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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38760 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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I really notice that when playing older games from the "golden age" of PC gaming in the late 90s to mid 2000s; they are often more mechanically complex and have much more complex plots than modern titles, simply because that is something players appreciated at the time and appreciate less now.

What games are you playing these days? I've noticed the polar opposite, that games are getting far more complex and intricate today. I can't name a single game released >20 years ago that reaches the complexity of modern EU4, and even mainstream games like Destiny 2 have way more build variety and moving parts than shooters back in the 90s or early 2000s.

Maybe the Capitalism series? It's on GOG, it looks complex, but it is just about economics (but then, aren't most 4X/Grand Strategy games about that, really?).

I'm a big fan of both EU4 and Civ 4.

EU4 certainly is complex but a lot of the complexity is kept separate from each other part, like you're playing 10 little minigames.

In EU4, you start building workshops once you get admin 6. You build them on the highest production-value provinces, then you just spam them everywhere once you get more production efficiency. More money - more workshops - more money. All you need to do is go to the macro-builder and it will tell you exactly which provinces will profit most from a workshop. There's a synergy with manufactories in the sense that you always need a workshop to go with the manufactory. There's a synergy with the economic idea group that everyone ought to get (because it's the best even post-nerf I think) because one idea reduces construction cost for all buildings by 10%.

In Civ, you can build forges in your high production cities when you get Metal Casting (sooner if you choose to beeline it or later if you're focusing on other tech). Some leaders have the industrious leader trait that makes them cheaper, plus they're better at building wonders so forges become more a part of your playstyle. You need a Forge to build the Colossus in a coastal city, so terrain becomes an important consideration, especially on Archipelago maps where the Colossus is very strong from all that water. On the other hand, you might not have copper, so you probably won't get the Colossus and can prioritize other things. Forges let you get engineers, which are important for getting Great Engineers for wonder-building and eventually founding corporations. So there's also a potential synergy with the Philosophical trait, which lets you get more Great People. Forges give you more happiness from gold, gems and silver, so there's more geography to think about. But they also cause unhealthiness, reducing your maximum population. That needs to be countered with Aqueducts, farms and food resources, maybe trade. And of course, you need to get a certain number of forges across your empire to get the Ironworks for your most productive city! So you'll have to make some forges in worse cities by the time you get Steel to fill out the number.

Civ 4 links 6 or 7 things together in fairly sophisticated ways. There's always more than just raw cost-efficiency going on. You'll never see a Civ 4 tech that only grants +250 governing capacity. They all open up options that change a bunch of other things and lead to other techs.

EU4 has hundreds of moving parts that usually only add or subtract to a bunch of stats.

EU4 is complex? I've heard people complain it's dumbed down compared to some or other Victoria game.

IMO, something like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri seems equally complex. EU4 has a million almost inconsequential policies and % modifiers that if combined in the right way can have some serious effect, but it's almost like they don't want to you find out because it takes ten hours before it gets apparent in the game.

"Forever games" can reach an unbelievable level of complexity, and they didn't exist (EDIT: as much) in the 90s. MOBAs, MMORPGs, arena shooters, strategy games, heck even Minecraft.

I think today's forever games are less engaging, though, because people engage with their complexity mostly by learning "the meta" that someone else discovered by rote. The standard advice given to HOI4 newbies is to watch five hours of tutorial videos that teach you how division templates and combat calculations work. In the 90s you would dive into a game and parse it for yourself.

I think today's forever games are less engaging, though, because people engage with their complexity mostly by learning "the meta" that someone else discovered by rote. The standard advice given to HOI4 newbies is to watch five hours of tutorial videos that teach you how division templates and combat calculations work. In the 90s you would dive into a game and parse it for yourself.

It's true that it's basically impossible to have secrets in video games in the age of the Internet. People claimed up and down that Sonic was a playable character in Smash Bros Melee, and the rumor persisted for years, but in these days it would never gain traction. Similarly, easter eggs for most games are thoroughly well-documented to the point where if you want to know the secrets of a major game, it's typically just a Google search away. However, this applies to playing old games in the present day as well, as their secrets are just as exposed to the Internet as the secrets of modern games are.

My point is that modern forever games are so complex that it's implausible or at least unpleasant to learn to play them on your own. A late 90s game like, oh, Fallout or Morrowind for example, you can have a pleasant time muddling through the middling level of complexity and mastering it on your own. This learning process was what I really loved.

Modern games are like making a choice between doing a worksheet of fifth grade math problems with fancy graphics OR going through the Khan Academy course for multivariable calculus with a tutor giving you formulas to memorize.

The Internet has effectively outsourced tutorials for some games. Some of this is a natural progression of some games being so complex that watching a Let's Play is the most efficient way of learning. On the other hand, some of this is just lazy devs knowing fanmade wikis will document enough stuff that they think tutorials are a waste of time.

That said, I disagree on the characterization of modern gaming being a dichotomy of ruthless complexity vs braindead simplicity. There's plenty of games in the middleground. The Total War games are one example. Slay the Spire is another. Terraria is yet another, although it's certainly an offender of the "outsource the tutorial to the wiki" phenomenon.

sure, but none of the games you listed are "forever games", I don't think. Have you played Path of Exile, or Warframe?

I've beaten PoE twice (with years in between), and never needed to look things up. If you're just getting to the level cap and the end of the story, then you don't need a hyperoptimized build.

"beaten poe" is a pretty ambiguous phrase. the level cap is 100, and I've never gotten anywhere near it, even with fairly optimized builds. The end of the story is certainly not anything terribly hard to hit, but I'd call that the beginning of the game, not the end. The end is t16 maps and the uber bosses, and you need serious gear and a coherent build or you just run out of gas in, at best, early yellows.

the level cap is 100, and I've never gotten anywhere near it, even with fairly optimized builds.

Oops, I outleveled all of the story areas, so maybe that's why I though that? It's been two years since I've played.

EU4 and Destiny 2 are niche games.

Mass games are the creeds, cods and similar.

Destiny 2 is anything but niche. According to this MMO population website, it's within the top 10 most played MMOs (currently number 7 at time of writing).

EU4 is more niche but is still fairly well-known. It's typically within the top 50 most-played games on Steam.

Both of these points are sidetracks though, because OP's post wasn't comparing the CoD of today to the CoD equivalent of the 90s. Why would you? If you want in-depth games with complex mechanics, then you should be looking for those specifically, and modern gaming has way, WAY better options in that regard than the 90s or 2000s.

Honest mistake - i was thinking about the Divinity games.

MMOs are themselves not the most popular genre of game. WoW had 12+ million subscribers at its peak, but it's far from its peak, and to the best of my knowledge nothing has even come close to WoW success since then. Being #7 of MMOs is not exactly a wildly popular game. I think "niche" is a bit too harsh of a term, but it's not big either.

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