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Skippy McPants posted:A big part of the appeal behind Battletech is the mechs themselves, and I think that if you pulled back beyond about the scale of a company, then you'd lose a lot of that. PTN's LP sort of tried this with an Alpha Strike round, and at a lot of people didn't enjoy how much of the detail gets lost in the effort to make it play faster and bigger. Battletech will always be big mechs with tons of detail to me, and boiling them down to like 6 stat boxes just feels wrong.
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Mar 27, 2018 02:01
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Big robits with generations of detail etched into their battle-scarred hides is the setting's primary draw. If you pull the focus back to the point where that's no long on display, then you end up with any old strategy game. Matrix Games presents Battletech would be totally pointless, because who cares if a square tile is labeled 'mechs' instead of 'tanks'
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Mar 27, 2018 02:34
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I've said this before, probably, but I think a bit part of appeal for me in expanding the scope of the outfit is the possibility of introducing some level of defining chains-of-command and structure. Like appointing Company Commanders along with Lance Commanders. And maybe certain MechWarriors make really good fighters but are poo poo commanders but expect promotion and will get pissed off if they don't get promoted. And then you have to trust it to the AI. Or maybe some sort of strategic map where you maneuver your Lances around, so most battles remain small affairs.
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Mar 27, 2018 02:38
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Hubis posted:There's a great Sid Meier quote that's the effect of "If you make a good AI that doesn't cheat the player will just assume it's cheating anyways, so just make it easy on yourself and make something fun to play against and don't stress about 'fair'" I can't find that quote but I'd love to see it. anyway to me it all comes down to this: The AI is not playing this game - you are. There's no need for the game to be "fair" to the AI if the player has a fun, challenging experience. Sky Shadowing posted:I have absolute faith in this game to be a very good starting point. My only real concern is that in the future I think the Core BattleTech Fanbase at least wants to expand to controlling a Battalion sized unit, at the least, and I'm unsure how they can do that without making every battle a super long slog. What in the last two years of salty tears that this isn't a 1:1 TT conversion leads you to believe HBS won't throw out bad ideas if needed? This is a hypothetical so far down my worry list as to not exist, I suggest that approach for you too.  e: what I mean is, don't worry about hypotheticals. worry if - and only if - you start to see real traction for bad ideas among the fans not getting shot down. Psion fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 02:46
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I want 6 mechs in the player's corner, so that we can have a Comstar warcrimes campaign.
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Mar 27, 2018 02:54
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Skippy McPants posted:Big robits with generations of detail etched into their battle-scarred hides is the setting's primary draw. Matrix Games actually did publish a mech game, and the units were individual scale. I think it was freeware at one point.
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Mar 27, 2018 02:55
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sebmojo posted:I said it before, but isildur you should use those yogscast vids in publicity because they are distilled essence of battletech, and they're pure delight to watch. Yeah, the guy being able to identify mech's by tonnage and armament, and presenting his back armor to an enemy because his front had already been stripped was  as gently caress. That's a dude who loves the gently caress out of battletech, loving playing your battletech.It doesn't have to be perfect, and I don't expect it to be. The tactical combat looks enjoyable and if there's an even semi functional strategic layer, I'm very excited. I also really liked the discussion of balancing weapon types and weapon locations. From the video's I've watched it looks like it's trying to be battletech, not trying to transcribe battletech.
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Mar 27, 2018 03:33
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Once I was playing Medieval II as the Turks and was locked in this weird death spiral with Egypt where they'd send a 2,000-man army to Iconium every three turns, which would get absolutely wiped out, and then they demanded that I surrender. Their entire economy was dedicated in essence to throwing doomed men at this one city I owned, which in turn meant that I couldn't do much else other than defend it. The Mongols invaded and they *kept doing it* even as their entire Eastern holdings were boatmurdered by guys named "Batu the Cruel." Basically I don't like when an AI does that, because then you know there's a switch called "don't try to win, try to make the player lose" and it's permanently set to "on."
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Mar 27, 2018 03:53
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Right, which is why I call out Section Z for always complaining about it and bringing it up in this thread. Its a part of the difficulty. If the AI played as well as I did then I would complain, too. Until it can and does, I accept that there must be concessions to making the game a challenge even if it is a bit much at times. I'm not sure I'd want an AI that plays as well as I do. Thing is, the core of every heroic epic ever told pits a small group of people against unwinnable odds, and they succeed or at least struggle valiantly by using their lesser resources more intelligently. That kind of story has been told over and over and over a million different ways in almost every recorded civilization because it appeals very much to the human mind. Having a lesser AI with more resources in a game emergently tells this kind of narrative, because the player does have to be better than the AI because the AI just has more resources at its disposal. There are games that can tip this the other way, but broadly speaking it's drat near impossible to make an intelligent reactive AI in video games currently, but that's okay because a lesser AI suits just as well most of the time.
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Mar 27, 2018 04:16
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Pattonesque posted:Once I was playing Medieval II as the Turks and was locked in this weird death spiral with Egypt where they'd send a 2,000-man army to Iconium every three turns, which would get absolutely wiped out, and then they demanded that I surrender. To be fair, if HBS has made an AI worse than the Medieval II strategic AI then I’ll be impressed.
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Mar 27, 2018 04:28
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Right, which is why I call out Section Z for always complaining about it and bringing it up in this thread. Its a part of the difficulty. If the AI played as well as I did then I would complain, too. Until it can and does, I accept that there must be concessions to making the game a challenge even if it is a bit much at times. TBF 'complaining about game mechanics that I don't understand / in a game that isn't even out yet / that have not even been confirmed to exist' is basically Zed's gimmick at this point.
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Mar 27, 2018 05:39
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Voyager I posted:TBF 'complaining about game mechanics that I don't understand / in a game that isn't even out yet / that have not even been confirmed to exist' is basically Zed's gimmick at this point. At least it's an aspect seen in the actual skirmish gameplay, compared to complaining the game always advertised about controlling a small lance does not let use use a hand picked selection of tanks, jets, and three times as many deployable mechs on our payroll for the nth time If I end up worried about nothing, at least that beats worrying about how 12vs12 could be balanced outside of mod madness or expansions. Section Z fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 05:59
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Saw 54 replies and got my hope up for the release date 
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Mar 27, 2018 07:46
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Raged posted:Saw 54 replies and got my hope up for the release date I'm betting they're gonna give a more precise date by the third week of April,at this rate.
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Mar 27, 2018 08:19
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You can make good AI for a top-down game. It's just that it takes 2 years to do it.
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Mar 27, 2018 08:56
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Regarding the discussion of AI, there's a pretty interesting youtube series about AIs in games. The one about alien isolation stuck with me because it was such an interesting implementation where they had a director AI and an Alien AI with the director giving hints to the alien. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt1XmiDwxhY Some pretty interesting stuff in the series including recently a rundown on the AI through the total war franchise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBzTJOYgW0M
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Mar 27, 2018 13:00
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We got a launch date: April 24.
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Mar 27, 2018 14:11
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Foglet posted:We got a launch date: April 24.  High Command has confirmed deployment and WE ARE GO FOR LAUNCH on April 24, 2018 at 9am PT.
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Mar 27, 2018 14:15
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Same day as Frostpunk 
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Mar 27, 2018 14:19
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Also a new trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxqmd_tE2WI
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Mar 27, 2018 14:23
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Psion posted:I can't find that quote but I'd love to see it. I think it was something different from Sid Meier which relates to what Wiz is always talking about : Sid Meier posted:There is a basic dichotomy in games: When you reward players for winning a war and give them 100 gold pieces, the player never really questions rewards. If something bad happens, if there is a setback to the player, the react much differently. They complain the game is broken, the AI is cheating, or something in the game is wrong. You have to be careful with setbacks. It’s important to explain why these things happen, and how to avoid these things in the future. If gamers believe the game is cheating, of you haven’t explained something well, the will leave. But the Civ AI developer Soren Johnson has a lot along that topic. Soren Johnson posted:under symmetrical conditions, artificial intelligence often needs to cheat just to be able to compete with the player. Accordingly, designers must learn what cheats feel fair to a player and what cheats do not. As the Puzzle Quest team knows, games need to avoid situations in which players even suspect that the game is cheating on them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7AWHT7j3V4
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Mar 27, 2018 16:33
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ulmont posted:I think it was something different from Sid Meier which relates to what Wiz is always talking about : It's comparatively easier to not consider it 'cheating' when an alien jumps into the middle of your killbox to take a swing at your guys. It can still feel pretty bullshit, but hey there's a million more hive grown/clone stamped/whatever where that one game from. Which was part of my justification process for dealing with Old X-com and the remake. In an RTS, you don't really notice unless it's particularly strained (A regular feed of small groups and rebuilding vs 'OH poo poo, INFINITE RESOURCES gogogo'). In a 'x4 strategy' the above mentioned death spiral kingdom stands out more because of the both setting and mechanical prospect of "...So, diplomacy is a THING, right?" with only a fraction of the units involved. Meanwhile in Battletech. You can't help but hear the pilot shouting "Mechs are more valuable than lives! ™" every time they pull that sort of thing in what little (skirmish centric) gameplay footage we have so far.. Between the highly contrasting talks about resource scarcity across the entire setting, vs "Savanah Masters, amiright  " So even if it only happens 1/50th as often compared to other games, it stands out more.
Section Z fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 17:28
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The worst is when you are playing a racing minigame and realise that that AI will always rubber band to right behind you. I'll accept any amount of asymmetry between myself and the AI the game designer needs to make their system 'work', just as long as those rules aren't quietly changed on me mid-game.
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Mar 27, 2018 17:44
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isildur posted:gently caress, i hope you all aren't too disappointed. Literally anything is better than trying to remember how to set MegaMek up, so it's gonna be good to me.
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Mar 27, 2018 17:59
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I mean I really like my game and I think it's awesome but I think it's probably not as good as your anticipation is making it seem. Just, you know. Have realistic expectations!
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Listen to the first year of the Game Design Roundtable podcast. It's full of gold like the above quotes. Soren Johnson is one of the hosts for that first year and it's the only gaming podcast I've truly enjoyed. If you've ever thought 'why didn't they just do this instead' while playing a game, you owe it to yourself to give it a listen. I think older aged fans of battletech will enjoy it. You'll also never be able to listen to another gamer pretend at business/project management after this.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:00
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Alchenar posted:The worst is when you are playing a racing minigame and realise that that AI will always rubber band to right behind you.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:01
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Section Z posted:Another reason why I probably put way too much goddamned time into the Yakuza 0 Slot car racing minigame. Oh no, I'm going to leaves these children behind in the dust on my way to victory. RANT TIME Super Godspeed Gears release: don't worry, no spoilers. Showed up at seven, in full firesuit for a nine am release. Devoted no? I was one of the few to dress up, and I was the best-dressed. I'm not being vain, I honestly had the most detailed and accurate costume there. We were told in line, that the best-dressed person in line gets to open the box and have the first Super Godspeed Gears. So, I'm a shoo-in, aren't I? WRONG. loving Kiryu brings his bratty sprog in at 8:59am dressed in a generic Poppo cape with stars and glitter and loving gaudy BLAH. Taobao for a slot car. OMG WITTLE PWESHUS SO CUTE OMG YOU CAN OPEN THE BOX AND HAVE THIS GEAR YOU CAN'T OPTIMIZE FOR MAX PERFORMANCE AND fawning fawning, blatant breederism etc THE loving KID WON'T EVEN REMEMBER THIS. THE BOX OPENING WAS MINE. MIIIIINE. I wouldn't have minded if someone had said "Oh look Majima, you are best-dressed but would you mind if this swordfish launcher amputee opened the box instead?" I would have said "Absolutely no problem. Go for it." But no. loving NUGGET GETS THE HONOUR. I'm furious. On principle of course, not out of any sense of entitlement. Well yes, entitlement also. But I WORKED FOR IT, I DESERVED IT. I made an effort. I spent a million yen making an effort. I showed up early. I will remember and treasure this event for ever and eternity. And I'm passed over for an ugly little brat with a sparkly tie. Woo loving woo. I didn't stab her in the eye with my shadowblade. I WANTED to. I talked about doing so VERY loving LOUDLY. I was going to eviscerate her guardian with the sharp end of my safety cone. I loving hate Kiryu and child-lovers. loving GO TO HELL. I'm so pissed about this, sorry. It's just that in ten years time, this kid won't remember what she was doing on December 16th 2005. In ten years time, I will be remembering how I was deprived of this nerdly honor by an opportunistic twat breeder and her shitling. I'm hurt. All my life, nothing has gotten to me more than being deliberately ignored, or passed over. Honestly; that's the sort of thing that can make me cry in public. Or key your car. Or viciously murder you and your family in the heat of frustration and never-ending denial Congratulations breeders, you win. Edited to add: To all of you who are calling me immature etc, I'd like to add that you make a very good point, but have you considered GO gently caress YOURSELF? If you're so anal-retentive, go back to the other community and go on with your breeder-humping. Also, to the person who submitted this to fandom_wank, I seriously (no sarcasm) thank you. I've always wanted to be there!
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Mar 27, 2018 18:17
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Taintrunner posted:RANT TIME Reading this was physically painful.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:19
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Skoll posted:Reading this was physically painful. Yuuuup. What’s it from?
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Mar 27, 2018 18:28
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Awwh, I thought the Harry Potter childfree rant is a classic
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Mar 27, 2018 18:32
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yuuuup. What’s it from? I think we’re better off not knowing.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:34
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isildur posted:gently caress, i hope you all aren't too disappointed. I just pre-ordered your game, so it had better be the best game ever made by human beings in the history of the species.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:37
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Psion posted:I can't find that quote but I'd love to see it. I believe I actually heard it in the Part 4 of Soren Johnson's interview with Sid Meier for his long-running Designer Notes Podcast. If you're interested in "Things Sid Says (and Why He Believes It)" then the whole interview is worth a listen. If you're interested in development/design in general than I think the podcast is definitely worth a subscription -- it gives you a lot of insight into different people's philosophies/processes with the benefit of hindsight you don't get from game review podcasts. Psion posted:anyway to me it all comes down to this: The AI is not playing this game - you are. There's no need for the game to be "fair" to the AI if the player has a fun, challenging experience. One iteration of the aphorism which Sid and Soren discuss a few times is the question: "Who is the one having the fun -- the player, the designer, or the computer?" A mechanic/system might be incredibly fun to research and design, or incredibly elegant and aesthetically pleasing from a design point of view, but that "joy" is generally designer-facing and not necessarily experienced by the player. It's important to recognize whether you are confusing making a fun game with having fun making the game. Ideally you have both, but your goal is generally the former rather than the latter. This is why play-testing is important -- it can be hard to separate your own intimacy with the game and mechanics from the perspective of an independent player. Likewise, a sophisticated procedural world generator, a fully simulated economy, and highly sophisticated AIs that are programmed to manipulate those systems to defeat the player are only good if the player is actually interfacing with all that complexity and if that complexity enhances the focus of the game rather than distracting from it. If not, then it's just bloat and might end up detracting from the final product (especially if it hamstrings the game's ability to challenge the player). One classic example is how barbarians in Civilization would actually spawn spontaneously in areas the player couldn't see (behind the Fog of War) rather than follow the same rules as the player. Interestingly this was something they ultimately changed in later versions. Another example is how the "smart" thing for the AI to do in Civilization would be to always gang up on whoever the front-runner was (especially if it was the player). If they did this consistently, however, the game would be somewhat frustrating and predictable; however, if they completely ignored win conditions then the game would probably seem too easy. The trick is finding a balance between "trying to win" and "providing opportunities for the player to exploit". e: Yeah, this ulmont posted:I think it was something different from Sid Meier which relates to what Wiz is always talking about :
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Mar 27, 2018 18:39
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yuuuup. What’s it from? A classic internet thing from one of the old childfree communities about a Harry Potter book release.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:50
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Zore posted:A classic internet thing from one of the old childfree communities about a Harry Potter book release. And here I was thinking someone was having a cocaine-fueled meltdown.
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Mar 27, 2018 19:33
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How Disgusting posted:And here I was thinking someone was having a cocaine-fueled meltdown. Someone still might have been, even if it wasn't specifically the poster in this case.
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Mar 27, 2018 19:37
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Hubis posted:I believe I actually heard it in the Part 4 of Soren Johnson's interview with Sid Meier for his long-running Designer Notes Podcast. If you're interested in "Things Sid Says (and Why He Believes It)" then the whole interview is worth a listen. If you're interested in development/design in general than I think the podcast is definitely worth a subscription -- it gives you a lot of insight into different people's philosophies/processes with the benefit of hindsight you don't get from game review podcasts. Another popular example is the AI coding in early versions of Oblivion. They had this huge elaborate system set up, where each NPC had a set of characteristics and needs and would dynamically try to satisfy their needs in line with their characteristics (e.g. an upstanding citizen will always buy food to eat, whereas a criminal might just steal or even murder for it). Kinda like The Sims writ large, if you will. I'm sure one of the reasons it got so far was because it probably was very interesting and satisfying to design, implement, and then see working in motion. However, it ran into two problems: One, all the additional complexity could quickly lead to unpredictable outcomes, like entire towns killing themselves off in some sort of revenge-murder cascade triggered by a harmless theft. And two, all that complexity was largely wasted on the player, who couldn't see the workings behind it. If you see a shopkeeper get up and go grab a bite to eat in the tavern, it doesn't make much difference to you whether he did that because a complex simulation had him decide he'd gotten too hungry and calculate the inn as the cheapest place to get good food, or whether there's just a simple script along the lines of "At time Y, go to place X and perform action Z, then return". The result, as seen by the player, is essentially the same. It can be very easy to get lost in the how a certain thing can be accomplished, while forgetting about the resulting what that the player will actually interact with.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:32
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Perestroika posted:And two, all that complexity was largely wasted on the player, who couldn't see the workings behind it. really good spreadsheets are irresistible to designers, but if the whole spreadsheet is hidden from the players, with only its outputs visible -- basically a mechanical turk -- you could get the same results with a much simpler spreadsheet and nobody would ever know the difference. i've fallen victim to this tendency several times and identifying when you're just masturbating is a key skill for new designers to learn. i still love the Pirates economy, but i also recognize that it was Way Too Much and was entertaining mostly just to me.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:39
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It's the same thing in IT. Junior folks are just excited that they can, senior folks spend more time thinking about whether or not they should.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:49
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It's a shame because 'laughing about how a simulation can turn itself upside down' is totally my gig even in games that don't revolve around it and I'd love a god-game that ran on the logic described above that let me create a failure cascade with the smallest poke.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:53
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