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KickStarter The Banner Saga

toro

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Combat is more like 3/5 because enemy variety is nil. You fight like 3 enemies the whole game.

The turn system was a bad idea cause it inevitably led to exploitation. I don't understand why is so hard to see this.

Always this kind of retarded arguments: combat system sucked because variety sucked!? (wtf)

Nope. Both combat system and combat variety sucked but not enough to make the game an unpleasant experience.
 

roshan

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The turn system was a bad idea cause it inevitably led to exploitation. I don't understand why is so hard to see this.

Always this kind of retarded arguments: combat system sucked because variety sucked!? (wtf)

Nope. Both combat system and combat variety sucked but not enough to make the game an unpleasant experience.

How did you exploit the turn system? I neither found anything to exploit nor did I ever have a reason to look for ways to exploit it. It's like any other board game system. You move, then they move. Very simple, traditional and intuitive, and Stoic should certainly keep this for the next game.

It's also very good for gameplay and pacing because you continuously have things to do. This is the first game I've played with board game based combat, and it was awesome, so fuck immersion and simulation.
 

toro

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The turn system was a bad idea cause it inevitably led to exploitation. I don't understand why is so hard to see this.

Always this kind of retarded arguments: combat system sucked because variety sucked!? (wtf)

Nope. Both combat system and combat variety sucked but not enough to make the game an unpleasant experience.

How did you exploit the turn system? I neither found anything to exploit nor did I ever have a reason to look for ways to exploit it. It's like any other board game system. You move, then they move. Very simple, traditional and intuitive, and Stoic should certainly keep this for the next game.

It's also very good for gameplay and pacing because you continuously have things to do. This is the first game I've played with board game based combat, and it was awesome, so fuck immersion and simulation.

As per your discussion with Infinitron: The game does incentivize weakening but not killing.

A weakened enemy will do insignificant damage but most importantly it will waste an AI turn -> they will take turns from healthy enemies which can do significant damage.

Once most enemies are weakened, they can be basically killed one after another.

Therefore is in the interest of the player to keep weakened enemies in fight for as long as possible.

This kind of strategy is contra-intuitive and maybe you did not use it (for whatever reason) but I'm pretty sure most players did exploit the turn system like I've said above.
 

Infinitron

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That's not an exploit though, it's just the rules of the game. But I explained on the last page that the game does provide two push-backs that make killing weakened enemies a strategy worth considering.

BTW, I think people exaggerate the degree to which the game incentivizes you to "weaken everybody, and only then start killing".

1) If you don't kill enemies, you don't earn bonus willpower points. You DO feel the pain of this after your characters begin running out of willpower at the latter stages of a battle.

2) Weakened enemies can still beat the crap out of your armor. Watch as that group of dredge slingers with 2-3 Health left gang up on your tank, and before you realize it, he has only a few armor points left and is susceptible to one-hit kills.

Optimum gameplay is of course "going wide" and trying to hold down and kill everybody at once, so they all die at approximately the same time. If you can't manage that, then the next best thing you can do is try to manipulate territory so some of the enemies can't get physically near you. (This will often happen to YOU if you take an all Varl team when playing a Hakon chapter.)
 

roshan

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As per your discussion with Infinitron: The game does incentivize weakening but not killing.

A weakened enemy will do insignificant damage but most importantly it will waste an AI turn -> they will take turns from healthy enemies which can do significant damage.

Once most enemies are weakened, they can be basically killed one after another.

Therefore is in the interest of the player to keep weakened enemies in fight for as long as possible.

This kind of strategy is contra-intuitive and maybe you did not use it (for whatever reason) but I'm pretty sure most players did exploit the turn system like I've said above.

It's only counterintuitive if you play counterintuitively (and it is playing counterintuitively because I don't see anything inherent in the system that would actually reward that sort of behavior versus playing it "naturally", in fact such behaviour is actually penalized... which is probably why those who do it end up complaining about the combat).

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the system itself, only with players who think they are playing Fallout and don't "get" that this is a boardgame and should be played as such. At the very beginning you can already group and position your characters and plan which enemies they are going to take down by comparing health and armor values versus health and armor damage. If you do, most battles resolve very quickly and there is no need for strategies such as weakening enemies, keeping them alive and then killing them off, that really does sound ridiculous and certainly would be a complete waste of time.
 

Ninjerk

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As per your discussion with Infinitron: The game does incentivize weakening but not killing.

A weakened enemy will do insignificant damage but most importantly it will waste an AI turn -> they will take turns from healthy enemies which can do significant damage.

Once most enemies are weakened, they can be basically killed one after another.

Therefore is in the interest of the player to keep weakened enemies in fight for as long as possible.

This kind of strategy is contra-intuitive and maybe you did not use it (for whatever reason) but I'm pretty sure most players did exploit the turn system like I've said above.

It's only counterintuitive if you play counterintuitively (and it is playing counterintuitively because I don't see anything inherent in the system that would actually reward that sort of behavior versus playing it "naturally", in fact such behaviour is actually penalized... which is probably why those who do it end up complaining about the combat).

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the system itself, only with players who think they are playing Fallout and don't "get" that this is a boardgame and should be played as such. At the very beginning you can already group and position your characters and plan which enemies they are going to take down by comparing health and armor values versus health and armor damage. If you do, most battles resolve very quickly and there is no need for strategies such as weakening enemies, keeping them alive and then killing them off, that really does sound ridiculous and certainly would be a complete waste of time.
In the free multiplayer version that they released while still developing BS, the dominant strategy was primarily to "maim" as many of your opponents' pieces as possible and once they were all down to 1 strength you finish the game in like 3 or 4 turns. You could easily lose the game if you killed a 2nd pieces before they killed their first. AFAIK nothing about the basic gameplay has changed to alleviate this (given what I'm reading in here).
 

Karellen

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What Infinitron said. You can definitely take advantage of the turn system, but that's clearly how it's intended to be played, and as a general thing I think it's a fun system on the whole that leads to a variety of legitimate strategies. Maiming enemies is often a good idea, but sometimes killing them is a better one, and this plays into a lot of interesting decision-making, much of which is highly situational. I also really like how the system often makes it a good idea to spread damage around and attack the stronger enemies first, whereas in more conventional RPGs you usually start by mopping up the small fry before ganging up on the strongest enemies. All in all, it's not really clear to me how it's an exploit any more than, say, making use of positioning is.

Now, there's an argument to be had that it's counterintuitive to not go all out to kill your opponents, but I don't really feel that way; to begin with, small scale melee battles in which one side is totally butchered aren't terribly realistic in the first place. The only time it really bothered me was during the battle at the top of the tower near the end of Chapter 3, in which the battlefield had large obstacles in place, meaning that it was very difficult to reach the enemy ranged units unless you had fewer units and therefore held the turn advantage. Other than that, it tended to be fun more than it was weird. If you want to rationalise how it works, just pretend that the enemy commander has only limited capacity to control the situation and its attention can be wasted on wounded units. (Incidentally, in the military, there is some notion that critically injuring an enemy soldier may be more valuable than outright killing them, because it essentially forces the unscathed parts of the enemy force to divert their attention to taking care of their wounded.)
 

Tigranes

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In what way does the game incentivize weakening but not killing?

Because if there are only two enemies left on the enemy team and lots of allies left on your team, they each individually get more turns than your guys do. You have to waste turns moving guys on the other side of the map who can't help you defeat them, while they get in a bunch of hits on your guys who are near them but are helpless to react.

I can see how this could happen given the mechanics. But I really never had this issue. As in literally not a single time in the whole game. :)

This is basically the #1 tactical 'tip' recommended for all Banner Saga players, because, as has been explained, it's an integral part of how the game works.

Maybe you got lucky, but wait till you leave the 'strongest guy' till last, and then realise you just gave that strongest guy Improved Hastex5.
 

roshan

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Optimum gameplay is of course "going wide" and trying to hold down and kill everybody at once, so they all die at approximately the same time. If you can't manage that, then the next best thing you can do is try to manipulate territory so some of the enemies can't get physically near you. (This will often happen to YOU if you take an all Varl team when playing a Hakon chapter.)

That is certainly not optimum gameplay, that is just wasting your own time. In fact if you think about this logically, usually at the beginning of battles, you actually have more turns per character than the enemy because the enemy usually has more units. Which means your heavy hitters get more attacks than the enemy's most powerful units. So if you act quickly, you can actually cut them down with your best characters before they really have the chance to do major damage. Once that is complete there is really no reason to take advantage of the turn system as it's not like the game is difficult. You can just quickly kill all the enemies, it only involves very basic math with small numbers.
 

Karellen

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Optimum gameplay is of course "going wide" and trying to hold down and kill everybody at once, so they all die at approximately the same time. If you can't manage that, then the next best thing you can do is try to manipulate territory so some of the enemies can't get physically near you. (This will often happen to YOU if you take an all Varl team when playing a Hakon chapter.)

That is certainly not optimum gameplay, that is just wasting your own time. In fact if you think about this logically, usually at the beginning of battles, you actually have more turns per character than the enemy because the enemy usually has more units. Which means your heavy hitters get more attacks than the enemy's most powerful units. So if you act quickly, you can actually cut them down with your best characters before they really have the chance to do major damage. Once that is complete there is really no reason to take advantage of the turn system as it's not like the game is difficult. You can just quickly kill all the enemies, it only involves very basic math with small numbers.

Right, at the beginning you normally start with turn advantage because the enemy has more units, so it seems to me that it's a good idea to keep that advantage by spreading damage around, essentially to maximise the amount of effective turns you get while minimising the amount of effective turns the enemy gets. You can definitely win battles otherwise too, especially if you break the enemy's heavy hitters first (which is often a good idea, though sometimes not feasible due to positioning), but when it comes to minimising your own losses, leaving some useless enemy units alive at low Strength to waste enemy turns is often the ideal strategy.
 

roshan

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This is basically the #1 tactical 'tip' recommended for all Banner Saga players, because, as has been explained, it's an integral part of how the game works.

Maybe you got lucky, but wait till you leave the 'strongest guy' till last, and then realise you just gave that strongest guy Improved Hastex5.

I already virtually finished the game (at the final battle now, but don't really feel the need for the end when the journey itself has been so fulfilling). Maybe I will have this issue in Banner Saga 2 but as for the first game nothing like that has happened at all.

Right, at the beginning you normally start with turn advantage because the enemy has more units, so it seems to me that it's a good idea to keep that advantage by spreading damage around, essentially to maximise the amount of effective turns you get while minimising the amount of effective turns the enemy gets. You can definitely win battles otherwise too, especially if you break the enemy's heavy hitters first (which is often a good idea, though sometimes not feasible due to positioning), but when it comes to minimising your own losses, leaving some useless enemy units alive at low Strength to waste enemy turns is often the ideal strategy.

Highly doubt that this is the "ideal strategy". I finished battles so quickly and with so much ease that with only one exception, I always elected to slaughter the remnants of the army and kill more dredge (this is after selecting to charge into battle and therefore having more enemies to fight in the first place).

Honestly this all sounds like a more complicated and more ridiculous version of kiting gibberlings in Baldur's Gate 1. Yes you could spend the whole game pointlessly kiting all those gibberlings and tasloi and xvarts to "maximize your advantage" and "minimize your losses". Or on the other hand you could really just go and kill them, because what's the REAL necessity or advantage to kite those one hit kill gibberlings and tasloi with your party of six level four characters?????
 

SCO

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I think that the butthurt the codex has about the fixed enemy turns is dumb. The game is only challenging because of it. Another game i played - gungnir - was also only challenging because of it (it was worse than BS actually because it had no weakening in-built). It's a crutch to the AI yes, but if it makes the game not a cakewalk like 99% of them, i'm all for it.
 

Infinitron

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Roshan, it's funny to me how you don't realize when people are agreeing with you. :) You told me that you killed everyone at the same time in a previous post!

I would usually take out the strongest enemies first, with Rook stripping armor (3 base armor stripping + willpower boost + item augmentation), and then one of the high damage varls moving in for the kill. Usually a B-Team with characters like Hogun to take on medium threat enemies. And if there were weaker outlying enemies that could be one hit killed by one of my characters, I would assign that character to mop them up while others were busy with the real threats. No need to keep anyone alive, just kill them all at the same time.

And how do you kill them all at the same time? By "going wide", strategically spreading your forces and attacking everybody at the same time. Not ganging up on enemies one at a time with your entire team. You said it yourself - you had your A-team to kill the strong guys, your B-team to kill the weaker guys, everybody else to mop up, etc - at the same time.
 

toro

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This is basically the #1 tactical 'tip' recommended for all Banner Saga players, because, as has been explained, it's an integral part of how the game works.

Maybe you got lucky, but wait till you leave the 'strongest guy' till last, and then realise you just gave that strongest guy Improved Hastex5.

I already virtually finished the game (at the final battle now, but don't really feel the need for the end when the journey itself has been so fulfilling). Maybe I will have this issue in Banner Saga 2 but as for the first game nothing like that has happened at all.

dr_evil___by_jkanakova-d55748y.jpg
 

SCO

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
It's definitely a solution to the gamist focus firing menace (another is simultaneous turns phase based combat). Don't you get bored of doing the same thing (if in different ways) in every game?
I only gave the game a dot above 'good for what it is' in the poll but it wasn't because of combat, but rather because of the limited interactivity.
 
Last edited:

roshan

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Roshan, it's funny to me how you don't realize when people are agreeing with you. :) You told me that you killed everyone at the same time in a previous post!

I would usually take out the strongest enemies first, with Rook stripping armor (3 base armor stripping + willpower boost + item augmentation), and then one of the high damage varls moving in for the kill. Usually a B-Team with characters like Hogun to take on medium threat enemies. And if there were weaker outlying enemies that could be one hit killed by one of my characters, I would assign that character to mop them up while others were busy with the real threats. No need to keep anyone alive, just kill them all at the same time.

And how do you kill them all at the same time? By "going wide", strategically spreading your forces and attacking everybody at the same time. Not ganging up on enemies one at a time with your entire team. You said it yourself - you had your A-team to kill the strong guys, your B-team to kill the weaker guys, everybody else to mop up, etc - at the same time.

Yes, I ended up killing everything in very quick succession, but the difference is that I never left low HP stragglers around to waste enemy turns, my priority was to kill everything quickly and efficiently. I would just compare health, armor and armor break and match units with each other accordingly and therefore end up winning battles. Using math versus exploiting the turn system which I felt was a quicker and a lot more fun way of doing things and probably the "natural" way to play the game.
 

Copper

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Me too - the only time I've had an experience of 'wasting turns getting people across the battlefield' is taking on the second wave, which has fuck all to do with the damage system.
 

Infinitron

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Well, that being said, splitting the enemy force so you can take down part of it while the other part wastes a few turns walking towards your guys is a legitimate tactic. It's dangerous, though, because when they finally do arrive they might hit your already-weakened characters hard. You have to time things correctly so you always get the first shot on them when they arrive.
 

Tigranes

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Roshan, it's funny to me how you don't realize when people are agreeing with you. :) You told me that you killed everyone at the same time in a previous post!

I would usually take out the strongest enemies first, with Rook stripping armor (3 base armor stripping + willpower boost + item augmentation), and then one of the high damage varls moving in for the kill. Usually a B-Team with characters like Hogun to take on medium threat enemies. And if there were weaker outlying enemies that could be one hit killed by one of my characters, I would assign that character to mop them up while others were busy with the real threats. No need to keep anyone alive, just kill them all at the same time.

And how do you kill them all at the same time? By "going wide", strategically spreading your forces and attacking everybody at the same time. Not ganging up on enemies one at a time with your entire team. You said it yourself - you had your A-team to kill the strong guys, your B-team to kill the weaker guys, everybody else to mop up, etc - at the same time.

Yes, I ended up killing everything in very quick succession, but the difference is that I never left low HP stragglers around to waste enemy turns, my priority was to kill everything quickly and efficiently. I would just compare health, armor and armor break and match units with each other accordingly and therefore end up winning battles. Using math versus exploiting the turn system which I felt was a quicker and a lot more fun way of doing things and probably the "natural" way to play the game.

Well there are a number of possible reasons. For instance, when confronted with a big, damage-dealing boss and some minions, some people try to take out the boss first, others go for the minions first. Which is more sensible is dependent on a lot of factors. In the Banner Saga system, it is always better to kill the strongest guy first, because whoever survives just keeps getting stronger.

Again: whenever you kill one enemy, all remaining enemies grow stronger, because they get additional turns.

This means that if you happened to kill 3 weaker enemies in a group of 7, you just made the enemy stronger - not in every sense, but certainly in their capacity to harm you.

You can obviously see how that can be pretty unintuitive for many people.

Now, if you're the type of person to always target the strongest enemy first, or not to gang up but attack everyone at once, then you won't notice it as much - because you are alreadey playing in a manner that is optimal for this combat system. But that doesn't answer any questions about whether this system is a good one in general. The only thing your experience tells us is that people who happened to already begin with a certain approach got through fine, people who happened to begin with another approach got some surprises.

There are also some weirder situations: e.g. when there are a couple of archers in a big map in a corner and some melee guys close to you, many people will decide to kill the melee dudes first so they aren't running past the melee guys to get the faraway ranged. This can be a bad tactic in Banner Saga, because when the melee dudes are dead, the ranged dudes will get 2x, 3x, 4x the attacks while you run all the way there.

Again: Banner Saga's system is not 'broken' in the sense that you have to do ridiculous gamey shit all the time to win, or in the sense that it is completely irrational. Rather, the point is that Banner Saga is built to reward a quite specific approach to combat, an approach which can work against learned intuitions from a lot of other systems (and intuitions about how fighting works).

Even this is not necessarily a problem. I have no problem with a system being counterintuitive and having its own unique approach. My personal criticism is that Banner Saga's approach rewards leaving weak enemies alive when you can kill them off. When you have two enemies, Big Strong with 18HP and Small Weak with 2HP left, Banner Saga punishes you for finishing off the small one. I don't find that particularly exciting or fun-inducing.
 

SCO

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Fuck learned intuitions. Use your fucking brain (in general, not you specifically).
 

Ninjerk

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Roshan, it's funny to me how you don't realize when people are agreeing with you. :) You told me that you killed everyone at the same time in a previous post!

I would usually take out the strongest enemies first, with Rook stripping armor (3 base armor stripping + willpower boost + item augmentation), and then one of the high damage varls moving in for the kill. Usually a B-Team with characters like Hogun to take on medium threat enemies. And if there were weaker outlying enemies that could be one hit killed by one of my characters, I would assign that character to mop them up while others were busy with the real threats. No need to keep anyone alive, just kill them all at the same time.

And how do you kill them all at the same time? By "going wide", strategically spreading your forces and attacking everybody at the same time. Not ganging up on enemies one at a time with your entire team. You said it yourself - you had your A-team to kill the strong guys, your B-team to kill the weaker guys, everybody else to mop up, etc - at the same time.

Yes, I ended up killing everything in very quick succession, but the difference is that I never left low HP stragglers around to waste enemy turns, my priority was to kill everything quickly and efficiently. I would just compare health, armor and armor break and match units with each other accordingly and therefore end up winning battles. Using math versus exploiting the turn system which I felt was a quicker and a lot more fun way of doing things and probably the "natural" way to play the game.

Well there are a number of possible reasons. For instance, when confronted with a big, damage-dealing boss and some minions, some people try to take out the boss first, others go for the minions first. Which is more sensible is dependent on a lot of factors. In the Banner Saga system, it is always better to kill the strongest guy first, because whoever survives just keeps getting stronger.

Again: whenever you kill one enemy, all remaining enemies grow stronger, because they get additional turns.

This means that if you happened to kill 3 weaker enemies in a group of 7, you just made the enemy stronger - not in every sense, but certainly in their capacity to harm you.

You can obviously see how that can be pretty unintuitive for many people.

Now, if you're the type of person to always target the strongest enemy first, or not to gang up but attack everyone at once, then you won't notice it as much - because you are alreadey playing in a manner that is optimal for this combat system. But that doesn't answer any questions about whether this system is a good one in general. The only thing your experience tells us is that people who happened to already begin with a certain approach got through fine, people who happened to begin with another approach got some surprises.

There are also some weirder situations: e.g. when there are a couple of archers in a big map in a corner and some melee guys close to you, many people will decide to kill the melee dudes first so they aren't running past the melee guys to get the faraway ranged. This can be a bad tactic in Banner Saga, because when the melee dudes are dead, the ranged dudes will get 2x, 3x, 4x the attacks while you run all the way there.

Again: Banner Saga's system is not 'broken' in the sense that you have to do ridiculous gamey shit all the time to win, or in the sense that it is completely irrational. Rather, the point is that Banner Saga is built to reward a quite specific approach to combat, an approach which can work against learned intuitions from a lot of other systems (and intuitions about how fighting works).

Even this is not necessarily a problem. I have no problem with a system being counterintuitive and having its own unique approach. My personal criticism is that Banner Saga's approach rewards leaving weak enemies alive when you can kill them off. When you have two enemies, Big Strong with 18HP and Small Weak with 2HP left, Banner Saga punishes you for finishing off the small one. I don't find that particularly exciting or fun-inducing.
inb4 he tells you this isn't math
 

SausageInYourFace

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So, has anybody any idea if these 'issues' (not that I personally mind them, cause I did not, I thought the combat was fun) with the combat system have been discussed/explained/justified in any way by the designers? What was their reasoning? Are there going to be any changes to the system with Banner Saga 2?
 

Karellen

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So, has anybody any idea if these 'issues' (not that I personally mind them, cause I did not, I thought the combat was fun) with the combat system have been discussed/explained/justified in any way by the designers? What was their reasoning? Are there going to be any changes to the system with Banner Saga 2?

Well, basically the combat became the way it was because it was originally designed and played as a board game by the developers, and then further tested in the PvP online component while the game was being developed. In that context, having alternating turns instead of an initiative system seemed more appealing, because it meant both players were constantly doing something. Also it somewhat avoids a death spiral in which the first player to score a kill gets an immediate advantage, which arguably helps keep the matches close and interesting all the way to the end. It does kind of limit what you can do in a single-player game, though, since the system is really designed for competitive and symmetrical play, which is why the single-player game doesn't have a lot in the way of different combat scenarios. From what little the developers have said about the next game, though, they're keeping the core system but are apparently shooting for more variety in battles as well as new mission objectives. Here's hoping.
 

SCO

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Good for them that they (apparently) didn't give in to the pressure of boring people who like the same thing over and over.

:bunkertime:
 

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