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Yeah, just play what you enjoy. But most bad games think have a few of the following characteristics: Player Elimination when the game ist longer then a few minutes Too much output randomness, see roll and move e.g. and no way to mitigate that randomness. Bad Market row style card offerings in deck builders e.g. Too few meaningful player decisions
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Mar 22, 2020 23:20
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Remember: When liking a game, the goal is to be right, but it is the goal that is important, not the being right
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Mar 22, 2020 23:21
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Selecta84 posted:Yeah, just play what you enjoy. Add to this the general sentiment that some designs are just somehow so much worse than a similar game that came out a decade ago which kinda shows laziness in design research and/or the cynical take in releasing a design with pretty graphics or theme because people would buy it. Pure deckbuilders that are just worse versions of dominion and terraforming mars compared to race for the galaxy are the big ones around here. Also Lisboa when concordia exists ticks off the chrome/decision space box for me but I love the art and theme and really look forward to the expansion that reduces the bonus point decree grab. I’ll still play Concordia 90% of the time though 
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Mar 22, 2020 23:27
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Selecta84 posted:few meaningful player decisions This is the only thing that can make a bad *game*, though not necessarily a bad social experience.
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Mar 22, 2020 23:45
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mellifluous posted:I don't care if I have bad taste as long as I enjoy the game, but I am interested in hearing what mechanics or concepts make a game bad. Most of the frequent participants in this thread are deep into the hobby, so perfectly fine games like Wingspan, Scythe, Terraforming Mars, etc. get called "bad". On the other hand, the good thing about this thread is that people will almost always spell out the reasons for their opinions. There's nothing really to say about truly awful games, like say, Cards Against Humanity, so they aren't discussed. Just shift your frame of reference a bit as you read and consider "BG thread bad" is more like "there are better alternatives".
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Mar 22, 2020 23:56
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Selecta84 posted:Bad Market row style card offerings in deck builders e.g. In case the asker is not familiar with deckbuilding tropes, I think this could be generalized into "opportunity inequity." For instance, let's say that there are sandwiches on a platter. Two are rye, two are wheat, and two are white. It turns out that rye is completely OP, but you're third in line. You don't even have the opportunity to get rye if the two players ahead of you in line want them. In this way, it relates much more broadly to "player agency" which is when a player makes a choice. As with all critiques, it comes with the caveat "without mitigation." For instance, maybe being in line 3rd for sandwiches gets you bonus ketchup or something. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean it's killer for the game. You could say that Through the Ages has some degree of opportunity inequity because you're buying from a common market that cycles, but there is some mitigation where you can pay more sometimes to get it before someone else does and the number of cards in the market is large, affording more opportunities.
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Mar 23, 2020 00:01
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mellifluous posted:I'm not trying to open a can of worms, but I'd be interested in what this thread considers bad. I'm pretty new to board games, and I probably enjoy bad games. (I can't be sure because I don't have a handle on what this thread dislikes. (Besides Munchkin, I think. And I don't like Munchkin.)) For me a bad game is one that is mechanically bad, so where the mechanics do not give everyone the same shot at winning. So the game can be random, as long as that randomness affects everyone evenly. Take for example Stone Age, you're rolling dice to get resources so it's really random in that sense but those mechanics affect everyone so can't really fault it mechanically there. At the same time I just don't really like the game. To think about a mechanically poor example going to look at Charterstone. So it's a legacy game so you're unlocking stuff as you go. So you've got no idea what is good and what is bad, you can easily make a choice that dooms your entire 12 game run to mediocrity, especially if you're the yellow player. So the game is inherently unbalanced because the factions are not balanced, and you're making choices with no idea of the consequences of them. So those are 2 huge mechanical failures right from the start. The game also has no real counter play, you might identify who's winning but you can do little about it. I can't really follow their strategy if it's tied to their home tiles nor can you stop them doing it. It ends up just being an unbalanced frustrating experience. For me that's just a bad game because all the mechanics in it are bad (There are other bad mechanics in it but I'll not get into that) King Making is a bit of divisive one I find, it's one of the biggest problem with Munchkin the person in 3rd place wins. It's always going to be an issue with conflict based games, things like Inis are great but you can find that someone gets to decide who wins. I feel this problem is a lot less in Inis though because it's hard to be a run away winner or loser, everyone can stay in the hunt.
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Mar 23, 2020 00:04
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CaptainRightful posted:Most of the frequent participants in this thread are deep into the hobby, so perfectly fine games like Wingspan, Scythe, Terraforming Mars, etc. get called "bad". On the other hand, the good thing about this thread is that people will almost always spell out the reasons for their opinions. Terraforming Mars isn't a perfectly fine game, though. RAW it's a luck-of-the-draw slog which encourages players to do anything other than actually win the game. The people who do enjoy it tend on the whole to be those who play games because they enjoy the act of playing for itself, as opposed to the challenge of analytical play which is what I think appeals to most of us here.
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Mar 23, 2020 00:10
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Jedit posted:Terraforming Mars isn't a perfectly fine game, though. RAW it's a luck-of-the-draw slog which encourages players to do anything other than actually win the game. The people who do enjoy it tend on the whole to be those who play games because they enjoy the act of playing for itself, as opposed to the challenge of analytical play which is what I think appeals to most of us here. There are people who absolutely adore playing hours of it and just enjoy cranking their engine, much like the people who do the same with EDH, wingspan, or other engine builders. It's enjoyed as an activity more than a game. Splendor drew a reaction of being too short for some people, while I laud the design because the interesting portion of an engine builders is the race to finish your engine. Watching the engine crank is just seeing the results. Reminds me that I have a progress quest game to get back to. Started a new one and I think my character's level 5 now.
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Mar 23, 2020 00:14
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Chill la Chill posted:There are people who absolutely adore playing hours of it and just enjoy cranking their engine, much like the people who do the same with EDH, wingspan, or other engine builders. It's enjoyed as an activity more than a game. Splendor drew a reaction of being too short for some people, while I laud the design because the interesting portion of an engine builders is the race to finish your engine. Watching the engine crank is just seeing the results. All engine builders should end just as thier engine gets going. That's why Splendour is the perfect length really.
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Mar 23, 2020 00:20
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Yeah Race does it near perfectly as well, letting you capitalize on a strong engine if others don't end it and giving you other avenues to winning besides running an engine (with goals and such)
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Mar 23, 2020 00:22
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So my mom and sister are really enjoying Pandemic and Dead of Winter and we have a lot of time for board games, and I'd like to capitalize on that. They enjoy coop games but are not against competitive stuff, as long as it isn't much more complicated than DoW. I'd rather avoid heavy euro games, as they think I'm much better than them at that kind of stuff and tend to get discouraged very quickly. On the other hand, I dislike games with a lot of randomness, so it can be hard to strike a balance. Any suggestion for games that would fit the bill and work well with 3 players?
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Mar 23, 2020 00:29
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Selecta84 posted:Yeah, just play what you enjoy. What are some examples of a good market row in a deck builder?
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Mar 23, 2020 00:35
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Gilgameshback posted:What are some examples of a good market row in a deck builder? Valley of the Kings has a good market row because it is a 'crumbling pyramid' that lets you adjust and dictate the way in which cards come out. It also draws from a set pool, so at higher levels of play all players know what cards will come out, it's just a question of when.
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Mar 23, 2020 00:38
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Eraflure posted:Any suggestion for games that would fit the bill and work well with 3 players? Spirit Island. See a page or so back for a lot of praise for why it's probably the best coop.
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Mar 23, 2020 00:53
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Selecta84 posted:Yeah, just play what you enjoy. Monopoly: Porn Edition If a game brings people joy, can it truly be called bad? (8/10)
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Mar 23, 2020 01:08
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Selecta84 posted:Player Elimination when the game ist longer then a few minutes I prefer eurogames, and from what I understand, they tend not to have player elimination, so I've naturally avoided this. I definitely don't like the idea of being knocked out of a 3-hour game an hour in. Selecta84 posted:Too much output randomness, see roll and move e.g. and no way to mitigate that randomness. I assume the most egregious example of this is something like Candyland? And for designer board games, something like Settlers of Catan? I started with Settlers of Catan, but I admit I quickly grew past it. It's not like I'd never play it again, but it won't be my first choice. Are there other popular games that rely too heavily on luck? Selecta84 posted:Bad Market row style card offerings in deck builders e.g. What are the different ways you can offer cards in deck builders? I don't know much about this genre. Is this a mechanic n games that aren't pure deckbuilders, or is it called something else in such a game? Selecta84 posted:Too few meaningful player decisions What's an example of a popular game with too few decisions? I recently played Concordia for the first time, and it felt like the opposite of your criticism--is that an accurate feeling? I played with a full 5-player count, and I felt like I always had multiple good choices available and all of my turns mattered. There were many paths to victory, and I enjoyed making a plan but being able to tweak it based on what my opponents did. I've still only played it once, so maybe the shine will fade, but it felt like a perfect amount of complexity for me, especially since the mechanics are so straightforward. I don't think I'll ever be into super-heavy 18xx games (nothing against the genre; I just prefer shorter games), so Concordia felt just right.
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Mar 23, 2020 01:53
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mellifluous posted:
Talisman Betrayal at House on the Hill Tales of Arabian Nights
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Mar 23, 2020 01:57
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Casnorf posted:This is the only thing that can make a bad *game*, though not necessarily a bad social experience. Unclear rules also make a bad game.
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Mar 23, 2020 01:58
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Chill la Chill posted:Add to this the general sentiment that some designs are just somehow so much worse than a similar game that came out a decade ago which kinda shows laziness in design research and/or the cynical take in releasing a design with pretty graphics or theme because people would buy it. I'm interested by your first point: Are there one or two games in each genre (and here I don't even know how granular genre can get; I only know basic terms like worker placement) that you would recommend as the essentials? I do like the idea of having a small collection of games that are played consistently, rather than one with games you might play once every couple of years. I don't have anything against collecting as a hobby in itself, but for me, I want to play the games I own. Is there a broad critical consensus on such games? (Are BGG rankings useful here, or are they biased or flawed in some way?) Does this particular thread have some kind of consensus? I watch rules videos and playthroughs before I buy a game to see whether I think I'll like it, and I've taken suggestions from this thread in the past. For those who helped convince me to buy Hansa Teutonica, I loved it! Like Concordia, it felt like you could have a broad idea of what you wanted to accomplish, but you had to be able to react and adapt based on your opponents' moves. How would you describe Hansa Teutonica, genre-wise?
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Mar 23, 2020 02:07
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Magnetic North posted:For instance, let's say that there are sandwiches on a platter. Two are rye, two are wheat, and two are white. It turns out that rye is completely OP, but you're third in line. You don't even have the opportunity to get rye if the two players ahead of you in line want them. In this way, it relates much more broadly to "player agency" which is when a player makes a choice. As with all critiques, it comes with the caveat "without mitigation." For instance, maybe being in line 3rd for sandwiches gets you bonus ketchup or something. As an example that's similar-but-fine, in Stone Age the first two players are probably going to go for wheat and workers because they're really useful and fill up if one person grabs them. But first player cycles, those two are always going to be there every round, and doing that means the third player gets first pick of any good cards/huts, which *aren't* there every turn. And a good card or hut can shake up the "probably" on the first two picks, which means everyone gets to make interesting decisions. So even though you have two first picks and more than two players everything gets smoothed out.
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Mar 23, 2020 02:34
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Catan isn't an example of output randomness - you roll the dice, and then the outcome determines what choices you have available to you. (It is a bit too random still - the potential for some players to get immense riches while other players starve is an issue on its own - but that can be mitigated to some extent with e.g. a dice deck). Output randomness is stuff like classic D&D, where you decide what you want to do, and then make a random roll to see whether you did anything or if you were just wasting your time.
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Mar 23, 2020 02:37
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah Race does it near perfectly as well, letting you capitalize on a strong engine if others don't end it and giving you other avenues to winning besides running an engine (with goals and such) And the limited number of VP tokens means that if you do get a breakaway engine going the game's going to end in 2 or 3 rounds, instead of you just getting further and further ahead while it's left to others to end the game. I've found that in both Race and Terraforming if I push the endgame (and don't get bad card luck) I can drop a tableau that beats, or at least challenges, anyone trying to build an engine; but if we wind up in engine-land in Terraforming it's just a slog for anyone who's not winning.
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Mar 23, 2020 02:42
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mellifluous posted:What are the different ways you can offer cards in deck builders? I don't know much about this genre. Is this a mechanic n games that aren't pure deckbuilders, or is it called something else in such a game? Free-for-all (Dominion): There are X copies of Y different cards, anyone can buy any card on their turn as long as there are copies left and they have the money. Can be overwhelming for people if the mechanics don't click. Market Row (Star Realms): everything's in one pile, put out X cards and those are all you can buy. There's usually some incentive to get cards that hang around, or a mechanic to cycle them to make room for new stuff. If there's a big power imbalance between cards this heavily favors the first player, particularly if good cards are rare so you can't get your own turn of grabbing the God card later. Draft (Inis, though that's not a deckbuilder): Everyone gets X cards, picks one and passes the rest to the next player. Kinda like everyone gets their own market row, and you have interesting choices because if you drew two good cards the other one's probably not gonna be there when it comes back around. Can be unbalanced if the person just before you is going after the same strategy, and it's VERY slow compared to other methods. There are variants on all of those (for example one whose name I forget is a free-for-all in style but with only four piles available; when one pile runs out the person gets to pick another card to replace it that everybody will then have access to buy) but I think that's the main styles. Market Row shows up in a lot of games that aren't pure deckbuilders, where instead of tools it may be the goals players get to pick from. As such I think its flaws are the most evident across board gaming.
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Mar 23, 2020 03:00
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mellifluous posted:I'm not trying to open a can of worms, but I'd be interested in what this thread considers bad. I'm pretty new to board games, and I probably enjoy bad games. (I can't be sure because I don't have a handle on what this thread dislikes. (Besides Munchkin, I think. And I don't like Munchkin.)) To make things even more confusing, I think there are some bad games that are best-in-class. For example, I wouldn’t go to bat for Puzzle Strike as a great design; the game isn’t very intuitive to play, and the proximate cause of most losses is a bad draw. But I can’t think of a better “2 player deckbuilding game with heavy player interaction,” so I’d be forced to recommend it anyway.
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Mar 23, 2020 03:26
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Edit: delete
Tiny Chalupa fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Mar 23, 2020 |
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Mar 23, 2020 03:56
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Jedit posted:Terraforming Mars isn't a perfectly fine game, though. RAW it's a luck-of-the-draw slog which encourages players to do anything other than actually win the game. The people who do enjoy it tend on the whole to be those who play games because they enjoy the act of playing for itself, as opposed to the challenge of analytical play which is what I think appeals to most of us here. This comment only proves my point about this thread. I'm not a fan of the game, but everybody who is plays the draft variant. It's not as luck of the draw as you make it out to be. Popularity is not correlated with quality, but four years after release it's climbed to #3 on BGG, which wouldn't happen if a lot of people who are hardcore into our hobby didn't find it at least "perfectly fine".
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Mar 23, 2020 04:07
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Yep I know people whose tastes I respect really love it. I don’t like it because drafting takes too long for what it is but that doesn’t make it a bad game.
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Mar 23, 2020 04:27
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mellifluous posted:I'm interested by your first point: Are there one or two games in each genre (and here I don't even know how granular genre can get; I only know basic terms like worker placement) that you would recommend as the essentials? For WP, you pretty much only need something like Bus or Caylus. There's certainly variations if you want them, but those two are solid picks. Knizia's tile layers (Tigris and Euphrates, Stephenson's rocket) are pretty much the best you'll get for tile placement. Auctions, probably The Estates, Modern Art, or Ra. quote:I do like the idea of having a small collection of games that are played consistently, rather than one with games you might play once every couple of years. I don't have anything against collecting as a hobby in itself, but for me, I want to play the games I own. Is there a broad critical consensus on such games? (Are BGG rankings useful here, or are they biased or flawed in some way?) Does this particular thread have some kind of consensus? quote:I watch rules videos and playthroughs before I buy a game to see whether I think I'll like it, and I've taken suggestions from this thread in the past. For those who helped convince me to buy Hansa Teutonica, I loved it! Like Concordia, it felt like you could have a broad idea of what you wanted to accomplish, but you had to be able to react and adapt based on your opponents' moves. How would you describe Hansa Teutonica, genre-wise?
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Mar 23, 2020 04:36
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Drafting doesn't remove the RNG nature of the game (it's still a giant unseeded deck with little way to dig) and in some cases makes it worse (someone can clearly hate draft something you need because the rest of what they drew is early game dreck, etc).Chill la Chill posted:Bottom liner probably has one of the best small collections around. I'm flattered but 1) you only say that because we overlap so much and 2) 75 games is not what most consider small! That's about 50/25 big box games to small box stuff. But I do consider it near complete and put a lot of work into curating through trades and sells over the past few years, cutting down from almost 200 and coming out the other end with what I think is both a more rounded and better collection. https://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/defeldus?own=1&subtype=boardgame&ff=1 I think that's current. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Mar 23, 2020 |
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Mar 23, 2020 04:42
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Chill la Chill posted:For WP, you pretty much only need something like Bus or Caylus. There's certainly variations if you want them, but those two are solid picks. Knizia's tile layers (Tigris and Euphrates, Stephenson's rocket) are pretty much the best you'll get for tile placement. Auctions, probably The Estates, Modern Art, or Ra. quote:Much of this thread believes in this goal as well. Splotters provide so much replayability that quite a few of us just keep playing themover and over and we have online games that do the same. The Great Zimbabwe is my favorite midweight euro and I have easily 40 (50 now?) plays of it after getting it a couple years ago. Bottom liner probably has one of the best small collections around. And let me tell you about 18xx...
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Mar 23, 2020 05:57
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CaptainRightful posted:This comment only proves my point about this thread. I'm not a fan of the game, but everybody who is plays the draft variant. It's not as luck of the draw as you make it out to be. Popularity is not correlated with quality, but four years after release it's climbed to #3 on BGG, which wouldn't happen if a lot of people who are hardcore into our hobby didn't find it at least "perfectly fine". Not to debate the merits of Terraforming Mars, but the makeup of BGG members has changed massively over the years. When I joined 15 years ago there were fewer than 40,000 registered users, most of them hardcore Eurosnoots and old grogs. Today there are more than 2.5 million registered users, and very few of the new influx are hardcore hobbyists. Hardcore hobbyists no longer drive the ratings the way they used to.
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Mar 23, 2020 09:39
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Tiny Chalupa posted:What gives? A worldwide health crisis that is severely impacting the supply chain.
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Mar 23, 2020 09:42
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah Race does it near perfectly as well, letting you capitalize on a strong engine if others don't end it and giving you other avenues to winning besides running an engine (with goals and such) Another Enginer builder that I think does it almost perfectly is Lewis and Clark, you're building and engine to go over a fixed course as soon as your engine works, you win.
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Mar 23, 2020 09:45
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Jedit posted:Not to debate the merits of Terraforming Mars, but the makeup of BGG members has changed massively over the years. When I joined 15 years ago there were fewer than 40,000 registered users, most of them hardcore Eurosnoots and old grogs. Today there are more than 2.5 million registered users, and very few of the new influx are hardcore hobbyists. Hardcore hobbyists no longer drive the ratings the way they used to. Terraforming Mars is the hip new way of the future, grandpa
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Mar 23, 2020 10:12
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taser rates posted:I'd throw Reef Encounter up there too, as one of the best tile laying games, though it's only best at 2 or 3. Certainly forgot the winsomes but yes grab Chicago express. They play around with the idea of turn order, area control, and shared incentives much like Stephenson’s rocket. And no you won’t get me to buy reef encounter!! Five of you have now tried to convince me
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Mar 23, 2020 11:54
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I feel like TTR is inevitably won by the person who drew routes with large overlapping sections, unless they’re dumb enough to really telegraph what route they’re trying to build
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Mar 23, 2020 13:09
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Tiny Chalupa posted:Anyone else getting bad shipping info from Amazon? 3 games I ordered Friday, Prime mind you, said they aren't coming to Saturday Lmao this post, really?
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Mar 23, 2020 13:48
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Edit: Not going to derail the thread with this. I will get Battlecon on the table today so that's exciting My lady has never played it and its been years since I have. I need to read up on it again to try and ensure she has s good time Tiny Chalupa fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Mar 23, 2020 |
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Mar 23, 2020 15:10
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Even extreme eurogrogs can be allured by theme. Even in this tread, people were willing to give Dead of Winter a third shot in hopes of finally getting a good and accessible zombie-themed game. Terraforming Mars also has a highly nerd-bait theme. And I've known people who've been in the hobby for a long time grade it on a curve due to it's theme. But for a game of such length, Terraforming Mars doesn't bring anything new or interesting to the table and I'd rate it lower than Coimbra.
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Mar 23, 2020 15:21
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