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I have the same feeling. Got the base box for LoTR, stumbled into a "good enough" deck on my second or third try and lost interest on it, because sitting alone swapping cards in a deck isn't my idea of fun.
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Oct 7, 2015 09:56
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Bobfly posted:So what games, if any, do you feel do a good job of mitigating skill differences and creating an even playing field? In any two player game competitive game, the winning player's Skill + Luck was greater than the opposing player's Skill + Luck. Skill is knowledge of the game and correct strategies and all that. Luck is everything that the players can't control. Therefore, in a two player game, the less skill that is required, then conversely the more luck comes into play. So, any high luck, low skill game meets this threshold. Everything's fuzzier when you get away from two player competitive. Adding in more players makes the formula more than Skill + Luck. It's now Skill + Luck + Bonus, where Bonus is any action a player takes that affects a single other player, positively or negatively. Or, as it's more commonly known, the political element. Call it kingmaking, chip taking, vindictiveness: whatever you call it, it's another element to reduce the element of Skill relative to the final outcome. However! One might argue that manipulating this political element is also a skill, so it's not quite the same. The other way is to remove the competitive element. A two player cooperative game means that the players win or lose based on their total Skill + Luck. Thus, there is a vested interest for the more skilled player to buoy a less skilled player. Of course, that buoying might not take the form of teaching or helping. It might be quarterbacking. In short, go make Zombie Dice or Mage Knight, everyone.
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Oct 7, 2015 10:01
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BonHair posted:Pictomania. It uses drawing skill though, which is just a non-gaming skill I guess. Also any game with a bunch of politics, like Risk or whatever. Good players should be shot down and conspired against by any sensible newbie. That's actually one reason I don't mind kingmakerish games every once in a while: I actually enjoy the fact I can play with bad newbies and have them all gang up on me (the obvious threat), because they're usually sensible enough to let go when I'm stomped pretty bad to focus on whoever snuck into the lead, and in the end everyone is in a sensibly meaningful position and has fun. It also makes for some cool moments when I'm against unbeatable odds, but keep outplaying the opponents, so a story of dramatic defiance paints itself. Like, in one newbie Game of Thrones game I got dealt the Hitler (Greyjoy, the combatiest house) and went on a terrifying blitzkrieg rampage (it turned out mid-invasion that the target of my invasion happened to be the most clueless of the group, it was kinda hard to salvage things by going easy on him by that point), prompting most of the free world to unite against me just winning the game in a few turns. A few tense turns of 'why won't the motherfucker just die" ensued, but despite all my dancing and tactically retreating and out-Yomiing the combat cards I was ultimately reduced to a single cavalry unit in some bumfuck nowhere province of the Starks. And, if I remember right, by the end of the game I still managed to claw up to the third place. It was both more fun and interesting for everyone involved than if i just dominated everyone outright. Though probably one needs a right kind of newbies so it doesn't just fall back into usual horribad kingmaking. PS. We should have more 1 vs many games where there's no need for the solo player to ever pull his punches, like tragloop as opposed to, say, Descent. Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Oct 7, 2015 |
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Oct 7, 2015 10:04
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Lichtenstein posted:PS. We should have more 1 vs many games where there's no need for the solo player to ever pull his punches, like tragloop as opposed to, say, Descent. Descent usually has the heroes steamroll the overlord though?  E: 2nd ed, at least.
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Oct 7, 2015 10:22
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I heard numerous times that if the Overlord is better than the heroes it turns into extremely unfun slog of him just repeatedly picking them off one by one, beginning with the squishiest one.
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Oct 7, 2015 10:27
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That is one of the reasons I stopped playing Descent (both Editions). Being the overlord is just not that much fun to me anymore. If you are too mean 4 other People aren't having any fun. If you are too easy on them it is boring for the overlord. I only play it when my group really really really wants to play it. And then I treat it more like a rpg session with me as the DM.
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Oct 7, 2015 10:41
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Descent seems like it's not balanced well enough. The biggest problem is the campaign thing: You want to reward people for winning, which is intuitive, but in reality, this means that the winner gets stronger than the loser, and even if they started out equal, this would lead to unbalanced gameplay, which would then snowball into hell because the winner would be more likely to win again due to the rewards, leading to more rewards and more victories and so on. Rewarding players works in RPGs because the gamemaster essentially rewards himself in equal amounts by upping the threats. Descent doesn't let the Overlord do that.
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Oct 7, 2015 10:59
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On the other hand, I've heard they've really learned some lessons for Imperial Assault. Is there anything to gain by fishing rule segments from there? Or are the two games too different in the end? The different line of sight rules (must be able to draw line to any two different corners, instead of any one) work well, at least.
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Oct 7, 2015 11:51
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The campaigns in the later D2 expansions pretty much address the swingy balance issues, IMO. Plus the new overlord card sets. It will never be perfect because there are too many heroes and optimal/suboptimal combinations in respect to abilities etc. I think it's likely the Descent 1 conversion pack hero set (all bazillion of them) are particularly ill thought out in this regard. IA has dodged this bullet.
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Oct 7, 2015 12:08
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Fat Samurai posted:Good game design. I'm pretty sure the randomness will help the new players win some of the games and not feel bad when they lose with only 5% of the points of the winner. The four figure scores are only made possible by assembling a very specific combo based around the most expensive cards in both Fight and Buy. It won't even appear in most games, and against a human I doubt it could be pulled off. Against a human you're doing really well if you double their score, and a gap of maybe 20 or 30 is more common.
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Oct 7, 2015 12:10
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Bobfly posted:So what games, if any, do you feel do a good job of mitigating skill differences and creating an even playing field? Go. Not becuase of randomness, though, but rather because it has very well established handicap rules baked in.
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Oct 7, 2015 12:13
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Selecta84 posted:That is one of the reasons I stopped playing Descent (both Editions). If you are essentially the DM, then you shouldn't feel so bad if you lose all the time to the players. Thats your job, as DM you are supposed to lose (but in a way that looks like you didn't do it intentionally).
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Oct 7, 2015 12:25
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Bobfly posted:So what games, if any, do you feel do a good job of mitigating skill differences and creating an even playing field? Nations has each player set a "difficulty level" for themselves, which affects how many resources they get during one step of the game. But I haven't played it enough to have any idea if it actually works.
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Oct 7, 2015 12:33
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Rutibex posted:If you are essentially the DM, then you shouldn't feel so bad if you lose all the time to the players. Thats your job, as DM you are supposed to lose (but in a way that looks like you didn't do it intentionally). That's why I choose to play it this way. I don't care if I loose as the overlord. So my group can have fun with the game although I'm not really into it anymore. Most of the time I'm doing them a favour.
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Oct 7, 2015 12:38
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Jedit posted:The four figure scores are only made possible by assembling a very specific combo based around the most expensive cards in both Fight and Buy. It won't even appear in most games, and against a human I doubt it could be pulled off. Against a human you're doing really well if you double their score, and a gap of maybe 20 or 30 is more common. I think it was I'm confident that an experienced player can loving destroy someone in their first or second game. EDIT:  *The one after they introduced the energy mechanic. Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Oct 7, 2015 |
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Oct 7, 2015 12:39
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How long does a game of Traglooper actually take?
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Oct 7, 2015 12:44
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Lichtenstein posted:PS. We should have more 1 vs many games where there's no need for the solo player to ever pull his punches, like tragloop as opposed to, say, Descent. I prefer games like Whitechapel or Friedrich to rpg dm-style games, myself. They feel more purely competitive, or something.
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Oct 7, 2015 13:20
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Fat Samurai posted:I'm confident that an experienced player can loving destroy someone in their first or second game. The skill these games test is the ability to memorize the cards in the deck so you know what combos you hope to get. ThisIsNoZaku fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Oct 7, 2015 |
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Oct 7, 2015 13:24
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AMooseDoesStuff posted:How long does a game of Traglooper actually take? It depends on how many days/loops are in a script. I have seen a game done in 45 minutes, I've also been in a game that took 2hrs, neither of which where anyone really suffered any ap. So I'd say thats the range 45min-2hrs.
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Oct 7, 2015 13:39
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Bobfly posted:So what games, if any, do you feel do a good job of mitigating skill differences and creating an even playing field? There's a difference between some randomness and the complete randomness that a lot of posters here are exaggerating about. Near complete randomness would be something like Talisman, which I find a fantastic game to play with my young nephews but I almost never bring out for my normal group (every blue moon people are in the mood for that kind of thing, but it is rare). For some randomness I'll typically go with some quick games like Citadels or Love Letter. They are fast and easy enough that usually even the weaker players will win a game or two. Carcassonne is another one that most in our group find easy enough to play that the great player guy doesn't win a ton more often than anyone else. Somebody touched on Pictomania which is also a good idea (word games can work for this as well). Secondly we try to mix in some good cooperative type games (QBing isn't really a problem with this group) like Mage Knight, Flashpoint, Legendary Encounters, or a dungeon crawler of some kind. Often it's the weaker player who ends up making the key move that saves us all from certain doom, which almost feels as good as a 'win' in a normal game. Also there are plenty of 'kingmaker' type of games that can sometimes be useful to pull out after a day of someone winning nearly every game. Some people hate this kind of thing but my group is usually pretty good natured about it with the 'winner' taking on a 'come at me bro' type persona. Finally there are a few games where all the different sides or roles play differently, like Chaos in the Old World where the weaker player can be given a stronger (or easier to understand) role. One thing I like about CitOW is that it is pretty well balanced, but we still find that a newer player can usually do fine and be competitive with Khorne because their goal and strengths (kill everyone else) are a lot easier to understand than a faction like Nurgle. Once gain, all of these thoughts are coming from a regular gaming group consisting of friends and family who are people I would want to spend time whether I was playing a board game or not. This makes a big difference in what kinds of rules you will tolerate in a board game. Obviously the better players are going to win the majority of the games (and thats ok), but it's nice to mix it up every once in a while.
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Oct 7, 2015 14:32
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It is possible for the losing player to have less than 0% of the winning player's total in Dungeon Lords, yet it rocks hard. Just saying.
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Oct 7, 2015 14:44
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lordsummerisle posted:So I tried Netrunner for the first time the other day. Mixed feelings. I got thrown right into it with a specialized deck from a high skill player. He sat next to me coaching me a bit throughout. A lot of the cards in the deck were very dependent on being used toward comboing with certain other ones, which was hard for me to know. The coach had to point me towards ist. On one had what I enjoy about netrunner is really more of the actual gameplay over the theory crafting- I really enjoy bluffing stuff out and hoping the Runner doesn't figure out what I'm up to as the Corp, and trying to figure out how to call those bluffs as the runner. It rather reminds me of Twilight Struggle in that every hand feels like you're about to lose. On the other, it definitely requires a lot of meta knowledge if you're going to play it outside of a small group.
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Oct 7, 2015 15:37
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silvergoose posted:It is possible for the losing player to have less than 0% of the winning player's total in Dungeon Lords, yet it rocks hard. Just saying. I love Dungeon Lords and I'm absolutely terrible at it. That's one metric I use for determining how much I like a game. 'Did I like it even though I failed miserably?'.  edit: forgot a word Damn Dirty Ape fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Oct 7, 2015 |
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Oct 7, 2015 15:37
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So back at the end of June I won the Queen games Marshlands contest on BGG. I didn't hear from them until August asking for my shipping info, I actually didn't even know I won as I forgot to check the thread assuming I would get a notification. Anyways, the person from Queen never responded saying it had shipped or anything and after about another month I decided to send them a messge asking for any update, still got nothing. I tried contacting the BGG admin who runs the contests, Chaddyboy, and while he responded saying he would look into it never actually got back to me about any development. What would you guys say? I'm SOL, or should I make a more public post on BGG or Reddit? Not really a big deal but it makes me question the validity of these BGG contests.
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Oct 7, 2015 15:43
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EBag posted:So back at the end of June I won the Queen games Marshlands contest on BGG. I didn't hear from them until August asking for my shipping info, I actually didn't even know I won as I forgot to check the thread assuming I would get a notification. Anyways, the person from Queen never responded saying it had shipped or anything and after about another month I decided to send them a messge asking for any update, still got nothing. I tried contacting the BGG admin who runs the contests, Chaddyboy, and while he responded saying he would look into it never actually got back to me about any development. Follow up with chaddyboy. Contact Queens customer service. I've heard they're kind of a lovely company. You may be SOL
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Oct 7, 2015 15:46
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drat Dirty Ape posted:That's one metric I use for determining how much a game. 'Did I like it even though I failed miserably?'. This, but also the inverse: "Did I NOT have fun even though I won?" This is why I get flabbergasted by all of this talk about games being designed so that new players can have just as much chance to win as skilled ones, as if that were somehow the way games are supposed to be designed. Because few things sour my opinion of a game than me winning my first game against experienced players; it usually means that the game is either shallow enough for me to spot a dominant strategy from the start, or random enough to make developing skill pointless. Either way, I usually feel no desire to play that game again. Meanwhile, one of my favorite games right now is Terra Mystica; a game that I have never won, but always feel like I can do better the next time.
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Oct 7, 2015 15:55
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StashAugustine posted:On one had what I enjoy about netrunner is really more of the actual gameplay over the theory crafting- I really enjoy bluffing stuff out and hoping the Runner doesn't figure out what I'm up to as the Corp, and trying to figure out how to call those bluffs as the runner. It rather reminds me of Twilight Struggle in that every hand feels like you're about to lose. On the other, it definitely requires a lot of meta knowledge if you're going to play it outside of a small group. Yeah, I am pretty sure the playing itself will be a lot of fun. But I need a lot more metaknowledge for that to be the case. I always consider that kind of energy could be better spent with other board games. Or soloing Mage Knight if I am alone. Or doing anything, really.
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Oct 7, 2015 15:58
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My most recent one of those was Don't Turn Your Back. I majorly hosed up, realized it halfway through, but it was tight and interesting enough to try to recover that I still liked it. Says a lot about a game when you lose 64-60-40 and still think it was fun despite going "fuuuck I hosed up" for 5 minutes afterward.
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Oct 7, 2015 15:59
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Paper Kaiju posted:This, but also the inverse: "Did I NOT have fun even though I won?" This is why I get flabbergasted by all of this talk about games being designed so that new players can have just as much chance to win as skilled ones, as if that were somehow the way games are supposed to be designed. Because few things sour my opinion of a game than me winning my first game against experienced players; it usually means that the game is either shallow enough for me to spot a dominant strategy from the start, or random enough to make developing skill pointless. Either way, I usually feel no desire to play that game again. I've experienced that more than a few times.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:00
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Lichtenstein posted:That's actually one reason I don't mind kingmakerish games every once in a while: I actually enjoy the fact I can play with bad newbies and have them all gang up on me (the obvious threat), because they're usually sensible enough to let go when I'm stomped pretty bad to focus on whoever snuck into the lead, and in the end everyone is in a sensibly meaningful position and has fun. I can't think of any other board game that handles this situation like Game of Thrones. You can't win by simply having a better understanding of the rules, because all potential strategies are visible and available for discussion. At the moment of combat, you don't know which leader your opponent will choose, but you are allowed to see all of their available options up until they decide. It's usually in the other players' best interest to advise a less experienced player and inform them of options they may have missed. And you (probably) can't win by either turtling up while the others duke it out or by going solo and refusing any temporary alliances. It's too bad I can't get it to the table more often--is there anything similar out there with a shorter play time and that plays well with less than 6 people?
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Oct 7, 2015 16:06
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COIN  Well, except for the shorter playtime.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:07
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I'll never get people to play Cuba Libre 
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Oct 7, 2015 16:10
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Tekopo posted:COIN If my friends are loathe to commit a full day to Game of Thrones, I don't see how I'll ever talk them into Fire in the Lake.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:10
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CaptainRightful posted:If my friends are loathe to commit a full day to Game of Thrones, I don't see how I'll ever talk them into Fire in the Lake. P500 Cuba Libre so I can get it sooner.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:15
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Cuba Libre takes like 3 hours to play, it's pretty quick firing once you are used to it.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:17
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Tekopo posted:3 hours [...] quick firing Haha, I love the way wargames break the concept of time in one's mind.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:21
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Paper Kaiju posted:This, but also the inverse: "Did I NOT have fun even though I won?" This is why I get flabbergasted by all of this talk about games being designed so that new players can have just as much chance to win as skilled ones, as if that were somehow the way games are supposed to be designed. Because few things sour my opinion of a game than me winning my first game against experienced players; it usually means that the game is either shallow enough for me to spot a dominant strategy from the start, or random enough to make developing skill pointless. Either way, I usually feel no desire to play that game again. Yeah. I think it's a matter of degree. If there's a little variance in the game such that it introduces a slight handicap sometimes, like 50-50 going to 60-40, and it's not super obvious when variance is in play, I think it can be kind of nice for a group of players that aren't too far off skill wise but are definitely unbalanced and playing lots of the same games*. If you're playing some dueling card game, and they get a nice opening hand relative to your average opening hand and take a game from the better player occasionally, then sometimes that's more fun (note, I'm not talking "welp I mulliganed into a hand with no land, congrats on your win young padawan" level variance). Sometimes that's undesirable and both players would rather just use these matches to train dojo style. And the variance is usually a bigger bummer in a game you only are going to play once a month at best, for me at least. If i'm playing some long 3+ hour civilization game that we only get to play once every 3 months like Eclipse, and I take a really bad beat from randomness, I'm going to be salty as hell. If we're playing Netrunner or X-Wang for 2-3 hours a week and someone that I beat the majority of the time takes a game from me it doesn't really bother me (but not speaking for everyone here). As an aside, I think card games often do this "obscured variance" thing better than dice games. It takes a really trained eye sometimes to determine which opening hand has the 60/40 advantage, whereas it's sometimes much easier to tell when a 4 would have been ALOT better than a 3 at that moment. * With really unbalanced groups, I think it's actually pretty crappy to try and address that with variance and usually leads to crappy games where skill has little impact for anyone involved. Probably better to play a game that tests a different skill like a party game, dexterity, or the occasional political game
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Oct 7, 2015 16:23
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COOL CORN posted:Haha, I love the way wargames break the concept of time in one's mind. Eh, video games do the same thing IMO.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:24
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COOL CORN posted:Haha, I love the way wargames break the concept of time in one's mind. Pretty much. I don't even bat an eye at 2-3 or more hours games anymore, give me Argent and Arkwright all day.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:30
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taser rates posted:Pretty much. I don't even bat an eye at 2-3 or more hours games anymore, give me Argent and Arkwright all day. I was playing something the other night, I think Advanced Third Reich... and I came out of the craft room a couple hours later and my wife says, "how'd it go?" To which I replied, "oh I just finished up the first turn." The look on her face was awesome.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:54
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