Kaiju-A-GoGo

[screamingpalm]

Define "taking a city" for me.

You need to make cities surrender, which is done by making their morale drop to a certain point. I don't know what the exact breaking point is, seems to be somewhere ~ 35-ish. This is done by taking out fleeing citizens- stomping or using abilities. TB hadn't taken a single city in the first 6 months, then complains about going bankrupt lol. Not bad design, simply a L2P thing.

[Draco18s]

simply a L2P thing.

Whiiiich as he stated, isn't ever explained in the game.  The player is given a kaiju and told to wreck house.

[screamingpalm]

Well it could be better explained I suppose. It was easily obvious to me like I say, but I digress. I only objected when he called it bad design. Semantics perhaps.

[kasnavada]

Well it could be better explained I suppose. It was easily obvious to me like I say, but I digress. I only objected when he called it bad design. Semantics perhaps.

IMO, that's bad design in both cases. Someone that tests games for a living not finding about it kind of tells something to me.

Either it's bad design because it's not explained / obvious, or it would be bad design because it causes upkeep issues.

[screamingpalm]

Well, I didn't immediately understand everything about AI War when I first started playing it. That doesn't make it badly designed- quite the opposite actually. The inverse can also be true, sometimes things are obvious enough that you might not think there is a need to explain further.

[kasnavada]

Everything is quite a large term. A game can't explain everything. But I don't think it's quite the same situation. From what you're saying, subduing in Kaiju seems to be a core mechanic, maybe equivalent of AI War not explaining how to capture research stations.

Every core mechanic in a game should be at least hinted at (some games prize themselves on discovering the rules), explained.

AI War does explain its core mechanics, like resource production, how to assault other worlds, out to do research, waves and so on. It even explains a whole lot of non-core mechanics actually, and it is very very well designed on that point.

Kaiju does not seem to do that, otherwise it would be in the video.

That said, it's probably pretty simple to solve, just add some information in a pop-up and tadaaa.

[screamingpalm]

Some people avoid spoilers for movies, others for RPG's. For me, I don't normally follow others' strategies for games and try to think for myself. So for me, it was not obvious what was going to happen the first time I attacked an AI core/home (forget the proper term, haven't played in a bit ). For example. I don't think that this makes it a poor design though. This is the Arcen forum right?

[WingedKagouti]

Some people avoid spoilers for movies, others for RPG's. For me, I don't normally follow others' strategies for games and try to think for myself. So for me, it was not obvious what was going to happen the first time I attacked an AI core/home (forget the proper term, haven't played in a bit ). For example. I don't think that this makes it a poor design though. This is the Arcen forum right?

Purposefully avoiding knowledge provided by the game is different from the game not offering said knowledge.

[kasnavada]

Every core mechanic in a game should be at least hinted at (some games prize themselves on discovering the rules), explained.

What I said is this above.

@screamingpalm, about "core post" retaliations...
While a "surprise", AI war spends about it's whole time teaching you that biting the AI means it'll fight back somehow. I could even state it barely does anything else, but I'll be exaggerating - it attacks on its own too, sometimes. Anyway, the game prepared you for this the whole time, that's exactly why it's well designed. It's a "surprise" that you're prepared for. And, anyway, it is "only" one wave mechanism among the dozen which AI war will throw at you (if not more). So not exactly "core" in my book. AI war IS well above average on that point, to the point where the game will teach you a lot of by "just" playing it. It won't teach you how to master the game, but directly or indirectly it will point you into this direction.


Back to Kaiju:
From what you said and the video, there is about 3 sources of income:
- enslaving towns => not explained.
- beating stuff => explained and obvious actually.
- stuff at your base => explained.

Beating towns give you income, but repeatedly doing so seems to give less resources because of the game keeping track of destroyed building. So basically the games points you to spread your attacks, NOT beat up a single town until it submits.

It's misleading, but is it bad design ?


Now the "main" point. What's the "point" of a game like kaiju ? Exploring mechanics until you understand how it works, or is it targeted for people looking for a game providing mindless fun ? Is it supposed to be a game which traps you until you find the right solution ? Is it a game where you're supposed to wake up in a new world without knowing anything about it ? Are you supposed to fight the game mechanics into submission ?

No, Kaiju is supposed to be "mindless" fun. Misleading mechanics hurt this kind of games. The game should "flow", and point you toward discovering how it works, and let you concentrate on the fun parts : beating stuff up.


Last point, it's really a small issue. I think we wasted more time speaking about it on this thread than they'll spend correcting this when do eventually do... as a small tutorial / small pop-up stating that you can beat towns into submission would solve this "problem".

[Draco18s]

Long story short:

I don't preorder anything, early access (almost) anything, or buy anything day-of-release.  I look at reviews, actual gameplay, and the opinions of people who know jack, boot the game, and do stuff blind.  And by "blind" I don't mean skipping tutorials, I mean "playing the game without searching for an explanation."  If the tutorial is buried somewhere obscure within the game and they miss it, that's acceptably blind.  If the tutorial is "reading a wiki" that's acceptably blind.  If the tutorial is a 30 minute Youtube video embedded into the main menu, that's acceptably blind.

Because in all three of those situations I am not likely to find or go to the effort.  And it really pisses me off that a lot of smaller studios think that they can get away with a series of video tutorials.  These are not tutorials, they offer me no experience in actual play, no practice, no getting a feel for the controls.  And above all, they are boring as HELL.  Natural Selection 2 did this, Star Conflict did this.  NS2 really, really needs single-player tutorials of somekind because holy hell, you can not figure things out on the fly at all.  "Oh man, I've got enough points to buy up to a Fade!  These guys are so cool...huh, how do I activate Blink?  Button's not working...oh shitshitshitshi--" *dead* "Oh sweet, the commander's chair is empty, let me just hop in and...this is waaay different, hug what do I do?  Uh, oh god they're attacking the spawn, guys guys over here!  Fuckfuckfuckfuck--" *dead*

There are games that can get away with it.  TF2 had more than one class where "point and shoot" was a viable tactic.  Heavy and pyro do accel in this regard (yes, there are subtleties, like not being a "W+M1 pyro" and doing basic spy checking, but even without you can make meaningful contributions).  Medic is "find a guy, use medigun, wait for ubers" and you get popups whenever someone yells for medic that tells you how badly they're hurt.  As you play you get a good view at how some of the other classes play.  Experienced engineers will put dispensers and turrets in defendable locations, and you can easily emulate that, allowing yourself to try out a new class and "not be complete shite."  Hell, playing as an Engineer and getting sapped by spies gives you insight on how to spycheck as a pyro.

NS2?  You die too quickly and expend permanent resources trying out new things.  And oh yeah, one of the hardest classes to play as an alien?  The only one that's free.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Some people avoid spoilers for movies, others for RPG's. For me, I don't normally follow others' strategies for games and try to think for myself. So for me, it was not obvious what was going to happen the first time I attacked an AI core/home (forget the proper term, haven't played in a bit ). For example. I don't think that this makes it a poor design though. This is the Arcen forum right?

Ah ah ah, no, avoiding knowledge isn't the same as the knowledge not being accessible. It's pretty clear Kaiju is hiding the knowledge based off that video and from what I've seen other people say about it. That is bad game design. Well, that and quite a few other mechanics I gleamed from the video. Plus, I was really hoping monsters destroying a city would be far more....involved. I'm incredibly disappointed that it's mostly target buildings, blow them up again and again and again. I was already bored just watching someone else blow up a city. For that to be the main mechanic of the game, it doesn't inspire me to pick it up anytime soon.

Have to agree with some of the other comments, this looks like a cash and grab. I'm honestly surprised the devs went ahead and pushed this out after the Kickstarter failed. That should have told them that maybe something was wrong. That or I would have worked on making the game more complete and varied, not limited and lacking in variety. If they are hurting for money, I have my doubts this will pull them out of the slump. Especially when you consider it has sold 2K copies (rough estimate), it's probably peaked at this point.

[screamingpalm]

Well at this point I think I will just have to simply disagree with you guys. I never expected this discussion here and on this forum lol. In no way is all the information easily accessible for AI War, or everything always obvious. Core mechanic or not, the example I gave has the same end result as TB not knowing to take cities for income. Either way ends in a fail state. It's also not fair to say that it is available on a wiki and for a game that has been out for awhile compared with a game that released two days ago. I get the feeling Dunning-Kruger is in full effect here and cannot follow the logic. Don't really feel like debating subjective opinions further, so that's enough from me.

Moot point anyway as the dev has stated that they are going to add the info to the game since it was apparently not obvious enough.

[Aklyon]

Dunno why they didn't have the info there at first anyways. Even AI War's huge text-heavy ship tooltips are better than no info at all

[screamingpalm]

Like I said, it was probably so obvious to them they didn't find it necessary. In a game where the entire premise is that you are an evil scientist taking over the world using a giant robot, it really shouldn't be necessary to tell people to go take over some cities. Just imo.

[Draco18s]

Like I said, it was probably so obvious to them they didn't find it necessary.

And this is where it fails the "Mom Test."  That is: give it to your mom and see if she can figure out how to play without any instruction.

Here's how Extra Credits explains it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9VONeNVPaNs#t=153