Gimmick! comes with a special sound chip that gave the composer Masashi Kageyama extra sound channels. Sakai was the one who implemented these and encouraged Kageyama to take full advantage of the new hardware. I think they did a really good job, and made a game that didn't have anything quite like it in when it was made.

Yumetaro Wrote:
"Gimmick!" is an action game published by Sunsoft and released for the Famicon in 1992, and had a very muted release in Scandinavia in 1993 as "Mr. Gimmick." A cursory glance may lead you to think that this is an iterative experience based on games like Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden, but I think it has more going on than that.

I have absorbed some gameplay through this trailer for the game's Switch release.



It definitely has a late console look. The colour palette looks more like a SNES game (if it is in fact the original I'm seeing here) and the spread of stuff they're showing off here looks like something out of a SMW romhack. I think romhacks are neat because it's people trying to be creative while also binding themselves to a strict form. I think there's a great artistry to this, and that, perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, greatness is far more likely to emerge from within sophisticated constraints like this than from their lifting or absence.

Gimmick seems really cool for an organic and professional manifestation of this all the way back in NES times. Someone looking at what their machines can do, what people are doing, and trying to create the coolest, most maximalist thing possible, that's still just like what's expected of the time. The best Mariobornevanialike the NES could possibly handle.

More generally the NES is incredbile to me that people were thinking so big-picture, and so like-artists with such a simple machine. Kaga being the really great example that comes to my mind. I'm glad to know about this thing. Thanks for the post.

Warhammer would be perfect for a gacha style monetization to be honest. There are clearly high-spenders in that audience who would pay just to "support the game". This sort of thing also has a nice side effect for anything with multiplayer that is designed to work with the system. PVP is out of the question but co-op works. The whales tend to be very helpful in trying to assist those who have less resources. It allows for a classic eco-system. The nobleman who cares for the commoner. United in love of the product (nation.) It is a good outlet, and you can find people talking in these terms in forums etc. regarding mobile games designed this way.
It lets a man with a wallet be a hero for others who consume the same media. MMOs never came close to this sort of thing, this disparity within the game. A set subscription...equality is set right from the get-go. Cosmetics might be added, but as soon as power is involved...
That audience goes rabid. They require everything to be equal and requiring grind above all else.
Still, the "gamer" audience is as you say. But they are obsolete in many ways at this moment. Both the young and the old of the classic type have migrated largely to mobile games. And mobile games constitute the wild west of development. Although, maybe that moment is ending already. We will see. If laws crack down on gambling etc. then it will be difficult again. But the gambling (in the Eastern games at least) is currently in the form of: "Here is the highest possible price you will pay for this. But you have a chance to pay significantly less." It's certainly not a casino.

Guest Wrote:Warhammer would be perfect for a gacha style monetization to be honest. There are clearly high-spenders in that audience who would pay just to "support the game". This sort of thing also has a nice side effect for anything with multiplayer that is designed to work with the system. PVP is out of the question but co-op works. The whales tend to be very helpful in trying to assist those who have less resources. It allows for a classic eco-system. The nobleman who cares for the commoner. United in love of the product (nation.) It is a good outlet, and you can find people talking in these terms in forums etc. regarding mobile games designed this way.
It lets a man with a wallet be a hero for others who consume the same media. MMOs never came close to this sort of thing, this disparity within the game. A set subscription...equality is set right from the get-go. Cosmetics might be added, but as soon as power is involved...
That audience goes rabid. They require everything to be equal and requiring grind above all else.
Still, the "gamer" audience is as you say. But they are obsolete in many ways at this moment. Both the young and the old of the classic type have migrated largely to mobile games. And mobile games constitute the wild west of development. Although, maybe that moment is ending already. We will see. If laws crack down on gambling etc. then it will be difficult again. But the gambling (in the Eastern games at least) is currently in the form of: "Here is the highest possible price you will pay for this. But you have a chance to pay significantly less." It's certainly not a casino.

I'm glad someone agrees with me on this. I definitely think games are probably due for more monetisation. Really in general they need to evolve. The Gamestop shelf full of new, complete, AAA releases should be considered as outdated as CDs. Most people don't really believe they can sell that or particularly want to make it. It was really, really nice for the most part. I love that. It was a great little thing for producing a lot of idiosyncrasy, experimentation, works with character. But as with all things, Japan was doing the heaviest lifting there and largely enabled by cultural quirks of their nation and people (large tech-luxury oriented population with taste and supporting buying habits).

As you say, we need to look at what our own culture is and what can be done with that. AND I'd add, what do we even want to do now? Lots of guys want to work for "video games" but I don't think any of them dreamed of rendering ferns for Alan Wake 2. At least I hope not. Worse of course is getting enslaved to stupid middleware shit nobody can even be manipulated into wanting. Man-hours just dumped in a hole.

If we want a genuine creative industry that is fulfilling and enriching to the lives of those within and its audience/consumers we would need a kind of cultural revolution that's been a long-time coming. I believe it would be much harder to build a japan style culture than maintain one. Realistically replicable standards of production values might have to be enforced (I want games with cheaper (not worse you dumb fucking tranny) graphics made by people who have to work less and enjoy their work more), piracy should be aggressively fought and culturally shamed, a culture of supporting artists and works with vision would need to be inculcated. Brutal stuff. But if we want to the cool interesting PS1/PS2 style spread of titles and ideas, a manga industry style constant influx of new ideas and opportunities for interesting individuals to distinguish themselves, we probably need something like this.

Now back to what I was saying, more monetisation. If we want to let this thing basically play itself out but less retardedly, I think we obviously have a problem of a fixation upon vestigial standards for no good reasons. Microtransactions are hated and feared because of screenshotted greentexts accompanied by a picture of Todd Howard's horse. Man-hours that could be used to colonise mars will be burned every two years recreating Call of Duty again for another cash influx.

Call of Duty should probably be one big rolling game, like the Halo Master Chief collection. Their campaigns are probably so shit because they have to work on the decades outdated big new release format. The zombie shit, as much as it doesn't interest me, seems a lot more inspired and interesting because it doesn't have to pretend it's for getting the general public on board and can instead be a weird meme thing made special for people who live call of duty.

Warhammer would be great for anything monetised sure, and I would go further and say that I think buying advantage in online games is really funny and should be tried. I personally play against meta in most online games because it's more fun and interesting to me. Poorfags go skaven swarm. Whale is some elf who kills them by the hundred. That's really funny. I remember that shit space marine planetside thing planned to make orkz a free to play shitter team. That would have been funny.

All right I'm just dumping thoughts now. Any other microtransaction fans here? Or at least people who think change needs to come and we'd be better off thinking about it than letting it happen slowly and stupidly?

Yumetaro Wrote:...

I didn't play this myself (watched a friend) but I am fond of this game. The trailer anthony posted shows off some of the mechanics which is a shame because I don't think players should be spoiled on these. It's funny to watch speedruns and see them using techniques that were possible from the very beginning of the game, but most players would never think to try them. I love when games manage to pull this sort of thing off. Getting the good ending is fairly difficult and requires solving some emergent platforming puzzles. I was impressed by the moments when you realize how you can make use of certain mechanics, as well as the graphics which do look too good for the NES.

anthony Wrote:I'm glad someone agrees with me on this. I definitely think games are probably due for more monetisation. Really in general they need to evolve. The Gamestop shelf full of new, complete, AAA releases should be considered as outdated as CDs. Most people don't really believe they can sell that or particularly want to make it. It was really, really nice for the most part. I love that. It was a great little thing for producing a lot of idiosyncrasy, experimentation, works with character. But as with all things, Japan was doing the heaviest lifting there and largely enabled by cultural quirks of their nation and people (large tech-luxury oriented population with taste and supporting buying habits).

As you say, we need to look at what our own culture is and what can be done with that. AND I'd add, what do we even want to do now? Lots of guys want to work for "video games" but I don't think any of them dreamed of rendering ferns for Alan Wake 2. At least I hope not. Worse of course is getting enslaved to stupid middleware shit nobody can even be manipulated into wanting. Man-hours just dumped in a hole.

If we want a genuine creative industry that is fulfilling and enriching to the lives of those within and its audience/consumers we would need a kind of cultural revolution that's been a long-time coming. I believe it would be much harder to build a japan style culture than maintain one. Realistically replicable standards of production values might have to be enforced (I want games with cheaper (not worse you dumb fucking tranny) graphics made by people who have to work less and enjoy their work more), piracy should be aggressively fought and culturally shamed, a culture of supporting artists and works with vision would need to be inculcated. Brutal stuff. But if we want to the cool interesting PS1/PS2 style spread of titles and ideas, a manga industry style constant influx of new ideas and opportunities for interesting individuals to distinguish themselves, we probably need something like this.

Now back to what I was saying, more monetisation. If we want to let this thing basically play itself out but less retardedly, I think we obviously have a problem of a fixation upon vestigial standards for no good reasons. Microtransactions are hated and feared because of screenshotted greentexts accompanied by a picture of Todd Howard's horse. Man-hours that could be used to colonise mars will be burned every two years recreating Call of Duty again for another cash influx.

Call of Duty should probably be one big rolling game, like the Halo Master Chief collection. Their campaigns are probably so shit because they have to work on the decades outdated big new release format. The zombie shit, as much as it doesn't interest me, seems a lot more inspired and interesting because it doesn't have to pretend it's for getting the general public on board and can instead be a weird meme thing made special for people who live call of duty.

Warhammer would be great for anything monetised sure, and I would go further and say that I think buying advantage in online games is really funny and should be tried. I personally play against meta in most online games because it's more fun and interesting to me. Poorfags go skaven swarm. Whale is some elf who kills them by the hundred. That's really funny. I remember that shit space marine planetside thing planned to make orkz a free to play shitter team. That would have been funny.

All right I'm just dumping thoughts now. Any other microtransaction fans here? Or at least people who think change needs to come and we'd be better off thinking about it than letting it happen slowly and stupidly?

An intriguing proposition which would surely earn much praise in any AAA's boardroom. While I agree with the spirit of your post and that there's no problem with monetization as such, I'd wager that there's very few instances where more monetization is actually going to improve things for any PC/Console game. Mobile is mostly for burning downtime between other tasks, and memetically their effect is limited to minor microspells. If we're to take Japan as an example, you'll find them quietly playing on their phones during the train commute, but for any dedicated time set aside for "gaming" they'll boot their PS5 to play Armored Core or some other Japanese shit. In the absence of good examples of mobile gaming's cultural relevance, I'll focus my attention on the PC/Console market.

Quote:The Gamestop shelf full of new, complete, AAA releases should be considered as outdated as CDs. Most people don't really believe they can sell that or particularly want to make it.

Funny thing is, this is exactly what you'll find today if you're looking in Japan. Go to Yodobashi Camera and you'll see resplendant shrines dedicated to their latest regional releases, reminiscent of what we once had in the West with the release of Halo 2 long ago. Their best and most successful games are typically standalone releases following the From Software model; you get a complete game on day 1. Armored Core 6 is a one they could have monetized the fuck out of -- put the focus on the PVP arena and make players gacha roll for parts, why not? But they didn't want to or need to. That's because the whole microtransaction thing isn't a result of a cultural change leading to an organic shift in demand, but rather a result of the broader competency crisis plaguing software development as a whole.

There are a few games I know of which did cyclical monetization well: TF2, CSGO, and fucking Roblox. That's all well and good, given they invented the whole concept over a decade ago, and nearly everything since has been imitating the lootbox or the robux thing. What made these work is that you had decent underlying game(s) developed by competent professionals, which were then further augmented by a closed loop monetization system that feeds back into itself. My friends and I enjoyed GAMBLING and trading skins back in middle school. We actually made money, by virtue of being smarter than whoever we were competing with, and Valve still ended up with the net profit. This should not only remain legal indefinitely, but perhaps a serious ministry of education could look into making it a mandatory part of any finance curriculum starting from age 13 or so. State-enforced gambling (for minors).

Yes... such monetization can be good, but the introduction of the idea coincided with the total shiddification of computer programming. Driven by the demand for web development and helped along by a mid-2000's object-oriented curriculum, you got a massive influx of drooling imbeciles entering the field from ~2012 onwards. Just as the seniors who pioneered the whole thing started to retire. Add the fact that mass migration has since kicked into turbo-overdrive, and what you get is incompetent web-dev pajeets being ordered by finance kikes to double, triple, quadruple-charge you for things that should have been in the base product. When you pay $70 for air, complete vaporware, any additional charge is just buying more nothing.

This is not a problem thats exclusive to games. Pay $20 a month for GPT-4, and they gimp the model to the point of unusability right from under you. Pay $15 a month for Google Drive, and see your storage space get slashed in half just after they accidentally delete half your files. The whole thing is falling apart at the seams. Total trannification across the board.

So, with all of that said, what's the "change" to be embraced here? Seems clear to me the AAA mtx thing is mostly a smokescreen and an excuse to charge you in parts, because they've lost the capability to ship a complete product on time, like some shitty parody of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Here's your rolling release goy, w-we promise you'll get the rest of it soon! That's not something to be emulated, especially when you do have smaller games routinely mogging AAA slop. Some point&click incest game made >$2 million in profit. Co-op horror with PS1 graphics >$20 million. These seem like small profits till you factor in the sheer overhead incurred by larger titles that have 500 miserable "devs" + 50 dudes in a "monetization department". I will NOT pay $20 to dress like a FAGGOT in Call of Duty.

The actual change that needs to come: a return to form. Small teams of competent white men (actual professionals who know what "memory alignment" is), making fun + memetically charged games that let players say "nigger" in text chat. Any additional monetization is orthogonal to that. Charging for expansion packs is great when you actually have something to deliver. I reject the idea that there's some inevitable trend that needs to be followed or even co-opted; that'd just be getting dragged to the grave by an industry that's falling apart.

This post is already too long so I save rest for later. Hail Amarna.

Guest Wrote:Warhammer would be perfect for a gacha style monetization to be honest.

It already has gotten the treatment 20 times over.

Pylon Wrote:An intriguing proposition which would surely earn much praise in any AAA's boardroom. While I agree with the spirit of your post and that there's no problem with monetization as such, I'd wager that there's very few instances where more monetization is actually going to improve things for any PC/Console game. Mobile is mostly for burning downtime between other tasks, and memetically their effect is limited to minor microspells. If we're to take Japan as an example, you'll find them quietly playing on their phones during the train commute, but for any dedicated time set aside for "gaming" they'll boot their PS5 to play Armored Core or some other Japanese shit. In the absence of good examples of mobile gaming's cultural relevance, I'll focus my attention on the PC/Console market.

The time isn't really for more monetisation. It's more like we need to start monetisation. Because right now this only exists for phoneshit and a few PC deathmatch memegames. The question that always causes spicdowns on 4mex is "name a good game that was ruined by monetisation/microtransactions/whatever". Nobody does this at the moment. Everyone's afraid to because of memes.

Quote:

Quote:The Gamestop shelf full of new, complete, AAA releases should be considered as outdated as CDs. Most people don't really believe they can sell that or particularly want to make it.

Funny thing is, this is exactly what you'll find today if you're looking in Japan. Go to Yodobashi Camera and you'll see resplendant shrines dedicated to their latest regional releases, reminiscent of what we once had in the West with the release of Halo 2 long ago. Their best and most successful games are typically standalone releases following the From Software model; you get a complete game on day 1. Armored Core 6 is a one they could have monetized the fuck out of -- put the focus on the PVP arena and make players gacha roll for parts, why not? But they didn't want to or need to. That's because the whole microtransaction thing isn't a result of a cultural change leading to an organic shift in demand, but rather a result of the broader competency crisis plaguing software development as a whole.

Yes, as I kind of alluded to already, Japan has the best pop-artisan culture in the world and so doesn't really need serious correcting. The only problems are when westerners start invading with a zeal and chauvinism that makes the jesuits look timid.

Now the fact you can even say "From Software Model" is worrying. From should be rank and file, but they're not anymore. Elden Ring was a blockbuster because normal westerners hadn't played anything for a while and through ZOGvision goggles ER looks a bit like World of Warcraft so down it went. These are the same people who day-one purchased Baldur's Gate 3. It was blockbuster mimetic virus, not finished product winning through taste. And for Armoured Core 6 they basically marketed the thing like ER with robots and rode on their name (FROM THE MAKERS OF...) to again meme people. This is not a safe or reliable way to do business. Manga works because you can fund it using the steady purchases of a steady customerbase who know what they like and won't turn their backs on this thing with absurd zeal because of an Mexican's greentext screenshottted by an indian and then shared by a transsexual on twitter (the fate of starfield, not that that game looks good but the people complaining don't know better).

Armoured Core 6 couldn't really have been monetised. What you're describing is an entirely different type of game. A game they could make of course. It is largely the business model in Japan for cash-oriented fodder-projects to support the more serious artisan work. Fire Emblem makes money via phonetrash, and the mainline games build on and generate interest in the IP, drawing more people into the phonetrash. Also because the Japanese aren't Jews they respect each other and recognise that it's good that they aren't all slaves making meaningless garbage so the phonetrash devs consent to being an auxiliary project to the mainline ones despite being more profitable.

This is comparable to the call of duty and halo model of "campaign and multiplayer" only far more intelligent and deliberate.

Quote:There are a few games I know of which did cyclical monetization well: TF2, CSGO, and fucking Roblox. That's all well and good, given they invented the whole concept over a decade ago, and nearly everything since has been imitating the lootbox or the robux thing. What made these work is that you had decent underlying game(s) developed by competent professionals, which were then further augmented by a closed loop monetization system that feeds back into itself. My friends and I enjoyed GAMBLING and trading skins back in middle school. We actually made money, by virtue of being smarter than whoever we were competing with, and Valve still ended up with the net profit. This should not only remain legal indefinitely, but perhaps a serious ministry of education could look into making it a mandatory part of any finance curriculum starting from age 13 or so. State-enforced gambling (for minors).

I would like any opportunity for intelligent children to leverage their intelligence and get ahead in life. I'm not crazy about this option but it's a novel thought.

Quote:Yes... such monetization can be good, but the introduction of the idea coincided with the total shiddification of computer programming. Driven by the demand for web development and helped along by a mid-2000's object-oriented curriculum, you got a massive influx of drooling imbeciles entering the field from ~2012 onwards. Just as the seniors who pioneered the whole thing started to retire. Add the fact that mass migration has since kicked into turbo-overdrive, and what you get is incompetent web-dev pajeets being ordered by finance kikes to double, triple, quadruple-charge you for things that should have been in the base product. When you pay $70 for air, complete vaporware, any additional charge is just buying more nothing.

Video games aren't sacks of corn. We can't really say what "should" be there. This mindset (or mexset) leads to fa/v/ella calling Tears of the Kingdom a ripoff because the "map" is the same. Do these people also measure minutes for ticket price when they go to the movies? Budget to ticket price? Pages for price with books? It gets absurd very quickly if you imagine people talking about anything else like this.

Quote:So, with all of that said, what's the "change" to be embraced here? Seems clear to me the AAA mtx thing is mostly a smokescreen and an excuse to charge you in parts, because they've lost the capability to ship a complete product on time, like some shitty parody of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Here's your rolling release goy, w-we promise you'll get the rest of it soon! That's not something to be emulated, especially when you do have smaller games routinely mogging AAA slop. Some point&click incest game made >$2 million in profit. Co-op horror with PS1 graphics >$20 million. These seem like small profits till you factor in the sheer overhead incurred by larger titles that have 500 miserable "devs" + 50 dudes in a "monetization department". I will NOT pay $20 to dress like a FAGGOT in Call of Duty.

Most of the games that get in trouble for this kind of thing I can't really imagine having a reasonable "complete" state, which circles back around to the key problem. What the fuck does a "complete" call of duty game look like? It doesn't complete. It's a deathmatch platform.

Quote:The actual change that needs to come: a return to form. Small teams of competent white men (actual professionals who know what "memory alignment" is), making fun + memetically charged games that let players say "nigger" in text chat. Any additional monetization is orthogonal to that. Charging for expansion packs is great when you actually have something to deliver. I reject the idea that there's some inevitable trend that needs to be followed or even co-opted; that'd just be getting dragged to the grave by an industry that's falling apart.

I would also like it if we developed a Japan style respect for artisans and good work, but that's asking a lot from people who have very little to offer.

Are any of y'all RTS officionados? Or at least tangentially interested in the genre? I have the following questions:

1) Why do new RTS titles feel like more of the same tired old formula?
2) What would you do differently in terms of mechanics and the core gameplay loop?

There's been a quirky lil dynamic going on for nearly a decade, consisting of players complaining that no new titles are coming out, new titles actually coming out, and failing miserably to satisfy the demand before fading into obscurity.

anthony Wrote:The time isn't really for more monetisation. It's more like we need to start monetisation. Because right now this only exists for phoneshit and a few PC deathmatch memegames. The question that always causes spicdowns on 4mex is "name a good game that was ruined by monetisation/microtransactions/whatever". Nobody does this at the moment. Everyone's afraid to because of memes.

{...}


Yes, as I kind of alluded to already, Japan has the best pop-artisan culture in the world and so doesn't really need serious correcting. The only problems are when westerners start invading with a zeal and chauvinism that makes the jesuits look timid.

TL;DR: You're right. Normies conflate the competence issue with a monetization issue. They want to blame everything on an impersonal byproduct of "late-stage capitalism", instead of on the very real monkey problem.

---

The current hysteria over monetization as the problem in-of-itself is suboptimal. I especially like the idea of having the phonetrash money being a financial engine for the real artists to produce their work. An effective use of modern slavery. So there's not much of a disagreement there, I'm just coming with an autistic "software quality" perspective.

Quote:It was blockbuster mimetic virus, not finished product winning through taste. And for Armoured Core 6 they basically marketed the thing like ER with robots and rode on their name (FROM THE MAKERS OF...) to again meme people. This is not a safe or reliable way to do business.

Elden Ring and Armored Core 6 were finished products that won through taste. At least... I personally liked them. By "complete" I mean that they had a great deal of non-homogenous content which was actually accessible and worked properly from launch. They accomplished this rather quickly with a dev team of "only" 300 people. Competence. Compare this to Halo Infinite's development, which used >2x the amount of time, people, and money to produce something which is woefully inadequate in comparison. It does not stack up to what's coming out of Japan, or what their predecessors pulled off over 15 years prior. That's my point: capacity for quality work has been lost by nearly every AAA studio in the West; the means by which to do so have been entirely forgotten. The monetization issue is a red herring.

Quote:Video games aren't sacks of corn. We can't really say what "should" be there.

{...}

I can't really imagine having a reasonable "complete" state, which circles back around to the key problem. What the fuck does a "complete" call of duty game look like?

I remember the days when you'd buy some random game off the shelf, and you could reasonably expect it to work. As in, the software you purchased and put in your machine would run at a reasonable framerate, and all of the content you paid for would be accessible. For AAA you'd have a campaign, a VS bots mode, split screen + networked multiplayer, and occasionally even some extra minigames that the devs had time to throw in just because. Remember the top-down monkey arcade thing from Black Ops? Hell, even Zombies itself was something made for World at War by one dude who had the time for it. That's what I generally mean by "complete" and "what should be there". But more importantly, my emphasis is on the competence of last-gen devs operating at 10x the capacity of those we have today.

In contrast, I recently purchased a copy of WH40K: Rogue Trader. Let me tell you: this shit does not work. These retards released a CRPG where nearly half of the questlines are bugged in some major way, and they didn't even use their own in-house game engine to make it. CRPG's are not rocket science, but apparently something unfathomably more complex for these people who can't figure out how to make a Unity quest trigger that doesn't break when you reload the save. So much for work that could be getting us to Mars. More money than ever is going into game studios that can't even do a fraction of the work that was considered routine in the 2000's. I can't go into all the ways the latest CoD is certainly broken because I frankly have not played it.

Were the software actually good, I'd have no problem whatsoever with much more aggressive monetization that pulled its own weight. It's not a monetization problem, it's a diversity hire retard monkey problem.

Quote:Do these people also measure minutes for ticket price when they go to the movies? Budget to ticket price? Pages for price with books? It gets absurd very quickly if you imagine people talking about anything else like this.

There's a considerable drought of kino lately as well, but I suppose I'll entertain the argument. An imax movie ticket is no more than $15. A AAA video game is typically $70, + Season Pass for another $20 / quarter, + any pre-order upsales or whatever else they pull on you. So we're comparing a film that costs $15 for a curated iMax experience, with a piece of software that can cost upwards of $100 to experience in its entirety. From the price alone, one might reasonably expect these two things to be held to different standards. Please forgive my indulgence as a software AUTIST in these sorts of things, because indeed I am very interested in the cost-to-results ratio. Not so much from the purchaser's perspective, but from the creation side. I suppose the other analyses wouldn't be so absurd if I was a movie producer, or a publishing house, both of whom almost certainly do look at such metrics. I am the CEO of Aryan Nigger Games.

I hope I haven't come off as dismissive. You've given me something to ponder. The process of optimizing vidya $ to fund Mars-Anenherbe is of critical importance. Would love to hear more on what monetization specifically you'd like to see. How modern digital content delivery and cheap transactions could be leveraged by a good team for maximum fun and benefit. The Warhammer Planetside thing was a good example. Hail

Pylon Wrote:

Quote:It was blockbuster mimetic virus, not finished product winning through taste. And for Armoured Core 6 they basically marketed the thing like ER with robots and rode on their name (FROM THE MAKERS OF...) to again meme people. This is not a safe or reliable way to do business.

Elden Ring and Armored Core 6 were finished products that won through taste. At least... I personally liked them. By "complete" I mean that they had a great deal of non-homogenous content which was actually accessible and worked properly from launch. They accomplished this rather quickly with a dev team of "only" 300 people. Competence. Compare this to Halo Infinite's development, which used >2x the amount of time, people, and money to produce something which is woefully inadequate in comparison. It does not stack up to what's coming out of Japan, or what their predecessors pulled off over 15 years prior. That's my point: capacity for quality work has been lost by nearly every AAA studio in the West; the means by which to do so have been entirely forgotten. The monetization issue is a red herring.

Have you seen the way people talk about them? The way people engage with them? Again, I believe the success was extremely arbitrary. Not something that anybody else making nice things can count on.

Quote:

Quote:Video games aren't sacks of corn. We can't really say what "should" be there.

{...}

I can't really imagine having a reasonable "complete" state, which circles back around to the key problem. What the fuck does a "complete" call of duty game look like?

I remember the days when you'd buy some random game off the shelf, and you could reasonably expect it to work. As in, the software you purchased and put in your machine would run at a reasonable framerate, and all of the content you paid for would be accessible. For AAA you'd have a campaign, a VS bots mode, split screen + networked multiplayer, and occasionally even some extra minigames that the devs had time to throw in just because. Remember the top-down monkey arcade thing from Black Ops? Hell, even Zombies itself was something made for World at War by one dude who had the time for it. That's what I generally mean by "complete" and "what should be there". But more importantly, my emphasis is on the competence of last-gen devs operating at 10x the capacity of those we have today.

I believe that that's more a matter of form than anything else actually. People had more fixed ideas of what a video game ought to be, so rather than bloating outwards until they basically run out of time things would be built towards a complete standard. Fixed ideas feel bigger and more complete in a finished work than an idealised forever-game that never quite comes together (every western PC game). JRPGs don't have these problems because the whole thing is bound to a vision with limits. There's only so much game to make. Used to be pretty true of most games. Now most western gamers and developers believe that genres are stale and stupid and your game should try to be everything at once because clearly set limits feel "video gamey".

Quote:In contrast, I recently purchased a copy of WH40K: Rogue Trader. Let me tell you: this shit does not work. These retards released a CRPG where nearly half of the questlines are bugged in some major way, and they didn't even use their own in-house game engine to make it. CRPG's are not rocket science, but apparently something unfathomably more complex for these people who can't figure out how to make a Unity quest trigger that doesn't break when you reload the save. So much for work that could be getting us to Mars. More money than ever is going into game studios that can't even do a fraction of the work that was considered routine in the 2000's. I can't go into all the ways the latest CoD is certainly broken because I frankly have not played it.

CRPGs have always had this problem. The real waste in CRPGs if you ask me is not just being VNs or whatever. But then that'd get at the real problem with these things, which is that they're dogshit boring. They sell on the kind of unspoken premise of world simulation, which runs into the above problem, you can't really put a cap on filling in an entire virtual world. As a finished form "CRPGs" have no restraint. JRPGs come with very firm expectations which make them simpler. What they're going to be is largely defined already, and that thing is very simple. JRPGs are allowed to run on the logic and conventions of a game that could be made on a console 30 years ago without a problem. CRPG fans are tasteless pigs who love convention but only because they associate it with the opposite of its intention and best effect. They think their conventions make things deeper, more realistic, whatever, so a game has to simulate the whole universe, and it has to run on dicerolls and dialogue choices and factions because these people are animals.You can't fit the whole world in a game, but you can fit a lot. CRPGs are a promise that will never be fulfilled. JRPGs are a standard that is met constantly.

Quote:

Quote:Do these people also measure minutes for ticket price when they go to the movies? Budget to ticket price? Pages for price with books? It gets absurd very quickly if you imagine people talking about anything else like this.

There's a considerable drought of kino lately as well, but I suppose I'll entertain the argument. An imax movie ticket is no more than $15. A AAA video game is typically $70, + Season Pass for another $20 / quarter, + any pre-order upsales or whatever else they pull on you. So we're comparing a film that costs $15 for a curated iMax experience, with a piece of software that can cost upwards of $100 to experience in its entirety. From the price alone, one might reasonably expect these two things to be held to different standards. Please forgive my indulgence as a software AUTIST in these sorts of things, because indeed I am very interested in the cost-to-results ratio. Not so much from the purchaser's perspective, but from the creation side. I suppose the other analyses wouldn't be so absurd if I was a movie producer, or a publishing house, both of whom almost certainly do look at such metrics. I am the CEO of Aryan Nigger Games.

I hope I haven't come off as dismissive. You've given me something to ponder. The process of optimizing vidya $ to fund Mars-Anenherbe is of critical importance. Would love to hear more on what monetization specifically you'd like to see. How modern digital content delivery and cheap transactions could be leveraged by a good team for maximum fun and benefit. The Warhammer Planetside thing was a good example. Hail

You seem to have misunderstood me. I'm not comparing value across media. I'm suggesting that the values of gamers are absurd and more demonstrably so if applied to other media where we aren't used to such thinking. Gamers feel ripped off for absurd and arbitrary reasons and have a masochistic desire to know that developers suffered for their money more than almost anything else it often seems.

Quote:Have you seen the way people talk about them? The way people engage with them? Again, I believe the success was extremely arbitrary. Not something that anybody else making nice things can count on.

I don't concern myself with such things. I do believe, however, that making good software consistently is a sustainable business model, at least for small teams at the scale I care about. From personal observation and many firsthand accounts from developers. Could not care less about what's said on Reddit, /v/, or whatever.

Quote:I believe that that's more a matter of form than anything else actually. People had more fixed ideas of what a video game ought to be, so rather than bloating outwards until they basically run out of time things would be built towards a complete standard. Fixed ideas feel bigger and more complete in a finished work than an idealised forever-game that never quite comes together (every western PC game). JRPGs don't have these problems because the whole thing is bound to a vision with limits. There's only so much game to make. Used to be pretty true of most games. Now most western gamers and developers believe that genres are stale and stupid and your game should try to be everything at once because clearly set limits feel "video gamey".

Very true. I've got nothing more to say on this particular thing. 

Quote:JRPGs come with very firm expectations which make them simpler. What they're going to be is largely defined already, and that thing is very simple. JRPGs are allowed to run on the logic and conventions of a game that could be made on a console 30 years ago without a problem. CRPG fans are tasteless pigs who love convention but only because they associate it with the opposite of its intention and best effect. They think their conventions make things deeper, more realistic, whatever, so a game has to simulate the whole universe, and it has to run on dicerolls and dialogue choices and factions because these people are animals.You can't fit the whole world in a game, but you can fit a lot. CRPGs are a promise that will never be fulfilled. JRPGs are a standard that is met constantly.

I am uneducated simpleton when it comes to JRPG's. Grew up solely on Western kino from the late 90's and early 2000's. Would welcome any recommendations you care to share.

ssa Wrote:Are any of y'all RTS officionados? Or at least tangentially interested in the genre? I have the following questions:

1) Why do new RTS titles feel like more of the same tired old formula?
2) What would you do differently in terms of mechanics and the core gameplay loop?

There's been a quirky lil dynamic going on for nearly a decade, consisting of players complaining that no new titles are coming out, new titles actually coming out, and failing miserably to satisfy the demand before fading into obscurity.

RTS has a simple problem: Nothing in the starcraft-type field will be as good as brood war. Nothing in the AOE-type field will be as good as AOE2. The solution is to make something different, and then the question comes: Is there a demand for *that*...I don't know. A lot of the player-base probably plays LoL, Dota2, etc. I think that if a new RTS was to succeed, it would have to do so based on strength of art (the hook) and then strength of narrative in the campaign (retaining force.) But current wisdom is all focused on multiplayer from what I've seen.

ssa Wrote:Are any of y'all RTS officionados? Or at least tangentially interested in the genre? I have the following questions:

1) Why do new RTS titles feel like more of the same tired old formula?
2) What would you do differently in terms of mechanics and the core gameplay loop?

There's been a quirky lil dynamic going on for nearly a decade, consisting of players complaining that no new titles are coming out, new titles actually coming out, and failing miserably to satisfy the demand before fading into obscurity.

Sorry, I missed this post first time around. You raise a subject I've thought about a lot (and talked about elsewhere, maybe even earlier in this thread). Guest is largely correct. Our problem is that a rather large and diverse field of experiences got conceptually refined down to basically only being allowed to be clones of two similar games. Anything else will be shouted down and attacked viciously by the loudest fucking vocal minority in the history of vocal minorities. That being comp-rts players. This minority successfully impressed upon the world the image of themselves as the "rts" players and the only ones games should be made for, but they're also a satisfied audience (despite also complaining that not enough games are made for them constantly, despite the fact they are the only audience new "rts" attempts to cater to to the point of the extinction of all other adjacent experiences).

RTS titles all feel the same because compniggers have been screaming that TRUE rts is only allowed to be a Starcraftvaniabornelike with agecompanylike elements. Every game is building a "base", "harvesting resources", and "microing" around your "squads" and "units" to take out their "map control" and "base" and eventually win. I emphasise these different retarded words because they're all so loaded, and I want you to think about them like you haven't seen them before. They're weird.

Of course, as I've been saying elsewhere about JRPGs, these are elements of a form. A tradition within a medium that can no longer be said to be an active striving towards "realism" or experimenting towards some new form that will deliver a fundamentally new experience. Now I like form, generally. Because, as I said, without form works often just bloat out without aim or intention. But form is good because it provides a frame and boundaries for new experiences within those boundaries. "JRPG" is a platform. Every JRPG might be about guys lined up having slow, staged mock-fights. But no two can really be called that alike because these shared elements are used to frame completely new visions. It's different people having different battles in different worlds, I hope you get me.

But what is this one form of "RTS", so mimetically successful that it killed all other related forms, for? Well, as they were created, they were primarily intended to serve as platforms for multimedia narrative based experiences. Starcraft has a relatively fleshed out story with solid production values and attempts at drama at stakes, and this story is presented through the perspectives of particular commanders overseeing the various battles that play out over the course of this story. Age of Empires 2 had its campaigns. It was historic adventure narratives for boys (and based men) presented in a highly novel and exciting way. Birds eye views of dozens of men killing each other, all seeing commander fantasy, the pleasure of building a little ant city to fight from. This is the experience that was actually successful.

But the experience that was mimetically successful was the revisionist lie that these games were most authentically and valuably appreciated as multiplayer competitive platforms. Somehow, this insanity of all interpretations caught. I suppose because of the Korean bugmenace mainly, and it became the dream to chase. A low common denominator forevergame is how RTS succeeds, because it happened once. And the only people you can find in the west talking about RTS are degenerate weirdos who never shut the fuck up about how the spirit of "RTS" is in being "hardcore" and how there used to be a bunch of superfluous "campaign" shit that existed solely for cowards who did not want to play the real game.

This ignores the special circumstances of Korea, that they're spiteful bugs who won't touch Japanese games as a matter of course, and who can't afford their own shit despite being "first worlders" just about, so they all play low common denominator shit on rented-access PCs like the warehouse and deliveroo slaves of the future west. This experience did not win on quality or any kind of universal appeal. It won on circumstance. Bad circumstances in particular (the now more organic rise of "competitive" gaming in the west should be seen as a significant step on our road to serfdom).

My point up to now, what we had was a form that was built around and for presenting dramatic and violent situations from a larger scale perspective, and allowing people to see massive events unfolding all at once. What this then became interpreted as was a form for competition.

Now, form as a platform for individual expressive and limited visions is good. But, form as a platform for a competitive forevergame is fucking dumb. Largely ditto what I said about Blood Bowl 3. The thing already exists, and barely sustains itself or doesn't even bring in money. And the plan is to split that limited niche playerbase by giving them what they already have but spun in some arbitrary way to be just different enough to not be the exact same game? Gee, who the fuck could have seen Grey Goo crashing and burning? Remember that game?

I bring up Grey Goo as the example of RTS retardedly shitting itself to death because it's so wrong on both counts. Mechanically (I hate that word but not as much as "gameplay") it's a boring do-over of AoE and Starcraft with gimmicks. Aesthetically, as multimedia, what is it? It actually has high production values cutscenes, a plot, a "campaign", but for the love of God why? It's so fucking ugly, boring, and stupid. The "factions/races" are all fucking hideous and boring. The game has zero appeal compared to something like AoE2's bright and lively depictions of history, Starcraft's colourful hollywood aliens and space-marines, Grey Goo has robots and drones fighting over grey dirt. Enjoy. This is what is going to pull you away from those and enslave the entire state of south korea.



This video's presentation is awful (one of those disgusting faggoty sounding youtuber voice guys), it feels appropriate for the subject matter.

And I'm not picking bad examples to be a dick and serve my weak point. Here's the future of RTS for you.







Do you see how we get to this from what I wrote above? If so, I have succeeded.

I see two big open goals for "RTS" which are completely neglected because of this language-hell these retards have dug themselves into. The first being what Grey Goo half-assed. Use the Command & Conquer, AOE2, Starcraft formula as a base for a highly original story that you actually want to tell, which is interesting. People like the basic form of these games to the point they will buy AoE2 DLC to play the campaigns. Starcraft 2's campaign modes have more players than PvP. People want to play something cool and neat which they can engage with in the form of an "RTS". But most people don't find desperate base-wars on an ELO ladder particularly compelling. It puts people off of the entire thing. If you have a cool narrative which could work a few ways, and you do it as an RTS without the pressure or excesses of compfaggotry, I think it could sell (other point, most RTS campaigns are shit to play now because of multiplayer conventions leaking in too hard. For example, infantry taking half an hour to die to machine gun fire in CoH2 because of multiplayer balance updates, making the campaign bizarre as scenarios built around base values kept getting updated too).

The other open goal is building "RTS" as spectacle. The ongoing success of the first Warhammer: Dawn of War game and more importantly, its megamod bloatfests such as ULTIMATE APOCALYPSE is proof that people like to LOOK at RTS just functioning and doing its thing, and they want more of that. Dawn of War is optimised like shit, and Ultimate Apocalypse is mostly one guy just dropping an insane amount of assets into one old game and letting you scale everything up by fucking with basic in-game values. It barely works, but it's still really cool just to see the sheer scale of it. This should be seen as a problem. Why is the greatest experience of scale available in an RTS one autist's barely functional mod for a 20 year old game?

Stupid asset drop toys like Ultimate Battle Simulator and such (I forget their names) are more to the point, as they are barely even games. Just ways to watch massive numbers of virtual entities do things inside your computer. This is what people want, but because it doesn't fit into the narrow dominant meaning of "RTS" nobody knows how to sell it and the people who enjoy it have no mass-consciousness of themselves as a potential audience able to petition to be pandered to. Compfags are the SJWs of "strategy games". A loud minority who killed everything people want to replace it with their gay faggotry that only, and barely, pleases them. The quiet moral majority need to learn who they are and how to ask for what they want. But that probably won't happen until some faggot who sounds like 'MasterOfROFLness' makes a youtube video referring to big strategy games as "grandsimvanialikes" or something, then it becomes a steam tag. Even then, if that's what it takes, someone should do it. But nobody is because gamers are that fucking dumb. There are that many videos about the struggles of "RTS" games lately and as far as I know nobody is actually talking about any of this (I don't watch these videos because listening to anybody but myself talk about video games is painful to me).

Extension of this open goal, my favourite "strategy" game might be Bungie's Myth (and Myth 2). In addition to feeling big, it feels very alive. Like Halo it has very lively and intelligent feeling moving parts which interact in a naturalistic fashion with each other. It doesn't have 2000 units at once like Ultimate Apocalypse, but the units you have have more physical and tactile interactions with each other than anything else you see in "strategy". The two big untouched appeals are scale, and fidelity/depth of interaction. Make a game that shows off one or both of these and I think you'll stand a far greater chance at getting gamer attention than trying to clone Starcraft 2 again. Look at Stormgate. Everything about it is shit. Compare it to footage of Ultimate Apocalypse or Myth. It looks like a regression from both in every way but being a snappy, micromanageable spamfest for Korean warehouse slaves. This is the fate of the tradition that gave us the AoE2 Joan of Arc campaign.

Guest Wrote:RTS has a simple problem: Nothing in the starcraft-type field will be as good as brood war. Nothing in the AOE-type field will be as good as AOE2. The solution is to make something different, and then the question comes: Is there a demand for *that*...I don't know. A lot of the player-base probably plays LoL, Dota2, etc. I think that if a new RTS was to succeed, it would have to do so based on strength of art (the hook) and then strength of narrative in the campaign (retaining force.) But current wisdom is all focused on multiplayer from what I've seen.

I ended up writing everything I wanted to above but thank you for your contribution to. I had it in mind also while writing.

anthony Wrote:RTS titles all feel the same because compniggers have been screaming that TRUE rts is only allowed to be a Starcraftvaniabornelike with agecompanylike elements. Every game is building a "base", "harvesting resources", and "microing" around your "squads" and "units" to take out their "map control" and "base" and eventually win. I emphasise these different retarded words because they're all so loaded, and I want you to think about them like you haven't seen them before. They're weird.

My point up to now, what we had was a form that was built around and for presenting dramatic and violent situations from a larger scale perspective, and allowing people to see massive events unfolding all at once. What this then became interpreted as was a form for competition.

{...}

The other open goal is building "RTS" as spectacle. The ongoing success of the first Warhammer: Dawn of War game and more importantly, its megamod bloatfests such as ULTIMATE APOCALYPSE is proof that people like to LOOK at RTS just functioning and doing its thing, and they want more of that. Dawn of War is optimised like shit, and Ultimate Apocalypse is mostly one guy just dropping an insane amount of assets into one old game and letting you scale everything up by fucking with basic in-game values. It barely works, but it's still really cool just to see the sheer scale of it. This should be seen as a problem. Why is the greatest experience of scale available in an RTS one autist's barely functional mod for a 20 year old game?

Excellent post. I especially resonate with what was said about Dawn of War.

Titans duking it out over a sea of infantry; thundering of cannons rattling away to the death of thousand men; their bodies ground to paste under the tracks of your war machines. To be a commander overseeing this grand spectacle is what appeals to me. A distinguished RTS must capture the desire to be a general. Not a squad-level tactician, and certainly not a Samsung assembly line manager. This is what future titles needs to understand about which parts once appealed to the Aryan soul. The concept of memorizing a table of "unit builds" and slamming your keyboard at 700 APM is an asiatic misunderstanding of the medium. It is offensively alien and deeply repulsive -- something which reflects in the flatlined sales and "RTS is dead" retrospectives.

Another thing I find interesting, is how the former casual playerbase of RTS has moved on almost entirely to 4X, in absence of compelling depth at a more digestible pace. Who gives a shit about microing SCV's for an extra 5 minerals when you could be assimilating entire star systems? When you lean into being a glorified spreadsheet simulator for gooks, you end up losing out to Paradox map-painting games filling a similar void, (minus the carpal tunnel syndrome).

Quote:Use the Command & Conquer, AOE2, Starcraft formula as a base for a highly original story that you actually want to tell, which is interesting. People like the basic form of these games to the point they will buy AoE2 DLC to play the campaigns. Starcraft 2's campaign modes have more players than PvP. People want to play something cool and neat which they can engage with in the form of an "RTS".

Ditto regarding campaign narratives and aesthetic vision. Those pre-level briefings taught me English when I was 3. I've nothing to add there aside from saying Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2, and Brood War were peak.

Quote:the former casual playerbase of RTS has moved on almost entirely to 4X, in absence of compelling depth at a more digestible pace ... you end up losing out to Paradox map-painting games filling a similar void

4X (usually) provides discrete time-steps with a limited amount of stuff to do in each turn. Having predictable resource incomes and time to think everything through allows for the resource management angle to be expanded on massively. Instead of 3-4 resources that everything runs on, you get a dozen odd numbers to search for, pursue, keep track of, and account for as the game goes on. Competitive RTS means that efficiency bonuses, unit stats, and production speed must all be plotted out in a spreadsheet before you even get into the game. You scarcely have time to adapt a strategy in the heat of it, planning one out is a non-option.

In real-time grand strategy, the focus shifts the opposite way, away from numerical complexity and towards an overall narrative. HOI4 takes advantage of this impeccably. The factions aren't just bundles of stats and sprites, when you're playing as the U.S. or Germany, you're directing the narrative course of your nation, in a world that's either bound to take a course you know all to well, or one that might change dramatically. There's numbers and stats under the hood, but you can for the most part ignore those. The narrative developments you get through the focus trees do a fantastic job of telling you how a particular development or path will affect your nation. Stellaris tries to do a similar thing, but building a narrative around ephemeral, arbitrary factions and races means all of the story has to happen through generic event chains, it moves each faction's uniqueness to gameplay factors, which is the weakest point of the genre so far.

What both grand strategy branches do really well is give you time to think. You either get static discrete turns, or the ability to turn the speed down and pause the game entirely. You're just building something aesthetic, and only moving to attack when you're confident with what you have and wanna move the narrative forward. This is how casual RTS players like to play, and it's something 4X and RTGS encourage and reward. Games will never be "balanced," AI sucks as a rule, and the network code is held together with duct tape and players. None of that matters, in single player you're playing exactly to overtake and stomp the AIs, and in multiplayer you're just chilling out with your friends and roleplaying diplomacy. You can wait 5 minutes for someone to reconnect after a desync.

None of this is to say that either of the genres are doing much better than RTS in terms of evolution or doing something cool, the few studios who've hit it big are too afraid of losing their cash cows to change things up too much, but they do exemplify what RTS lost in moving to compfaggery.

ssa Wrote:

Quote:the former casual playerbase of RTS has moved on almost entirely to 4X, in absence of compelling depth at a more digestible pace ... you end up losing out to Paradox map-painting games filling a similar void

4X (usually) provides discrete time-steps with a limited amount of stuff to do in each turn. Having predictable resource incomes and time to think everything through allows for the resource management angle to be expanded on massively. Instead of 3-4 resources that everything runs on, you get a dozen odd numbers to search for, pursue, keep track of, and account for as the game goes on. Competitive RTS means that efficiency bonuses, unit stats, and production speed must all be plotted out in a spreadsheet before you even get into the game. You scarcely have time to adapt a strategy in the heat of it, planning one out is a non-option.

In real-time grand strategy, the focus shifts the opposite way, away from numerical complexity and towards an overall narrative. HOI4 takes advantage of this impeccably. The factions aren't just bundles of stats and sprites, when you're playing as the U.S. or Germany, you're directing the narrative course of your nation, in a world that's either bound to take a course you know all to well, or one that might change dramatically. There's numbers and stats under the hood, but you can for the most part ignore those. The narrative developments you get through the focus trees do a fantastic job of telling you how a particular development or path will affect your nation. Stellaris tries to do a similar thing, but building a narrative around ephemeral, arbitrary factions and races means all of the story has to happen through generic event chains, it moves each faction's uniqueness to gameplay factors, which is the weakest point of the genre so far.

What both grand strategy branches do really well is give you time to think. You either get static discrete turns, or the ability to turn the speed down and pause the game entirely. You're just building something aesthetic, and only moving to attack when you're confident with what you have and wanna move the narrative forward. This is how casual RTS players like to play, and it's something 4X and RTGS encourage and reward. Games will never be "balanced," AI sucks as a rule, and the network code is held together with duct tape and players. None of that matters, in single player you're playing exactly to overtake and stomp the AIs, and in multiplayer you're just chilling out with your friends and roleplaying diplomacy. You can wait 5 minutes for someone to reconnect after a desync.

None of this is to say that either of the genres are doing much better than RTS in terms of evolution or doing something cool, the few studios who've hit it big are too afraid of losing their cash cows to change things up too much, but they do exemplify what RTS lost in moving to compfaggery.

I think modern Paradox games border on not being strategy games at all. They are fundamentally different from board games like chess or earlier computer games that drew inspiration from them like Civilization. As a matter of practical necessity, tabletop games had to have rules that were transparent to human players because there was no computer to handle the mechanics of the game for them. In contrast, Paradox games present the simulation in such a way that it's easy to play the game without knowing what's really going on e.g. you have to look up guides to understand combat mechanics in Hearts of Iron because the game doesn't show you how results are calculated, just the results the battle simulation produces.  Technologies, doctrines, or ministers will give you one or two percent bonii which are inherently more difficult for the human mind to grapple with than the whole numbers found in tabletop games.

Something like Civilization IV doesn't need a "narrative path" in the form of focus trees because it's status as a game is secured by its core mechanics. The player's decisions revolve around tradeoffs whose consequences are easy to understand (e.g. building a temple means you won't get your next military unit for another six turns), because they were designed from the start to create a game-like experience. In contrast, Paradox titles have their roots in an attempt to simulate historical reality, which means that extraneous Visual Novel-esque elements are grafted on top of the simulation in order to make it more enjoyable as a game.

On the whole, the awkward compromises produced by trying to make a game out of a simulation instead of having a clear vision of what the player's experience is supposed to be as the foundation, leads to Paradox's real-time map games not being good examples of game design in my opinion. The addition of important mechanics through modular DLC further contributes to the disjointed character of these games.