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Oh, yeah, I definitely don't think every game needs to be casual, just arguing that less complexity isn't just about sacrificing too much for the invading pleebs and sometimes about simply maintaining a non-hardcore fanbase. I think we're on the same page.

KoW is perfect for that mix of simple to learn, easy to play, but tons of room for tactical choices.

I jumped ship from warmachine because of the toll of keeping up with everything when I also want to play various other games in my limited gaming time.

I don't see model complexity to be a huge issue in the game. It's A barrier, but what I found really cut off casual players was how punishing influence allocation was when combined with hard control elements. One of the promises the game touted was that there was always counter play, but there were just a few things like 1" vs 2" melee, unpredictable movement, and certain effects where that counter play was something like "play down a player" or "bring another team" and for as many times as they revamped the rosters, they never really did anything about those issues.

Generally speaking, I feel like there were a lot of elements that could have been paid for in Inf rather than Momentum, but in truth, they first had to really answer the question of what to do about players that decided to play the game without the ball.

I'll agree the Ball was an issue over every season, which for a footy game is not ideal.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I'm not a customer - and after the cancer that was Dark Souls KS probably never will be - but I respect their decision to end the game instead of dumbing it down for the unwashed masses so they can drag it on into a miserable unlife like PP tries to.

Streamlining doesn't equal dumbing down just like complication doesn't equal depth. Actually the game design goal - elegance of rules - is about achieving maximum depth (meaningful choices) with minimum complication ("moving" elements).

It's modern approach to design so you're not going to see it amongst wargame geezers who think making the game bigger makes it smarter, because unnecessary memorisation is the only skill they have a grasp of. Hence wargames which still exist in 2020 that have rules that may have been considered elegant maybe in the 80's - geezer designers at work

For more quotes from smart people:

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Certainly AoS 1.0 is the most perfect game by those standards.

If you look at their recent work, the company is more interested in chasing down a magical IP that will garner them an instant fan-base and frontloaded Kickstarter cash than develop and maintain their own flagship product.

The real facts were they couldn't keep stock in their own store much less their distributors. Also, the rules changed so frequently for the sake of competitiveness (which they fostered not the community) it was difficult to keep up for casuals.

So many people dumping their GodTear right now its untrue. Looks like SFGs decisions around GB has affected peoples trust in them or willingness to support their other games. At least in the immediate term.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Just to put this in front of different eyes, a group of more prominent players and others (such as token manufacturers and the author of The Longshanks site) are currently undertaking to keep the game moving forward as a community project.

Still some back and forth on the scale and scope, but arguably people out in the world understand the game better than the creators at this point, so this could actually be quite positive for the game.

Where can I track this / find more info on it?

Honestly, that has me much more interested. It's like Bloodbowl with GW... when GW was going through *that* phase, it was much better off in the hands of the community with volunteer rules development and lots of third party companies making unofficial teams. So, I love this idea!

Sunno wrote:
So many people dumping their GodTear right now its untrue. Looks like SFGs decisions around GB has affected peoples trust in them or willingness to support their other games. At least in the immediate term.

Fingers crossed for another clearence sale in due course

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

Sunno wrote:
So many people dumping their GodTear right now its untrue. Looks like SFGs decisions around GB has affected peoples trust in them or willingness to support their other games. At least in the immediate term.

Fingers crossed for another clearence sale in due course

You don't even have to wait. Just go on FB or Ebay right now....

Happy (bargain) hunting!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Certainly AoS 1.0 is the most perfect game by those standards.

You apparently didn't read carefully enough because it's quite the opposite. Gameplay in AoS doesn't offer meaningful choices but the system is overloaded with different units, each having their own mini-rules. So it's exactly the opposite - minimum decisions, a lot of miniutiae to remember. A lot of moving parts, but few real options. Nedlessly broad but shallow, as are all GW games by definition.

My examples of tabletop games which meet those standard of state-of-the-art elegance are games such as Concordia or Imperial (Imperial2030) or Brass because they create very complex game states with multiple paths of resolution but have extremely finely crafted, lean rules.

Hobby moneys for the month went on GB stuff

But good to see a bit of pushback rather than the " i hate it so only got half the amount i was intending to " that infects CCGs and GW from time to time

Sunno wrote:
So many people dumping their GodTear right now its untrue. Looks like SFGs decisions around GB has affected peoples trust in them or willingness to support their other games. At least in the immediate term.

GodTear honestly feels like it works better as a board game anyway. I don't think it's got a ton of mins game appeal.

 RiTides wrote:

Where can I track this / find more info on it?

https://discord.gg/qJHtxh
Early days, so don't expect too much. I think it's obvious that, as good a game as GB is, it never had a great shelf life. There's only so much profit to be made from a game that is deliberately limited in scale. What sucks is that it died before it was complete.

It could have been completed with competent management and an appreciation of lthe inherent imited scope. But the owners ballsed it up totally by cancelling metal and over investing in plastic. This consumed all their capital and that was the basis of the production and distribution problems they had which led to reduced uptake of the game. This mismanagement made it unprofitable to maintain the game so they stopped.

From a business perspective they've now got lots of experience and should be able to turn a tidy profit on their new products which will be designed from the ground up to be quickly produced, large quantity, quick sale products.

It just sucks any goodwill that was remaining for them that they blamed the community instead of their mismanagement / lack of experience.

Thanks for the discord link! Signed up and read the announcements / etc, looks promising

I think these projects work much better for small scale games. Comparing the results of 9th Age versus Bloodbowl is like night and day (obviously one had an official competitor to deal with, too).

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Certainly AoS 1.0 is the most perfect game by those standards.

I really liked what AOS 1.0 was trying to achieve. I wish more gamers had taken the opportunity to step outside the usual gamer mindset, or at least not gak in it for other people.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Certainly AoS 1.0 is the most perfect game by those standards.

I really liked what AOS 1.0 was trying to achieve. I wish more gamers had taken the opportunity to step outside the usual gamer mindset, or at least not gak in it for other people.

I'm all for a more casual environment, but the humor was really flat and forced, and there's a good reason for points. Power level has its own issues and I don't believe at all that points are the only solution nor do they need to be perfectly balanced or even intended to be even (for instance, historical scenarios or last stands or whatever), but just saying "play what you want, there's no metric for gauging force balance" is unwise for any competitive system, even the most friendly, and moreso for a likely introductory game. It just bogs down everything when you need to abstractly gauge what you think will be a fun game with no assistance.

(Note: I do completely invite a counterargument. Is there some competitive game with no in-built balancing mechanic (scenario, model value, army size, starting conditions, etc etc) that works well?

I think the main issue here is “competitive”. I play a lot of these games cooperatively, especially with friends and family. They are not “gamers” at heart, so the discussion about what to field is entirely about what one wants to see in action and not about what is a fair match or test of skill. It’s a completely different approach to the game, and it’s a lot of fun....but it is admittedly not the kind of challenge most gamers are looking for.

But that’s not really relevant for a game like Guildball, which seems designed specifically to target serious gamers.

Theoretically, GB is easier to field than AoS. You bring your team, you pick captains, mascot, players, go. There's very little crunch on that end. Figuring out an "even" army without some common metric requires a fair bit more effort to get it right.

That there is where a lot of players get hung up and miss the point of points. They provide structure, but don't determine the game. If you don't care about getting it exactly right, don't stress. An extra 10 points probably isn't going to decide the game. A subpar unit isn't likely to determine it either. People get way too hung up on optimal units as the path to victory and fail to appreciate how much wiggle room there is outside of say, the top 8 at a major convention.

I think "experienced" is probably closer than "serious." I mean, I never played a tourney, we don't use a clock or drafting locally, we just choose a team of six and get on with it. But I still appreciate the depth and the challenge of the game.

One of the issues I think GB had (but by no means top of the list) was chasing the board game market with what is fundamentally a fairly hard core minis game. One only has to follow Crisis Protocol on Facebook for a few days to see how relatively clueless that sector is about basic skills that your average tabletop Wargamer probably picked up in their childhood.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I think "experienced" is probably closer than "serious." I mean, I never played a tourney, we don't use a clock or drafting locally, we just choose a team of six and get on with it. But I still appreciate the depth and the challenge of the game.

One of the issues I think GB had (but by no means top of the list) was chasing the board game market with what is fundamentally a fairly hard core minis game. One only has to follow Crisis Protocol on Facebook for a few days to see how relatively clueless that sector is about basic skills that your average tabletop Wargamer probably picked up in their childhood.

I recently found the copy of Battletech I bought when I was like... 8. I did not do so well in deciphering it.

Do you mean now, as opposed to when you were a kid, or when you were 8?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Do you mean now, as opposed to when you were a kid, or when you were 8?

Yes

Lol. My experience of Battletech is similar.

 LunarSol wrote:
Theoretically, GB is easier to field than AoS. You bring your team, you pick captains, mascot, players, go. There's very little crunch on that end. Figuring out an "even" army without some common metric requires a fair bit more effort to get it right.

That there is where a lot of players get hung up and miss the point of points. They provide structure, but don't determine the game. If you don't care about getting it exactly right, don't stress. An extra 10 points probably isn't going to decide the game. A subpar unit isn't likely to determine it either. People get way too hung up on optimal units as the path to victory and fail to appreciate how much wiggle room there is outside of say, the top 8 at a major convention.

Is this in response to my post about AOS? I don’t want to go off topic with a reply in thread, so let me know if you want to take it to PMs.

I feel it comes down to whether one perceives a tabletop game more as a sport or a leisure activity.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I think "experienced" is probably closer than "serious." I mean, I never played a tourney, we don't use a clock or drafting locally, we just choose a team of six and get on with it. But I still appreciate the depth and the challenge of the game.

One of the issues I think GB had (but by no means top of the list) was chasing the board game market with what is fundamentally a fairly hard core minis game. One only has to follow Crisis Protocol on Facebook for a few days to see how relatively clueless that sector is about basic skills that your average tabletop Wargamer probably picked up in their childhood.

I've noticed this with Modiphius' Fallout and Elderscrolls games. They're really chasing solo/co-op game play, which I love, but they're brining in a lot of boardgame people who endlessly complain about how complicated and confusing the rules are. I'm by no means a hardcore wargame fan but I am for RPGs and some out there are pretty crazy (looking at you Shadowrun) and I enjoy crunch from time to time--so I'm pretty good at deciphering rules but you need to play the game a few times to get things sorted. This is what I've noticed about the boardgame crowd attracted to those games is they feel if they can't understand the rules without playing they're crap. And while no rule set is perfect and everyone absorbs rules info different, and some of the criticism is valid and constructive, it's amazing how many just give up because the rules are more then like 20 pages and to many cross refrencing pages. All while I'm over there going "Have you tried Infinity as this game is a beer and pretzel game compared to that".

Depends why one is gaming and how much they want to commit to one rule set in a sea of opportunity. Battle tech made a lot more sense when you had more time to learn it and far fewer exciting alternatives.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Certainly AoS 1.0 is the most perfect game by those standards.

I really liked what AOS 1.0 was trying to achieve. I wish more gamers had taken the opportunity to step outside the usual gamer mindset, or at least not gak in it for other people.

I'm all for a more casual environment, but the humor was really flat and forced, and there's a good reason for points. Power level has its own issues and I don't believe at all that points are the only solution nor do they need to be perfectly balanced or even intended to be even (for instance, historical scenarios or last stands or whatever), but just saying "play what you want, there's no metric for gauging force balance" is unwise for any competitive system, even the most friendly, and moreso for a likely introductory game. It just bogs down everything when you need to abstractly gauge what you think will be a fun game with no assistance.

(Note: I do completely invite a counterargument. Is there some competitive game with no in-built balancing mechanic (scenario, model value, army size, starting conditions, etc etc) that works well?

Well your error is using term competive with gw games. Gw games aren't competive and any attempt to use as such fails by definition. Lottery as competive game makes more sense.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Depends why one is gaming and how much they want to commit to one rule set in a sea of opportunity. Battle tech made a lot more sense when you had more time to learn it and far fewer exciting alternatives.

The issue here isn't so much gamer motivation as producers chasing the dragon of profit by trying the market their square pegs as compatible with round holes. When it's probably more feasible and profitable long term to own your square peg game, and work on a round peg game to complement it.

Otherwise you end up with casual board gamers sat in a pile of paint, sprues and glue, with their fingers marking 8 different spots in a rulebook, vowing "never again."