Mana Pools

[Nihtantuel]

I am sorry if this topic has been discussed to death (please point me to the topic on the forum if so) but I want to ask this question. This comes from someone who is not frequenting the forum (for nothing other than dev updates) for years. I love PDX games, but I have a huge issue with the game design.

Ever since EU4 released I haven't liked the design of that game. Primarily due to the "mana pools" design that the game had taken. I even created a topic on the forum asking this very question and at the time I was still checking it I saw 50x50 like to dislike ratio. It is obvious that from the standpoint of game design this feature was very controversial.

For me the "mana pools" design is what kills the fun. Because they are essentially buit on random modifiers . I would expect PDX to come up with a new primary game mechanic, but it appears that as the years come buy they only keep pushing it. This is what is killing fun for me in PDX games.

I would like to get the community's take on this. Please let me know what you think. Thanks.

 

[Xuanzue]

mana points is lazy design.

 

[Ixal]

Mana systems are horrible.

Sadly they fit with to the one button press instant gratification design PDXs pushes as apparently the target group PDX caters to does not have the foresight and patience to make long term decisions and wait to see them bear fruit.

 

[RedTemplar]

Maybe a minority here, but I like it. As I recall from reading dev diaries, the idea behind monarch points was in part to help good rulers and bad rulers feel different. With lower stats on a crappy king, a country would languish, while am exceptionally strong monarch could advance his kingdom by big leaps if he had a good reign. I view systems like that as a way to make characters matter.

 

[Colesy_]

Maybe a minority here, but I like it. As I recall from reading dev diaries, the idea behind monarch points was in part to help good rulers and bad rulers feel different. With lower stats on a crappy king, a country would languish, while am exceptionally strong monarch could advance his kingdom by big leaps if he had a good reign. I view systems like that as a way to make characters matter.

CK2 did a decent job of emulating what you just described but with traits and attributes, both of which do a much better job of making characters matter. At least in my experience, most of my rulers in CK2 are memorable in their own way. I remember the good and I remember the bad, both for more positive reasons than negative. In mana-based games like EU4 and Imperator, I feel as if your nation lacks a face, so to speak. In EU4 and Imperator, I can't be bothered to know my rulers name, nor their family, or even their traits because it feels as if they mean almost nothing while they are being overshadowed by this arbitrary mana system.

It's the exact opposite for me in CK2. I know my ruler's name, I know my family, I even remember my friends and enemies. There's seemingly a personality with goals and motives behind every character in CK2. You remember those characters by their deeds, whether that be seeing the nations prosper while at peace, conquering your way to glory or getting crafty with your marriages and alliances to create an empire that can be built through inheritance. You don't remember them by how many "action points" you can accumulate per month.

But to the point, a CK2 character with good traits and attributes can feel wildly different from the opposite and can fill the same vacuum that monarch points currently take up, in a better way. However in the end, unlike with EU4 and Imperator, the actions you make as a ruler are what matter the most, regardless of traits and attributes, you rarely lose control of the game. EU4 and IR on the other hand, you've lost control up until you acquire the needed amount of points to tech up, fabricate a claim or what have you.

 

[VineFynn]

Mana represents political capital. It's a currency just like ducats or manpower or favours or prestige or piety. It's a necessary abstraction of the very real currencies used in politics. Without those your game ceases to be interesting very quickly because your decisions are uneffected by opportunity costs. I'm not saying mp or power is executed well, but it isn't an inherently problematic system.

CK2's currencies make no sense in the context of EU4 or Imperator.

 

[NoOneBCE]

I must Highly dissagree, mana Splits up Oppertunity costs! If all actions in emperor rome were based off of one currency then uping stability would mean not Raising men, not building that Market not promoting that pop. As it stands now Uping stability means that you don't enact an edict or convert 10 pops. The categories are so specific that you have very few competing oppertunities with them meaning almost none existant oppertunity costs.

Want to make Rulers matter? Fine just make their stats give huge % modifiers to costs. Your character is a bumbling idiot in religious matters so the clergy needs aditional compensation to up the stability of your relm. That would mean that instead of just waiting for the points to tick up... (points that you can hardly use for anything else) you can use your much faster ticking universal currency and just sacrifice actual oppertunities by over spencing on stability massively.

 

[kviiri]

CK2 did a decent job of emulating what you just described but with traits and attributes, both of which do a much better job of making characters matter. At least in my experience, most of my rulers in CK2 are memorable in their own way. I remember the good and I remember the bad, both for more positive reasons than negative. In mana-based games like EU4 and Imperator, I feel as if your nation lacks a face, so to speak. In EU4 and Imperator, I can't be bothered to know my rulers name, nor their family, or even their traits because it feels as if they mean almost nothing while they are being overshadowed by this arbitrary mana system.

It's the exact opposite for me in CK2. I know my ruler's name, I know my family, I even remember my friends and enemies. There's seemingly a personality with goals and motives behind every character in CK2. You remember those characters by their deeds, whether that be seeing the nations prosper while at peace, conquering your way to glory or getting crafty with your marriages and alliances to create an empire that can be built through inheritance. You don't remember them by how many "action points" you can accumulate per month.

But to the point, a CK2 character with good traits and attributes can feel wildly different from the opposite and can fill the same vacuum that monarch points currently take up, in a better way. However in the end, unlike with EU4 and Imperator, the actions you make as a ruler are what matter the most, regardless of traits and attributes, you rarely lose control of the game. EU4 and IR on the other hand, you've lost control up until you acquire the needed amount of points to tech up, fabricate a claim or what have you.

The problem I have with CK2 design (as opposed to mana pools of Stellaris or EU4) is that many actions are tied to opaque and frustrating MTTHs instead of anything you can actually count on to happen or even understand.

Fabricate a claim? Takes you-don't-know how long, for reasons you are also not privy to. And costs money when it fires, adding to the frustration. Converting a province is similarly annoying except it doesn't cost money.

I agree other games of Pdox could use elements of CK2, but it should be remembered that the CK2 model works well in some areas largely because of the heavily character-oriented gameplay. Copying bits and pieces of it is not feasible --- you want something that resembles a whole package.

 

[Casko]

Mana system can work. However it should not be be all end all. And honestly, if everything is Mana, it makes things way too gamey. Not to mention if we use I:R as an example, it should honestly had been more a CK2 but Ancient Era. Rather than EU4 with odd pops.

For example, Mana could be used to represent political capital in various stratas of society, how easy or hard is it for you to push through reforms, etc. Or whatever else.
But Mana should not be used to literally everything, from Tech to pop conversion, to military to making politicians like you among others. Tech for one, should be with technology points or some such imo rather than a part of the universal mana.

 

[VineFynn]

I must Highly dissagree, mana Splits up Oppertunity costs! If all actions in emperor rome were based off of one currency then uping stability would mean not Raising men, not building that Market not promoting that pop. As it stands now Uping stability means that you don't enact an edict or convert 10 pops. The categories are so specific that you have very few competing oppertunities with them meaning almost none existant oppertunity costs.

Want to make Rulers matter? Fine just make their stats give huge % modifiers to costs. Your character is a bumbling idiot in religious matters so the clergy needs aditional compensation to up the stability of your relm. That would mean that instead of just waiting for the points to tick up... (points that you can hardly use for anything else) you can use your much faster ticking universal currency and just sacrifice actual oppertunities by over spencing on stability massively.

You're just saying there should only be one type of mana. Not that mana is bad. Mana is a replacement for the envoy system in EU3 or prestige and piety in CK2. You cannot replace it with something like ruler skill from EU3 and attributes from CK2. That makes no sense. Those are not currencies. If you make rulers change costs instead, you're just shifting the role of "mana" to a different currency, the one which you are changing the costs for.

I also find it difficult to believe that you would find it satisfying to have your every action tied to a single currency. I certainly wouldn't. Being necessary for too many different things was a major criticism of EU4's mana.

 

[Shebaloso]

Mana represents political capital. It's a currency just like ducats or manpower or favours or prestige or piety. It's a necessary abstraction of the very real currencies used in politics. Without those your game ceases to be interesting very quickly because your decisions are uneffected by opportunity costs. I'm not saying mp or power is executed well, but it isn't an inherently problematic system.

CK2's currencies make no sense in the context of EU4 or Imperator.

I keep reading these comparisons between "mana" and prestige (mainly from CK2), but i think they are utterly unreasonable.

First of all, a curious thing is that EUIV ALSO has Prestige and Legitimacy (which could be equivalent to Piety), which work roughly in the same way of CK2, and yet i've literally never seem a critic of EUIV's mana pool putting Prestige and Legitimacy in the same basket.

Now, onto the argument itself, there are blatant differences between the concept of prestige/piety and proper mana insofar as the former are not mechanisms of action, but consequences of action in the vast majority of time, while the latter is the mechanism of action itself.

Prestige in CK2 is an abstraction for the feudal standing of the nobleman within his circle and has only limited value as a currency. It's quite important to say that it doesn't limit nor does it structure your actions in any way, bar some decisions and declarations of war, which is actually perfectly reasonable for what it means, and can even go in the negative should you, for example, lose a holy war. Piety is the similar abstraction of the standing of the nobleman with the clerics. Again, the game is not structured around those abstractions, they are not the tool by which you act, but the consequence of how you act.

Which is not the case with EUIV/IR proper mana. Mana is an abstraction for the state resources, but it works in such a way that makes true mechanics behind what could be considered affairs of state, like diplomacy, taxation, and so forth completely unnecessary, which detracts very much from the game and turns it into a compilation of modifiers. Perhaps the best comparison to EUIV is vic2 instead of ck2, because the character interaction is also absent. The development (the eu4 term) of a province in vic2 is intrinsically tied to population size, employment, pop composition etc. If you want to gain more money through tax, you have to actually do stuff whose indirect result MIGHT be more tax, like building a factory, inducing pop change from unemplyed labourers to employed craftsmen who are now taxable through their earnings. In EUIV, you simply spend a couple of mana and the development instantly magically increases. And those who defend it might simply say "well, just spend that mana and imagine the same thing". C'mon....

This is not a defence of vic2 mechanics (or ck2 mechanics, for that matter), because i'm perfectly aware that both a game like vic2 has limited market potential and that mechanics need not be that deep or convoluted (although i think vic2's problem is its UI, and not a supposed excessive complexity) ,but an illustration of the difference between a game that is structured around currencies and two that aren't.

The mere acts of sending one's chancellor to a foreign province to TRY (because his result is neither instant nor extremely predictable) and postpone an attack of that foreign king, or of elevating tariffs during a world war that is eating away your treasury instead of simply spending diplomatic or military currency (war taxes) are good illustrations of why i think anything non-mana related will be always superior to everything mana related.

 

[VineFynn]

I keep reading these comparisons between "mana" and prestige (mainly from CK2), but i think they are utterly unreasonable.

First of all, a curious thing is that EUIV ALSO has Prestige and Legitimacy (which could be equivalent to Piety), which work roughly in the same way of CK2, and yet i've literally never seem a critic of EUIV's mana pool putting Prestige and Legitimacy in the same basket.

Now, onto the argument itself, there are blatant differences between the concept of prestige/piety and proper mana insofar as the former are not mechanisms of action, but consequences of action in the vast majority of time, while the latter is the mechanism of action itself.

Prestige in CK2 is an abstraction for the feudal standing of the nobleman within his circle and has only limited value as a currency. It's quite important to say that it doesn't limit nor does it structure your actions in any way, bar some decisions and declarations of war, which is actually perfectly reasonable for what it means, and can even go in the negative should you, for example, lose a holy war. Piety is the similar abstraction of the standing of the nobleman with the clerics. Again, the game is not structured around those abstractions, they are not the tool by which you act, but the consequence of how you act.

Which is not the case with EUIV/IR proper mana. Mana is an abstraction for the state resources, but it works in such a way that makes true mechanics behind what could be considered affairs of state, like diplomacy, taxation, and so forth completely unnecessary, which detracts very much from the game and turns it into a compilation of modifiers. Perhaps the best comparison to EUIV is vic2 instead of ck2, because the character interaction is also absent. The development (the eu4 term) of a province in vic2 is intrinsically tied to population size, employment, pop composition etc. If you want to gain more money through tax, you have to actually do stuff whose indirect result MIGHT be more tax, like building a factory, inducing pop change from unemplyed labourers to employed craftsmen who are now taxable through their earnings. In EUIV, you simply spend a couple of mana and the development instantly magically increases. And those who defend it might simply say "well, just spend that mana and imagine the same thing". C'mon....

This is not a defence of vic2 mechanics (or ck2 mechanics, for that matter), because i'm perfectly aware that both a game like vic2 has limited market potential and that mechanics need not be that deep or convoluted (although i think vic2's problem is its UI, and not a supposed excessive complexity) ,but an illustration of the difference between a game that is structured around currencies and two that aren't.

The mere acts of sending one's chancellor to a foreign province to TRY (because his result is neither instant nor extremely predictable) and postpone an attack of that foreign king, or of elevating tariffs during a world war that is eating away your treasury instead of simply spending diplomatic or military currency (war taxes) are good illustrations of why i think anything non-mana related will be always superior to everything mana related.

It's entirely possible to go negative with eu4 mana.

Piety is regularly in use as a currency in CK2. You buy titles, purchase actions from religious leaders and execute people with it. Prestige is frequently used as a cost for major decisions, it's used to break truces, buy tribal buildings- in what way are either of these two comparable to legitimacy and prestige from EU4, which are just ranges for adjusting a modifier? The differences you cite are ones of degree, not of kind. And I'm not interested in quibbling over where to draw the line between those degrees. Those currencies not being used for every damn action in the game is what makes them better executions of "mana", it doesn't make them not mana. Unless "mana" is literally just "any currency I *don't* like", in which case the label is entirely pointless for anything other than name calling.

Your argument is just "CK2's mana is executed better". And it is, but I don't see how that is relevant to me pointing out the role that mana plays in making these games.. games. You're constrained by either a currency or time. That's how games work. CK2 chooses time via MTTH a fair bit more than other paradox games of the same generation, which is something I don't mind, but can also make your game experience highly arbitrary since it takes agency out of the hands of the player. Deciding when to use a currency and when to abstract something as being outside of the player's control (usually via randomness) is an important part of game design.

Yes, simulated outcomes are better than abstracted ones, but that's assuming you have unlimited devtime and player performance. I can tell you right now from working on M&T that a) there is far less room to manuveur than you seem to think in terms of performance and development resources when making such simulations run on regular PCs and b) for that reason criticising abstractions on the basis that they reduce simulated elements is completely missing the point of abstractions.

 

[Shebaloso]

It's entirely possible to go negative with eu4 mana.

Piety is regularly in use as a currency in CK2. You buy titles, purchase actions from religious leaders and execute people with it. Prestige is frequently used as a cost for major decisions, it's used to break truces, buy tribal buildings- in what way are either of these two comparable to legitimacy and prestige from EU4, which are just ranges for adjusting a modifier? The differences you cite are ones of degree, not of kind. And I'm not interested in quibbling over where to draw the line between those degrees.

Your argument is just "CK2's mana is executed better". And it is, but I don't see how that is relevant to me pointing out the role that mana plays in making these games.. games.

Yes, simulated outcomes are better than abstracted ones, but that's assuming you have unlimited devtime and player performance. I can tell you right now from working on M&T that a) there is far less room to manuveur than you seem to think in terms of performance and development resources when making such simulations run on regular PCs and b) for that reason criticising abstractions on the basis that they reduce simulated elements is completely missing the point of abstractions.

First of all, what i meant by "going in the negative" with prestige is that it doesn't impact your gameplay whatsoever insofar as it doesn't limit your actions or what you can do or your "progress" in the game as not having mana does in EUIV

But you seem not to get the point at all. Spending prestige to break a truce is perfectly reasonable of an abstraction because the impact of said action is directly palpable within the game's mechanics. You don't have to make 2, 3 or 4 jumps between what prestige is meant to represent and what it effectively is in the game. Prestige represents the standing, the reputation of the character within, and "spending prestige" in this context is nothing more than tarnishing your reputation, which is exactly what would happen should you break a truce in real life, with piety being almost literally the same thing. Prestige and Legitimacy function similarly in EUIV because they also do not require 3 or 4 jumps between what they are and what they are within the game and what they are meant to represent. They are not used in EUIV to "buy" buildings, but they are directly exchangeable into personal unions, vassalizations, money, stability, modifiers etc. by the myriad of events and decisions that players get throughout the game. So no, i'm not arguing that ck2 is just "better application of mana", unless you're one of those people that also consider money a type of mana, in which case this conversation is over.

And i find your last point extremely funny, because it would seem that i'm arguing for some untenable degree of simulation that has never been achieved in the history of video games, but in reality i'm literally speaking about games that were released no less than 7 years ago and have in the case of CK2 as many concurrent players as EUIV itself. I don't see the distinction between abstractions and simulations that you made. I'm not criticising abstractions on the grounds that they reduce simulated elements. I'm criticising abstractions that are so far from they are meant to represent that you reduce the multiple actions between the start and the endgoal to a single one with an instant result, while, in my opinion, the joy of such video games lie specifically in how to deal with those multiple actions.

To the people that defend this mana system, let's use EUIV itself as an example. Instead of having to appease small nations with gifts, marriages, alliances, guarantees, etc, why not for example, simply tie vassalization to a specific number of dip points?

 

[the glory of plain]

remake the focus from vic2 are obviously a better choice
the point are ridiculous
especially the part they come from ruler ability

 

[VineFynn]

First of all, what i meant by "going in the negative" with prestige is that it doesn't impact your gameplay whatsoever insofar as it doesn't limit your actions or what you can do or your "progress" in the game as not having mana does in EUIV

But you seem not to get the point at all. Spending prestige to break a truce is perfectly reasonable of an abstraction because the impact of said action is directly palpable within the game's mechanics. You don't have to make 2, 3 or 4 jumps between what prestige is meant to represent and what it effectively is in the game. Prestige represents the standing, the reputation of the character within, and "spending prestige" in this context is nothing more than tarnishing your reputation, which is exactly what would happen should you break a truce in real life, with piety being almost literally the same thing. Prestige and Legitimacy function similarly in EUIV because they also do not require 3 or 4 jumps between what they are and what they are within the game and what they are meant to represent. They are not used in EUIV to "buy" buildings, but they are directly exchangeable into personal unions, vassalizations, money, stability, modifiers etc. by the myriad of events and decisions that players get throughout the game. So no, i'm not arguing that ck2 is just "better application of mana", unless you're one of those people that also consider money a type of mana, in which case this conversation is over.

And i find your last point extremely funny, because it would seem that i'm arguing for some untenable degree of simulation that has never been achieved in the history of video games, but in reality i'm literally speaking about games that were released no less than 7 years ago and have in the case of CK2 as many concurrent players as EUIV itself. I don't see the distinction between abstractions and simulations that you made. I'm not criticising abstractions on the grounds that they reduce simulated elements. I'm criticising abstractions that are so far from they are meant to represent that you reduce the multiple actions between the start and the endgoal to a single one with an instant result, while, in my opinion, the joy of such video games lie specifically in how to deal with those multiple actions.

To the people that defend this mana system, let's use EUIV itself as an example. Instead of having to appease small nations with gifts, marriages, alliances, guarantees, etc, why not for example, simply tie vassalization to a specific number of dip points?

Going negative prevents you from spending any prestige/piety. It works exactly the same way as EU4. You cannot spend more than you have.

Again, this is just a question of execution. Whether or not something is flavourful doesn't make it "not mana". They both perform the same role in the same way.

You criticised mana as an abstraction of stuff which another game had managed to not abstract. I then specified that *in working on M&T*, to do in grossly simplified form what you just said had been done in v2, makes the game unplayably slow and has taken multiple people many years just in the attempt. What is funny about this, exactly? Seems pretty pertinent to you saying "its been done before" as if thats all that matters. Devteams have limited resources.

Last paragraph is a ridiculous strawman. Nobody is saying mana is the only thing that should constrain your actions.

 

[Ivashanko]

I must Highly dissagree, mana Splits up Oppertunity costs! If all actions in emperor rome were based off of one currency then uping stability would mean not Raising men, not building that Market not promoting that pop. As it stands now Uping stability means that you don't enact an edict or convert 10 pops. The categories are so specific that you have very few competing oppertunities with them meaning almost none existant oppertunity costs.

Want to make Rulers matter? Fine just make their stats give huge % modifiers to costs. Your character is a bumbling idiot in religious matters so the clergy needs aditional compensation to up the stability of your relm. That would mean that instead of just waiting for the points to tick up... (points that you can hardly use for anything else) you can use your much faster ticking universal currency and just sacrifice actual oppertunities by over spencing on stability massively.

Stability can be completely disconnected from mana though. MEIOU has a system where it is, for instance.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Maybe a minority here, but I like it. As I recall from reading dev diaries, the idea behind monarch points was in part to help good rulers and bad rulers feel different. With lower stats on a crappy king, a country would languish, while am exceptionally strong monarch could advance his kingdom by big leaps if he had a good reign. I view systems like that as a way to make characters matter.

The problem with this, when it was first implemented, was that there was virtually no player agency for for whether a monarch was good or bad. And no consistent way to avoid being a monarchy for most possible picks.

Having the majority of a crucial resource tied purely to RNG in a "strategy" game is poor design. EU 4 since introduced a lot of mechanics granting agency to monarch points (disinherit, estates, level 5 advisors, more modifiers reducing mana costs), making that particular complaint less relevant now than in 2014 by a wide margin. Unfortunately, they also gutted the game in other ways and refuse to do anything about the inefficient + confirmed lying UI so far. They also never got around to finishing up the fort beta, so it's debatable whether the game actually got better overall. Mana did though.

Mana is bad in situations where it is used poorly. It is a game resource, ultimately.

 

[RedTemplar]

The problem with this, when it was first implemented, was that there was virtually no player agency for for whether a monarch was good or bad. And no consistent way to avoid being a monarchy for most possible picks.

Having the majority of a crucial resource tied purely to RNG in a "strategy" game is poor design. EU 4 since introduced a lot of mechanics granting agency to monarch points (disinherit, estates, level 5 advisors, more modifiers reducing mana costs), making that particular complaint less relevant now than in 2014 by a wide margin. Unfortunately, they also gutted the game in other ways and refuse to do anything about the inefficient + confirmed lying UI so far. They also never got around to finishing up the fort beta, so it's debatable whether the game actually got better overall. Mana did though.

Mana is bad in situations where it is used poorly. It is a game resource, ultimately.

I consider that lack of agency a plus — just like in history, sometimes a good country gets a bad king and falls behind as a result. I like that I can be hampered by something largely out of my control that I have to find ways to work around.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You don't "work around" arbitrarily fewer resources. If you're any good at the game, you have a list of priorities on how to spend resources. Some people literally make that list, I suspect most have it intuitively. The better you are, the more likely this list is to resemble a theoretical optimal one.

Regardless, if you have randomly fewer resources w/o agency you do randomly fewer things on that list, starting from the top. There are no extra decisions made, no tradeoffs between necessary resources and other things. You just do fewer things.

That amounts to playing the game less, not "working around it". In practice when people are asked how to "work around it" their answer is to do fewer things.

It's junk design.

 

[Ratgar]

I think two important distinctions were missed in the grand debate over mana vs other value based gameplay counters:

1) Mana is a "related" type resource which defies attempts to pin it to any real relationship, allowing it to be lazily tacked into any necessary gameplay balancing scenario. For example naval gameplay you get "naval" mana. What is it? It is some sort of human effort related to boats. If it were fuel oil, or years of naval engineering expertise we could make demands on how it is logically used in a game, but what makes it mana is that there is no describable logic for how it is gained or lost besides that of gameplay design. So something like Prestige and Piety is definitely not Mana in this sense, because there is a clear real life logic it imitates for how you go about getting it. If murdering people and being incompetent increased piety or prestige, we would feel like it was off. But when it comes to "naval" mana, something like having lots of boats could either increase your naval mana, or use it up. The only logic we can appeal to is whatever the game designer thought convenient.

2) Mana is heavily confined to within certain values, and closely kept away from any additions or subtractions that might be called "runaway." It is specifically not like money, in that money can snowball from investments, or again like Prestige or Piety, because both of these you can easily accrue up into the the thousands. Factories, and goods are very clearly not mana, because they have direct physical manifestations and understandable relationships, but also because in a game like VIcky 2 they aren't a direct source of balance. Mana exists solely for gameplay, and the reason it is purposely devoid of any real logic is to make it more readily excusable when it is severely limited, placing a rubber band on the player.

And this is frankly why Mana is bad, it exists solely in the service of balance, but it lacks implicit logic to make that balance feel satisfying. Around the edges, like the invisible barriers in an fps, this sort of non-diegetic gameplay is acceptable as the limits necessary to make a closed game system. But Mana of late has become heavily criticized because it occupies the main gameplay of Paradox games. Imperator and EU a substantial portion of your game time, maybe even a majority of it, is spending mana now. Its sort of like the invisible barriers and walls around the map in fps games suddenly became the main walls and obstacles in the fighting area.