I've always thought the Firaxis sort of design ethos really set back tactical games in a big way. Someone in the late 2000s figured out that a lot of people get bored after moving the fourth unit in a game and so that sort of limitation was born- the old X-com was born of Julian Gollop's weird brain worms of physical modeling (the world map aspect of UFO Defense was not added by his choice), so everything worked physically and he was fine letting you send 28 men into battle. Firaxis had a lot of capital D Design in their take on the game, so 4-6 units, strict limits on the use of things like grenades and missiles, and a heavily simplified action system. The joke is that if Enemy Unkown were designed in 2023, flanking would be a cooldown ability.
It's no secret that Firaxis for a long time used board game veterans to design stuff, from Twilight Struggle's Ananda Gupta (TS was the #1 rated game on BoardGameGeek before the kickstarter era of board games and stands the test of time as an excellent game) to Here I Stand's Ed Beach. Though i think in some ways perhaps they might have learned the wrong lessons from board games. I can understand the desire to use cards in this way- both games use a hand of cards to determine what you could do on your turn, and Jake Solomon did work with both, as far as I know, but there's a fairly significant difference.
In Twilight Struggle and Here I Stand, cards have an OP value, which are just generic points with tons of possibilities of what to do with them on your turn, and they also have an event, which is something special that has an effect well outside the normal game mechanics. Occasionally you'll use both, but it's a choice. The hand of cards and small quantity helps avoid choice paralysis, but the OP value, a sort of action point mechanic helps bring back a panopoly of options of what to do with your turn when it comes to your turn and it's time to play a card. The Protestant player in Here I Stand can play op points to engage in religious debate, build troops, move troops around, or make conversion attempts. You can always punch, as it were.
Here, i think the goal is to try to cut down on the choice paralysis, but then you only have three characters anyway. We've gone from 4-6 to three. This isn't that uncommon, a lot of tactical games on steam (Thankfully, not Jagged Alliance 3, thanks haemimont for letting me bring 18 guys into combat if i want) have done this, but now instead of a brace of cooldown abilities at the bottom of your screen, it's just, cards. If you've mastered it, you can generally eliminate the bad turns but there's very little power fantasy here. The way opposing events fire in Twilight Struggle when you use op cards and have to manage these crises works incredibly well in a game about the Cold War, where you often have to try to mitigate problems you create in the first place, but there's nothing like that in Midnight Suns.
I'm not familiar with these particular board games but I think it's become very fashionable for video game developers to lean heavily on board games, in a way that I think rarely works well, for a variety of reasons.
One of them is that board games often not very interested in their own themes. There are a bunch of games all about trading wheat for clay that have essentially the same theming. Ticket to Ride isn't about trains to any real degree, it's about the rules, and the train stuff is a thin layer on top.
Games have visuals and music and other aesthetic avenues to express theme, and don't work well when the themes and rules are way mismatched. This was one of my main problems with Midnight Suns, and also with the game Overland - the mechanics don't match the presentation and what the games are ostensibly about.
I suspect if Midnight Suns were a board game, or even a digital card game, people would think "oh it has neat rules, and also a thin superhero theme on top - fun!" But a super hero video game (with a 3d environment you can run around in) needs to model super-heroism to some degree.
As for how constrained Midnight Suns is, I've always suspected it was originally going to also be a mobile game, perhaps even with mobile as the lead platform.
I can't speak to much to the design ethos of Firaxis since I'm not familiar with enough of their games, but thanks for your in-depth comment.
I've always thought the Firaxis sort of design ethos really set back tactical games in a big way. Someone in the late 2000s figured out that a lot of people get bored after moving the fourth unit in a game and so that sort of limitation was born- the old X-com was born of Julian Gollop's weird brain worms of physical modeling (the world map aspect of UFO Defense was not added by his choice), so everything worked physically and he was fine letting you send 28 men into battle. Firaxis had a lot of capital D Design in their take on the game, so 4-6 units, strict limits on the use of things like grenades and missiles, and a heavily simplified action system. The joke is that if Enemy Unkown were designed in 2023, flanking would be a cooldown ability.
It's no secret that Firaxis for a long time used board game veterans to design stuff, from Twilight Struggle's Ananda Gupta (TS was the #1 rated game on BoardGameGeek before the kickstarter era of board games and stands the test of time as an excellent game) to Here I Stand's Ed Beach. Though i think in some ways perhaps they might have learned the wrong lessons from board games. I can understand the desire to use cards in this way- both games use a hand of cards to determine what you could do on your turn, and Jake Solomon did work with both, as far as I know, but there's a fairly significant difference.
In Twilight Struggle and Here I Stand, cards have an OP value, which are just generic points with tons of possibilities of what to do with them on your turn, and they also have an event, which is something special that has an effect well outside the normal game mechanics. Occasionally you'll use both, but it's a choice. The hand of cards and small quantity helps avoid choice paralysis, but the OP value, a sort of action point mechanic helps bring back a panopoly of options of what to do with your turn when it comes to your turn and it's time to play a card. The Protestant player in Here I Stand can play op points to engage in religious debate, build troops, move troops around, or make conversion attempts. You can always punch, as it were.
Here, i think the goal is to try to cut down on the choice paralysis, but then you only have three characters anyway. We've gone from 4-6 to three. This isn't that uncommon, a lot of tactical games on steam (Thankfully, not Jagged Alliance 3, thanks haemimont for letting me bring 18 guys into combat if i want) have done this, but now instead of a brace of cooldown abilities at the bottom of your screen, it's just, cards. If you've mastered it, you can generally eliminate the bad turns but there's very little power fantasy here. The way opposing events fire in Twilight Struggle when you use op cards and have to manage these crises works incredibly well in a game about the Cold War, where you often have to try to mitigate problems you create in the first place, but there's nothing like that in Midnight Suns.
I'm not familiar with these particular board games but I think it's become very fashionable for video game developers to lean heavily on board games, in a way that I think rarely works well, for a variety of reasons.
One of them is that board games often not very interested in their own themes. There are a bunch of games all about trading wheat for clay that have essentially the same theming. Ticket to Ride isn't about trains to any real degree, it's about the rules, and the train stuff is a thin layer on top.
Games have visuals and music and other aesthetic avenues to express theme, and don't work well when the themes and rules are way mismatched. This was one of my main problems with Midnight Suns, and also with the game Overland - the mechanics don't match the presentation and what the games are ostensibly about.
I suspect if Midnight Suns were a board game, or even a digital card game, people would think "oh it has neat rules, and also a thin superhero theme on top - fun!" But a super hero video game (with a 3d environment you can run around in) needs to model super-heroism to some degree.
As for how constrained Midnight Suns is, I've always suspected it was originally going to also be a mobile game, perhaps even with mobile as the lead platform.
I can't speak to much to the design ethos of Firaxis since I'm not familiar with enough of their games, but thanks for your in-depth comment.