Do you ever just want to experiment with 'best case scenarios'?

[Zed Clampet]

I've been playing a lot of strategy games lately (stop calling me "old"), and one thing these games never include (at least the ones I'm playing) is something similar to "sandbox mode". For instance, in Balatro, maybe I just want to pick my own jokers. Or in Monster Train 2, I want to pick the specific champion version, all the extra monsters and my complete deck of cards, etc.

Now, obviously, I don't expect these games to be officially counted. I just think it would be fun to see what I could do if I have complete control. I could see myself tinkering around with that quite a bit.

One thing, though, I suggest that this mode only become available after you have finished the game properly so as not to ruin the fun of actually playing the intended way.

Does anyone else think this would be a fun mode? Good idea? Bad idea? Pitfalls I didn't think of? Would cause cancer?

 

[BeardyHat]

Seems like we used to have this and lost it. I remember playing endless hours of custom games via Skirmish in Red Alert, as well as custom games against bots in stuff like Battlefield.

Mutaters used to be a thing in console games.

I think it would be nice to have that all back, as long as it's included in the game and not sold as a $10 DLC...

 

[Pifanjr]

There's still quite a few games with console commands or a developer mode for testing, but it would be nice if all games had something like that. I would assume such testing modes would be useful for the developers themselves as well.

 

[Zed Clampet]

@BeardyHat @Pifanjr

I think one of the reasons I'm not seeing these things is because all of the strategy-type games I am playing right now are being made by small indie teams or even solo devs. Maybe bigger companies still making these types of games are still adding this sort of "creative" mode. I know the Planet Coaster games have it, and Total War games have custom battles (although they don't let you properly level your heroes and generals).

 

[neogunhero]

Now, obviously, I don't expect these games to be officially counted. I just think it would be fun to see what I could do if I have complete control. I could see myself tinkering around with that quite a bit.

I wish more games had modes like this as well. A sandbox playground to just test some things and mess around in. It could also be positioned as a tool to help make your builds in a game like Balatro, so you know which jokers works well with which.

Sandbox modes are sometimes my favorite. I like the ones where you can do exactly like you said, set up a best case scenario and see how it plays out. I used to play a lot of Arma 2, specifically the mission creator mode. It gave pretty advanced tools to create actual missions with objectives, but I just used it to place two huge armies to fight against each other. I'd equip myself with the best guns in the game and go to town.

 

[Pifanjr]

I think one of the reasons I'm not seeing these things is because all of the strategy-type games I am playing right now are being made by small indie teams or even solo devs.

That would be my guess as well. Having an in-game way to test various scenarios is useful, but it's not exactly fun to make, so it's often skipped by independent, small teams.

 

[Zloth]

Distant Worlds 2 gives you access to an editor, and that's an indie game. A typical game has 1000+ stars with multiple planets each, so there's no way anyone would want to hand-craft an entire game. We can use the editor to tweak things, though. It's really good for helping deal with the occasional game that gets ruined by the RNG when got built - like having one faction be stuck between two nebula or some such.

It seems like most folks don't really like those sorts of features, though. BattleTech has a well done skirmish mode but, from what I've seen of the achievements, few people are interested in it.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Distant Worlds 2 gives you access to an editor, and that's an indie game. A typical game has 1000+ stars with multiple planets each, so there's no way anyone would want to hand-craft an entire game. We can use the editor to tweak things, though. It's really good for helping deal with the occasional game that gets ruined by the RNG when got built - like having one faction be stuck between two nebula or some such.

It seems like most folks don't really like those sorts of features, though. BattleTech has a well done skirmish mode but, from what I've seen of the achievements, few people are interested in it.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that no small teams included this feature. I have a number of games by small teams and solo devs that include it, but most do not. Megaquarium is the first that pops to mind as a small team game that includes it.

As for paragraph 2, the sentiment expressed is simply not how things work. You add things like this to expand your potential audience regardless if only 10 percent would use it. I would generally agree that "most", as in more than 50 percent, don't utilize those features (saying they don't like them because they don't use them seems like a stretch) and suggest that it, overall, probably depends on the game and specific genre. But developers include many things that most people don't use, like the games themselves after the first few minutes, various accessibility features, and even things like single-player modes in some games. And I feel confident saying that in a building/tycoon type of game like Planet Coaster that there would be enormous backlash if the game didn't feature a creative mode. Overall, there are just tons of things that not everyone uses that is put into games in order to expand the potential audience. Every language, for instance, even English and Chinese, usually come in at less than 50 percent of the players. Anyway, there are vastly different games included in the strategy genre and the popularity probably depends a lot on which type of game it is. Personally, I wouldn't use one in a game like XCOM

 

[Zloth]

Anyway, there are vastly different games included in the strategy genre and the popularity probably depends a lot on which type of game it is. Personally, I wouldn't use one in a game like XCOM

Yeah, that's very much true, now that I think more about it. Size of the game might matter, too. If you finish a game and can think of a bunch of things the game could have covered, making more scenarios will be fun. If the game already exhausted everything, what's the point?

But getting back to the topic...

I did use that BattleTech skirmish mode to test out ideas. I did the same in Mechwarrior's version. Make a mech with a certain loadout, then test it in the skirmishes. It was a good way to discover that the heat buildup was too much even in cold weather, or that the ammo ran out too fast.

Creative modes get used to experiment, too. Or just because it's the fun part - I never did anything except creative mode in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3.