OpenBracket

*NOTE* These are generalizations. They don’t apply to all games, but to a majority of them.

**Other note** This post took me a while (obviously) but it is because I am currently building my own strat and I thought long and hard about what bothered me and what techniques I will be using in my game to counter the overarching problems mentioned below.

So for you out there that play PBBG strategy games, you probably have a few times to complain about. I know I sure as hell do. And I am going to talk about those complaints here and figure out how I think they could be improved upon.

So the basics of a strat game is pretty simple. Build up your nation and kick the living crap out of everyone you can or avoid having the crap kicked out of you. Pretty simple premise but very enjoyable if done well. These games also run in rounds, so every few months, they reset the round and everyone starts with a clean slate. Which leads to several problems but I will touch on those in a few.

Actually, stopping to think about all the problems I have with PBBG strat games I can make two definitive categories that they fall under:
Balance
Repetition

balance

This is a big problem with games from every genre, but I think it most clearly rears it’s ugly head in strats.

gameplay strategies
Often times, when playing a strategy game, I find that there’s one only a handful of ways to play the game and do good at it. Part of this problem stems from there only being one way of ranking for players to compare themselves, which is usually network or attacks won. And the games that do compare players on different levels, don’t have the game designed so that these players can actually survive in the game. Say I’m a researcher and I have tech far ahead of anyone that attacks me, but because they have been building crappy units since the start of the game, they simply flood me.

To create a game that takes into account some other stat would totally change the style of these games. They won’t be rapid, build and kill. I don’t know what they would look like, but I am working on it to figure it out.

single/multi play
I hate it when I find a game that has potential and this is the flaw that kills it for me. I am currently playing two strategy pbbgs that have this as a major flaw. I sign up and play the game and play it for weeks and never encounter another player. The forums are cryptic, the options to communicate or hidden and the ability to interact is almost impossible.

All you can really do in games like these is build and research. I know my rank, but how the hell do I attack! Things like that kill a game. Some people may find it fun, but I like a lot of interaction between players. It’s what I look for in games.

This problems roots lay in two places: Poor interface design, and a poor concept of community I think on the designers behalf. Hiding the mail and attack commands deep insubmenu’s and having only icons without a text box for nav , you are just asking for trouble. It leads to players maintaining their account for a few days, maybe a week or two, but when you can’t interact with other players or even see that other players are interacting you start to loss interest… or I do at least.
Then we have community. The most important game feature of any PBBG in my opinion. Making it difficult to communicate or even see global events, stifles a community to the point where you don’t have one. You just have a bunch of people playing your game with no connections or real interest.

repetition

I don’t need to really explain this one since it’s self explanatory I like to think. But I hate doing the same thing, every bloody time I log in. I want something different to happen. I want wars to start because I offended someone in the forums. I don’t just want to be attacked, build up, attack back. Make it so that the game can have different aspects.

For instance, SK eliminated repetition by having sectors and each round you would be forced into a different sector where leadership could (and was) fought for, and then when a leader was picked, you would join an alliance where wars started over so many little things. It made the game fun and exciting for a good time. It did in the end get boring because even with all of that after 2 years of play it became the same thing again and again. For me.

So even with a more human factor into the game it can still get repetitious. How do you counter this? Change the rules, had new rules, add new units, turn off units for a round… just change it up, in particular thegameplay, not just layout or something equally as boring like you can now add color to text in the forums.

Repetition is really bad in game that force you to research or upgrade buildings to unlock new ones. I hate to stereotype, but many of the German empire building strats I find to suffer from this. Lots of people find that interesting and fun, and that’s good for them. But I would rather see the game play be more focused around playing and interacting, than, what I feel these games try to do, keep a person playing as long as possible no matter what. If the game takes 4 weeks before it gets interesting, you may play that 4 week just to see what happens, then it 3 more weeks till you get this unit which changes game play and then its 5 days until you are able to build enough troops to attack… no. Sorry. Next game.

But, this is just my opinion. I’m just a guy trying to build games that I think are fun. This isn’t a science that we are looking at here. There is no one right answer. But we can still critique, rip apart, study and try to develop new, unique ways to build things, to design, to play. This is my goal, and with that I ask, as I always do, for input, thoughts, idea’s.

The next article is actually taking longer for me to write than I intended. I find myself brooding over designs and idea’s as I write this and get caught on those. But while I work on it, I want to ask you, the readers a few questions:

What is the most  important feature of a web game?

Whats the most overlooked feature?

What can be (in a general sense) be done to increase the  quality of web games?

What do you hate/dislike/disagree with most about web games?

Do you think that utilizing new technology is as important as gameplay?

I would love to hear what you guys think about those. I ask that everyone that reads this post answer, even if someone has already said what you were going to.