GAMING
The military MMO Foxhole is a rabbit hole of bad logistical strategies.
The worst part of strategy games is shuffling. I forgo most 4X in the mid game because shuffling more icons is too tiring. No Total War since the Middle Ages has really thrilled me, because finding a path for each army has added nothing but hassle.
That’s why I love the model of imperialism, where everything is one turn, not a shuffle. Which is why I’m a little surprised at how addictive Foxhole is as a strategy game. Most players (Brandy included) will tell you that this is a game. everything about shuffling, t. logistics. But after I finally found the time to do it, I realized that most of them, even some “logs” oriented players, don’t know what it really means.
Foxhole is a top-down military MMO in which players from two fixed factions shoot as well as drive trucks full of weapons to the front lines. It offers a wonderful degree of freedom, and even when joining the war late, there’s always room for someone new and hundreds of ways to contribute. Each war lasts until one side occupies enough regions, which could theoretically happen overnight or never, but usually lasts three or four weeks.
Everything in Foxhole is done by the players, but if in EVE Online it means taking as much as possible for yourself, then in Foxhole everything is for war. Accumulation is categorically “wrong”. It’s reminiscent of Planetside 2 at times, but where resources are basically infinite (and bases are fixed), in Foxhole, if the frontline is busy, anything behind it will go too if it’s not prepared. If the right ammunition is not delivered, no one can fire back. Without some sort of premeditated strategy, the most elementary defense is impossible. Players can’t even show up at the base without a uniform.
What Foxhole does is not one or the other; it is that everything is done by the players, everything goes towards a common goal, another everything must be prepared in advance, down to the bullet. There are no abstracted logistics points. There is only what you do, what you deliver and what you expect. This is important because all playable characters are equal, with no skills or +5 legendary equipment. Your limits are determined by what equipment others have provided, and anyone can do it from the ground up by assembling and improving everything on their own. But you don’t need it, because everything belongs to everyone.
Instead of a hyper-individualistic approach to building or playing survival, 98% of your preparation will be strategic, not personal. You provide for others because sharing is the only way to achieve great things, and the means and purpose of everything you do. Doing everything yourself is crazy. Doing something solely for yourself is crazy and asshole. Community is a good strategy. His V The strategy by which mankind has lived for millions of years. Even in war, we win only when we believe in greater effort and help each other. The extra stuff you keep for rando is possible because of the extra stuff you took from rando. I once drained fuel from an ambulance. It was right.
Foxhole does not have a command structure. You are not the all-powerful commander. Nobody is. All gambits, invasions, and the organization to support them require coordination from the ground up, and best of all, you can do it alone.
Oh, you can’t do everything and you won’t get credit for most of your accomplishments. In fact, some actions are disproportionately rewarded with in-game “rewards”, essentially “likes” that players give to each other. Acknowledgments increase your rank, but apart from the first few, they do not affect anything else. Long-term players will naturally rank over time, but there is only a limited correlation between rank and skill. They also lead to highly tragic behavior, such as when several people cynically exchange commands for nothing or cheat the system to activate “team player?”. a popup for multiple people, some of whom will click “yes” to be polite.
But that’s okay, because those commands are useless and no one can rank up anyway. I saw the major throw a truck full of explosives at the enemy, not only failing to fight them off, but also to arm himself and fight back, miserable scoundrel.
Thus, you will get too many credits for some things and nothing for others. And some of the most valuable works are completely invisible. Esoteric: filling up fuel tanks, hauling badly parked cars, building jeeps for public use, patrolling just in case. This is a game in which, in addition to the pleasure of combat, you need to enjoy useful things without recognition. But it’s also a rare strategy game in which invisible things are not forgotten. Usually they are abstracted away by random numbers – the unlikely defeat of a supertank by the militias (in Fox Hole, someone stole a few mines from an enemy jeep) or the unsuccessful advance of an armored column (no one filled a large canister with gasoline along the way) – but here it is all you can do, and they occur organically as the design and behavior of the players kiss and fight.
Like in real lifeinvisible work everywhere, and ungrateful not because people don’t care (although some don’t care). They just don’t know it exists just because you did it. Anyone who has studied public health could name fifty preventive measures that are not only underestimated but condemned by those who are too ignorant to appreciate the disasters they have prevented.
The irony is that in a game where the fighters are overlooked and the truckers are praised, it is the truckers who enjoy the flattery while not noticing their quiet man-bats. Too many of them do not understand what good logistics is. Even ignoring the fact that some of them are actually miners and producers, there is a worse problem: many in the logs interpret “efficiency” only as “Increase number”. Drive off in jeeps from small caches to protect every other line of defense that the enemy can easily outflank? No, no, the most efficient way is to fill a freighter with a bajillion of weapons and send it to port. Has anyone actually used it? Who cares!
It is “efficient” in the sense that capitalism is: more things are produced, but they are concentrated away from where they are really needed, and achieve less in actual human conditions. This is logistics as brute force, without holistic administration. You may have made good logs because you moved thousands of crates, but at the same time, the warehouses are full of empty guns and the bunkers are full of inappropriate ammunition, because no one connects the dots and makes small packages so that people get what they need.
The last mile is known to be the most inefficient in terms of logistics, and a common mistake is to devalue work whose value is not immediately obvious. But that is how societies flourish and how wars are won. Not by mass, but by details and accidents. One loaded rifle in the hands of a sentry is worth more than a hundred on a conveyor belt. Sometimes you also need to park the truck and be this soldier, to hell with efficiency.
My side lost my first war devastatingly, largely due to our willingness to throw everything too late into one or two places dictated by the enemy. I’ve even had a few people claim that it’s okay to have zero supplies at most respawnable bases (and languish in ports and warehouses worth three wars) because regiments (clans) have private supplies for their own use. I wonder if they remembered me when the other team took over those warehouses and used them against us.
No doubt it was frustrating to watch this unfold, but it also highlights that Foxhole presents a unique strategic challenge beyond moving supplies: how does a general strategize while stuck in a private’s boots? It’s not just about awareness, it’s about implementation. It’s a thought provoking challenge with multiple answers, it’s best to choose the one you like because hey, it’s a game! Logically, the best chance of victory will require the coordination of several regiments, as well as tons of administrative, labor and real diplomacy. It might be more useful to work on a random scale with a few friends, creating a non-committal network of contacts to team up with, making its most basic communication and organization features a real shame, like even a simple list of friends or notes. a system like EVE would make a big difference.
But what I like about Foxhole is that even as a solo player, you can strategize if you know your limits and not get too invested. You cannot command or control people, but you can persuade, lead by example, and push the world. I didn’t really achieve anything on my own, but I made a difference by fixing the problem and using someone else’s truck to fix it, anticipating the enemy gambit and leaving tools nearby so others could pre-empt it by keeping it under fire. And because everyone makes a small contribution, everyone feels that they are important.
Sometimes choosing to fight means accepting the limits of one person’s influence. Sometimes you need to reason with your side and accept defeat. Can I convince everyone No further fortification of the city, that the enemy, obviously, will simply go around to cut off the port road? Obviously not. But I can fortify this road and deliver equipment to the three bases best suited to cover it. I haven’t been able to convince the locals that these were organized reconnaissance probes, but I can patrol for a while and raise the alarm when the invasion lands. There are always other battles, other ways you can bridge the gap between your great vision and your humble little soldier.
Foxhole is a “pick your scale” sim, a strategy not of command, but of communication, where hopeless battles often bring far more rewards than nominally the best results. I knew I would love it, but I had no idea it would be such an exciting strategic tapestry. You’ve been putting it off for too long.
There’s always something new to find in Hyrule
It has now been six years since the release in 2017 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The Switch launch name and Nintendo’s swan song on Wii U left an indelible mark on the industry with their approach to open-world space.
Tomorrow, May 12, its continuation The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Will be released. In fact, our review of it should already be live right here and now. This is an updated version of Hyrule that we saw in Breath of the Wildonly now with floating sky islands and a hot new villain in town.
it doesn’t erase Breath of the Wild at least from the history books. I didn’t play myself Tears of the Kingdom at the time of this writing, so who knows if I like it better. But Breath of the Wild was a pretty big change for the industry and I don’t think it will be forgotten. In fact, on the last day before we all skydive into the new Hyrule, I wanted to have a little celebration. Breath of the Wild here on Destructoid.
So I asked the Destructoid staff to share their favorite moments, big or small, from their playing time. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Please share yours in the comments below and let’s thank them for that.
Eric – Seeing the dragon
It has a lot of exciting moments. Breath of the Wild it made me appreciate the scope of what Nintendo has created. Even just jumping off the Great Plateau and descending into Hyrule for the first time was amazing. But the dragons were the moment when I felt like I was seeing something really amazing.
The first one I saw seemed to be miles away, drifting with the wind. I thought to myself, “Ah, that’s a cool background effect.” Then, playing later, I climbed a snow-covered mountain and found a massive ice dragon in the fog right in front of me. It really started. Naidra as I find out what was corrupted and needed help to free herself to roam the skies of Hyrule like other dragons. And the more I played, the more I understood these dragons, like everything else in Breath of the Wildare part of the world. Everything interacts, and everything is one living virtual ecosystem of interacting rules and ideas.
Even when I got a screenshot of Nydra now, years later, for this part, I had to appreciate the feeling of sliding around and seeing all the ice explosions ripple outward. It’s not some kind of secret boss or scenery. They are part of Hyrule, the world that Link and I travel through, but that lives and breathes separately from Link.
Zoey – Introducing Hyrule Castle City
Enough Breath of the WildThe world is made up of wilderness and long forgotten ruins. It often feels like the whole world has simply gone and is on its way to healing the scars that Hyrule once sat on. However, when you finally muster up the courage and approach the castle dominating the landscape, you will find that something brings you closer to home.
Hyrule Castle City is the utterly gutted remains of the largest settlement on the map. All that was left was burned beyond recognition. However, despite this, you can still see the fine details that go back to ocarina of timea particularly ruined version of the Castle City depicted in the second act of this game.
This is a dangerous place for delays, as guardians are still crawling through the ruins. However, it is one of the few places where Breath of the Wild trying to bring home the destruction that was caused when everything went wrong.
Holmes – Party with Prince Sidon
Games either work hard to be playgrounds or obstacle courses. Roblox another Fortnite are playgrounds. Final Fantasy IX another advance wars are a series of obstacle courses, with little conversation or free will. Of course, many games try to mix and match, and the original Zelda was one of the first to put one into the other. Specifically, it’s like a series of one-screen playground obstacle courses. Sometimes you need to defeat enemies, solve puzzles, or use certain items to complete the course. These are the more closed parts. The other courses are open to you from the start to roam as you please. This tension between opposites, free and strict, open and closed, free and entangled, has made Zelda a genre-defining hit from the start, and most of its sequels have followed suit.
Breath of the Wild made the playground much, much larger than ever before, and the obstacle courses, for the most part, have not grown in volume. you can play Breath of the Wild for several hours, never hitting an obstacle that you cannot simply climb over, go around or go around in any other way. It still has some really fun, focused objectives like shrines, and a part where you have to invade the banana-obsessed Yiga clan’s home base. But for the most part what did Breath of the Wild stand out how much you didn’t have to do in it. Those who felt like before Zelda holding hands became excessive, and the trainees were delighted at how this one simply threw you out into the street and said: “You yourself understand.”
As an older person who constantly has to “figure out” life, this was a huge repulsion. the freedom to do what you want, and more about the series of choices you have to make in order to do things as well as you can. It’s up to you to remember to pay your bills, make sure your child gets to school on time, find out about the best deals on groceries, consider refinancing your mortgage when interest rates change, convince your sick but defiant older parents to go to the doctors, the list is here. continue. Once you’re old enough to be the one who’s supposed to take care of yourself and guide others instead of guiding yourself, it can be exhausting to play a video game that requires you to navigate a giant open map on your own.
That’s why my favorite part Breath of the Wild it’s when it suddenly turns into a high-stress, linear obstacle course where you never have to ask where you should be going, but instead you have to focus on some Resident Evil 4combat in survival style. After Prince Sidon the Shark Man encourages you to follow him to his Zora domain, it starts to rain. like anyone Breath of the Wild the player knows that wet ground means no climbing, so there’s no way to get off the trail in front of you. It’s slippery and full of monsters, so slashing, shooting, and sneaking up on enemies is a must. The strategic use of time-limited electroelixir is also close to mandatory.
If you want to have the freedom to go where you want and do whatever you want, all the time, I’m sure this part has been a chore for you. But to me, a guy burdened with many real-life choices (and responsibilities), this gallery of elaborate, exquisitely crafted challenges feels like the right combination of handcuffs and fistfights; a small oasis of binding challenges in an unstructured adventure.
Timothy – Between Moments
Many games are fun to play, but fewer are fun to watch. I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you this. Breath of the Wild surely falls into the latter category. Even after spending over 100 hours in Hyrule, watching people research or break the physics engine never gets boring. There’s a reason the online content never stopped for this six year old game with no live service elements.
However, for me, it’s not the wild and wacky feats that make exploration fun. These are ordinary, unremarkable stories that stay with you because they are so unique. is yours. For example, when I visited again Breath of the Wild This last holiday season, I was on my way to the magnificent temple on Evening Island. However, while on a boat ride, I accidentally spotted a chest floating in the water. Guided by the pure instincts of completion, I unrolled my vessel to grab my treasure. What followed was a comedy of errors in which I just could not go to the chest for the life of me. It was the same slight inconvenience you might experience when trying to find your keys in the morning despite only having them in hand.
When I finally received my prize, I boldly declared to my audience, “After all, it’s better not to have five arrows.” It was technically correct. What’s this ten arrows.
But you know what? This my ten arrows now. The fact that I remember it clearly six months later shows how easy it is Breath of the Wild creates lasting memories.
CJ – From the shadows
I’ve been wrestling with this clue every week because even though I adore Breath of the WildI don’t know if I have even one favorite moment from it. Because there are so many thrilling moments in this game, from the first time you step out of a cave, or the first time you see a dragon, or the first time you wander around the Isle of Evening Dawn, completely unprepared for what you’re about to face. . The game is an outstanding collection of outstanding moments. So instead of trying to figure out my favorite, I want to talk about something that stuck in my memory.
So I played Breath of the Wild about 40 hours at the moment. I have seen so much in this world, but there are still parts of the map that are not yet filled. And there is one place that especially calls to me: the Ruins of Tiflo. I’m going there thinking that’s how you get to the Master Sword. What I find is a sanctuary quest shrouded in darkness. I’m confused and a little scared as I grab the nearest torch and start lighting the torch stands. I don’t know if I should. I don’t know where to go. I just keep moving forward until I hit a dead end.
I don’t usually feel fear when I play. The Legend of Zelda game, but the ruins of Tiflo awaken my deepest childhood fear of the dark. I am absolutely on pins and needles going through this place. A few minutes later I find the pedestal. Just as I’m starting to get frustrated, thinking I’ll have to run through these ruins looking for the orb again, I turn Link around and Hinox flies out of the shadows, charging towards me.
I don’t remember screaming at that moment, but I probably did. I probably beat the controller as well as I usually do when the jump scare lands so well. The Legend of Zelda The show has leaned towards the dark and gloomy before, but nothing about this show scared me more than this giant fucking Hinox popping out of the dark like it was Slenderman.
Again, this is not my favorite moment in the game, but damn it, it remains the most vivid in my memory today.
Eric Van Allen
Senior News Reporter. Although Eric has been writing about games since 2014, he has been playing them for much longer. Usually found in RPG battles, digging into indie gems, or hanging out at Limsa Aethryte.
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