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Poopy Palpy posted:I just got an email blast from David Sirlin promoting Puzzle Strike 2 and this first paragraph is pretty rich coming from a guy who used a picture of someone else's redesign of someone else's game as the starting point for his design: The whole article is weird. "I designed how I wanted the box and components to look then designed the game around that" is a choice. I have the print-and-play version of Puzzle Strike 1 from 10 years ago and though I haven't played in forever I did like the idea of a board game that felt somewhat like Puzzle Fighter, attacking your opponent with resources that they could then use back against you. Moving to a market row and fixed card pools is also strange. None of this really matters though since it's a Sirlin joint and probably shouldn't be backed. Here's the article if anyone else wants to read.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 05:23 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 06:00 |
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Magnetic North posted:BGG has been markedly better* after site owner Aldie posted in support of BLM which came after board game designer Eric Lang described (cw: racism, seriously it's not an easy read) described his personal interactions with the police as a man of color. For any non-Americans who are somehow unaware, this all came after (this link is just Wikipedia, not the actual video) the murder of George Floyd by a police officer and subsequent publication of video footage showcasing the particularly inhumane, cruel, slow and brutal way in which he was murdered, causing widespread outrage. Thanks for this post, it's very helpful and good catch-up on BGG history. I'm still gonna be a long while before I am active on BGG. With the items you posted, it's disheartening to see how the "improvements" show what little effect a POC voice has in the community over a WASP saviour. Is it really change if good things are happening but pretty much still excluding you in the process? Feels the same to me...
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 06:55 |
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I agree that BGG moderation is admirable but the BGG user base is still pretty awful. Any thread dealing with social issues is filled with garbage that has to be moderated to the point that I think the community still sucks even if the site owners have tried to make it better. I have zero interest in being part of that community until those lovely people aren't.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 07:22 |
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Crackbone posted:I mean what else do you want from them? It said “we hosed up, our moderation didn’t work, we’re going to rethink what’s going on”. A genuine response would be to restore the user's GC rights, apologise to them, and then look at the moderation. Taking away Global Chat from everyone is just shifting blame onto the users.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 09:43 |
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Crackbone posted:I mean what else do you want from them? It said “we hosed up, our moderation didn’t work, we’re going to rethink what’s going on”. Actually list some concrete steps they’re going to take, for one. But they don’t actually care, they just dislike the community backlash
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 09:50 |
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Orange DeviI posted:Actually list some concrete steps they’re going to take, for one. But they don’t actually care, they just dislike the community backlash I think you're probably right, and maybe I'm being too naive and charitable here, but I'm willing to give them a tiny amount of rope here; setting out a plan for restorative action and future improvements will take a little time and you gotta get it right. However, if this is still their last word by the end of day today, then I feel that that would demonstrate that they do not see this as the capital-E Emergency that it is, both from a moral 'human decency' angle and a tactical 'business bottom line' angle. Again, perhaps that perspective is too generous, considering how bad and toxic an environment they have fostered for so long, but I can at least conceive of a world where they make the correct responses and this is mostly forgiven over time. In any case, they should be all hands on deck right now formulating a plan. And if they're not, gently caress 'em.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 10:21 |
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Jedit posted:A genuine response would be to restore the user's GC rights, apologise to them, and then look at the moderation. Taking away Global Chat from everyone is just shifting blame onto the users. Leaving global chat completely unmoderated while you figure out what your moderator was doing doesn't actually strike me as a great course of action. Taking it down until you can figure out moderation that's consistent with your core values is probably the best option. That said, the proof is in the pudding really. It'll really down to what they do next.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 10:47 |
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So I just bought the latest printing of Obsession with both expansions, plus promos and the Useful Box. Did I surrender to the hype? Quit possibly! Will I actually like it? Let's find out The rulebook makes it look way more complicated than it actually is. Is there a good simplified ruleset?
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 11:22 |
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Bought my partner Wingspan last year as a way to lure her into boardgaming via pretty pictures of birds and I'm having way more fun with it than I thought I would, it's a really fun engine builder and we are both hooked. Euro expansion was a great buy also, adds some more objective tokens which is good spice, the new bird cards are a nice twist with not much additional mental overhead too, and a bunch more beautiful egg pieces which is always a nice bonus. I'm looking at the Oceania expansion and we are a bit more on the fence about it, new board and new food types/dice seems like a fairly radical change and my partner doesn't like extreme complexity, does anyone have any experience with it?
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 12:05 |
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Tiger Millionaire posted:Bought my partner Wingspan last year as a way to lure her into boardgaming via pretty pictures of birds and I'm having way more fun with it than I thought I would, it's a really fun engine builder and we are both hooked. The main changes are a new food type, which acts as a kind of wild type, but also can score points if you use enough of it; the player boards are new and balanced slightly better; and some of the new birds have end game scoring potential. It's not too much to get the hang of, and is 100% worth it if you enjoy the base game.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 14:46 |
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Jedit posted:A genuine response would be to restore the user's GC rights, apologise to them, and then look at the moderation. Taking away Global Chat from everyone is just shifting blame onto the users. Orange DeviI posted:Actually list some concrete steps they’re going to take, for one. But they don’t actually care, they just dislike the community backlash It's reasonable to give them a few days to formulate a plan. Chat moderation is a nightmare, and there are no easy/simple answers to deal with crap like this. The statement might be in bad faith, but they admit they hosed up, which is the best starting point you can hope for. We've all seen the non-apologies a lot of these companies/creators put out when they get caught.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 15:10 |
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HampHamp posted:The Oceania expansion doesn't add a ton of complexity, and in my opinion it really improves how the game plays. The main reason for this is that it feels much quicker to get an engine up and running - without it, games feel like they end just as you're getting going. Seconding. The main thing that Oceania does is remove that initial choke point of spending tons of actions on “gain food” that gets really boring. With Oceania you can start building your engine a little faster. Having more end of round goals and objective cards also helps vary the game a lot. Also the bird cards are simply the best. Bin chicken supremacy forever.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 15:52 |
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Crackbone posted:It's reasonable to give them a few days to formulate a plan. Chat moderation is a nightmare, and there are no easy/simple answers to deal with crap like this. Their discord is a trash fire full of bigotry that is never banned by the same mods that banned the op for stating their identity. They are still a mod too. I think that says a lot.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 15:58 |
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Bottom Liner posted:Their discord is a trash fire full of bigotry that is never banned by the same mods that banned the op for stating their identity. They are still a mod too. I think that says a lot. Agreed they at least should have fired that mod. As it is, I'm going to have to be satisfied with the statement they made, as in person gaming isn't happening for my next podcast on Bitoku and we didn't finish the first session of Bitoku.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 16:07 |
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Bottom Liner posted:I agree that BGG moderation is admirable but the BGG user base is still pretty awful. Any thread dealing with social issues is filled with garbage that has to be moderated to the point that I think the community still sucks even if the site owners have tried to make it better. I have zero interest in being part of that community until those lovely people aren't. They have banned a ton of people from BGG and they want lovely people reported every time. Unfortunately while they have a special space for women and the LGBTQ community, they haven't been able to find anyone who would moderate a people of color community, because as you can imagine, it'd need to be a 24/7 job. I think as a person of color that they have responded to me. I was the only Black person featured for two days during Black history month. I also would note that Alma Mater has been on sale at several retailers, unlike the publisher's previous game, Coimbra. I've had many people tell me that they were going to buy Alma Mater and didn't because of my thread. There are a host of games that I played in 2021 that did have acceptable or better representation, and I'd like to think that it was because of the thread that we at Something Awful supported.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 16:12 |
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Fab. Thanks bird friends, sounds like the oceana expansion will make a great gift then. Between Wingspan and Azul she's really come to appreciate boardgames as something more than boring 3 hour Monopoly/Risk slogs with family at holidays
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 16:13 |
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Orange DeviI posted:Actually list some concrete steps they’re going to take, for one. But they don’t actually care, they just dislike the community backlash That's true of nearly every capitalist business. But that's why there has to be a backlash. At the end of the day, a company is a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet. and we have to be sure that those numbers go down if the company can't be responsible to the community and responsive to community concerns.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 16:14 |
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Defenistrator posted:Thanks for this post, it's very helpful and good catch-up on BGG history. I'm still gonna be a long while before I am active on BGG. With the items you posted, it's disheartening to see how the "improvements" show what little effect a POC voice has in the community over a WASP saviour. Is it really change if good things are happening but pretty much still excluding you in the process? Feels the same to me... I don't know where this is coming from? What are your expectations that the community should be or look like? E: they do listen to me. So let me know what you want. Mayveena fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jan 10, 2022 |
# ? Jan 10, 2022 16:15 |
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Bottom Liner posted:Their discord is a trash fire full of bigotry that is never banned by the same mods that banned the op for stating their identity. They are still a mod too. I think that says a lot. Apparently they recently made their subreddit mod a Discord mod, and that person has been kicking rear end and taking names on the Discord (in a good way) for the last 24 hours. I also believe the mod responsible for the gross ban explanation has been removed as a mod, though that could simply be temporary since it seems to have been done silently. It sounds like Berserk is appropriately working towards a solution based on that 2nd release, so I'm willing to see where they take it - but they've likely got another issue to address directly now that bigots are actively buying/positively reviewing TTS to show support - content warning: https://imgur.com/a/8HWaOzr. So whatever solution they come up with likely needs to include "and if you're a bigoted piece of poo poo that bought our game to spew hateful poo poo, gently caress off, we deleted your review, and we're donating all sales from this weekend to <insert LGBT charity here>."
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 16:50 |
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JoeRules posted:Apparently they recently made their subreddit mod a Discord mod, and that person has been kicking rear end and taking names on the Discord (in a good way) for the last 24 hours. I also believe the mod responsible for the gross ban explanation has been removed as a mod, though that could simply be temporary since it seems to have been done silently. Hopefully Steam will catch the review bombing and stop posting the reviews. Steam does have a process for that but it may only work for negative reviews? Unsure, I guess we'll be finding out shortly. I think I'll contact Steam and let them know this is going on.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 16:52 |
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JoeRules posted:
All bar one of those people has too much time in the software to have only just bought it, so donating their sales to LGBT charities won't help. That gallery also omits the review I reported which came from an open Nazi calling for more bigotry - hopefully because he just had his Steam account deleted.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 16:59 |
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Tiger Millionaire posted:Fab. Thanks bird friends, sounds like the oceana expansion will make a great gift then. Between Wingspan and Azul she's really come to appreciate boardgames as something more than boring 3 hour Monopoly/Risk slogs with family at holidays It is a beautiful thing to see, yeah? Like yeah games can actually be short, enjoyable, and interactive. Keep us in the loop for other games you have been enjoying!
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 17:20 |
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Jedit posted:All bar one of those people has too much time in the software to have only just bought it, so donating their sales to LGBT charities won't help. That gallery also omits the review I reported which came from an open Nazi calling for more bigotry - hopefully because he just had his Steam account deleted. As you mentioned, that gallery just scrapes the surface of the reviews. There are a significant amount of gross positive reviews with a small number (or no) hours played.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 17:25 |
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Radioactive Toy posted:Here's the article if anyone else wants to read. This article just made me want cooler gems for Bullet <3, not PzlStrk2
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 18:29 |
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I'm still open to the idea that puzzle strike 2 could be good. If Vlaada can make a market row work, sirlin can too (by copying what Vlaada did.)
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 18:38 |
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Tiger Millionaire posted:Bought my partner Wingspan last year as a way to lure her into boardgaming via pretty pictures of birds and I'm having way more fun with it than I thought I would, it's a really fun engine builder and we are both hooked. My wife picked up Mariposa the other day and it seems to be a pretty good light game as well. The theme fits really well and and its a neat little game about getting your butterflies as far north as you can whilst still being able to return to the south.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 20:07 |
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Impermanent posted:I'm still open to the idea that puzzle strike 2 could be good. If Vlaada can make a market row work, sirlin can too (by copying what Vlaada did.) Vlaada has a market row game?
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 22:04 |
Archenteron posted:Vlaada has a market row game? Through the Ages
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 22:12 |
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Archenteron posted:Vlaada has a market row game? Bunny Bunny Moose Moose
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 22:16 |
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PRADA SLUT posted:Bunny Bunny Moose Moose I seriously thought you were trolling, but no, it's an acutal, honest-to-god Vlaada game. Man makes everything I swear.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 22:52 |
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Aramoro posted:My wife picked up Mariposa the other day and it seems to be a pretty good light game as well. The theme fits really well and and its a neat little game about getting your butterflies as far north as you can whilst still being able to return to the south. Slightly heavier but Isle of Cats in another simple and thematic game that I’ve had a lot of success introducing to all different groups. Plays quick, rules are intuitive, lots of avenues to victory. Plays like an Azul/Wingspan hybrid.
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# ? Jan 10, 2022 23:11 |
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God, had a really frustrating game of Cat Mustache Club with my in-laws, my FIL kept acting like he had no idea what was going on so we had to kind of take his mask placement with a grain of salt. He knew the whole time and was just hamming it up for an advantage. Some people are just sick, I tell ya.
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# ? Jan 11, 2022 00:14 |
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I'm glad Sirlin finally released this design article for Puzzle Strike 2 because he'd been tweeting about the game for months and up to that point the only thing I knew about it was that the pieces have glitter. He's leaning so hard into how good the components are but, like, Sirlin, my guy, they're just cubes, they're not that exciting. I really like his designs, but man does he make some bad choices when it comes down to... everything else.
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# ? Jan 11, 2022 07:06 |
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I remember when Yomi came out and people were asking about sleeves. "No you don’t understand how good these cards are, sleeves are just a hack for bad cheap cards." In fairness the cards were nice.
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# ? Jan 11, 2022 08:51 |
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Fenn the Fool! posted:I'm glad Sirlin finally released this design article for Puzzle Strike 2 because he'd been tweeting about the game for months and up to that point the only thing I knew about it was that the pieces have glitter. He's leaning so hard into how good the components are but, like, Sirlin, my guy, they're just cubes, they're not that exciting. I really like his designs, but man does he make some bad choices when it comes down to... everything else. Dude's always been about his games production quality being really good so I'm not surprised he's super hyped on it. All of the games of his I've gotten have been great component-wise, but their prices have definitely reflected it.
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# ? Jan 11, 2022 09:11 |
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I agree his games always have nice components, but the way he's been pushing Puzzle Strike 2 feels different. Especially with this article talking about how he did the design components first and built out from there. Feels like Sirlin trying to get in on the miniature-heavy kickstarter appeal, while fundamentally misunderstanding what makes people want such things.
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# ? Jan 11, 2022 15:40 |
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The scepter lights up for some reason
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# ? Jan 11, 2022 16:09 |
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See that was the problem with broken loose’s game and lack of funding. Should’ve designed the giant Megazord first as a centerpiece then designed the game.
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# ? Jan 11, 2022 19:29 |
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Chill la Chill posted:See that was the problem with broken loose’s game and lack of funding. Should’ve designed the giant Megazord first as a centerpiece then designed the game. and put it in a skimpy bikini
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# ? Jan 11, 2022 19:36 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 06:00 |
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SettingSun posted:Just played a game of it tonight. Great game and I hope your group has devoted a significant amount of time into playing it. It pays to know the rules very well because there are a lot of them. There is something that is incredibly important to remember: TI is a game for points. First to 10 wins, the moment it is reached. Everything you do in the game should lead to you scoring a point. Do go out picking meaningless fights. Also protect your homeworld. You can't score if you lose it! Thank you for the advice! It was very fun playing, I didn't expect it to be nearly as smooth or as quick as it ended up being, it took about 5 hours and I ended up winning with my horrifying war suns. I really liked the race-for-the-galaxy-esque way that strategy cards operated and all the command token machinery. We played with four players and it was good, excited to play with six though.
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# ? Jan 11, 2022 20:02 |