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HopperUK posted:I find that interesting because I felt like the original Prison Architect devs went to a lot of trouble to be as ethical as they could be. The execution is handled like it's a very serious, very bad thing that's happening. It's entirely possible to build a prison based on reform and rehabilitation. I suppose I mean it's as ethical as it can get while still being about prisons. Yes, this is what I was referencing with "pre-Paradox", btw. Prison Architect while still under Introversion without any meddling? One of the few cases of really tastefully handling a major issue while still gamifying it. Wasn't my cup of tea mechanically but appreciated it. Psych Ward threw that out the window with mountains of bullshit. It's a good thing they finally patched in a "go back to the version before we acquired it" option for builds.
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Mar 18, 2021 23:11
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Eh, topic seems fine to me so far, but I have not watched any video or paid for any game. Just going off of words typed on a tv I'm like ~its supposed to be edgy~ I guess.
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Mar 18, 2021 23:13
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Mandatory Assembly posted:Uh, are you guys talking about the Clandestine Site you can build? I think that's kinda mischaracterising it? Since nobody else seems to be willing to directly engage - what’s the actual text? I haven’t bought the game but I’m curious now after this sudden influx of posts.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:28
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Captain Monkey posted:Since nobody else seems to be willing to directly engage - what’s the actual text? I haven’t bought the game but I’m curious now after this sudden influx of posts. I'm going through the tutorial now, and so far this is all I've found - more to come as I unlock this tree. 
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Mar 19, 2021 02:00
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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm going through the tutorial now, and so far this is all I've found - more to come as I unlock this tree. The only way I'd be okay with that is if the intel it gives you is somehow bullshit. But eh, not really judging or anything; as a couple of people have hinted at, what squicks people out too much is pretty personal. I play violent games God knows, it's not as simple as 'morally wrong thing in game' or anything.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:01
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HopperUK posted:The only way I'd be okay with that is if the intel it gives you is somehow bullshit. But eh, not really judging or anything; as a couple of people have hinted at, what squicks people out too much is pretty personal. I play violent games God knows, it's not as simple as 'morally wrong thing in game' or anything. After playing some more, I think that's actually it for torture? As far as I can tell, your clandestine centers let you steal Russian bitcoin/mess with US elections/etc, and your intelligence center is about finding the rebels. And here's how I understand it: - each area of your ministry has three choices about how "harsh" your policy should be. Conscription vs volunteer army vs a mix. Ration power, don't ration power. Censorship, no censorship. - intelligence has you go between "rule of law" aka be better, and torture - what I screenshotted. I don't think torture should be that effective. I do understand how it fits the game design idea of "pick good vs evil choices" ala frostpunk's child labor. I do like the idea of having to keep an eye on the rebels and making sure they're not planning a coup. If I'm wrong, please let me know. So far this game seems weirdly/neatly complex but understandable and I'm enjoying it, but I'm also not yet in a frame of mood to dig into it - I got up early to put together a new bed and I just want to screw around with dungeon crawlers right now.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:18
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This honestly doesn't reflect on the devs or the game but I took a look at the Steam page for Rogue State Revolution and  
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Mar 19, 2021 02:30
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Beamed posted:This honestly doesn't reflect on the devs or the game but I took a look at the Steam page for Rogue State Revolution and It’s exactly the kind of game that’s going to attract garbage. The question is if they’re going to cater to them or not long-term.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:33
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Empire of Sin is on Gamepass now, reviews are pretty mediocre-to-bad but so far it seems interesting enough to keep my interest for a couple of hours maybe. I don't think I realized going into it that it's primarily an open world gangster xcom with the empire management trappings around it. I just want to play City of Gangsters 
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Mar 19, 2021 02:37
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Beamed posted:This honestly doesn't reflect on the devs or the game but I took a look at the Steam page for Rogue State Revolution and I mean, that is the scam. As middle eastern as colonial dungeons are to latin america. I felt skeeved when Space Haven spent an update on Slavery Mechanics but as a child of Rimworld I get why they make those hosed up first steps. Rogue State Revolution playing in Tropico's playground does give it precident to play in that tone.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:43
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KirbyKhan posted:I mean, that is the scam. As middle eastern as colonial dungeons are to latin america. I felt skeeved when Space Haven spent an update on Slavery Mechanics but as a child of Rimworld I get why they make those hosed up first steps. Rogue State Revolution playing in Tropico's playground does give it precident to play in that tone. Uh. Read the last paragraph.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:44
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explosivo posted:Empire of Sin is on Gamepass now, reviews are pretty mediocre-to-bad but so far it seems interesting enough to keep my interest for a couple of hours maybe. I don't think I realized going into it that it's primarily an open world gangster xcom with the empire management trappings around it. I just want to play City of Gangsters Weirdly enough that makes me interested as a fan of XCOM, how is the game as that?
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Mar 19, 2021 02:48
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Oh yes, the reviewer is a gross man who's into gross things. The game playing footsies with GWOT tactics is what I was talking about. I hope it doesn't veer closer to reviewer's Buttegeig fueled fantasies.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:51
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StrixNebulosa posted:Weirdly enough that makes me interested as a fan of XCOM, how is the game as that? I'm still barely past the tutorial but it seems drat near identical combat-wise, ability bar, AP, Overwatch, shot/crit chance, etc. I can't tell yet if it feels good to play or not in the long run but I think you could have some fun with it if you're looking for something similar with a 30's gangster flair.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:53
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HopperUK posted:Oh poo poo really? That's an instant turnoff for me if that's true. I was trying to find a review of the game a came across an interview with the actual developer, and he comes across as a very smart guy who is wired correctly politically ( he was on the Canadian government anti nuclear proliferation council and teaches programming at a community college or something), and the interviewer asked him specifically about “touchy” subjects that are addressed in the game. The developer gave a well-reasoned, thoughtful answer, and I was impressed. Still haven’t got the game yet because I try not to buy anything with the “roguelike” tag because I don’t like the genre and I don’t know what it means in the context of a game like this. Also not going to watch a 6 hour video, lol.
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Mar 19, 2021 03:09
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Alamoduh posted:I was trying to find a review of the game a came across an interview with the actual developer, and he comes across as a very smart guy who is wired correctly politically ( he was on the Canadian government anti nuclear proliferation council and teaches programming at a community college or something), and the interviewer asked him specifically about “touchy” subjects that are addressed in the game. The developer gave a well-reasoned, thoughtful answer, and I was impressed. Eh, I think I will. Just not tonight, gotta finish the 6 hr DSP vod a_raving_loon did last night and some other stuffs too.
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Mar 19, 2021 03:32
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Alamoduh posted:I was trying to find a review of the game a came across an interview with the actual developer, and he comes across as a very smart guy who is wired correctly politically ( he was on the Canadian government anti nuclear proliferation council and teaches programming at a community college or something), and the interviewer asked him specifically about “touchy” subjects that are addressed in the game. The developer gave a well-reasoned, thoughtful answer, and I was impressed. Link the interview!
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Mar 19, 2021 03:35
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Y’all, the dev is like actually posting in this very thread.
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Mar 19, 2021 05:22
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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm going through the tutorial now, and so far this is all I've found - more to come as I unlock this tree. I haven't played the game so I don't know if something like this would fit, but I think it may be more tolerable if instead of use of torture, it might be something surveillance-related, e.g. warrantless wiretapping or something along those lines. Just a thought.
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Mar 19, 2021 05:37
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StrixNebulosa posted:Weirdly enough that makes me interested as a fan of XCOM, how is the game as that? It was absolutely terrible, but they recently dropped a patch that made it better. I haven’t played it since the patch, so I can’t really tell you if it’s moved up to “mediocre” or if it’s still pretty bad. It had the general “seek cover and play it safe to focus fire on enemies and hope you can take them out before they seriously damage your guys” vibe that X-Com did really well, and the combats themselves weren’t bad excepting that occasionally enemy AI would spaz out and waste their turn running to a place, then running back; and that some bosses are super unbalanced. The problem is the overall context. You have to do dozens upon dozens of these battles to start even a small gang, so the tedium of slowly cat-and-mousing a roughly even enemy just gets unbearable. I feel like, in XCOM, my first dozen fights were varied and unique, and after they were over I was maybe a third through the plot? While in Empire of Sin, my first dozen fights were all against the same enemies, with the same abilities, in slightly different warehouses, after which I owned my first city block in a district that had forty blocks in a city that had ten districts. And to make it even worse, your gang members are incredibly expensive and nearly impossible afford to replace in the early game, so if you have the occasional  you can’t just lose a little progress and start a new team, you either reload a save or give up.The only way I had fun with it was to play the super unbalanced bosses and just see how fast I could completely decimate each fight, because you’re going through so loving many of those fights if you take it seriously you won’t get out of the first month. And even then, there’s one loving animation that occasionally happens where a character decides to take a shot, but needs to spend a full twenty seconds cautiously peeking around the corner before eventually jumping around and shooting, and you’ll die a little every time you recognize that it’s starting, because you’re going to see if a hundred loving times and it isn’t interesting after the first few. skeleton warrior fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 06:01
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Captain Monkey posted:Y’all, the dev is like actually posting in this very thread. I knooooow, but I am determined to wierd post through it.
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Mar 19, 2021 06:07
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skeleton warrior posted:The problem is the overall context. You have to do dozens upon dozens of these battles to start even a small gang, so the tedium of slowly cat-and-mousing a roughly even enemy just gets unbearable. I feel like, in XCOM, my first dozen fights were varied and unique, and after they were over I was maybe a third through the plot? While in Empire of Sin, my first dozen fights were all against the same enemies, with the same abilities, in slightly different warehouses, after which I owned my first city block in a district that had forty blocks in a city that had ten districts. i feel like if you're going to do a gangster game with combat, then combat needs to be even more rare, not frequent. violence should be almost hitman-esque, trying to stay as subtle as you can as you like beat up a guy and throw him down a flight of stairs. that would be more interesting than these giant gunfights which, while attention grabbing, usually meant serious poo poo was going down and one gang or another was headed for a bad ending. just the whole vibe of "underground criminal organization" and "constant, blaring gunfights" dont match imo basically while john romero did use to work at id software i just dont think the last couple decades have shown he understands game design
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Mar 19, 2021 06:26
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StrixNebulosa posted:I don't think torture should be that effective. I do understand how it fits the game design idea of "pick good vs evil choices" ala frostpunk's child labor. I do like the idea of having to keep an eye on the rebels and making sure they're not planning a coup. So yes, Strix, you've hit the nail on the head here. That torture policy does provide intel every turn and tank your approval with liberals. If you choose it though, you open up a number of event series that will definitely reinforce just how morally unjustifiable torture is. This is a game design conceit, basically. If there were any choices in the game that just flatly conferred no benefit, nobody would pick them, and you'd never get the associated event chains. You're free to be an amoral bastard when playing Rogue State Revolution, but the game is not going to shower you in rewards for playing that way, it will show you the consequences of your actions. StrixNebulosa posted:Link the interview! That interview is here! Captain Monkey posted:Y’all, the dev is like actually posting in this very thread.
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Mar 19, 2021 06:50
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Mandatory Assembly posted:So yes, Strix, you've hit the nail on the head here. That torture policy does provide intel every turn and tank your approval with liberals. If you choose it though, you open up a number of event series that will definitely reinforce just how morally unjustifiable torture is. This is a game design conceit, basically. If there were any choices in the game that just flatly conferred no benefit, nobody would pick them, and you'd never get the associated event chains. You're free to be an amoral bastard when playing Rogue State Revolution, but the game is not going to shower you in rewards for playing that way, it will show you the consequences of your actions. Would it be possible to add text that states that there might be unexpected effects later? Currently it reads like "Liberals get mad about torture even though it totally works perfectly".
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Mar 19, 2021 09:45
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Hah, so looks like post-apocalyptic raiders won't be in the future plans for Endzone anymore...because they're already present in the game since the release patch. It's the mid/late-game pressure the game needs, since there's not a lot of reason for you to take up mining before raiders were in. Now, you'll need to mine sulfur and manufacture ammo for use against the bastards, if you can't afford to keep bribing them with supplies.
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Mar 19, 2021 09:47
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ive owned prison architect since it came out on steam but have never managed to get into it. it's ugly in a way that rimworld somehow isn't, despite looking almost the same, the interface is horrendous, and the concept of prisons is kind of a turnoff. i don't think i've ever gotten far enough into it to get to the fun part, this most recent time I got to the campaign mission where you have to retake the prison from rioters and just found that boring, then went to make my own jail and got annoyed with the building interface. why didn't they just rip off theme hospital's basic interface like they did for a bunch of the other stuff? it would be so much easier if all the objects were in neat tabs instead of a giant bucket you have to filter, or if right clicking anywhere on the screen didn't cancel your build order. or if the undo button would undo you mistakenly cancelling stuff. i just want a fun management game to play that has some type of 'evil' or 'weird science' type options
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Mar 19, 2021 10:38
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Mayveena posted:Now I can't find "Komita" Komita is the neighbouring city off the south of the map. I haven't finished my line out that way yet but I'm hoping/assuming I can just run a trainline right up to the map border to get that connection working. I just gave it and shot and yup when you run track up to the border with a neighbouring city it asks if you want to create a connection.
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Mar 19, 2021 10:44
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There's nowhere on the map with that name. Did you find it?
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KirbyKhan posted:Oh yes, the reviewer is a gross man who's into gross things. Fairly sure that reviewer is just making GBS threads on Middle Eastern countries and not advocating for sex slavery. Then again, this is the internet, so he's probably an Islamophobe AND a sex pervert.
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Mar 19, 2021 10:56
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I did quite like prison architect when erm.. introversion wasn't it? The original devs had it. It is indeed simulating a lovely thing, but I sort of enjoyed the way the game just... lets you run the thing either for profit or to actually try and make people a little better off for being there. Like there's no real reward either way, it's sort of like the tropico swiss bank account, either you can make shitloads of money by killing people or you can run a prison that tries to get people as much education, addiction programs, and quality of life as you can possible manage and the only thing you get at the end is good recidivism stats. I think it's quite a good game to play if you're playing it from the perspective of "why should anybody have the ability to make this decision about people's lives" because it both illustrates how easily people might choose to just gently caress over their prisoners for personal gain, and also how that's kind of the least effort thing to do. Like you have to actually set out to try and run a good prison for its own sake, which is a fun thing to do from a gameplay perspective and also is probably the best way I can think of to make a game about prisons with decent politics, because there's no incentive to do it, other than your own commitment to doing it. It does make it so that poo poo conditions make people more violent and worse off when they leave, but it's entirely up to you, the omniscient prison architect with the money, whether you even care about that. But yeah then paradox bought it and now it's just a DLC cash cow.
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Mar 19, 2021 12:45
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Yeah to be clear (since there was a lot of discussion after I went to bed) I wasn't saying the torture thing was woven throughout the fabric of the game, I was talking about the toggle that gives you more intel and -rep with liberals which someone screenshotted. It wouldn't let me get a screencap for some reason. I thought the context was clear - there are a lot of oneoff jokes and stuff in the text of the game, but that one stood out to me as poorly handled.
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Mar 19, 2021 14:17
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Skyl3lazer posted:Yeah to be clear (since there was a lot of discussion after I went to bed) I wasn't saying the torture thing was woven throughout the fabric of the game, I was talking about the toggle that gives you more intel and -rep with liberals which someone screenshotted. It wouldn't let me get a screencap for some reason. I thought the context was clear - there are a lot of oneoff jokes and stuff in the text of the game, but that one stood out to me as poorly handled. Yeah I know right, completely mishandled and off the mark. Liberals fuckin love torture.
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Mar 19, 2021 16:23
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KirbyKhan posted:Yeah I know right, completely mishandled and off the mark. Liberals fuckin love torture. My leader's lineage name is Obama
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Mar 19, 2021 16:28
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Mandatory Assembly posted:So yes, Strix, you've hit the nail on the head here. That torture policy does provide intel every turn and tank your approval with liberals. If you choose it though, you open up a number of event series that will definitely reinforce just how morally unjustifiable torture is. This is a game design conceit, basically. If there were any choices in the game that just flatly conferred no benefit, nobody would pick them, and you'd never get the associated event chains. You're free to be an amoral bastard when playing Rogue State Revolution, but the game is not going to shower you in rewards for playing that way, it will show you the consequences of your actions. Thanks so much for explaining this!
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Mar 19, 2021 16:45
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Mandatory Assembly posted:Uh, are you guys talking about the Clandestine Site you can build? I think that's kinda mischaracterising it? I think the issue here is that it's a weird thing to make torture the singular focus of your intelligence policy. It could have been changed to something like Surveillance while losing practically nothing. For me cryptocurrencies are a similar turn off. I get that this is a slightly silly game with a nation of chickens, mechs and stuff, but I just hate bitcoin and everything it represents and hate to see it acknowledged as 'a thing' in my games. For an actual criticism, I would have liked to see a slightly deeper policy system in my political sim. You pretty much have the same thing as Democracy, where a policy will give you a bonus to something, a malus to something else, approval with one group and disapproval with other, and you need to balance all of those numbers. Which is fine, but not particularly exciting. It turns the game into a kind of accounts management. I would rather see some policies that have 'real' effects on the gameworld - for example, if you implement UBI, that should flip the way the economy works completely. Or, if you have stuff like Strip Mine, or Deregulate Fishing, I would like to see these resources actually tracked with the possibility of depleting completely, rather than just +yield -environment. Or, you have the Prohibit Unions policy, which should be kind of a big deal - the flavor text says it can attract investment but lower wages, but the actual effect is one unit approval with conservatists, and one unit disapproval with liberals. Basically I expected either more guts in the systems and simulations, or alternatively more scheming CK2-style. Game seems cool, but not what I'm excited about in this genre.
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Mar 19, 2021 17:02
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https://twitter.com/Sips_/status/1372941635395407873 Sips is doing a sponsored early look at Evil Genius 2 now if anyone's interested. Edit: I want this game explosivo fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 17:04
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OwlFancier posted:I did quite like prison architect when erm.. introversion wasn't it? The original devs had it. It is indeed simulating a lovely thing, but I sort of enjoyed the way the game just... lets you run the thing either for profit or to actually try and make people a little better off for being there. Like there's no real reward either way, it's sort of like the tropico swiss bank account, either you can make shitloads of money by killing people or you can run a prison that tries to get people as much education, addiction programs, and quality of life as you can possible manage and the only thing you get at the end is good recidivism stats. When I last played several years ago, rehabilitation was absolutely a way to make money. You can educate your prisoners and then have them work in a machine shop, which makes you money. Reducing recidivism made you a bonus (or you took a hit if/when they got arrested after release, don't remember offhand). Having therapy sessions for prisoners made them more placid. There were absolutely game mechanics to strongly encourage rehabilitation. grate deceiver posted:I think the issue here is that it's a weird thing to make torture the singular focus of your intelligence policy. It could have been changed to something like Surveillance while losing practically nothing. For me cryptocurrencies are a similar turn off. I get that this is a slightly silly game with a nation of chickens, mechs and stuff, but I just hate bitcoin and everything it represents and hate to see it acknowledged as 'a thing' in my games. Absolutely not to defend torture but you do realize that state agencies using torture for various reasons, including simply to induce fear, is absolutely a thing in the majority of the world right? The world is pretty awful. "Merely" mass surveillance is basically the middle ground at this point.
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Mar 19, 2021 17:45
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grate deceiver posted:I think the issue here is that it's a weird thing to make torture the singular focus of your intelligence policy. It could have been changed to something like Surveillance while losing practically nothing. For me cryptocurrencies are a similar turn off. I get that this is a slightly silly game with a nation of chickens, mechs and stuff, but I just hate bitcoin and everything it represents and hate to see it acknowledged as 'a thing' in my games. As a general response to this: I think you want a game that doesn't exist in Rogue State Revolutions. These additions would make it more complex but I'm not sure they'd make it better? I'm speaking as a player who enjoyed the tutorial and is looking forward to playing more because it's striking this odd balance of being complex but also light enough that I can grok it, which is a rarity in a citystate/nation simulator.
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Mar 19, 2021 18:04
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Volmarias posted:Absolutely not to defend torture but you do realize that state agencies using torture for various reasons, including simply to induce fear, is absolutely a thing in the majority of the world right? That's not what I mean. Each departament has their main focus, or I guess defining policy, that can be set to one of 3-4 settings. Like, Education has Limited/Nationalistic/Religious/Secular, Taxes have Regressive/Proportional/Progressive. Intelligence has Authorize Torture/Grey Area (so some torture)/Rule of Law. Seems kinda weird to me to define your entire intelligence operations just by relation to this one thing, instead of like I said, amount of surveillance on your citizens, or maybe a relation between Domestic/Foreign operations, or just regard for human rights/law in general. And then if you want to have torture in the game just make it a researchable policy, like nerve gas or nuclear facility are. Kind of nitpicky I guess, but it bugged me a bit. StrixNebulosa posted:As a general response to this: I think you want a game that doesn't exist in Rogue State Revolutions. These additions would make it more complex but I'm not sure they'd make it better? Yeah, I'm not saying it's bad by any means. Played the demo - it seems cool, but not for me, that's it.
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Mar 19, 2021 18:06
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Volmarias posted:When I last played several years ago, rehabilitation was absolutely a way to make money. You can educate your prisoners and then have them work in a machine shop, which makes you money. Reducing recidivism made you a bonus (or you took a hit if/when they got arrested after release, don't remember offhand). Having therapy sessions for prisoners made them more placid. There were absolutely game mechanics to strongly encourage rehabilitation. I mean you can do all of that yeah but you can also just shove everyone in cubes and starve them and rake in the federal grants which is much easier. That you get paid a flat rate per prisoner encourages you to spend the minimum amount possible for reliable income, or you can try and build a complicated rehab focused prison and expose yourself to the dangers and difficulties of running such a thing. It does have ways to make the prison economically viable either way but I thought the dichotomy between complicated, unreliable, release/recidivism focused income and the grindy, mechanical minimum viable human storage approaches was quite good. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 18:10
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some real gameplay for EG 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQRL08gHvOU Things i already see 3 multi layered maps (so far, more might be in finished product) better than the one then the other in the last game. Being able to place furniture in rooms before they are built and generally plan out rooms before they get started on building The world stage looks like its greatly enhanced. Theres now like an intel resource which you can get from prisoners thats used in it. Minions seem to be a resource you burn on Schemes to get money, intel, or better minions. Schemes seem to pop up randomly Zalika seems like a cool villain. She wants to run the world like a coder runs a program.
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Mar 19, 2021 19:20
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