Could We Make A Rogue Mode... ?

[Teal_Blue]

Where a player only has the 6 exos in the stall for the entire game, if one gets killed or lost, that's that and we only have what is left? Of the six, if i lose 4 or five through an entire 50 mission game, then i only have the 1 or 2 remaining, or i lose the game? It could make for a pretty intense set of missions. 

It doesn't have to be for everyone, perhaps just a toggle, like the ironman, in fact perhaps it could be a part of the ironman mode if you like. Or is this already what ironman is about and i'm rather oblivious of that?

Hope things on the financial front are looking better.

Sincerely,
-Teal

[Mick]

Of course, all equipped items on each destroyed exo would have to blow up with it.

[keith.lamothe]

One of the optional conducts I want to do for the expansion is "when an exo dies, it's gone forever".  So that'd just be a stall of 4, not 6, but yea

And yes, all the gear would go up in smoke too.

[Conir]

i like the idea, but i would suggest to be able to choose which exos you want to take - so if i want to go with 3 Assaults and 3 Sieges, let me do that. if something pops, its gone

[Teal_Blue]

Well, i am very glad that it seems a reasonable request.    Hoping the sales go well and we can look forward to an expansion. 

-Teal

[chemical_art]

For the record, and devil's advocate, this idea is terrible, and I wouldn't support it all. It doesn't help the majority of players, and hardcore players could simulate this by simply not using champs already destroyed in future missions. It doesn't expand base appeal at all, and I _highly_ doubt the number of players who would not buy except that there is a "super-ironman" mode implemented.


(Yes, that's devil's advocate for you)

[nas1m]

For the record, and devil's advocate, this idea is terrible, and I wouldn't support it all. It doesn't help the majority of players, and hardcore players could simulate this by simply not using champs already destroyed in future missions. It doesn't expand base appeal at all, and I _highly_ doubt the number of players who would not buy except that there is a "super-ironman" mode implemented.


(Yes, that's devil's advocate for you)

And what hurt does another toggle for those who want it do ? Not sure what downside you see here...
For those who like the idea it is definitely preferable if the game helps out a bit with enforcing the stricter ruleset ...

[keith.lamothe]

There are plenty of options in AIW that only a few players use, but which add to the perception of the game's overall awesomeness.

And while I agree that it could be readily simulated by the player, if that were a conclusive argument against the game enforcing it (when enabled), then why do we see hardcore/ironman toggles in so very many successful roguelike/roguelite/etc games?  It's trivial to simulate "dead is dead" or "when you die, game over, no reloading", but enough people don't work that way psychologically (who nonetheless want the rule sometimes) that there's a reason such toggles are added

[Pepisolo]

I'm all for the idea. It's the mode I'd play on. I think it could also make mission abandonments more meaningful. Currently, abandoning a mission doesn't really mean anything. It's just a way to quit out of a mission if you're bored. You might as well just fight to the death. However; if fighting to the death meant complete failure then abandoning a mission then becomes a much more tactical option. The mission is going badly -- do you fight to the bitter end or retreat and live to fight another day?




   

[chemical_art]

There are plenty of options in AIW that only a few players use, but which add to the perception of the game's overall awesomeness.

And while I agree that it could be readily simulated by the player, if that were a conclusive argument against the game enforcing it (when enabled), then why do we see hardcore/ironman toggles in so very many successful roguelike/roguelite/etc games?  It's trivial to simulate "dead is dead" or "when you die, game over, no reloading", but enough people don't work that way psychologically (who nonetheless want the rule sometimes) that there's a reason such toggles are added

And I will counter that one of the most common FAQ's of any of these "ironman" forced games is "how do I turn it off"

There is a difference between "perception of the game's overall awesomeness" and overall popularity. I don't know many players who say "AI Wars is terrible, but then I discovered hybrids". No. Rather, players like the base game, then a sub group of those players like the harder mode. The vast, vast majority of players of these "harder" modes liked the base game to begin with. Ergo, the base game, and not the extra features, contribute meaningfully to the game's awesomeness.

Harder / more intense /=/ a more popular game. In fact, evidence in the meta sense points to the opposite 

[BobTheJanitor]

By your argument, why would any difficulty level above easy ever be worth including?

Just because someone might not want it doesn't mean everyone doesn't. And to reiterate, who is it hurting? I'm not hearing the downside here. Unless you're imagining some situation where a player picks up the game, immediately turns on 'ultra hard death mode', dies, and then runs into the street screaming about how this is the worst game ever?

And you can't 'simulate' it.  Pretending you're in hardcore mode is not the same thing. Don't believe me? What's the difference between playing poker for pennies and playing poker for 10 grand per hand? What's the difference between walking on a rope one foot off the ground and walking on a rope stretched across a canyon? You can make believe as hard as you want, but when you're working without a net, the differences are obvious.

Harder/more intense = a more enjoyable game for some people, which is enough reason to include it as an option for those people, no?

[chemical_art]

By your argument, why would any difficulty level above easy ever be worth including?

Just because someone might not want it doesn't mean everyone doesn't. And to reiterate, who is it hurting? I'm not hearing the downside here. Unless you're imagining some situation where a player picks up the game, immediately turns on 'ultra hard death mode', dies, and then runs into the street screaming about how this is the worst game ever?

And you can't 'simulate' it.  Pretending you're in hardcore mode is not the same thing. Don't believe me? What's the difference between playing poker for pennies and playing poker for 10 grand per hand? What's the difference between walking on a rope one foot off the ground and walking on a rope stretched across a canyon? You can make believe as hard as you want, but when you're working without a net, the differences are obvious.

Harder/more intense = a more enjoyable game for some people, which is enough reason to include it as an option for those people, no?

That argument would hold, except time spent trying to balance . develop toward these harder difficulties is time not spent balancing toward the larger majority. If that is the goal, that some effort will be spent toward the minority, that is fine. However, I will not tolerate glancing over the fact. Be upfront. An disproportionate amount of time is time toward the minority. Again, that in itself is fine, as long as it is not denied it is at the expense (or at least, the ignoring) of the majority. It occurs in AI Wars all the time, it is true. However, I will also argue that is why VotM sales were not...spectacular, given the lack of support the expansion got. Focusing on making a game harder simply doesn't drive sales as much. If that is the goal, fine, but then don't mention disappointing sales in a similar time frame (I'm not saying anyone did, but it does tie in to the "mystery" of how this game didn't sell despite good reviews).

I stand-fast that making certain "challenges" coded will develop a game's popularity a fraction of expanding the base game to begin with. There are plenty of games which I've made informal rules to myself to make the game harder; even then, I would prefer the game developers pursue expanding the game rather then codify my personal rules.

Pick one: Difficulty, or popularity.

[Tridus]

That argument would hold, except time spent trying to balance . develop toward these harder difficulties is time not spent balancing toward the larger majority.

Seeing as how we're talking about a flag in code, a checkbox on the game setup screen, and a fairly small amount of code to make bots not respond (and the game cope with that accordingly), this argument is absurd. There is no "balancing" going on at all. The game is not being rebalanced in any way whatsoever by this change.

If that is the goal, that some effort will be spent toward the minority, that is fine. However, I will not tolerate glancing over the fact. Be upfront. An disproportionate amount of time is time toward the minority. Again, that in itself is fine, as long as it is not denied it is at the expense (or at least, the ignoring) of the majority. It occurs in AI Wars all the time, it is true.

Technically time spent working on easy stuff is also "for the minority", since lots of players aren't playing on easy (and pretty much nobody is going to play there more than once).

However, I will also argue that is why VotM sales were not...spectacular, given the lack of support the expansion got.

You'd argue that VotM sales were not spectacular based on... what? VotM gave the player several new toys. Core Turrets and their "spam these everywhere for virtually no cost" system make the game easier, not harder.

Do we even know if VotM sales met expectations? Have they ever said so? Or did they simply decide not to make the big changes until Keith is working on the next expansion?

Focusing on making a game harder simply doesn't drive sales as much.

FTL would disagree, and it's a lot more merciless than Bionic Dues is. XCOM would probably also disagree since it's reviving a franchise based on being remorseless about murdering you.  The genre is based on being hard, and you're not going to interest the genre fans if you're not. BD already has a solid difficulty scaling system, so it's got no problem appealing to people who want an easier game.

If that is the goal, fine, but then don't mention disappointing sales in a similar time frame (I'm not saying anyone did, but it does tie in to the "mystery" of how this game didn't sell despite good reviews).

No, it doesn't tie in at all, because the premise that the game is too hard for people right now is false. You can make this a really easy game if you desire.

I stand-fast that making certain "challenges" coded will develop a game's popularity a fraction of expanding the base game to begin with. There are plenty of games which I've made informal rules to myself to make the game harder; even then, I would prefer the game developers pursue expanding the game rather then codify my personal rules.

Pick one: Difficulty, or popularity.

Again, that's false. What's made AI War last so long is not that the only time anybody ever worked on a feature, it was applicable to a newbie playing on 4/4. Stuff was added that keeps the game interesting for a long time, which gives it longevity. If you're adding stuff to a game, you need to look at stuff to draw in new players, and stuff to keep the existing players interested. Without them, who is going to tell the new people about the game, or buy expansions?

[Tridus]

Now then, as for the difficulty idea itself...  it seems kind of overboard. Given how long the campaign is, making a mistake this unrecoverable is going to mean that you could wind up doing 20 days with 2 exos due to an error. If you lose the wrong ones and suddenly don't have enough ammo to kill everything (not out of the question at high difficulty with two exos missing), the campaign is over at that point.

A slightly more forgiving version would be this: When you lose an exo, it's replaced with a new one at the next mission. All equipped parts are lost due to the damage. Even XCOM lets you train a new soldier if you lose one. That hurts, but it's more recoverable.

[Frumple]

Or just let salvage missions bring back a destroyed one, possibly with part of its previous kit (maybe depending on how well you perform during the salvage mission... sprinkle some cyropod-like things around the stage, perhaps). Might give a reason to hit them before you've lost HQ health, even.