Not Losing Is Not Fun

[tombik]

In my current game, I got crushed.

I dont own any military.

My capital has 7 population, and 8-9 tiles non destroyed.

My second city is near to it and has one faactory, 50 non sick population.

It is clear that I lost. But I am an honorable man, I dont abandon my OWN people!! So I keep playing. I tried to build a second factory. Actually even the first factory in my second city is built under heavy gunfire. They did not destroy it. By the way by "them" I am meaning Burlusts, Boarines and Thoraxians, so yeah I really lost the game.

Each turn, if I have some money, (my income is as low as 3000 a turn btw as you can expect) I try to build some new houses to my second city, which is a little less destroyed, and sometimes I try to build some military, but they immediately destroy it. So it is like a vicious cycle, I know that I am lost, 3/4 of my population is sick always, and my income is getting lower and lower.

Basically, I want to lose, but it has been more than 45 minutes to with light of end of the tunnel is in sight. I was gonna say "2 hours" because it was that boring , then checked Steam gameplay time.

What I can suggest is, there should be some fatality in war, while indecisiveness make it longer and grindy, in the cases clear like this, the player should not be forced into abandoning the game.

I think Losing conditions are not being worked as hard as victory conditions, which I know also are not complete.

[jerith]

From the comment in http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=16682 it seems proper "game over" handling (both for winning and losing) will happen sometime after the art is ready.

NOTE: The rest of this post is an explanation of why I think things are the way they are. It's not directed at anyone in particular and it's meant to be informative rather than reprimanding.

Chris and Keith are currently spending their time and effort mostly on gameplay issues, which are rather more important at this stage of the beta. Once the core gameplay's sorted out, there will be more energy available for the other important things that aren't getting much love at the moment -- game over screens, text for buildings and such, music, various minor bugfixes, etc.

The thing is, gameplay and balance require a lot of iterative feedback and adjustment to get from mediocre to good to great. A lot of other work just needs one or maybe two passes to finish. It makes more sense to focus on the iterative stuff earlier to get more feedback cycles into the same amount of time and fill in the one-off work around that and later in the process when the gameplay's solid. On top of that, changes to gameplay can sometimes change how other things need to be done and then previous "polish" work ends up being thrown away. It's not an easy balance, because the one-off stuff can get in the way of the iterative stuff (long interturn delays, confusion about building functions, etc.) and make the feedback cycles longer and more painful. I think Arcen manages this balance better than most software companies, and it shows in their products.

As I understand it (based on reading the forums, etc.), the current development goal is to get combat and balance sorted out enough that the Blues have a reasonably good baseline experience and can provide feedback on things that we Reds and Oranges might be too familiar with the game to see. Once they arrive, I expect the focus to shift to some of the less in-your-face gameplay elements (resources, diplomacy, leaders, that sort of thing) and more general filling in of missing bits.

What you as a tester can do to help: Pretty much continue doing what you've been doing. Report problems even if you think they're things to worry about later, but maybe note that in the issue. If you think something that's been deferred is particularly urgent for some reason, add a note explaining why. Above all, remember that we're here to test a work in progress, not a finished game.

[x4000]

Thanks jerith -- that's more or less a good summary.

tombik -- in cases where you feel like "I should be finished off already, but instead the game drags it out," please do post a savegame of states like that.  We'll have to put in special code for the game to recognize states like that and make sure that someone comes by to put you out of your misery versus it just dragging out when you have no hope.

In general there are going to be a lot of edge and not-so-edge cases where "x should happen if the game/AI only did y."  Not a big deal, usually.  Just pop those up on mantis with a savegame and we can look at the savegame and make the game sim or the AI logic react to the state, as appropriate.  It's next to impossible for us to think of every case in advance, hence a large part of the reason for all this testing.

We probably won't get to things like that for another 3+ weeks, but having those savegames archived and ready for us when we will do will help us fly through those when we do get to them.  Those are the fun sort of concrete, straightforward, isolated problems that are a pleasure to solve for us.  It's not some tentacled beast with its logic in all sorts of parts of the balance of the game, heh.

[tombik]

Thanks jerith -- that's more or less a good summary.

tombik -- in cases where you feel like "I should be finished off already, but instead the game drags it out," please do post a savegame of states like that.  We'll have to put in special code for the game to recognize states like that and make sure that someone comes by to put you out of your misery versus it just dragging out when you have no hope.

In general there are going to be a lot of edge and not-so-edge cases where "x should happen if the game/AI only did y."  Not a big deal, usually.  Just pop those up on mantis with a savegame and we can look at the savegame and make the game sim or the AI logic react to the state, as appropriate.  It's next to impossible for us to think of every case in advance, hence a large part of the reason for all this testing.

We probably won't get to things like that for another 3+ weeks, but having those savegames archived and ready for us when we will do will help us fly through those when we do get to them.  Those are the fun sort of concrete, straightforward, isolated problems that are a pleasure to solve for us.  It's not some tentacled beast with its logic in all sorts of parts of the balance of the game, heh.

Thanks, I will mantis it with my save game this evening.

[x4000]

I appreciate it!

[tombik]

I appreciate it!

Btw, something funny happened, after I entered the beta, I decided to collect all Arcen games after seeing how much you care about your games.

I already own some of them from bundles, but after that happened I got all except Last federation.

And I got addicted to Tidalis... I own 400 games, half of them are really good games, I have your all other games... But all I play is Tidalis. It has been 20 hours already, lol.

[x4000]

That one has been such an oddity, haha.  It got wonderful reviews, and a lot of people got addicted to it out of those who did play it.  But it absolutely flopped in the larger market.  Ah well -- it was certainly devastating at the time, but I'm well past that now.  I'm just glad when people get into our less popular games and have a great time with them.

[crazyroosterman]

speaking of less popular games bionic dues has been on my radar (if rather faintly) when I'm finished with this game ill probably have a crack at it.

[tombik]

speaking of less popular games bionic dues has been on my radar (if rather faintly) when I'm finished with this game ill probably have a crack at it.

It is good, but gets a bit repetitive.

Keith said he will take a look at it, I am waiting for a future patch basically.

[jerith]

I love Bionic Dues (especially the title music), but it really does feel a bit like a late beta rather than a finished game, particularly around the equipment management. I should probably fire it up again at some point to kill some dumbots. :-)

[crazyroosterman]

I've tried out the demo and I like it..sorta the writing is very funny and I love the robots poor creatures don't seem to know what the hells going on at times on regards to things like customisation and so on I haven't really played the demo enough to have much of an opinion on those really.

[Zebeast46]

Surprisingly and probably unlike most of you, AI war is one of my least favorite Arcen Games that I own. Not saying it aint good but I just dont really like it much. Bionic Dues and TLF are my favorite Arcen Games that I have played (I am not counting SBR). Here is my list from favorite to least favorite:

1:TLF
2.Bionic Dues
3. Skyward Collapse
4. AI war
5. AVWW 1/2

After writing this I have realized that I have gotten really off topic, but I guess what I meant to say was I found Bionic Dues really great and I would definitely recommend it.

[tombik]

Surprisingly and probably unlike most of you, AI war is one of my least favorite Arcen Games that I own. Not saying it aint good but I just dont really like it much. Bionic Dues and TLF are my favorite Arcen Games that I have played (I am not counting SBR). Here is my list from favorite to least favorite:

1:TLF
2.Bionic Dues
3. Skyward Collapse
4. AI war
5. AVWW 1/2

After writing this I have realized that I have gotten really off topic, but I guess what I meant to say was I found Bionic Dues really great and I would definitely recommend it.

It was me , who got out of track , not you