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Blessed are Those who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness Now we're moving into the two afterlife stories in WoW I didn't play much. I didn't care for the aesthetics or the story of each, but they do groove for some folks. Today's subject, Maldraxxus.  Just like the mortal plane in Warcraft, the Shadowlands have been repeatedly invaded and attacked by other planes and cosmic forces. Foreseeing this when they laid out the Pattern, the First Ones created the afterlife of Maldraxxus to serve as the standing army of the plane of death. While all afterlives that we know of have their own military forces - the Wild Hunt in Ardenweald and the Temple of Courage in Bastion - the afterlife of Maldraxxus was given over purely to this purpose, an afterlife for those mortal souls who crave eternal battle and glory. That last point is important, as Maldraxxus doesn't just attract souls filled with violence and hatred. What seems to be key to Maldraxxus is, above all else, pride. Pride and a drive to succeed and prove that you're the big swinging dick/tiddies/other paraphernalia as appropriate. In other words, Maldraxxus is Valhalla, if Valhalla was run like a 24/7 pro wrestling circuit that's a death metal concert between matches and new contenders regularly arise from the mosh pit to compete for the title.  New arrivals to Maldraxxus are simply thrown immediately into a gladiatorial arena. If they distinguish themselves among the crowd, they are offered a place among one of the five great houses of the Necrolords, each representing and honing a different idea of what strength and prowess mean. These are: House of the Chosen: Strength through honor and skill. This is the 'Strength and honor!' bunch, the legendary masters of the blade who spend millennia perfecting a single cut, and notably also blacksmiths and armorers and even those who raise animals for war and other pursuits. House of Constructs: Strength through having the physically strongest body. There's a very strong transhumanist vibe to the House of Constructs, and many Constructs have a physical appearance that resembles their gender identity not at all. Because they've implanted their soul into a twenty foot tall Frankensteinian monster the better to rip their enemies limb from limb. House of Plagues: Strength through making the best [super]weapons. The House of Plagues is a cabal of mad scientists and engineers building doomsday weapons, because you can't swing a sword if you're dead from a pathogen and your armor isn't going to help you against the giant doom laser they've got pointed your way. House of Rituals: Strength through intellect and magic. Yup, for all the wizards out there who got into magic because they want to throw fireballs at people there's a place in the afterlife just for you. House of Eyes: Strength through guile and outwitting the enemy. This is the afterlife for spies, assassins, saboteurs, and cunning generals who prefer to win through battlefield intelligence and devious plans.  Now, those familiar with Warcraft 3 might be thinking based on these screenshots that Maldraxxus looks awfully familiar, and you're right. Shadowlands retconned a lot of previous lore about the Undead Scourge, and established that the Scourge's aesthetic, and a lot of how the Scourge operates, is in fact based on the Necrolords of Maldraxxus. One of the effects of Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination, which I'll explore in more detail in Warcraft 3, is that the bearer's mind is permanently linked to the Shadowlands. As such, the Lich Kings (or at least the first two) developed the Scourge using Maldraxxus as a model. Maldraxxus is, after all, supposed to be the great military force of death in the cosmos. Let's ignore the spider-people in the room and move discreetly along.  The way Maldraxxus normally operates is eternal feuding and warfare among the houses, eternally struggling against one another to hone their strength and develop ever stronger warriors, more clever strategies, more powerful weapons. The Eternal One of Maldraxxus, the Primus, kept things from getting out of hand by virtue of being the strongest warrior and most masterful strategist in all of the Shadowlands. You see, the raw stuff of Maldraxxus is undead flesh and bone and stone. When a Necrolord is 'slain,' their soul is simply freed from its current vessel and can shape another from the raw matter of the realm. Most Necrolords, even outside the House of Constructs, tend to eventually make new bodies for themselves that they feel are better suited to how they fight or the rigors of their work. If you meet a Necrolord who's still in the body they arrived in Maldraxxus in, that is the mark of someone who is both very proud and phenomenally dangerous. The native servant beings of Maldraxxus take the form of small skeletons, and they mostly seem to exist to do the scutwork of the houses, freeing the Necrolords to focus on training and battle. The problem with all of this, and the reason why the Necrolords developed such a fell reputation among the other afterlives, is the check put in place on this whole house of cards by the Primus. A completely impartial neutral force who could easily defeat any challenge and keep the whole system running smoothly. Needless to say, the Primus was one of the nipple man's first targets, and with him out of the picture things went out of control very, very quickly. Still, talking about the nipple man in detail remains for another time, if one that steadily creeps closer.
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Apr 3, 2023 00:22
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THE NIPPLE MAN. Also regarding the mission, the mention of "spies of the Bleeding Hollow" from the briefing is odd to me. Because a spy seems by default to be an infiltrator, when your enemies are a society of people composing a lot of races but literally never yours, and defectors and traitors crossing that particular gap seem pretty rare, how the hell are you supposed to infiltrate them? Shapeshifting magic? Illusions?
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Apr 3, 2023 00:55
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PurpleXVI posted:THE NIPPLE MAN. Heavy stealth, no one can raise an alarm about your presence when they have an axe the size of a car door wedged in their skull.
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Apr 3, 2023 01:06
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stryth posted:Heavy stealth, no one can raise an alarm about your presence when they have an axe the size of a car door wedged in their skull. Maybe everyone in the Warcraft world just has total face blindness and can only recognize each other by their pauldrons, so disguise is really easy.
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Apr 3, 2023 01:26
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[to the tune of "Wellerman" and "All Star"]  Soon will the nipple man come,your brain gets smart and your head gets dumb
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Apr 3, 2023 01:50
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Quackles posted:[to the tune of "Wellerman" and "All Star"] I hate this so much why would you post it it's gonna be stuck in my head for weeks aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
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Apr 3, 2023 01:53
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Tism the Dragon Tickler posted:I hate this so much why would you post it it's gonna be stuck in my head for weeks aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Because it was stuck in mine.
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Apr 3, 2023 01:58
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stryth posted:Heavy stealth, no one can raise an alarm about your presence when they have an axe the size of a car door wedged in their skull. "We killed everybody and took a briefcase!" What happens to the souls that don't distinguish themselves in the great mosh pit? Do they just have to keep fighting until they figure out a gimmick?
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Apr 3, 2023 09:53
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Tenebrais posted:"We killed everybody and took a briefcase!" Foot soldiers and literal fuel for the ambitions of those who do distinguish themselves. Or they join a house of their choice and work their way up rather than being picked out by the house for greatness.
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Apr 3, 2023 09:58
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As a theme and some various parts of writing, Maldraxxus was very fun. For a visual theme: Oops All Plaguelands. Again. Yay.
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Apr 3, 2023 11:40
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So for that level, the second tower should have gone up against the gold mine to kind of seal things off and protect your peasants, then you build up some anti air stuff, and your naval base is meant to go up in that protected area to the north where you can set up some cannon towers to sink kul tiras ships as they wander over into your clutches.
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Apr 3, 2023 11:53
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Lord_Magmar posted:Foot soldiers and literal fuel for the ambitions of those who do distinguish themselves. Or they join a house of their choice and work their way up rather than being picked out by the house for greatness. This. The Kyrian storyline implies that most souls who wind up in Maldraxxus but request re-sorting by the Arbiter are people who found they couldn't cut it in the viciously competitive arena of Maldraxxus, or grew tired of the endless competition and backstabbing.
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Apr 3, 2023 13:00
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stryth posted:Heavy stealth, no one can raise an alarm about your presence when they have an axe the size of a car door wedged in their skull. So its the House Steiner school of intelligence gathering.
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Apr 3, 2023 23:27
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Alkydere posted:As a theme and some various parts of writing, Maldraxxus was very fun. I don't mind it because I always thought scourge aesthetics were  . But I also didn't play Shadowlands
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Apr 3, 2023 23:36
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I remember particularly enjoying this mission. Maybe it’s the concentration on a navy and the extra gold. But of course dragons can circumvent that.
achtungnight fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 14:50
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Maldraxxus was the Plaguelands taken to the extreme and as someone who mainly plays a Death Knight and always liked undead stuff, it was right up my ally.
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Apr 4, 2023 15:19
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The attempt at Alliance 7 legit didn't go well because I fundamentally misunderstood the kind of mission it was. I thought it was going to be a base-building mission and therefore I didn't need to be particularly careful about losses at first. Alliance 7 gives you peasants and gold and wood, but arbitrarily restricts you from making a barracks or indeed most structures. Welp. The more I play Beyond the Dark Portal the more of these little dick moves I'm noticing, little traps and gotchas built into the map design. Ugh. Edit: Having beaten it with cheats, I think I see what you're supposed to do, and Jesus Christ on a pogo stick I do not have that kind of micro skill, Blizzard. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Apr 9, 2023 |
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Apr 9, 2023 02:29
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If it helps, that's the ONLY mission quite like that in the entire expansion.
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Apr 9, 2023 04:50
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At least Warcraft 3 don't have such dick moves (except one mission in Frozen Throne).
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Apr 9, 2023 09:46
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I thought I would despise the Necrolords when they first were previewed because I kind of hate the Scourge and its 00's-rear end kill-a-baby-and-wear-it-as-a-coat flavor of edge. To be more accurate, I hate the WoW fans who spent like two decades of their lives trying to lobby Blizzard into turning the Forsaken and by extension the Horde into the Scourge because they wanted to do that Edgelord poo poo in the game and couldn't forgive WoW for not letting them play as their favorite faction from the RTS in all its cringey glory. Then I actually played through their campaign and they turned out to be my favorite Shadowlands faction and storyline by a country mile. Whoda thunk it?
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Apr 9, 2023 10:02
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Cythereal posted:The more I play Beyond the Dark Portal the more of these little dick moves I'm noticing, little traps and gotchas built into the map design. Ugh.
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Apr 9, 2023 14:25
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berryjon posted:Are we talking Command and Conquer: Covert Ops levels of puzzle solving here? Take the last mission for example. Your base is set up with a tower covering the south, but there's just enough space for enemy units to slip by between it and the trees, plus there are hungry destroyers waiting offshore in the fog, so rather than taking the natural choice of putting a new tower to the west to seal the base, you actually need to place a new tower to the east. Then you want to avoid the oil patch closest to your base, because it's in range of ballistas on the island (of which there are several), you want to go for the northern one that's much further away instead. This mission, ugh.
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Apr 9, 2023 14:56
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Alliance 7: In the Shadow of Death  This is... worse than I had feared. Welcome to the battlefield, old man. Auchindoun was no mere orc fortress, Prince Danath.  We have a problem. Kurdran and his Wildhammers were invaluable to our assault, but now we know why he didn't report back. Understood. By the way, do you know what Khadgar was talking about? There's a lot of weird residual magical energies around here. There's a reason Xiulan already left the base. You don't seem as bothered by it as Khadgar. The man's witchsight is far more acute than mine, Danath. 'Witchsight'? Not the most scholarly term for a mage's sensitivity to magic and ability, when trained, to perceive magical energies. Some people are better at it than others. Weird. So Khadgar's better at it than you? Much. I'm very, very good at a few particular tricks like scrying and illusions. Khadgar as an apprentice was better at combat magic than I am now as a magistrix, and that was before he studied under Medivh. He's going to go down in history as a hero, like Turalyon and Alleria and you. Ahem. As I said, I believe I know how to seal the rift. For complicated thaumaturgical reasons, we need artifacts that have absorbed magical energies from the two men who created the rift in order to seal the rift for good, Medivh and Gul'Dan. Blah blah blah. Just tell us who you need killed, Khadgar. About that... Deathwing? You're sure he's here on Draenor? He's difficult to mistake for any other being when operating openly. Should I assume that a dragon named 'Deathwing' is as bad as he sounds? Yes. We ran into mention of him during the war, and the Kirin Tor conferred with the dragons not under the Horde's control afterwards. He's was one of the most dangerous beings on Azeroth. And now we have no choice but to face him. So the location of this mission no longer exists in modern-day Draenor, but was somewhere around here.  From alt-Draenor, however, it's been established that Deathwing's lair was in fact the island of Ashran. The site of Warlords of Draenor's mandatory PvP zone featuring two of the most half-hearted social hubs ever put into WoW.  Lead the way, Colonel. Xiulan, report? Eyes on a probable Bonechewer base to the east, Azélie. Why did I stow away in here? This thing was built by gnomes! And miss Wavestrider is seven feet tall! Now you're stuck with the consequences in this tin can, kid. Alleria, if you're going to bite my head off, now is the time. Sometimes the only way for a child to learn is to let him make mistakes. We have landed. Some opposition, nothing significant. A prison camp! Those look like Nethergarde Keep soldiers! Including laborers. We'll need a proper base here.Or at least that's what I thought. In my first, non-cheating go at this mission, I wasn't particularly careful about my losses because I landed here, saw the resources and peasants, and thought okay this is a normal mission with a couple of hero units. It is not.  Niamh? I want a barracks up and running. We can't. What's the problem? There's no iron on this island. Xiulan's tricks should let us get a shipyard and some ships up and running, but I don't think we can build a proper base here. Then it's all on us.So yeah. The briefing doesn't mention it, but you're just not allowed to build most structures on this map. Most critically, at least for how I play, this means no ballistas. Which means that Alleria is your only realistic tool for dealing with towers, and your margin of error consists of your paladins with their healing.   We have intruders. Welcome them properly, my children. This feels far better than killing Alexstrasza's children. Shattered Hand on an island to the northwest. Xiulan? You smell funny, miss Wavestrider. That's the ritual incense. Why are you burning ritual incense in a submarine? Praying, mostly. Xiulan to command. The elemental blessings are holding. Good. We're bringing up a landing force. In the meantime, we've located Kurdran. Thank the Light the Horde hasn't disarmed any of our soldiers, eh? Coast is clear, twiggy.So my best guess for how you're meant to do this is that you're supposed to land Alleria and friends first, and use Alleria's range and hitting power with flawless micro to sink the fleet. Or drown them in destroyers. You can make destroyers, freighters, and transports.  The abundance of catapults and cannon towers, plus that juggernaut, means your margin for error when microing Alleria, Khadgar, and the paladins is virtually zero.  We have landed. Clean them out. I left Alleria at home because dragons regularly dribble down from the north to attack. In hindsight, maybe I was supposed to leave that base undefended once I cleared the water?  Skilled and persistent. Interesting. Onyxia, Nefarian. I have new orders for you. There's a big Warsong base here that you can and probably should ignore.  Bluntly, I know I'm generally not good at video games.  I am trying to piece together how you're meant to play these missions, if you have the skill. Which I manifestly do not.  Beyond the Dark Portal has felt to me like it expects flawless micro, reading the devs' mind, numerous reloads, or some or all of the above.  Now, I've recently played another old game with this kind of difficulty, an old RTS/city-builder called Outpost 2. And I like that game a fair bit.  Because it only kicks up to that level of difficulty if you actually select Hard mode at the game start. Easy is, well, easy.  I feel like some modern games really miss an Easy difficulty setting that is genuinely easy. Much as I like Warhammer: Total War, even Easy mode kicked my rear end a lot when I first started, and about the full past week has been me trying to start a game as Khalida, the only ambiguously-canon LGBT faction leader in the entire series, only for it to end in hordes of angry dinosaurs (or less frequently, angry elves).  If Kurdran can't actually 1v1 Deathwing, then I don't know how you're supposed to beat him. Maybe use flying machines to kite him into your main force that hopefully has enough firepower to do the job?  I'm skeptical that I'll ever LP another RTS once I'm done with this project. Ten more missions until Warcraft 3. Note that canonically, Deathwing didn't die here and made it back to Azeroth. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Apr 9, 2023 |
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Apr 9, 2023 16:28
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Blessed are Those who are Persecuted Perhaps it's fitting that I'm hitting this point just in time for the busiest and most hellish week of the entire year at work. Today's subject, Revendreth.  Revendreth is an oddity among the afterlives we've examined so far, because we don't actually know what gets a soul sent here. We have a vague, abstract answer, but in my opinion it's an answer that raises more questions than it answers. Revendreth, you see, is the afterlife for those who committed grave crimes - sins, really - in life, and have been condemned to be punished and perhaps earn redemption. The existence of Revendreth therefore is contingent on there being rules about what is and is not a sin, but we do not know what those rules are. Every soul in Revendreth whose background we learn of is generally either blatantly a massive war criminal, serial killer, or similar unambiguously evil person, or a few are just comical absurdities played for laughs. Yet we know that you can get away with some deeply questionable if not downright evil actions and not be sent here - one prominent character in Maldraxxus is Lady Vashj, a character whom fans of The Frozen Throne likely remember. She was sent to Maldraxxus, not Revendreth. Now, in a sense I don't blame Blizzard for not wanting to lay out an objective theology for the setting of Warcraft, with clear rules about what gets you sent somewhere utopian (for your preferred flavor of utopia) and what gets you sent to Purgatory. I doubt anyone at Blizzard wants to start getting into theodicy and all the other philosophical quandaries that come with establishing that there is an afterlife where sinners are punished. Yet you can't have sinners without having sin, and that means defining what sin is. Or at least, you can't do that if you genuinely care about building a coherent world and narrative. So here we are with Revendreth.  Revendreth is extremely Gothic in aesthetic. Tall, gloomy castles, dark forests, marshlands where all manner of nasty things lurk, and the gargoyles on the battlements may be carvings or may be living creatures on the lookout for intruders. This is very clearly classical Dracula land, and whatever the questionable philosophical underpinnings of this afterlife, Revendreth certainly nails the aesthetic. The best guess we have as to what can get a soul condemned to Revendreth can be found in an organization known as the Harvesters. In theory, the fundamental purpose of this afterlife of punishment and torment is in fact meant to be redemption. Those obsessed with power become powerless. Sadists become pawns and playthings of those infinitely more powerful. The greedy are locked in a box and left by themselves for eons. The ruling beings of Revendreth are known as the Venthyr, and they are ruled by the Harvesters, each defined by a specific sin: Dominion, Pride, Desire, Avarice, Wrath, Envy, and Dread. Upon arriving in Revendreth, a soul is given a 'sinstone' - read: a tombstone - inscribed with their name and a list of their sins, and given to the Venthyr for assignment.  The Venthyr are vampires, full stop, just instead of drinking blood they drink anima drained from the souls of those in their 'care.' In theory, the Venthyr are supposed to be empathic and caring souls who help each soul sent to Revendreth cleanse themselves and atone. In practice, the Venthyr long ago became corrupt, obsessed with their own power, and what was supposed to be a necessary, cleansing pain gave way to sheer sadism. The Venthyr at the time of Shadowlands had become deeply divided between the corrupt aristocracy lording over their victims, and rebels in the shadows who recalled Revendreth's true purpose and meant to return this afterlife to its original duty. Making this even more murky is that some Venthyr seem to have been around since the Shadowlands were created, but some are former mortals. Those who earned redemption for their sins, and rather than go on to a more pleasant afterlife chose to stay behind to help others as they themselves were once helped. It's very telling that in the Night Fae story in Shadowlands, there comes a point where the player accompanies a Night Fae noble to Revendreth and fills an anima vessel by... giving a soul genuine therapy. Helpful, not hurtful. Empathy and kindness, not cruelty. A stunned Venthyr observer calls it one of the most effective displays of 'painsmithing' he'd ever seen. The implication seems clear that this was the original spirit of Revendreth, not the aristocrats hunting mortal souls for sport.  But this is Shadowlands we're talking about, so there wasn't any organic deterioration of the Venthyr and the purpose of Revendreth. Instead, Sire Denathrius, the Eternal One of this realm, had been in league with the Jailer for eons. It was at the Jailer's behest that Denathrius created the beings known to the rest of Warcraft as the Dreadlords, sinister agents of death so adept at concealing their natures that the Burning Legion thought to the organization's dying gasp that the Dreadlords were mortals who had become demons, and it's implied that the Dreadlords have infiltrated every other cosmic realm and agency with similar effectiveness. Idiotic plot aside, Sire Denathrius is one bit of Shadowlands that most players remember fondly. If you're willing to embrace the ham and cheese, it's hard to go too terribly wrong with Dracula and his castle, and Warcraft has never been shy about the calories. Really, he's proof that Shadowlands could have been salvaged. Yes the plot and story surrounding him were dumb, but Blizzard made the intelligent choice of casting Ray Chase to voice him and let him go completely to town. Which might be a fitting epitaph for Warcraft in general, really. People can forgive a lot of stupid as long as it's entertaining.
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Apr 9, 2023 16:28
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Cythereal posted:
I think Arkham counts as well, as he has very strong heart-eyes for Nagash.
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Apr 9, 2023 17:11
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I'm not sure if it's the intended way but the easiest way I found to do the naval part of that mission was to send transports up the left and top edge and then distract the enemy ships with a destroyer or two while you land them and get everyone ashore. Denathrius and Nevendreth were great aesthetically and also had some really fun raid boss fights, it made the awful and boring parts of shadowlands worth putting up with for a few weeks to experience them imo. Shame about everything else.
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Apr 9, 2023 18:14
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Generally, one of the expected/accepted ways of dealing with Deathwing is by having Kurdran (with healing standby when needed) kite him into a force of Destroyers on the water, yeah. Because Kurdran absolutely cannot solo Deathwing; Deathwing has 3 times the HP of Kurdran, more armor, and higher damage. This makes him a rather effective "boss" enemy, but also makes him a usable hero unit for the Horde, who have no healing, and thus their heroes are made significantly stronger as a sort of compensation for that.
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Apr 9, 2023 18:59
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BlazetheInferno posted:Generally, one of the expected/accepted ways of dealing with Deathwing is by having Kurdran (with healing standby when needed) kite him into a force of Destroyers on the water, yeah. Because Kurdran absolutely cannot solo Deathwing; Deathwing has 3 times the HP of Kurdran, more armor, and higher damage. I figured it was something like that. Alas for Blizzard, I no longer give a poo poo. SirPhoebos posted:I think Arkham counts as well, as he has very strong heart-eyes for Nagash. GW's been getting better about representation for women and LGBT characters, like Blizzard, but they still have a long way to go on both counts, including in the TW series.
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Apr 9, 2023 19:19
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If your having some difficulty with Total Warhammer it's sometimes best to start with a faction like the empire of Dawi first as they are quite good at growing am economy and being a bit more forgiving. At least before immortal empires as that makes Karl Franz a bit more of a piñata. I think GW has stopped really supporting TW. Age of Sigmar does have more LGBT representation at least. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Apr 9, 2023 |
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Apr 9, 2023 19:22
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Ugh, this mission. Kiting Deathwing into destroyer traps was how I beat him. That, or cheating. I honestly think this mission was where my cheating restrictions all came off. Either way, Deathwing is tough, making him my favorite hero unit in the game.
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Apr 9, 2023 19:52
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All games should have granular difficulty options than just easy/normal/hard. Maybe I don't get challenged on Normal, but get pasted on Hard. Maybe all Hard would need for me to find it a fun challenge was a bit more ammo, or a bit less enemy health. A lot of indie games are pretty good about this, with Ultrakill being an amazing example, with a bunch of set difficulty levels, but also the option to just make minor adjustments like, say, nudging all enemies down to 90% of their base speed so you have a blink longer to make a dodge or shoot back. So I think and hope that it's becoming more the norm.
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Apr 9, 2023 19:53
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I think certain games gain something from difficulty being baked in, to try to set a specific mood or tone. I think RTS games are, as a whole, not the type of games that do so. Revendreth made little sense once you got past the first few layers of symbolism, aesthetics, decadence, and vampires, but man did they absolutely nail those 4 things. It's an incredible zone, Denathrius is a fantastically fun villain, and it's a shame that he lost, got written out for a while, and we had to face the nipple-man who shall not be mentioned.
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Apr 9, 2023 20:10
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Jen X posted:I think certain games gain something from difficulty being baked in, to try to set a specific mood or tone. I mean, having a recommended or intended difficulty? Sure, what the devs assume would be appropriate for most people. But some folks just want a more casual experience, some folks want a more punishing one, some people might have disabilities or whatever that make it hard for them to keep up with more demanding parts of the default setup(if they require a certain reaction speed or ability to micro, for instance). Difficulty settings are also accessibility settings.
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Apr 9, 2023 20:30
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Cythereal posted:Which might be a fitting epitaph for Warcraft in general, really. People can forgive a lot of stupid as long as it's entertaining. See Red Alert 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Sq1Nr58hM Granted, I don't think anyone actually plays the Red Alert games for their quality writing.
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Apr 9, 2023 20:52
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Jen X posted:I think certain games gain something from difficulty being baked in, to try to set a specific mood or tone. I mean, Celeste did that, and it worked really well, but it also had the accessibility settings, and those were good to have, too.
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Apr 9, 2023 20:57
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Dirk the Average posted:See Red Alert 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Sq1Nr58hM (That's Red Alert 3)
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Apr 9, 2023 21:38
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Siegkrow posted:(That's Red Alert 3) Not that RA2 was any less cheesier.
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Apr 9, 2023 22:07
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PurpleXVI posted:All games should have granular difficulty options than just easy/normal/hard.
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Apr 9, 2023 22:25
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Xander77 posted:Weird how that became the consensus over the past few years. I remember arguing for this on SA back in the mid-2010's (time flies, we're all terribly old, death is coming soon etc etc) and getting intense pushback. I suspect it's because we've been seeing it actually happen in some games and people are realizing it's good actually.
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Apr 9, 2023 23:19
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| # ? Jun 2, 2024 10:41 |
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Strategy games are probably the hardest games in which to implement granular difficulty to any meaningful degree because they are so deeply systems driven, second only to puzzle games and it's incredibly hard to even quantify what difficulty means for them. The big three RTS series all have bespoke map scripts for each map on each difficulty level and parametrizing those into user operable sliders would be an unenviable task for the designer(and QA staff!) As an example, here's 15 questions about gold mines that could all make this part of the game either a complete non-issue or a major obstacle. How many starting resources does the player have? Are there avenues for the enemy to raid the player's economy? What does the enemy send in these raiding parties? When does the enemy send them? Are they coordinated with other attack waves? Do they ramp up over time? With more units or stronger compositions? How many resources are there on the rest of the map? Are they guarded? By what? Are they in defensible positions? Are they in the path of other attack waves? Will the enemy attempt to retake them? With what? Does resource availability push players towards a specific unit composition? How does that composition interact with incoming attack waves? etc...
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Apr 10, 2023 00:48
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