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Comment by nottorp | Hacker News Reader

I read that as "time limits are bad drama", not how the game is presented.

It can be badly done in a turn based game too, see XCom 2.

If you don't like RTS games you don't like RTS games, but this is more about, say, a RTS where you also have a fixed time limit for missions.

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I understand it as the game can adjust the time behaviour of NPCs to improve the players experience. If you are a spy who needs to meet your contact at the cafe at 1pm then getting delayed by an interesting side quest and arriving at 1:20, in the real world you screwed up and your mission is done. If you do that in a game then it’s boring and you probably won’t realise and wait hours at a cafe. Instead the NPC can simply arrive 20 minutes late. There were games then that had the real world clock approach and would be hard to play - I think for monkey island he actually built a scheduler to avoid this

I've played both monkey islands multiple times and I don't remember any time limit. Everything went at the speed of plot.

As opposed to Maniac Mansion, where you could die if you drained the pool and waited too long to refill it.

(Among many other ways, which you can find here: https://www.maniacmansionfan.50webs.com/waystolose.html)

... and then Gilbert saw the light, wrote this article and the rest is history.

The server you linked seems to be down, here's an archived version:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240529033339/https://www.mania...

I recall you need to do the mug'o'grog-puzzle fast.

I think the criticism is of less self-contained time limits that involve multiple puzzles/locations. You can retry the mug'o'grog puzzle if you're not quick enough, I think.

You sort of do, but you can always get a new mug if i remember well.

Yes, the SCUMM Bar restocks with mugs if you destroy yours.

It's still a bizarrely high-pressure moment built into a game that otherwise has no such mechanics. I always hated coming to it.

It would have been at least as easy to tie the disintegration of the mugs to scene transitions, which would have eliminated the time pressure at no cost to the game.

If you stay under water for ten minutes you'll drown in MI 1. It's one of the few ways you can die.

Even then it’s a faux death isn’t it? Doesn’t Elaine tell you that you could not have died there since the story is told in flashback, so you don’t lose any progress?

MI 1 isn’t flashbacks, that would be MI2

> I think for monkey island he actually built a scheduler to avoid this

That wouldn't make any sense, since nothing in Monkey Island moves.

(Exceptions: During Act I, the cook periodically leaves the SCUMM Bar kitchen to visit the tables. Also during Act I, you can trigger the shopkeeper to walk to the Sword Master's house; he will return when triggered by your actions in the shop. Movement can happen between Acts. On Monkey Island, you have to lead a monkey from its location to somewhere else. Herman Toothrot will show up in the cannibal village at some point after you're already required to have picked up the banana picker; his being there is not relevant to anything. Otherwise, nothing ever moves.)

> It can be badly done in a turn based game too, see XCom 2.

I disagree. I hated turn limits in XCom1 (we're talking about remakes, not original 1993 game, right?), because they weren't really justified by the game world, but in XCom2 when you are the scrappy resistance on quick hit and run missions it really helps build up tension.

> we're talking about remakes,

Yes.

> not original 1993 game, right?

The original 1993 game has a great example of how to put time pressure on the player without an explicit time pressure: terror missions. Diddle around and you get an army of chrysalids on your butt.

> you are the scrappy resistance on quick hit and run missions it really helps build up tension.

They had a demo day. I played the first mission, or maybe made it to the second. Ran out of turns because I explored an empty corner on the way to the objective. Uninstalled.

And yes, i finished the first xcom remake multiple times. Hated every bomb disarm mission with a passion.

If you ask me, they kinda painted themselves into a corner with the aliens on fixed patrol routes that you could just wait around until the position was perfect. You couldn't do that in the original xcom. But instead of fixing that, they added ... turn limits. It's just bad game design.

Possibly too much world of warcraft. I've seen this trend in games starting a few years after wow was out. People thinking that if Blizzard does it into a MMO, it's okay to do it in a single player game too.

How does WoW relate to turn limits?

To fixed patrol routes. A younger designer who played too many MMOs can think that's the only way to place enemies in a game: either standing in one place or patrolling a fixed route.

That may work in a rpg, but look where it got the tactics game in xcom 2.

I’m still not seeing the connection to WoW. Games did that long before WoW ever existed.

I disagree on this. I played through the remake once and never tried it again. But XCom2 was great and i liked it far, far better than the first part. Btw in most timed missions you don't lose on the spot when the timer runs out, you just face more and more reinforcements, which is completely justified by the setting.

Not in the first or second mission. Way to welcome new players, especially ones who are already suspicious since they read the reviews…

With XCOM 2 if you miss a tile in the last turn, you lose the mission. It's not a great execution even if it does apply time pressure. Long War or other mods handle this much better by bringing in reinforcement, so you can't stay for long, but you won't lose just because you miscount the tiles.

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