Just some light fun gameplay

Now Is Not the Time for Paradox

Section: 

Imari, Japan. 2001.

JR Ralls parts his rich, full hair. Luscious lock after luscious lock bends at his touch, each strand clinging ever more tightly to his brow than the last. JR doesn’t think about what it would be like to see a bald spot in the back grow; why would such a thought as that even cross his mind?

Rather, JR has more important things to focus on. This nihon-go is kicking his ass! As he studies it, the pressure starts in one spot of his brain and slowly spreads. It expands and expands until it feels like his mind is trying to shatter his cranium, fleeing the intellectual flogging he’s been subjecting it to.

It is a feeling he’s not used to. He breezed through every subject in school with the exception of language classes, where he always struggled to obtain his "Gentleman’s C."

Then, within weeks of graduation, he made the very wise and the also very smart decision to move 8,000 miles to a small town in Japan where if he didn’t learn how to correctly say “Toire wa doko desu ka?” then he didn’t get to go to the restroom.

Learning Japanese is doubly hard for him, because the retention of information and concepts is achieved by making connections to previously absorbed ideas. When someone knows a lot about a subject, then anytime they learn something new in that field that new information can attach itself to many other data points in their mind. But when JR is studying Japanese he is trying to get the words and grammar to latch onto a mental void.

He is learning through brute will, and at the end of a day’s effort he is utterly exhausted. He doesn’t think he can push himself any harder. His first non-minimum wage job, his fist time living alone, his first time living in a foreign country: It’s a lot to have on his plate. He’s not a teenager anymore. He’s got to learn to pace himself now that he’s twenty-three.

JR puts the flash cards down. He’s earned a break. He’s earned a friggin' break! He needs to do something else, anything else. He needs to ... hey … what was that game people were talking about on USENET? Europa Universalis? The people on soc.history.what-if say it’s like Civilization but with more options! Cool! And more complexity! Awesome! And it is supposed to be much harder! Great!

JR starts a game. He tries to move an army. It kind-of-sort-of moves, but the way it does so is weird and he doesn’t like it. He tries to manage the economy but doesn’t understand how anything he does affects anything else. He tries to colonize a new piece of land, but no, he can’t do that. He can’t figure out how he can perform the simplest of actions, because EU is:

SO.
FRICKING.
DENSE.

He tries the tutorial and gives up. He skims the manual and gives up. He sees if there are any pointers on the information superhighway and gives up.

Learning how to play EU can only be accomplished with some hard mental effort, and JR has had enough of that. So much of his energy is already going to studying Japanese that the idea of working for his fun sounds grotesque. He uninstalls Europa Universalis. Maybe he’ll give it another try when life gets less busy.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

North Carolina, USA. 2017

“So … how do I override Item Maintenance on an auto-reorder?”

“So … where does the PO’s Header Required Date actually pull in the data field?”

“So … if I get a verbal CONF for the PO but I don’t have a tracking number, do I still need to keep it in the process schedule?”

For the last couple of weeks, JR has been interrupting his coworkers once every ten minutes or so with questions like the above. Problems that were obtuse to him were explained with a sigh and, after some head-scratching on his part, the “obvious” answer was implemented.

JR has learned new things in other jobs, but most of that learning was based upon a significant foundation of pre-existing knowledge. At this job JR is employed in a field where he has zero experience, doing a job that he has zero experience in, while using an OS he has zero experience with. JR is excited about the opportunity, and thinks it is a good career path for him, but there hasn’t been a single day in the last month when his brain hasn’t said, “Could ... could we become a ditch digger? I’m pretty sure we know how to dig a ditch.”

He has a bubbly, fuzzy feeling at the sides of his cranium. It started after a few hours of hard work and increased throughout the day. It began to lessen as he picked up his kids, drove them home, made dinner, got the kids upstairs and brushed, read a story to them, gave them hugs and kisses, got back downstairs, and did some quick cleaning and prep work for next day. But it was only fully gone when he had done all his “chores” for the day and collapsed into a comfy chair to enjoy his (maybe) fifteen minutes of spare time. And in those precious free moments he often debated with himself what game he should play.

Even though he has heard that Stellaris is the easiest game that Paradox has ever made, and even though he learned that Hearts of Iron IV had been completely streamlined, and even though Crusader Kings was a game he desperately wanted to like ... no. Just, no.

JR has tried Paradox Games a half-dozen times and he has never once gotten over the hump. He genuinely thinks that if he could push past the learning curve he will have a great time with them. But when he actually looks over any of the multiple Paradox games in his Steam library, he shakes his head.

Instead, he pulls up Zelda II: The Adventures of Link. JR has recently beaten the original Legend of Zelda for the fifth time in his life, so now it's time to beat Zelda II for the fourth. Now is not the time for Paradox. Now is not the time for his hobby to challenge him. Now is the time for his hobby to provide comfort, familiarity, and ease. And replaying his old favorites gives him exactly that.

Comments

Hear, hear!

BTW, is "Solaris" a typo on purpose?

garion333 wrote:

Hear, hear!

BTW, is "Solaris" a typo on purpose?

Nope, fixed!

huh... somewhat coincidentally I couldn't get into Crusader Kings 2 when I first tried it because I had just started a new job. Now I can't get into Stellaris at least partly because I just started studying Japanese.

This was a great read

jrralls wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Hear, hear!

BTW, is "Solaris" a typo on purpose?

Nope, fixed!

My fault!

It's a great book, though.

Is the TL:DR of this that JRRalls was a filthy casual in 2001 and remains one in 2017?

My hope is that Paradox can find a way to increase the readability of their UI while keeping the complexity of their simulations. I have high hopes for a Victoria III if it is on trend with the development of Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis series.

I'm amused because Crusader Kings 2 is my comfort gaming.

(But, then, I'm nearing 500 hours in Paradox grand strategy games. Which apparently only gets me to the middle of the pack.)

Learning Japanese is doubly hard for him, because the retention of information and concepts is achieved by making connections to previously absorbed ideas. When someone knows a lot about a subject, then anytime they learn something new in that field that new information can attach itself to many other data points in their mind. But when JR is studying Japanese he is trying to get the words and grammar to latch onto a mental void.

I have a link about this!
http://blog.ncase.me/jigsaw-puzzles/

Having the basic Paradox system under your belt, though, gives you access to some wonderful games that can be played in small increments or large. I play Diablo or Path of Exile when I need mental downtime, and Paradox when I need something more thoughtful.

It really is a matter of getting through the gateway arm-in-arm with one of their games. After that, it's all much, much easier.

I think Paradox games partially get their bad press because people keep saying they're a better Civ. They're actually not. Civ is a 4x game. Everyone starts out small and then you persist and sometimes you take over the world. Literally. It helps a lot that Civ has a UI structure that has easy latch-ons and provide palpable interaction loops that reward the player for interacting with the game. Paradox games aren't like that. You don't start out with nothing, you don't start equal to other players, and victory conditions aren't static or similar. It's basically an entirely different sort of game.

LarryC wrote:

I think Paradox games partially get their bad press because people keep saying they're a better Civ. They're actually not. Civ is a 4x game.

So stellaris then.

This is similar to where I'm at with Paradox games right now. I got over the hump with CK2 and Vic2 to some degree but when I sit down after a long day I usually don't have the energy to think up my own goals in the game and then figure out how to manipulate the systems to get me there.

Plus if I'm limited to 30 minutes of play, sitting there for half of that waiting for time to move enough so an event I'm waiting on happens just feels like a waste. I know people claim that they're constantly busy in these games but I've never felt that way.

I think there's a lot of us out there who really want to love the Paradox stuff but just can't get there yet.

gravity wrote:

This is similar to where I'm at with Paradox games right now. I got over the hump with CK2 and Vic2 to some degree but when I sit down after a long day I usually don't have the energy to think up my own goals in the game and then figure out how to manipulate the systems to get me there.

Plus if I'm limited to 30 minutes of play, sitting there for half of that waiting for time to move enough so an event I'm waiting on happens just feels like a waste. I know people claim that they're constantly busy in these games but I've never felt that way.

I think there's a lot of us out there who really want to love the Paradox stuff but just can't get there yet.

I can't tell you how much money I've spent on Paradox games from the beginning in the futile hope that someday I'll "get" them.

gravity wrote:

This is similar to where I'm at with Paradox games right now. I got over the hump with CK2 and Vic2 to some degree but when I sit down after a long day I usually don't have the energy to think up my own goals in the game and then figure out how to manipulate the systems to get me there.

Plus if I'm limited to 30 minutes of play, sitting there for half of that waiting for time to move enough so an event I'm waiting on happens just feels like a waste. I know people claim that they're constantly busy in these games but I've never felt that way.

I think there's a lot of us out there who really want to love the Paradox stuff but just can't get there yet.

I don't really understand it, but my dad just sets up notifications to pause when certain kinds of things happens, and will just walk away with the game still running.

wordsmythe wrote:

I don't really understand it, but my dad just sets up notifications to pause when certain kinds of things happens, and will just walk away with the game still running.

Huh, that's an approach I've never heard of... I kind of want to try it

gravity wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I don't really understand it, but my dad just sets up notifications to pause when certain kinds of things happens, and will just walk away with the game still running.

Huh, that's an approach I've never heard of... I kind of want to try it

I'm a little more hands-on than that, but my CK2 time is generally switching between the fastest and slowest speeds. It's a game of setting up your Rube Goldberg machine and watching it spin for a bit, and then tweaking it just as it starts to fall apart. (And then misjudging the timing and getting executed by the King of France.)

Stellaris, I'm mostly playing on Fast, but that's because I've gotten used to it in the multiplayer games we have. (We do pause for the start of wars, or if something really, really big happens. And you do tend to fly through some of the story pop-ups that way.)

Gremlin wrote:
gravity wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I don't really understand it, but my dad just sets up notifications to pause when certain kinds of things happens, and will just walk away with the game still running.

Huh, that's an approach I've never heard of... I kind of want to try it

I'm a little more hands-on than that, but my CK2 time is generally switching between the fastest and slowest speeds. It's a game of setting up your Rube Goldberg machine and watching it spin for a bit, and then tweaking it just as it starts to fall apart. (And then misjudging the timing and getting executed by the King of France.)

Stellaris, I'm mostly playing on Fast, but that's because I've gotten used to it in the multiplayer games we have. (We do pause for the start of wars, or if something really, really big happens. And you do tend to fly through some of the story pop-ups that way.)

What do you do with your time while you wait for it to go? Sit there and watch it or go off and do something else? I never got comfortable just sitting there but maybe it's because I didn't have enough plates spinning at once.

gravity wrote:

What do you do with your time while you wait for it to go? Sit there and watch it or go off and do something else? I never got comfortable just sitting there but maybe it's because I didn't have enough plates spinning at once.

Poke around looking at what the rest of the world is up to, mostly. Particularly rivals/marriage candidates/interesting oddballs. I don't usually leave the computer, especially since I don't have speakers on it, just headphones, so I can't tell from a distance if it's paused. Occasionally I have a book or my phone, but not usually.

On the spinning plates front, you can:
- Make sure your children/grandchildren/wards are being educated properly
- Check on the technological development
- Make sure your council is assigned to useful tasks
- Check on your levys/retinue
- Construct buildings in your holdings (easily overlooked, kinda expensive, but important for your holding's long-term power)
- Check the succession of neighboring counties and titles
- Arrange marriages for your children and people in your court
- Try to attract skilled people to your court (or just malcontents with juicy claims)
- Throw a feast/go on a hunt/have a tourney/go on a pilgrimage
- Start or monitor a plot, see who you can convince to join you
- Monitor plots your spymaster has uncovered
- Check in on how neighboring kingdoms are doing and what wars they're fighting
- See who your richest vassal is, in case you want to imprison them and seize their cash
- Check which vassals are discontent, see what you can do to make them happier. (Or find an excuse to banish them. Either way.)
- Check on who likes and hates you in general. Then check on who likes and hates them in turn. (Via the nested right click menu: right click on a character portrait, then right click on the 'go to character' lower right button, then click on the button with two people to see that character's character relationships window.)
- (You can also mark characters as interesting, via the star button in that same nested menu: it adds them to your notifications, which is how I kept tabs on my lesbian scandinavian duchess grandmother when I was in Spain.)

You don't have to do these all at once, obviously.

That's a great list of stuff, thanks Gremlin! It sounds like I should be spending more time poking around and seeing what's going on. I definitely had an easier time finding stuff to do in CK2 than in the other Paradox games I tried. I fired up EU4 last night because of all this and I was having fun, but also in that early learning curve when I don't understand most of the mechanics. If I keep playing and learning those hopefully I'll find more to do even without all the cool human element stuff in CK2.