Newbie's first impressions

[PCarroll]

Tals said:
Give her the manual and point out that F1 keeps track of the commanders. I'm a real non hard core gamer but this game in terms of magic is unsurpassed IMHO. A year on I still pick up the manual and go through it - nicely done and the descriptions and attention put to the spells is very impressive.

I'd also recommend an MP game - I could never go through this game in SP, really holds little interest - but in an MP pbem or network game - great!

I did give her the manual; I pointed out the hot keys and the extensive listing of spells. And I repeatedly called her attention to the F1 key, which she did (of course) find useful.

I also mentioned how all the Dom2 fans seem to be raving about it's magic system being unsurpassed. But her response, which I think I quoted above, was, "So what? If I don't get to see my spells taking effect when they're cast, it doesn't matter how extensive the magic is."

Oh--and I did mention the fact that Dom2 seems to have been designed with multiplayer gaming in mind. She shrugged that off (as I would have myself). One evening I saw her playing a card game against a computer AI, and I said, "You know, you could play this online against real people." She frowned and replied, "I've been extroverting all day at work. The *last* thing I want to do when I'm relaxing at home is interact with other people, even across a virtual game table." Like me, she's very much a single-player gamer.

[Tals]

I don't think anyone says its unsurpassed just that it is detailed. In fact I don;t think i'd even say anyone is raving - this is probably one of the most self critical publishers forums you'll find

But yeah it is for MP - i'd take the opposite view - why the heck do I want to play against a lump of meta with pre programmed responses, far more fun to play against a human - the interaction from the human perspective is as little or as much as you want - it is not by any stretch an fps style chat - far from it in fact

My own view is this game sucks in SP and i've seen no comments that would suggest otherwise. But you'd have to try the MP out to really understand it's attraction. I understand it's not of interest but it is where the game sings.

Tals

[teal]

You may want to try Battle for Wesnoth. It is a single player computer game, with a strong theme, it is strategy based so it has some analysis, but is nowhere near the amount of analysis required for Dominions 2 (I would put it down at the level of hearts or cribbage). And it is free! It is a nice little war game with units representing individual soldiers, who get better as they fight through the campaign (if you can avoid getting them killed that is).

Teal

[quantum_mechani]

Tals said:
I don't think anyone says its unsurpassed just that it is detailed. In fact I don;t think i'd even say anyone is raving - this is probably one of the most self critical publishers forums you'll find

Sorry to burst your bubble... but I do think it is unsurpassed. And I'm most certainly raving.

[PCarroll]

teal said:
You may want to try Battle for Wesnoth. It is a single player computer game, with a strong theme, it is strategy based so it has some analysis, but is nowhere near the amount of analysis required for Dominions 2 (I would put it down at the level of hearts or cribbage). And it is free! It is a nice little war game with units representing individual soldiers, who get better as they fight through the campaign (if you can avoid getting them killed that is).

Teal

Thanks. I've done that too. Somebody else recently recommended it to me.

It is a very good game--especially for the price! Kind of reminds me of the old SSI game Fantasy General (which used to be one of my favorites, though it never got as popular as Panzer General or others in the series).

I haven't played Wesnoth in a couple weeks, though, and I don't know when I'll get back to it. One pet peeve I have about games like this is recruitment. In such a fast-moving game, I find it annoying to have to take care of that "housekeeping" chore every turn. I'd rather just give some kind of general instruction to an AI "recruitment officer" (e.g., "Give me lots of archers.") and then have recruitment happen automatically during the game.

Funny you should say it's "at the level of hearts or cribbage." Cribbage is probably my favorite traditional card game: to me, it has just the right amount of luck vs skill--it holds my interest without straining my brain. Hearts seems like a tougher game to me--but it's probably easier than the likes of Spades or Bridge (neither of which I like, because I don't like bidding games--which is why I'm not at all interested in Shrapnel's game "Gladiator").

[Wyatt Hebert]

Wow, someone who actually mentions both MoM and Fantasy General... Loved both of those games. Unfortunately, I don't have as much time as I would like to talk about things, but it's just an interesting insight to me. The whole problem I think is that people see computers as the fix to minutiae of a game... which they easily can be... no dice-rolling, no keeping track of counters, just making the decisions. However, the main problem is that with that ease people aren't paying attention to two other major issues: attention span and mental hold. I've noticed in myself that when either of those limits are exceeded, my fun factor starts going downhill.

I also truly enjoy cribbage, and it is an excellent game. Short enough not to drag on, and limited enough in each installment to not have to count all the cards in a deck. This is probably the reason Dom2 is truly better as a multi-player game... and that is because of the episodic nature inherent to the style of gameplay. I only have to hold so much in my head each time I sit to play, and it doesn't exceed my attention span. I believe I have larger than normal attention span and mental hold (by which I mean the ability to hold the current situation clearly in mind). I have managed to _fully_ complete a World War scenario, but it is excessively taxing, and I almost always dominion-kill the last 4 enemies, just due to temple overload.

I don't have a solution to suggest, just the observation, if it helps anyone.

Wyatt

[Cainehill]

Wyatt Hebert said:
Wow, someone who actually mentions both MoM and Fantasy General...

Classics among turn based fantasy strategy games. Also, mmm, Sword of Aragon and, mmm, a couple of TSR games. (There was also one that wasn't necessarily fantasy, I was playing in, mmm, well, it was between 1985 and 1988, that was just great - in some ways low level like Risk, but without huge stacks of armies, and I think there were 3 kinds of armies, each with their own advantages.) Heck, I even paid a second time for Fantasy General and Sword of Aragon to get them on CD in a collection.

The whole problem I think is that people see computers as the fix to minutiae of a game... which they easily can be... no dice-rolling, no keeping track of counters, just making the decisions.

For some things, it is a panacea. At one point Gemstone III, a very early commercial online RPG, was using ICE's Rolemaster rules. Fairly nice system, except for all the permanent character deaths, and worse, all the very VERY complex tables required. (Example : A full page of a table, maybe .... 2000 numbers, dedicated to the broadsword alone. Then imagine : 40 weapon types. 30 spell types. 20 miscellaneous types of damage, and 20 types of crits. Each with their own page of results. Heh!)

So it was awesome to have it wrapped up and handled via the computer. It was nice to know the system and have some idea what was going on, but not vital. And it was awesome to not have a round of combat take 10 minutes.

But yeah :

However, the main problem is that with that ease people aren't paying attention to two other major issues: attention span and mental hold. I've noticed in myself that when either of those limits are exceeded, my fun factor starts going downhill.

I also truly enjoy cribbage, and it is an excellent game. Short enough not to drag on, and limited enough in each installment to not have to count all the cards in a deck.

MP Dominions doesn't solve this; if anything it makes it worse, because people eventually discover that a game on a huge map like Faerun becomes totally stultifying, in terms of time required per turn == hours per day, etc.

A game of cards essentially has a built in turn limit, with few exceptions (games where a players score can go up or down - said games almost never get boring though because of the possibility of 2 or 3 hands with luck / big points finishing it). Dominions doesn't, with the exception of playing with .... victory conditions generally regarded as lame : research, dominion, etc.

Hopefully Dom3 will see a few new things : cumulative victory points (discussed in other threads, but essentially... Now, if the VP condition is 5, you may not have held a VP _ever_, but take 5 the next turn and have a surprise win. With cumulative, you add the number of victory points held by each player each turn. No stealth victories. No never-ending games, and the game gets more tense / exciting for everyone when they know one player is nearing the victory.

And also : Timed turns. Where a player has a time limit on how long they can play their turn, for one thing. This aids blitzes - it's actually currently possible, but the concept is crippled, because : in game, players don't get warned about how much time is remaining. Nor do orders get uploaded when the time is up. Right now, the concept of playing 10/20/30 minute forced hosting is ... undoable, as turns take longer, people would have to concentrate on doing their turns and updating constantly, then continuing, just so their previous 1-50 orders didn't get lost. No fun.

Speaking of no fun : No beer in the fridge, and the boss sending an email saying "we need to talk - take tomorrow off."

[Chazar]

This thread has moved on already, but since someone mentioned that "Settlers of Catan" started a whole genre of these "german-style" boardgames: This is not true! There are much more of these board games around and most of them are much more entertaining (IMHO).

However, it is true that these games are much less fun on the PC than playing with friends around a proper table with a drink and a snack. Nevertheless it is worth to try www.brettspielwelt.de: One can play several modern boardgames there. It is entirely for free and without advertisments, but requires a Java-enabled browser to play. While it is less fun to play online (against humans only) this site is a perfect place to test a boardgame before actually buying it (nothing against the boardgamegeek-reviews, but a review can never replace the actual test play of a game). Most of this site is available in english as well.

[Wyatt Hebert]

I know Rolemaster... and yes, that's exactly what a computer can alleviate. However, my point was primarily that if a designer, for example, doesn't take into account the attention span and memory span of the _player_, then a game that utilizes all of the computing tracking can still get very bogged down.

Wyatt

[PCarroll]

Wyatt Hebert said:
. . . The whole problem I think is that people see computers as the fix to minutiae of a game... which they easily can be... no dice-rolling, no keeping track of counters, just making the decisions. However, the main problem is that with that ease people aren't paying attention to two other major issues: attention span and mental hold. I've noticed in myself that when either of those limits are exceeded, my fun factor starts going downhill.

. . . [In a game like cribbage,] I only have to hold so much in my head each time I sit to play, and it doesn't exceed my attention span. I believe I have larger than normal attention span and mental hold (by which I mean the ability to hold the current situation clearly in mind). . . .

Thanks, Wyatt! I've never seen the problem put so succinctly before. I think that's exactly it.

I've been a big fan of board and card games throughout all five decades of my life so far, and I've enjoyed games of all kinds. I was an avid board wargamer from 1968 to about 1994 or so--but even during that time I was always struggling with the attention-span/mental-hold problem. Though drawn to big, complex games, over time I found I couldn't really enjoy playing them. I'd pore over a monster game--or a thick-rulebook game like Advanced Squad Leader--and *admire* it; but it was hard to make myself actually play--and even harder to keep playing and enjoying it. So, I kept falling back on simpler wargames.

I think there's some real tension there--between a desire to immerse yourself in a detailed, realistic game-world (participating in the *theme* of the game) and a desire to mentally grasp the game-system itself (minus the theme) and learn to play well. Designer Jim Dunnigan, back in the heyday of SPI, took an extensive survey and discovered that most wargamers were just "reading" the games, not playing them. Admittedly, that's what I usually did: I'd lovingly open the box, look at the components, read the rules, and play a practice game or two by myself; then the game would start gathering dust on a shelf.

The home computer at first looked like a solution to the problem; and as you say, it many ways it was. Setup time has been reduced from many minutes (or even hours, for monster games) to a second. Game play is speeded up. Online help and prompting saves searching through a rulebook. Combat calculations are automatic and instantaneous. And so forth.

But the basic problem still remains: if there's enough of a detailed theme to satisfy one's desire for imaginative immersion, there is also going to be a lot to hold in one's mind for a long time.

Until now, I hadn't noticed how simple the problem is. I don't have a solution either, and I'm not sure there is one. But it's nice to just be able to finally see the problem clearly.

The more I've played wargames and computer games over the years, the more I've come to appreciate the elegant simplicity of classic games like backgammon, checkers (draughts), chess, cribbage, and dominoes. No wonder these games have crossed over into many cultures and remained popular for so many generations. They've been refined to the point where they're just right in terms of size, length, pace, ease of learning, and level of challenge. Some (like chess and checkers) can be daunting to master; but you don't have to master them to enjoy playing them.

Dom2 (or Dom3) can't possibly solve the problem we're talking about, of course. By nature, it's an epic game with a fairly complex underlying game-system. So it's going to appeal to those who still want the imaginative immersion enough that they're willing to strain to wrap their minds around something too big and long to really be comfortable. To each his own. I've been there and done that, so it's easy for me to understand that desire.

At this point in my gaming life, however, I think maybe it's time to turn to some of the classic games I named above.

--Patrick