site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   2738 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 6, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's also easy to find games which can be set to extremely high difficulty, but the difficulty is always purely artificial, because it doesn't rely on making the computer-controlled enemies better at the game or making the scenario more complex, it simply makes the enemies stronger (impossibly so, given the ostensible rules and the narrative) while handicapping the player's units.

I never really got this complaint. Depending on how the game mechanics are set up, it may not be reasonable for the AI to be 'improved', and it's not even always the case that good AI makes the game harder. In addition, many games presume or establish asymmetry between the player and the enemy to begin with. In most FPS titles, for example, the player is usually vastly outnumbered by the enemy, but enemies are individually weaker and usually only have a single gun to work with.

Or creating an RPG character that's a dog's breakfast of classes and features that could not possibly make sense narratively, but allows for all sort of insane synergies that are possible because the makers of the game couldn't possibly have tested all the combinations of 8 races and 30 classes, each with a dozen different abilities. And characters like that are the only way to beat some of the "optional bosses" that no party that would be legal in a table-top game could ever hope to defeat.

I think stuff like this is fun, though. Isn't the point of high difficulty to force the player out of cookie-cutter builds and force them to explore the wider space of different options and combinations? Isn't that a form of 'mastery' too?

If the game is so hard that Pun-Pun nonsense-jank is necessary to beat it, then it isn't encouraging people to explore a wider space of options. Everything converges on the one broken nonsense build, and "cookie-cutter" archetypical builds become, perversely, rarer. everyone is a GensaiWarlockPaladin

My typical self-imposed challenge in RPGs is to find a sub-system or strategy or archetype that I LIKE or isnt used by Power builds and make it work anyways.

I never really got this complaint.

I don't mind loing to a strong chess engine, but I don't care to play a weak engine that is strong because it has two queens. The same is true for other strategy games. I want the computer to use the same options as the player not have a bigger economy/free troops etc that it mostly wastes. Also, many free resource games become gigantic slogs toward the end when the only sane option is pointing every resource toward the threat and the computer is sending an army that the player couldn't make in 20 turns every other turn. Not usually hard to beat, just quite full because you're beating the same army in similar ways to finish a game that was "over" some time ago.

Well, that's mostly the issue of asymmetric games pretending to be symmetric. In better designed games, the asymmetry is explicit and both the advantages and limitations of the AI are built around instead of the game pretending they don't exist.

And the second problem isn't really fundamentally caused by the asymmetry, it's caused by bad victory conditions. Plenty of strategy games become gigantic slogs by endgame when played in multiplayer as well. Which is why nearly all multiplayer matches in Starcraft or Civ end in forfeits.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats