Do you play in Ironman?

[mihai]

sometimes, but I'm not too pedantic about it. Once I went ironman in openxcom, till I got surprised by a terror mission with early sectopods. Needless to say, my main (and only) team got slaughtered in the first rounds. Except that single guy that had scouted too far ahead. He got incredibly lucky, killed 5 aliens without getting hit. I wanted him to live. So I changed to excessive savescumming, and because of the fixed-seed RNG it became like a puzzle game - 3/4 of possible moves were instant death. To make it short, he managed to get the single heavy laser from the pile of his burned comrades, camped in one multi-storage building.. and won. It was glorious. It was fun. It lasted 50 rounds. He became the veteran hero of the new team, and survived the then-ironman game.

edit: could someone explain where the kingcomrade option comes from? I couldn't find out in two years of lurking...

 

[Emily]

I only play ironman,any game that is remotely possible.

The ironman makes the game actually a game cause the death is actually a death and I feel much more immersed in my character. And a lot of time I wont act suicidal either and will run from some quests that I think arent worth it.

 

[IDtenT]

I always pick ironman if it is an option.

It also means I rarely finish games.

 

[Norfleet]

I don't play Ironman. For the simple reason that I like to try totally ridiculous stuff, that I am pretty sure I will die if it goes wrong. Because I want to see the result of what happens when I fail and/or succeed.

I also like to pick options that are going against what character I am playing (pick an evil option when I play with a good character) on purpose just to see if the game reacts to the difference of "alignment" between the character actions and it's moral code. After that (and even if I got an awesome reward by picking the evil option) I just reload and pick the option my character would pick.

Yeah, that's another good reason. Sometimes you already know it's bad, and would never actually do it for srs, but you just want to see WHAT HAPPENS. Ironman means you can never check out those options because you can't afford to burn an entire play on idle curiosity. Some games are just not MEANT to be played this way, and even the developers expect (and prompt you to) save often. Playing Space Quest Ironman would basically be missing the entire game, since the best parts of the game ARE about watching Roger get killed in silly ways.

edit: could someone explain where the kingcomrade option comes from? I couldn't find out in two years of lurking...

It comes from kingcomrade. It's just one of those Codex memes, all polls must contain a kingcomrade option.

 

[DakaSha V]

I play ironman without setting the option (if it exists). If i make a legitimate input mistake, or just didnt know how something works, ill load. Otherwise I keep on truckin

The problem with AI often isnt that its stupid, but that its immersion breaking by not using all of the options available to the player (or using them in such a braindead way that defeats the purpose of the mechanic in the first place)

also: dune wars

 

[BING XI LAO]

I used to savescum a lot, playing multiplayer (in Age of Wonders) was a bit of a shock as it's suddenly made obvious that it's unfair cheating.

I still savescum a lot though in single player, especially eu4 where I tend to alt tab with the game running while manpower/gold accumulates. Tend to miss a couple big things every now and then.

 

[Fedora Master]

It does depend on the game but for strategy/simulation titles I prefer Ironman now. When I was younger I was very reluctant to try it but now (>tfw 30 year old boomer) I wouldn't play any other way.

 

[MilesBeyond]

To me it depends on one question: Can you lose the battle without losing the war? (Or rather, lose the war without losing the game). In games like Paradox's GSGs, Dominions, XCom, Jagged Alliance, most Impressions games (if those count), Panzer General etc, then I'll absolutely play Ironman, except for maybe when I'm first learning the game. Part of what makes those games fun is that losing is a part of the process. I remember one of my first games of I think EU3. Went Brandenburg->Prussia, ate so much land that everyone declared war on me (now that I think of it, this might have been one of my first games of EU4). Got ganked, but instead of ragequitting, I instead vowed that we would rebuild and retake that territory - and one day I did, and with a vengeance. That was a lot of fun.

But in more "traditional" 4X games like Civ, Age of Wonders, and especially something like Heroes of Might and Magic or Disciples, I find that your fate is often decided in one battle. If your main force goes down, that's kind of it, and all you can really do is delay the inevitable (in some Civ installments you can quickly whip/draft out a standing force to save the day, I guess). So I'll rarely if ever play those Ironman, because one mistake can easily cost you everything. Also I never play Ironman in Civ because I can't be arsed to guard my Settlers but that's my problem.

 

[Dux]

I can certainly appreciate playing Ironman but it depends heavily on the game. If the game is fair about its challenge then fine but if the whole experience ends up with me being one-shotted out of the blue then I'll steer clear. I think I'm more open to the mode in turn-based games or slower paced strategy where I hopefully have a better idea of what's happening or what is about to happen. I'd never consider playing ironman in Path of Exile, for example.

 

[Serus]

It does depend on the game but for strategy/simulation titles I prefer Ironman now. When I was younger I was very reluctant to try it but now (>tfw 30 year old boomer) I wouldn't play any other way.

Similar here. When I was younger it was different but in the last decade I started to appreciate ironman in games a lot. I started to enjoy roguelikes and other games built around ironman but also to play strategy games in ironman (or as close as possible to ironman) when applicable.

 

[Plisken]

depends on the game

i like it in xcom, xenonauts and JA2 because in these games consequences are meaningful and enrich the strategic depth. People avoiding bad outcomes by savescumming are robbing themselves of a better experience IMO.

edit: for example, if you savescum there is never any reason to better your tactics or equipment or explore options other than RELOAD UNTIL I WIN beyond simply lessening the amount of saves you have to go through. Some of my fondest experiences with JA2 1.13 was doing hit and runs on patrols to thin out enemy numbers that could backup city sectors. hitting them hard and fast from concealment then popping smoke and di di mau. Theres no actual reason to do stuff like that when you savescum, because lol just reload and scalp it until it turns out in your favor.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I just savescummed all through a hard Battle for Wesnoth mission (with a strict time limit) and that game, which has heavy randomness, has a counter keeping track of how much damage you dealt/received compared to what would've been the 'average' from all the probability rolls thus far. Over any match it'll gradually move towards 0%/0% as more and more rolls occur, but in this case it ended at +8%/-6%

 

[Monkeyfinger]

If I like a strategy game enough to replay it a lot my goal always becomes "get good enough to consistently beat it on hardest difficulty ironman, while never dumping bad starts."

 

[thesheeep]

Can we please stop calling this gameplay variant ironman?
The term is clearly sexist and implies that women could not play difficult games.

Spoiler

Gotcha!


Don't try to deny it.

 

[Risewild]

Can we please stop calling this gameplay variant ironman?
The term is clearly sexist and implies that women could not play difficult games.

Spoiler

Gotcha!


Don't try to deny it.

I guess those who complain about that should go and play in the Ironmaiden mode

 

[toro]

In Soviet Russia the Ironman plays you.

 

[Serus]

Can we please stop calling this gameplay variant ironman?
The term is clearly sexist and implies that women could not play difficult games.

Spoiler

Gotcha!


Don't try to deny it.

So ironperson it shall be from now on!

 

[Risewild]

Can we please stop calling this gameplay variant ironman?
The term is clearly sexist and implies that women could not play difficult games.

Spoiler

Gotcha!


Don't try to deny it.

So ironperson it shall be from now on!

That term still excludes all the other metals! Where is the representation of copper? gold? silver? lead? zinc? etc.

It should (at least) be metalperson mode.

 

[Silva]

What I'll talk now may feel like some powerflower bullshit to some but here it goes...

Don't get too attached.

Attachment leads to risk aversion, which leads to save scumming at the least failure, which leads to boredom. Just let it go. Let the game flow as it may, setbacks and all, and it gets MUCH more exciting.

Damn, even getting checkmated by the CPU is fun! The most fun I had with strategy games was when the CPU checkmated me, and then I immediately started over, adjusted my strat and won. These days I measure a game by it's capacity of checkmating me.

 

[Zombra]

Only if it's enabled by default or the tooltip in the options menu says "this is how it's meant to be played". In general I go for the "vanilla" experience the dev intended, at least the first time through.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I am lately playing online games (popamole even) and I must say that I like games without saving more. It's an interesting feeling when you stopped thinking about savegames because the game updates a database whenever something happens, and you suddenly realize how much time you would have spent saving and reloading to get that extra bit of advantage. In that respect, a properly designed open world game can make Ironman and saves largely superfluous (also think of those old arcade games where you had 3 lives and could not save at all).

I think historically savegames served a lot of functions of which many are not needed any more. The only reason I still use them is that I can backup and reuse my progress years later (which I almost never do, but when I do it is awesome).

I also admit that I am guilty of the worst crimes of savescumming, using it as a major tactics to get the best characters, the best rolls etc, if games were so damn hard.

 

[Cael]

I also admit that I am guilty of the worst crimes of savescumming, using it as a major tactics to get the best characters, the best rolls etc, if games were so damn hard.

I tend to go the other way with RPGs. I play the game normally and once I beat it, I tend to play it on easy mode for fun. That means things like elevated stats, extra items, gaming the system like crazy or any sort of shenannigans, including modifying racial and class abilities, requirements and other parameters. Only in tactical games do I make things harder for myself by artificially restricting things, but that is because I tend not to modify tactical games that much in the first place and because tactical games requires you think and adapt, unlike RPGs, which tend to be more immersive and story/character focused.

 

[Zombra]

I like games without saving more.

Me too. Whether online or single-player, rolling autosave/"fail forward" designs tend to make for much better games in my opinion. (Exception: Desperados.)

 

[Jimmious]

Completely depends on the game. Games like for example, Rimworld, are meant to be played Ironman. Take your losses and move on.
Other games like long RPGs don't really promote that behavior.

Basically games that have good Ironman are the ones that losing characters doesn't mean immediate game over and simultaneously they offer ways to recover from losses

 

[Norfleet]

That term still excludes all the other metals! Where is the representation of copper? gold? silver? lead? zinc? etc.

It should (at least) be metalperson mode.

But what about high-density carbon-fiber composites and other non-metal materials? Or non-person artificial intelligences? Maybe it should be "materialentity mode".