The problem with two games in one

For updates and discussion of Terra Invicta, a grand-strategy alien invasion simulator
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Lemures
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2015 5:10 pm

The problem with two games in one

Post by Lemures »

Games like XCOM and the Total War series, in my opinion, both benefit and suffer from being "two games in one".

Let's take XCOM for example. One game is played on the battlefield, moving your soldiers about and generally hoping the RNG gods are kind. The other game is played at the command center, deciding where to spend your money, who gets what upgrades, etc.

This is both good and bad. As these two parts of the game complement each other, it can really help to provide a sense of victory when actions in one directly benefit you in the other. However, simply put, sometimes I don't want to play one of the games. More specifically, sometimes, I have an hour to kill, I don't really want to think long-term (e.g. which research do I do next?), and I just want to land the skyranger and start shooting things. XCOM doesn't allow for this, but I feel that it may have been relatively easy to add a feature in game that starts a random battle. Call it "Investigate areas of reported alien disturbances". There. Now I can play one more battle, and I can worry about the long game the next day.

Does anyone else feel this way? It may be too early talking about this sort of thing for Terra Invicta, but if anyone feels that this may be a beneficial gameplay addition, it can't hurt for the developers to be aware of it early on.
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DeusEstMachina
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2015 5:50 pm

Re: The problem with two games in one

Post by DeusEstMachina »

Since Terra Invicta is being toted as grand strategy, I honestly doubt there's going to be much in the way of "instant action" options. Grand strategy games tend to focus pretty exclusively on the long-term.
Amineri

Re: The problem with two games in one

Post by Amineri »

Lemures wrote:Games like XCOM and the Total War series, in my opinion, both benefit and suffer from being "two games in one".
This is definitely something we're considering and keeping an eye on. I'm not sure how successful we'll be in making it work -- as you correctly point out, it's a somewhat inherent flaw...
Bullett00th
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed Dec 30, 2015 10:23 am

Re: The problem with two games in one

Post by Bullett00th »

Aren't all TBS games 'flawed' that way?

I think it's good to juggle between strategy layer and combat layer to not get overwhelmed by one at a time.
Jican
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Dec 30, 2015 2:15 pm

Re: The problem with two games in one

Post by Jican »

The inherent issue with getting rid of the the long term aspect of researches, upgrades, troop exp, ect. that you don't like that you now have to do two things. First, is start every single fight with a clean slate, each time. Think any RTS game. Second, by foregoing the long term aspect of the game, it completely changes the dynamics and soon your actions no longer have the intended consequences they would. If everything was determined if you win or lose a fight, what's the point of stopping people from resetting every time something went wrong? Sure, that may not change some people's actions from doing it anyways, but it's hard to truly immerse yourself into a world with no long term consequences.
Andor
Posts: 40
Joined: Sun Jan 03, 2016 12:48 am

Re: The problem with two games in one

Post by Andor »

I think he's asking for access to the tactical game via an optional match mode. Essentially if the XCom multiplayer has a vs AI mode he would be satisfied. Of course it's a bigger pain if you weren't planning to bundle a multiplayer mode. OTOH the devs are certainly going to need some way to generate and play out tactical battles for internal development purposes, so it wouldn't be too hard to make it an optional game mode.

The problem is spoilers. If you can open up the battle mode and see all the advanced weapons and end game aliens then that may ruin part of the full game experience for some people. Of course you could always choose not to spoiler yourself. I deliberately avoided multiplayer in XCom for that reason, but some people like to make poor choices and then whine about them. :roll:
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