RPS Article: The 4X Genre Has Grown Stagnant, Here’s How To Fix It

[Mezmorki]

RPS Article: The 4X Genre Has Grown Stagnant, Here’s How To Fix It

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/03/07/how-to-fix-the-4x/

Written by Rob Zacny (Three Moves Ahead)

Interesting article .... I'll follow up with some thoughts in a moment ....

[Nasarog]

Origineel geplaatst door koalabrownie:

I'm sorry, but the truth is that you and a lot of other people in this thread are acting like someone who's been personally offended because someone doesn't like what you like. And rather than discuss the points of his article you're trying to discredit the author, either because of your opinion of the guy or in your case because of his association to a particular website.

I don't read RPS, never have, but I've listened to Rob Zacny talk for dozens or HUNDREDS of hours about 4X games on the Three Moves Ahead Podcast, a podcast which incidentally promoted Explorminate and its crew. And nothing in those podcasts suggests to me that he "hates" 4X games.

You want to get his opinions and others on 4X genre, listen to their podcast:
https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/the-4x-genre/
https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/star-drive-2/

He gave a decent, but not glowing review to Stardrive 2 on IGN:
http://ca.ign.com/articles/2015/04/20/stardrive-2-review

Is the content of his review indicative of someone who "hates" or doesn't "comprehend" 4X games?

We don't hate 3MA. We love 3MA actually. All of us have been listening for years and years. When Rob Z goes on a 4X rant though, I start to laugh. His experience with 4X is limited because he has seen it all and played it as well.

He often skips out on new 4X titles, and dismisses them outright.

When we review 4X titles, we spend a minimum of 40-50 hours playing the game to understand not just th egame, but its underlying mechanics too.

4X games are deep. Grand Strategy games are deep. Can you imagine someone trying to review a CK2 or Civ 5 only having played it for 20 hours?? I don't have to myself since I've seen it done time and again.

Anyways, back to Rob Z, he brings up great points, but he shits on 4X in the process. That bugs me. Plenty of new and recently released 4X titiles have tried some amazing things, but does he cover them and their efforts? Hardly!

[Troy]

This is one of the best threads we've had on the e4X forums. I'm very glad to see it. I have a few questions and remarks.

1. I may discuss with Nate splitting parts of this thread. There are some fantastic posts here that really have nothing to do with the RPS article. People will want to reference these posts in the future and they deserve a thread with a better and more search friendly name than what this one has.

2. I really have enjoyed with Rogue, Oliver, and Mario have brought to the table in this discussion. Is this the type of thing some of you would enjoy the e4X staff writing about in eXpositions for the site? And if we do, will people be willing to be forgiving if we make mistakes along the way?

3. I'm wary of catagorization for a number of reasons, but I think that's where a healthy peer-review process would come in handy. Thankfully, we have a fantastic community here. I salute the courage of everyone who had the guts to stick their foot out there and post something at the risk of some forum troll cutting it off.

4. Like Nate said, we don't hate RPS or 3MA, but that also means we can't criticize them.

[ディチィコ]

Origineel geplaatst door Marfig:

Origineel geplaatst door koalabrownie:

Even if that's true (and I suspect it isn't), it doesn't invalidate what he says.

It is true really. And it does invalidate what he is saying. Bear with me, but I have to come in Nate's defense.

While one may agree that a certain background story flavor can only benefit a 4x game, that is most certainly NOT what is wrong with 4x games. And consequently that is NOT what will fix them. The whole article is a fake. A pretencious piece of so-called gaming analysis by someone who, because of his complete failure to address 4x as a strategy genre, does not understand these games at all.

Zacny (forgive me if I sometimes may call him Zach, he's someone I don't usually like to follow and his name may become confused with someone else I know very well), is instead worried with something else entirely. His criticism comes from the fact he doesn't know what to do with 4x games.

The type of journalism that comes off RPS is riddled with subjectivity and appeals to The Experience Of Playing This Game as being more important than game design, mechanics or any other objective analysis of a game. It is part of the wave of New Games Journalism that one of the RPS founders started. And is itself based on New Journalism, a type of journalism that tries to address itself as Truth over Facts. Which is in itself as nonsensical devoid of meaning, as the type of witting that it ended up producing.

You cannot, literally, read ONE SINGLE game review or analysis at RPS without it being full to the brim with the most inane pseudo-intellectual bullshit and the so-called game experience, which is largely a personal and subjective view of a game that serves readers in no way imaginable. The task of actually informing the reader about a game is not a concern. The reader must only know how the writer felt when playing it.

Readers are drawn to this bullshit, because the hook resides on the writting style. New Journalism is usually humurous, confident in tone and generally entertaining. But the price you pay is you get to know nothing, almost nothing at all, about how the actual game is, and what YOUR own experience with it will be. RPS new games journalism is not about being informed by a game analysis or review. It is about being entertained by a game analysis or review.

This is more or less amiable towards RPG or FPS games, experimental indie titles, and gameart titles, which do tend to rely on emotional charges and gaming as an experience. But it clashes directly against the more pragmatic strategy titles, in particular the more focused 4x genre. It is for this reason you see very little coverage in RPS of strategy titles. And 4x in particular is demoted to the status of news reporting and rarely a title gets to be reviewed at RPS. Usually only because it has become somewhat popular.

Zacny wants story in the 4x genre so he can do the type of trash journalism they at RPS do for ever other genre. Without the whole background story, he can't connect emotionally to the game and gain enough material to write their usual subjective pieces about how the Antarians made him feel like when he was 4 and went and saw his first clown and got so scared he ran towards the House of Horrors entrance, and some other kind of lowkey fabricated humor that reveals nothing at all of how a game works.

He hates the 4x genre for sure. He's a hater by virtue of his total lack of comprehension of what it means to play what is essentially a stripped down to mechanics version of a strategy game. He just doesn't like these games as him (and John, another journalist buddy at RPS) have stated numerous times in the past. So to see him to come up and a adopt the mantle of someone with a PhD on gamming analys and pretend he knows anything about it and how to fix it, when everyone else in the world is scratching their heads trying to come up with new and inventive ways to further the genre, is an insult to those, like Nate, who have been looking deeply into this genre for years, and is exactly what you can expect from someone who can only be wrong. He's a hater and he is wrong. The only thing he did was to identify an issue that is certainly not what is wrong with 4x games.

I just want to say that I love you

[ディチィコ]

Origineel geplaatst door koalabrownie:

Origineel geplaatst door Mezmorki:

I guess the point here is that if someone is going to be critical of the "4X" genre - it would benefit their argument to be clear about what exactly they are criticizing.

"Dull, rote progress undercuts every aspect of 4X games. Combat scarcely changes except that the statistics on units and weapons get a little larger, so that the war you fight at the dawn of history is almost exactly the same as the war you’ll fight at the end. Once settlement is over and development is underway, it becomes all too easy to hit “end turn” a few hundred times until the score screen, because there’s little to admire or enjoy in the process of building. Friends and rivals become abstract collections of math to be manipulated with trade offers and military strength values, rather than fellow actors on a heroic stage. You’re all there competing to build a better civilization, but with no idea of what you’re actually building towards."

This quote is the biggest load of horse shit I've ever read. What he is describing is a GAME. You know, where you increase in power while trying attain victory. If you don't like the fucking game then go play something else. You don't like 4x games, Rob, we get it. But that whole progression is what 4x games ARE. You want to be an actor on a heroic stage? What? Go play an RPG. There's a lot of good ones. If you want to build a monstrous space fleet and blow some shit up with it, and that alone sounds like a good enough reason to play a game, then maybe we can get along.

[ディチィコ]

Another thing this dude totally misses is that new players are coming into the genre every day. MOO2 is a great game, but a 12 -year old is going to look at it and give it a pass due to presentation. Rob may be sick of 4x games, and we all may have our gripes with them, but I don't think there's anything wrong with providing a polished and fun take on a proven formula. It's the type of thing a curmudgeon will frown at because the child inside him is long dead. But I know for a fact that some kids will boot up StarDrive 2 as their first 4x and have a blast discovering what we did when we were their ages.

[Mezmorki]

Well, I think we know your feelings on the matter!

[AK_icebear]

Origineel geplaatst door Zero:

But I know for a fact that some kids will boot up StarDrive 2 as their first 4x and have a blast discovering what we did when we were their ages.

This is an important point that many of us bemoaning 4X issues forget or ignore.

[screamingpalm]

I can immediately spot the problem. The author cites AAA/big budget games and then complains about stagnation and shallow gameplay. Ummm... duh? I just started getting into Illwinter's games, and am really enjoying the rich depth of gameplay and detail. Here is an entertaining AAR from Dominons someone posted on the Steam forum for example: https://devnada.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/drama-mama-introduction/

Big production values are not only unnecessary, they are often detrimental- ESPECIALLY for strategy games. Can you imagine the PC that would be required to run AI War with HD graphics for example? The thousands of ships and static defenses and projectiles etc that would need to be rendered? Meanwhile everyone complains about bad AI and boring game design wrapped in pretty graphics lol. One poster here claiming that $5 games are garbage/low quality... yet after 500 + hours in AI War, it became one of my all time favorites- a game I bought the whole collection for $5 on Steam Summer Sale. :)

[Gregorovitch]

Origineel geplaatst door Mezmorki:

Origineel geplaatst door Gregorovitch:

For myself, and I would suspect for many players, I think I can look at a game and say "That is a straight 4X" and I can look at another and say "That is a strategy game" and I can look at yet another and say "I can't really classify this one".

I'm going to quote myself from from earlier in a different thread in response to your post:

Origineel geplaatst door Mezmorki:

A helpful way to think about classification is based on Wittgenstein's Family Resemblance[www.philosophy-index.com] concept. If we imaging a family, all members of the family have certain features/attributes that they share with some other members of the family, such that you can tell they are a family generally having such and such traits - yet not every member of the family expresses each of those traits or in the same way.

I think this is a more applicable method for thinking about game classification as it does away with the need to discretely classify by flow chart or whatever. It allows for overlapping features and edge cases ... and is in line with Rogue's Venn diagram notion a bit as well (we just need to image dozens of overlapping circles).

That is a very interesting way to look at it. However I think there is a bit a of a problem since a particualr classification (or set) can mean different things to different people and this might be considered an important issue for both acurately describing your game or being able to accurately select a potential game to play. Is it important that a classification cannot be misleading or misunderstood?

4X is something of problematic term in this context I think. Everyone knows what an FPS, RPG, or adventure game is, but 4X is hard to define. I looked at my library and checked the steam user defined tags ("Folksonomy") for a number of game:

Banished: city builder, strategy, simulation, survival
Banner Saga: RPG, turn based, strategy, tactical
Cities Skylines: city builder, simulation, building, strategy
CK2: grand startegy, strategy, medieval, historical
DW: strategy, 4X, space, simulation, RTS
EL: Strategy, 4X, turn based, fantasy
ES: Strategy, 4X, space, turn based
EU4: grand strategy, strategy, historical, simulation
Expeditions Conquistiador: RPG, strategy, turn based, historical
Factorio: strategy, base building, sandbox
Fallen Enchantress: strategy, RPG, turn based, fantasy, 4X
GC2: strategy, 4X, space, turn based, sci-fi
Homeworld: space, strategy, RTS, sci-fi, action
Kings Bounty: RPG, turn based strategy, strategy, fantasy
Civ 5: turn based strategy, strategy, turn based, 4X
Sorcerer King: strategy, turn based, fantasy, 4X, RPG
Spellforce: RPG. strategy, action, fanrasy, RTS
Star Ruler 2: strategy, 4X ,space, RTS, sci-fi
SotS2: strategy, 4X, space, sci-fi
Shogun 2: strategy, turn based strategy, RTS, historical
Tropico 4: city builder, simulation, strategy, RTS
Unity of Command: strategy, WW2, turn based strategy
Valkyria Chronicles: strategy, turen based, RPG
Worlds of Magic: strategy, RPGT, turn based, 4X, fantasy
X3 Terran Conflict: space, simulation, sci-fi, sandbox, strategy
XCOM2: strategy, turn based, tactical, sci-fi
XCOM1: turn based strategy, tactical, strategy, sci-fi
Sins of a Solar Empire: strategy, RTS, space. sci-fi, 4X
Thea: strategy, RPG, survival, turn based

What does this tell us?

[For me it seels to support the arguement that 4X is a sub-genre of strategy, wholly contained within it, but it doean't really tell me why EL, say, is a 4X and EU4 isn't]

[FireStorm20]

Origineel geplaatst door koalabrownie:

Origineel geplaatst door Mezmorki:

I guess the point here is that if someone is going to be critical of the "4X" genre - it would benefit their argument to be clear about what exactly they are criticizing.

"Dull, rote progress undercuts every aspect of 4X games. Combat scarcely changes except that the statistics on units and weapons get a little larger, so that the war you fight at the dawn of history is almost exactly the same as the war you’ll fight at the end. Once settlement is over and development is underway, it becomes all too easy to hit “end turn” a few hundred times until the score screen, because there’s little to admire or enjoy in the process of building. Friends and rivals become abstract collections of math to be manipulated with trade offers and military strength values, rather than fellow actors on a heroic stage. You’re all there competing to build a better civilization, but with no idea of what you’re actually building towards."

Thats a good quote to quote becasue it exactly shows what imho is wrong with Rob wiews on 4x. As you read it, its a very shapeful little paragraph filled with able words that must at the end say to the reader " wow thats a smart guy who knows what he is talking about".

To me , it just shows Rob doesnt get 4x. Lets go in detail:

Combat scarcely changes except that the statistics on units and weapons get a little larger, so that the war you fight at the dawn of history is almost exactly the same as the war you’ll fight at the end

Endless Legend: You got 3 tiers of units that you unlock with time that can change dramaticly the way you play. Unlocking techs give you many items/amulets that allow you to alter dramaticly your troops abilites: Want to make a supermobile army of archers keeping ddistance? or SuperSolid tanks?Or mix the 2? More cheaer troops or few elite ones but very expensive?Do you have the resoruces to build thebest weapons/armor or you gonna have to do with lower ones? The terrain plays an important role, and choosing combat on strategic maps in hill terrain where you can place your archers on hills can give you tremendous advantage. Finally you must counter who you are fighting. As Wild Walkers i might have used mostly my archers as backbone, but going aginst vaulters with mostly archers is a suicide idea...

Sword of the Stars 1 - Well the sentence is so silly when you pair it with Sots. You uncover all time different techs which can change your fighting dramaticly. PD, torpedoes, unguided torps, energy absorbers etc.

Result: Rob has no idea what he is talking about.

[FireStorm20]

Once settlement is over and development is underway, it becomes all too easy to hit “end turn” a few hundred times until the score screen, because there’s little to admire or enjoy in the process of building.

Endless Legend: You can build up your city squares.You can plan expanding cities to claim resources or more importantly anomalies, becuae there are techs that give trmendous bonuses to that. Not all buildings are worth building everywhere.Besides in a 4x game Expansion phase never ends, as you will soon enter wars that rhopefully make you extend.So you must all time plan what resrouces you want to aqcuire.

You got all time the influence/empire plan/luxury resources mechanics to plan for. You got the winter mechanic. In short , i really fail to see hwo yuo can die in boredom clicking nexdt trun button

Sword of the Stars 1:Well there is no buidlingds at all lol so if you want to be literal he speaks the truth. But again imho he misses the point as there is tons to do on other fronts. Tech is complex, you to care for it. You got trade to micromanage. You got orbitals/ defenses to worry about, ships redeployments, Random menaces, Grand Menaces. And this a very war orineted 4x, so there is alwys war.

Result: A round sentence which hides the truth.

Friends and rivals become abstract collections of math to be manipulated with trade offers and military strength values, rather than fellow actors on a heroic stage

Maybe the most telling for me.Yes some flavour to avoid "spreadsheet effect" is much welcomed. But in the end strategy/politics both in RL and games is in big part about numbers and balancing them. If you find it dull to dive into those in big part admiteddly mathematic mechanics, maybe just pure strategy/4x gaming isnt for you. Maybe RPG is more your taste for your "heroic stage". Just stop torturing yourself man.

I could go on o, expand to many other games but this reply is long enough as it is. In summary for me Rob just doesnt see the intricate interesting sides of 4x because he just doesnt like them, so how can he?

From what i remeber form his SD1 review: The races are dull (lol i spend a loty of time just reading all the cheeky conversatiosn with various races), the ship designing sucks, the planets are the same (anyone rmeembers how big a prize was a terran world in SD1) and trading wasnt a mechanic even worth mentioning:

Way to go yeah.

[RayFowler]

Perhaps part of his problem is that he is playing on the low difficulty levels? Those are designed for beginners and yes, you can win pretty easily by simply hitting next turn after you've finished the expansion phase.

[Nasarog]

Origineel geplaatst door Gregorovitch:

[For me it seels to support the arguement that 4X is a sub-genre of strategy, wholly contained within it, but it doean't really tell me why EL, say, is a 4X and EU4 isn't]

I can explain the difference between EU4 as Grand Strategy and EL as 4X and why GS is a sub-category of 4X and why you are correct in calling 4X a sub-genre of Strategy.

[kuraiken]

Origineel geplaatst door FireStorm20:

Combat scarcely changes except that the statistics on units and weapons get a little larger, so that the war you fight at the dawn of history is almost exactly the same as the war you’ll fight at the end

Endless Legend: You got 3 tiers of units that you unlock with time that can change dramaticly the way you play. Unlocking techs give you many items/amulets that allow you to alter dramaticly your troops abilites: Want to make a supermobile army of archers keeping ddistance? or SuperSolid tanks?Or mix the 2? More cheaer troops or few elite ones but very expensive?Do you have the resoruces to build thebest weapons/armor or you gonna have to do with lower ones? The terrain plays an important role, and choosing combat on strategic maps in hill terrain where you can place your archers on hills can give you tremendous advantage. Finally you must counter who you are fighting. As Wild Walkers i might have used mostly my archers as backbone, but going aginst vaulters with mostly archers is a suicide idea...

Sword of the Stars 1 - Well the sentence is so silly when you pair it with Sots. You uncover all time different techs which can change your fighting dramaticly. PD, torpedoes, unguided torps, energy absorbers etc.

Result: Rob has no idea what he is talking about.

Actually, this is a point where I'd largely agree with the article.
What you're mentioning is detail level, fine-tuning. What he's talking about are gameplay mechanics and a different dynamic.
And that is something most modern games don't do, not just 4x, but all of them.

A game whose dynamic and gameplay fundamentally changes throughout a "game"? Starcraft 2.
The reason is because weapons have properties beyond their damage, same for the defenses. Paired with activateable abilities, a single unit through its new technology can radically alter the way the battlefield works. A new technology alters the way the player has to play the game, because the implementation of, say tanks, alters the value and the abilities of almost every single unit and specific tactics or strategies open up, while others stop being viable. And these are realized in gameplay decisions, that is actions the player has to actively take, meaning he is inputting very different commands than he otherwise would.

Modern games are hesistant to do that, they keep to the same mechanics and principles instead of evolving them or enhancing them. Sure, you can look at, say, Stardrive 2, and say: but look, different weapon systems with different properties, and special effects to boot, lots of potential for specialization! But play match after match and ask yourself: Do the engagements play vastly different (emphasis on play, that is interact, not look) to you? Because the mechanics are changing, are different, in every engagement. But do you feel that? Does the gameplay really change? Or do you still play the game the same way just with some slightly different mechanics and visual effects?

And the degree to which this holds true is of course subjective. Some will say that there's a significant change if there's a change in engagement range preference, but others will look for tangible change that alters the way they play the game.

Let's, for curiosity, just throw a MoO idea out there to make use of the new asteroids on the battlefield: What if you can develop a weapon whose shot is so powerful, it can move asteroids, and doesn't destroy them? What if all of a sudden, you could manipulate the asteroids, turn them into projectiles and turn the enemy's defense into a trap.
Whether the mechanic would make fun, could be used by the AI, etc. aside, you can't claim that is not a significant change in how the battles would be played, and that from that point onwards, technology vastly changes how you play the encounter.

And those sort of "new gameplay mechanic" developments mostly don't happen, not in any significant way.

[FireStorm20]

Origineel geplaatst door kuraiken:

Origineel geplaatst door FireStorm20:

Endless Legend: You got 3 tiers of units that you unlock with time that can change dramaticly the way you play. Unlocking techs give you many items/amulets that allow you to alter dramaticly your troops abilites: Want to make a supermobile army of archers keeping ddistance? or SuperSolid tanks?Or mix the 2? More cheaer troops or few elite ones but very expensive?Do you have the resoruces to build thebest weapons/armor or you gonna have to do with lower ones? The terrain plays an important role, and choosing combat on strategic maps in hill terrain where you can place your archers on hills can give you tremendous advantage. Finally you must counter who you are fighting. As Wild Walkers i might have used mostly my archers as backbone, but going aginst vaulters with mostly archers is a suicide idea...

Sword of the Stars 1 - Well the sentence is so silly when you pair it with Sots. You uncover all time different techs which can change your fighting dramaticly. PD, torpedoes, unguided torps, energy absorbers etc.

Result: Rob has no idea what he is talking about.

Actually, this is a point where I'd largely agree with the article.
What you're mentioning is detail level, fine-tuning. What he's talking about are gameplay mechanics and a different dynamic.
And that is something most modern games don't do, not just 4x, but all of them.

A game whose dynamic and gameplay fundamentally changes throughout a "game"? Starcraft 2.
The reason is because weapons have properties beyond their damage, same for the defenses. Paired with activateable abilities, a single unit through its new technology can radically alter the way the battlefield works. A new technology alters the way the player has to play the game, because the implementation of, say tanks, alters the value and the abilities of almost every single unit and specific tactics or strategies open up, while others stop being viable. And these are realized in gameplay decisions, that is actions the player has to actively take, meaning he is inputting very different commands than he otherwise would.

Modern games are hesistant to do that, they keep to the same mechanics and principles instead of evolving them or enhancing them. Sure, you can look at, say, Stardrive 2, and say: but look, different weapon systems with different properties, and special effects to boot, lots of potential for specialization! But play match after match and ask yourself: Do the engagements play vastly different (emphasis on play, that is interact, not look) to you? Because the mechanics are changing, are different, in every engagement. But do you feel that? Does the gameplay really change? Or do you still play the game the same way just with some slightly different mechanics and visual effects?

And the degree to which this holds true is of course subjective. Some will say that there's a significant change if there's a change in engagement range preference, but others will look for tangible change that alters the way they play the game.

Let's, for curiosity, just throw a MoO idea out there to make use of the new asteroids on the battlefield: What if you can develop a weapon whose shot is so powerful, it can move asteroids, and doesn't destroy them? What if all of a sudden, you could manipulate the asteroids, turn them into projectiles and turn the enemy's defense into a trap.
Whether the mechanic would make fun, could be used by the AI, etc. aside, you can't claim that is not a significant change in how the battles would be played, and that from that point onwards, technology vastly changes how you play the encounter.

And those sort of "new gameplay mechanic" developments mostly don't happen, not in any significant way.

I dont get your argument.As i tought i described with details Endless Legend and SOTS have mechanics that change combat with time. I dont get the argument that its "fine tuning". Imho its at least as much changing as new units in SC2.

Another example : Shogun Fall of the Samurai. The introduction of advanced gundpowder units and artillery changes the battlefield dramaticly.