Some ideas on gameplay

Gameplay, for the millionth time, does not exist in a vacuum. Look at where you are. It's a game about the awesomeness of blowing up planets first and foremost and gameplay second.

Ideally the two ideas of gameplay and style or story support and inform each other.

Stop moving the goalposts bmb. They're talking about Gameplay. They are ALLOWED to talk about certain mechanics in a vacuum if they wish.

If you've got nothing to add besides "gameplay doesn't exist in a vacuum" then don't reply, I think we've all heard more then enough of that from your previous posts.

You have an unhealthy obsession with goalposts.

This is a thread about legitimizing mechanics logically if you didn't notice. Any vacuum talk is in fact off topic.

You have an unhealthy obsession with not adding anything to topics, ignoring counter arguments, going on philosophical rants and changing topics. The later two fall under the category of "moving the goalposts".

Gameplay can refer to an entire game and all within it or individual parts that make up the whole (ie. mechanics in a vacuum). Your statement "It's a game about the awesomeness of blowing up planets first and foremost and gameplay second." makes no sense, since "the awesomeness of blowing up planets" is, in fact, gameplay. You yourself acknowledge this duality when you said "adjacency [a single mechanic] being good for the gameplay" [sic].

I don't adress posts and points that aren't relevant. Just like I'm going to ignore your goalpost crap for now to keep on topic.

Gameplay certainly doesn't refer to a whole game. Gameplay specifically refers to the mechanical side and more specifically how that affects how the game is played (clue is in the title after all). For example the mechanic of adjacency changes the way the game is played toward more compact bases, and thus more valuable targets, and more optimization of your resource use, weighing that off against making yourself too vulnerable to attack and chain reaction. It changes the gameplay in this way. And I say these are positive changes to the gameplay or the way the game is played that wouldn't exist without the mechanic.

The awesomeness of blowing up a planet is a stylistic choice and to some degree a story element, even if it isn't a narrative as such it underpins the kind of emotional experience you want out of the game.
The gameplay of blowing up planets is created via mechanics that enable, encourage and/or force the necessity of performing that action. So mechanics are not strictly gameplay but they create gameplay. And gameplay is informed by the narrative or stylistic choices of the game. And mechanics are in turn informed by the gameplay.

And ideally the narrative is also informed by the mechanics and vice versa. So you have a story that makes sense with the mechanics, mechanics that make sense with the story and enable gameplay that is desirable for that story. Synergy between all things.

hi. this isnt a japanese final dream ix or kirbys fantasy land game.

please keep the anime narratives to anime shows like family guy and archer.

What?

What veta is probably trying to say is; Poor gameplay can shatter a well crafted story more than a poorly crafted story can break gameplay.

Story is the least important aspect of a Game like Planetary Annihilation.

Within a Game, Gameplay is king.

Is that right veta? did I understand you correctly?

Not only is that false as I've played several games that would be really fun if not for the constant interruptions by lengthy talking sequences, poorly made cutscenes and general bad writing.

It's also not relevant as I explained what exactly I meant with "story".

- You can certainly fluff away why the first one shouldn't be done: you could say that factories have more precise building techniques, or the acu and engies simply don't have enough onboard space for the blueprints of units. From a gameplay perspective, it completely breaks up what RTSs have been based on so far, and that's keeping factories mostly static. If anything could build anything anywhere, it would completely change gameplay in ways we just can't imagine. And I don't think it would end well. I do think that mobile factories might be interesting though, I'm just not sure in what form of implementation.

-Second has been discussed for months, and I think the devs are on board with it

-What? Why? No, that's just a bad idea. Mex nodes are a valuable way to create contention points on a map, force the player to expand map control, and add a sort of scarcitly level to metal. If you didn't have to go out of your comfort zone to build mex spots, there would be far fewer strategic reasons to build outside of your base, or on other planets in general. Besides, that's basically what fabbers are. Which may or may not be in the game. I'd be happy if they were or they weren't, honestly.

-RL doesn't always apply to gameplay. Actually, it rarely does. Now, keeping games 'realistic' is important to allow for easy suspension of disbelief, but sometimes it just doesn't work out. This is one of them...keeping air and ground separated creates for more dynamic strategic decisions, in that you can't just go and spam a whole bunch of interceptors to win the game. That's what gunships are for...but then gunships are often vulnerable to or sometimes can't even fire upon interceptors. This creates for really interesting air play, because the goal then becomes to secure the air in order to be able to use gunships. And that doesn't even bring ground AA into the equation. It's a cool system.

The blueprints encoded into another blueprint would still take up the same amount of space barring any kind of compression scheme. So the limited memory excuse doesn't quite work because a unit that can build a unit that can build another unit would need memory to contain the first unit as well as the second unit if the first unit is to be able to build it.

In other words the commander would need to contain blueprints for every single unit. A factory would need to contain blueprints for the units it can build plus structures that its engineers can build, plus any units that structures built by those engineers can build. And any structures those structures' units can build.

Basically every construction unit would need to contain the full set anyway in some capacity.

And even if we say the commander has the most memory and other construction units have a subset of what the commander has, how would engineers be able to assist factories if they don't have the blueprints for those units?

What about from a gameplay perspective?

From a gameplay perspective being able to build any unit anywhere would be interesting. I don't know if it would be good or bad but it would be interesting. Have to try it basically.

Knight is right about one thing, you'd need a better build menu to sort through units.

You also want engineers to be able to assist anything to maintain the simplicity of the build ray paradigm.

Yup. Silly assertions deserve silly retorts.

So that fluff doesn't work. The point is, it doesn't really matter what the fluff is, they can make whatever fluff they want. What's more important is what they end up doing.

Since we're not dealing with pre-established canon here there isn't any kind of prewritten story that can influence gameplay. Hence Gameplay being king in a game like Planetary Annihilation. If it works for gameplay, it's in and will be justified later.

It's great to not cart around the baggage of SupCom. The game is free to evolve its gameplay without any restraints because of story or pre-established style from games prior.

Such a breath of fresh air, wouldn't you agree?

I mean... that's a HUGE part of why SupCom 2 failed as a game, was it not? Not living up to the pedigree set by SupCom/FA, in practically every way...

Sigh. I really wanted to like SupCom 2, but my preconceptions wouldn't let me.

You keep harping on about gameplay this and gameplay that like it's some sort of religion. Never really explaining why you think it's important as if it's self evident. And choosing instead to subvert the premise of the thread by falling back on your initial proposition over and over.

Gameplay is important but not to the point where... hmm, I think you can guess at this point what I'm going to say.

this may come as a shock but ppl play games for gameplay. there's plenty of media devoted exclusively to narratives

you cant have a good game with bad gameplay and a great story - you can have a good game with great gameplay and a bad story (see: every good game except maybe bioshock infinite)

Your kidding right?

I don't know what kind of level your thinking of, but certainly even remotely above newb level, (Read newbie, not noob, even noobs know this) it is one of the largest influence in how it plays out.

It matters SLIGHTLY less in 40kmx40km maps, but at that point, the general game design simply falls apart anyway.