In Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander/Conquest:Frontier Wars it's hyper macro with an assumption of continual creation/death of units and often incorporate a "supply line" concept. Some people love it (there aren't many).
Most TA (or at least TA-dericative, Balanced Annihilation/Complete Annihilation) games I see are driven by small raid groups avoiding enemy fortifications and destroying his economy... Really not that much macro there.
it felt like i was constantly losing my units because the opponent had the right type of unit (helicopters) to destroy my tanks for example.
Scream at your air or support player to give you some fucking AA already. They love not doing that (especially the supports, they love their heavy arty) but you might just get lucky. Also on your part make sure to not outrun your AA cover and target enemy heavy AA first, not their tanks. Your tanks suck at dealing damage, leave that job to the air player. You just kill the things that kill him and do the point capping. Oh and the HEAT ability on your heavy tanks is for shooting light and medium vehicles, NOT heavy tanks! It does almost no damage to HTs while it is awfully fast at wrecking support units.
Buildings are your tech level. While a long game should reach a point where each player has every building it should not be possible to just plop them down early and has to be weighted against the units you could buy for the money NOW. If your buildings are so cheap that the player can just make them without a second thought, why not merge them into the main building? Teching must be a conscious choice with advantages and disadvantages, no-brainers in RTSes (things you'll do every game no matter what the situation) often get annoying.
Chess has resource management. The pieces on the field are resources, you can sacrifice them for a tactical advantage or you can play it safe and try not to lose them. In WiC if you lose a "pawn" you just have to wait some time until you can get a new one, in Chess a lost pawn remains lost and you have to weight the advantage gained by the sacrifice against the disadvantage of losing a piece. There are situations where you can sacrifice even the queen and come out ahead.
1. In WiC you CANNOT have both air and ground. It's a class based team game, one player goes air, the other tanks, another AA/arty/repair and a fourth infantry (each class can have multiple players of course but lacking a class or two is usually fatal). Well, okay, you can play the special 1v1 or 2v2 mode but that's really not the point of the game. 2. If your units die you lose almost nothing, if your tanks did run into heavy air, well, make new ones and get some AA support next time! 3. You always have a shortage of units and you have strategic goals to capture. Your team simply won't have enough tanks (or AA or gunships or infantry) to put a full force on every point you hold and the same goes for the enemy. You have to decide where to attack with what and when to hold. Cooperation can be a big deal here, a team that can correctly coordinate attacks between ground and air forces will do much more damage than a team where each player basically rushes for the low hanging fruit (unfortunately common in unorganized games but what do you expect on the internet...).
Cv2's bosses are especially pathetic since they don't lock the doors on you... Speedruns I've seen just had the player run past the boss without caring about it.
Most people consider AoS and DoS better than COTN by the way. They might be easy (especially DoS with the throwing weapons) but the mechanics seem the most advanced out of the bunch to me which is a very important thing IMO.
they know about casual markets need to be babied, and unchallenged to the point of inanity
I doubt that. Casual gamers are capable of becoming masters at a game just as much as hardcore gamers are (see e.g. Tetris or Dr Mario), they are just more unwilling to put up with overly complex controls or game designs. Of course having to memorize button combos isn't going to fly with them but I don't think it's difficulty in the actual game that's turning them away (though you should start easy at first to allow the player to get used to the game and develop a feeling that he can succeed, don't just throw him into a huge and difficult level at the start that will just frustrate him*). It's just that many games seem to try creating complexity by giving the player craptons of actions he can do and just as many buttons he has to deal with instead of creating complex situations with simple actions.
*= I'm looking at you, Contra 4! No other Contra except maybe Hard Cops has a first level as hard and long as that.
It can be problematic when the actions you'd like to do are not available or your character acts in a way you don't want to. There are situations in many games where the only way to progress the story is to do something you can pretty much see is stupid and will just result in a desaster (a popular example is releasing the seals that keep the big evil away in jRPGs, you can see that it's a bad idea to break them but if you don't the game refuses to continue or when a character is being held hostange and you're required to hand over the magic stones or whatever you just collected without the option of saying "kill her, I'll keep the stones").
Square-Enix, for example, has made it quite clear that you'll never see any old games with the words "Final Fantasy" or "Dragon Quest" in the title on any download service;
Should be mentioned that only applies to OLD games, they do release NEW games for download services like FF Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King for the Wii (the one notorious for the huge amounts of "horse armor" you can buy).
I'm not seeing the phrase "Mega Man" anywhere near the Virtual Console
One day in the future humanity will either be visited by god finally and all us naysayers will have to eat our words
Added problem: WHICH god? Humanity had thousands of gods throughout its existence. Would suck if you devoted your whole life to a god, converting others and adhering to every religious rule, no matter how much it hurt you just to find out it was the wrong god and you're getting the punishment deal anyway (or maybe the god has specific rules against adhering to blind faith over reason because he wants to test people's logical facilities, not just their ability to doublethink).
Free thought only requires action if it actually accomplishes something. Freely-thinking cubicle drones aren't going to be an issue no matter how much they whine and promise to revolt.
Some use the remote for aiming and the nunchuk's shaking as their action button, e.g. the toilet game and the juice bar. There being one of them per level won't help since you're already failing the music game which would be your one game you can skip per level.
I don't think retaliation is competition, a competitor cannot retaliate as he's already fighting you, an ally (supplier, customer, etc) could retaliate. Creating fights between companies that aren't really competing doesn't get much done.
You mean "make sure that there are several equally powerful entities competing with each other". Some markets just don't HAVE enough large companies to get meaningful competition.
Also the less the small guy can handle not having the contract at all the less these competitors have to beat each other on contract terms (they'd rather go for price or something).
Sounds nice in theory but when contract negotiations are involved you often have a huge disparity in bargaining power so the more powerful can usually force terms on the less powerful, how do you equalize that?
Isn't the deciding feature that it's a very tight control, usually with severe punishments for rule violations? Possibly with a dash of using violence and terror groups to keep the people in line?
Slashdot Mirror
In Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander/Conquest:Frontier Wars it's hyper macro with an assumption of continual creation/death of units and often incorporate a "supply line" concept. Some people love it (there aren't many).
Most TA (or at least TA-dericative, Balanced Annihilation/Complete Annihilation) games I see are driven by small raid groups avoiding enemy fortifications and destroying his economy... Really not that much macro there.
it felt like i was constantly losing my units because the opponent had the right type of unit (helicopters) to destroy my tanks for example.
Scream at your air or support player to give you some fucking AA already. They love not doing that (especially the supports, they love their heavy arty) but you might just get lucky. Also on your part make sure to not outrun your AA cover and target enemy heavy AA first, not their tanks. Your tanks suck at dealing damage, leave that job to the air player. You just kill the things that kill him and do the point capping. Oh and the HEAT ability on your heavy tanks is for shooting light and medium vehicles, NOT heavy tanks! It does almost no damage to HTs while it is awfully fast at wrecking support units.
Buildings are your tech level. While a long game should reach a point where each player has every building it should not be possible to just plop them down early and has to be weighted against the units you could buy for the money NOW. If your buildings are so cheap that the player can just make them without a second thought, why not merge them into the main building? Teching must be a conscious choice with advantages and disadvantages, no-brainers in RTSes (things you'll do every game no matter what the situation) often get annoying.
Chess has resource management. The pieces on the field are resources, you can sacrifice them for a tactical advantage or you can play it safe and try not to lose them. In WiC if you lose a "pawn" you just have to wait some time until you can get a new one, in Chess a lost pawn remains lost and you have to weight the advantage gained by the sacrifice against the disadvantage of losing a piece. There are situations where you can sacrifice even the queen and come out ahead.
1. In WiC you CANNOT have both air and ground. It's a class based team game, one player goes air, the other tanks, another AA/arty/repair and a fourth infantry (each class can have multiple players of course but lacking a class or two is usually fatal). Well, okay, you can play the special 1v1 or 2v2 mode but that's really not the point of the game.
2. If your units die you lose almost nothing, if your tanks did run into heavy air, well, make new ones and get some AA support next time!
3. You always have a shortage of units and you have strategic goals to capture. Your team simply won't have enough tanks (or AA or gunships or infantry) to put a full force on every point you hold and the same goes for the enemy. You have to decide where to attack with what and when to hold. Cooperation can be a big deal here, a team that can correctly coordinate attacks between ground and air forces will do much more damage than a team where each player basically rushes for the low hanging fruit (unfortunately common in unorganized games but what do you expect on the internet...).
Cv2's bosses are especially pathetic since they don't lock the doors on you... Speedruns I've seen just had the player run past the boss without caring about it.
Most people consider AoS and DoS better than COTN by the way. They might be easy (especially DoS with the throwing weapons) but the mechanics seem the most advanced out of the bunch to me which is a very important thing IMO.
Where did you get the A from? GT and GTA are different series, GT stands for Gran Tourismo.
Only in the PAL regions, it seems.
Hm, I'd guess that's because none of the compilation discs were released here...
they know about casual markets need to be babied, and unchallenged to the point of inanity
I doubt that. Casual gamers are capable of becoming masters at a game just as much as hardcore gamers are (see e.g. Tetris or Dr Mario), they are just more unwilling to put up with overly complex controls or game designs. Of course having to memorize button combos isn't going to fly with them but I don't think it's difficulty in the actual game that's turning them away (though you should start easy at first to allow the player to get used to the game and develop a feeling that he can succeed, don't just throw him into a huge and difficult level at the start that will just frustrate him*). It's just that many games seem to try creating complexity by giving the player craptons of actions he can do and just as many buttons he has to deal with instead of creating complex situations with simple actions.
*= I'm looking at you, Contra 4! No other Contra except maybe Hard Cops has a first level as hard and long as that.
It can be problematic when the actions you'd like to do are not available or your character acts in a way you don't want to. There are situations in many games where the only way to progress the story is to do something you can pretty much see is stupid and will just result in a desaster (a popular example is releasing the seals that keep the big evil away in jRPGs, you can see that it's a bad idea to break them but if you don't the game refuses to continue or when a character is being held hostange and you're required to hand over the magic stones or whatever you just collected without the option of saying "kill her, I'll keep the stones").
You misread his post. He said Amazon offers it for $900 and other companies don't offer it at all.
Square-Enix, for example, has made it quite clear that you'll never see any old games with the words "Final Fantasy" or "Dragon Quest" in the title on any download service;
Should be mentioned that only applies to OLD games, they do release NEW games for download services like FF Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King for the Wii (the one notorious for the huge amounts of "horse armor" you can buy).
I'm not seeing the phrase "Mega Man" anywhere near the Virtual Console
Megaman 1 and 2 are released on the VC.
The Virtual Console is just for ROMs, there's a "Nintendo Channel" now that delivers videos, ads and demos (the latter only for DS games though).
GT4 for the PS2 supports 1080i AFAIK.
One day in the future humanity will either be visited by god finally and all us naysayers will have to eat our words
Added problem: WHICH god? Humanity had thousands of gods throughout its existence. Would suck if you devoted your whole life to a god, converting others and adhering to every religious rule, no matter how much it hurt you just to find out it was the wrong god and you're getting the punishment deal anyway (or maybe the god has specific rules against adhering to blind faith over reason because he wants to test people's logical facilities, not just their ability to doublethink).
Anthropic principle: P(A|!B)=0 => P(B|A)=1
Free thought only requires action if it actually accomplishes something. Freely-thinking cubicle drones aren't going to be an issue no matter how much they whine and promise to revolt.
Some use the remote for aiming and the nunchuk's shaking as their action button, e.g. the toilet game and the juice bar. There being one of them per level won't help since you're already failing the music game which would be your one game you can skip per level.
I doubt it sold more than the Wii Fit board.
I don't think retaliation is competition, a competitor cannot retaliate as he's already fighting you, an ally (supplier, customer, etc) could retaliate. Creating fights between companies that aren't really competing doesn't get much done.
You mean "make sure that there are several equally powerful entities competing with each other". Some markets just don't HAVE enough large companies to get meaningful competition.
Also the less the small guy can handle not having the contract at all the less these competitors have to beat each other on contract terms (they'd rather go for price or something).
Isn't gas simply one of the biggest factors used in calculating inflation?
Sounds nice in theory but when contract negotiations are involved you often have a huge disparity in bargaining power so the more powerful can usually force terms on the less powerful, how do you equalize that?
Isn't the deciding feature that it's a very tight control, usually with severe punishments for rule violations? Possibly with a dash of using violence and terror groups to keep the people in line?
Close. It tastes like a three-headed monkey.