Random Rants LVII: wow. many anger. very whining.

[Phrossack]

Rant: turns out I have only one weekend to spend with someone before I go. Better make the most of it, then.

 

[Arakhor]

Aren't you living in Patagonia?

Which is probably the equivalent of asking you if you live near Andorra.

 

[JohannaK]

As a matter of fact, I kinda do! Just a couple hours ride from my place.

 

[Arakhor]

Yes, but you're Spanish.

 

[Hygro]

My little brother just crushed me, my older brother, and a stranger in a 3v1 war in Civ5:BTS

 

[Snerk]

Civ5:BTS?

 

[Arakhor]

I think that's a fairly obvious typo.

 

[Farm Boy]

Perhaps a little known mod? The war may have been Romans+Spanish+Japanese vs. Daleks.

 

[Snerk]

Yeah yeah but will it swing to Civ4:BTS or Civ5:BNW though?

 

[Hygro]

Civ5 BNW

 

[cybrxkhan]

Once my brother turned eight or so (he's four years younger), even if he often doesn't know much about a game, he will usually be be better than me at it anyways. Don't matter if it's TES, CKII, the Sims, SimCity 4, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Lego Racers, those "educational" games our parents bought us when we were little kids, he will be better than me even if he doesn't know what half the interface does. :/

 

[sophie]

Once my brother turned eight or so (he's four years younger), even if he often doesn't know much about a game, he will usually be be better than me at it anyways. Don't matter if it's TES, CKII, the Sims, SimCity 4, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Lego Racers, those "educational" games our parents bought us when we were little kids, he will be better than me even if he doesn't know what half the interface does. :/

Meh, don't worry about that. The thing about those sorts of games is that they require a certain way of thinking about things and if you have that the games become surprisingly easy to play. So if you luck into playing that way from the get-go you seem to intuit the game better than someone else.

An example:
When I was young I LOVED the Rollercoaster Tycoon games, but I was never particularly good at them. I almost always ended up living month to month, never making quite enough money, usually hemorrhaging guests, and constantly having to deal with people getting lost on paths. When I was older I came back to the game and started reading up on strategy. I learned two important facts about the game:
1) If you charge 0 for admission you can charge the excitement rating (rounded down to the nearest 0.10) on the rides and people will never complain about the ride being overpriced.
and
2) Attendance is just a factor of number of paths (available space for guests to occupy) and ration of rides to path tiles. Also guests getting lost is a factor of how far they have to walk before encountering a ride they want to go on.

Once you learn these two facts the game kind of becomes laughably easy. That pricing model makes it so that one or two launch-start rollercoasters make you all the money you'll ever need in the game (you can charge $5-6 for a 15 second ride and the line will go around the block) and as long as you never stop building and expanding you'll hit your attendance goals within the first year/year and a half.

It's the same way with the city building games. When you first start it seems sensible to just plop houses down along the main road. Which leads to chronic disease and houses not really getting their needs satisfied. But once you learn how to set up efficient housing blocks the games become fairly easy.

I find, especially with strategy/simulator games a lot of the overall experience with the games is dictated by the habits you fall into early on. Some people intuit the system more easily (they are pretty ridiculously abstracted usually, so you often have to have a very outside-the-box way of thinking about things to grasp the core mechanics), and some people just luck into developing a specific obsessive-compulsive way of dealing with the game that happens to dovetail well with optimal play.

Although honestly lucking into something like that can also have an adverse effect on enjoyment of the game. Once I learned how to play RCT "the right way" I got bored of it pretty quickly because the game got too easy. It's the same reason why I honestly never played the Total War games for all that long. The battle system came fairly easily to me and every battle was winnable in more or less the same way: neutralize cavalry, engage infantry on infantry, execute flanking maneuver with cavalry. Game over. It's the same with sieges: establish beachhead, neutralize stragglers, establish pincer move, take main square. It just kind of gets samey.

The real fun of those management/strategy games is dicking around. Not knowing what works and failing hilariously over and over again until, miraculously something does work. The best city/management experiences come from, against all adversity taking a city that is a grade-a disaster zone and turning it around into a well functioning entity. The narrative you build around yours and the city/person/theme park's development. The ability to look back and remember when you were just starting out and finishing your first rail line with $10 in the bank, or that time when barbarians killed off your last warrior and you were just able to recruit an axeman one turn before the barbarian was going to conquer your capital and end your game, or when you lived in constant fear of France knocking on your door and wrecking your [feces]. the fun comes from adversity and having to find ways to triumph over it. If anything being good at the game wears down enjoyment much faster.

Also - how can you "be good at The Sims"?

 

[Zack]

My younger siblings consistently beat me in the newest Mario Kart, after years of me dominating them.

 

[Farm Boy]

Congratulations! You have begun to ''get old.'' Metabolism probably has another 10 years or so before it follows twitch speed.

When that starts to sound rant-worthy just remember, it is entirely a feature of two things: 1) having not died, 2) kids is dumb(aka they lack perspective on age)

 

[Zack]

Congratulations! You have begun to ''get old.'' Metabolism probably has another 10 years or so before it follows twitch speed.

When that starts to sound rant-worthy just remember, it is entirely a feature of two things: 1) having not died, 2) kids is dumb(aka they lack perspective on age)

It has nothing to do with my skill. They've just gotten better while my skill level has stayed relatively constant. They also play the game a lot more than I do.

I'm not even 20, it's not because I'm getting old.

 

[Snerk]

Hehe, face it, you've peaked.

 

[Zack]

 

[Snerk]

The good thing about having two older sisters is that there have never and will never be a time I do not reign supreme in gaming. The bad thing is that they're girls so they care less.

 

[Zack]

Heh, my sister has always gamed with her older brothers, though that's a much different dynamic.

 

[choxorn]

I can't immediately think of any games that I can consistently beat my younger brother at or that he can consistently beat me at, but there's plenty of games we both have that we've never actually played against each other, or that we haven't played against each other in a long time.