I think this was most old KoF bosses.
Like Sub Zero vs. Goro in MK just doing freeze + uppercut over and over again. It worked every time on every cab I fought him on.
Having watched some competitive HoMM3 videos recently, Armageddon bombing (and specifically “dragogeddon”) is definitely a known quantity in that space so I imagine a total conversion mod maker would know about it.
Honestly I am always really curious about the ‘response’ to these kinds of tactics, i.e. custom maps in turn based games that are designed to be unbeatable without knowing specific engine restrictions. In Heroes-likes even just understanding the concept of single-stacks and kiting immediately makes your armies like 50% more effective.
I think the first time I became consciously aware that strategy games are things to be “gamed” and generally not attempts to simulate genuine honest strategy is when I was looking up tips for Advance Wars as a teen because I was having a hard time and I found out that spamming infantry is almost always a good move since that lets you capture more buildings faster and past a certain point you have a critical mass of infantry where it doesn’t matter that a guy is weaker than a tank because you just have 10x the guys.
Padding out the end of a FFT map to make your own guys punch each other in front of a cornered goblin with 2 HP is also a gamer tactic, IMO. Or maybe a gamer strategy since it’s long-term?
Gamer tactics emerging (and I agree that it feels live a vs-AI specific thing) is always an interesting thing to me because they are a manifestation of the gap between what the game itself says it is and what the mechanics say it is.
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I feel like I’ve done this a bunch of times but can’t recall most of the specifics.
I do recall in one of the lesser giant itch bundle games named Manual Intervention (basically a 3d Missile Command that takes place on a globe) every stage was just an overly long grind to get through and I wasn’t enjoying myself at all, so when I gained an autofire ability near the end of the game I just turned it on for the last stage and walked away. It took a half hour or so but the game managed to beat itself and I only took a few hits. It is my only good memory of the game.
Also I am trying to currently speed through The Last of Us 2 as quick as I can without going full scummy, but there was a recent set piece where a bunch of people are looking for you in knee deep water and I realized when I laid prone it put me in swimming mode, and enemies have a much harder time seeing you when under water, so I basically took advantage of that to swim past 90% of the encounter and disappear the time I was spotted.
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I’m not sure if this counts but in Dead Space 2 they give you a proximity-mine launcher and well, the game becomes very formulaic in terms of when enemies are going to attack you and where they’re going to come from. I entered a room and in the middle there was a button I needed to push. So I laid down mines in semi-concentric rings around me before I pushed it. Then I calmly turned around and watched all the necromorphs get turned into a fine paste and waltzed out without having to fire a single additional shot. A game-breaking bug shortly after was the final straw and that was it for me.
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Related: In Dead Space 3, they added weapon crafting, right? And one of the weapons you can craft is a rocket launcher, and one of the parts you can add to it is “no self damage”. You can probably guess what happens after. Point the gun at your feet and continually unload rockets! Campaign completed on hardest difficulty!
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i feel like i scum games the fuck up whenever possible but its so hard to remember specifics
in shenmue during forklift racing you just take a shortcut through an alley and you’ll win the race and win your money but the day will repeat so you can get all the money for gacha without making time go forward
in ninja turtles 2 arcade you can interrupt the snow boss from ever throwing his rock by doing jump kicks at him when he picks it up
in final fantasy xiv shadowbringers you could craft coffee biscuits super easy and just turn them in all day for tons of money but it was too profitable so they took it out of the game
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I’m pretty sure Deus Ex HR wasn’t figuring on me carrying turrets around and poking them around every corner to clear out goons for free. Pitching one into a busy room and listening to the carnage is just delightful.
Or using vending machines to block all the hallways leading to the funicular.
There is the FFT tactic of having Ramza scream at himself until hes getting 5 turns a round all of which he uses to scream even more. And then you just stomp on everything before it can even move.
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I did this it was hilarious
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I’m surprised given the amount of Sekiro love on here in general that nobody has brought up dead angling—Sekiro bosses often have separate AI forks for when you aren’t facing them that help them chase you down and do not bother to include behaviours like parrying. However, with several bosses (even more on older patches) you can pin them into corners while not locking on and facing slightly away in such a manner that you can attack them while not 100% facing them, which causes them to select the wrong BT branch and never parry or attack, making the fight completely trivial. This is the typical speedrun strat for Genichiro and some others
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oh for clarity this is a very old map that is contemporary with Heroes 2. I’m not sure if it was included with the base game or made by a fan but most mentions of it that i was able to find were “nostalgia posts” talking about people’s fav maps from back in the day.
Would not be surprised if it was a known quantity then either! But I suspect the intended strategy is to build resources for a year or more of in-game time while trying to keep the dude in check. I had a backup plan in case the boat-man decided to go capture my main castle, which I could not have stopped him from doing. If anything, it would have been better for me because I could have taken 3 of the 4 necromancer castles and built one strong army instead of two moderate armies made of different creatures.
But still, PC games have always been Fucking Weird
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Depraved Gamer activating a trap card
In FF2 you can break the SaGa-like progression system by using the spell Change, which switches the HP and MP of one character with an enemy. (This can’t be used to go above max HP/ max MP)
Use it on a weak goblin to get your HP and MP to critical level, then immediately kill it, the game will think you went through an ordeal and award you a ton of max HP / max MP. You can then go to an inn and repeat, until your HP and MP values are so big they show up in letters instead of numbers
I know someone who did this then fucking destroyed the rest of the game… until they reached the final boss, who constantly uses drain attacks based on the opponent’s max HP. The player character’s max HP values were so large, and their attack power paled so much in comparison, that they could never outheal the boss
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The first one I ever did as a kid.
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A recent thread reminded me that I could only beat the final mission in A-10 Cuba by aiming my jet at the enemy HQ and hitting alt+J (jettison all weapons) and ejecting.
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Just remember one interesting bit of cheese I discovered in MGS5: I’m not sure of the actual functions at work but apparently static objects continue to exist beyond draw distance, but enemies do not. So I could load D Walker up with TOWs, line up a shot on a radar or antenna or other such target, then just back up so far everything vanishes while not moving the reticle and then fire and destroy the target without triggering any alerts whatsoever.
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