- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Grand Theft Auto includes the depiction of criminality, clearly it shouldn't exist. Open world games generally involve the ability to kill random people or engage in theft then maybe they should be banned too. And of course a kid might see Tony Hawk Pro-skater, imitate its moves, and break a bone. Better ban that too! And so on.
I'm sorry but this is a fundamentally useless impulse. You aren't making the world a better place by banning art that clashes with hyper-puritanical sensibilities. Any moral system that thinks this is a Good thing to do is useless and irrational.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
I never said anything about banning it. I said that maybe the urge to gamify the horrors of human history is kinda fucked up.
You left out literally all the key player-facing decision points, though. You took away the option to keep an eye on the employer, dictating that all the mistakes that make the trap work were just automatically made.Errr. Do you know what I mean by The Company Store Syndrome?
Its meant to do that. Sure, you can be like Draconis Combine and starve Wolf dragoons of supplies they are supposed to get.... Culminating in a commando attack and blowing up the Wolf mobile space station.
But most clients are more like Davion. You want to survive on the battlefield? Better be indebted to me, just like what they did to Eridani Light Horse, selling them lots of equipment and gear that they couldn't possibly hope to get and thus secure terms of service such as ELH being NAIS instructors
It all boils down to this. Making your unit poorer and poorer, more stuck to the company store while work equals debt. If you don't though, you die in battle as your mechs are not ready. Eventually giving you a choice of indentured servitude to the employer or banditry. Its in the manual itself, as mercs having to keep one eye on the enemy and the other eye on their employer.
Its even why my suggested run thru has the classic signs of giving the mercs too good terms to be true(full salvage, bonus combat pay and independent command is not normal. )
Thd difference between mine and the suggested treatment is that I say exposing the players to the sheer insanity that is Btech economics is more than ample enough to cause such a death spiral. Rules say not to go too deep into accounting and not the economics because it's not fun, but that's where I disagree. I think it can be extremely memorable, if done properly.... And only ONCE of course.
The point of the gribbly accounting isn't to generate intimidating spreadsheets for the pure love of spreadsheets. It's to have access to actionable understanding. What you wrote was a series of 'you botched your contract, logistics, and accounting decisions' except with all of those things presented as fiat instead of as containing any agency.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
I didnt realise we'd be rehashing arguments from 2000s Jack Thompson but here we are.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
You did say "shouldn't" though, as in ethically such games shouldn't be made, and Fourthspartan pointed out how such an ethical system that demands that is useless.
Now it is true you didn't speak of banning, but in a way that makes the position just even more useless - then it becomes just moralist grandstanding about a perceived problem without offering solutions.
- Location
- Patriarchova
There are not enough people alive on Earth to give you that many cents.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
What can I say, I'm an anarchist.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
There is something to be said for making a Civ/4x game that is fundamentally unwinnable. That no matter what you do, how well you govern, sooner or later the whole system crumbles and all your works will turn to dust. Call it Ozymandias it you want to be really on the nose.
Though, er, out of all the "fallen empires" you could base this game around, maybe don't use Nazi Germany for it? I have a feeling a game about extending the Nazi regime for as long as possible would attract the wrong crowd.
Have you seen some of the nations that are playable? It's not limited to ones where 'winning' is a reasonable achievement, though the game might be gameable enough to pull off weird upsets.
(I do think if one is setting WWII Germany up to be able to sustain an industrial war against the opposition, it should at least be signposted where the breaks from reality enabling that are. Because history presented by a game like that is going to be perceived as real information.)
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Ah, damnit. Wasn't there a 90s DOS game about the USSR that was basically that? But I forgot the name. You have to weather the Caucasus Conflicts, Chernobyl, economic downturns, hardliner coups etc etc just like in RL history... and even if you manage to survive that in the 2030s or so you have Tunguska 2.0 wrecking Siberia. Basically it was meant to be unwinnable, but let's see how long you can extend the USSR.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
Oh the violence is fine.
It's the states I have a problem with.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
What states.
- Location
- Russia
They did say they're anarchist
I think you're reading more into the scenario than was actually presented. PainRack is laying out the sort of things that should happen to mercs, that doesn't mean that all of these are going to happen to players and that they have no control over them. Like, sure, maybe your players are able to negotiate good contracts that save them from certain issues. But that's going to take active involvement, and also has consequences: high risk - high reward can absolutely be a thing, and something that players can fall into pretty easily.
Secondly, some of these things are outside of player control. It's like critizing a DM for having a forest fire, blizzard, or other environmental effect in an encounter because the players didn't have input in preventing it. Sometimes characters aren't going to have 100% agency and bad things are going to happen to them, with the result being that they now have to deal with these situations. This shouldn't be surprising: it's what most of running a table top rpg is about.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
The states with borders!
LordInsane
Loyalist to the Alvarian Merchant's Guild
- Location
- Bohuslän, Occupied Norway
Was it Crisis in the Kremlin?
Vyslanté
The self is a prison
- Location
- European Union
do they tho
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
This has literally nothing to do with your earlier post about gamifying violence. I am confused.
Well if you can point me to the generation of gamers who played GTA running over pedestrians with cars and robbing stores, please do.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Ah yes!
Game time from 1985 to 2017, so I guess the comet comes in the far future of... 2010. Ehem. But all I have heard is that the player is just plastered with, well, crisises - SSRs wanting to break away, factional coups, American meddling, famines - making the game essentially unwinnable.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
So, to not shitpost for a moment - I have no issue with games involving violence, it' the gamification of history that I'm a little wobbly on. And the reason I've at no point said it should be banned is because I don't think it should! I trust people to make their own decisions. I'm just not a huge fan of it.
Sarissa
OwO
- Location
- Washington, D.C.
Ghosts of Tsushima is made almost fucking unplayable by it's story, and I gave up after Act One and the DLC (after accidentally starting it).
Other games with good gameplay you can skip the scenes just to get to fighting but this game made the absolutely unforgivable skin of no cutscenes being skippable.
I rolled my eyes at the whole "extremely honorable samurai" cliche in the beginning, but then I realized that it also made the entire cast the most boring people in the universe who have the same arguments over and over.
"No you should attack in the stupid but honorable way!"
"No, I have 2 braincells!"
It also doesn't make any narrative sense. One of the central characters is an archer expert samurai dude. Okay, so stabbing motherfuckers in the back is dishonorable, but instead picking up your bow and shooting an arrow into an unsuspecting person's head is all fine?
It seems like the devs were aware of this, so they tried to like course correct for the DLC, but then it went way too far in the other direction. With like no warning, your beloved father turns out to be a mass slaughterer of the innocent and the game treats him as such.
But like... so are the people you're meant to be rescuing and earning the forgiveness of in the first place? Their very title is "raiders", they're pirates who as such loot, kill, and pillage as a fact of life. Why is the narrative treating them like a pile of puppies your dad kicked for no reason?
Other games with good gameplay you can skip the scenes just to get to fighting but this game made the absolutely unforgivable skin of no cutscenes being skippable.
I rolled my eyes at the whole "extremely honorable samurai" cliche in the beginning, but then I realized that it also made the entire cast the most boring people in the universe who have the same arguments over and over.
"No you should attack in the stupid but honorable way!"
"No, I have 2 braincells!"
It also doesn't make any narrative sense. One of the central characters is an archer expert samurai dude. Okay, so stabbing motherfuckers in the back is dishonorable, but instead picking up your bow and shooting an arrow into an unsuspecting person's head is all fine?
It seems like the devs were aware of this, so they tried to like course correct for the DLC, but then it went way too far in the other direction. With like no warning, your beloved father turns out to be a mass slaughterer of the innocent and the game treats him as such.
But like... so are the people you're meant to be rescuing and earning the forgiveness of in the first place? Their very title is "raiders", they're pirates who as such loot, kill, and pillage as a fact of life. Why is the narrative treating them like a pile of puppies your dad kicked for no reason?
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- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
Games where there's not a win condition and the entire point is to stave off inevitable failure as long as possible are... common? There's like entire genres built around that concept. It's weird to claim that having a playable faction or character or whatever that has no win condition is fundamentally bad design, when it just kinda' incredibly clearly isn't.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
Listen, it is of VITAL importance I revive the Sassanid Empire and destroy Rome for the glory of Ahura Mazda.