Why do people think carcassonne is a "friendly" game?

[Suoivax]

Why indeed, Carcassonne is about having fun, meaning playing by the rules. If one player has won, the other can concede, no issues there. But trying to force your opponent to not block is against the spirit of the game. It would not be advisable to have such a pathetically underhanded cheater as a friend. Blocking is no more objectively frustrating than any other part of the game.

Naturally, I use simple methods to weed out the anti-blockers from my tables and ban them from my games, which has greatly improved my experience on the site. I would encourage all users to do the same and improve the quality of their games. Cheaters have no place at the game table.

But do you really enjoy a game where you blocked your opponent at the very beginning and you know you're gonna win anyway but both of you have to pointlessly play at least till the mid of the game when your blocked opponent can concede? How this could be fun? There is no challenge for you in it. It's so boring frankly. What about situation when there are three or more players and only one of them is blocked and can't concede? You just having fun knowing one player is forced to play without any joy, just wasting his/her time? Would you play like that with your siblings or friends?

I look forward to games where my opponents are good enough players to either block me back or get around my attempts to block them.

[Ceaseless]

Why indeed, Carcassonne is about having fun, meaning playing by the rules. If one player has won, the other can concede, no issues there. But trying to force your opponent to not block is against the spirit of the game. It would not be advisable to have such a pathetically underhanded cheater as a friend. Blocking is no more objectively frustrating than any other part of the game.

Naturally, I use simple methods to weed out the anti-blockers from my tables and ban them from my games, which has greatly improved my experience on the site. I would encourage all users to do the same and improve the quality of their games. Cheaters have no place at the game table.

But do you really enjoy a game where you blocked your opponent at the very beginning and you know you're gonna win anyway but both of you have to pointlessly play at least till the mid of the game when your blocked opponent can concede? How this could be fun? There is no challenge for you in it. It's so boring frankly. What about situation when there are three or more players and only one of them is blocked and can't concede? You just having fun knowing one player is forced to play without any joy, just wasting his/her time? Would you play like that with your siblings or friends?

A rule preventing my opponent from conceding until an arbitrarily selected "midway" point is an abusive system I would never implement in a game with friends/family, though I can't do anything about bad BGA policy. Fortunately, not an issue I have to worry about since even if I use BGA to face friends/family I can also just face them in unrated so the concede button is always open.

You talk about there being no challenge in using blocking and it somehow making the game boring, which doesn't make any sense because there's nothing stopping my opponent from doing these same things back to me. If I had blocking options that were truly so obvious, then my opponent should be able to see and sidestep these issues. So cases where I can create such game-ending blocking moves are just opportunities for my opponent to go "oh derp, that was a bad idea, guess next time I should try something else ". In future games they will make moves with those lessons in mind. I'm not going to get such easy ways to shoot them down, because they'll also have tools to play around it, or counter block me, etc. That's part of the beauty of playing the game, having to find ways to safely make your moves instead of brainlessly slapping pieces around in obviously punishable ways. Blocking opens new paths of attack and defense to explore, recreating the terrain's ideas as players are forced to respect the existence of their opponent. If such techniques were truly no challenge to use we wouldn't have multiple 700 level players, because so many players would be using those techniques and preventing each player from reliably winning enough to get that high. The high rated players have to have picked up things they can use that others haven't worked out well enough yet to keep an edge over the competition.

Don't expect anything fair out of playing an interactive game with more than 2 players. That's not the way such games are generally designed, and you shouldn't expect them to be. No one player is given enough influence to properly be able to win just because they played better. If someone is coming up ahead the influence of the rest of the board pushes them down, and in some cases with luck or hidden information sometimes players get pounded by unintentional issues too. Things like player politics and variance hold much more sway than they do in 2 player. I don't know what the Carcassonne-specific details are for such a system, but that's the general case for such games. Add to that BGA's quirks and it's a headache I'm not interested in trying to sort out. You can't weed out all the problems even in a 2 player system, but the odds are much better there.

[ACBD34]

Why indeed, Carcassonne is about having fun, meaning playing by the rules. If one player has won, the other can concede, no issues there. But trying to force your opponent to not block is against the spirit of the game. It would not be advisable to have such a pathetically underhanded cheater as a friend. Blocking is no more objectively frustrating than any other part of the game.

Naturally, I use simple methods to weed out the anti-blockers from my tables and ban them from my games, which has greatly improved my experience on the site. I would encourage all users to do the same and improve the quality of their games. Cheaters have no place at the game table.

But do you really enjoy a game where you blocked your opponent at the very beginning and you know you're gonna win anyway but both of you have to pointlessly play at least till the mid of the game when your blocked opponent can concede? How this could be fun? There is no challenge for you in it. It's so boring frankly. What about situation when there are three or more players and only one of them is blocked and can't concede? You just having fun knowing one player is forced to play without any joy, just wasting his/her time? Would you play like that with your siblings or friends?

If your just playing with base game than blocking is very easy to do. If you don't like blocking then play with 2 of the major expansions (3p or more), as although blocking is still tactic. You don't get players trying block as excessively.

If I go out of my way to block another players meeples it hurts me unless its either a high value cathedral or a block of opportunity. In both cases you should be playing in way that mitigates that risk. And the increased variety of tiles makes it that in half of the cases a block is really on only a delaying action. e.g. the player knows their is good chance you will get a piece but that it might trap your builder for half the game.

[aubrey209]

Why do people think Carcassonne is a friendly game?

That's the way I learned to play with the board game, and the way we still play it. We enjoy the beauty of the board and the way tiles fit together and cities form. Much of our scoring is due to luck, and it is fun for us. We have discussed aggressive play and all agree that we don't enjoy it.

So when I was provided a paid membership here, I decided to try Carcassonne. I can't understand competitive level people who prey upon new and inexperienced players. I am one of those players that some of the commenters here, call stupid and childish because of my opinions of the relentless aggressiveness. I have actually been called uneducated...

So I appreciate the few here that have expressed an understanding of players like myself. I have decided to not play Carcassonne on BGA again, unless I'm playing privately with a personal friend.

[ACBD34]

Why do people think Carcassonne is a friendly game?

That's the way I learned to play with the board game, and the way we still play it. We enjoy the beauty of the board and the way tiles fit together and cities form. Much of our scoring is due to luck, and it is fun for us. We have discussed aggressive play and all agree that we don't enjoy it.

So when I was provided a paid membership here, I decided to try Carcassonne. I can't understand competitive level people who prey upon new and inexperienced players. I am one of those players that some of the commenters here, call stupid and childish because of my opinions of the relentless aggressiveness. I have actually been called uneducated...

So I appreciate the few here that have expressed an understanding of players like myself. I have decided to not play Carcassonne on BGA again, unless I'm playing privately with a personal friend.

I think the mistake your making is that your playing base game 2p Carcassonne. That combo is rather cutthroat and if you don't try blocking the other player then you will lose.

I would suggest using the two expansions inn n cathedrals and builders.

You will probably still struggle from looking a at a few of your recent game but it might be a more enjoyable game for you.

I will give one tip, stop with speculative farmers it never pays off.

[thx3811]

You talk about there being no challenge in using blocking and it somehow making the game boring, which doesn't make any sense because there's nothing stopping my opponent from doing these same things back to me.

No, I don't, I clearly said that after blocking the other player at the beginning of the game so he/she can't participate in the game normally no more it must be boring and unchallenging for the blocker to continue the game by him/herself, not the blocking itself.

And yes, there is something that stops your opponent under your blocking attack from using the same tactic - unlike chess where both players are provided exactly the same set of pawns in Carcassonne tiles are distributed randomly, so it often happens (the sus execution of randomness in BGA code that in most of the cases favouritizes a player of higher ELO status is a topic for a separate thread) that while you get all convenient tiles to fast complete a city or road the opponent you blocked keeps on getting tiles that don't stand much chance in blocking (i.e. only roads or cloisters).

[ExaltedAngel]

No, I don't, I clearly said that after blocking the other player at the beginning of the game so he/she can't participate in the game normally no more it must be boring and unchallenging for the blocker to continue the game by him/herself, not the blocking itself.

There is no such thing as "participating in the game normally". You either play to win or not, but if you don't, you shouldn't complain if others do.

[Ceaseless]

You talk about there being no challenge in using blocking and it somehow making the game boring, which doesn't make any sense because there's nothing stopping my opponent from doing these same things back to me.

No, I don't, I clearly said that after blocking the other player at the beginning of the game so he/she can't participate in the game normally no more it must be boring and unchallenging for the blocker to continue the game by him/herself, not the blocking itself.

And yes, there is something that stops your opponent under your blocking attack from using the same tactic - unlike chess where both players are provided exactly the same set of pawns in Carcassonne tiles are distributed randomly, so it often happens (the sus execution of randomness in BGA code that in most of the cases favouritizes a player of higher ELO status is a topic for a separate thread) that while you get all convenient tiles to fast complete a city or road the opponent you blocked keeps on getting tiles that don't stand much chance in blocking (i.e. only roads or cloisters).

If one player gets a really bad pulls and gets shut down, that's unfortunate luck for them. Though a quick look at the Carcassonne ratings shows this doesn't seem to happen often overall. Variance is going to deliver better set-ups for a player some games and worse in others, averaging out to the same to everyone after enough games. Though skills gaps seem to have a greater effect on the outcome based on the results we've seen so far. Don't let you Meeples get locked out too badly and you generally draw tiles that give you options. A complete lockout seems pretty avoidable.

I see you bring up a theory that BGA is rigged for higher rated players but conveniently forgot to mention the possibility of BGA favoring low rated players. How suspicious. Actually, in light of BGA's rating updates on consecutive wins rigging the system against higher rated players on average, it would seem even more plausible for BGA to also rig their code in favor of lower rated players as well.

[CinnamonSunflower]

I clearly said that after blocking the other player at the beginning of the game so he/she can't participate in the game normally no more it must be boring and unchallenging for the blocker to continue the game by him/herself, not the blocking itself.

I have played plenty of 2p base games on Carcassonne where I had a meeple blocked early on by my opponent, but went on to win nonetheless.

I guess there was a time in my life when I would have thrown all of my toys out of the pram and stormed off, like so many people on this forum seem to do. But then I grew up.

[CinnamonSunflower]

I have actually been called uneducated...

Whilst not condoning anyone being rude on BGA, I suspect that this comment was in response to something you said yourself.

Whatever your views on blocking, using the comments field to complain about your opponent making a perfectly legal move is toxic behaviour. Period.