Complexity and Luck

[RivaRain]

Harmonies is my favourite game at present. I like games with tight, elegant design that allow for complex strategy and diverse possibilities. I also love the gorgeous visual style.

I noticed that Harmonies is rated 3 in Complexity and 1 in Luck.

Firstly:

Does 'Complexity' refer to the complexity of rules and interactions, or strategic complexity? I think the latter is covered by 'Strategy'. While quite puzzly for the first few games, the rules and interactions are easy to grasp.

Secondly:

The ‘Luck’ factor in Harmonies is greater than 1 (also noted in another post). Ticket to Ride is rated as 3, and I think the amount of luck is very similar. The luck-related mechanisms themselves are actually quite similar.

The only major luck factor in TTR is whether you draw a valuable destination card and overlapping destinations at the start of the game. Harmonies involves more luck during the game (convenient tile flops or inconvenient tile droughts often decide the outcome of the game).

I think the following is an accurate rating:
Complexity 2
Strategy 5
Luck 2+
Interaction 1

[Jellby]

There is no description of what those labels mean, let alone how to assign the ratings. No one knows what the appropriate value for "Complexity" is, because no one knows what that is supposed to mean (in the BGA context), or what 0 or 5 correspond to. It's even worse in the case of "Interaction", some games seem to assume it's the level of player-to-player interaction outside the game, so to say (I believe in the French translation it's called diplomacy), as in trading or bluffing.

So my suggestion is to ignore them.

[dschingis27]

Yeah, these scales are quite random. But I agree that a luck factor 1 does not give a correct impression of the influence of randomness in this game.

I have to say that Harmonies is my favorite game at the moment, too. I love particularly that the luck influence is so decently scattered throughout the rounds of the game (one could say uniformly distributed). For the most part, the luck is accumulated slowly and lost slowly and it doesn't feel that only one single round or single events decide the entire game. (Sure enough, there are occasional 'magic draws' but they feel less frequent and less influential than in other games.)

Compare that to:
TicketToRide: The starting cards you get have a huge influence on your winning chances, also certain key routes can make or break your game.
RailroadInk: I would say 40-50% of your winning chances are determined by whether the draw in the final round of the 7 rounds fits into your setup. This can make the game feel pointless, as the big reaper is always coming at the end.

Many games have the problem that small single events have a huge influence on the entire game feel and thereby diminish the meaningfulness of the rest of the game. I can personally get quite enraged if such things happens to me. Sometimes, in other games, you really only need a very certain field (Agricola, looking at you), card, or dice roll, and if someone else takes it away from you, there is not much else for you to do. The sense of agency in Harmonies is largely due to the game state not changing much in turns of opponents. Your opponent can only take one fifth of the cards and tokens, the rest is known and you have a decently stable look into the future. In contrast to other games, the 2nd-best choices you can make and plan for, they are usually meaningful and you still have decent agency even if your opponent takes away the best card.

So yeah, the overall game feel is quite relaxed but you can still play the game very competitively. The exact mix I was looking for in a long time.