Galdred
Studio Draconis
The problem I usually have with unit death is that it is usually more important than whatever goal you are supposed to accomplish:
Losing an unit to secure an objective in nuXCOM is almost never worth it (while it was usually pretty sensible to throw characters into the meat grinder in the old one).
This is made even worse in games like Mordheim our Battle Brothers where improving your warband is the goal of the game itself.
I think Blood Bowl handles it rather well for a multiplayer game, especially in (non endless) League play:
- Winning a match is a big thing (it rewards you with popularity, and it helps you win the league. You have a limited number of matches per season)
- Having a character out of the game doesn't mean he will die. I think having most of your heavily wounded characters recover makes casualties a lot more acceptable. I wish more games did that (consider most characters that are out heavily wounded, without making it impossible to die).
- It also helps with the long term balance of the game, as insanely good characters get phased out.
- Given that it is a multiplayer game, you need to accept your losses, and cannot reload.
I only wish the game made it easier to play with an incomplete roster (1st edition had 16 players at all start of match, instead of 11 now), and concessions were not so crippling (as you cannot really save your team if it makes one thrid of them leave after the match).
Losing an unit to secure an objective in nuXCOM is almost never worth it (while it was usually pretty sensible to throw characters into the meat grinder in the old one).
This is made even worse in games like Mordheim our Battle Brothers where improving your warband is the goal of the game itself.
I think Blood Bowl handles it rather well for a multiplayer game, especially in (non endless) League play:
- Winning a match is a big thing (it rewards you with popularity, and it helps you win the league. You have a limited number of matches per season)
- Having a character out of the game doesn't mean he will die. I think having most of your heavily wounded characters recover makes casualties a lot more acceptable. I wish more games did that (consider most characters that are out heavily wounded, without making it impossible to die).
- It also helps with the long term balance of the game, as insanely good characters get phased out.
- Given that it is a multiplayer game, you need to accept your losses, and cannot reload.
I only wish the game made it easier to play with an incomplete roster (1st edition had 16 players at all start of match, instead of 11 now), and concessions were not so crippling (as you cannot really save your team if it makes one thrid of them leave after the match).