The problem with two games in one
Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 5:19 pm
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.
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.