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To clarify, I didn't throw a hissy-fit or ruin anyone's game, I just bowed out because there was nothing else for me to do. I don't want to make a scene or ruin peoples' fun, I'm just pissed that I wasted 3h on a game and got hosed and then trying to gently caress other people over is somehow not okay. I dunno, whatever, I probably just won't play the game again.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:03
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Stelas posted:Tekopo revealed as also being Rutibex.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:03
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EvilChameleon posted:I played Railways of the World or some such tonight and I, for the first time in my life, was mad at a board game. Or maybe the group. Either way, it was a dull Euro and that was fine, and I made all the worst choices and I figured my only choice was to go for the longshot 20 point super long route to even hope to compete. Playing with 6 players, after 3h of gameplay, I am just about to finish the route and another player beats me to it by one round. I can't block him from doing it as much as I try. Everyone says "oh, that's too bad, that sucks" and I just want revenge on this player who hosed me so I say I want to just spend the rest of the game giving other people points since there is no way I can accomplish anything but dead last. I played Steam and if nothing else it's not as easy to steal someone else's route, though you won't be building long routes because that's not what the game is about.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:05
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EvilChameleon posted:I don't want to make a scene or ruin peoples' fun, I'm just pissed that I wasted 3h on a game and got hosed and then trying to gently caress other people over is somehow not okay. Not enjoying the game and feeling frustrated is ok. The reason people are calling you an rear end in a top hat is because you don't get the bolded part ("somehow" not okay). It should be obvious why trying to gently caress people over in that way is not okay.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:07
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If a game puts you in a situation where you 1) can't possibly win, but 2) can gently caress other people over, and 3) the game is going to last for an indeterminate amount of time, then it is not a mechanically sound game. I hate player elimination but a situation where you can't win but also have to sit on your hands or risk being a kingmaking rear end in a top hat is even worse. I guess either way you can just play Candy Crush on your phone or whatever but I would prefer a game where even while you are losing you can do stuff and have fun, and you are not stuck waiting around for multiple hours. It's why I prefer games like Dominion, 7 Wonders, Machi Koro etc.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:12
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Even without spite-based dickery, I tend to find very political free-for-all games boring, because they all kind of just blend into one. Risk and Catan and Cosmic Encounter have different rules, but largely they feel like the same game, and I've played enough of it to last a lifetime. What I think the market could use is more team based games; we don't own very many, but pretty much all of our favorite games have been team based (Avalon, Team 7 Wonders, 2v2 Tash Kalar, and a few different random co-ops which I'll call team games for the purposes of having a longer list).
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Oct 17, 2014 17:14
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EvilChameleon posted:To clarify, I didn't throw a hissy-fit or ruin anyone's game, I just bowed out because there was nothing else for me to do. I don't want to make a scene or ruin peoples' fun, I'm just pissed that I wasted 3h on a game and got hosed and then trying to gently caress other people over is somehow not okay. I dunno, whatever, I probably just won't play the game again. Playing board games with real people who are presumably your friends definitely requires some awareness of how your behavior is impacting other people. The way I see it, if the other player was a) aware that he screwed you and b) chill and close enough to understand you would try to spite-play him you might be able to get away with trying to gently caress him over. I know some people who revel in being a dick and in fighting off people being dicks in return. As with all things, though, if you're unsure you generally want to err on the side of not loving people.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:16
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It takes a certain kind of temperament to become invested enough to play well and viciously yet still remain amiable and clear-sighted. One of my closer IRL friends simply cannot do this, and I limit my game-playing with him because of it. If there is any self-actualizing merit to game play it comes from cultivating an ability to invest in an outcome while acknowledging its triviality - people who can't do this probably shouldn't play games (at least with me because fuuck that.) ALSO THOUGH: Games that encourage this kind of behavior are fundamentally broken. It's no fun to sit and watch someone else win, and if the only way you can effect a game state is by tearing someone down and kingmaking, that's the way most people will play. I'm not saying that all games that have clear-cut winners early on are bad, I'm just saying that they yeah are bad actually why would you make anyone suffer through that weird onanistic festival. If you disagree with me your opinion is wrong. Like seriously I am actually better with watching someone slowly grind me into dust in a long game like that than I am at being the winning party. Who wants to slowly grind someone they play with into dust with no hope of return? Impermanent fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Oct 17, 2014 |
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Oct 17, 2014 17:21
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Maybe(definitely) I too am an rear end in a top hat, but I'm not sure why that's so bad. I mean, yeah the most rational, kind move would be to try and catch up even though it's impossible. However, taking away points from another player in the lead doesn't seem against the spirit of the game at all. It all depends on your attitude at the table, I think. One time in a pretty tight game of BSG, my girlfriend playing Human Cally shot me, Human Roslin in the face, solely because I broke an in-game promise I made to her. I was definitely annoyed that she wasn't playing "correctly" but it was her choice to make and I had to respect that.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:23
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See, that's kind of why I think it's up to the game designer to ensure the game doesn't allow for kingmaking or at least discourages it. What else are you supposed to do? You're in the game, but you can't win, but you still have to take turns and you've gotta do something. Typically no matter what you do it'll impact the other players in some way or another. Either make sure your game contains some kind of comeback mechanic so players never feel trapped like this in the first place, or worst case just eliminate players who fall behind too much. I don't like board games with player elimination, typically, but it's better than kingmaking.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:49
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:See, that's kind of why I think it's up to the game designer to ensure the game doesn't allow for kingmaking or at least discourages it. What else are you supposed to do? You're in the game, but you can't win, but you still have to take turns and you've gotta do something. Typically no matter what you do it'll impact the other players in some way or another. Either make sure your game contains some kind of comeback mechanic so players never feel trapped like this in the first place, or worst case just eliminate players who fall behind too much. I don't like board games with player elimination, typically, but it's better than kingmaking. How about taking your turn with no drama and moving on? Yesterday we were playing Five Tribes, and the second turn of the game, a player made a very bad move that gave another player a ton of points. The game was over at that point, with another probably hour to play. Did I bitch and moan because he gave the game away? No, just smiled and kept playing. Why bitch and moan? That's only going to make the first player feel bad (he never did realize what he'd done) and make the game take longer after everyone started arguing about it. It's about the watching the process and enjoying yourself. I lose all the time like nearly every game I play, I still can't wait to play the next one.
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Oct 17, 2014 18:01
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quote:You're in the game, but you can't win, but you still have to take turns and you've gotta do something. Managing the experience of "being behind" is an important bit of design. If I'm behind in Agricola, I still try to do as well as I can and get points, and largely my experience is the same, and I'm doing similar stuff to the people in the lead. You can be losing Agricola but still have interesting options and a range of potential outcomes (maybe I'll have 20 points or maybe I'll have 30). In games where this is a problem, often players who are losing have sharply less options - sometimes to the point of "virtual player elimination". If you're behind in Risk, you don't get to do much on your turn - and what you do doesn't matter to your own outcome. You're going to die, and "lasting longer" is kind of a double edged sword if you're not having fun turns. If you're behind in Catan, you have less choices on what to build and do and generally less "fun stuff" happens for you. If you're behind in Tash Kalar, quite often you have more options on what to do (because of flares) - and even if you aren't going to win, you can still aim to drop some legendaries and get some points or whatever (there's still variance in your outcome). And this isn't accidental, Vlaada clearly spent a lot of time managing the experience of being behind.
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Oct 17, 2014 18:02
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My group actually does fight for 2nd place when that's an option. You might not be the best, but you can still be better than the other scrubs  I think that's the situation where having no player elimination works best. Like jmzero said, there's definitely a difference between being behind on points and being behind on resources. If you're just behind on points you can still set your own personal goals to achieve.
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Oct 17, 2014 18:10
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Speaking again to Steam I played a 4 player game where none of us had played before. One of the players had figured out she wasn't going to win, so she was just kind of out mentally (though she still enjoyed the game). I was fairly certain I wasn't going to win, but I still enjoyed looking for new routes to build and delivering goods. It was a close enough game where we all had money so we could still spend to do things, so it wasn't like there was nothing to do. I guess that's just part of the personality of player. I think there may be a few people like that in my group, if they're not winning they're not having fun, which maybe makes them a lovely person to play games with?
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Oct 17, 2014 18:16
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One of the things I dislike about Settlers of Catan for new people is that there comes a point where many people won't be able to win and have nothing to do while they wait for the person going to win to drag themselves across the finish line. What are you supposed to do when the only goal available to you is to win and you can't. That's why I introduce people with Ticket to Ride. Even if you're not going to win the thing, people enjoy just trying to line up their routes, and by the time they can or can't due to space, the game is over. This is also the reason o never play risk anymore. I just wish someone could invent a good game using all the pieces Risk provides.
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Oct 17, 2014 18:19
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Fat Turkey posted:This is also the reason o never play risk anymore. I just wish someone could invent a good game using all the pieces Risk provides.
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Oct 17, 2014 18:21
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FISHMANPET posted:Speaking again to Steam I played a 4 player game where none of us had played before. One of the players had figured out she wasn't going to win, so she was just kind of out mentally (though she still enjoyed the game). I was fairly certain I wasn't going to win, but I still enjoyed looking for new routes to build and delivering goods. It was a close enough game where we all had money so we could still spend to do things, so it wasn't like there was nothing to do. I guess that's just part of the personality of player. I think there may be a few people like that in my group, if they're not winning they're not having fun, which maybe makes them a lovely person to play games with? This is kind of nerdy (sorry!) but there has been recent research into the role of attribution of responsibility for failure in whether people feel "good" about -- or learn from -- a failure. The more ambiguous the responsibility for the failure (especially when easily assigned to not-you), the worse it is for the person failing all around. If somebody else screws you over, you have a clear person to blame for your lack of perceived success in the game (regardless of your real game status), you will be less likely to try to make a comeback, and less likely to try to be better at the game. Not you personally, the general "you." Edit: it's an interesting study -- one of the ways they see how people react to failure is to give them a hypothetical scenario, where they have to decide whether a car should be used in a race; one of the links they have the option to click on in the information presented indicates that a certain gasket has a 99.9% chance of failing. Most people don't click on that link, and many that do say "eh, just a gasket in the car", and say the car should race. Then they find out it's actually data from the Challenger, and they made the same mistake NASA did. homullus fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Oct 17, 2014 |
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Oct 17, 2014 18:28
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There are several very good board game players in my area. If you have to win to have fun, you're simply not going to have fun with them. Gaming is an iterative process, you keep playing, analyze your play, and try to get better. The reason I lose all the time is because I refuse to succumb to AP. It's far more important to me to keep the game moving and people engaged in the game than it is for me to make the best move. Plus if I tried to think of every possible move and then evaluate it, I'd forget halfway through it and have to start over! 
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Oct 17, 2014 18:30
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King making is a valid game mechanic. If you find yourself losing to it then you have been playing wrong; you have to take into account potential king making when making deals and alliance during the game so that when you are in a position to win the losers allow you to. Why does no one have a problem with bluffing/deception games but everyone gets upset when a game calls for other social skills?
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Oct 17, 2014 19:06
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The stated objective of most games is to win, not to cause someone else to lose. Impermanent fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Oct 17, 2014 |
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Oct 17, 2014 19:11
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Rutibex posted:King making is a valid game mechanic. If you find yourself losing to it then you have been playing wrong; you have to take into account potential king making when making deals and alliance during the game so that when you are in a position to win the losers allow you to. Why does no one have a problem with bluffing/deception games but everyone gets upset when a game calls for other social skills? We're (mostly) not talking about games with deals and alliances, we're talking about games that have turn by turn decisions, and on your turn, you have the option of screwing someone else over, with the two potential targets having which of them win decided based on your decision.
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Oct 17, 2014 19:12
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Somberbrero posted:Maybe(definitely) I too am an rear end in a top hat, but I'm not sure why that's so bad. I mean, yeah the most rational, kind move would be to try and catch up even though it's impossible. However, taking away points from another player in the lead doesn't seem against the spirit of the game at all. It all depends on your attitude at the table, I think.
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Oct 17, 2014 19:20
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Fat Turkey posted:One of the things I dislike about Settlers of Catan for new people is that there comes a point where many people won't be able to win and have nothing to do while they wait for the person going to win to drag themselves across the finish line. What are you supposed to do when the only goal available to you is to win and you can't. This reminds me of the two times I ended up eliminated early in Settlers. The first time I got bad luck and then got beat to the last remaining spot I could possibly expand to. It was then literally impossible for me to win, and I told everyone this and I said that I would go watch the guys playing Acquire on the other side of the room since I'd never seen it played before. The other players acted like I was being a bad sport, but I insisted. I told them that the only thing I could do if I kept playing was play kingmaker and I had no interest in that, and there was obviously like 45 minutes left so I didn't want to sit around for that long. I don't know if they still thought I was being a bad sport and I don't care because I know that I wasn't. I know because other time I was eliminated early I was definitely a bad sport. I was playing with my friend Dan who had never won a game of Settlers while I was playing and was a little bit bitter about it. We were playing Seafarers and early on it became evident that I was too far behind. Dan was winning. So I decided that instead of playing to win, I'd set myself another goal: circumnavigating the globe (building a line of ships all the way across the board). I was having a great time playing Magellan and trading for wood and sheep until Dan blocked me with his ships. Well then. If I can't win and I can't play my own little game, what else is left? Oh that's right. Screwing Dan. So I started to just feed cards to the second place player. So yeah, I like Settlers, but once every 10 games or so, you end up getting screwed so hard at the start that it pretty much ruins the game. The other 90% of the time it's fun. That meta-game of playing the other players that so many of you hate? Yeah, I like it. It's fun and my friends and I all have a good time because we're not assholes or babies (often).
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Oct 17, 2014 19:21
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Really the thing is I probably won't play the game again. I've never felt this way when playing a game before, and I didn't want to ruin it for other people, but I was frustrated to have spent 3 hours playing something and not have anything to show for it because I went all-in with everything and got nothing. At least when I lose at Agricola I can still work on my score or how I'm playing even if other people are beating me and I don't feel like it's a total loss even if I can't win.
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Oct 17, 2014 19:21
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I'm glad you had fun Jimbozig 
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Oct 17, 2014 19:27
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Rutibex posted:King making is a valid game mechanic. If you find yourself losing to it then you have been playing wrong; you have to take into account potential king making when making deals and alliance during the game so that when you are in a position to win the losers allow you to. Why does no one have a problem with bluffing/deception games but everyone gets upset when a game calls for other social skills? Mechanical drownout. Social skills are powerful & blunt, while game mechanics can be fragile and subtle. For instance bridge as a game is dominated by bidding, a communication channel that's less than 6 bits wide per bid. With open tabletalk, many (most? I don't play bridge) of the strategies of the game are simply gone, replaced by "other social skills". It's simple to observe that in competitive multiplayer games, prearranged teams can break large numbers of games in half. Kingmaking has a tendency to cause many forms of gameplay to devolve, denying direct experiencing of the mechanics to the players who sat down for precisely that reason.
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Oct 17, 2014 20:13
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When I first started getting into boardgames a few years ago I was living in a student house and had a lot of spare time and we played a lot of games. I could only really afford one game and I bought Game of Thrones as all my friends were interested in playing it. Unfortunately one of my housemates (a very good friend of ours that we spent a lot of time with) was possibly the worst person to play games with I've ever met. He would always spend about half an hour planning his moves and always took the longest, if you ever broke any sort of alliance or deal he would be genuinely furious with you and never make an alliance again, if things went slightly wrong he would insist he was doing really badly even if he wasn't, and worst if all if he felt like he wasn't going to win he would just leave the game. I can understand leaving the game when it has become completely pointless but it was at the point where he could be the second or third strongest player and if he lost a castle he would just abandon the game. The worst part was that because he lived in the same house we couldn't stop inviting him to play with us and he had no self awareness whatsoever. It was bizarre how seriously he took it, the rest of us would be backstabbing each other and shouting but still be enjoying the game and he couldn't cope with anything going slightly wrong.
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Oct 17, 2014 20:19
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Booklegger posted:Kingmaking has a tendency to cause many forms of gameplay to devolve, denying direct experiencing of the mechanics to the players who sat down for precisely that reason. This is basically what it comes down to. Metagaming is fine, but when you're essentially ignoring the game to be a prick because you're butthurt about losing, it has nothing to do with board gaming. It has to do with being a huge jerk. ed: Helping someone to win because that is advantageous to you somehow is much different than helping someone to win because you are mad that you did not.
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Oct 17, 2014 20:30
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Philosophical question: you're playing Chaos in the Old World and clearly see you're heading towards unsalvageable defeat. Is deciding to drag everyone else down with you and help the Old World repel the invasion throwing a shitfit, or a deliberate way of losing less?
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Oct 17, 2014 20:47
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I believe that everyone loses and you don't even get the chance to score points that way, so I think it would be a shitfit.
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Oct 17, 2014 20:49
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Impermanent posted:I believe that everyone loses and you don't even get the chance to score points that way, so I think it would be a shitfit.
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Oct 17, 2014 20:53
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Impermanent posted:I believe that everyone loses and you don't even get the chance to score points that way, so I think it would be a shitfit. I disagree, I think it's OK to try and aim for a shared loss this way. CitOW is a game that would be kingmaking incarnate if the shared loss outcome did not exist as a safety valve. It's also actually harder to engineer a victory for the Old World than it is to win normally, so it's probably fine balance wise.
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Oct 17, 2014 21:05
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In that case, I guess everyone losing is kind of a "tie" (in a sense) so it's somewhat understandable. Though much like all of these things we're discussing, much of that lies with the sentiment of the other people playing. Being mean-spirited can be fun with the right crowd. I guess my rule of thumb is that, in a casual setting, the focus should be on everyone having a good time regardless of who is playing and how. If you're doing things to make the game less fun for people, then you're just really being rude.
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Oct 17, 2014 21:11
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I am, in the case of CitOW, speaking with no experience as to the actually playing so I can't really speak to the design of the game, Ojetor, so if you think it legit plays better that way then you're probably right. Is it easy, though, to tank the game by helping the board repel the invasion?
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Oct 17, 2014 21:16
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Impermanent posted:I believe that everyone loses and you don't even get the chance to score points that way, so I think it would be a shitfit. The thing about Chaos is that it's a really odd game. It feels like a game that should be political, but the balance hinges on people not making alliances and deals. I wouldn't classify this as a shitfit just because the everyone loses mechanic works as a sort of escape valve for kingmaking. Out of the game? Bring everyone else down, because losing is losing and you're going to lose anyway. It's better than actively helping another player, which absolutely breaks a game as asymmetrical as Chaos.
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Oct 17, 2014 21:20
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Impermanent posted:Is it easy, though, to tank the game by helping the board repel the invasion?
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Oct 17, 2014 21:20
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BioTech posted:I buy the games my group plays and usually they gang up on me because they agree having read the rules before them gives me an edge. Lately I've been selecting more co-op stuff or at least games that try to prevent this from happening because it can get real tiring. I curb this by reiterating to my players that the first game is a learning game. A learning game means we play and figure out mechanisms and it doesn't really matter how we play or who wins, we're playing to figure out the game beyond my initial explanation. Usually it leads to less people being dicks to the rules-knower and no butthurtness when people don't win or can't figure it out right away. The next game we play full on now that everyone knows the rules. If we don't have enough time or we feel like we have it figured out then we stop playing the learning game a few rounds into it and start over playing the real game. This has lead to less people ganging up on the game owner and made the game have better first impressions for later plays. Only one I can't stop that in is Werewolf. I've been moderating that game for 5 years and even get booked at peoples parties to run it around October. On the weird chance that I play it I always get killed first no matter what I am. Everyone assumes that I know something somehow because I moderate it so much.
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Oct 17, 2014 21:42
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Werewolf is always a great showcase of in-group victimization.
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Oct 17, 2014 21:44
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quote:I believe that everyone loses and you don't even get the chance to score points that way, so I think it would be a shitfit. Lots of games haven't got a good framework for "how a player should behave if they're unlikely to win", or even for what they should be trying to maximize in regular play. Say you're in a political game with points. I think we'd mostly all say it's rational to attack the leader. But say you're in 4th - is it OK to instead focus on the person in 3rd to try to finish ahead of just them? Or should you sort of stay out of that, because maybe he still has a chance to win and you don't? Should you play to "minimize the number of people that do better than me" or "play as though I want to finish first, even if that's impossible". Sometimes the game gives some guidance, but often it's normally ignored. Like, in Galaxy Trucker I'll sometimes take a part that I don't terribly want, but that I want to prevent others from getting. But you win in Galaxy Trucker just based on whether you finish in the black, regardless of how others do. So why shouldn't I want everyone to do well? If anything I should be trying to co-operate with everyone so we can all make it or something. And I certainly shouldn't be rush-building a ship so I can flip that timer faster. Does the fact that I do that make me a jerk? (I think there was a post here a bit ago where some group actually did get annoyed with a guy for flipping the timer quickly in a Galaxy Trucker game.) Anyway, when games don't lay out a clear path for what players should be trying to accomplish (especially for players who aren't winning) they open the door for a bunch of annoyance (like we've seen in discussions here relative to Dawn of Winter and a bunch of other games). And I think it's fair to say that even when games give some alternate goal guidance, many people are going to play it as "finish behind the least number of people" anyway, because that's how a "normal game" works. jmzero fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Oct 17, 2014 |
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Oct 17, 2014 21:45
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Galaxy Trucker is a really bad example there, because the "everyone wins" rule is clearly not meant seriously. you absolutely win by having the most points, and anyone not realizing that is playing it wrong. I mean, you could play it as a coop, but where would the fun be in that? The key difference is whether you are trying to make someone else lose or you are trying to get ahead yourself. So going all in on being third is fine, but knocking down the guy in second place so that the guy was third might get second is not. Obviously there are grey areas, such as your chance to win depends on knocking down everyone in order or a million to one chance of something happening or whatever. The point is that it's bad game design when you have no other options than a) dicking around meaninglessly until you lose, b) being a dick to one or more persons for no reason* until you lose or c) helping out one or more other players for no reason* until you lose. *no reason is subject to interpretation. In political games, I guess "I promised" would be a reason.
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Oct 17, 2014 22:06
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