IDK. I skipped horse archers in my latest dark elves playthrough of total war warhammer 3, because they are so trash. No shields + large targets means they die really easy to missile fire, And since you can’t use a longbow on horseback they lack the range to engage other archer units without taking a few volleys first.

Basically they are only good for fighting factions like undead that that have no ranged units.

Aye. Like all design paradigms, there are places where they can be useful or can be used to achieve a certain feel.

I actually hate “choose from a menu combat” but have thought of a few cases where it would make sense - for example a Legend of Galactic Heroes style space warfare game based on hyper-realistic combat between massive fleets of 20,000+ ships each, which according to lore, line up in nice neat firing lines and shoot at each other for 12+ hours until one side has won via attrition. There is no way to simulate that in real time and be fun, and the ranges at which combat happens in deep space means that there is basically literally no room for maneuvering once the battle has began…

This is actually a few different design paradigms you are talking about.

The first is the exploration map transitioning into a battle map during encounters. The second is randomly spawning encounters. The third is forcing players to fight those encounters. Games like Zelda 2 had a exploration map transition into a battlemap, but the encounters are visible on the exploration map and could be avoided if you want so they were never forced or random. On the other hand games like Shining in the Darkness had exploration and battle on the same map; there was no transitions and the view perspective did not change, the game just randomly forced you to fight encounters while you walked around. Then you have something like Vermintide 2 which is a realtime first person action rpg/shooter where random monsters are spawned in at random times on random places on the map to attack you, but the monsters only spawn out of sight in places you are not looking at, and you are not forced to fight them.

IMO battle transitions and forced encounters are outdated mechanics designed around the technical limitations of 8 bit era systems, while random encounters are a great way to improve exploration and overall replay value of a game.

Wipeout is my favorite racing series. Jet Moto was pretty cool too.

every beth game has always had game breaking bugs on release

Try Kenshi.

You think the CCP hasn’t been stuffing propaganda into literally everything it could for your entire life?

Since the early 2000s, main melody productions have been market-based shows singing mainstream tunes and glorifying the social and political lines that the CCP wants the public to value and imitate. It’s a broad list, from encouraging good behavior in public places to honoring the CCP’s past struggles, strengthening trust of current policies, or kindling patriotism and cultural confidence.

Over the past decade, the government has managed to harness the power of commercial studios and A-list talent to create increasing quality. Propaganda films have now topped the box office highest-grossing list in China each year for the past six years, and in 2022, the top three TV dramas with the highest TV ratings were all of this genre.

Until the late 1990s, main melody was the only melody. These films dominated cinemas, stoking patriotic fervor over China’s potential and implying that only the party could release it. But media commercialization meant competition for eyeballs—there was suddenly more choice on TV, and all sorts of commercial films were being imported from the West, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Today, online streaming and short-video apps heighten that competition even further.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/18/the-knockout-china-main-melody-films-tv-propaganda/

The game was a ripoff of phantasy star online 2 except with less slutty costumes, which is the main reason people play phantasy star online 2. The game was always going to be DOA.

have you tried kenshi?

Tabula Rasa. It was a first/third person sci fi mmo shooter/rpg with craftable mechs, It lasted for a bit more then a year before it shut down, and no private servers have ever been created.

Gundam : Universal Century Online. Picture Star Wars Galaxies with combined arms mecha warfare. Start on foot, buy a jetpack, mine some ore, built a tank/jet/mech, fight in the war. It lasted about as long as tabula rasa before it shut down. It currently has no private server.

Firefall. First/third person sci fi mmo shooter/rpg with craftable mech suits. bla blah, shut down no private server ever created.

tl/dr: I want a new mech mmo. Or even just to be able to play my old favorite mecha mmos.

The Morrowind expansion for Elder Scrolls Online could have been the greatest thing ever, if they had just straight remade TES3 in the ESO engine, following the failed Neverine that literally existed in lore during the era ES was set in. Instead they just released an expansion set in morrowind with a story that had nothing to do with tes3’s storyline.

The only reason I go to Reddit anymore are the credible defense megathreads. It is the last subreddit that has not been taken over by partisan botfarms pushing an agenda.