Paradox Grand Strategy: Tim Cook? How many divisions has he got?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Paradox Grand Strategy: Tim Cook? How many divisions has he got?

«‹›769 »

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

DStecks posted:

It literally doesn't, but for argument's sake, let's say that it does. What does policing the definition of "game" actually achieve? It is inevitably a bludgeon being wielded by people who want to enforce their video game preferences as the only legitimate ones. "A game without losing isn't really a game" is perhaps a statement of interest to, say, developmental psychologists studying the animal origins of play, but in the field of video game design it's a worthless statement, which can only ever serve to stifle creativity.

Pharnakes says "I find it frustrating when a game says "hey, maybe a cool thing!" and then says "actually no, nothing at all!"

The Sharmat says "You're not allowed to! If there's no chance at failure, then it isn't a game!" conveniently ignoring, for example, random events in the very games this thread exists to discuss. Plenty of Paradox game events have only positive outcomes. Does this mean they delegitimize these games? Make them lesser? Because that would seem to be the argument Sharmat is making.

This is why I said that Sharmat's definition of a game is a useless one. All it exists to do is tell developers there's certain things they aren't permitted to do, that there's certain things games aren't permitted to be. It's video game fundamentalism.

You're surprised at video game fundamentalism in a thread full of map game grognards for series that are traditionally workshopped by its developers with competitive multiplayer matches?

I bring it up because its just as prescriptive to focus on The Sharmats comment that it isn't a literal game after the original comment explaining that failure is vital to a game's experience, which is still a broad stroke but an important one that defines the map game through line. There are many sources of random failure and the entire point of a map game is to statistically minimize those in favor of the good stuff. That seems to be the case of the anomaly system that's being argued over as well, since it is influenced by scientist skill and traits they have collected so far, almost as if its a cool system that is meant to be probed and prodded by a player to find the dynamic but maximized approach like Apoffy's description of how to get good CK2 leaders.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 15:59

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 23, 2024 21:58

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

zedprime posted:

You're surprised at video game fundamentalism in a thread full of map game grognards for series that are traditionally workshopped by its developers with competitive multiplayer matches?

I bring it up because its just as prescriptive to focus on The Sharmats comment that it isn't a literal game after the original comment explaining that failure is vital to a game's experience, which is still a broad stroke but an important one that defines the map game through line. There are many sources of random failure and the entire point of a map game is to statistically minimize those in favor of the good stuff. That seems to be the case of the anomaly system that's being argued over as well, since it is influenced by scientist skill and traits they have collected so far, almost as if its a cool system that is meant to be probed and prodded by a player to find the dynamic but maximized approach like Apoffy's description of how to get good CK2 leaders.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 16:02

karmicknight: Aug 21, 2011

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Comet Sighted

"[REF DATE] is a day I will always remember. It was the day I became cynical, bitter, and distraught. You may call it an overreaction for me to feel this way simply because of the HR practices of a single Anomalous studies scientist, but let me explain what all of this means to me.

My life was thrown off balance and I never regained my footing after that day, because I lost my ability to respect. An essential part of being human is to feel respect for those who may or may not be deserving of it. But it is equally human to feel painful disillusionment when someone or something you respected turns out to be much less than you thought. But the level of betrayal I felt when the Anomaly announced that is wasn't the optimal event tree tore something from me that I'll never be able to recover. They tore away my ability to respect anything, and they tore away my ability to feel [REF RACE]."

# ? Nov 4, 2015 16:38

DrSunshine: Mar 23, 2009; Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

karmicknight posted:

"[REF DATE] is a day I will always remember. It was the day I became cynical, bitter, and distraught. You may call it an overreaction for me to feel this way simply because of the HR practices of a single Anomalous studies scientist, but let me explain what all of this means to me.

My life was thrown off balance and I never regained my footing after that day, because I lost my ability to respect. An essential part of being [REF RACE] is to feel respect for those who may or may not be deserving of it. But it is equally [REF RACE ADJ] to feel painful disillusionment when someone or something you respected turns out to be much less than you thought. But the level of betrayal I felt when the Anomaly announced that is wasn't the optimal event tree tore something from me that I'll never be able to recover. They tore away my ability to respect anything, and they tore away my ability to feel [REF RACE]."

>"How tragic."
>"One less mouth to feed".

# ? Nov 4, 2015 16:40

Cynic Jester: Apr 11, 2009; Let's put a simile on that face
A dazzling simile
Twinkling like the night sky

DrSunshine posted:

>"How tragic."
>"One less mouth to feed".

>"Gave it a good tumble"

# ? Nov 4, 2015 16:46

RabidWeasel: Aug 4, 2007; Cultures thrive on their myths and legends...and snuggles!

vyelkin posted:

It's worth pointing out that EU4 itself has tried to eliminate as many opaque random chances as possible that existed from EU3. Remember missionaries in EU3? You placed your missionary and it had a tiny chance every month of converting the province. It could randomly pop two months later, or you could be waiting 200 years. That may have been more realistic but it really wasn't better gameplay in any way than the EU4 system.

It was much worse than that originally, you had missionaries that regenerated at a fixed rate much like how diplomats etc. used to work and you would fire off a missionary for a fixed cost which would then immediately either convert or fail to convert the province on arrival. If you got unlucky you could spend decades worth of missionaries on a single province.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 17:18

Groogy: Jun 12, 2014; Tanks are kinda wasted on invading the USSR

DStecks posted:

I'm not saying that losing is bad, I'm saying that it is not needed for a game to be a game. You can't "lose" Myst.

You can lose in Myst actually.
if you free any of the two brothers that is a fail state for you the player. You have to free the dad.

You can also consider failure to solve a puzzle, giving up or resorting to cheat is a form of losing even without the game explicitly telling you

Groogy fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Nov 4, 2015

# ? Nov 4, 2015 17:43

binge crotching: Apr 2, 2010

Groogy posted:

You can lose in Myst actually.

Yep, and not just 'lose' by being stuck in a puzzle you can't figure out, but actual outright game over.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 17:47

Groogy: Jun 12, 2014; Tanks are kinda wasted on invading the USSR

I am however not saying the ability to lose is what makes a game a game. For me I define it as this: An activity with a structured set of instructions of how to succeed in it

This means however that something like The Stanley Parable is not a game as there is no set of instructions on how to succeed. You can argue that the ending which is most beneficial for Stanley is a "win" condition but the game does not give you the instruction to find that ending. However the game To The Moon which is very heavily focused emotional story does provide this and as such I define it as a game. Both of these are very dear to my heart and just because something "technically isn't a game" doesn't make it bad, not entertaining or as some put it "not fun". It just makes it something else, the content is still the same.

Mind also succeed does not mean that win condition equals game by my definition or just that it tells you that you have to just press space to make the story move forward and then it finishes. The key part is that you can be "better" at it I guess.

Groogy fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Nov 4, 2015

# ? Nov 4, 2015 18:16

Enjoy: Apr 18, 2009

Any game you guys play has a fail state because you're friggin' losers

# ? Nov 4, 2015 18:29

Agean90: Jun 28, 2008

Enjoy posted:

Any game you guys play has a fail state because you're friggin' losers

your life seems to be in a fail state, i recommend a hard reset

# ? Nov 4, 2015 18:34

Demiurge4: Aug 10, 2011

The Incredible Machine was a game without a real failure state, just escalating challenges to be overcome that could stall the player temporarily if it was especially complex. Today it's games like InfiniFactory or whatever crazy automation setup you build in Minecraft. Losing is Fun when it's part of the games design, Dwarf Fortress is basically a strategy roguelike where the player expects to lose everything eventually because the game is designed to throw increasingly insurmountable challenges at him. Crusader Kings 2 is hard to lose because you're not playing a country, but a dynasty and any surviving member continues the game. A lot of players have trouble making the distinction though.

I don't think Stellaris will suffer from failure states in the anomalies because they are basically a secondary module to the main game. Presumably the game has a tech tree that might even branch and let the player go different directions. Anomalies give the player opportunities to accelerate up that tech tree or in rare cases unlock a technology that throws the entire game wide open when you suddenly find a rogue AI that infects your formerly perfectly safe robotic workforce.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 20:41

The Sharmat: Sep 5, 2011; by Lowtax

Videogame Fundamentalism

Demiurge4 posted:

The Incredible Machine was a game without a real failure state, just escalating challenges to be overcome that could stall the player temporarily if it was especially complex.

Being stalled is a failure state

# ? Nov 4, 2015 21:58

Linear Zoetrope: Nov 28, 2011; A hero must cook

The Sharmat posted:

Being stalled is a failure state

This discussion is a failure state.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:13

Elias_Maluco: Aug 23, 2007; I need to sleep

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that a game is a self-contained set of rules through which the player interacts with other players or things or the game itself. It makes sense to me and applies to every game I can think of.

Why are we discussing this again

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:23

Apoffys: Sep 5, 2011

Elias_Maluco posted:

Why are we discussing this again

I thought we were discussing whether some minor feature in a half-finished game which we have almost no information about sounds like "fun" and "something that makes the game better". Apparently I was wrong, and we were really discussing whether or not games are even real or just a figment of our deranged imaginations.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:29

Vivian Darkbloom: Jul 14, 2004

Elias_Maluco posted:

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that a game is a self-contained set of rules through which the player interacts with other players or things or the game itself. It makes sense to me and applies to every game I can think of.

Why are we discussing this again

Because no one here has read Wittgenstein :colbert:

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:31

Funky Valentine: Feb 26, 2014; Dojyaa~an

Sometimes a map game is just a map game.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:32

Demiurge4: Aug 10, 2011

The Sharmat posted:

Being stalled is a failure state

If you're putting together a puzzle map but can't find the piece that fits in that one spot, have you lost the game?

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:36

Kulkasha: Jan 15, 2010; But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Likchenpa.

Dibujante posted:

An intermediate step would be to allow provinces to decompose along pre-determined lines based on development / something(!?)

e.g. a huge province with really low development could split into four roughly even provinces (maybe randomize it up a bit?) after it hits 12-18 development. Of course, provinces can't decompose forever, so eventually you can just keep piling on the development. But really big provinces that are supposed to represent vast areas of sparsely populated land could break down into smaller and smaller provinces if they get developed sufficiently.

e: possibly some peace deals could also split a province into parts and give some parts to one side and some to another?

This is a great idea, P-Devs take note!

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:39

karmicknight: Aug 21, 2011

Jsor posted:

This discussion is a failure state.

This discussion is a failed state not a failure state.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:40

The Sharmat: Sep 5, 2011; by Lowtax

Demiurge4 posted:

If you're putting together a puzzle map but can't find the piece that fits in that one spot, have you lost the game?

"Failure state" doesn't have to mean a game over screen and never did in the context of any part of this discussion as far as I'm aware.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:47

double nine: Aug 8, 2013

<< if it presents itself as a game and is perceived by at least a part of its audience as a game then it's a game.>>

We have researched functionalism.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:53

The Sharmat: Sep 5, 2011; by Lowtax

But then how will I have easy to use objective categories that don't trigger my spergy tendencies?

# ? Nov 4, 2015 22:59

Jobbo_Fett: Mar 7, 2014; Slava Ukrayini; Clapping Larry

Paradox Grand Strategy: Power Gaming since 769 A.D.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 23:06

double nine: Aug 8, 2013

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Paradox Grand Strategy: Power Gaming since 769 A.D.

WHERE IS MY CAVEMAN:FALL FROM EDEN GAME PARADOX?!!

edit: actually with the White Wolf purchase that might just happen now ... Get on it, Johan

# ? Nov 4, 2015 23:12

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

A game is any event that provides the player agency to affect the experience, even if it is in a trivial way. This is not something you can say about any other medium. No participant in a traditional film or novel experience can alter it in any way. Sometimes, there's experimental film / literature / theatre that allows the audience to influence the direction of the experience. I would classify this as a game.

p.s. with this expanded definition in mind, and the established fact that games are murder simulators, interactive theatre is a murder simulator. Hopefully this clears things up.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 23:41

Kulkasha: Jan 15, 2010; But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Likchenpa.

You know what would be cool for future EUs? Implementation of a character system. Like, you start out as a Nobleman/King or as a Patrician, and over the course of the game, as you make different advances and take different ideas, you evolve to control an entire faction or even the country, autocrat-style. You would actually fear the Revolution!
Also pops everywhere, all the time.

# ? Nov 5, 2015 02:37

Kavak: Aug 23, 2009

Will there be dynamic province names or at least renameable (By event or otherwise) provinces in HoI IV? It'd be great for Kaiserreich.

# ? Nov 5, 2015 09:58

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

Kulkasha posted:

You know what would be cool for future EUs? Implementation of a character system. Like, you start out as a Nobleman/King or as a Patrician, and over the course of the game, as you make different advances and take different ideas, you evolve to control an entire faction or even the country, autocrat-style. You would actually fear the Revolution!
Also pops everywhere, all the time.

Also there should be a chance of an Aztec invasion powered by alien benefactor technology.

# ? Nov 5, 2015 10:10

Riso: Oct 11, 2008; by merry exmarx

Kavak posted:

Will there be dynamic province names or at least renameable (By event or otherwise) provinces in HoI IV? It'd be great for Kaiserreich.

That is the worst 'feature'. You never know where or what province something is.

# ? Nov 5, 2015 10:16

Jobbo_Fett: Mar 7, 2014; Slava Ukrayini; Clapping Larry

Riso posted:

That is the worst 'feature'. You never know where or what province something is.

Perfect counter-intelligence tactic to be used in any multiplayer game.

Besides, the recent paradox games do well to show off war goals and potential casus belli on the map with highlighted areas or other things that make them pop out. Same goes for building stuff, since you're choosing a province for its potential rather than its name.

And the games also have a search engine built-in to find any named province,.

# ? Nov 5, 2015 10:28

Kavak: Aug 23, 2009

Riso posted:

That is the worst 'feature'. You never know where or what province something is.

Are you referring to multiplayer? Can't it just be turned off by the host if it's going to be a problem?

# ? Nov 5, 2015 10:30

GenderSelectScreen: Mar 7, 2010; I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME; College Slice

Kavak posted:

Can't it just be turned off by the host if it's going to be a problem?

You can't do that in CK2 so I doubt it.

# ? Nov 5, 2015 16:22

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

If I can't rename everything in a game I get really twitchy.

# ? Nov 5, 2015 19:31

prussian advisor: Jan 15, 2007; The day you see a camera come into our courtroom, its going to roll over my dead body.

Don't know if you guys have read today's dev diary on HOI4, but

podcat posted:

Since the question will be asked about guarantees.... it's worth pointing out that guarantees no longer come into effect if both sides of a war are guaranteed by you. So this means that the nations inside the US sphere of guarantees are protected from external attacks, but does not limit internal wars between nations. This should make playing a south american minor a lot more interesting than before!

It's what I always wanted

# ? Nov 6, 2015 13:23

Kavak: Aug 23, 2009

Makes sense- The Monroe Doctrine was all about European interference, we never gave a poo poo about Latin American countries beating each other up, especially in South America once you left the Caribbean coast. US probably would react badly if another country was out-and-out annexed, though.

EDIT: What's the focus called "Pearl Harbor Gambit"?

Kavak fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Nov 6, 2015

# ? Nov 6, 2015 13:40

Fidel Cuckstro: Jul 2, 2007

Kavak posted:

Makes sense- The Monroe Doctrine was all about European interference, we never gave a poo poo about Latin American countries beating each other up, especially in South America once you left the Caribbean coast. US probably would react badly if another country was out-and-out annexed, though.

EDIT: What's the focus called "Pearl Harbor Gambit"?

I really really hope it's an event that lets you fake an attack on your own fleet. Pearl Harbor needs more thrutherism.

(It actually does sound like something that will provide a huge relationship penalty to Japan and maybe trigger them in to declaring war)

# ? Nov 6, 2015 13:50

Kavak: Aug 23, 2009

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

(It actually does sound like something that will provide a huge relationship penalty to Japan and maybe trigger them in to declaring war)

That would be the embargo, but if "Stalin Was Right" will be a thing, so can this.

# ? Nov 6, 2015 13:53

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 23, 2024 21:58

Freudian: Mar 23, 2011

FDR LIED, CARRIERS DIED

# ? Nov 6, 2015 14:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Paradox Grand Strategy: Tim Cook? How many divisions has he got?

«‹›769 »