There is an issue in 4X games. In fact, it's so persistent, that Amplitude Studios' co-founder and CEO Romain de Waubert de Genlis describes it as an "inherent problem", one his team have been attempting to solve since the first Endless Legend released back in 2014.
"One of the X's, 'explore', disappears after a while," de Waubert de Genlis explains. You've discovered the map for one thing, so there is no more world to uncover. But 'explore' can also refer to something more abstract, your strategy becomes fixed. Because you can see the lands, and you can see the resources, and you can see the enemies you face, you must decide on a course of action and there will rarely be much reason to change it.
But spotting the problematic 'X' is far simpler than fixing it.
De Waubert de Genlis points to the changing seasons in the original Endless Legend as their first attempt to solve the problem. In that strategy game, partially inspired by Game Of Thrones, progressively shrinking summers and lengthening brutal winters were designed to make long campaigns less static. "We've always had those changing maps or moments," he says.
With Endless Legend 2, the change is more dramatic. Campaigns begin with different players on scattered islands. High seas keep the landmass small at first, but as the campaign's turns pass the water will recede, revealing new territory to be claimed. By introducing new land, players can't define their strategy for the entire game in its first turns. "It shuffles the cards again and again," de Waubert de Genlis says.
As with other 4X games, each faction in Endless Legend has access to a sprawling tech tree, and a large part of the puzzle of each game is assessing the territory around you and choosing what to research first. Shrewd choices make for a strong economy, and a strong economy often leads to a whomping great army with which to meet your sniveling opponents. However, that emphasis on strong starts means some players will restart a campaign over and over until they roll a starting area that fits their strategy, rather than fitting their strategy to the starting area.
"We have a lot of players that start games over and over because they don't like the beginning," de Waubert de Genlis says. "We should look at the stats, but full playthrough is probably 5% of the games." To compel players to stick around longer, Amplitude need to make players comfortable with imperfection. The first step is a tried and tested technique: "You need to be guaranteed of some balance in the initial [area] around you." That means some good resources, but also never too many. If a player ever has a game when everything around them is, as de Waubert de Genlis puts it, "100% amazing or 100% really stupid", then they will know extremes are possible and that encourages them to restart until they land on a good one.
The next, and this is specific to Endless Legend 2, is ensuring that when the waters recede, the land it reveals offers challenges and opportunities. As de Waubert de Genlis said when telling me about shifting attitudes to early access releases, "this was not perfect at the beginning" and has taken a lot of fine tuning with players. In the game's initial launch, when new land appeared there was just too much of it, so it didn't force conflict between players. Now there are more choke points around valuable resources. This, he says, is designed to create "More feeling of 'I have to fight for that little piece of new land that just appeared'".
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/three-different-4x-strategy-games-three-different-solutions-to-that-inherent-problem-of-disappearing-exploration
