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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   28696 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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Death stacking is a derogatory term for a common theme in GSGs and RTSes that the best strategy to beat the AI is just to have a huge blob of units that overruns one's enemy like a horde of ants eating a hot dog. The idea is that games should heavily discourage this beginner strategy. It reduces the complexity of systems to whoever has more units will win.

Maybe I'm a scrub*, then, but that's exactly what I enjoy. I'm not a micro fan. I don't want to care about my APM. I want to build infrastructure, and then crush my opponent witb superior logistics and production.

*No maybe about it. I'm terrible at RTSs, but I love me some late game tech trees

Yeah, the complaint that IF you manage your nation well enough to invest in logistical infrastructure and research and production while hindering your opponents from doing the same, while navigating politics and making the best of the (inevitably awful) start location you rolled, and put a lot of thought into sophisticated combined-arms deployments while spinning a whole bunch of other absolutely-vital plates and taking care to avoid getting penned in and AOE-wrecked—

That IF you do all that, you're more likely to win than they are—

Well, it just doesn't strike me as credible. And neither do the people who make such a complaint. And somehow I'm sure that this is a window onto what is basically wrong with the world, and why democracy needs to be acknowledged as the hideous mistake it was.

There's something to be said on this topic about League of Legends and other games like that, but I've only a glimmer... something about stat-checks and outplay potential.

Just different genres. I for one like games where the player can end up in unrecoverable situations not due to reaction time, but poor decision-making.

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