The 'combat' gameplay of the two games is pretty hard to compare, except for one fact: You can lose missions, and losing missions will set you back. Proper 'hard' games, by creating very low expectations - that is, telling the player they will fail - make eventual victory more meaningful. Difficult enemies do not exist to make the player lose: They exist to make the eventual victory more meaningful by creating a expectation of failure.Īchievements aren't compared against nothingness: Players are happy when they exceed their own expectations, and unhappy when they fall short of them. Players like to win: CPU enemies exist, ultimately, to be defeated. It seems obvious, but it can get out of focus. In this regard, it's very important to note one thing: Players like winning. XCOM creates additional tension by pretending you can get into a total loss situation, which is actually pretty unrealistic - especially in xcom2, and especially after the first two months. In that moment, you understand that the game isn't fucking around, and will kick your ass if you're not careful. The fact that you can actually have setbacks, and lose, doesn't quite kick in until the first soldier death. XCOM is much subtler than that: While the premise is, storywise, an unwinnable situation - it's a "normal" unwinnable, the kind games throw at you every day of the week and twice on sundays. This is accomplished, first and foremost, thematically: "Dark" in the name, proud of being difficult, and desperate characters are a staple. If you 'win', you're defying expectations, not complying to them. The implicit meaning behind that is: Failure is expected. One very important point to make straight out is that, in reality, what matters isn't the actual possibility of failure, but rather the perception of that.ĭarkest Dungeon, like Dark Souls brilliantly did before it, plays it's card very, very straight: This is a hard game, and you will lose. Obviously, a long game can't straight up display a YOU LOSE, START BACK upon a loss: Thereby, mechanics to punish failure, but not cripplingly so, are needed. X-COM(2) and Darkest Dungeon are games with obviously heavy inter-influence, and i'm choosing them to talk about possible approaches to strategic permadeath. How to make a game that has satisfying wins, but still lets the player win and doesn't drive him/her away? Wins are more satisfying when hard to get.
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