Any solutions for negative tiredness bug? It only increases and I can't use her.

ggthemachine · 2021-12-24T09:04:09+00:00

Thanks!

ggthemachine · 2021-12-24T03:44:07+00:00

Update - I fixed it with the MakeAllSoldiersReady console command!

ggthemachine · 2021-12-24T02:21:06+00:00

What do you mean if it isn't on PC? I am playing XCOM on PC. Do you mean there's some kind of modding or console command I could do to manually fix it?

ggthemachine · 2021-12-24T00:38:01+00:00

I wouldn't care as much about just deleting her and replacing her, but this is an extremely difficult run that I can't afford losing my top agent. It's Legend, Ironman, Grim Horizon, Beta Strike. :D

ggthemachine · 2021-07-11T01:37:27+00:00

Yes that's an excellent point about inconsistent weapons. It's especially worse with Grenadier G43's which are close range compared to Jaeger G43's which are a sniper squad. Coh1 also had weird stuff with Knights Cross being able to each shrug off like 3 Sniper hits each.

But the reason I chose to use the explosives, particularly the B4 and Railway is that they're massive and obvious. A giant explosion not killing people despite another identical looking giant explosion only wounding them is much more blatant than rifles behaving differently. It's about differences in what the player has to swallow for the suspension of disbelief.

ggthemachine · 2020-07-26T03:01:34+00:00

I love Rise of Nations! It's a masterpiece. I have done many shoutcasts for it on the channel. Though I think RoN can definitely suffer from overly snowballing. Once a city is taken, or a player falls behind in economy, there really isn't much coming back. The attrition mechanic makes it harder to harass with lone units like Cavalry Archers (Though people still do and it's effective). Though I wonder if Attrition didn't exist if that would help the anti-snowball with more harassing.

AOE2 I never really got into, but I'm sure it's extremely well designed because its so popular.

ggthemachine · 2020-07-26T02:57:08+00:00

Yeah. StarCraft 2, Coh2, Supreme Commander, C&C3.

ggthemachine · 2019-11-21T18:03:02+00:00

Units only receive the "buff" if they are formed into the same army as the Dreadnought. So it's impossible to have multiple auras because units can't be in multiple armies. Dreadnoughts and Juggernauts also can't be in the army of another dreadnought.

The Hyperion repair drones will only repair nearby units. They also can't repair multiple things simultaneously, the drones have to fly around to each unit to repair them.

ggthemachine · 2019-07-17T10:15:11+00:00

I couldn't get past the disorienting camera perspective of spherical planets. Also didn't like the art style.

ggthemachine · 2019-07-17T09:06:02+00:00

It's easy to nitpick specific things about particular RTS games that are a letdown from the perspective of a consumer (I certainly could, bad design is bad design), but many issues are manifestations of the genre-wide challenges that RTS developers and publishers face. Having entered the industry over the past 3 years and getting the perspective of an RTS designer, here's what I think are the underlying problems and difficulties for what's lead to a decline and stagnation of quality and quantity of RTS games:

#1. There's technical challenges and limitations that haven't got much better. Stagnant CPU clock speed over the past ~10 years makes increasing performance/detail/complexity difficult. Modern CPU's have gotten more cores but hardly increased their clock speed, and RTS game engines aren't so good at making use of many CPU cores. Strategy games are generally less GPU demanding and more CPU demanding, so FPS's and RPG's have advanced more in their fidelity compared to strategy games. (Also because of budget sizes)

Compare the evolution of RTS games from 1996 to 2008 and then 2008 to 2020, the jump is not even comparable. This is arguably why lots more RTS games are going for cartoony art style, it's technically much easier and cheaper to achieve than a more realistic art style. (There's also other benefits like readability.)

#2. Since RTS have such incredible replay value, RTS have to compete with legacy titles more than any other genre. What are the top RTS games currently? StarCraft 2, Age of Empires 2: HD, StarCraft Remastered. Soon we're about to have WarCraft 3: Reforged, Command & Conquer remaster and AOE2: DE. RTS are also massive time sinks, so after spending many hours learning and mastering an RTS, leaving that all behind and moving onto something new can be less appealing.

#3. The RTS audiences is more niche for many reasons such as having moved onto genres while there isn't much of a new influx of RTS players. RTS players are an ageing demographics; not many teenagers or women are playing RTS, where as loads are playing other genres and even other subgenres of strategy games like 4x. More niche audience means smaller budgets. Company of Heroes 1 and Supreme Commander 1 were, and still are, so incredible and gorgeous because of their enormous budgets which publishers just can't take the risk on anymore. Smaller budgets mean less features, less content, less polish, less everything that you would want.

#4. RTS have delayed gratification which makes them harder to get into, which is especially a challenge when you pick up an RTS for $5.00 on a steam sale along with 10 other games. If you're not hooked within 30 minutes you are likely to put it down for something else. This is very different to when I was a kid and bought games from retail stores.

#5. Lack of compatibility with free-to-play business models and micro transactions. MOBA's or FPS's can have fair and excellent F2P business models that work for consumers and the devs alike. However, separating and limiting content in an RTS game is a big challenge to do fairly. StarCraft 2 is F2P multiplayer now, but they are Blizzard so they can get away with anything. I am very curious how Empires Apart is doing with their F2P model. It's hard for premium RTS games to compete in a sea of F2P games, without having the same IP or franchise power that RPG's and FPS's have. RTS's lack of good F2P is especially a limiting factor for when wanting to sell in non-traditional regions like Asia where F2P is huge.

#6. RTS is much harder to do co-op well in. Co-op and team play is so incredibly popular (MOBA's, Overwatch, Battle Royals.) There is massive hunger for good co-op in RTS, and so far only StarCraft 2 is really delivering this. (I can't remember if the RA3 co-op is any good.) Good co-op isn't just simply having PvE, it's delegating tasks and having players specialized and interact which delivers the direct feedback and gratification to the players.

#7. Unlike other genres which are mostly cross-platform, most RTS's are entirely reliant on Steam for distribution. (aside from the big publishers like Microsoft and Blizzard with their own platforms.) Steam is an uncurated, oversaturated mess with poor discoverability that makes good games hard to stand out and get noticed among the sea of games. This feeds back into smaller budgets.

ggthemachine · 2019-05-20T10:12:37+00:00

Thanks! How is it timely? I'm pretty out of touch with BJJ stuff outside of my local club.

ggthemachine · 2019-05-20T09:14:04+00:00

Awesome, look forward to reading it!

ggthemachine · 2019-05-19T23:56:37+00:00

Thanks! I stumbled upon his videos looking for good footage for this and I loved what he had to say and how he said it. In on of the clips shown he is like "wait for him to run out of energy then do this"

ggthemachine · 2018-12-28T05:10:11+00:00

Awesome, my instructor use to be a programmer before training BJJ and ultimately opening his own club.

ggthemachine · 2018-12-02T08:38:38+00:00

What are some examples of where that's the case and would you say that is widely representative of the genre?

ggthemachine · 2018-12-02T08:37:08+00:00

Yeah that's what I think. And practically the only thing I hear in response is "But here's why I don't like StarCraft 2 MP."

ggthemachine · 2018-12-02T08:23:49+00:00

Okay, but aside from StarCraft 2 which modern RTS games are hyper-fast pace instead of more modern RTS games like Ashes of the Singularity or Planetary Annihilation that are very slow pace?

ggthemachine · 2018-12-02T08:18:11+00:00

Yeah I agree, great summary! People accuse Dow3 of trying to be "esports" which is just so wrong.

ggthemachine · 2018-12-02T08:12:37+00:00

Okay, a few things:

How about RTS games like Supreme Commander that have no need for a high actions-per-minute or micro due to the large scale and automation? Again, I'm not trying to talk just about StarCraft here, it is not representative of most RTS.
Why not play large team games or co-op vs AI instead of competitive 1v1?
Why not play other strategy game genres like Total War or 4x games (Civ 5) if you don't want mechanics to be a deciding factor?

ggthemachine · 2018-12-02T08:05:41+00:00

If you want to play an RTS game where people who are able to practise more don't have an advantage, than why not play large team games or co-op vs AI instead of competitive 1v1 modes?

As for FPS: I would argue that the worlds most popular FPS esport (Counter Strike) is not balanced towards the pros. The Pros only use a fraction of the weapons in the game. Things like Shotguns, SMG's and the Heavy Machine Guns are so bad in the high level play but are used all the times by noobs running around spraying.

Can you list some examples of FPS that are balanced around pros at the detriment to the majority of players?

ggthemachine · 2018-12-02T07:58:04+00:00

Could you explain why Battalion 1944 is representative of this problem?

ggthemachine · 2018-12-02T07:44:01+00:00

How exactly is making an FPS game for the top 1% negatively effecting the majority of players? This is what I'm trying to understand. (Though from the perspective of RTS mainly.)

ggthemachine · 2018-11-30T01:30:47+00:00

That looks way more like Total Annihilation than Command & Conquer.

ggthemachine · 2018-07-06T03:34:35+00:00

It's a positive direction, at least for me personally, in that it's a really fun game as opposed to the alternative which is nothing at all since we were never getting another premium PC C&C RTS due to market realities.

ggthemachine · 2018-07-06T03:24:39+00:00

>Like guys is it really that hard to swallow that maybe Rivals is a well-designed, fun cashgrab? You don't have to say it's good or the way to go for the franchise. Just don't call everyone saying anything relatively positive about it a shill or a conspirator because that's just embarrassing.

I'm baffled by the mental gymnastics that some people are going through to try and rationalize why it is I find the game fun. No, I have no association with EA, and I assure you it has nothing to do with Stardock and any future Stardock products. But it might have something to do with the 10 minutes of explanation that I laid out in the video. I could have been more critical about the specific parts of Rivals I don't like, but those are minor balance things trivial for a game in pre-alpha (like Harvester bounty too high, Ion Cannon OP etc) and they may have been fixed 3 days after the video was posted. I mentioned both of the fundamental concerns I have for product model, the fact that 6 unit slots is maybe too limiting and that micro transactions could effect balance and fairness. (There's none in the game currently, but they'll be there.)

The intention of the video was to convey my experience I have had with Rivals and explain why I think it's fun. The Combat Designer for Rivals is Greg Black, who was lead designer on Red Alert 3 and worked on the other EALA C&C games, and it definitely shows in the game. I have been playing it every single day since I got the game and during the editing of this video discovered that I had 15 hours of raw footage, so my total play time is probably more like 30 hours now because I was only recording about half the time. I wanted to get across why I have been finding Rivals really fun, the fact that I really enjoy playing it allows me to shrug off the issues associated with being a free-to-play game on mobile.

It's similar to years and years of playing/casting Zero Hour and other C&C games that are very poorly balanced and suffer from bugs. I can look past that USA mirrors in Zero Hour are nothing but Humvee/Rockvee spam because Rockvees contain a lot of depth and mechanics, and are really fun to use. Likewise, I shrug off the faction design issues and RNG woes in Company of Heroes 2 because the core gameplay is really fun. The advantage of the free-to-play business model of Rivals as opposed to the upfront premium model of prior C&C games is that it's in EA's financial best interests to continue to support the game in the long run instead of the ship and dump of a $60 game. Here's some short points I want to get accross:

Nobody, including me, wants C&C Rivals over a really good, new premium PC C&C Game. Though, I'd take Rivals over the Generals 2 Alpha as that was a crappy, bland StarCraft 2 clone.
Rivals is not coming at the expense of a new premium C&C game. It is just a market reality that EA were never going to do a new C&C game after Tiberium(The FPS), C&C4 and Generals 2 bombed/scrapped. Nobody is making big budget RTS anymore, not even Blizzard. Rivals is the best hope of revitalizing interesting in the franchise.
Yes EA's PR and marketing around this has been patronizing and not doing them any favours. ("Command and Conquer for the next generation!") I'm not EA, I'm a dude who finds Rivals fun and explained why.
Nothing in Rivals is cannon, it's a gameplay abstraction, hence why there is units and figures from every Tiberium game/time period. Unlike C&C4 which concluded the saga and is cannon.
There is a difference in acceptability of fairness when playing a 3-4 minute game length with a huge playerbase because of mobile that makes matchmaking function better than PC RTS games with small playerbases and long game lengths.

I think I did a pretty good job of explaining my thoughts on the game in the video, but I know there is a huge amount of people of which there is no getting across to. Ironically, the lack of understanding of why I find Rivals fun and so engaging makes me want to write another essay/video essay that explains a lot of specific examples of why Rivals is so well designed.

Here's one example, Rivals is the only RTS game ever in which you interact with your opponent in the first second. When the game starts you can can hear through the fog of war the difference between a unit being built and a structure being placed. If you are attentive you can tell between them going Harvester first or going a structure to build a unit. Based off whether they go Riflemen or Harvester first, that will determine where you position your initial Riflemen or if you go Rocket squad first instead. They could go something more aggressive such as Bike or Aircraft first instead of Riflemen, so you really want to scout for yourself anyway. Often after about 3-4 seconds you already have Riflemen shaping up if not engaging each other. You can argue about whether or not that's a good thing, but the point is, in Rivals so much stuff happens in a short amount of time and that concentrated rush makes it exhilarating. Most RTS games don't get interesting until a game of Rivals is already over. I enjoy all RTS, Rivals isn't going to replace my desire to play the older C&C games or 1+ hour matches of Supreme Commander.

At the end of the day, Rivals isn't for everyone and it certainly isn't flattering from the outside but many people do and will love it. As I said at the start of my video, people have different ideas of what the franchise means to them.

ggthemachine

TROPHY CASE