Having fun with a limited word pool

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aghagh
Posts: 97
Joined: 22 November 2014, 20:38

Having fun with a limited word pool

Post by aghagh »

There are currently 550 words in the pool for each available language. Many players ask for more words to be added to the pool because of repeats and because they think the game would be more fun. I'd like to share why I think a limited word pool can be a lot of fun and why a large pool of words might not be that great.

A great way to have fun with the current word pool is to build a clue pool with optimal clues for each word in the pool. It could be labeled as "clue polishing". This is done by
- Coming up (at any time) with new clues. Knowing that words will repeat is an incentive to come up with new great clues for those words.
- Discovering new great clues from other players (and stealing them to add to your own clue pool).
- Testing new clues. When you come up with new clues you want to test them to see how they work. In this case you definitely want repetition in words.
Because players copy great clues from each other, no clue is safe from clashing after some time, so this is a never ending process.

Another way to have fun is finding challenging pairs of clues for 3p and 4p games. The primary goal here is not to find the "optimal" clues to make the mystery word obvious (as above), but to give the guesser the right ammount of challenge. These clues should not be too obscure (after all, the guesser should be able to guess), but just have the right level of difficulty so the guesser has to sweat the guess. This works great with other experienced players because giving two clues allows for many interesting meta-clues.

On the other hand, if the word pool was too large, I think the following things would be observed:
- Clue givers would almost always have to improvise their clues because each word would be a new word.
That would mean either
a) Less quality clues, so guessing would be harder or there would be more clashes.
b) More time thinking / looking for a good clue, so games would take longer.
- Guessers would be less sure of their guessing because the same clues could apply to several potential mystery words.
That would mean
a) More skipping.
b) More misguessing.
c) More potential arguments about whether the guess should be accepted or not because it's not exactly the mystery word.
Which would also mean less elo awarded per game on average. A 13 point game would be harder to achieve (this in itself would perhaps not be a bad thing).
- Not much fun at
a) Collecting clues.
b) Coming up with new clues.
c) Testing new clues.
As you might not play ever again with those mystery words.

Some people even suggest to have an "unlimited" (infinite) word pool by searching words on the Internet every time. I think that would be a bad idea because it would aggravate the above. Plus, if dictionaries were used to get the words, it would mean many odd words would be brought to the game, as dictionaries are full or archaisms, rare words, etc. But not using dictionaries would mean many incorrect or made-up words would be brought to the game. In any these cases, a way to replace a proposed mystery word by the game would probably have to be implemented.

For these reasons I don't favor a large pool of words. The game could still have some more words, but I'm afraid that might not satisfy those players complaining of repetitions, because to avoid repetitions altogether, the pool would have to be quite large, and then the problems I mentioned above would manifest themselves.
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mindbird
Posts: 6
Joined: 04 March 2018, 22:16

Re: Having fun with a limited word pool

Post by mindbird »

Good thinking, but I do feel an increase to 2000 words would work as well or better..
Hagardunor
Posts: 174
Joined: 16 April 2020, 20:59

Re: Having fun with a limited word pool

Post by Hagardunor »

Keeping low numbers of words to guess drives the game to its fatal fate.

look at this : https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28148
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