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Again gonna sound like a conceited piece of poo poo but I'm disappointed that many gamers, even those who are waist deep into the hobby (the kind who have a BGG account and so on), are blind? stupid? complacent? enough to let the "random bullshit go" and "everyone is doing something at the same time ergo this game flows well" stunts be pulled on them.
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Apr 26, 2023 19:24
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Kirby games were always extremely inoffensive and super easy while being bright and colorful and generally fun to dink around in. Mario had the same charm visually but with some real challenge mixed in. Maybe Sonic was a better choice, cause Kirby games were still good while Sonic is and always was just trash.
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Apr 26, 2023 19:25
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Hey if board games do follow the video game trajectory, we just gotta wait a couple years/decades for some b lister with a couple fun but uninspired entries to come in outta nowhere with the new yardstick everything gets compared to... While all the big names just keep copying
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Apr 26, 2023 20:26
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Bottom Liner posted:Kirby games were always extremely inoffensive and super easy while being bright and colorful and generally fun to dink around in. This is possibly the most correct opinion I've ever seen on these forums, good job. I don't really understand why people are buying new Euro games instead of tried and tested older games, because classics such as CoB, Concordia, Troyes, Power Grid, RftG and a ridiculous amount of others are still completely brilliant and I refuse to believe that everyone has already played them to death.
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Apr 26, 2023 20:44
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RabidWeasel posted:I don't really understand why people are buying new Euro games instead of tried and tested older games, because classics such as CoB, Concordia, Troyes, Power Grid, RftG and a ridiculous amount of others are still completely brilliant and I refuse to believe that everyone has already played them to death. Those games do have one thing in common: not necessarily the most appealing visuals. Now, I think Troyes looks cool (haven't played it) and I like the way Concordia looks (outside the covers) but they are all sort of various shades of drab. Is it possibly that the increase in production values in the last 10 years has rendered your average board gamer to be like the average video gamer: overfixated on pretty poo poo? Or is it just Cult of the New and Cult of the Future?
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Apr 26, 2023 21:28
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It's a variety of things, including aesthetics. Marketing will of course always push newcomers to new releases and availability reinforces that. The small and short print runs mean that even a game from 2 years ago might be impossible to find without going aftermarket hunting. This is exponentially worse for older classics that don't get frequent reprints. Brass is a great example of this and what a new coat of paint (black only) can do for a game. It wasn't even in the top 100 before the Lancashire/Birm editions IIRC, and is now the #1 ranked game. If there is any justice in the world Ra or another Knizia reprint will follow that same trajectory. Board games also have a kind of unique problem with discoverability compared to almost every other hobby medium. You have to be really into the hobby to even hear about the older games or know why you might want to play them over the new shiny stuff, but then you face all the above if you want to find many of them. Then you add in the fact that many people don't replay games much and a lot of board games aren't very good with varying levels of mastery, it's all just a big stew of reasons why the older games don't get played as much in the broader hobby*. *I highly suspect a lot of them do get played a ton more than we hear about but the people in most online communities are typical board game hypebeasts that buy 30 games a month. The people playing the classics just aren't as likely to constantly post about them.
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Apr 26, 2023 22:10
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I dunno, Earth seems like a pretty neat game. An interesting amalgamation of a bunch of recent bg trends. Reviews say the build quality sucks however. I guess it validates the point in saying I'm not rushing out to buy it though.
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Apr 26, 2023 22:22
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Magnetic North posted:Those games do have one thing in common: not necessarily the most appealing visuals. Now, I think Troyes looks cool (haven't played it) and I like the way Concordia looks (outside the covers) but they are all sort of various shades of drab. Is it possibly that the increase in production values in the last 10 years has rendered your average board gamer to be like the average video gamer: overfixated on pretty poo poo? Or is it just Cult of the New and Cult of the Future? You should totally get Troyes because it's loving great and the art is brilliant. But yeah, if you don't like the colour brown and enjoy games about European history I'll admit that this whole subgenre probably looks a bit dubious. My genius strategy to try to reverse-pyschology people into trying Hansa Teutonica by branding it as "you get to play a 14th century German accountant" (which I thought was a sure-fire approach) didn't work Bottom Liner posted:It's a variety of things, including aesthetics. Marketing will of course always push newcomers to new releases and availability reinforces that. The small and short print runs mean that even a game from 2 years ago might be impossible to find without going aftermarket hunting. This is exponentially worse for older classics that don't get frequent reprints. Brass is a great example of this and what a new coat of paint (black only) can do for a game. It wasn't even in the top 100 before the Lancashire/Birm editions IIRC, and is now the #1 ranked game. If there is any justice in the world Ra or another Knizia reprint will follow that same trajectory. I'll agree with this for really old games but most of my games collection consists of games which were already more than 5 years old when I bought them and I got a brand new copy every time. Maybe I've just been lucky?
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Apr 26, 2023 22:27
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Bottom Liner posted:It's a variety of things, including aesthetics. Marketing will of course always push newcomers to new releases and availability reinforces that. The small and short print runs mean that even a game from 2 years ago might be impossible to find without going aftermarket hunting. This is exponentially worse for older classics that don't get frequent reprints. This aspect definitely drives a big percentage of my more recent tabletop game buys because it's a real bummer when someone mentions a best-in-class title only to look back and see its last print run was like 2013 and used copies are selling for exponentially beyond MSRP. It's instilled a strong sense of FOMO and made me adapt a better safe than sorry approach to grabbing newer stuff that gets a lot of buzz. The physicality of board games alongside the need to often play them a lot before issues or fatigue comes up makes them so hard to parse, as already mentioned. It's always a question of honeymoon phase versus genuine instant classic these days.
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Apr 26, 2023 22:38
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RabidWeasel posted:
This makes me curious to see what it would cost to replace my collection now vs what the games cost at release. Also good to know in case of an insurance claim and reminds me to take updated photos for that reason. Does anyone know how they even estimate those kind of things?
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Apr 26, 2023 22:49
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Cult of the New is totally way more prevalent in this hobby than in most and you can see why: it's Hard to find people to play games with. Especially for the kind of games you wanna play and the way you wanna play them. Unlike almost any other major "cognitive" hobby, board games require a group of like-minded people at the same time and place and that's just the price of admission, it's another matter entirely whether you will have a Good and Fun Time once seated (I'm excluding solo gaming I know, but that's very much a niche). So people naturally arrange themselves around new titles because they: 1) are available and 2) people wanna play them (or at least enough people wanna play them that is removes a lot of the friction finding people to play with usually holds). So in that sense I forgive gamers for frothing over the latest and greatest, but I don't forgive them for rating TM a 10 somehow. Serotoning fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Apr 26, 2023 |
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Apr 26, 2023 23:10
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I keep sacrificing things to summon a reprint of Tigris and Euphrates and it still isn't working.
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Apr 26, 2023 23:22
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RabidWeasel posted:This is possibly the most correct opinion I've ever seen on these forums, good job. I also think there is just some indefinable quality to a game that makes it really shine or not, depending on the player and group. I've owned every one of those games you mentioned and sold them all because while I enjoyed them well enough, and could see that they were incredibly well designed games, I just never felt motivated or excited about playing them. I really couldn't articulate why, as other games like Brass, Hansa Teutonica, Barrage I have kept and played countless times and can see myself continuing to do so. Similarly I've never played a Knizia game that really excited me and don't have any in my collection. I can recognise that they're really good games, they're just not for me - and I can imagine that there's something in those designs that may not be exciting others either and is leading people (including myself) to keep seeking that next game that really does hit the spot. I'm sure that aesthetics, cult of the new and all that comes into it as well but I do think a big part of it is just that really subjective element that differentiates a really solid, quality game from one that people feel enthusiasm and excitement about playing.
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Apr 27, 2023 01:40
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Kerro posted:and I can imagine that there's something in those designs that may not be exciting others either and is leading people (including myself) to keep seeking that next game that really does hit the spot. These ideas are at odds with one another because you could apply the former to the games you listed as liking just as easily. You point out those games you don't like as missing that special something when they're all classics that do see a lot of play and some have had wildly successful reprints or many expansions. Your ending is right though, it's entirely subjective (with market and social forces affecting people's taste). Another big part of it I haven't seen mentioned is that people in this hobby largely have a lot of disposable income so when they find a new interest they go all in buying all the shiny new toys and it takes a long time for that behavior to slow down or stop. That's why "COMC of 500 games I bought since getting into board games 3 months ago, 495 still in shrink" is an all too common meme on Reddit now. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 01:52
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Bottom Liner posted:These ideas are at odds with one another because you could apply the former to the games you listed as liking just as easily. Yeah that might not have been clear but that was the point I was trying to make, that the games that I feel a passion for don't objectively have anything different from the games that don't, it's just my subjective experience of them and similarly the games that don't have that spark for me could really sing for someone else. Agreed on the disposable income thing, combined with the fact that compared to the equipment outlay of other hobbies like hunting or carpentry to name just a couple that I know firsthand, board games really aren't that expensive so I think it doesn't phase a lot of people to drop hundreds on games they won't even play.
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Apr 27, 2023 02:39
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Yeah the absolute worst game I've bought still has a $/person/hour(/kg of box) of like 2 which is pretty inexpensive compared to most hobbies.
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Apr 27, 2023 03:12
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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Storage space is the real pain. I have way too many games in big boxes with a lot of empty air. I think the kind of group you typically play with has a big impact on how many games you have. If I only played with the same four player group I think we'd probably stick to a few classics and the occasional new thing, and probably get a lot more play out of all of them. I find myself however covering a lot of different circumstances: two player games for me and my wife, more kid friendly and co-op games for the whole family, games for two extra people come to the four player group, social games when there is a larger group, etc. I am absolutely convinced that the majority of the best games out there are excellent at exactly four players but there are so many times I have 2, 3, 5 or 6 and i hate, hate, hate games that scale poorly at a given player count (typically games that at 5 or 6 players take way too long or games that don't scale down properly to 3). I think the extent to which the cult of the new is a problem depends a lot on current gaming trends, too. There are a lot of low-interactivity euros and over produced kickstarters which I think in many cases are not great group experiences compared with many older classic euros which are simpler to teach, have both more and more interesting interactivity with other players, and play reasonably quickly. There's a lot of great new stuff too mind. I just think that as the audience has expanded for games it's changed how they market them ; a lot more on high level concept and components. Ark Nova is Pretty Good but I don't think it really merits its spot on the BGG top 100, nor do many of the other new ones. At least in terms of what I think it does well and other games do better. But obviously people voted for it.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:25
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What are some good travel games you folk swear by? I'm mostly talking games you can get out on a train table and play with about 1-2 other people. I know about HIVE pocket, solid, but won't eat up travel time always.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:36
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CHOAM posted:What are some good travel games you folk swear by? I'm mostly talking games you can get out on a train table and play with about 1-2 other people. I know about HIVE pocket, solid, but won't eat up travel time always. The TTR card game is pretty good for this. I don't play too much while on the move in general though, so I'm not aware of more recent options
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Apr 27, 2023 04:39
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CHOAM posted:What are some good travel games you folk swear by? I'm mostly talking games you can get out on a train table and play with about 1-2 other people. I know about HIVE pocket, solid, but won't eat up travel time always. Air Land & Sea, roll & writes (super skill pinball would be my rec for 2), Regicide
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Apr 27, 2023 04:44
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CHOAM posted:What are some good travel games you folk swear by? I'm mostly talking games you can get out on a train table and play with about 1-2 other people. I know about HIVE pocket, solid, but won't eat up travel time always. Can't beat card games. For two players: Air Land and Sea Caper: Europe Radlands Rift Force For three+ players: For Sale for The Crew (best with 4) High Society Capital Lux 2 Oriflamme For both: Race for the galaxy (my most played travel game) Fantasy Realms (really needs the scoring online webpage tho) I'm not a huge fan of Roll and Writes but for the right group something like Cartographers can be pretty fun.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:46
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Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll be sure to research these a bit and chat about it to my typical train partner
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Apr 27, 2023 04:51
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CHOAM posted:What are some good travel games you folk swear by? I'm mostly talking games you can get out on a train table and play with about 1-2 other people. I know about HIVE pocket, solid, but won't eat up travel time always. Buy 'No Thanks!' Then buy: - Uno Flip - Skip Bo - Cockroach Poker Put those 3 in the No Thanks box. Done
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Apr 27, 2023 04:59
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CHOAM posted:What are some good travel games you folk swear by? I'm mostly talking games you can get out on a train table and play with about 1-2 other people. I know about HIVE pocket, solid, but won't eat up travel time always. Codenames duet is the one my wife and I have played literally hundreds of times in cafes, trains etc. It also plays perfectly well with more people so I definitely rate that. I also enjoy The Crew Deep Sea (or the original) for this. Alternatively you can just exert your will and make it work through sheer determination. I can confirm that Chaos in the Old World works fine when backpacking around the Czech Republic and Eldritch Horror is playable in a campervan in the Australian outback.
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Apr 27, 2023 05:30
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Kerro posted:Alternatively you can just exert your will and make it work through sheer determination. I can confirm that Chaos in the Old World works fine when backpacking around the Czech Republic and Eldritch Horror is playable in a campervan in the Australian outback. Ask me about my dry erase FCM that fits in a ziploc sandwich bag and has been played on economy flights
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Apr 27, 2023 05:40
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Bottom Liner posted:Ask me about my dry erase FCM that fits in a ziploc sandwich bag and has been played on economy flights Pics NAO
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Apr 27, 2023 06:46
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Pvt. Parts posted:Pics NAO  I made a premade 5x5 map and block off tiles down to the appropriate size (so we have 5 different 2p maps on each side for a total of 10). Each player gets an org chart with a spot to track their money and food/drink, and under each employee type there are two boxes, the first to track how many you've hired and the second to track how many are working today. Bank and turn order on the round structure board, along with marketing tiles to mark off as they're placed. We use a shared milestone sheet and mark them with different colors for different players (same as their restaurants on the map). We use red letters to track food demand beside houses and on player boards: B for burgers, P for pizza, Be for beer, C for Coke, L for lemonade. We do the same with marketing tiles, drawing them on and noting what they're marketing with the letters. It plays significantly faster as long as you write things clearly. My wife and I only play with this version now if we're doing 2P because it has zero setup time and no tokens to fiddle with. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 07:36
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Bottom Liner posted:
Ahhhh that's SO COOL. I love dry erase-ified versions of games, I just have Ganz Schol Clever and Qwinto like that but would have never have thought it could be pulled off for something like FCM. Wicked.
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Apr 27, 2023 07:47
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Very cool! Sounds like a good setup - drat!
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Apr 27, 2023 07:47
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Kerro posted:I really couldn't articulate why, as other games like Brass, Hansa Teutonica, Barrage I have kept and played countless times and can see myself continuing to do so. These games (I haven't played Barrage, but have heard a lot of good things) fall into the same category of "everyone seems to accept that these games are great, even if they don't personally like them" that I was refering to. It's not that everyone should agree to sit down to play a game of RftG because it's inherently a Good Game but that with so many games out there which are years old and still have people saying "this is easily in my top 5" or "this might be the best game of its type" it seems crazy how much money people are willing to put into kickstarters and newer untested games in general. I guess there's a collection side of the hobby which I just don't understand at all (I generally want my collection to be smaller, not larger!) which drives this as well as a desire for games with stronger visual appeal and nicer components which might trump gameplay for some.
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Apr 27, 2023 07:53
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Pvt. Parts posted:Ahhhh that's SO COOL. I love dry erase-ified versions of games Splotter practically invented the dry erase Euro with Roads & Boats, did they not? I can't think of an older one. The oldest dry erase game of any kind that I know of is Triplanetary from 1973. It's a space combat game where ships don't manoeuvre freely, but rather have limited capacity to adjust their vectors. The start and end point of each previous move is marked on the map grid to show what the current vector is, while the ships themselves are shifted on the grid to simulate the movement of the large asteroids that comprise the "scenery".
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Apr 27, 2023 09:36
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Were crayon rails games earlier than that?
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Apr 27, 2023 10:56
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silvergoose posted:Were crayon rails games earlier than that? According to BGG Railroad Rivals is the oldest crayon rail system game and that was also 1973. I had thought that it was mid-70s, postdating 1829 (which was 1974). I did say that Triplanetary was the oldest such game that I knew of, though. It's possible that there's older ones that I don't know.
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Apr 27, 2023 11:16
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Yeah that wasn't a "ha ha you forgot" it was purely me not really knowing the history of that genre.
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Apr 27, 2023 12:10
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This all reminds me of playing Empire Builder in spring 2019 which feels like ten thousand years ago. Even after only that one aborted play, I still think of it sometimes. There is just something about the almost childish (in a good way) tactility of it combined with the joys of expansion, capitalism and commerce in a sort of Adam Smith "it is not from the benevolence etc etc etc no I will not log off" kind of way.. Also, I can see on that same page people already espousing the work of Null Signal Games (then NISEI). I was a fool who totally missed the memo on that one.
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Apr 27, 2023 12:23
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Just on the cult of the new, I have something of a pet theory. I should say, by the nature of this group, I don't think it's really going to apply to any of you, but all the same. So, essentially, I think most board gamers are conflict averse. Obviously not entirely, most games are competetive, but that often isn't actually direct conflict. Chess and Go are both pretty universally accepted as plausible answers to 'what is a perfect board game', I don't think anyone would be really surprised if someone said that, even if they didn't agree. But none of us are getting chess and go out at every opportunity. I think a large part of that is how 'directly' competetive they are. Clearly, it's only two player as well, so less social, but that highlights another aspect. We're doing this socially, conflict in a social setting is often not preferred. So what's that got to do with cult of the new? Well, when you play a game repeatedly, everyone begins to get full knowledge of the ins and outs. Meta and counter meta develop. The best games bear repeat play because of this, you can't 'solve' them, because over time, you're not playing against the game, you're playing against your opponents. But at the start, with a new game, that's not true! If you sit down to play Root the FIRST time, the vagabond runs away with it. It's not because the players were outplayed by the vagabond 'PLAYER' , it's because they were outplayed by the vagabond 'CHARACTER'. So, you're getting tension creating conflict, but it's with the game itself, and not with the other players. The second game, everyone adapts. Possibly they over adapt, and the Vagabond gets crushed. But again, that was the players reaction to a 'system', not to a player. But that third game? That's going to be where people know what's up, have it all dialed in, and the outcome is this time going to be about how well you can beat 'each other'. With new games, and really, only with new games, you get that hit of having conflict with the system. It's social, youre playing with and against your friends, but the 'loser' hasn't really been beaten by the other players, they've been beaten by the game. There's also an element to it off figuring out the system. Like, you can win a deck builder by being the first to work out how good trashing cards is. I think us board gamers tend to be puzzle solvers. With a new game, it's a lovely puzzle. But again, when a meta develops (denying card trashing, fighting over it, etc) it stops being a case of solving the puzzle the game presents, and becomes solving your friends, which is again, conflict. If you're always on a new game, you never have to face Jed anticipating your round 3 buy and gazzumping you, or realise you have to be the one to attack Lisa with everything you've got to stop her from winning.
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Apr 27, 2023 13:01
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!Klams posted:Just on the cult of the new, I have something of a pet theory. I think that is only part of it. I don't know if conflict aversion is the right way to describe it, but rather that direct mastery or accomplishment is not the concern of many modern hobbyist board gamers. You can certainly play chess or go with that kind of attitude, but because of the directness of the competition and the lack of luck, it is going to directly demonstrate that you are better or worse than someone. So that would dampen the drive of someone who is not as interested in that particular measurement. Adding additional players, new rules and experiences and additional elements of luck can let you be entertained without that 'judgement' for lack of a better term. Perhaps it would be better to say "competition agnostic" rather than "conflict averse" or something? This is all just speculation on my part here are other reasons we may see the Cult of the New / Cult of the Future: Games are a social activity but you can only play Go or Chess (or Backgammon or Ur or Senet for that matter) against a single opponent at a time, so it's natural that as leisure time increases and disposable income becomes a thing that exists we would see more games that want to involve more people. I would guess it started with card games like Poker and Hearts because they do not require additional components to field more players but then again Whist apparently predates them by 2 centuries so the history might be a bit muddier than I know. Also, I think also that most forms of hobbyism involve a level of consumerism, at least under capitalism. You don't just 'hobby' when you're actively engaged in the activity, whether it be mountain biking or model trains or board games. You daydream about it, you window shop and sometimes buy stuff, you talk to friends or at least strangers on the internet (  ), and back in the day you might have subscribe to a magainze, etc. In Calvin and Hobbes, I remember that Calvin was subscribed to "Chewing" which was a chewing gum magazine that was a parody of the cycling magazines that Watterson read. This is somewhat quaint now in the world of crowdfunding and social media, but it is still about hype and excitement and minutiae.
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Apr 27, 2023 13:22
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silvergoose posted:Yeah that wasn't a "ha ha you forgot" it was purely me not really knowing the history of that genre. No worries, it's not something I know everything about and I know it. I was just filling out what information I have.
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Apr 27, 2023 13:25
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!Klams posted:So, essentially, I think most board gamers are conflict averse. Obviously not entirely, most games are competetive, but that often isn't actually direct conflict. Chess and Go are both pretty universally accepted as plausible answers to 'what is a perfect board game', I don't think anyone would be really surprised if someone said that, even if they didn't agree. But none of us are getting chess and go out at every opportunity. I think a large part of that is how 'directly' competetive they are. Clearly, it's only two player as well, so less social, but that highlights another aspect. We're doing this socially, conflict in a social setting is often not preferred. I don't really have any issue with conflict, but I find it much harder to get a good game with something directly competitive because I'm very rarely playing a game with a group of people who all have the same level of experience and investment.
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Apr 27, 2023 13:59
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| # ? Jun 5, 2024 20:36 |
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CHOAM posted:What are some good travel games you folk swear by? I'm mostly talking games you can get out on a train table and play with about 1-2 other people. I know about HIVE pocket, solid, but won't eat up travel time always. Hey! That's My Fish.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:02
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