anon474

My primary concern is that JA3 is truly becoming a very similar game to XCOM, where each character has very unrealistic and arbitrary abilities, and there's less of an emphasis on stats (or even gear for that matter). And I guess you could walk a fine line with this. You could have a very unrealistic but deep RPG where items matter, and flasks have very unrealistic and significant bonuses like maybe one flask has +4AP bonus for that round on 4 turn cooldown, and you can upgrade it to +10AP bonus on cooldown. Maybe there are other items, like a laser pointer that adds +10% accuracy to anybody aiming at a given character, and it's also on cooldown and also requires a certain amount of AP to use. You can design these unrealistic mechanics around real-life items, and as long as you're thorough it wouldn't be that bad (and as long as you commit and have LOTS of abilities and items like that). But back in JA2, there was very little action you could make in the actual combat which wasn't either move, or shoot, and I don't want to move away from that, because then we are moving towards a less realistic, less WYSIWYG strategy. I think the majority of depth in JA should be on the back end, in the stats and in the items, not in the special abilities only that merc has access to (somehow).

thoughts on the beta footage so far: firstly I would like to congratulate the development team on a job well done, it's very hard to make video games and the development team has certainly outdone themselves here. I also have some feedback on two topics, the writing, and the gameplay. 1 on writing. the writing outside of dialogue is generally pretty amazing, really top notch. the "we know what you're thinking AGAIN!" is a great example of humor, as is the IMP questionnaire, really captures the original heart of the writing in JA2, and even maybe improves upon it. However, some of the one-liners, I think, can do with a bit more work. Examples: steroid on strategy screen: "I will be putting oil on my chest". Fox: "Not enough time for a Quickie. Battle I mean". There are three problems with these and similar one-liners. Problem 1: too on-the-nose. There's a difference between using euphemisms to describe what happens when a man loves a woman very much, and describing the act in unnecessary and graphic detail, sometimes even changing what that act is, and the intent behind the act. An example of how to rephrase Fox's line without being too overt and obvious in a crude way is to say something like "You've kept me waiting for SO LONG". It's clear that she's not just referring to the situation. But it's also not exactly clear what she's referring to, and this exists in the precise space between unnecessary and sometimes graphic and crude information, and telling somebody no information about something. By using euphemisms, and really making things unclear, you can avoid creating somewhat painful, crude or unnecessarily graphic one-liners. In fact a lot of the most memorable starcraft and red alert one-liners from units are ENTIRELY based on euphemisms. Almost entirety of starcraft 1s or red alert 2s VO for units is some kind of nod or euphemism or funny metaphor/play on words that has a double meaning in this precise situation. Look at Rocketeer (there are many examples) in RA2, it's a flying unit for the alliance, and the things he says are: "Ridin' high", "Check out the view" and "Igniting boosters", all of which take on new meaning when said by the flying unit. Problem 2: There is a trend in modern writing, especially in places like marvel, to make characters quirky (or ironic and smug). And then the characters that aren't quirky, are desperate. And desperate characters (see this new IMP email, see Speck from the original JA2) can be funny, but quirky characters just come off as smug, or ironic. Fox I think comes off as a bit smug in this one-liner, and I wish she wasn't. Smug characters aren't endearing to listen to, or enjoyable to listen to, they kind of make you angry, because they're designed to make you angry. Problem 3: Telling what the character is, vs showing. I don't need dialogue to tell me that steroid is a bodybuilder. His name is "steroid" and his bio already told me this. So when I hear one liners like "Haha I will kill the major myself, with my BICEPS!" (steroid's line from the first sector) or when he says things like "I will be putting oil on my chest", these are overt examples of what this person's background is. It's not necessary. In fact, most mercs in JA2 went (almost) the entire game without making any kind of overt reference to who they are, and it's not necessary for them to disrupt us by forcefully reminding us that "hey they're a bodybuilder" or "hey, they're a porn star". In fact, all they need is a ridiculous personality, and it doesn't even matter if we know what their precise background is. Steroid worked perfectly well as just a guy who was a bodybuilder but didn't tell us he was a bodybuilder constantly, he just spoke with a ridiculous accent and was very loud and brash and maybe a bit stupid. We also don't know anything about Maddog, does it mean he's any less of a character for it, no. SOLUTION: 1 Broken english. Broken english is the king of adding character to mercs in JA2. It's a good start. 2 Euphemisms and non-overt references to aspects of the merc's background, personality, or just other unique mannerisms. 3 UNIQUE MANNERISMS. Perhaps more important than anything else, the mercs weren't just memorable because of their background, or their personality. They used unique mannerisms. Why does Tarballs call everybody "woody"? It doesn't matter! And there's probably no reason. If all you want to do is to give character to a merc, make them talk in a funny way (meaning tone of voice, and their apparent disposition via their tone of voice), make them use unique slang, some that may be very old fashioned, make them use unique phrases and words (this will be inevitable because you'll hear the same line 100 times so), and maybe give them unique observations that they come up with randomly during certain events. 2 on mechanics 1 the emphasis on abilities vs stats and items. I think the core of JA2 was very much an emphasis on stats, and in terms of what you had to do in combat, it was very very simple, you just had to run around, and shoot. And that was it for 90% of the battles, and if you really had to do something extra it'd be the use of an item. It seems like in JA3 there's an emphasis on abilities vs items and stats, and I think this is a bad decision because it makes everything seem unrealistic, and moves us away from serious strategy, to more of a domain of "well as long as you have the right ability, it really doesn't matter what your stats are". I can show an example of this. Take Igor (or any merc). Let's say we give him an ability called "battle rage", and he can come back to full HP after hitting 0 HP once per battle. Now is there anything inherently mechanically wrong with this ability? No. But does it feel wrong, and unrealistic, and not "WYSIWYG"? Yes. And this is the point here. Systems like "grit" and "freemove" take me out of the hard strategy of realism by creating this weird system of extra HP that doesn't really exist, or this weird system of movement that's not really movement. Mechanically all of these systems have justifications. But realistically, they're a bit out there. I know this probably won't happen, but to solve this, I would go completely back, and turn JA3 into entirely a case of "stats and items" and make the things you can do limited yes, but also realistic and no "vashe zdorovie" and similar abilities and if there is an item that you want to give people buffs to, put it on the item, don't put it on an ability for igor, that never goes away and is on some flask that never dissapears and refills itself - WYSIWYG doesn't just apply to visuals, it can also apply to items. If a character uses an item or should use an item (like ammo) it should be in his inventory. In fact this is why ammo in squad inventories has already bothered some people, because it feels unrealistic and not WYSIWYG. Convinient yes, unrealistic, also yes. In light of that fact, should there be this level of convienince? I don't think so. In fact, I would say that it makes more sense to let mercs have extremely huge backpacks and unrealistic ability to carry all this crap around, than it would to create this magical top hat from which rabbits can be pulled out of with the squad inventory. Because one is exaggerated reality, while another is completely unrealistic. And if we want Igor to have a unique perk that gives him extra bonuses from alcohol, then that is a perk that applies to any alcohol Igor consumes, versus having some flask that only he can see. And maybe it's not a Igor-only perk (or maybe Igor has a stronger version of a perk everybody can have), but it's a "alcoholic" perk, that anybody merc can get, if they so wish. Also please consider adding swappable models (not including the head) for mercs, because otherwise it really does look like we have a bunch of civilians holding guns which just looks ridiculous in my opinion. And if people are worried about their characters looking identical with the same gear on, you can vary up primary colors of the model (that shouldn't be too difficult, just change some variables on a material in the editor), or maybe there's about 5 or 10 generic outfits anybody can put on, like a jeans+tshirt+plate carrier type look (you often see this on guntube influencers), cargo pants+tshirt+plate carrier (been popular since 2000s), and a traditional camo shirt and pants with army boots (and then also urban versions of soldier uniform like you see in metal gear solid type games, basically a soldier's uniform only without camo and it's all black uniform).

pog

pog

SEE what is this conspiracy theory stupidity. Tricked? TRICKED BY WHOM. What is this narrative about "nefarious developers". They're not even a mobile developer wtf are you talking about. You're exactly the kind of hater I was referring to in my post about people being negative. You're not just a critic, you're a hater (not that there's often a difference, a lot of so-called "critics" are vitriolic and hater-ish), and there's a difference. You can give your opinion and feedback without trying to get personal or make developers feel bad. Talking about some nefarious plan to trick Ian Currie is ridiculous. And Ian Currie is himself no innocent victim either, I'm sure he did plenty of questionable things now and then, though of course I don't hate him, and I don't denigrate his involvement with the project. They can be developers of whatever they want, they just need to have the right set of ideas with which to enter development. And in part I'm sure they do, and in part maybe they don't which is where you have good and neutral outside feedback, pointing out things that may have been overlooked, or giving them new goals or steps to make at the present point in time. And you're not helping the development team by trying to denigrate them.

Oh and in case anybody hasn't seen my basic criticism of not including CtH as a visible stat and part of UI, basically I think it's one of the most if not the most important stat in the entire combat system BY FAR, you want to know if you can hit somebody with any degree of certainty probably more than any other information, and it's a great way to both 1 make correct decisions in the battlefield and 2 see progression in real time, by seeing some mercs have a higher hit % at the same distance, have mercs switch to other weapons and see which weapon has the better hit %, etc. Also in case anything in teh above post comes off as ironic or sardonic, that wasn't the intent, I have support for the entire development team.

So in this article back in 2022 our esteemed producer emphasized that they made the CtH decision on purpose, and in fact did this some time ago, and have structured the systems around this. However. I think this is undesirable. Here is why, and allow me to in a nice way (hopefully) try to disagree with some of the reasoning and logic presented in this article. https://www.pcgamer.com/jagged-alliance-3-wants-to-escape-the-spectre-of-xcom-by-never-telling-you-the-odds/ "But what if you're trying to make the successor to a different turn-based classic? Then, it seems, XCOM's legacy can be a hindrance instead. "We found that, no matter what we did, everyone played just like they played all the other games like XCOM," says Brad Logston, senior producer for Jagged Alliance 3. "We weren't playing it like Jagged Alliance. We didn't even know how to fix it. We were doing things like tweaking AI, tweaking weapon damage ranges, all these different things. Nothing was really working. No matter what we did, everyone played just like they played all the other games like XCOM. Brad Logston, Haemimont Games Once we did, everything shifted. Before, if someone had a 75% chance shot, they wouldn't take it.They'd hold back, and the AI would have to react to that—it had to know that the player was only going to move up when they could get the kill shot. Once we removed chance-to-hit … they're experimenting. It also meant we could make the AI more fluid. They could try things, they could be a little sloppy during play." Some of my favourite turn-based games of this new era are ones that give the player an overabundance of information—games like Into the Breach or Invisible, Inc., that reveal not just chance-to-hit, but fully telegraph the enemy's response as well. But here, Haemimont Games have discovered something that gets to the essence of what made the early Jagged Alliance's mix of turn-based combat, 4X strategy and RPG-lite management so good. These are not games about responding perfectly to the situation. These are games about messy, chaotic combat simulation, where unexpected things happen that force you to react. "The solution may seem small, but it's had an oversized effect on how the game plays. "One of our combat systems designers proposed: 'you know, this may be crazy—and people are gonna kill us—but what if we just remove chance-to-hit and see how that works.'" It's a standard part of every turn-based tactics: go for a shot, and the game will tell you how likely you are to hit your foe. It's such an ingrained part of the genre that it's almost a meme. Every XCOM player has a story about the 99% chance shot that missed. ""It's not just chance-to-hit," says Logston. "Even things like weapon jam chance, or grenade fumble chance. I've had situations where I've been on the second story of a building, fumbled a grenade, and blown up the floor beneath me. All the mercs fell down one floor, took fall damage and were stunned for a turn. But those are the things that happen in Jag sometimes—it just goes that way." But the real sign of Haemimont's commitment is that one seemingly small decision to upend the conventions that XCOM laid down. It would have been easy to make another XCOM-alike. They're pretty popular, after all. But it wouldn't have been Jagged Alliance. That's not what we're trying to do. There are already games out there that have done that. That doesn't make us special." I have a number of thoughts on this: 1 The idea that JA must have this one separating factor from XCOM, imo, is a bad way to think about the franchises, because they're not just different along one parameter, they're different along many parameters; JA has AP units, modern XCOM does not, JA has in-level loot, XCOM does not, you need to research things then they're given out for free to the entire squad. JA has ammo, XCOM does not have ammo (wrongly). JA has some amount of inventory management, XCOM has no inventory management, all ammo is endless, all weapons are fixed, there's also little weapon diversity. XCOM has very different classes that are locked to specific ways of playing, XCOM does not have that. XCOM has "abilities" that are expected to be used almost every turn that make the entire combat system less about stats and more what abilities the XCOM unit has, while JA does not have super OP "abilities". JA is more like an open world RPG, albeit a more strategic one, in XCOM there is no "world" interaction outside of deploying to missions, there are no NPCs to talk to, etc. So it's a significant mistake, in my opinion, to try to create some giant differentiating factor from XCOM. That factor may arise (it probably wouldn't, the two strategy titles are still in the same genre), but looking for it, vs looking to make the best JA possible, is a mistake imo. It's a bad goal and aim which will distract you from what really matters, which is making the best and most consistently JA JA title possible. 2 DIfferentiation is not necessarily good. Ferrari can go like "you know, we're not different enough to Porsche. So we need to make our cars have no wheels". Would that be a point of differentiation, yes, would it work, no. Robbing your strategy of good sound strategy and RPG mechanics for the sake of differentiation is a BAAAAAAAAAAD idea. If overlap happens it happens. What would you rather do, make a bad strategy, or a good strategy that shares its good decisions with another strategy. 3 Not showing CtH is not like adding critical failure and fumble chances. One is a new mechanic that makes the battlefield more interesting (and hopefully you can see chances to fumble, exactly like you should see chances to hit), and another is information about the battle that allows you to make correct decisions. You can add fumble mechanics without having it at all hurt 4 Some reason why JA may "play like XCOM" is due to 1 the fact that there don't appear to be stances like in JA2 and everybody auto-runs to their destination (which is a very XCOM thing), and 2 there's action cam all over the place so it really feels like XCOM (action cam got introduced by XCOM after all, if I'm not mistaken). To fix this I recommend: 1 changing or reducing how far you can travel in a level 2 changing level and building size to have the same effect, so mercs can't just run halfway across the map and end up 2 feet away from the enemy in a single turn like in XCOM, and the potential to be stranded or overwhelmed is much higher. 5 There seems to be some kind of nod to titles like Pheonix Point that I guess didn't sell as well? But listen, phoenix point didn't sell as well because it sucked, it had a weird setting, it had a weird mutation mechanic which imo was not fun at all, it had a poorly thought out setting and premise. This is perhaps the most important point - there is little meritocracy in marketing, and in reasons why one title sold well, but another didn't. There are plenty of great hidden gems that are perfectly great, but because in order to find out if they're perfectly great or not you need to spend some time in them and purchase the title, they never get purchased in the first place. (This is why having a Demo is a must I say, it never hurts, but it allows customers to bridge that unbridgeable gap of "man I'm not sure about this title, do I want to spend the money and commit? what if it sucks?" with a free teaser of the full version. The reason why XCOM sold well isn't just because it's such a great strategy (I don't think it was actually, I think it was severely nerfed from its original version), it's because there was an overlap of multiple factors to make it sell well. Firaxis isn't just any random studio, Firaxis is a OG developer that makes Civ titles. And of course all the Civ guys are going to buy or at least check out XCOM. So there's one audience group you already have in the bag. And then you have the original demographic that remembers the originals. And then you have the average uninformed customer who stumbles across it. So you need to have a confluence of factors, and you need to almost have trapped audiences that are familiar with the studio, familiar with the product franchise/series, familiar with the GENRE, AND THEN, they think it looks good or whatever. But there is no meritocracy; games will get bought or not bought depending entirely on the reputation of the developer, the genre, the franchise, and how it "looks like" from the trailers. Plenty of good games got overlooked and are overlooked to this day, just because they're not the kind of genre that a given customer group is used to buying, and those games fall through the cracks because the customer is just too unfamiliar with the specific game, game genre, game dev, etc, and there needs to be a way to bridge that familiarity gap. So my suggestion here is: leave marketing and design choices as completely separate ideas and entities, focus on making the best JA possible without trying to compare it to anything else, simply focus on making good game design decisions, and making the most ideal most perfect version of JA you personally would want (I think a lot of dev team are fans of original). And then decide how you will market that product, and what demographics and groups you can appeal to with it (or to which groups it'll appeal in the first place, because a developer has limited ability to make people switch genres and change tastes). Also maybe try to develop some relationships with some youtubers, there's plenty of big ones out there. Of course youtubers can be annoying and egotistical, but they are a great way for somebody to sing you praises and introduce a product to a customer group that didn't know anything about it, but now may decide to check it out. And there's another reason why you want to make the best possible JA you yourself would want to see, with no compromises: because this is the "back end marketing" idea. You know you won't have a big launch, but you're expecting big staying power after launch, and you expect the customers who did purchase the title, to be like "wow this is really good", and then they tell everybody else about it, and before long you have JA2. JA2 could've easily been forgotten about, it's been 20 years, but it has enormous staying power because it, i suspect, was made with very few compromises and a very high amount of depth and systems. In my opinion the best marketing strategy is to do something like...a show and tell, showing a basic mission with maybe 2 mercs on a night op or something, and then guiding viewers through the actions. Invite people in, be welcoming, friendly to them. You're often dealing with complete novices, whether they're novices to RPG or not, but novices to the genre certainly. So explain things to them, allow them to vicariously live through you getting a cool upgraded weapon in the level, and then looking for ammo for that weapon, oh maybe there's a store nearby we can go there, and now we have ammo look, so now we are fully decked out and have just went from some low caliber SMG to a MP5 wow, and this is the best weapon on the squad now, wow. And we really like this merc and were looking for an upgrade for this merc, and now they get to kick butt which is great. And if you want JA to feel more like JA, maybe emphasize the open-world aspect of it more. It's not just about combat after all. Create a big map where you can fight, but can also wander around, interact with objects and people. Maybe find a safe that you can lockpick and get some goodies out of (maybe have a safe in every big sector and make it a side quest or an achievment to see how good you are at rescuing luxuries from the hands of their owners, and then create a reward for people to get all the safes, like maybe one of them has a treasure map in it randomly or at least in one of the hard ones). Maybe create missions where your objective is to sneak in (or because JA has no mission structure, create reasons for small squads to go in and either find information that can be sold or used otherwise that would otherwise get destroyed first thing in combat...find other things. And potentially emphasize the "hard strategy" aspect of JA, emphasize the unforgiveable nature of it, be very punishing if mercs are reckless or run too close to the enemy. I think in this case, making JA3 more like JA is all about how the strategy looks, versus its underlying mechanics. JA was very much a "serious" strategy. Zoomed out camera, very far away. Soldiers ran in a straight line like professionals, they didn't do any "action running" or leaping over obstacles which may or may not be a bit, I don't want to say comical, but maybe a bit over the top. There was no action camera. Most dialogues, shopping windows, were still within the strategy window so you still got the feeling like hey, your point and objective here is to make high level decisions and direct the team, it wasn't to gallivander and talk to people "for fun". If there was an obstacle like a box, I would expect JA mercs to run up to it, and get over it in a realistic way, rather than hopping over it. If there's a roof to climb, they're also going to climb it in a realistic way to where you can sense that this is an attempt to depict real life. Movies like Above the Law or any other 90s and 80s action movie wasn't necessarily. The more you step away from a very realistic and very serious simulation of combat, the more you simplify mechanics, the more you make characters very mobile and able to run very far in a single turn, the more not-serious it looks. In my opinion. But fundamentally, as long as there are time units, as long as there is adjustable tile-per-tile movement, as long as there is individual progression where characters and mercs move from worse gear to better gear, and there's stealth systems, perception mechanics, and hopefully CtH, mechanically it should be very similar to JA2. But I hope somebody reads my thoughts on marketing JA2, because you shouldn't try to change the product to suit marketing necessarily, you should make the best product possible in the absence of customer consideration so to speak (and you know, obviously make it for A type of customer, maybe just not the most mass market appeal one), and then try to figure out how to get people to buy it, how to get people to know about it, how to get people who don't understand the genre or franchise to be interested in the genre or franchise. You shouldn't adjust or try to frankenstein a upside-down product to suit a bigger demographic (if that's the case, just make another open world RPG like skyrim, very mass market appeal, everybody knows the genre, big group of people who know about it), just make the best possible product in this genre and then try to invite people to check out this genre or particular kind of strategy. if you try to make a good SUV, and your publisher comes to you to say "hey, not a lot of people buy SUVs" will you really please anybody by saying "ok let's try to bastardize the SUV and turn it into less of an SUV", you just get this weird diluted version that neither pleases the SUV fans, and neither pleases the mainstream demographic. It makes more sense to try to get people to like SUVs than to build SUVs in a way which dilutes their SUV-ness and makes the niche and core demographic unhappy. And even then you gotta understand that marketing doesn't always have something to do with the underlying quality of the strategy, some titles are very good but they aren't pushed or marketed, and they don't have a natural demographic that would already be interested in them, so they are ignored. Commercial success is often not about the quality of something, but whether that something is a type of genre that people would want to get, and whether they are familiar with the product, the genre, the studio, and this combination of factors that allow customers to go like "ok, i'll try it out, i'll risk it", because it's all about risk and commitment fundamentally. Also please release a demo. It doesn't hurt anything, as far as I know they're not that hard to make, but they're an excellent stepping stone in getting people who would think about getting JA but are maybe put off because it's too different to what they're used to, to get it more likely than not.

So, it can still be a collaborative effort between the devs and community. There's no reason, if the devs are motivated by making a good strategy, that the community cannot give positive or neutral feedback that doesn't try to make a developer feel bad, but instead gives them...feedback and information on what's working and what's not without judging or shaming them at the same time. There's a difference between giving feedback, and giving feedback+telling people they shouldn't be developers, or telling people that they're stupid or useless. I can tell you that, and get real personal in this message, you wouldn't like it, so why do it to development team.

a little bit yes. steroid i actually didn't like how he was represented in JA2. But I don't think they shoudl copy duke nukem look directly: that whole side strap across the chest look is very unrealistic, and it looks a bit weird. they should do some other kind of holster set-up, imo. Not thin straps like on duke or on steroid (on steroid they're even thinner). Duke is clearly a little bit of an exaggerated character, but steroid is supposed to be somewhat based in real life.

Ok negative nancy Developers are fans of the series and are doing this because they like it. Mafia City Omerta was based in large part on XCOM and JA type combat. Stop trying to create this stupid perception and stereotype that all developers are poorly intentioned and only you, oh special player, sees the true beauty of jagged alliance for what it is, and only you, oh brilliant player, can save jagged alliance from the clutches of ill-intentioned developer. Developing is hard, because you have to come up with new ideas. It's very easy to criticize new ideas, but it's not easy to come up with them (then again, devs should probably copy and look at a lot of what JA2 did and try to replicate it than trying to come up with something new entirely, if people didn't copy anything we wouldn't have cars or trains because one person would make a car and nobody would copy him, copying what works makes sense). Sometimes development is constrained by a publisher that wants to make a title more mass-appeal and mainstream. Sometimes developers have very small budgets. You're just talking shit for no reason. Instead of trying to help developers, even if you think they're misunderstanding something, you're intentionally laughing at them. You know what you are? You're a sack of sh--. You aren't criticizing other people because you have something worthwhile to criticize. You criticize other people because you enjoy trying to take their pride or confidence away.

hitman fine, steroid fine, stupid chick with black hair fine (would probably prefer not to have her but she's not too annoying) the guy with the bling i would change, he can still dress like a wigger, but he should be cleaned up a bit, he looks way too like "ugly bling" vs good bling. mr t had good bling, or bling that wasn't too ugly necessarily, all the chains were nice straight, there were no ugly oversized medallions. the doorag on this character looks a bit ugly imo, it should be tighter. "deedee bombastique" is a fortnite character however, i would remove her entirely (or just get rid of 1 ironic glasses that do not fit anywhere outside of fortnite 2 herself calling herself "bombastique", super cringe 3 am i correct that her vest has purple accents? WHY???? its a BULLETPROOF VEST not a t-shirt you buy in some stupid t-shirt shop.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Maybe you can learn how to shut the f up and not give us your input the next time. lol It's good faith outside feedback that they can dismiss entirely or use in part or in whole. Developers have said that they are currently playing around with features, which means this is exactly the right time to do something like this. I know that the game is not out, but it doesn't matter. The developer benefits from outside feedback and this can give them a expectation for what they will see when the release comes out, so they're not surprised, and so they can make some adjustments or fix some shortcomings that they might think are fine or they might think the customer doesn't care about before release. It doesn't hurt to have neutrally phrased feedback to the dev team from the outside in terms of what people like and don't like.

I don't think they would punish me, you're the one who started talking sh-- to me saying to "deal with it", and most of your replies were dismissive if not insulting, and you just called for the head designer to be fired immediately. I think I'm good. Realistic or not realistic, we can agree to disagree, there's no point trying to force your opinion on another person. I'm not looking for absolute realism, I'm ok if they have modern architecture, because modern architecture looks good, even if they would not have modern architecture in the country.

I don't think it's that bad, because you still have RPG mechanics affecting inventory space, they're just very simple. I don't think it's a big deal. It seems simple, but I don't think it's that bad.

No, having a camera that's zoomed out by default is very different to a camera that starts out zoomed in. The level of zoom implies the type of genre and level of action that'll take place. Somebody is too stupid to understand that UI is very easy to move around and change around, much easier than 3D content most definitely. What, am I speaking at a level too far above yours? Your little intelligence cannot grasp it? Lol. Original JA2 had a very close proxy which was a bar that filled up as you got higher chance to hit percentages. You are on cocaine if you do not understand how having one might as well mean you have the other my stupid friend. That's not game design, that's asset and enemy and world design and setting design. Again you're stupid and are wasting my time. I don't care what you think. I don't think you understand what I was saying but sure. They solve problems like this usually just by getting rid of personalized skins and instead adopting universal skins any soldier can wear. It saves devs a lot of time too, they only have to (and I mean HAVE to design, maybe they will want to design more, but they only have to) design 4 outfits and they're pretty much done. Some basic uniform, then a medium one and an advanced one. Job done. Yes it makes soldiers look less unique, but it makes soldiers or mercs look like actual soldiers and mercs. I'd much rather have a very generic soldier in a t-shirt, bulletproof vest, and cargo pants, if it looks like he fits in a war zone. Look at the new videos, they have clutter everywhere. Are you fighting in a street or in a junkyard. Says the guy who thinks JA3 will be a disaster, but also defending devs when he has no reason to do so, based on no evidence. It's in no way a guarantee that devs will even be consciously aware of the 90s and 2000s paradigm of basing VO mostly off one-liners and restricting "full" VO to big scenes (actually most of the time probably unnecessary and kind of not good, imo). When paradigms shift, new generations come into an industry, or just technology changes and now it's financially acceptable for any size studio to do "full" VO, often people can start to think that just because they can, that they should, and the don't realize how emblematic and iconic some of the non-full, one-liner type VO was, and how good the old way of doing things was, even if nobody exactly defined what the "old way" was. Ok tough guy. I'd fire you immediately and see how you cry.

And of course, and as per usual, I'm not attacking any of the devs, I'm just reviewing what I've seen of the game, and where I think the developers should spend more time, and what their next steps can be, if they think everything is good then I can maybe point out things that they've missed or overlooked, etc. It's all love and support ❤️ kissy kissy smooch smooch other girly stuff etc.

1 the camera is too close to the action, in my opinion. this is a screenshot from ja2 (1.13 but still same resolution afaik) and ja3 side by side. the second screenshot is borderline third person. Now of course I'm sure camera distance will be variable and so on, but the way the level is designed (is it a huge level with a city and 50 buildings, or is it a very small map like in silent storm or in something like ja flashback for example), and the default camera distance will have an impact in terms of how strategic the strategy will be, versus how fast-paced and non-strategic it will be. This is another example of a very zoomed out isometric camera as was really widespread back in the day for all kinds of strategies, swat 2 shown here, rollercoaster tycoon, theme hospital. In a shot like this you can see JA3 also take on a similar distance, but, is it by default, it might not be. 2 i'm not the biggest fan of the full-window screens for weapon inspect, and for dialogue. I think aesthetically it looks both a bit ugly, and doesn't fit a strategy. I would prefer to have smaller window-in-windows, both for inventory, for item inspection, and for dialogue. JA2 already did dialogue this way after all, easy small window-in-window. I think with dialogue it might be justified, but with weapon inspect, I don't think that full-window mode needs to exist at all, you can inspect a weapon perfectly well in a comparatively small window. examples: (Also is it just me, or do a lot of characters in JA3 have a permanent smirk on their face? I think there should be a bit more variety in terms of facial expression and the apparent emotion the merc is feeling. Also I don't know if I think a smirk is a "good" expression to have on somebody's face, if somebody is smirking at me I think they might be smug or might be trying to laugh at me which I take in a combative way. This all goes into this modern philosophy of making every character super-overpowered, super happy, super confident, to where they have these insane smirks (you see this in anime sometimes, where each character is grinning for no reason and is insanely overconfident for no reason)). 3 i like the music, but, i think some of the songs sound a bit generic and not jagged-alliance enough. maybe some of the compositions should be the original songs from ja2, in higher quality, with some additions made by the composer if they think it'll help. If you try to write a composition similar to another composition maybe you will sometimes intentionally try to avoid notes of the original composition, but this can sometimes make the new composition sound weird or off because you're on purpose avoiding the notes of the old composition. Also I believe I heard the battle music being played somewhere, either on the livestream or elsewhere, and it sounds very world war 2-y, like something out of war thunder, or similar ww2 style videogames and movies. Also I think some of the JA2 compositions are timeless in a way, the laptop theme is very good (despite only being 1 chord on horns i think, with some marimbas or something being played on top of that and a lead guitar coming in every once in a while), and the battle music in ja2 was especially top notch and like VERY heavy. So was the main menu music in JA2, both are very very brutal compositions, really utilizing the classical orchestra to the utmost and having very un-classical sounding compositions (but good of course). Overall I think the soundtrack needs a bit more ja2 type sound, which is very much: 80s, that one synth horns patch that everybody used in 80s and 90s, lead guitar, and maybe some marimbas to give that tropical feeling. the four compositions that capture JA2 to me are the main music theme with how it just comes out of nowhere and blasts you with the horns and the military drums, laptop theme, battle theme especially with its like very dynamic scaling (7:50 in video below) slides on the strings and whatever else there is, and the post-battle victory music which I think is great, very relaxed, etc, and also very timeless and emblematic. i get that a lot of compositions are in-genre for jagged alliance, but i think they can be refined a bit more, and i think additional compositions can be written to sound more like 80s synth and leadguitar type music. 4 I think not including %-to-hit anywhere, whether as a bar like in ja2, or as an explicit hit percentage is a really bad idea. Like really bad. Because then it just becomes all guesswork, how are you supposed to know if one weapon is better than another if you swap to it and still don't know the hit percentage. How are you supposed to know if you can hit from the current distance or if you should move in closer. 5 I do not like how run-down a lot of the levels look like. This is another strong contention of mine, along with number 4: in ja2 while you were in a third-world country occupied by a dictator, you were fighting in SAM-site installations, modern military bases, you were fighting in modern airports, with modern hangars and clean-looking modern-looking cement roads and so on. Was it realistic? Not necessarily. But did it look good? I think so. I don't think it looks good to be fighting somebody who look like villagers in what looks to be favellas, you want to be fighting cool looking elite military units! but instead it looks like you're fighting local criminals and impoverished riff-raff. It looks like you're fighting drug dealers on a local street. 6 I do not necessarily love what I've seen of the enemies so far, I don't think they're bad, but I would prefer for them to look a bit more formal and cooler, I do not want to be fighting villagers or people who look more like local gang members or criminals or drug dealers than a modern military. I think some of the facepaints are very over the top, you can keep them but make them much more restrained and smaller. or the facepaint squads can be a rare type of squad that only shows up sometimes, maybe it belongs to a certain smaller faction. 7 I think it's a BIT weird to see random mercs, like for example like Ivan, clearly not wearing a vest, fighting in the battlefield. There's gotta be a way to modify the mesh to stick a vest onto him. This goes back to the whole idea of "I don't want to be fighting villagers, and I also don't want my guys to look like random civilians that picked up a firearm". 8 I don't think it's a big deal, and I don't even think its a bad system (I just think it can be improved upon), but I think the inventory system is very simple and if you can bring in a LBE system from 1.13 with some better progression (a lot of LBE becomes basically same by volume of overall items that can be stored after a certain point very early), that'd be a lot better. 9 i think some of the levels look really overpopulated with objects, which makes them look unclean, or like a bomb went off, or a zombie apocalypse broke out. I think it's ok to make them look a bit cleaner, if there are cars there, maybe the cars look like they've been parked, and aren't at a weird angle...maybe get rid of some of the trash, and replace it with some other useless objects like telephone booths, or poles or square bollards. 10 the overall feel seems to be closer to xcom than to jagged alliance, because there's much more of an emphasis on individual mercs, those individual mercs stand out (instead of all having the same model like in ja2), and stand out very clearly by having very different clothing, and the action takes place at a much more CQB basis than otherwise. I don't think it's a bad thing or a deal-breaker, and I don't think ja3 is xcom, it just has a feel that's closer in that direction. It feels a bit less serious and more "fun!", and while humor existed in ja, it was always a very serious affair, or that's how i interpreted it anyways. but i don't think it's a big deal or a big problem, whether a strategy becomes ja or something like xcom 2 depends on the underlying gameplay mechanics, and the gameplay mechanics seem to be in-touch with ja2. but you gotta bring in % to hit, without it, it's like one chair-leg missing from a chair, we need good dense depthy strategy, we don't need very simple point n click simulators. Also we should have variable zoom levels (I already saw those, those are great, especially if they can be modified with attachments and perks sometimes). 11 please remember to include one-liners in the game, I'm not sure how the VO is done, but, a key staple of almost all strategies from this generation, including RTSes, was one-liners. you had this in starcraft with very memorable one-liners from units, you had this in red alert 2, you had this in ja2. very iconic lines that were said in a interesting way by a merc, that would get stuck in your brain because they were repeated 200 times. 12 dead stats are inevitable so don't feel too bad if a perk is not as good as the others, or a stat isn't as useful. and if you really need to make it useful, just add some other stats to the perk or stat, like if there's a particularly average perk, add +10hp or +1ap to it to really make it useful again. ----- overall as long as ja3 mechanically is similar to ja2 i don't care, but there are ways to make the same ja title more or less interesting.

Probably was used as inspiration for opposing force in part (though helicopter scenes are in general very very cool ways to do exposition and introduce us to the world, characters, and plotline of the story)

Actually you telling somebody that they would shit their pants would be more likely than anything to hurt their confidence which would make them bad. If they feel confident, they'd be able to react naturally, and just point and click. Guns are not high-technology high-skill weapons. You point a gun at target, and boom. That's why guns are deployed to millions of mostly completely untrained basically children. If a 18 year old kid can fire a gun (indeed, in africa there are 14 year old kids who fire guns perfectly fine), you can too. It's not designed to be a super high skill weapon type, in fact quite the opposite. Now fire a gun well, maybe different, know good military formations and strategy, that might be different, but if he thinks he can do a good job being a soldier - he probably can. The hardest part of being a soldier is what happens if you're losing a war, and still expected to fight. That's the hard part. Or if you're out-matched technologically, and are facing an enemy with significantly more advanced technology than you which keeps them safe, but you in danger. If you think you're going to win, and you think your side is going to win, then it's not hard at all.

Me watching this thread: Yesssssssssssss yessssssssssssss! Let the hate FLOW THROUGH YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🤣

😱 I mean listen, I think technically JA is not outdated, the graphics are more than fine (you can't see anything anyways because the action is very zoomed out, this is not an FPS where you can see things up close), in fact I'd say the graphics are up to modern AAA standard, but beyond that, we haven't seen anything yet chill bro, I'm sure there'll be plenty of gritty detail. We can talk about how that gritty detail is delivered, is this captain planet for kids or more like a "serious" action tv show in 90s that maybe has very "serious" real life, realistic villains that are not redeemable people (maybe you can see examples of this in miami vice, certainly in letal weapon series, and similar 90s action movies that didn't really have a "happy ending" as it were, where the happy ending was rescuing the innocent victim (like the protagonists girl), but pretty much everybody else died, beverly hills cop is another example of a movie that was while outright comedic in a lot of its early parts (probably way more than JA ever needs to be or should be), it also had a "serious" plotline about actually "bad" bad villains).

Yeah I think they're called trophy guns and are actually handed out to officers in the military upon retirement. That's where the tradition of engraving firearms comes from. But I would also not separately mind very unique custom versions of guns that give maybe even a small boost on underlying values, a 1 ap reduction here a +1 damage there, maybe +10 magazine size. Nothing huge, but something that would make the end game trying to find not just the best weapon but the best version of that best weapon, which would be extremely rare.

I actually wouldn't mind a few luxury or cosmetically different guns. I get what you're saying, I think you're referencing COD type cosmetics, but I don't think 1 or 2 of these kinds of guns is bad. Could be a cool collectors item for your main merc. Have him carry a golden 1911 instead of a regular one.

What people generally mean by balance is not impossibly difficult, but also not too easy, and that depends on how many enemies there are, how much ammo you can and should carry into each mission, are you expected to replenish ammo using enemy's ammo, how does that work. What about durability, what is the optimal speed of durability decrease, is it a weapon gets broken after 10 missions, maybe 20. Or only 5. If you change mechanics around you'll also have to now re-balance the entire title to make it more fitting for that set of mechanics. The difficulty and stats of enemies should rise in line with progression, and there are some philosophies around how to do this.

I mean, my friend, there are different kinds of development lol.