My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Games have rules. These rules aren't always fair: The average [[First-Person Shooter]] pits a single player against multiple groups of enemies, all of whom are trying to kill him.

 

{{examples}}

* In the original ''[[Civilization]]'', Triremes built by the player couldn't leave the coast without being lost. Computer built triremes had no such restrictions, allowing them to circumnavigate the world.

** Most of the ''Civilization'' games have AI that largely ignore some of the basic game rules when playing on the higher difficulty levels with the recent edition of ''Civilization V'' being the worst, where the AI can just ignore some of the game rules. For example, when a player founds a city it decreases the overall happiness of his empire thus resulting in things like lower production and a lower growth rate. This is done to prevent the player from expanding too quickly via settler spamming. Plenty of players have reported however, that on the higher difficulty levels the AI can more or less just do as it pleases and produce vast number of cities without any penalties, and produce units at a much faster rate then the player for no reason. The actual AI itself however, does not actually appear to get smarter, making this a perfect example of [[Fake Difficulty]] and [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]].

** One WMG theory that may cancel all the angst about evolution levels: the game you play is only your experience, and the evolution levels you discover are not universal. So yes, ''your'' Pidgey always evolves at a certain level, but nothing says that ''all'' Pidgey do.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics A2]]'', abilities are all learned by specific jobs. Blood Price, for instance, can only be learned by Spellblades, a Viera-only class. Now, there exists a job changing system, so you can use abilities from one class to another, so this means finding Red Mages and Summoners (both Viera jobs) with Blood Price isn't terribly out of the ordinary. However, AI units tend to ignore the exclusivity of support abilities like these, and you'll find plenty of enemy units with abilities they just simply shouldn't have. Illusionist (Humes and Nu Mou only) with Blood Price, despite lacking the Spellblade job necessary to get it? Sure, why not? And, whenever you compete in the "Cup" missions to get scions, some enemy units will have support skills that raise Magick/Resistance, or raise Attack/Defense (which can also be learned by monsters, but they could simply just be abilities only learned ''by'' those monster), or support skills that allows the unit to evade all ranged attacks (not Evade Magick, that's a reaction skill). Your clan will never learn such skills, oh no. What really rankles is when you fight with a certain unit using one of these unobtainable support skills ("Impervious", which makes them immune to ''all'' [[Standard Status Ailments]]), and then later on you get to recruit this character, and he's suddenly ''forgotten'' this amazing ability.

*** This could possibly be justified, however, in the sense that the law is applied to you because you are in an adjudged clan. The enemies, especially if they are monsters, are not adjudged, and therefore are not subject to the laws that the player has to follow. The downside to not being a part of an adjudged clan, [[Final Death|however...]]

** Speaking of Laws, let's speak of ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]''. The law system in that game was, if anything, even ''more'' restrictive. There were anything between one and ''three'' laws up for any given mission, which were randomized depending on the day. The enemies actually had to obey the laws (Enemies that disobeyed would be red-carded and jailed just like your party members, and sometimes waiting for the right law would cripple an enemy), except when they didn't. Many enemies of any real importance would have a special medal on them (just a mark on their profile, not an actual item that you could steal or break) that made them immune to getting red-carded. So they could get yellow-card warnings all day for flagrant disobedience of the laws that would get ''your'' clanmates jailed on the spot. And you could ''never'' get this kind of law-protection.

*** Which is also purely for show since Vigora regenerates stamina, which player characters need to act. Enemies don't HAVE stamina and, as written above, can already act however often they're scripted to.

* Similarly in ''[[Seiken Densetsu 3]]'', enemies who can use Techs can use them as a counter to your Techs/Magic, as a desperation attack when they're almost dead, or whenever they feel like it (even though the player needs to attack multiple times to use a Tech). This can be particularly dangerous near the end of the game when some mooks have Techs that can wipe out your entire party in one or two hits.

* In the original ''[[Dawn of War]]'', certain powerful units had a limit on the number of them that a human player could build. For some reason, the computer wasn't subject to said limits, allowing it to spam otherwise unique uber-units.

** Tau bases in the ''Dark Crusade'' expansion campaign could build listening posts around their bases rather than on strategic points. You, however, can only put them on SPs, since that is what they are ''for''. The discrepancy was due to the fact that the Tau had no static defensive structures except for these strategic point turrets. As the base building code demanded static defenses, the developers had no other option but let the AI cheat.

* An odd couple of AI rules...er...modifications appear in the ''[[Command & Conquer]] Generals'' expansion ''Zero Hour''. Prince Kassad (the GLA stealth-specialist general) can make terrorist motorcycles by default (usually a bonus of the Demolition-specialist, otherwise made by tediously combining a motorcyclist with a terrorist) and enjoys using them in excess. And the rocket-infantry units of all AI USA generals can use laser guidance (increases range and rate of fire) on ''any'' target, including other infantry and buildings, yet players can only paint vehicles. However, these both seem more like [[Good Bad Bugs|happy accidents]] that improve the challenge the AI offers, since the AI is not [[Artificial Stupidity|always very bright]]. These quirks are above and beyond the usual RTS [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|AI cheats]], such as ''extra resources'' and ''unit-building bumper-crops''.

* In ''[[Puzzle Quest|Puzzle Kingdoms]]'', your hero has four slots in which he can equip stat boosting items. You are limited in both type (one item each from Helm, Armor, Weapon, and Accessory) and by the point cost of each item. Computer opponents, OTOH, are given items completly at random, not only ignoring the points cap, but frequently stacking item types (which occasionally results in completely unfair combos like enemies with three shields, soaking up 90% of your attacks).

* The AI competitors in ''[[Railroad Tycoon]]'' get to build several track configurations that aren't available to human players, including stations with non-straight-through track (it can leave at a non-opposite angle and have multiple accesses - while humans are restricted to N-S (say), AI can build N-SE, N-E and N-E-W...), and diagonal bridges that can cross more than one square.

* Indy game ''[[AI War Fleet Command]]'' uses this as its central concept. The player is told outright that the AI team flagrantly disregards things like tech level requirements and resources. On the other hand, the AI team's current aggression and tactics are limited by factors known to and manipulated by the actions of the human team - much of the game's strategy comes from figuring out how to destroy objectives and taking strategic locations without pissing off the AI so much it declares "fuck this" and pulls an insurmountable tech-three fleet out of its ass.

* In [[World of Warcraft]], Whirlwind is a Warrior ability that strikes all targets around the user for damage that is lower than a typical weapon attack. When bosses and some enemies use Whirlwind, however, they will often spin for a few seconds, hitting anyone standing next to them multiple times for damage comparable to their typical weapon attacks, more akin to the Blade Storm talent (only accessible to Arms warriors at the very end of the talent tree, and having a cooldown of about a minute and a half). This is one of many examples of player abilities being different in bosses' hands.

* In later ''[[Disgaea]]'' games, you can merge your monster-type units into giant monsters with higher stats and increased range on their attacks, and you can turn monsters into weapons for your humanoid units to use (called "Magichange"). However, Fusion and Magichange normally only work for a few turns without a special ability. Unless you're the computer, for whom it will never wear off. (On the other hand, given the computer's tendency to fuse/Magichange on the first turn of battle, and [[Artificial Stupidity|its tendency to sit still doing nothing until player units are in range]], this can be seen as a practical way to keep the player from just waiting the fusion/Magichange out from the other side of the battlefield... but then, once the enemy unit is close and trying to murder your units, it STILL doesn't wear off.)

* One of the minigames in [[Ripper]] lets the play with different rules. It's a chess-type game where you and the computer are trying to capture each other's kings. But while the computer can move all its pieces from the beginning, the player can only use their knights after all of their pawns have been killed. The computer knows this, and will actively go out of its way to avoid capturing your pawns.

* There are plenty of [[Roguelike]] games (like ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]]'', and the first, but not the second, ''[[Izuna Legend of the Unemployed Ninja|Izuna]]'' game) where enemies aren't affected by traps. Most likely because their AI is so bad they tend to walk recklessly even into visible traps all the time, but it still can get annoying.

** The second to last boss has the ability to use any spell cards at no mana cost, and his deck seems designed to abuse this power to the fullest extent. This is particularly evident when he casts [[That One Attack|Elven Dismissal]], a card which [[One-Hit Kill|returns an opponent's monster to their hand]] by paying an amount of mana slightly higher than the monster's summoning cost. Since the boss essentially has an infinite amount of free spell mana at his disposal, the game interprets this as allowing him to sweep away ANY of your monsters for free. If he decides to take out your most powerful defensive monster and already has board control, you can [[Game Over|kiss the match goodbye]].

* In ''[[Makai Kingdom]]'', building bonuses and special weapon abilities tend to vary depending on whether you're the player or not. For instance, units deployed from an Academy gain +50% EXP for players... but enemy units instead gain a sweet level-up each turn. If an enemy hits one of your troops with a mallet, you go down a level, but the same thing doesn't happen when your troop holds the mallet.

* In the ''[[Chaos Rings]]'' series, the harder bosses in the game all have the ability to take ''two'' consecutive turns while the player only has one.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]

[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]