Worst 3 concepts in the history of gaming

[kekremsi]

In no particular order:

-Ganking
-Grinding
-Vassal States

Causing pain and grief for the player is a popular trend and firaxis can't stay behind the times.

[Will9]

What are the first 2?

[Shrapnel12]

What's wrong with Vassal States? Ever since I started playing Civ 2 when it first came out, I've wanted such a concept. The only thing I want as bad or more, is better diplomacy options.

[kekremsi]

Bad thing about is it works more in favour of AI civilizations. Civ was fun because you had to avoid strong civs while slowly destroying weaklings in order to face the remaining civs once you were significantly powerful at last. That was my strategy and that journey was fun. Now every civ with a single city and their grandmother is a vassal of someone and every hostile action results in a world war. Yet when you accept someone else's vassalage you kinda ally with them in wartime and they can cancel the vassalage not I.

I'm sure some will explain it's historically accurate or engaging but for me it takes our more fun than it brings and I don't think I as the player gain anything in any vassalage situation. It's just a trick to get things significantly messed up and hard unexpectedly because human strategies almost always win otherwise.

In short I support it should cease to work like a "mutual protection pact" kind of factor. I doubt Civ IV would get such high review scores if it wasn't for awesome prequels and the critics weren't afraid of telling anything bad about it.

[MightyTiny]

But you can switch off vassal states by creating a custom game. So if you don't like it, just switch it off.

And I also have no idea what "Ganking" and "Grinding" is.

[Jaybe]

Vassal States is bad for people who want to have CONTROL of their gaming experience.

For instance: I wage war on a tech competitor, the Ottomans; but I decide to make peace, leaving them with 2-3 cities (hey, it's a Huge map). After the 10 turns of peace are up, I prepare to finish the job. I check my F4 and --ack!!-- the Ottomans are now vassals of the Inca (2nd place civ on another continent, and my friends)! I must have missed the announcement. Now to finish the job is going to involve complications galore; I cancelled the attack but I may decide to do it later regardless.

Vassals add a volatility to the political scene which is a great step in the realism department. It enhances a major concept in Civ4, that being potential downsides to decisions you make.

[Thedrin]

Maybe you should play a game with vassal states switched off?

Echoing Will9; what are ganking and grinding?

[Solver]

That's really harsh. I am admittedly not a huge fan of vassal states myself (it's not the concept I dislike per se, it's the Warlords execution of it), but I think it's far from a disaster. When things work right, it actually improves my game experience. And it can always be turned off.

[kekremsi]

Ganking and grinding are WoW concepts. They mean player killing unsuspecting players/in unjust situations and spending time killing same monsters for days and days for tiny bit of reputation gains or gold (which the game almost forces you to at max level) I wish I didn't know these concepts considering the significant amount of time wasted regarding them.

Talking about turning the feature off; sure I can do it but then again I can play Civ III. It seems to me like it's a feature that's meant to define this version of Civ like the culture concept defined Civ III nicely. I'd feel like I dumbed the game down for my needs if I disabled it if you know what I mean.

[Purple]

According to Answers.com, from a MMORPG context:

# Gank

1. verb In PVP, when a player of significantly higher level kills a weaker player. Ganking is mostly frowned upon, as the player so killed often is at a severe disadvantage.
2. verb An abbreviation for "gang kill" in which a group of players work together to take down a high-level player. See party.

# Grind - verb To repetitively kill mobs in an area, usually for experience.

[Solver]

I can't agree about vassal states defining Civ4. They're an expansion feature, not even a core game feature. So I feel they're an extra feature, and enabling/disabling extra features should be done to give yourself the game you want to play.

I think you're doing yourself a disadvantage by not adjusting the options presented to your liking

[Thedrin]

Talking about turning the feature off; sure I can do it but then again I can play Civ III. It seems to me like it's a feature that's meant to define this version of Civ like the culture concept defined Civ III nicely. I'd feel like I dumbed the game down for my needs if I disabled it if you know what I mean.

No. Vassals were only introduced in the Warlords expansion. Vanilla CivIV already had a significantly different core game from CivIII - overhauls in maintenance and combat for example.

[kekremsi]

Thanks I didn't notice it was an expansion feature. This will switch my view certainly.

Still I'm serious about it being a winner in top 3 grief concepts . You may not agree but to me, it's the first *bad* feature in one the the greatest game franchises ever.

[Thedrin]

What Jaybe said. For the first time in the Civilization series, civs that have been reduced to a fraction of their former glory have an option other than 'waiting to die'. It may not have been implemented as well as it could have been but it's a step in the right direction towards more interesting foreign policy dynamics.

[Ming]

I love vassel states. Now I don't have to exterminate a player. I can just take the territory I want and leave my opponent with a few cities that I don't really care about and end the war as a winner.

But yes, you have to pay attention on the relationships before making attacks. I really hate it when I'm super friendly with somebody, and I'm in process of killing somebody I hate, and all of a sudden, my one true friend on the board declares war because they just became the owners of the civ I'm attacking. But that's just the game and does make it more interesting