Fun and Games - challenge and the gamer

[Paper Tiger]

We've all heard it said, usually as a warning when someone is being irresponsible or too care-free. 'Life is not all fun and games'. That games gets mentioned in the same breath tends to suggest that games are frivolous, light-hearted affairs. But there are also serious games and we're all fans of at least one serious game. There's nothing frivolous about CMBN.

The subject of the fun value of CMx2 games has come up in one or two discussions I've had in the past year and a half and I've recently been giving this quite a lot of thought. It seems to me that my idea of 'fun' when playing a serious game is very different from some others and this has caused some friction between me and a small number of posters. I am making this post so that I can have something to link to should these issues crop up again in the future. This is not going to be a short read and it's probably not of much interest for most of you, but here goes.

I consider myself to be a serious 'serious gamer' as are most of us here. Don't get me wrong, I like the occasional light game from time to time. I have been a serious gamer most of my life. I was the captain of my school's chess team for my last two years there and in my capacity of captain, I played games of chess against the other school captains in competitions. To stay at the top of a very competitive group my chemistry teacher, Mr Milne, who was a great chess player himself, encouraged me to study the game deeply to understand opening theory, middle game and end game strategy. It was the end game that I excelled in and if I could survive the other player's onslaught and get through to the end game, I was usually home and dry.

But, after leaving school, when somebody found out that I played chess, they would ask to play a game with me. Most of the time, this turned out to be an uncomfortable experience as I would beat them effortlessly and it made me feel like I was bullying them or just showing off. (That's not boasting. It just happens to be the result of hard work and study.) But if they played a good game they would have my full attention and that was always a more enjoyable experience.

I also discovered wargames when I was at school. Although I started out playing WW2 table-top miniature rules, I came to board games quite quickly and WW2 wasn't really my favourite period. That turned out to be the Napoleonic Era and the American Civil War. But there was one board game series that eventually came to dominate my game-time and that was Advanced Squad Leader. When played against another human, this game offered me as much of a challenge as a game of chess could. And when I didn't have an opponent on hand, I would play both sides to the best of my ability and still get that 'hit'. ASL also provided me with a very broad range of missions to play. I could play with a handful of counters on a small board for four or five turns, half an hours play sometimes, or I could play a massive campaign like Red Barricades for example. I didn't get many opportunies to play the three historical modules, including Panthers in the Mist and Pegasus Bridge because of the size of the maps and the density of counters so I played the scenarios that shipped with them instead. Having two cats didn't really help either as they really seem to enjoy sleeping on them when you're not looking.

For most of my life there's always been a cat around and so my board wargaming habit was always under threat from the truly catastrophic intervention of my furry little friends. So when home computers started growing up, I was looking for a computer wargame that I could keep set up indefinitely. I tried quite a number of these but in most cases the AI was truly appalling and so the challenge died on the vine very, very quickly. Two notable exceptions were a game called 'White Death' (I think) covering the battle for Velikie Luki and a naval game called 'Action Stations'. However, these days, the AI in some games has developed to the point where it can do much more than just provide an opponent for a newbie to learn the game mechanics.

Obviously, I've spent an enormous amount of time playing BFC's CM series of games, both CMx1 and 2. The real hook for me was the scenario editor which allowed me to create my own maps and scenarios and that is what kept me really engaged for such a long time. But, up until recently, there is one other game franchise that I have played and loved just as much and that is the Civilization series.

I reckon I've spent more time playing the Civ series than I have CMx1 and 2 combined. I found Civ 2 when it came out and I've played every game in the series for a countless number of hours, sometimes sitting with the duvet wrapped around me in front of my computer at 2 in the morning on a cold winter's night playing 'just one more turn'.

But I've lost my interest in Civ now because the game no longer offers me a challenge when I play it. Civ V's new 1-UPT rule basically took all the challenge out of playing against the AI for me. It's too easy for me to destroy the AI side with tiny, but very well placed forces. I was disappointed quite early on when I was playing a game as Russia. I clearly wasn't going to win that game as the Indians had built up a huge empire and were far ahead of me technologically and militarily. So I decided to go down in a blaze of glory and declared war on India. Sure enough, huge numbers of mech and armour backed up by missiles came at my small civ but I beat them off easily because the AI had absolutely no idea how to do war. This happened in my games time and time again and so it became harder and harder to work up any enthusiasm for starting up a new game. Gods and Kings got me back in for one game but it was just the same. More units, more civs but no military challenge whatsoever. Where's the fun when Alexander the Great threatens you in the game and you know that if he attacks you, you'll be able to take down his massive army one-handed and blindfolded? It just reduces him to being a Paper Tiger.

Of course, it's not a game about war but conflict between civilizations is a very important element in the game play and that part holds no challenge for me anymore. As a result, my love affair with Civ has died and I don't see me picking up the Brave New World expansion later this year unless they do some major work on the war AI part of the game. Although CIv has varying difficulty levels, the AI doesn't get smarter or raise its game in any way as you ramp up that difficulty. It just gets more and more production and research bonuses as you climb the difficulty ladder. There don't appear to be any bonuses to combat which would make the combat side of the game a bit more challenging. Basically, the AI cheats and even though it makes the game more challenging this robs the fun for me.

Another deep strategy game that I've played a lot of is 'Hearts of Iron'. I picked up the first iteration way back while I was waiting for the computer version of another classic board game "World in Flames' to arrive (and am still waiting). One thing that happens when you up the difficulty is that the AI side gets combat bonuses (10% at hard, 25% at very hard). This doesn't make the AI smarter but it's more effective when it does what it does. This meant that I could set up and enjoy a campaign as the USSR in HOI 2 (Armaggedon) preparing for the German invasion. The Germans could put in a very powerful Barbarossa in 1941 at the higher difficulty levels but eventually, I would stop them in the winter and then usually end 1942 in Berlin and on the road to Paris. it was fun while it lasted and I'd usually quit after I'd steamrolled over mainland Europe in the west and China in the east.

It looked like HOI was going to go the way of Civ series and that prevented me from picking up HOI3 until late last year.The franchise-saver for me was that HOI 3 provided me with the option to have the AI manage my forces for me and this renewed the challenge once again. Now I could give my army groups, armies and corps objectives and stances and avanues of approach and then I'd sit back and watch it do its thing. This really works for me as my forces are being handled by the same AI as the computer opponent are. It's not able to plan as deeply as I can and so, barring a massive material disadvantage, I'm probably going to emerge as the winner. But I have to think and plan carefully to get that win. It's not easy to achieve and so feels like the time invested in playing it is worthwhile.

Now that's a long story :eek: but we've firmly established by now that I don't find 'easy to win' to be a quality I value in a serious game and that it is the challenge that gets and holds my interest. Naturally, this is going to influence my designing in a major way. But difficulty is not everything. The missions must be enjoyable to play as well. I won't get into my philosophy of scenario design as JonS is doing that for us all already. However, I will say that enjoying playing a mission is a very close second to difficulty in my book. There are so many different things that can make a mission fun to play for me so I won't go into them either. I've designed quite a broad range of missions for CMx2 and I've really enjoyed playing almost all of them.

Finding the right level of challenge in a stand-alone mission is a real headache and it is even more so when it is part of a lengthy campaign and I have to use my own best judgement at first and then listen very carefully to the feedback I get from my play-testers to get it 'right'. Difficulty itself does not make a mission fun to play. One very fine example of this arose when I was designing the 'Scottish Corridor' campaign. I had intended to have two bonus Bluecoat missions at the end of the campaign featuring the real German heavies, the King Tiger and the JagPanther. The King Tiger mission was a lot of fun to play but the JgPanther mission, 'Brew Up', was absolutely no fun whatsoever and so it never even got in front of a Beta tester.

I won't go into the details but basically, a squadron of Churchills, with their crews dismounted at the start of the mission, (enjoying a brew up with the infantry in their foxholes as it happens) were ambushed by no less than three Jagpanthers from behind. The result was a massacre in history and it resulted in a massacre in the game as well. In almost every case, I do a lot of my mission work ahead of BFC working on the module and so I had already done a lot of testing on this mission using US Shermans in place of the Churchills and the Shermans could pull it off from time to time. But when I finally got Churchills to play around with, they just weren't up to the task. Very simply, there was no fun to be had in this mission and so it's being reworked substantially for inclusion in the revised 'Scottish Corridor' campaign.

Although we're all playing CMBN, we're a very varied bunch. We are divided into the Real Timers and the WEGO players, the H2H and the AI opponent players etc. There are also smaller sub-groups that find their fun destroyed by what they feel to be artificial time restrictions. I've already covered this at length in another thread and won't go into it again here. However, I have had one person who has been very critical of my recent work and after discussing the time limits that were originally the cause for his dissatisfaction with the game, he then switched focus to the way my missions are playtested, that real tactics don't work in the game and that I employed tricks and puzzles to make my missions artificially difficult. At each stage of these discussions, I patiently dealt with his complaints but they clearly were ignored. We've done the mission clock so now let's now talk about real tactics in the game.

Although I'm better known for my campaigns, I have actually designed around ten stand-alones for the CMx2 series of games. Seven for the British Forces module and three for the Repository. In the course of designing one of those BF stand-alones, 'British Mettle', I had the good fortune to get some wonderful feedback from Mark Gibson, a Major in the Australian Army, who was playtesting it for me. He basically explained to me how to do 'combined arms' properly in the game. I learned a whole new way to play the game after that and it was an important influence on my development. before he talked me through it, I thought I was a pretty good player. How wrong I was. And I went on from there to develop my own play-style making further discoveries along the way as I explored the game more deeply. My tactics and play styles continue to evolve as I play the game. I don't think I will ever be able to say that I have perfected my tactics. Two things I will say about my tactics though. Firstly, I use SMOKE a lot. If I have it, I WILL use it, every time. And second, I aim to achieve fire superiority over my opponent at every opportunity. And that's as much as I'm going to say about tactics.

Now let's talk about tricks and puzzles. A very, VERY important part of the designing process is allowing the battle to develop and tell its own story and this comes about from hours and hours of repeated play. Quite naturally, as a result of all that time spent playtesting, I become very familiar with the map and so get a feel for where would be a good place to site an AT-Gun or a MG bunker etc. Breaking into one of these defensive positions may feel like it's a puzzle to be solved and of course it is. This is a tactical challenge that a real-life commander would have to face. He'd have to work out the best way to overcome the tactical problems confronting him using only the assets available to him at that time. But what about the somewhat more insulting 'tricks'?

After playtesting through certain missions for hours and hours on end, sometimes it just leads to a complete dead end while other times, I get an epiphany about what the mission needs to give it that extra 'cool' factor. What that actually is can vary tremendously. It's part of the evolution of the mission. And that's pretty much all there is to my designing. It's important to note that at no point to I resort to formulas or tricks in the process. I try to craft an AI plan that will give a good player a challenge without resorting to trickery. To be honest, I don't know any tricks. These are utterly alien to me and I'm not interested in learning any either. Now, what about the way content is tested?

Absolutely everything I design is playtested very thoroughly by me before it gets in front of another Beta-tester. Since I play everything in Real Time you can be sure that it has been playtested in RT . This is my hobby and I don't have all the time in the world to do it. I prefer to play a mission through to its conclusion in one sitting and so RT suits me best. Therefore, if I put something up on the Repository, it's likely that I did all the testing myself and so it's been tested in Real Time only. However, everything that is crafted for the title/module which you PAY for has been tested in both Real Time and WEGO. It shouldn't come as any big surprise after reading the endless number of 'Which do you prefer: Real Time or WEGO?' threads that continually pop up, that the majority of player play WEGO and so it's unnecessary for anybody to ask which way it was tested. It was tested both ways.

Finally, there's no doubt that the game got significantly more difficult since v2.01 introduced the improved machine gun behaviour in the game. A lot of the content that was designed earlier got more difficult. When I play campaigns, I like to let off steam and relax from time to time. In 'Montebourg' there are a number of relaxed missions, like 'Beau Guillot', 'La Grand Hameau', 'Le Ham' and 'The Farmhouse' that were quite easy to win. The same missions are now a bit more difficult even without the revisions. When going back to these pre-v2.01 works, it's important to bear in mind that they were not intended to be that hard to win. In time, I hope to revise the two big campaigns that I've already made to ease up the difficulty a bit. but that's not going to happen any time soon.

As a footnote, I'd like to add that if I want to sit back and relax and enjoy a game of CMBN against the computer player after a hard day at the office, I play a Quick Battle. I actually do do this from time to time and I would strongly recommend that others do this from time to time as well. The stand-alones are designed to provide the player with a more challenging, and less frivolous experience. The campaigns, bar the traing campaigns, are intended for the more serious of the serious players. Lame scenarios and campaigns wouldn't help the game at all.

If you have taken the time to read all this I would like to thank you for your indulgence.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Serious wargaming is what I find more fun anyway, so +1 to that.

My idea of a good game involves half an hour of recon before a shot is ever fired.

Thoroughly enjoyed everything you've put out over the years, PT.

[ridethe415]

I did take your name in vain during the Scottish Corridor. That was one tough campaign.

The more time I put into learning the mechanics and application proper use of forces, the more I enjoy the game. There is such a depth to this game series I doubt I'll ever move to anything else.

And with OMG and Bagration due later this year...I don't see how I'll get to play every scenario / campaign.

Great work BTW. Thanks

[Examiner2]

Very good read, thanks for taking the time to write it.

[Jack Ration]

Next to my Squad Leader box is White Death! ... and I have the HOI3 series!

You are obviously passionate about your gaming and designing. A game that you cannot lose is not worth playing! It is the risk of defeat that holds your interest and the fickle hand of the gaming gods (the double one or double six rolls of the dice!) that provide the amusement and frustration!

Enjoy your gaming!

[Wodin]

Great write up..you forgot to mention Command Ops;)

I appreciate your campaigns and scenarios and have no complaints whatsoever.

[Paper Tiger]

Thanks for the support guys. Glad you appreciate the work that goes into making all this.

Great write up..you forgot to mention Command Ops;)

Command Ops really is an exceptional game, isn't it. It's AI is the best I've played against. Grigsby's War in the East also comes with an incredible AI opponent as well. So far I'm finding the AGEOD engine to be quite the competent opponent as well. I think we're lucky that AI for wargames is getting to a point where it can give us a real fight, at least for a while, and that's something that I'm very glad to have seen. It's been easy enough to find people to play chess with. Wargames, not so easy and so a good AI opponent is a real gift.

[Michael Emrys]

It's been easy enough to find people to play chess with. Wargames, not so easy and so a good AI opponent is a real gift.

Amen to that, brother!

Michael

[Fizou]

Keep doing what you’re doing PT. You are a great designer and have given me so many hours of fun in CM! Don’t let a few naggers discourage you, the majority is well behind you and appreciate your excellent work.

[A Canadian Cat]

I don't find 'easy to win' to be a quality I value in a serious game

A game that you cannot lose is not worth playing!

Agree with both you on that, I would add having fun even when you are losing is important too - but that is usually our own responsibility rather than the game's.

The more time I put into learning the mechanics and application proper use of forces, the more I enjoy the game. There is such a depth to this game series I doubt I'll ever move to anything else.

So true, the more I play the more I learn and the more fun I have. Echoing Some of PTs sentiment about finding your self able to win handily at chess against more casual players (not about chess - I suck at that) but I have found that since I am playing CM more and have been, purposefully, playing against better players my skills in the game are out stripping my RL friends who introduced me to this game. I am sad to report that one is probably not going to make the transition to CM2 (he plays way to much Eve Online) and the other keeps getting the tar beat out of him. I'm not going to hold back but I will have to start stacking the deck in their favour. That is one of the nice things about CM. If you do have a skill imbalance, between players, you can tweak the points in a QB or pick an unbalanced scenario or tweak on yourself.

[slysniper]

Just keep up with having thick skin. Paper Tiger

Designing is a gift and you have it.

but there is plenty of fools out there that will blame the game, scenario and so forth when their poor tactics and poor play does not get results they like. there are others that have ego's as fragile as egg shells and cannot suffer the insult of the AI betting them.

So you will always have someone blaming you for your design no matter how talented you are.

But I found out the hard way , trying to be nice by making suggestions to another designer that designers take a lot of pride in their work and sometimes pointing out issues or improvements can offend them because of the work they have put into it. Thus the reason we have lost some designers, why put forth the effort if you are going to get flak about your work.

Never let that happen, dont take input from others too seriously, weigh it to what you know, only adjust something if what they ask for rings true to you also. and when they dont see things the way you do, let it go and let them go.

Your work proves who knows what they are doing, so let it be.

[mjkerner]

Just keep repeating "calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean......"

Luv your work, PT.

[Bulletpoint]

Well, as the guy who burst in here recently, rashly denouncing "amateur" campaign designers, I thought I owed you to say that I am now somewhere towards the end of the Road to Montebourg, and that I have enjoyed the challenge very much so far.

Sure, at times I have been very frustrated, but it is very rare that this has not been my own fault. In hindsight, I should really have known better - based on the mission briefing and the map layout.

[Holman]

Thanks for the thoughtful post, PT, and thanks even more for the design work over the years!

[Lanzfeld]

PT <-------- THE goto name in campaigns.

Please dont burn out or die before the eastfront! LOL! We need you.

Cheers to you and all you have brought to this game and community.

[Quintus Sertorius]

Chess is a tough one. People tend to get bummed out and feel stupid when they lose. You have to make sure to go out of your way not to lord it over your opponent. Likewise, you have to go out of your way to be a good loser at that game. Either that or you have to have a good enough relationship with your opponent that no one is going to take it personally.

[Holien]

Great Post...

[Blackcat]

Mr. Tiger, Thanks for taking the time to write such an interesting post and thank you for all the hours you have put in designing such superb campaigns and scenarios. I appreciate that the improvements to the game have made your earlier work harder than you intended. I have just bailed out of my attempt at the Scottish Campaign under version 2.01, the AI had me beat (I shall try again, of course), but the Road to Monteberg under the original game was pretty tough - how, in one battle, you knew that I would move my people in that way and place your mines accordingly, is a mystery.

I hope Battlefront have found some way of rewarding you because you (along with GeorgeMC and a couple of others) have added so much value to their product. Mind you, I still intend to beat you death with a large haddock when we meet.

[Lethaface]

Good post PT.

Personally I got into CMSF mostly because many other RTS games were not really challenging. I have been enjoying your scenario's since CMSF, starting with the Red on Red campaigns IIRC.

After a few years lull in playing games, since a few months I have acquired CMBNCW and now CMFI+GL. Because of the vastly more difficult terrain in CMBN and my playstyle that developed in CMSF, I have shied away from Road to montebourg in the second or third misison. I haven't even gotten into your Scottish corridor campaign.

Probably this is also partly due to the difference in acceptable casualties between CMSF and CMBN.

So I'll take your advice regarding QB's for a more 'relaxed' way to play CM against the AI after a hard days of work. That and the PBEM's I'm playing with more than acceptable results.

Now for the weekends, which campaign or scenario in CMBN or CMFI would you advise to a CMSF vet but CMBN noob? Something mildly challenging?

[Paper Tiger]

Now for the weekends, which campaign or scenario in CMBN or CMFI would you advise to a CMSF vet but CMBN noob? Something mildly challenging?

I've read that 'Courage and Fortitude' is mildly challenging

[Lethaface]

Haha I just read about it, I'm worried it'll make me go play CoD

[Hister]

Bravo PT, bravo! We need champs like you!

[BLSTK]

Did someone say "challenged"?

[BLSTK]

PaperTiger: "I've read that 'Courage and Fortitude' is mildly challenging."

Some have called me "mildly challenged".

[vonRocko]

Thank you for your work Paper Tiger. I enjoy your campaigns.