Does anybody play with "no characters"?

[KayAU]

After finishing my second game, this time as Eqypt, I decided to check out the detailed game setup, and was surprised to find that Old World has a "no characters" option. It seems like it would basically remove half the content, and transform Old World into an entirely different game. There are no longer any leaders, no families, no roles to be assigned and so on. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, nor am saying it is good. I am curious though - does anybody here have any experience with this mode, and if so, what do you think about it? Does the game still work without the whole "Paradox-like" character system?

My guess without having tried it yet, is that it would leave the game a bit sparse. On the other hand, the "Civ" part of Old World is what I am really here for, and it seems to be mechanically very solid. The character system can certainly be fun, but I do get a bit of decision fatigue and information overload from it, at least as an inexperienced player.

 

[PiR]

Good question! I've never tried it. Might try it next time.

 

[Solver]

For decision fatigue and making the system a bit easier, we have the event frequency option. You can set event frequency to low and you'll have fewer events to deal with - or even set to Minimum and you won't be getting any narrative events. That's probably more fun than No Characters. Yes, the game works with no characters but that does remove a lot of the content. You no longer have families, governors or the various archetype mechanics, and IMO the best thing about Old World is how well the systems work together. Playing with no characters just removes half the systems. That's a valid way to play but I think just toning down the event level is the best way to focus more heavily on the "Civ part".

 

[PiR]

I don't think I'd be able to stop myself from influencing everyone and trying to optimize the bonus the characters bring, even with low events.

 

[KayAU]

For decision fatigue and making the system a bit easier, we have the event frequency option. You can set event frequency to low and you'll have fewer events to deal with - or even set to Minimum and you won't be getting any narrative events. That's probably more fun than No Characters. Yes, the game works with no characters but that does remove a lot of the content. You no longer have families, governors or the various archetype mechanics, and IMO the best thing about Old World is how well the systems work together. Playing with no characters just removes half the systems. That's a valid way to play but I think just toning down the event level is the best way to focus more heavily on the "Civ part".

Thank you, I actually didn't consider just turning down the frequency, but that seems like a much better way to reduce the amount of decisions I have to make. I do generally like events as a mechanic, so I wouldn't want to remove them completely. I'll try Low for my next game.

Out of curiousity, I will eventually play a game without characters as well, although I'll probably do a couple more normal playthroughs first. I was surprised you included the option, as it seems almost akin to Humankind having an option to disable Cultures. I'm all for customisation, though.

 

[Solver]

The no characters mode was initially intended for competitive multiplayer - the idea was that characters introduce too much randomness, then a match between similarly skilled players would be decided randomly. But people liked characters a lot so the no characters mode wasn't used much even in MP, and by now we seem to have settled on some better settings/features to allow competitive MP.

 

[King Jason]

Interesting - the major concern with lack of randomness when it comes to competitiveness has always baffled me - you can still have highly competitive arenas based on games who's systems almost entirely rely on randomness - or at least deterministic systems that have so many variables that they appear random and the players ability to predict the variance comes down to statistical chance.

Things that stick out directly are games like Poker or Magic The Gathering... But even if you look at boardgames; Twilight Imperium is a beast of a boardgame - requiring 6 players and about the same time or usually more hours to play - the tabletop simulator and discord community is huge for that game and tournament play is a regularity.

But when you dissect the design of that game, probably 80% of it is random - even the combat comes down to dice rolls.

Yet, switch arenas into videogames, and some types of players get so up in arms or become downright condescending at even the slightest whiff of random elements in gameplay.

To each their own, of course... But it's so so so strange to me the dichotomy.

 

[Solver]

Well there's degrees of randomness and competitiveness of course. But in Old World, using the default characters, something like Greece vs Carthage would be very uneven. With players of similar skill, I'd expect Greece to win at least 80% of the time because Greece starts with two excellent military characters and Carthage starts with nobody militarily useful. But the community has come to accept random events in multiplayer games, with some tweaks. Certain events are disabled in competitive play but most events are considered to have sufficiently low impact that they make even competitive games more fun.

 

[nolegskitten]

I Love no-character in MP and I'm more and more intrigued by it in SP. I'll probably stream some of it. It's a different game, but it's a great game as well IMO.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

I played it once and really liked it. It also felt like the AI did better than in a game with characters.
On the other hand, a lot of content this game has to offer is just gone with that setting, and it also limits your options in dealing with religions and other nations. So you have less decisions to make, or at least less diverse decisions, and no matter how much I liked it (I really really did). to me it really felt like "this is not how this game was intended to be played." And sure enough, it does not seem to receive a lot of attention from developers or players.

 

[Dale]

I played it once and really liked it. It also felt like the AI did better than in a game with characters.
On the other hand, a lot of content this game has to offer is just gone with that setting, and it also limits your options in dealing with religions and other nations. So you have less decisions to make, or at least less diverse decisions, and no matter how much I liked it (I really really did). to me it really felt like "this is not how this game was intended to be played." And sure enough, it does not seem to receive a lot of attention from developers or players.

Fun fact:
No characters was initially the default way to play MP. It took a lot of pressure and convincing to get Characters the default way to play MP.