Rags to riches, riches to rags

lol, both of the Dot Hack series were like that, but you didn't enjoy the uberness for too long though, you went from riches to rags in about 10 mins. :P

In dot.hack 1(first series), your best friend is a max lvl uber character that was going to powerlvl you, and it was kinda fun while it lasted. Your pal got pked in the end though, and not in a pleasant way.

In dot hack 2(the second series), you start out as a noob, but due to some story events, you instantly gains max lvl and max gear..., for a while. Then you get hacked, so you lose all your uber gear and lvls.

In Suikoden 3, there are 3 starting characters, and each has vastly different backgrounds, skills, lvls, and wealth. 1 of the characters is a Knight Captain, so she is rich, decent lvled, has great starting gear and gets other knights to protect her. Another one is a kid growing up in the country side/wilderness, where his tribe believes in subsistence living, so he has virtually no money, and only a hunting knife plus a duck as his companion. If you are playing back and forth between the two, it does feel like going from riches to rags and rags to riches in a painful way.
 
In God of War II, you start out with all epic god-gear that you collected from all of the progress in the first game, but are tricked into actually giving up pieces of your equipment towards killing your ultimate goal.

Which turns you from ultra-God to mere pathetic mortal in about twenty minutes.... Only to build up again.
 
I don't think you're getting it. What Alec means (i think) is that whatever you start with is the most you're gonna get. As the game progresses, you're forced to make use of what you have, diminishing your resources as you go, ramping up the difficulty because of the "resources" shortage. You'd probably have to choose between taking advantage of your temporary superiority to try and gamble into getting even more "resources" or moderating your spending and planning for the long run.

That description just reminded me of Oregon Trail :P
 
Well in some military strategy games you start off with your full force pool that's theoretically fully at your disposal, sometimes you can't field all at once though, e.g. Steel Panthers, Close Combat - series, Combat Mission-series, etc. As the campaign wears on you deplete your forces although you might gain exp. and make the few units you have more 'elite'.
 
lol, no offence, but please let alec explain what alec thinks. :P

And what you describes just mentions most of the TBS or RTS games, where you got limited resources, limited time, and diminishing returns on your investments the farther you go.

Galactic Civilizations 2 were like that, because even on the random chance that I found a lvl 40 planet to build all the things I want, I can't let population grow above a certain point. I can't remember the final number, but anything over 25(I think) will require me to stuff the planet full of entertainment centres and other moral boosters(which gives me increasingly diminishing returns), which totally kills the point of a large planet.
 
It would be neat if someone would make an RTS where the short term winning strategy is antithetical to a long term winning strategy.

For example, you are the leader of a tribe in Africa. You are at intermittently at war with most of your neighbors. White people show up. They offer to trade their guns for your elephant tusks and precious stones. They even offer to help you defeat your neighboring enemies as long as they get to keep the captives. Eventually both your tribe and the white people get more and more powerful. Your wealth grows and most of your enemies are exported.

One day the white people are seen taking by force some of your people from a remote village. The white people deny it. You leave it at a warning. Yet as time goes on there are increasing reports of the white people taking your own people. You decide to fight back, but the white people have already built large forts within your territory. You kill some of them, but more and more keep coming off ships from their home country, bringing bigger and better guns.

A difficult scenario for sure, but I guess more of the point was a game where resources continually diminish just from using them. One could imagine an action-movie-like FPS where the player either defends or initiates an assault on a fortified position with limited guns and bullets. Overall this is just a resource scarcity problem, but many game designers seem to have a hard time balancing this and end up erring on the side of plenty.

There are also a few RTS games where the player has a limited number of troops. Usually this type of design is easier to work for a single level/mission. Otherwise the player may get to the final level and realize that they used up too many bullets/troops 3 levels ago. But perhaps by lowing the starting bullets/troops amount for each level, the game could become increasingly difficult but not impossible.
 
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