Turn-Based Tactics Into the Breach: Advanced Edition - mech tactics game from FTL devs with Chris Avellone writing

[kyrub]

Oh damn. Mentioning Invisible Inc. along with FTL makes me dizzy. Asking for trouble, there, if it does not fill the expection dam created in the process...

 

[circ]

Googled something semi related earlier and this came up too. Please don't suck. Isometric tactical combat and mechs, oh.

But it's the FTL guys - nice music and atmosphere, but gameplay and campaign had no real variety, disguised by rl mechanics.

edit: watched gameplay video. HAHAHAHAHA. Are you fucking kidding me? Tiniest of the tiny maps with 0 detail and 0 tactical depth. Fucking mobile game with hype from FTL.

 

[Arnust]

0 tactical depth.

Well, someone hasn't read even the last article.

 

[circ]

I saw the vid, don't try to sell me your fanboy bullshit.

 

[Arnust]

I saw the vid, don't try to sell me your fanboy bullshit.

"I shall base all my opinion in a sole instance of pre-release non-tutorial gameplay rehearsed by a player in the learning and without commentary when the game is also unassumingly simple and minimalistic like its precedent" "I also will not read even the most simple and grounded overview posted above this very comment" "I'll procede to call it a mobile game even if the chance for it to ever be is really low based on the treatment of FTL" "Fanboy"



I'm sorry to tell you but you just might not be the target audience for this. You've got some flashy unneeded animations to fail 99% chance hits to do, lad.

 

[circ]

First, learn the difference between tactical and strategic and then try to argue your case.

I'm not hopeful that will happen though because so far your arguments have sounded like cheap strawmen used by shills.

 

[Nutria]

A game played on an 8x8 grid with relatively simple rules can still have a lot of depth. Chess for example.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Well, no matter what kind of hype they write and say, all the actual footage shown so far looked p lame. And I guess I'm being generous now.

 

[Infinitron]

An LP of sorts on RPS: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/12/01/into-the-breach-after-action-report/

 

[Arnust]

Ah, bullshitery. Wouldn't have it other way. Albeit the way to cope with that seems to just be not being negligent with network power "stock" and do as many as possible before facing the boss encounter or other particularly hard ones.

 

[The Fish]

 

[circ]

Yeah, dumb, shallow mobile game with rng thrown in to give the illusion of challenge and depth. Wait, that's kind of like their previous game. Well that's peculiar. Why bother with involved gameplay and story, that's for old people.

 

[Galdred]

Yeah, dumb, shallow mobile game with rng thrown in to give the illusion of challenge and depth. Wait, that's kind of like their previous game. Well that's peculiar. Why bother with involved gameplay and story, that's for old people.

Managing Rng is part of the challenge in many games(Blood bowl, X-COM...).
That said, I don't see much Rng in their new game. It seems very (too?) puzzly to me.

Edit: in the previous video, he actually tells there is no RNG("nothing left to chance"), and why, so the RNG criticism comes as a bit off:

 

[Arnust]

I wish the mobile game standard was like Subset Games', lmao. Would make it a way more worthwhile platform for sure.

I must say that the tuning down of RNG and more puzzle focus will most likely make it have a lesser lasting appeal and replayability, but by that I'm really paraphrasing Justin Ma on one of their first disclosures about the game.

 

[Nutria]

So the devs wrote an essay about the RNG in this game being about inputs and not outputs.

Wow. This guy really does have his head pretty far up his ass. So since combat results in Civilization are "output randomness" that means it's somehow a lesser game? Watch out Sid Meier, it turns out you don't know as much about making strategy games as this guy.

 

[thesheeep]

Well, that article is a load of overanalyzing nonsense

The guy just really doesn't get what is interesting about randomness to begin with and has no clue about what would make risk management an interesting and fun part in games.
Imagine Blood Bowl, Mordheim, etc. without dice rolls to determine the outcome of an action. Or any single PnP system ever.
To this guy, they are simply all badly designed games because they wouldn't function without "output randomness".

From the article I get the impression that his favourite game would be chess on a random map.
This does not bode well for the game.
At all.

Edit: Turns out the article is not from a dev of this. Phew.

 

[Arnust]

Well, the article does date from almost four years ago now, not far after the release of Advanced Edition, and, most importantly... oasis789 , how did you get to the conclusion that he's a dev? I can't find absolutely no involvement between him and any of Subset games! It already seemed off to me when they have a way more humil attitude, like in their GDC talk or even the linked above.

Solomon and the Firaxis XCOM developers talk a lot about how they secretly manipulate the RNG in favor of the player in order to make them feel like the game isn't unfair and keep them playing. Ergo, it is the perception of overwhelming RNG that hurts appeal.

Oh I know. Even as I find that kind of shitty, it's a good game design notion. What I rather meant was run differentiation. In the subreddit, someone getting one of the Holy Trinity weapons like the Burst laserII/FlakII/Twin Vulcan/Glaive is reason of celebration, even if it's not really a good example. I don't think I could have played FTL for 200 hours if RNG was any different.

 

[Galdred]

oh, Keith Burgun is no dev of FTL. He designed a few games of his own:
Auro

Empires:

and 100 rogues:

100 Rogues was before he embarked on a crusade against randomness.

He took over the gamedesign subreddit, so this nonsense about randomness being evil incarnate may have reached beyond his own games
Edit: I have nothing against deterministic games. I just hate it when people argue that it is the only way to go. Blood Bowl would certainly not be better without dicerolls, nor chess with to hit rolls.

 

[circ]

I have no issues with dice rolls or that kind of randomness. Even randomly created areas or enemies. It's when I'm moving a squad through the tropics and a snowstorm out of nowhere kills every single one of them, that I call bullshit. That's not overcoming a challenge through improvisation, there's no information to prepare for it, it's bad design and the dev not understanding balance. Now this is an extreme example, but I've seen this type of thing - not specifically snowstorm though, actually happen in games, even recently - example, Darkest Dungeon.

 

[Arnust]

t's when I'm moving a squad through the tropics and a snowstorm out of nowhere kills every single one of them

What if you were warned that there was a snowstorm in the first place and you got the option to go through other path considering you aren't stocked up on warm sweaters?

Albeit agreed, Darkest Dungeon fucking sucks and the only real way to overcome RNG is throw so much grinding to it, which is asked regardless, that it balances out and you can manage to overcome it through force. For similar reasons I find other games like The Binding Of Isaac and Enter The Gungeon quite banalshitboring.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

oh, Keith Burgun is no dev of FTL. He designed a few games of his own:


100 Rogues was before he embarked on a crusade against randomness.

He took over the gamedesign subreddit, so this nonsense about randomness being evil incarnate may have reached beyond his own games
Edit: I have nothing against deterministic games. I just hate it when people argue that it is the only way to go. Blood Bowl would certainly not be better without dicerolls, nor chess with to hit rolls.

Its amazing to me that game designers who code can 't properly understand the place or point of RNG. Often people who whine about randomness (and often even numbers) in games simply don't understand programing or game design, which is why I always find it amazing that computer game programmers can fall into this shit way of thinking. Designing a totally 100% if/then flow chart type game system is the most boring and mundane crap in the world.

Many people seem to feel that if you do away with randomness and 'luck' that it will be a better game system or that randomness is just some sort of crutch or replacement for actual gaming systems. I agree that the procedural phenomena is annoying and overly used, but randomness used correctly and in the right places and degree only enhances game play and replayability. RNG simulates the chaos of battle etc better than anything a human would purposefully design. Its my opinion that games should have more purposeful and human designed systems, maps, encounters and story while sprinkling in some randomness in those areas-but that the best place for randomness is in the combat system for things like initiative, surprise, events, and damage. Things that make you have to change strategy and tactics on the fly. RNG to design maps and encounters and loot is where randomness is used poorly and too often and too lazily IMO.

For some reason the idea that RNG equates to luck and is 'bad' seems to have infected the millennial generation. I have a brother 20 years younger than me and he and all his friends are just in love with those soulless German/euro type board games where you do some stupid shit like run a paint factory or control a cities electricity supply. Honestly it does not matter what the game is about, they just plaster any theme on top of the mechanics which is why the games are so soulless and mundane. I am overcome with a feeling of intense boredom and tedium whenever I look at the game boxes. I would rather watch reruns of leave it to beaver or do my dishes or laundry than play one of those games. In fact I think there is probably a game where you organize your daily chores like buying milk at the store or picking up your kids from school and organizing their afternoon practices and homework and bath time.

They seem to love the games deterministic mechanics and consider anything RNG as 'bad' and as being "just based on luck". Honestly it feels like a hipster type thing where people hear some guy rant about RNG and luck and think they have discovered some new 'progressive' type game mechanics that makes them feel smart and edgy. People who fall for this shit are the dame dipshits who think communism sounds 'fair' and awesome. Its the same type of faulty logic. I immediately lose interest in a game if any of the creators start talking about RNG and luck in this negative fashion because it usually means the game will be a shallow shitty game based on a few repetitive and boring mechanics which often are just a variation of rock/paper/scissor plastered over identical units whose differences are simply aesthetic. Some hipsters call this elegant game design, but really its almost always just boring mental masturbation.


Probably nobody here has played the board wargames by Dean Esigg of multi-man publishing, but in his operational series of wargames (for example: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12234/dak2 ) he uses randomness in the combat system that is truly amazing and inventive but most importantly, it is also fun. He does it in a way that addresses many of the problems of turned based gaming where the players know too much information and have too much and perfect control over their units. The way he uses randomness reintroduces chaos and unpredictability. You can roll up to a seemingly weak enemy with an overwhelming force and find out that your force recon was way off about the enemies strength and or location which ends up with your planned overwhelming and easy victory turning into a surprise and ambush by a more prepared enemy than had been expected.

It is this unpredictability that makes the game tense and exciting. Having to recover and change strategy based on this unpredictability is a better simulation of reality and war than simply moving a certain exact and known number of combat points next to an enemy whose strength is also 100% known and then getting a completely identical result each and every time. That is not realistic, but moreover it is not much fun either IMO.

I know these seemingly archaic type of board wargames are not very popular perhaps (and really they have always been somewhat niche), but since I have got back into board wargaming over the last few years I have realized that these boardgames and their designers have not sat still over the last 30 years, but that in fact modern board wargames have seemed to become more inventive and pushed the envelope of what is possible when compared to their computer game counterparts.

I think it may be that low tech boardgames force the creators to be more creative compared to computer-game designers who have perhaps become somewhat disconnected from their boardgame past while lazily relying more and more on raw computer power in the place of game and system design (i.e. procedural maps, loot, and even procedural story telling etc...). Also the boardgame designers have been under much more pressure to innovate and figure out ways to increase immersion and narrative in response to computer games which can more easily introduce story telling and immersion due to the nature of their underlying medium.

I believe it could possibly do some good for computer game designers to reconnect with their boardgame roots as far as game mechanics go. I think it is a mistake for computer game designers to divorce themselves of boardgame mechanics, which is something I think many of them do. I think they often think of boardgames and their mechanics as having only existed due to the limitations of technology. Its the same type of thinking that you hear sometimes about turn based vs. real-time, where some modern people believe all turn-based games in the past really wanted to be real-time games and that the only reason turn-based games existed was because computers were not advanced enough to do real-time games yet..

Which is of course completely wrong, since some of the very first and most popular computer games were pong, lunar lander, asteroids etc...

BGG link to above mentioned wargame: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12234/dak2

 

[Galdred]

Note that Justin Ma (the FTL guy who did the talking) is not a programmer, he did part of the game design and the art for FTL(Matthew Davis was the programmer). Keith Burgun cannot program either, so neither exemple contradicts your point.

 

[baud]

Also, from what I understood, there is randomness in the game, for all the spawn location and contents, forcing the player to (as you said) adapt to a new situation. On the other hand, since there is no randomness when resolving an action, once you got a plan, it will work without fail

 

[Jimmious]

After 4 pages I have to say that whenever I read the title of this game I get this song in my mind:

 

[Beowulf]

I'm having a different flashback: