Re:Software Friction
by throwway120385 on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @06:17PM
(#40722676)
Requiring you to manage a messenger corp in order to dispatch armies past your borders might be a good example of a mechanic that generates friction though.
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That's a nice mechanic and many games have something equivalent to that, but if you can merely pay a resource tax to have everything working perfectly again then it's not friction in the sense that the article is talking about.
The problem with real friction is that, even if you did everything perfectly, orders may still not make it to the unit that has to execute them or they may do something else because of reasons neither of you foresaw, or the enemy forces you saw on the minimap are only half the forces that are actually there. Imagine if you were playing some shooter and randomly on 25% of the time your controller does not respond to inputs at all and another random 25% of the time the inputs get reversed. That would be a super frustrating game to play.
Re:Software Friction
by throwway120385 on Thursday June 20, 2024 @02:23PM
(#40741620)
Basically like a really frustrating XCom run where instead of a 5% chance to miss you had a 25% chance to miss.