Board Game Arena

I propose a setting along the lines of "turn order determined after selecting tickets", perhaps "turn order determined by selecting tickets", where whoever selects their tickets first goes first, whoever selects their tickets second goes second, etc. This is in the spirit of the original rules ("the most experienced traveler goes first") in that the more skilled player would likely be able to select their tickets more quickly.

This option would reduce the role of luck. The first-mover advantage (~63% win rate in my opinion but closer to 55% according to others) would more often be in the players' hands, excluding the cases where you can't determine who actually went first (e.g. players' pick times are within 1 increment) and default to the existing approach (random tiebreak). Additionally, the power of the first-mover advantage would be dulled by the opponent having more time to select tickets (~54% win rate).

Such a setting would also increase the skill ceiling - right now, there is no difference between a player who takes 95% of their thinking time to pick their destinations and a player who can spot the best combination of destinations in a few seconds.

speedypuzzlement wrote: ↑11 December 2024, 21:31 the more skilled player would likely be able to select their tickets more quickly.

I think having a mechanism that explicitly punished those with a physical disability / impaired mobility doesn't sound great to me.

That's a fair point. Partially it is why I considered increment (17 seconds for normal, 30 seconds for slow) in resolving ties. So even if your opponent selects instantly, you have at least 17 seconds to decide.

How would this work for turn based games?

Just a really odd suggestion.

There really is not that much skill in picking your tickets fast at the start of the game.

Top players already know the best 2 tickets to keep given all the combinations, so takes a couple seconds to decide. Only thing that could slow it down is deciding to keep all 3.

So now the top players get to go first, and there is a big first player advantage. That doesn't seem too fair to start the game,

What would be interesting is if all the tickets were ranked, and the player who keeps the worst tickets gets to go first. So the game starts and you are first, then you don't know what tickets the opponent has, but you know yours are worse!