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Every game can be 20/player if you enforce chess clocks on everyone. The take home message here is that you should enforce chess clocks on everyone.
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Mar 5, 2015 21:16
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Broken Loose and gang, how do you feel about Glory to Rome and/or Innovation? This seems really out of whack to me. After 4 complete games, him and the people he played with were good enough at Agricola to be able to determine the winner based on the opening hand? Maybe the people I game with and I are just really that stupid, but we've played about 4-5 times, still haven't used anything but the basic deck, and still can't make any kind of prognosis based on starting cards. Also, he says every game of it he's played has had first timers and even then they didn't play out the game?
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Mar 5, 2015 21:16
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bobvonunheil posted:Every game can be 20/player if you enforce chess clocks on everyone. What happens when your clock runs out? You just lose and stop placing workers? That's not really Agricola anymore.
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Mar 5, 2015 21:27
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quote:This seems really out of whack to me. After 4 complete games, him and the people he played with were good enough at Agricola to be able to determine the winner based on the opening hand? Maybe the people I game with and I are just really that stupid, but we've played about 4-5 times, still haven't used anything but the basic deck, and still can't make any kind of prognosis based on starting cards. There's a strong amount of "I solved this game the third time I played it" wank there. Sure there's ways you can murder yourself in Agricola (eg. I take Lover + Fireplace Stage I, and hope I get the sheep pile... and someone took the sheep pile) if you're crazy aggressive. But if everyone is playing at least somewhat reasonably, then you should pretty much never be way ahead (or way behind) in Stage I. Sometimes there's a wide spread coming out of Stage II (often you effectively bet heavily on when exactly Family Growth shows up) but again, usually it's in doubt until later, and often until the final scoring. As someone said above, you hate to write off someone's opinion as "you're terrible at the game", but I think it's fair here. To be clear, "new players can get really brutalized in Agricola" is a legitimate complaint - and I prefer games that ease people in easier - but the way he states his complaints suggests the problem goes deeper than it actually does.
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Mar 5, 2015 21:32
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Caverna solves the new player problem of Agricola but introduces more AP. However, the mining part of caverna feels so good it's hard to play the gric knowing I won't be able to mine a fish.
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Mar 5, 2015 21:53
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Well, I think it's commonly accepted that some cards are just completely broke-a-doke if you are dealt them randomly? i.e. Taster, Chamberlain, Lover, Ratcatcher, etc. It DOES seem unlikely that someone would discover that in their first 10 games, but maybe it had already been on the geek forums at that point and they knew some of the power cards going into it? e:I could see calling a game if you randomly drew some of the cards mentioned and were familiar with the game, maybe even just from reading discussion and playing a couple times. If you're like super grog, of course e: http://play-agricola.com/forums/index.php?topic=1598.0 That's after thousands of drafts, but I guess they outright banned the cards I mentioned above
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Mar 5, 2015 22:08
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fozzy fosbourne posted:e: http://play-agricola.com/forums/index.php?topic=1598.0 That is the worst formatted thing I've ever seen, euro nerds of all people should know how to list numbers
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Mar 5, 2015 22:23
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quote:Well, I think it's commonly accepted that some cards are just completely broke-a-doke if you are dealt them randomly? i.e. Taster, Chamberlain, Lover, Ratcatcher, etc. In games with experienced players, those cards are really strong... but in a game with new players I'd bet on the guy with easier to use stuff like Greengrocer or Animal Dealer or whatever (and I imagine lots of cards new players would pick out as overpowered aren't actually that amazing). And while I see why people ban those cards at some point (heck, we've banned cards in Dominion), they're not necessarily game enders. I mean, it's not like a 4 player draft is likely to feature Taster + 27 copies of Veterinarian - everyone is usually going to get some "strong card"s to match up against someone else's "very strong card".
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Mar 5, 2015 22:45
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Bubble-T posted:One thing I find players get wrong all the time is the idea that starting with +1 military and some 2+ defense worlds in their hand means they have a military strategy and just need to find a +military dev. If you have only some of the pieces of a strategy in Race then you don't have that strategy. 3 blue production worlds is not a strategy until you've found the consume powers. 6+ military is not a strategy until you have a hand stocked with high defense worlds for the end-game settle rush. That doesn't mean the cards you have are worthless, a single world settled or development placed can be useful without locking you in to anything in particular until you've given yourself more concrete strategic options. Race is primarily about flexibility, resource generation and tempo - I agree that often it feels like a strategy finds you, not the other way around, but this doesn't mean you're impotent before that happens. I also dispute that 6-costs are the key here, at least to the extent you claim - they're obviously important but very few of them have powers that you really want in the early/mid game (galactic federation is the exception and by far the strongest card in the game) and good play usually leaves you with a tableau that can benefit from multiple 6-costs. You totally highlighted my issue, though. You can't do anything in Race until you get an arbitrary amount of prerequisite cards. Blue and brown production doesn't work unless you find consume powers. Military doesn't work unless you have target worlds to conquer. Generalized strategies don't give any points unless you have a 6-cost development. Nothing in the game guarantees that you'll have all the pieces of a coherent strategy available to you at any given time, and nothing in the game prevents a player from just randomly drawing all the pieces they need with no difficulty. It's telling that my enjoyment of Race SKYROCKETED once Prestige Search was added to the game. Here's the big kicker: I'm unlucky. Whether or not you believe it is your call, but, if a game can arbitrarily gently caress me over, assume it will. Just imagine the perspective of a player who absolutely draws the wrong cards at any given point in the game and assume that every action that player takes is intended to overcome that obstacle. My journey of learning Race was frustrating and tedious; several months of grinding against AIs and YCS buddies to learn the deck and all the synergies. In the end, I'm only slightly better at winning at Race, but I'm astronomically better at predicting who will win based off the first 2 turns. Playing 10 games of Race in a row to stabilize the output of the game's RNG is unacceptable, because that insinuates that Race really should be 250 minutes long. Love Letter is a random swingy blowout that takes 5 minutes to play, so when you play 6 consecutive games it still only comes out to half an hour. The math does itself. fozzy fosbourne posted:Broken Loose and gang, how do you feel about Glory to Rome and/or Innovation? I fuckin' hate Innovation. It's Fluxx but with dramatically fewer ways to farm the deck and more luck involved. What a piece of poo poo. I'd rather punch myself in the face than play Innovation.
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Mar 5, 2015 22:49
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Broken Loose posted:Here's the big kicker: I'm unlucky. Well now you're just trying to make Stats majors mad. 
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Mar 5, 2015 23:01
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I hate Innovation, I hate RtfG, I love EmDo and I really like GtR. I would like GtR more if I could get a hold of a copy without breaking the bank.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:04
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"I unironically believe that my luck is objectively worse than that of other individuals" -A Game Designer
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Mar 5, 2015 23:09
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Can anyone share their thoughts on Spurs: A Tale in the Old West? I bought it for reasons but haven't gotten around to it, probably because it requires 3 players minimum and that's all like 
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Mar 5, 2015 23:15
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I also like GtR quite a lot: the crazy, broken combos elevates it above general euroness. The card economy is quite confusing at first, you probably want to try it with experienced gamers. On the other hand, the rest of my playgroup considers it to be just a boring euro and only ever agrees to play it semi-ironically. Also, I happen to have the cheap and beautiful Polish edition that AFAIK was licensed out to like 4-5 other European countries and I have no idea why English speakers are stuck with the ugly-rear end editions.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:16
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Chomp8645 posted:"I unironically believe that my luck is objectively worse than that of other individuals" It's his hilarious quirk. Sorry, one of them. 
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Mar 5, 2015 23:47
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Chomp8645 posted:"I unironically believe that my luck is objectively worse than that of other individuals" This, as a response to me saying, "I have a poo poo time with games because I routinely experience worse-than-average experiences," just comes off as you announcing that you're a stupid, smug rear end in a top hat. At the level of somebody going, "Why don't poor people just buy more money?" If anything, it also puts the things I've made into a more positive light, because I go out of my way to ensure a balanced experience for my players. It's certainly superior to making something like Exploding Kittens and not understanding why people are telling me that it's a bad game.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:47
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Broken Loose posted:This, as a response to me saying, "I have a poo poo time with games because I routinely experience worse-than-average experiences," just comes off as you announcing that you're a stupid, smug rear end in a top hat. At the level of somebody going, "Why don't poor people just buy more money?" Haha, what? Are you comparing being made fun of for believing you are cursed with bad luck in games to making fun of someone for being poor? Because that's some good poo poo man.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:51
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You're a good game designer, BL, but that doesn't mean you can't have incredibly powerful confirmation bias.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:54
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It's entirely reasonable to have objectively less luck than other people. It's right there on the character sheet.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:56
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I'm sure Broken Loose doesn't literally believe that his existence warps the workings of RNGs, it's just that he identifies as "that unlucky guy", which for a game designer is sure, whatever, or even helpful.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:03
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Now I am sad that the Wikipedia article for The Law of Large Numbers does not contend with how some consider it radically underdetermined.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:10
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Chomp8645 posted:Haha, what? Are you comparing being made fun of for believing you are cursed with bad luck in games to making fun of someone for being poor? Okay, I'll put it this way: Bad things happen to me, both in and out of games. Some of it is within statistical norms and some if it is wildly out the ordinary. I therefore operate under the expectation that bad things will continue to happen in circumstances out of my control, such as card draws, dice rolls, being put in jail for a month over a paperwork error, getting testicular torsion in my sleep, fighting game mixup situations, waking up to my girlfriend's corpse, and tons of other things. Assuming otherwise would be literally insane given my experiences. It would be the gambler's fallacy to assume that any given RNG would treat me well under the guise of fairness. Why would I? I'm AWARE the other sides of the dice exist, I just don't see the point in attempting to roll anymore. So yeah, if you're like, "That's bullshit! Nobody with a brain could actually end up thinking that life isn't completely fair! Things are perfectly fair and statistically average for ME and my friends all the time!" then yes, it comes off a lot like a spoiled rich kid who hasn't ever had to worry about how they're going to heat their home and eat simultaneously in the winter. I generally don't bring it up because somebody like you inevitably goes on a tirade about how I'm apparently mistaken and nothing bad has ever happened to me. Xom posted:I'm sure Broken Loose doesn't literally believe that his existence warps the workings of RNGs, it's just that he identifies as "that unlucky guy", which for a game designer is sure, whatever, or even helpful. This, pretty much. Although I try not to ever admit to identifying as such because of poo poo like this exact conversation. Broken Loose fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Mar 6, 2015 |
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Mar 6, 2015 00:11
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Broken Loose posted:Okay, I'll put it this way: Bad things happen to me, both in and out of games. Some of it is within statistical norms and some if it is wildly out the ordinary. I therefore operate under the expectation that bad things will continue to happen in circumstances out of my control, such as card draws, dice rolls, being put in jail for a month over a paperwork error, getting testicular torsion in my sleep, fighting game mixup situations, waking up to my girlfriend's corpse, and tons of other things. That wasn't bad luck, bro, it was me. I travel the world tweaking the knackers of the somnolent, and I laugh. Quietly, of course, so as not to awaken them.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:21
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Wow, Spell Wars looks like a pretty lovely game. Tabletop is usually better at tricking me while I'm watching the episode. The art is still amusing though.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:24
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Broken Loose posted:Okay, I'll put it this way: Bad things happen to me, both in and out of games. Some of it is within statistical norms and some if it is wildly out the ordinary. I therefore operate under the expectation that bad things will continue to happen in circumstances out of my control, such as card draws, dice rolls, being put in jail for a month over a paperwork error, getting testicular torsion in my sleep, fighting game mixup situations, waking up to my girlfriend's corpse, and tons of other things. Assuming otherwise would be literally insane given my experiences. It would be the gambler's fallacy to assume that any given RNG would treat me well under the guise of fairness. Why would I? I'm AWARE the other sides of the dice exist, I just don't see the point in attempting to roll anymore. Do you realize that what you are writing sounds insane? Like, I'm not even making fun of you anymore because I think you need therapy or something. You sound like you've been traumatized by past events and see the world as set against you. I would just write the post off as an internet-standard hyperbole post if I didn't know that I'm reading about events that have actually happened to you. Talk to somebody.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:28
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Jedit posted:That wasn't bad luck, bro, it was me. I travel the world tweaking the knackers of the somnolent, and I laugh. The worst part was being told by the doctor in the ER, "You're good for now, but the fact that this happened to you once means that you have an anatomy it's capable of happening to. So it could actually happen again." Chomp8645 posted:Do you realize that what you are writing sounds insane? Like, I'm not even making fun of you anymore because I think you need therapy or something. You sound like you've been traumatized by past events and see the world as set against you. Insanity was defined at one point as, "Doing the same thing repeatedly yet expecting different results." In fact, my acting overly conservative in strategy to minimize RNG is more sane than any conceivable alternative. The funniest thing that happened recently was when I went to a therapist in December and he said, "You're not unlucky! It's just the general badness of life that sometimes hits people in different amounts." Then he asked me to come back for a follow-up, except he realized all the doctors on site were booked for 4 months for bizarre reasons ranging from childbirth to winning a cruise, to the point where he felt it necessary to reiterate that exact statement unprompted as I stared at him blankly. I laughed about it the whole way home.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:39
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Chomp8645 posted:Do you realize that what you are writing sounds insane? Like, I'm not even making fun of you anymore because I think you need therapy or something. You sound like you've been traumatized by past events and see the world as set against you. he's not saying that he's literally warping the probability curve by being alive, he's saying that a lot of bad poo poo's happened to him and that he hates playing games with a high level of luck variance because of it and that he designs games based on that hatred. seems fair to me.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:39
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ashez2ashes posted:Wow, Spell Wars looks like a pretty lovely game. Tabletop is usually better at tricking me while I'm watching the episode. The art is still amusing though. I have a friend who really likes it and brings it out sometimes but yah it's pretty awful. It might be tolerable if it played in half the time but it just drags on way too long, especially with new players trying to figure out their spells, and with 5 or 6 players you can be dead before you even get a turn.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:40
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Fungah! posted:he designs games based on that hatred. I like the idea of "hate based game design". A new frontier of design theory.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:42
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Fungah! posted:he's not saying that he's literally warping the probability curve by being alive, he's saying that a lot of bad poo poo's happened to him and that he hates playing games with a high level of luck variance because of it and that he designs games based on that hatred. seems fair to me. He might be trying to say that, but he's delivering it with a level of hyperbole that really does not get that point across.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:42
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I finally ordered Archipelago because of this thread. Jerks.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:43
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admanb posted:He might be trying to say that, but he's delivering it with a level of hyperbole that really does not get that point across. have you read a single other broken loose post ever?
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Mar 6, 2015 00:44
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because that's just what he does, dude
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Mar 6, 2015 00:46
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Chomp8645 posted:I like the idea of "hate based game design". It's actually really worked out well! A lot of my best designs were born out of spite for mechanical conventions. I think it can apply to any passion-based design, though, as the more boring games have come from people who don't properly criticize or objectively praise games before going into copying them. Trying to find ways introduce variance into designs without having that variance interfere heavily with player experiences has been a very tough and rewarding challenge, too. admanb posted:He might be trying to say that, but he's delivering it with a level of hyperbole that really does not get that point across. What did I say that came off as hyperbole?
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Mar 6, 2015 00:47
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ashez2ashes posted:Wow, Spell Wars looks like a pretty lovely game. Tabletop is usually better at tricking me while I'm watching the episode. The art is still amusing though. Are you referring to EPIC SPELL WARS OF THE BATTLE WIZARDS: DUEL AT MT. SKULLZFYRE? Because you have to say the whole thing, accompanied by a bitching guitar shred. And yes, it's pretty poo poo. The one time I played it, I beat the person who was teaching me mostly by spamming Wild Magic (which only lets you play the top card of the deck at your opponent without seeing it first; an ability that is literally useless since you would have drawn that card anyways if you hadn't drawn the Wild Magic). The entire time my opponent kept complaining about his lack of good draws (apparently he kept getting hands full of Deliveries with no Sources or Qualities), and the lack of any discard/redraw mechanic. When it was done, I politely thanked him for showing it to me and got up, and he said 'No wait, we're supposed to play in a series of games to determine the real winner." 
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Mar 6, 2015 00:47
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Shes Not Impressed posted:I finally ordered Archipelago because of this thread. Jerks. It wasn't good? I don't think my table is big enough to contain it.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:51
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Paper Kaiju posted:Are you referring to EPIC SPELL WARS OF THE BATTLE WIZARDS: DUEL AT MT. SKULLZFYRE? Because you have to say the whole thing, accompanied by a bitching guitar shred. It would have gone better if they knew the rules. That isn't how wild magic works. ESWOTBWDAMS is a dopey game that should only ever have four players and be played among friends. The game ends when you have all had enough, not the actual win condition.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:52
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ashez2ashes posted:It wasn't good? I had been holding off on it because of the price and the prospect of teaching it to my friends, but I finally gave in after a few posters made persuasive arguments but they're probably just slave traitors anyway. It hasn't arrived yet.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:53
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Broken Loose posted:It's certainly superior to making something like Exploding Kittens and not understanding why people are telling me that it's a bad game. is this a random dig at exploding kittens or did the designer have some sort of my-game-is-a-precious-unique-snowflake meltdown cause i'll need a link if it's the latter
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Mar 6, 2015 00:56
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Indolent Bastard posted:It would have gone better if they knew the rules. That isn't how wild magic works. I was intentionally reducing it for the sake of not having to look up the exact wording on the card just for the sake of a three sentence negative review on an internet forum. We played it as it was written on the card. My point is that EPSOFASDFGHJKL!@#$ should never be played by any number of people, and if I have three good friends to play with, I have a LOT of good games that work best with exactly four people who already know how to play (like nearly every game Vlaada has made). Paper Kaiju fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Mar 6, 2015 |
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Mar 6, 2015 01:11
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