General > Discussion

Disruptive changes to stat calculation in latest 2.5-dev

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ShipIt:

--- Quote from: H-Hour on September 07, 2013, 11:46:03 pm ---I understand it can be frustrating for some players, especially considering the lengths that modern games go to to ensure players experience little to no "friction"  in their games. But to me, the potential for outliers is an important pact between the game and the player. I know, as a player, that I face a randomly generated challenge, that the game has jot been deliberately engineered to ensure I face only mild challenges, and that makes the victory mine in a way that I don't feel in other modern games. The peaks and valleys are an integral part of what makes a sandbox game meaningful. We already have some hard limits - the game can not sustain more than 8 missions on the roadmap at once, and will discard New spawns - but it's important to me as a gamer that the game does not "auto-tune" itself to safeguard me from outlier moments. In a game like this, where the narrative shape emerges dynamically from the unique circumstances of each campaign - and my own successes and failures - such outlier moments provide the game with the uncertainty and struggle which gives the game meaning. We can gate the experience and narrow the range of possibilities as mass-marketed games do, but in my view doing so undermines the power and investment that comes from forcing responsibility onto the player.

--- End quote ---

+1

MonkeyHead:
Hear Hear. I dont want to always win. I want to lose horribly and enjoy the small victories when they come. To borrow the motto from another community where I hang out a lot, Losing is Fun!

Telok:
I seem to have been misunderstood. I absolutely do not want an easy, non-random game. I like and support the current implementation, that's why I try to do data mining and testing. What I'm concerned about is that it might be better to put some limits on the randomness at some point.

My current situation is what raised the question. I have now had 12 missions in three days and the current code seems to lack any sort of upper limit to that. Likewise it sounds like there is no possible streak breaker code to prevent a game going for three months without any missionsat all.

On an unrelated note I have sold off all the plasma blasters and particle beam cannons in my radar base garrisons. One of the missions was a base invasion on one such garrison. The blasters are too inaccurate at ranges of more than two or three squares and the cannons are too slow and heavy (and still rather inaccurate) for green troops. In any case neither weapon can stop an armored ortnok in a single hit, combined with the inaccuracy this makes them unsuitable for my base defense purposes.

My base defenders are being moved to a plasma and sniper rifle based defense plan. If I'm going to lose a soldier every hit then I want at least some damage from my troop's reaction fire. That means weapons with less than a 3 spread.

By the way, I won that mission with only three survivors out of the twelve soldier garrison. Plasma rifle bursts were more effective than the blasters.

ShipIt:
Not sure about this, though - but at this point in the game you should already be able to use the EP-Ammo for your initial weapons (Assault, Sniper, HMG), no?

Telok:

--- Quote from: ShipIt on September 10, 2013, 06:21:11 am ---Not sure about this, though - but at this point in the game you should already be able to use the EP-Ammo for your initial weapons (Assault, Sniper, HMG), no?

--- End quote ---

I've had that stuff for a while now but I only use it with the sniper rifles on my real soldiers. While it is a boost to the damage it suffers from being workshop only like the PB grenades for the grenade launcher and advanced aircraft. With competing demands on my workshop time trying to arm the garrisons with first-rate ammo is way way down on the list. They'll get coilguns before they see plasma ammo because I can buy coilgun ammo from the market faster than I use it. Even with my best sniper teams it's 2/3 coilguns to 1/3 sniper rifle and that's only because the TU difference keeps sniper rifles competitive.

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