4 ms·
Doubtful tbh, at least in the context of the article. The problem for games that simulate war (or any other environment with "friction") too closely is not that
by WJW 2y ago
Doubtful tbh, at least in the context of the article. The problem for games that simulate war (or any other environment with "friction") too closely is not that the AI is not good enough, it's that such environments are just inherently not "fun" and thus not good material to make games out of.
Games work on a tight gameplay loop where the player can have feelings of agency (they can influence what happens at all) and mastery (they can get better at influencing what happens with practice). For this you need to have a relatively predictable relation to actions and outcomes. Having the game randomly lose the orders you give to a unit without any feedback is kinda the opposite of that.
- throwway120385 2y agoRequiring you to manage a messenger corp in order to dispatch armies past your borders might be a good example of a mechanic that generates friction though.
- WJW 2y agoThat's a nice mechanic and many games have something equivalent to that, but if you can merely pay a resource tax to have everything working perfectly again then it's not friction in the sense that the article is talking about. The problem with real friction is that, even if you did everything perfectly, orders may still not make it to the unit that has to execute them or they may do something else because of reasons neither of you foresaw, or the enemy forces you saw on the minimap are only half the forces that are actually there. Imagine if you were playing some shooter and randomly on 25% of the time your controller does not respond to inputs at all and another random 25% of the time the inputs get reversed. That would be a super frustrating game to play.
- throwway120385 2y agoBasically like a really frustrating XCom run where instead of a 5% chance to miss you had a 25% chance to miss.