Board Game Arena

CB Droege wrote: ↑21 July 2020, 12:54
I wasn't complaining. I was observing, but you are continuing with the assumption that playing is only about winning. In fact, you say it in your post, but that's not true. Some people play to play. And yes, you should always try to win, but many games have multiple different ways that you can try to win, different strategies you can employ, which are better for different situations, and some of them can def be called more aggressive than others. One way to win Carccassonne is to block and attack, but you could also just build better, bigger stuff, with a minimum of blocking.

Even the examples you gave: In MtG, you CAN win by just building a huge realm full of creatures and life-giving bonuses, and just defend yourself while you gain life and wear your opponent out. Does it work as often? Maybe not, but it's still a valid way to play the game. and I'm certain there are similar examples in Chess, but I admit I know almost nothing about chess at higher levels than just "I know the rules and can technically play a game" (Probably because I find the game too aggressive in general :O )

And to your "then why would you play?" question: Well, I usually don't play two-player Carcassonne because it usually ends up so aggressive, I play another game or I play with more players, where it gets less 'attacky'.

BUT, if I'm playing against just my partner who REALLY doesn't like having her farms stolen, and I know going in that she hates playing that way, then I will try to find another way to win, confident that she's not going to try to steal my farms either, and if I lose because I chose to try something else instead of taking the farm-stealing opportunity that surely would have won, well, that's okay, I learned more about the game, my partner had more fun, and maybe we'll play another round, which we might not have done if I had played in a way that upset her.

Yes we should always try to win. It's bad to throw games for any reason, but trying to win with a less aggressive strategy, or with a new tactic that I'm less sure about, is not the same as throwing the game, and it's totally okay.

Gaming is not always about winning at all costs, sometimes there is a balance to strike.

Sorry, I think that you misunderstood me. I absolutely don't think that playing is only about winning, I think that the process of playing games serves lots of different functions and I'm someone who will often play games primarily for the social aspect and the banter. But you're talking about Carcassonne arena league amd higher level play and saying that it's too aggressive, and I'm wondering really what else one would expect from competitive Carcassonne? The game *is* designed around the concept of there being a winner and loser and these people are doing nothing more or less than placing the tiles within the ruleset of the game in order to win it. My only advice would be that if you don't care about winning/losing Carcassonne thrn don't deliberately put yourself into a competitive arena where people are going to attempt to beat you.

Besides, it probably goes both ways. These people probably find gentle building non-attacking play rather boring and don't want to play with people who are obsessively non-aggressive. I never forget when I was introduced to Catan by a group, told the rules and instantly moved the robber onto someone else's hex, only to be told 'we' don't play like that. I said that it was in the rules to do it, got frowned upon and everyone refused to trade with me and I lost the game. Actually this happens a lot when I p!ay Catan - whoch I don't anymore - simply because I refuse to play passively and allow people to imp!ement nicey house rules that, to me, neuter the point of one of the game's central mechanisms.

I think the same is true of Carc (although I'm a beginner at the game in a non-casual sense). If you play it overtly passively, let one person build their stuff in peace etc. then you're not really playing anything more interesting than clock patience, just drawing tiles to see what comes out. The game allows for you to block someone else's scoring opportunities because that's how you get ahead and influence the outcome of the game. That's far less boring to me personally.

But genuinely I think you should play games as you enjoy playing them, that's what they are about, and if winning isn't important then don't try and win and play people who don't want yo win either! I just took issue a little with the idea that carc isn't fun or these people aren't fun for trying to win a game designed to be played to win. Personally I enjoy friendly competition rather than just seeing what tiles come out when I shuffle them.

NB sorry I typed this on my tablet and think I quoted the wrong text..

frogstar_A wrote: ↑21 July 2020, 16:17

juss100 wrote: ↑21 July 2020, 07:55 You should play a game how you want to play it, of course, but I find it somewhat odd that someone would complain that a two player game designed around the idea of friendly competition is aggressive. Can you imagine at Chess tournaments 'Director, I'd like to complain about poor sportsmanship, this man keeps trying to take my King, when I'm more into making pretty patterns with my pawns?' Or Magic the Gathering 'Can someone stop this woman attacking me when I'm perfectly happy building up my own menagerie of lands and creatures'

What spoiled my enjoyment of the game is that once all my meeples are blocked in I can't really do anything - I just have to sit and watch my opponent play for the rest of the game. This is what happened to me, and why I ended up just conceded because it was boring.

You weren't playing correctly. Why not look at the game and take the time to figure out what you did wrong? How you could have defended your position, attacked your opponent, or preserved your meeples better? For me these are far more interesting tactical decisions than "Oh I've got a city piece, shall I add it to that city I started building 10 turns ago and make it bigger?" It's more fun pondering why I lost and what my opponent did will than just laying tiles as they draw out of the bag.

frogstar_A wrote: ↑21 July 2020, 16:17 There is no analogy in Chess, because there is nothing the opponent can do to stop me actually moving pieces on my turn.

Every move in Chess is about hindering your opponent's position and limiting their movement options. It's about finding strategic and tactical advantages over your opponent. Not that dissimilar to me ... and it's a better game for it and the most popular of all games for a reason i.e there's so much to think about and such a wealth of interesting strategic positions that can occur.

frogstar_A wrote: ↑21 July 2020, 16:17The analogy in MtG would be a land destruction deck that just focuses on destroying all my lands so I can't play anything. In the rules, but not much fun to play against.

MtG was the first game to spring to mind that gets its lifeblood from aggressive play. I have lots of problems with CCGs but that's for another day...

frogstar_A wrote: ↑21 July 2020, 16:17My takeaway from this is just to play 3-4 player games where blocking is less likely to be a good strategy - only huge castles etc end up being blocked, rather than a strategy to just literally block in every meeple. I certainly never had a problem with it until I started playing Arena 2 player games.

Yeah, maybe that would work for you. I tend to struggle with the poor balancing of many 3-5 player games and in Carc I think there may be issues around people teaming up for resources to shut out other players. I do tend to play 4 player games when I care less about winning "the game" and more about nursing my beer because it's exceptionally hard to account for the actions of several other people tactically all at once. I even struggle with grand strategies like Eclipse because you just can't anticipate some things or do anything about others (playing with a couple of turtlers ... another instance where passive play kills the fun entirely. If you're on the other side of the map you can't do anything to counter them.)

And for the record, if that's what the game is about then so be it - I'm not asking people to play differently or try less hard to win - it's just that, if that genuinely is how the games play out I'll just play something else. Maybe Chess or MtG

I think the problem, maybe, is that your view of the game has changed. You thought Carc was about one thing and now you find it's a different type of game and it feels a bit sad to you ... because you want to be good at it, but in a different way. Yeah, there are so many great games on BGA alone, not all of them aggressive. Hanabi springs to mind. But arena mode competition is gonna involve people trying to win by all means I suspect, so maybe do something else. (And yes, Chess would totally reward your time!)