Tobold's Blog

Friday, September 06, 2024

Folded Space board game inserts

I play a lot of board games. Sometimes I have people invited over to my place, and I already know what we will be playing, so I have all the time in the world to set the game up. But more often I am playing elsewhere, like my weekly board game night in my friendly local games store; and then the time a board game needs to set up becomes more important.

Imagine a game with a lot of different cards, tokens, and meeples. If you would just randomly dump them all into the box of the board game, it would take quite a while to sort them and set the next game up. So, many board games at least provide cheap little plastic bags into which you can sort the game components by type. But that is just half of the equation: I frequently replace those plastic bags by little plastic boxes, because then I can put that box open next to the game board, and have the tokens more easily accessible.

I currently have a weekly game session to play Agemonia, a long narrative campaign game. And that game came with custom plastic trays, including covers, which make setup and storage very fast. Unfortunately, that is an exception, and probably financially viable only for those expensive big box games. A more typical board game box for way under $100 is more likely to just have a few cardboard dividers, and those aforementioned plastic bags for tokens. As that isn't ideal, third party companies provide improved inserts for various popular board games.

I recently bought the classic version of Dune: Imperium. And then the online shop I bought it from sent me clever advertising and offered me the new Dune: Imperium Uprising version of the game for 25% off, so I couldn't resist and bought that one as well. Both boxes come with the tokens and meeples already in plastic bags, but the cards come shrink wrapped and by default all go into the same big compartment in the box, where they will get all mixed up. Thus I bought for both versions of the game two slightly different insert solutions from Folded Space. Folded Space makes inserts out of coated foam, which you have to assemble and glue together yourself. You end up with a bunch of trays that fill up the original game box completely, which more or less prevents game components from spilling. And the trays can be set up directly for use in the game.

My experience with this product is mixed. I found assembly less fiddly than the e-Raptor insert for Gloomhaven. But the overall experience stands and falls with the quality of the glue you are using. For the first insert I used a cheap glue, which was way too liquid, and hard to dose precisely. Inevitably the excess glue spilled into the trays. And then it turned out that even after drying, the glue remained sticky for a long time; that was really bad, because I had already put game components in the trays, and then had problems getting them unstuck from the trays without damaging them, especially the cards. I got better glue for the second insert, and this is easier to dose. But some excess glue inside the trays seems inevitable, and I'll have to dry the completed trays for several days before using them.

The positive point of the Folded Space inserts is that they are in a price range from $15 to $30, which is at the lower end of that particular market. For comparison, the Feldherr insert for Dune: Imperium doesn't need assembly, but costs €40. As the Dune: Imperium games directly from Dire Wolf cost between €50 and €55, a €40 insert seems somewhat excessive in comparison. For games without many cards, I often use the $15 Gamegenic Token Silo, but that is a generic product, and doesn't necessarily fit perfectly for every game and every box. Still, having a lid is good, and the outer tray holding the token trays can be used to roll dice in. Individual little plastic boxes from Amazon cost only around $1 per box, and can provide an even cheaper alternative. But usually I have to buy a complete set of boxes of different sizes and then pick out the ones that best fit in size for a particular game.

So, once I mastered the assembly of the Folded Space inserts and the glue problem, the final product is both pretty and useful. Set-up is sped up considerably, compared to the provided plastic bag solution with no containers for cards. As I am currently playing Dune: Imperium quite a lot, I don't regret having bought the inserts. I still wouldn't buy inserts for every game I own, just for the favorite ones.

Labels: Board Games

- posted by Tobold @ 11:51 AM Permanent Link (3) comments

Tuesday, September 03, 2024

Housing and perceived market failure

I read and watch international news. In a globalized world, it helps with understanding when you can compare what is going on in different countries. And sometimes, surprisingly, you hear the same story from many places all over the world. One of these stories that seems to be ubiquitous to many first world countries is the housing crisis: Both renting and buying houses has become increasingly unaffordable for people on a median income, whether that is in the USA, Europe, or Australia.

What is strange about the story, is that all these countries have capitalism and free markets. Basic economic theory says that if there is high demand, and thus high prices for any good, the market will react by increasing supply, which ultimately brings prices down again. If houses are "overpriced", new construction companies could spring up, and make good profit by building houses and selling them, or renting them out. So, why isn't that the case?

While in some markets the reason for houses being so expensive are particular to the location, like zoning laws in California or the London green belt, there seem to be more universal forces behind the observation that the housing crisis is pretty much everywhere, even in places where land is still available. And in that context I had an interesting experience when we moved into a new house and sold our old apartment: It turns out that while our apartment was legal to live in for us, the moment we sold it the new owner couldn't use it as it was. Building regulations are constantly changing, and the new owner was obliged to spend additional money to bring up the apartment to the building code. Reports about the housing crisis often cite that it was easier for earlier generations to afford a house; but that doesn't take into account the fact that the house your parents built would today be considered illegal and sub-standard.

And at least in Europe, this is going to get a lot worse. The large majority of existing housing stock is considered to be not energy efficient enough to meet European climate targets. Other countries have the same basic problem, but not every government is as willing to wield a heavy regulatory club as the European Union is. It is not as if they were fundamentally wrong here: Making houses more energy efficient through insulation is not only necessary for climate targets, but also a good investment in the long run, especially when energy prices are rising. But regulations explain the perceived market failure of the housing market: If you build a house today following all of today's regulations from safety to energy efficiency, the result is a house that isn't affordable. It's a great house, especially if you compare it to the houses previous generations built, but you need way more than a median income in order to pay the mortgage, or the rent. Building an affordable house is basically illegal in many places. And regulations will catch up to the people who still live in houses that are affordable because they don't comply with modern building codes. The housing crisis will remain with us for decades to come.

- posted by Tobold @ 9:38 PM Permanent Link (10) comments

Sunday, September 01, 2024

The biggest lie in board games

How are board games sold? Obviously there are some board game enthusiasts who get thoroughly informed about a game before buying it. But most board games are sold to people who either in a shop or online only have some basic information about the game. And much of that information they have is what is printed on the box. Thus it is extremely profitable to lie to customers when printing information on the box, suggesting to them that the game is suitable for their needs, when in fact it isn't. And the biggest lie printed on the box is the player count.

If you look through a board game shop, or a list of crowdfunding games, you will find a huge number of games with a printed player count of 1 - 4; so they should play solo, for two players, for three players, and for four players. The reality of this is that the game will be best at only one of those player counts; if you are lucky they still kinda work at the other player counts, but it is practically impossible for any game to provide an equally great experience at all player counts.

Let's look at the reasons why games can't work at all player counts, with some examples: Tainted Grail is a complex narrative game, with a complex, puzzle-like card combat mechanic. That works quite well for low player counts, solo or two players. But for higher player counts the downtime, the time between the end of your current turn and the start of your next turn, becomes increasingly long. Maybe your whole group is low on food, and you decided all together to go to a hunting spot; so every player is doing a combat against a random wildlife creature, some of which are quite hard to kill. With 4 players that might take rather long; and as this is just resource gathering, it doesn't even add to the narrative. A lot of games are in a similar situation: The turn of any given player can be long, there is little to no interaction with other players during that turn, and thus at higher player counts people end up waiting a lot, usually getting out of the flow of the game by looking at their phones.

Familiar Tales, a much easier narrative game designed to be family-friendly, has the opposite problem. It's flow works well for 4 players; but the narrative demands all 4 characters to be in the game, and combat is balanced on that being the case. So for smaller player counts, each player has to play several characters, and there are rules on how to combine the decks if you are playing 2 characters at once. Unfortunately those rules don't work well at all, and make the game rather difficult and tedious. Again, similar things happen with other games that are well balanced for 4 players: The difficulty at other player counts isn't the same, resulting in a very different experience.

Dune: Imperium is a game with a lot of player interaction, especially the worker placement base mechanic, which prevents you from using a space that another player got to earlier. As the number of spaces on the board is fixed, this feels a lot tighter and interesting at 4 players than at 3 players, because at 3 players there is simply less competition. At 1 or 2 players there are rules for an AI/automa deck blocking a space every turn, but that is by necessity very random, and not as interesting as having to guess which space another player would take. Combat, which consists of different players sending different numbers of troops into conflict, is also feeling rather random with the AI/automa, while being much more interesting with 4 real players.

Board Game Geek, the biggest source of information for board gamers, for every game lists the official player count, but also a "community" and "best" player count decided on by poll. For example Tainted Grail is officially listed at 1 - 4 players, community would only play it at 1 - 3, and best is 1 - 2. I used that information to make a list of all my narrative campaign games, to decide which one of them I would want to play with friends in a 4-player group, and which ones would be better if I just played them with my wife at 2 players. But when I go for example to the Spiel games convention and look at a brand new game, which doesn't have much information yet on BGG, it is very hard for me by just looking at the box to decide what the real player count for a game is. The only exception to this is specific 2-player games, like this year's Spiel des Jahres Sky Team, which are more likely to be honest and not pretend that they can be played with other player counts than 2.

While the other information printed on the box, like the playing time, can be somewhat misleading too, the biggest lie printed on a board game box tends to be the player count. Be very, very careful before spending your money on a game if you personal situation makes it that you would be very disappointed if the game doesn't work well for a specific player count. If you only ever play with your spouse and end up with a game that doesn't really work for 2, or you have a larger game group and a game doesn't play well for that, you could be wasting your money.

Labels: Board Games

- posted by Tobold @ 9:46 AM Permanent Link (1) comments

Thursday, August 29, 2024

Dune: Imperium thoughts

I am currently deeply enthralled by the board game Dune: Imperium. I've been playing it at my weekly board game night, but also on Steam. I also have the iOS version, but unfortunately that one doesn't have the Rise of Ix expansion yet. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am looking forward to combining the two different base games with three different expansions, which gives a lot of different possible setups. So, what makes this game so good?

A lot of modern games minimize the interaction between players, as well as minimizing randomness. The result is something that a lot of people seem to like: Predictability. Predictability allows for strategy, and moves that consist of executing the strategy you thought of in advance. To me that is often a bit boring, lacking excitement. Dune: Imperium has that excitement, because there is just the right balance between creating a strategy, and having to constantly change tactics within a broader strategy due to the randomness of cards, or the unpredictability of the moves of your opponents.

For example, a good early strategy is to gather enough Solari (money) to buy your Swordmaster, because that enables you to do one more turn every round. Depending on what base game and what expansions you play, there are frequently multiple paths to get there. But you can't just decide on one of these pathways before the game even begins. It depends on where you are in the turn order, what leader you are playing, and what cards you drew. If things work out perfectly, you can buy the Swordmaster as early as the second turn, and can already use that third agent in this second turn, giving you a nice advantage over your fellow players. Ideally you start the game as second player, and hope that the first player doesn't block the space you need; then you'll be first player in the second round and can block the Swordmaster space for everybody else. But of course things can go badly, you don't draw the card you need in the second turn, somebody else gets there before you, and in the next turn your the last player to act, thus at risk of still having to wait another turn or two before you get your Swordmaster.

Another game mechanic full of tension and drama is the conflict cards, especially if the current conflict is about one or two victory points. Not only are there many different options to get troops into the fight, but the reveal turn can give a combatant more power, and then there is still the possibility to modify the outcome with intrigue cards. I had a somewhat painful experience yesterday, where twice in the game I thought I had clinched the victory points, and both times a series of card plays resulted in a draw, giving neither me nor my opponent the win. That makes for really intense rounds.

In your first game, all this appears somewhat random to you. But the more you play, and the better you get, the more you can see the influence of skill. It isn't all pure randomness. As you start with 10 cards and get 5 cards per round, you *know* which cards you'll draw in the second round as soon as you see your starting hand, and can adjust your tactics accordingly. And by buying cards with specific symbols, you can increase the probability of being able to use the spaces that have that symbol, enabling you to plan ahead for a given strategy. Your opponents might be unpredictable, but with time you'll learn what moves other players are more likely to make. You never achieve perfect foresight, but it all makes more and more sense over time. You need to watch what the other players are doing, and that to me is a lot preferable to other games, where you can basically ignore the other players on your race up the victory track.

Labels: Board Games

- posted by Tobold @ 6:49 PM Permanent Link (3) comments

Saturday, August 24, 2024

Substitute games

Since I moved a bit over a year ago, I was lucky to find some new friends to play board games with. What I didn't find was anybody playing role-playing games, and so I haven't played Dungeons & Dragons for a while. There had been some talk from WotC of wanting to support the new edition of D&D with an official virtual tabletop, which would have been an opportunity to find new people online to play with. But up to now, this product hasn't materialized, and maybe never will. But I have found substitute games.

Today I'll have friends over for our 8th session of Agemonia, out of an estimated 20 sessions to play through the whole campaign. And although this is a board game, and not a pen & paper role-playing game, there are a lot of similarities. There is no DM, and thus the story is a lot less free form and more linear and scripted. But we still get the tactical combat, story, and character progression as if we would play D&D.

Similarly, with two of the people I used to play D&D with and my wife, we are now playing other campaign board games. Currently that is Familiar Tales. That is less involved in the gameplay and character progression, but provides an app in which the story is told by professional voice actors. Agemonia has an app too, but it only serves to read some of the longer story texts, while the story that happens by discovering story points on the map isn't voiced. You could play Agemonia without the app, as the text is also available in a story book. Familiar Tales needs the app and doesn't have a book, which at least has the advantage that the box is a lot smaller and lighter.

Personally I like Agemonia more, as Familiar Tales is a bit too light on gameplay for my tastes. But both games offer maps which a group of characters can explore. There are story points on the map, so you get a role-playing-like experience of things happening due to your actions, and you having to react to those events. And both games are of the kind where you get together a group repeatedly to play through the scenarios of a campaign. Which is a marked difference from my Wednesday board game nights, where any game played is just for that one evening, and groups to play form on the spot and aren't pre-planned.

While I wouldn't say no if somebody invited me to play D&D, I am in no hurry to organize a game of my own. Organizing a game would probably mean having to play the DM, and that is a lot of work. It is also a lot of cost, especially if I would have to buy yet another edition of D&D. I think I am happy enough with the substitute experience of my campaign board games.

Labels: Board Games

- posted by Tobold @ 9:43 AM Permanent Link (3) comments

Thursday, August 22, 2024

Permanent revenue stream

The Steam page for Civilization VI quotes as its first entry unter reviews PC Gamer saying “I’ll never need another Civ game in my life besides this one”. But now Firaxis announced Civilization VII, and I'll guess that Civ6 comment will be forgotten. I played all the Civilization games, even those that weren't called Civilization, but I am getting increasingly sceptical about the added value of yet another Civ game. At what point do sequels stop bringing technical and gameplay improvements to the game, and are just there to create a permanent revenue stream. While Firaxis certainly isn't the worst in this respect, with over 8 years between Civ6 and 7, there are a lot of game series that produce a constant stream of game, DLC, DLC, sequel, DLC, DLC, sequel, etc., and then expect us to buy all of those products.

That isn't limited to videogames. The "improvement" of what is now apparently called "D&D 2024" over "D&D 2014" is marginal. Pre-orders have started, and you're supposed to buy another Player's Handbook, another Dungeon Master's Guide, and another Monster Manual for $50 each. Not to mention all the other books that added rules to the 2014 D&D 5th edition, which are now not necessarily compatible with the new version anymore. I'm sure WotC will soon happily sell you an updated version of these books for $50 each. Meanwhile the only thing that really interested me about the 2024 version of Dungeons & Dragons, the official virtual tabletop, is nowhere to be seen. Which isn't surprising, as D&D has decades of history of promising great digital products that then either disappointed or were never fully realized.

The Sims 4 is free to play since 2022. The Steam page lists 82 DLCs available, with a combined retail price of €1284.19. The original retail price obviously was insignificant, compared to the permanent revenue stream from 8 DLCs per year. The Sims 5 has been announced to be free to play from release on. On the internet one often finds people arguing for the buy to own business model. But isn't that just an illusion? If you are buying the DLCs and sequels of a buy-to-own game, aren't you just paying an extra initial fee in addition to providing a permanent revenue stream to the game company?

- posted by Tobold @ 10:01 AM Permanent Link (4) comments

Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Dune: Imperium and modularity

I recently mentioned that I played my first game of Dune: Imperium at my local board game night, and then started playing the digital version to become more competent for the next time I can play it face-to-face. That led me to read and watch more about Dune: Imperium, and I like the game more and more. And one interesting point here is the concept of modularity.

Among the board games I backed on Kickstarter, there are a few where I didn't just back the base game, but got some expansion with it. And quite frequently that turned out to be a mistake, especially with campaign games: An expansion just adds more content for those who have already played through the whole game, and want more. With big box campaign games sometimes needing a year or more to play through, I now own expansions where I never even opened the box.

Dune: Imperium isn't a campaign game, so expansion don't add to the length of the game, but rather to its breadth. And, unlike most other board games, Dune: Imperium now has *two* different base games; the original Dune: Imperium and the newer Dune: Imperium Uprising. There are currently two expansions, Rise of Ix and Immortality, with a third expansion, Bloodlines, just being announced. And you can play either base game alone, or with any expansion, although I am not certain that adding more than one expansion at a time will give a good result. But that still leaves 8 possible combinations of base game plus zero to one expansion. And they are all interesting variations of the same fundamental game.

Even if you just have one base game with 8 different leaders, there is a good amount of replayability. Dune: Imperium has some very good game design, where a winning strategy of your last game doesn't necessarily apply to your next game. Different leaders have different strengths, and one might be more suitable for a military victory, while another would do better with diplomacy. And then there are slightly different conditions in each game, with different conflicts to fight over, different cards available for purchase, and even different player order might make a big difference.

The need for replayability is where it makes a big difference, whether you play in real life or the digital version. In real life, I can maybe play one game of Dune: Imperium per week. Digitally, especially against the AI, games are fast and always available, so I can play several games a day. I started out playing the iOS version, and at some point I had played every one of the 8 leaders several times, and encountered them as opponents many, many times. So I switched to the Steam version, where the first expansion Rise of Ix is already available, and the variation of the rules, and the additional 6 leaders really added a lot of replayability.

I now decided to add the original Dune: Imperium and the Rise of Ix expansion to my board game collection. This is a game that I might want to play from time to time, and then it is better to not have to have it available. I haven't had the opportunity to play the game in real life again; but while I was pretty lost in my very first game, I am sure that now I would be reasonably competent for the next game. The AI in board game apps generally isn't brilliant, but the one in the Dune: Imperium app isn't horribly bad either. If you can win games against the AI in the app, you understood the game well enough to not embarrass yourself against real players.

Labels: Board Games

- posted by Tobold @ 9:02 AM Permanent Link (0) comments

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Maybe the "gacha" isn't the problem in gacha games

The term gacha in games describes a particular mechanic similar to loot boxes, in which you buy a random character. It has all the problems of other loot boxes in video games, namely that you aren't assured that you get what you want, and might pay for something you consider worthless. There are endless stories on the internet about how much money some people paid to get a particular "SSR" or "Legendary" character, this being different terms for the strongest characters in the game. Now I have played a few gacha games, and my personal observation is that the gacha / loot box system for characters didn't particularly bother me. With my particular spending habits on these games, where I am neither trying to play for absolutely free, nor spend big money like a whale, I find that in all gacha games I tried, I got a handful of perfectly good characters just from free summons and the first cheap purchases. And then the games usually limit how many characters you can bring into combat anyway, so while having more SSR characters adds to variety, it really doesn't feel necessary to me. The summons aren't what interests me about these games, which makes me pretty resistant to getting addicted or overspending for summons.

However, that definition of gacha game might be too specific. If you play several different gacha games, it isn't as if those summon "loot boxes" are the only common and defining feature of the genre. Instead these games are somewhat overloaded with different game mechanics, different ways to make your existing characters stronger. And in a blatant absence of originality, the progress game mechanics of all gacha games resemble each other very strongly. They will be called differently, but there sure is something like a "main" account level, which then limits the "character level" of each character, and limits to what level the gear can be separately leveled, and to what level the talents and skills can be separately leveled. Of course there are different resources to grind for, for each of those separate leveling aspects.

If you have been playing Sword of Convallaria since its release two weeks ago, and did neither neglect it, nor overspend in it, your main level is probably around 40 now, like mine. And it is here where for me the real problems of the whole package of game mechanics in gacha games become glaring: The honeymoon period with quick progress is over, and you find that while level 40 removes a hard lock on for example leveling up your gear beyond 40, you simply haven't got the resources to level up all the gear you might want to. You haven't got the resources to level up the talents that account (voyager) level 40 unlocked. Et cetera, et cetera. Basically progress in this part of the game has slowed to a crawl, and you are just supposed to log in several times a day to use all the accumulated endurance to "sweep" (get the reward without actually doing the repetitive grind) of various resource-gathering "worlds". You need to do that for many days to slowly progress your characters, which then allows you to beat more difficult worlds for better grind/sweep rewards. This is a pure time / resource management game, which has very little to do with the underlying RPG and combat systems. You grind a lot for small segments of story progress or access to interesting combat sessions. And of course there are numerous monetization schemes that promise you slightly faster progress for your cash. Having half a dozen more legendary characters wouldn't help me at all, which is why I don't hate the core "gacha" game mechanic; it is the rest of the game mechanics that come with it that I find annoying.

If Sword of Convallaria had only this regular mix of gacha game mechanics, this would be around the point where I would stop playing. So it has to be remarked that none of these comments apply to the "other half" of the Sword of Convallaria game, the Spiral of Destinies. You don't even need to play the gacha part of the game to level 40 if you don't want to, it doesn't help you in Spiral of Destinies. You need to play the gacha part just a little to unlock access to the Spiral of Destinies, and then you get the keys you need to unlock the chapters in Spiral of Destinies for free with time. There is a perfectly fine non-gacha, non-monetized, tactical JRPG hidden in this second part, which you can play for a long time with no restrictions before you reached all the possible endings.

- posted by Tobold @ 11:48 AM Permanent Link (2) comments

Saturday, August 10, 2024

Git Gud in board games

Imagine a modern board game, one of those innumerable games in which players compete for victory points, while not attacking each other directly. If you played that board game a hundred times, recorded and graphed your achieved victory points over time, how would the graph look? While there would obviously be some variation from game to game, the overall shape of the curve is predictable: It would start low, go up relatively quickly at first, and then flatten out. Depending on the complexity of the game and how quickly the player can grasp it, the flat section would be reached earlier or later. But it is unlikely that somebody understands the optimal game strategy completely in his first, or first few games. It takes some time to "git gud" at a specific board game, even if you are already skilled at playing board games in general.

The practical problem for me is that by playing a lot of different games with a lot of different people, players are frequently at different points on their own curve. I recently played a game of Ark Nova with a guy who said that he had already played the game around 200 times in a digital format online. A second player had played the game several times, a third player once, and me never before. Kudos to the devs of Ark Nova for including easier boards for beginners, but that didn't stop the expert from crushing the less experienced players. I liked learning the game, but as a contest of skill the exercise was futile.

In a board game that is widely played competitively, like chess, you can assume that at least in a tournament environment everybody already played a sufficient number of games to be at the flatter end of the curve. It isn't that players don't learn anymore after a hundred games, but the difference between the 100th and the 101st game is obviously smaller than the difference between the first and the second game you ever play.

This week I played my very first game of Dune: Imperium. Again not doing very well against players who had already played the games over ten times. Because I liked the game, I then started playing the digital version a bit. Theoretically I could practice the game there against an AI, or even online, and then do a lot better the next time I play it face-to-face. But while some board games exist as digital versions on Steam or mobile, that tends to be games that are a few years old and have been rather successful. Newer or smaller games don't get their own standalone software; they might make it to a virtual tabletop platform like Board Game Arena or Tabletop Simulator, but I am not a big fan of those. They tend to be fiddly, and they don't have an AI to play against for learning purposes, thus just moving the problem of being too early on the curve elsewhere.

Getting good at a board game also requires to play the same game repeatedly and without too long breaks. When I haven't played a particular board game for over a year, I have trouble remembering the rules, not to mention any advanced strategies. Board Game Geek is said to have over 125,000 board games. If I go to a weekly board game night 50 times a year, I think I'll have more fun playing 50 different games badly than playing 1 game very well. And the enjoyment of playing one game very well would depend on a number of other players also wanting to play this one game repeatedly. It might depend on your personality, but I wouldn't enjoy crushing somebody in a board game, just because I played it much more often than him.

So, yes, you can "git gud" at a board game. But playing a board game to find out who the better player is makes only sense when everybody has played the game already often enough to approach a more or less stable skill level. That is why I personally prefer cooperative board games.

Labels: Board Games

- posted by Tobold @ 11:28 AM Permanent Link (2) comments

Wednesday, August 07, 2024

More AI in games!

Some of my favorite D&D adventures I played more than once, with different groups. And in spite of the adventure being the same, and me as a DM being the same, a different group always ended up playing through the adventure differently. Sometimes markedly so, for example when playing Ravenloft with one group that leaned into the horror aspects, and another group that was more power-gamer oriented. In computer RPGs, I find the possibilities for playing the game again in a different way quite limited. For example I tried Baldur's Gate 3 as the Dark Urge, playing evil and trying to recruit Minthara, but all that still resulted in a game that had only minor differences from the previous "lawful good" run.

Meanwhile in the real world, this week's "correction" at the world's stock markets hit tech companies especially hard. Investors are beginning to realize that AI isn't going to result in billions of profit anytime soon. One of the problems with AI is that it turned out to be unable to replace humans completely in any environment in which the quality of the output matters, for example when writing a legal brief or a medical diagnosis. AI can help produce a first draft, but its tendency to "hallucinate" means that a human needs to proofread and edit the result, to ensure that it doesn't contain any dangerous bullshit. If only there was an environment in which there were no serious consequences to anything that AI produced, which could serve as a test laboratory for future AI development. Also known as "games".

If ChatGPT suggests putting glue on pizza to make the cheese stick, it is a problem, because somebody might follow that advice and then sue the company after getting sick from that pizza. An AI Dungeon Master in a game world might also sometimes say something stupid, but honestly, that also happens to human DMs improvising on the spot. And within the environment of a game, it doesn't really matter. The gain of being able to replay a computer role-playing game and have really different things happen would be far superior to the risk of some of the invented stories not being coherent or logical. Generative AI is perfectly able to tell stories, and would be great to tell different stories to different players, based on slightly different player inputs.

The only problem with that proposal is that it would require a game company willing to try something daring and new. And that isn't where computer game companies of the world are right now. The most creativity we get from game developers these days is them trying to combine feature A which worked so well in game X with feature B which worked so well in game Y. Thus surprise hits like Palworld, being "Valheim with Pokemon".

I do think that generative AI could be the next big step up from the ubiquitous open world games. There are far too many open worlds in which nothing interesting ever happens, and non-essential NPCs repeat the same lines of text over and over. The "open" in open world currently only means that you have some freedom to do the scripted content in different orders, usually with some "gates" preventing you from messing up that order too much. It wouldn't take that much technology to make quest NPCs give different quests every time, even if that was limited to the different types of monsters available in that zone. Our game worlds are so static right now, that even minor technological innovation with generative AI would feel like a revolution. Viva la revolution!

- posted by Tobold @ 9:15 AM Permanent Link (2) comments

Saturday, August 03, 2024

The dichotomy of Sword of Convallaria

I tend to not see things as black and white, as reality is usually a lot more complicated than that. But a lot of people see monetization of games in black and white terms, where anything but a one-time purchase is considered a thing of evil. So they might consider Sword of Convallaria as a Gacha game with a Pay2Win mechanic into which whales can put hundreds or even thousands of dollars, where free players will constantly run out of energy, and be severely limited to how much they can play. But weirdly enough, Sword of Convallaria also has a near completely separate part, which is a pure single-player game, which is free, has no monetization, and you can play for as long as you like without any need for energy or similar resources. You only need to play the Gacha part of the game for a bit, short enough to not encounter any paywalls or energy problems, in order to unlock the single-player part, and gather a few keys to unlock the chapters in it. So what is it? An evil monetization scheme, or a great Final Fantasy Tactics like game that provides a ton of good content for absolutely free? Well, it's both!

The single-player part of Sword of Convallaria, called Spiral of Destinies, is a rather good game. It has a turn-based tactical combat part, and a worker placement / village management part, with the two parts working well together. While you can take 3 characters from the Gacha part and import them into the single-player part, within the single-player part characters only level up by fighting or training, and only get gear and talents from in-game activities. There is no way to Pay2Win in this part. There are also no paywalls, no resources like energy which would limit you to how much you can play every day, and next to zero monetization. "Next to zero" because every few hours you'll finish a chapter and will need a key to unlock the next chapter, but those keys are really plentiful and easy to get in the Gacha part of the game. In fact there is an event in the Gacha part that transforms your achievements from the single-player part into rewards, and that includes a bunch of keys. I still have 11 of those Keys of Destiny in reserve, without even especially trying to get them, and have been gaining them faster than I can spend them. I also got nearly 6,000 luxite saved up, and instead of doing 40 summons with that, I could buy another 60 Keys of Destiny. That would allow me to play the single-player part through several times, to all of the many different endings, which would take probably a hundred hours. If you don't really like Gacha games, but can survive playing a tiny bit of it to get to the single-player part, Spiral of Destinies is a very good game for the low, low price of absolutely free.

Of course the idea is that by bringing players into contact with the Gacha part of the game, some will prefer that part of the game called The Fool's Journey and Crossing Worlds. And that part is monetized, allowing you to spend as much as $100 at once for a single purchase of game currency. Now you can play this part for free as well, at least for a good while. You get enough summons for free at the start to get a decent team, and the early events and activities all give you a bunch of that game currency. The 6,000 luxite I am sitting on? All earned in game, although I have to say that I did spend money on the battle pass (called Cornucopia) and the Blessing of Hope, which is the system by which you get some luxite every day for a month for just $5. Sword of Convallaria works like every other Gacha game, so that the first $50 or so you spend give you rather large benefits, while there is strongly decreasing returns when you spend hundreds of dollars. That is why I tend to spend around that much, and then stop spending money, except if I keep playing the game for longer and need another battle pass.

My experience with the Gacha part of Sword of Convallaria was rather pleasant. The explanation for that I was able to find in the small print. In Sword of Convallaria, when you summon those Gacha characters, you have a 2% chance of finding a legendary one, the highest rarity. That compares rather positively to other mass market Gacha games, like Genshin Impact or Honkai Star Rail, in which that legendary drop rate is only 0.6%. While Sword of Convallaria has a "pity system", which gives you an automatic legendary if you didn't randomly get one in 100 pulls, you have an 87% chance of finding a legendary before that pity system kicks in (while in Genshin Impact the chance is only 42%). As a result I already have 6 legendary characters, including two of the characters that people on the internet say you "must have", Gloria and Beryl. As you don't need more than 6 characters in the Gacha part of the game, there isn't really much motivation for me to use my luxite on more summons.

In summary, Sword of Convallaria has room for whales, and some players might not like that. But the game is unusually generous to people who spend either just a little, or nothing at all, far more generous than the competition. The tactical combat game is quite good in both parts of the game, and I do enjoy the overall package of the single-player part a lot. Unless you are really, really allergic against all attempts of monetization, or are somebody who can't control his spending at all, I would recommend checking out Sword of Convallaria if you liked games like Final Fantasy Tactics, or Tactics Ogre. Between buying Tactics Ogre for $50 and playing Sword of Convallaria with $50 or less of spending, that would actually be a hard choice.

- posted by Tobold @ 1:39 PM Permanent Link (0) comments

Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Failed game mechanics

While reading news about gaming, I stumbled upon a rumor that Rockstar was considering making a sequel to their 2011 game L.A. Noire. I have no idea how true or far-fetched that rumor is, but what surprised me personally was that anyone would consider making a sequel to a game in which the main game mechanic didn’t work.

L.A. Noire is a playable game, with a solid Rockstar part of driving through Los Angeles in 1947, including car chases, a bit of shooting, and some fist fights. But its claim to fame was the interrogation sequences, where the player was supposed to select one of three options (true, doubt, lie) in response to motion-captured facial expressions of suspects. A later version of the game changed the names of the three options to good cop, bad cop, and accuse. It didn’t help. It turns out that lie detection through reading facial expressions doesn’t work any better in a video game than in real life, even if you ask your actors to exaggerate. Different people interpret the same facial expression differently. And even if you were pretty sure that the suspect wasn’t saying the truth, it wasn’t always that clear whether doubt or lie was the best response. Youtube is still full of videos giving the right responses to every single interrogation, because the average player just failed this central task half of the time.

It doesn’t help that guessing right or wrong doesn’t matter. L.A. Noire is very linear, and even major career events like getting promoted or demoted happen at fixed points in the story, regardless how well or badly you are doing in solving cases. Given the age of the game I think I can spoiler the fact that you are actually forced to put the wrong men in prison for a series of killings that are actually the work of a serial killer. Even if you know, you get no agency, no option to do it otherwise. In my personal opinion, L.A. Noire is not a very good game, and the facial expression reading not working for many players is a major reason for that.

Now I might seem a bit harsh on that. But then consider that every single feature of every single Rockstar game has been copied by other games over the years. Usually with lower production values, and thus lower success. But I don’t know of any game that copied the interrogation game mechanic from L.A. Noire. It seems that even game designers more talented at copying than inventing new game mechanics didn’t consider this one as a good idea.

- posted by Tobold @ 2:57 PM Permanent Link (3) comments

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