Comments on: Slideshow Tutorials

By: East is East and West is West

East is East and West is West — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:04:32 +0000

[...] manual and have it readily available. There is no way you will figure this out by going through the Click To Proceed tutorial or by jumping in. And the manual itself is only a couple of dozen pages with generous screenshots. [...]

By: Troy

Troy — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:26:49 +0000

Yeah, that’s a serious problem. I did that a couple of times, too. Is it so hard to make things blink or flash or make a little noise?

By: James Allen

James Allen — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:28:40 +0000

In the SR2020 tutorial, it took me a while to figure out to click the red highlighted icons…I kept exiting the tutorial by pressing “done” instead!

By: Alan Au

Alan Au — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:36:02 +0000

Ideally, I shouldn’t even need to math to figure out how things work, but revealing the math means I’m less likely to be surprised when my intuition conflicts with the in-game results. Plus, I want to know what tradeoffs I’m making through my choices.

By: Troy

Troy — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:55:43 +0000

I’m also a big fan of calculation transparency. The player should know what factors lead to which effects. The best part of the SSG wargames is how clear the calculations are every step of the way.

GalCiv2 needs more numbers in the planet building phase, for sure, especially since the most recent expansion adds tons of new structures that may or may not be superior to the default ones. A right click to a GalCivilopedia entry would help a lot. I think ship building is fine (there are hard counters and you have to measure cost).

I am not a big fan of math, though, so min/maxing to get optimal results with a little calculation is much less appealing to me than going by feel. And, the more complicated games get, of course, the less likely it is that you can find a right solution in any case.

Civ IV stands out in this regard, because the math is not only transparent, it is easy to do. And the math in no way leads to some sort of imperative to take a specific action. The openness of the engine does not close off the strategy.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:45:03 +0000

Your comments made me think of an interesting (and frustrating) corollary– the “hidden game engine” problem.

I’m a paper manual guy– would love to have something in my hands, or at least a PDF I can return to again and again.

But what peeves me off in strategy games is having all the mechanics hidden from me. If I’m told my star frigate is better than a space fighter, I want to know HOW much better it is. And how does the game measure that? In what situations is it NOT better?

Galactic Civs II is a great game, but notorious for this– what is the optimal planet strategy? What are the worst combinations of weapons and defense? What are the *calculations* at work here?

I get the feeling that many designers, particularly of 4X games, hide these computations and variables from players simply because they feel that is the way to heighten the “mystery” of the game. Building a fleet of huge ships may be the worst strategy of the game if the numbers were actually revealed to the player, but with the numbers hidden, it may simply “feel” like the right call. Thus the designer figures, “Hey, the player is enjoying themselves, so why ruin the fun by telling them that there is a ‘right’ way to play the game?”

For once the players know the ‘right’ way to play the game, it becomes stupid to play any other way, thus eliminating the variability/replayability of the game.

Personally, I think it’s lazy, and carried to certain extremes, offensive (as in situations where the AI is optimized to play the game “correctly” but human players are not provided the same information).