Do you play for the strategy or the stories?

[carbon]

Do you like to play the game because you love a well-crafted story or because you love a challenge?

A rather unscientific poll to find out how the playerbase divides itself.

[Alenerel]

On my part, I dont give the sligthest importance to the stories... I like both base building and strategy, but at same time its difficult to build a nice base when you literally can lose the game or some precious pawns so easily.

For me the game is divided into two parts. THe first one which is a very small base with 1 or 2 rooms and I have to use strategy, and the second part where the defenses are set and the turrets play the defense while I build. They are different feelings, tho I always enjoy way more the first part... I always feel the need to "complete" the base.

[cmitc1]

I feel like i am missing out when people say there are "stories" in this game, because i dont really feel it.

maybe in my next play through i will put more effort in seeing it.

..

other than that, i play for the strategy.

[TuttiFrutti159]

I really enjoy the basebuilding part, because there are unlimited ways to build them. It's all about optimising your base until one day it might be superior, but it will never never 100% complete.

Once you have your structure, you can go over to making everything look really nice so your pawns get a mood boost.

With the raids, and other events you're given a handicap, which makes it even harder. On the other hand I usually get really
bonded with my pawns, because of their stories and their personal actions. But I guess, I would'nt be playing the game if not
for the strategy matter 

[ArguedPiano]

I play for the strategy. Whether trying to stay alive as long as possible or trying to beat my record for fastest (game) time launching a ship, I play on the hardest difficulty usually in a biome with little or no growing season.

The base building and colony management with added threats is what's enjoyable for me.

[Alenerel]

I feel like i am missing out when people say there are "stories" in this game, because i dont really feel it.

The stories are like a wanderer comes and a day after he starts a fight. The role playing people will see like "a shaman joined the colony but he hated the science of our surgeon".

[Profugo Barbatus]

I tend to play for the strategy aspect. Specifically, I get a lot of satisfaction out of avoiding building into mountains, and instead building actual little walled cities, with the defenses spread along said walls, plus internal fallback points. I also turn up the desired pawn numbers on the storytellers to make sure I have enough folks around for a dedicated military, so that I've got a handful of pawns that won't cripple me if they die.

Usually end up with some neat battles, like sappers making it through the walls, and leading to a street by street fight, buildings burning and fighting from the rubble, or rushing a response force out to take out a siege camp while shells blow holes in my housing units and factories as the civilian pawns tuck away into the small rock formations that I turn into bomb shelters.

Suffice to say, the above play style should work *great* with the ability to attack hostile camps in A16, so I'm pretty excited for the update.

[carbon]

I had to go with strategy on this. The relationships, appearances and backstories add a little bit of nice flavor to help pass the downtime, but they are rather easy to ignore. If it weren't for the fact that the game does a solid job of challenging the player and offering interesting ways to overcome those challenges, I wouldn't keep reinstalling every alpha or two.

The thing about storytelling in games is that it tends to happen on its own anytime the game is good enough. The original X-com is a good example of this. All you have is a name, gender and statline for your troops, but you really get attached to a few of them, because of all the difficulties the game puts you through with them. No fancy A.I. storyteller required.

In a way, knowing the game is trying to put together a story for me, kind of discourages my own imagined narratives. It's like a Mad Lib where someone has already lightly penciled answers in all of the blanks.

[A Friend]

I play for both. The challenge of surviving is fun as you'd expect from a game. But sharing stories of how your colony of yayo addicted cyborgs came to be with your friends also feels satisfying.

[LedgeG2]

The story elements drew me in initially but I quickly fell in love with the creativity involved with developing new strategies and the significance that efficiency and minmaxing has with executing them.

[Catastrophy]

I like the story elements. I liked them in DF as well. I could use more of them. More pictures of Lumi taming the chicken, Doc sneaking in the human meat into the hopper, Jon crafting a legendary statue depicting Jon crafting a legendary statue etc.
I also like the event system, it could use a load of more events so the story experience is more varied.
But what I like most is having the random event collide with the strategy I set up. I really dig the mix of both.

[Tammabanana]

I play for both. The challenge of surviving is fun as you'd expect from a game. But sharing stories of how your colony of yayo addicted cyborgs came to be with your friends also feels satisfying.

Ditto.

This one time, Tadashi started off sleeping with Molly, but then Molly proposed and he rejected her. Molly went moping around, and Tadashi went off and started sleeping with Alex. Then he dumped Alex and took up with Octavia! I was like, "Octavia, nooooooo, you should know better than that!" Tadashi proposed to Octavia, and lo, Octavia rejects him. You go, girl. And then poor Tomoko falls for Tadashi's sweet talking! And then Tadashi dies in a raid, and Tomoko is crushed but everybody is is like, "God, finally."

[Limdood]

I play for both. The challenge of surviving is fun as you'd expect from a game. But sharing stories of how your colony of yayo addicted cyborgs came to be with your friends also feels satisfying.

Ditto.

This one time, Tadashi started off sleeping with Molly, but then Molly proposed and he rejected her. Molly went moping around, and Tadashi went off and started sleeping with Alex. Then he dumped Alex and took up with Octavia! I was like, "Octavia, nooooooo, you should know better than that!" Tadashi proposed to Octavia, and lo, Octavia rejects him. You go, girl. And then poor Tomoko falls for Tadashi's sweet talking! And then Tadashi dies in a raid, and Tomoko is crushed but everybody is is like, "God, finally."

I have trouble seeing them myself, but I LOVE other people's stories.

Only good story i have is when 3 commandos busted out of my jail in the early days of prison escapes.  My colony of 9 members (7 snipers, 2 swordsmen) suffers a jailbreak of 3 random prisoners.  The prisoners corner one of my members while i'm gathering them up to fight the prisoners, beats her unconscious and takes her rifle.  The prisoners run out, shoot 2 more colonists, arm themselves with another sniper and a sword.  My shots repeatedly miss the mark and eventually I try to fall back into the base.  The prisoners choose NOT to run away and instead chase my colonists into the base, corner them, and all the colonists go down and the prisoners run off the map.

End Outcome:
1 injured prisoner, 2 fine
3 downed colonists, 6 killed

I'm still convinced that those prisoners were a plant in order for a coalition of opposing factions to take down my colony :p

[Lightzy]

You never play for the stories.
You play for the strategy, and if the game is designed well, you get amazing stories.

That way the stories are 'real', and so, impactful.

[Grishnerf]

for me this is a perfectionist/logistic/min-maxing game with nice storyelements and strategy.
and the randomness how certain Events can interact with each other (insects vs tribal raiders, trading Caravan vs wild animals etc) makes this game for me perfect. it never gets "old"