Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Grumble Jones Desperation Morale Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsWell, as some of you are already aware, my main WoW characters are now part of an active guild on Uther.
This spells the end of a long-running annoyance: guild spam. Not that I ever encountered too much of it, but it got pretty bad for Blanc on occasion.
So, now Farmishi (my second character on Uther) had two people ask her, ‘can i join ur guild?’ yesterday.
Arg.
Slept through my stop on CalTrain last night. Considering my penchant for taking naps when riding in any moving vehicle, only twice in a year and a half is not bad.
Last time, it was a limited that stopped at the next station. This time I got to go all the way to San Jose before my train stopped. And of course, a conductor came by to check tickets right after we pulled out…
Fortunately, he believed me when I explained that this was NOT part of the plan…. Something confirmed when I pulled out my schedule to see what my options were. Good news: the next north-bound train was a mini-bullet straight back to Mountain View (my stop). Bad news: I’d have a twenty minute wait for it. Just as well, the train which had been on time all the way down to Mountain View was ten minutes late into SJ (it caught up with the previous local train; apparently they need to tweak this part of the schedule).
So, I got to see what the SJ station was like. I am Not Impressed. Considering that it’s *the* major stop on the south end (some trains do go further), I was expecting something like the San Francisco terminal. Instead, it’s an ugly spread out thing that’s so noisy yelling is obligatory. There’s just two tracks (one north, one south) like the rest of the minor stations in between. Up a couple miles there’s a area with a half-dozen tracks, some of which are still in use with freight, but not here.
So I was quite happy $3.50 later when the doors closed, instantly cutting the noise level by two thirds. Still irritated as heck about getting home 50 minutes late, but it’s my own fault (well me and the extra-quiet PA announcements they had that day).
I seem to be a sucker for pastimes that everyone else has thrown away. Wargaming is effectively dead. Comics as we know them are dying.
But I still play wargames. I still buy comics (as money allows). I still play turn-based computer games.
Things like Advance Wars show that that last one isn’t really in big trouble. But the vocal majority of gamers will barely slow down long enough to say ‘Huh, you play that?’ when confronted with a died-in-the-wool turned-based strategy gamer. Some of the most influential computer games ever made are turn-based, but it feels like they are passed over on a lot of ‘Top 10’ lists. (And if they are on there then there’s a chorus of complaints about it….)
So when someone posted a question of ‘All my friends only want to play RTS and FPS games, why do we still do this?’ I marshaled my thoughts, and tried to get at the issue:
‘Real-time’ games have been around as long as video games. Pong, and every other arcade game, is, if you think about it, ‘real-time’. Going back further, while Poker, Chess and all their ilk use turns, sports are games too, and they have all the same traits of real-time games.
If you consider the yearly earning power of a sports superstar versus, say, Parker Brothers (the company), the gap between these two sides is nothing new. Actually, what was new was that turn-based (as a category) could generally keep up with the arcade style games on the computer. That changed back to the standard when computers got powerful enough to support the creation of the real-time strategy and first-person shooter genres.
These days, of course, the complexity of all games is mind-bogglingly huge. FPS and RTS, the two big winners on the PC have several advantages over traditional TBS games. They’re generally very fast to get into, and the action gets going immediately. Both of these types are also typically short games. You can easily get in several rounds in an afternoon. Game not going well? You’ll get another chance.
In the console world, the big winners tend to move towards fighting games (which is really a distant cousin of FPS), and RPGs. RPGs are much longer (indeed on a scale with TBS, or longer). But once again, they tend to spend a lot of effort on immersing you into the world (through the graphics), and the action gets started pretty fast (some even dump you into combat straight off).
Turn-based strategy tends towards a high level of abstraction, and a lot of the action is removed from any sense of immediacy. They proceed slowly at first, and never really produce the ‘now, now, now’ adrenaline rush of most other game types. This eliminates the vicarious thrill and removes the action to the higher thought processes. Not good when all you want to do is kill your frustrations by proxy….
Okay, now that I’ve shown why I’m in the minority… let’s see if I can grope my way towards an answer to the original question.
All games deal with resource management in one form or another. RTS often do this overtly, with Tiberium/gold/metal or whatever. Your units, and their ability to control/damage/influence is another form of resource. Also, your attention is a resource that must be managed. I admit that one of the things I don’t like about RTS is that constant knowledge that there are other things I should also be doing and paying attention to. I like my intelligence to be the resource, not my attention or physical skills (I have a sucky Dex score).
I’m not the kind to ponder over a chess board for hours, but I do like the fact when I’m done with a turn I’m DONE. I’ve thought about everything there is to think about it (and if not, it’s my fault, not the game’s), and all my plans are going forward because I paid attention to them all. In the long run, they aren’t necessarily good frustration killers either, as I’m likely to get frustrated with my problems with the game.
TBS also has the broadest range of subjects. I’m not always in the mood to fight a skirmish. With all the base building and action in the world, RTS games cannot show anything past about the level of a company on each side. [Well, technically they could, but they’d have to break out of the ‘1 man = 1 man’ mold. But Europa Universalis is far from what anyone thinks of as an RTS….] TBS can range from this scale (Fantasy General) to star spanning empires (Master of Orion, et al). Also the time issues allow for more complex interactions like economics, trade and diplomacy that the time-starved RTS doesn’t dare provide.
Maybe, my interests are just too broad to be contained within the narrow compass of the existing RTS genre. I want to conquer the world, not some little map. (Hmm… or maybe just my megalomania is too broad….)
I really think the time required is a bigger culprit than most people give credit for. Games have continuously gotten larger, and in the TBS realm, this means longer. Many current TBS games are well past what wargaming would have called a ‘monster game’. If I just want to blow an afternoon, I either have to go back to the mid-’80s, or pull out an RTS.
Another fun day of gaming! Went over to Mark’s yesterday and played a game of Imperium Romanum II with him and Jason. They’ve been with the game for a while, and I’ve been a boon to them as some scenarios demand three players.
For my second game we played – the second scenario, “The Great Mithridatic War”. This covers the period where Rome had to deal with ongoing revolt in Spain, Mithridates’ second attempt to expand his kingdom to dominate all of Asia Minor and Greece, and what most people know of the period – a slave revolt headed by a gladiator named Spartacus. The general time frame of the scenario is covered by Colleen McCullough’s Fortune’s Favorites.
I was going to reprise my role of Mithridates from the first scenario, but I looked at all the miscellaneous forces he controls and got cold feet at the last moment. So I ended up with Sertorius, at the head of the remaining Marian faction in Spain. Mark took Mithridates (and the pirates, and Sparticus if the revolt started). Jason took ‘the Senatorials’, Pompey, Lucullus and Crassus.
The Roman Senate of course commands an incredible amount of power, with a tax base nearly four times that of the other two players combined. It has a large area to draw reinforcements from, which allows for easier recruiting than either Mithridates or Sertorius (who begins holed up in Gallaecia – NW Spain). However, there’s a lot to do, and Rome is reacting to powers who don’t have to go far at all for their goals.
I started on the wrong foot, needing the first turn to sort out what was happening, and how to work towards what needed doing. This lead to an army being ambushed and wiped out on the first turn. Ouch.
The second turn went much better. I defeated the Roman force (without losses to either side, which wasn’t necessarily part of the plan), snuck in behind them to Toletum, and took the abandoned capital of Lucitania, Emeritus Augusta, securing the province for myself. Better yet, the Roman army was mostly along the eastern Mediterranean shore, leaving all of Baetica (southern Spain) wide open.
Meanwhile, Mithridates was sweeping through Bithnia and headed for Roman Asia, and the pirates are cutting off the supply of corn to Rome, causing revolts there. All of these events are eroding morale, while mine is soaring from the victories.
August sees minor forces invest the cities of Baetica and the armies march for Saguntum and Carthago Nova. These battles also go well, and I wrest two more provinces from Rome (The second being Tarraconensis – the eastern half of Spain). At this point, there is a discussion. By a strict reading of the victory conditions, I win as soon as I control these provinces. Since I also go first in a turn, this seems a bit harsh, and I was certainly interested enough in the situation to continue. (But I claim the moral victory!)
The next couple months aren’t nearly as good. Pompey comes out of north Spain with way too many troops and takes control of Tarraconensis back. His initial stab at Baetica fails, but things are settling into a winter where I will be trying to take out some small garrisons and figure out what to do about an army bigger and better than mine.
Also, Rome has successfully pirate hunting and recovering morale in the process. Also, the attrition of battles has left Mithridates’ army too weak to continue offensive operations, and there’s a fair amount of territory left before Mark gets to his victory conditions.
When we left the game (end of day), it looked like the Senatorials would be the winner – eventually. He should keep me from winning, and the next spring would be concentrating new forces against Mithridates, and once he was out of the way, the entire military might of the Republic would fall on Sertorius.
Okay, stumbled across a reference to this thread.
Since Blizzard tends to be pretty brutal in their archive purging, here’s the two relevant posts, though the responses from there get pretty funny:
3rd post:
Re: Alterac Valley for Tuesday 08-16-05 | 8/16/2005 3:29:01 AM PDT
Brion Level 57 Night Elf Hunter
ok i have a proposition for the horde, let us kill Korrak while you sit and watch. and well let you get all the honor youll ever want=}. no? ok well it shall be a great battle then, hope to see everyone there!
5th post:
Re: Alterac Valley for Tuesday 08-16-05 | 8/16/2005 8:44:27 AM PDT
Feydra Level 59 Human Priest
((OOC))
Pardon me for hijacking the thread, here..
But, Brion – if you don’t want your mother to know you were up and on the computer at 3:29 in the morning – DON’T post on a forum that she reads.
Busted.
Grounded.
^_^