Im not saying make a mandatory game that a player must complete and limit a player to certain boards.

the "easy button" game is for people who chose to hit the button but i do think that there should be a indicator on the board page that shows them a difficulty. Green, Yellow, Red traffic lights?

Gimli wrote:
Earlier I noted that I could not find wargear page on facebook. Any tips or a direct URL that could be posted?

I couldn't find Attack! either is it down or gone?

Gimli wrote:

lol, do you want to give someone a spanking or something? No one got a spanking. And no one said anything about forums, not giving name(s) was deliberate. Not many are gonna know what that is about. But there was a point to be made.

Is this a serious comment? I can't remember the last time I've seen you post without finding some way to mention ELEVEN LIES!!!1!! like getting into some internet spat that doesn't even qualify as a flame war is the crowning achievement of your career.

Gimli wrote:
Earlier I noted that I could not find wargear page on facebook. Any tips or a direct URL that could be posted?

Wargear on Facebook leads me to the WarGear group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=301677411413&ref=ts

Gimli wrote:

If you want to debate my motivations or whatever, feel free to PM me, so you don't look like a stupid hypocrite while mentioning hijacking of threads and going off topic... ;)  Peace buddy!!

My hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Thanks Yertle, I got it. But seriously, I only saw the warhammer thing... now that I have joined I can find it in a search.
But just to make sure, I went to my gaming profile, and researched... it did not show up! The one warhammer page, 3 people with the last name wargear. Below that are just pages suggested by bing, including wargear. Searching with wargear.net doesn't get you the group either...

Cramchakle wrote:

Any time I visit a site which forces me to sit through anything before I get to the business end is a site whose bounce count just increased by one. I won't even sit through a beautifully designed flash intro. Seriously, I don't have time for that nonsense.

Totally agree with this sentiment.

KrocK wrote:

I couldn't find Attack! either is it down or gone?

Zynga got sued by Hasbro and it got dropped.

Gimli wrote:

Do you guys remember when you'd start a new game and you saw a msg like this: "A new player would like to join warfish, could you let them into your game"?

Whenever I did it, I'd always welcome them, give them tips, especially if a non standard board, like bomb factory...

Isn't this how ruthlezz got invited to Warfish ;)

The whole board complexity thing can hopefully be handled as part of the new board list display - I'd suggest perhaps a checkbox 'show advanced boards' which will default to off initially.

Practically every time I talk to alpha on the phone about this site, we agree that some sort of graduated exposure of the site would vastly aid in retention of players. Gimli's mentoring approach is also a good one. Every game of five or spies against a 1000 begins with a blurb about mechanics. You can't trust folks to read instructions, even when PLACED NEXT THE BOARD.

I think that the board review committe should assign every board a value:
"Basic" - Standard risk rules or mild varients
"Intermediate" - Custom rules but still plays like a risk map, capitals, hordes
"Advanced" - Nonstandard dice, victory goals, etc.

These could be a green circle, blue square, black diamond on the game details?

When you join a game on an advanced board for the first time, it would give you a warning along the lines of "This risk board uses non-standard rules and victory goals, please read the about section", and would give an option to continue or exit. And then in the player options you could turn this warning off for new boards if you want.

BlackDog wrote: I think that the board review committe should assign every board a value:
"Basic" - Standard risk rules or mild varients
"Intermediate" - Custom rules but still plays like a risk map, capitals, hordes
"Advanced" - Nonstandard dice, victory goals, etc.

These could be a green circle, blue square, black diamond on the game details?

When you join a game on an advanced board for the first time, it would give you a warning along the lines of "This risk board uses non-standard rules and victory goals, please read the about section", and would give an option to continue or exit. And then in the player options you could turn this warning off for new boards if you want.

I like this idea but then we open that whole, what's Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, and who decides?

For instance, I think non-standard dice are less confusing than a hordes bonus structure, and that playing a game with NS-dice (depending on how close to standard they are) is much more risk-like than playing a hordes board..   We could debate this, but that's not the point.  It's subjective territory.

We've debated this a number of times on probably more than one thread.. The WHO decides part of it might be even more important in the long run than the WHAT decides part of it.  I've argued that developers should have a say (after all they should be invested in having their boards accurately represented), but I think there are those who disagree with me.

BlackDog wrote: I think that the board review committe should assign every board a value:

M57 wrote:

I like this idea but then we open that whole, what's Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, and who decides?

This. The Review Committee can barely agree amongst themselves as to what their job is now.

The law of many opinions is our best option.

I think we should assign a point system to determine the difficulty of individual rules. You then calculate a total and assign it as the difficulty level of the board. Then you can sort by that number, the more complicated boards will be ranked higher, the simpler boards will be ranked lower, thus you can sort and create thresholds for levels of difficulty.

Why not make it part of the review process? Must score
0 - like standard (easy to understand and play)
1 - not far from standard (playable, but need to read rules/understand map prior to playing)
2 - not risk, but uses risk engine (thank Nygma for many example in this category)

Take the average rounded to an integer of the B,I,A scale (sure most boards will probably come out Intermediate, but that seems alright).

Alpha wrote: Why not make it part of the review process? Must score
0 - like standard (easy to understand and play)
1 - not far from standard (playable, but need to read rules/understand map prior to playing)
2 - not risk, but uses risk engine (thank Nygma for many example in this category)

Take the average rounded to an integer of the B,I,A scale (sure most boards will probably come out Intermediate, but that seems alright).

Remember this thread?

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/862p3/100_Boards

I like the attempt to automate the assignment of difficulty, and would be very curious to see if the number of "Nygmas" matches my own opinion.

M57 wrote:

Alpha wrote: Why not make it part of the review process? Must score
0 - like standard (easy to understand and play)
1 - not far from standard (playable, but need to read rules/understand map prior to playing)
2 - not risk, but uses risk engine (thank Nygma for many example in this category)

Take the average rounded to an integer of the B,I,A scale (sure most boards will probably come out Intermediate, but that seems alright).

Remember this thread?

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/862p3/100_Boards

 

I think 11's mentioned something similar here about a difficulty algorithm. I can already see ways to make simple-playing boards with with a high number of Nygmas.

I don't know if board-only analysis suffices to measure "true" difficulty.

Mongrel wrote:

M57 wrote:

Alpha wrote: Why not make it part of the review process? Must score
0 - like standard (easy to understand and play)
1 - not far from standard (playable, but need to read rules/understand map prior to playing)
2 - not risk, but uses risk engine (thank Nygma for many example in this category)

Take the average rounded to an integer of the B,I,A scale (sure most boards will probably come out Intermediate, but that seems alright).

Remember this thread?

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/862p3/100_Boards

 

I think 11's mentioned something similar here about a difficulty algorithm. I can already see ways to make simple-playing boards with with a high number of Nygmas.

I don't know if board-only analysis suffices to measure "true" difficulty.

There's a difference between "difficulty" and "complexity" that Nygmas might not be very good at distinguishing. I've used this argument before, but if we had a one or two more specific designer features, I could see using a lot of Nygmas to create a checkers game.  Not very difficult, but high in Nygmas and low "Riskiness". 

I think a number of differently derived ratings is called for.

Riskiness:  Is the Game Risk-Like?  This could use a straight Nygma Algorithm. (1 = Risky, 10 = UnRisky)

Difficulty:  While there's admittedly a bit of subjectivity to this, I wouldn't trust it to an algorithm.  I think this should be a Review Board/Designer rating.  I propose that that a quorum of reviewers along with the designer rate the board for difficulty, and the mean score is used as a difficulty rating. (scale 1-10).

Generally speaking, I think we would see that these two numbers will be close to each other and that's OK, but even basic things like board size and number of borders impact on difficulty.  Some designs are inherently easier to understand because of the nature of the board's graphics, or the inclusion of rules and arrows right there on the board etc..  So there will be variance.

This discussion should be moved elsewhere.