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Spoilers through Game Four On our biweekly schedule we just completed game four. And so far, we've scored at least one milestone every single game. In fact the fourth game was the first time we didn't wipe the board of milestones. I won this round because I managed to score the "sell 30 gold of goods in one action" milestone which isn't as hard as it sounds. Get a Marketplace (or get lucky with the right event) to get a bonus on how much you sell goods for, get one of the +2 Sell advisers, acquire four goods. Take them home and sell 'em. There are a bunch of +2 Sell advisers floating around the deck now, so it was a pretty easy score. Similarly, three of the five players now have a colony each so I'd be shocked if someone didn't get the Have Three Active Colonies milestone by next game. For that matter, once someone gets a second colony the "Have Five Buildings" milestone could fall in the same game. Meanwhile, the two players who don't have colones have been buffing their exploration and I'd expect one or both of the exploration milestones to go in the next couple of games as well. In short, we've made progress in every game so far. Granted, we're less than a third of the way through the full game, but if it continues at this pace with every game being at least a little different than the one before it? I think we'll be well satisfied. FISHMANPET posted:Also it's entirely possible that we missed huge parts of the story by skipping so much but I have no regrets. Three games in and I just didn't care at all what was going on. The writing was really bad. Whatever story was there, it was just too much. We played once a week which is probably on the fast side as far as things go and I felt like there was just too much stuff to remember from week to week. You don't know what's important and what's fluff. Maybe if you sat down with a case of red bull and blitzed through the whole thing in 48 hours with no naps you'd see something develop but this just isn't the place for nuanced story telling. When you don't know what order it's going to come out, you have to beat your players over the head with it. And between that and all the finicky little secret rules that are only in the captains booke, it's just too much mental work for so very little pay off. I think I see the problem. Seafall isn't a story game. It's an economic/exploration game that has a story in it. If, as in my group, you enjoy the base game, then the story is just a little frosting on top of what we already enjoy. If, on the other hand, you don't care for the base cake and only want the frosting, you're not going to go away particularly fulfilled.
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Jan 19, 2017 05:24
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Every action you take tries to infuse itself with story though. I mean, if you're playing this as an exploration game you're going to be shocked when you get to the ending. This is a story game.
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Jan 19, 2017 05:26
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That's a pity. Sounds like it lacked focus.
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Jan 19, 2017 07:00
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It really isn't. When I take my turn, what am I thinking about? is it, "I've got to investigate the the silver statue. I can't wait to unearth the secrets of the ancients! Man, I hope the crew of the Sakura can make it through the whirlpool, I'd be gutted if those brave explorers perished!" No. What I'm thinking is "Well, I've got Amelia the Noble available in my council room. I can use her now to get a +7 to Tax, end my turn on Ronin Island, buy that ancient statue for two VP thanks to the Treasure Room bonus I got two games ago to start my next turn, hire the Merchant's Guild, do the Sell action back home to earn some more cash, then do a Buy as my second action to clean Ronin out of the Iron I need to found a colony on Tanto Island the turn after that." The fact that there was a little paragraph I read aloud that described the opulence of my throne room when I acquired that Treasure Room bonus doesn't make it a story game. The gameplay actions I take to reveal the story are what make it an economic/exploration game. To put it another way, you played the game, got bored because you weren't getting the story parts fast enough, and thus trashed the game to read the story without playing the game. Which, it seems to me, indicates that you wanted the story more than you wanted the base gameplay. Our group...or at least me, anyway...actually like playing the game. I like planning out the most efficient trade routes and calculating the best use for my gold income. I'm not particularly chuffed about the "big reveal" at the end of the game. I'm looking ahead to the game in two weeks and trying to figure out how to get to three colonies before the other two guys who are also in the colony founding business. Your definition may vary, probably does in fact, but to me a story game is one where the gameplay is about the story. Something like Tales of the Arabian Nights where the game mechanics are about giving you the structure and opportunity to tell a collaborative story. Like I said...the story in Seafall is the frosting layered on top of the mechanics of an economic game. You have to want to play that economic game and like it, because if you don't, you end up exactly where you are....with a pile of cards and pieces you tore apart so you could get to the story. What you did was scrape off all the frosting and licked it off the spoon, and now you're wondering what to do with the rest of the cake. My group is just eating the cake a piece at a time. 
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Jan 19, 2017 07:24
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You may be playing it that way, but when you get to the end it'll be clear that it's a story game first. But as long as you're enjoying it, that's all that matters. I think if I had a different group that was willing to play a relatively dry exploration game maybe things would go better. But I'm still left with the problem of not advancing the game is the best way to win. If you held a gun to my head I could play the game and enjoy it on some level, but there'd always be something in the back of my head saying "you could have way more fun playing a different game." And not just fun as in telling a story, but the mechanics just aren't that interesting. It's all about growing your pool of dice so you can do better at dice chucking. For the record, we opened a box after each game we'd played so we hadn't even gotten to the point where it would become a slog. It's just that the game was... boring. Mechanically and story wise.
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Jan 19, 2017 17:33
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One thing that sounds concerning is that for an economic game there should be no (or at least a minimum of) added rules that have an unclear implementation and scope. I mean, I haven't seen for myself but this thread wouldn't be the first place I read people saying "when new rule X says I now get Z for Y does that mean to resolve it like A, B or C? And does that include Q?" Has anyone else run into that kind of stuff or is it not really a problem?
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Jan 19, 2017 19:05
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Our group is on game 9 with 5 out of 6 boxes opened. This game is really an experience generator and not a competitive board game because the balance is just all over the place. Milestones are crazy powerful because they reward a large amount of points and maybe some sort of permanent bonus. Raiding and Exploring rely on too much randomness compared to Economic. The results of exploring actions vary way too much. The catch up mechanics don't work very well and once you specialize, you are pretty much set on that path. I think the late game was not tested well. Lots of rules interactions are missing and the wording for some are just vague. Box 5 Spoiler Inquisition results change rules but you don't update the rule book. The ancient cult events actually require you to run the black light through everyone's advisors to find the highest ranked member but it is not mentioned in the card or in the rules. Overall the paper napkin pitch for this game is amazing, but its really the details which the flaws show up.
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Jan 19, 2017 23:16
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Mechayahiko posted:Our group is on game 9 with 5 out of 6 boxes opened. This game is really an experience generator and not a competitive board game because the balance is just all over the place. Milestones are crazy powerful because they reward a large amount of points and maybe some sort of permanent bonus. Raiding and Exploring rely on too much randomness compared to Economic. The results of exploring actions vary way too much. The catch up mechanics don't work very well and once you specialize, you are pretty much set on that path. Yeah, it's funny you say that. I remember listening to a few episodes of 3MA when they had the designer on while he was working on the game and even back then he commented that he was having a hard time balancing the game around how he wanted it to play out.
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Jan 20, 2017 02:13
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Spotted at a local store: 
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Jan 22, 2017 19:55
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Just pile them up in the back beside the stacks of urinal pucks with Bin Laden's face on them I guess 
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Jan 22, 2017 22:02
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Kind of glad I didn't get it. Wouldn't have worked with me and my fiancee playing only, anyway
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Jan 22, 2017 22:54
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I am playing this game and have been for a while. I'm about ready to be done. We played two games last night. We normally only do one. I think I would've dropped out if the night concluded with the first game, because it's been about three weekends where we unlocked nothing, and the same thing happened there. Luckily though we had time to get a second game in, and we unlocked boxes four and five. Things are happening! Yay! We're doing a four player game and three of us have zero chance to catch the player in first, aside from us dedicating several actions to sinking his ships over and over and making the game a boring slog that would never reach the end. The catch-up mechanics fail utterly because they forget that the player who wins the game and gets a permanent upgrade almost assuredly won by completing a milestone (or two), which further gives them a permanent upgrade. The most egregious of these is probably the bonus glory for building/ship upgrades, which further propels them to front of the pack at the start of the next game. A bonus to a ship upgrade slot can potentially net them +3 glory from raiding a low-difficulty dock to get an upgrade. This is dumb. I'll be interested to see how Charterstone does. I haven't played Risk Legacy, but Seafall has me questioning how well the legacy mechanic works for competitive games.
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Jan 23, 2017 16:48
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Risk Legacy worked because the majority of the changes were to the board, not a player's situation. In Seafall there's so much happening to individual players that it would be very difficult to balance (as evidenced by the poor balance).
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Jan 23, 2017 17:56
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Off the top of my head, the things I'd change about this game (don't ask me how, I am not a game designer and I realize that it's super easy to say "take this out, I don't like it!" and another thing to actually implement it) would be: - Pretty much entirely remove all economy (buying and selling) from the game. The game's strengths are when you get to interact with the captain's book, not when you use an entire turn to buy two blocks and then another turn to sell them for a profit of 6. This is obviously easier said than done, but there are a million other pick up and deliver games that I'd rather be doing this in. - Decrease the amount of turns before winter comes to 4 or so. Increase the VP end-game mark to account for increased gold pool sizes. Advisors are fun. We get to see maybe two sets, and often we've already seen them. Alternatively, just have advisors refresh when the last one is taken or make a building that does it (not talking about the guild hall) or something. - Drastically reduce the glory reward of most milestones. The permanent upgrade is enough. - Let you do three actions standard. Or make researching a free action that costs the gold? Japanese Dating Sim fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jan 23, 2017 |
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Jan 23, 2017 18:12
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A lesson I'm getting from reading people's takes is that excitement over opening boxes & getting changes (or anticipating opening new boxes) isn't enough to carry a game long term.
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Jan 23, 2017 18:37
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Mister Sinewave posted:A lesson I'm getting from reading people's takes is that excitement over opening boxes & getting changes (or anticipating opening new boxes) isn't enough to carry a game long term. No. You have to enjoy the basic game as well. My group does and it's going great. Others don't, and they're having a less satisfactory experience.
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Jan 23, 2017 18:38
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jng2058 posted:No. You have to enjoy the basic game as well. My group does and it's going great. Others don't, and they're having a less satisfactory experience. Right. And I would argue that basic out-of-the-box Seafall is a dry pick-up-and-deliver/4X-ish game supplemented by the semi-interesting "Choose Your Own Adventure" aspects of exploring that needs additional mechanics (that are unlocked later) to be much of a game at all. But that gets to arguing over tastes and is a waste of time. I'm glad your group's liking it. I'm probably the odd man out in mine (and my distaste is pretty recent), aside from basically everyone agreeing that the catch-up balance mechanics aren't effective to counterbalance snowballing effect of the permanent upgrades.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:07
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:I'm glad your group's liking it. I'm probably the odd man out in mine (and my distaste is pretty recent), aside from basically everyone agreeing that the catch-up balance mechanics aren't effective to counterbalance snowballing effect of the permanent upgrades. So you're not that into the game, do you have to keep playing? Does the legacy thing work if players drop out?
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Jan 23, 2017 19:36
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Clanpot Shake posted:So you're not that into the game, do you have to keep playing? Does the legacy thing work if players drop out? I think they have some mechanics for players leaving (and even players joining late). I am not quite at the point to where I need to consult them, especially with the end game in sight, so I don't know what they are. Actually, here they are, from the Rulebook (which is accessible here, without spoilers): quote:Permanently removing a player So while I wouldn't recommend this to other people, I'm nonetheless wanting to finish it. Sunk-cost fallacy, ahoy!
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Jan 23, 2017 19:42
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Having now played through game six, I'm beginning to suspect our table has been fortunate in running pretty even. My victory in game six was the first time a player got a second victory. Through game five, each of the five players had a victory under his or her belt. Our scores to date are 68-66-58-58-57. Everyone's score at least one Milestones and a win bonuis/ No one's completely out of it, and the last place person should probably do pretty well in game seven since she spec'ed Exploration and the only Milestones left are two "Use the X Chart to find Y Island" types which her nation's great at and the rest of suck at. Of course both of those are Unlocks so we're expecting a new batch of Milestones as soon as one of them gets completed. So far, so good.
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Feb 17, 2017 06:40
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jng2058 posted:Having now played through game six, I'm beginning to suspect our table has been fortunate in running pretty even. My victory in game six was the first time a player got a second victory. Through game five, each of the five players had a victory under his or her belt. Our scores to date are 68-66-58-58-57. Everyone's score at least one Milestones and a win bonuis/ No one's completely out of it, and the last place person should probably do pretty well in game seven since she spec'ed Exploration and the only Milestones left are two "Use the X Chart to find Y Island" types which her nation's great at and the rest of suck at. Of course both of those are Unlocks so we're expecting a new batch of Milestones as soon as one of them gets completed. That's good to hear. Those are actually the two unlocks we both accomplished in the same game, which was... interesting. Neat stuff happens. And yeah, I'd say you guys are pretty lucky to have such an even spread, but that's good to hear. I'm guessing you guys have done a little bit of player-versus-player raiding? We've done very little, and that's probably the biggest source of our problems. Basically, we didn't really take advantage of the enmity tokens that the first-place player has to hand out by raiding him. We haven't gotten as many games in as I'd like but we're nearing the end. Maybe 4 more games? We're pretty much just playing for 2nd place now; the guy in first place can more or less passively generate 10 VP or so by activating colonies and placing buildings that he can afford without much trouble, so it's kind of a slog. But, eh. The last game was fun, most of us accomplished a lot, I discovered an island, discovered, explored, and closed a tomb, someone else did a significant milestone, and then the guy in first place won. Like I said, playing for second place. Japanese Dating Sim fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Mar 1, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 16:39
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So after playing the intro with my group. It took u's 1.5 hours. gently caress this game, the intro bored us to tears and left is feeling like we got nothing done. Moreover, it cause tons of arguments in our otherwise rarely arguing group over rules. The loving rulebook contradicts itself within 1 page constantly. Also, they really could have spent the 0.5 cents to print out useful player summaries too. We had to constantly pause to look up rules. I mean, we are a group that regularly plays 4/5 complexity games on boardgamegeek and this game was confusing. Also, potential balance problems are apparent right from the intro game. Some players get propelled into ever increasing victory while other's are doomed in the first roll. Moreover, it seems like winning just propels one even farther into victory land. Also, I don't see any reason to explore when I can just spam trade between the island 2 tiles from my base. Especially now that the Isle is full up on trade goods. I give it 1/5 to start. Looking forward to 15 weeks of this bullshit. twig1919 fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 13:25
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twig1919 posted:So after playing the intro with my group. It took u's 1.5 hours. gently caress this game, the intro bored us to tears and left is feeling like we got nothing done. Moreover, it cause tons of arguments in our otherwise rarely arguing group over rules. The loving rulebook contradicts itself within 1 page constantly. The pace of Seafall is basically a (boring) rollercoaster. The intro is the worst part. You just finished the slow, upward-moving part. It's not a wild ride from thereon, but even as someone who doesn't like the game I can say that it gets better than the intro.
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Mar 7, 2017 19:41
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Just talked to a friend of mine who is 6 games in on his campaign and he's thinking of quitting and the only reason he keeps playing what he considers a boring game is the legacy aspects and opening new boxes.
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Mar 7, 2017 22:10
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Through game seven. A different player won so two of us have two wins, three of us have one. No one's further than 7 points behind the leader. Everyone seems to still be having a good time. That is all.
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Mar 8, 2017 19:06
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The 12th (13th maybe, forget if that counts the intro) game of Seafall shall be our last. At the end of today's game, one guy said "I think we have one, maybe two more games until it's over" and another guy said "... I think you guys should play it without me, I think I'm done." I felt roughly the same, and after some discussion we decided we're going to just go through the actions we'd take, read the last few exploration entries, etc., and then play something else for our next meeting. Honestly, I think it'd be more like 3 or 4 if we were still playing competitively, as a few things more or less require some level of cooperation to happen. We've more or less done away with all pretense of competition though and are just trying to complete milestones and uncover the few remaining sites that we had left. I'm very relieved. But, I have to note that had I been playing most any game that's this long as [i]often/i] as I've played Seafall (roughly weekly), it'd have probably overstayed its welcome, too. We got our money's worth, I'd say, and I'm still not sour on Rob Daviau or legacy games in general, though I'll have a few things to watch for in the future. Japanese Dating Sim fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 00:27
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:The 12th (13th maybe, forget if that counts the intro) game of Seafall shall be our list. How do you feel about the experience as a whole? You earlier said it was like a boring roller coaster that got better as it went on, but I guess obviously the momentum wasn't enough to keep you going. Value aside, do you regret the time you spent playing it?
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Mar 13, 2017 01:56
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Sinteres posted:That's kind of sad to get so close to the end before giving up, but if it's not fun anymore, it's obviously perfectly reasonable. I feel like the bad reviews and impracticality of finding a group willing to play anything short of amazing that consistently means that I'll never play it, but I'm still reluctant to read spoilers just in case. I'm happy for the experience. The very first, intro game, is pretty bad. The next several (5,6?) games are significantly better as the game opens up and the novelty of the game and its mechanics / legacy aspects are still fresh. Things start to drag though, and, in our case, one player (the one who won a couple of games in a row early on) started to run away with things. It started to get to where whoever was about to win kinda felt bad about doing so, because fairly often it'd mean another player didn't accomplish something they were building up to for the whole game. So things tended to end on a sour note for the last several games. Anyway, short answer I'm glad we played despite it not ending well. I listed a few things I'd change, and I'd add one more big one that a friend mentioned - as opposed to the game ending when a player reaches a VP threshold, they should've made it last a set number of turns, so players can plan to accomplish things that have a lasting effect instead of racing to get VPs and possibly not affecting anything permanently and progressing the game. It'd also prevent the case of a player setting a lot of stuff up and then seeing the game end before they can do what they were working toward. That got longer than I meant it too and I'm on my phone so I'll just cut it off here. Happy to answer other questions later though. Japanese Dating Sim fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 02:51
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I haven't played it but the spoiler about the end of the intro scenario absolutely blew my mind with how lovely and frankly hostile it seemed. The setting seemed interesting and I like legacy games but I literally spoiled just that one little thing for myself and it convinced me that it just wasn't the game for me.
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Mar 13, 2017 04:39
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:Anyway, short answer I'm glad we played despite it not ending well. I listed a few things I'd change, and I'd add one more big one that a friend mentioned - as opposed to the game ending when a player reaches a VP threshold, they should've made it last a set number of turns, so players can plan to accomplish things that have a lasting effect instead of racing to get VPs and possibly not affecting anything permanently and progressing the game. It'd also prevent the case of a player setting a lot of stuff up and then seeing the game end before they can do what they were working toward. It's really too bad this game wasn't quite up to par mechanically, because it seems like something that might have been really good with a second edition. If it was just a flat out bad game that was uninteresting, it wouldn't feel as much like wasted potential, but it's frustrating when even the negative reviews have a big 'but it's so cool when you find out what all the hidden stuff is!' caveat. By the way, the game's half off on CSI if anyone's still interested in buying it. I wish I could justify it, but I feel pretty confident it wouldn't be played.
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Mar 13, 2017 05:06
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food court bailiff posted:I haven't played it but the spoiler about the end of the intro scenario absolutely blew my mind with how lovely and frankly hostile it seemed. The setting seemed interesting and I like legacy games but I literally spoiled just that one little thing for myself and it convinced me that it just wasn't the game for me. Our group thought it was pretty great! Oh man we are gonna destroy so many things in this game because Legacy! WAIT, NOT THAT Frankly I'm surprised at the person that hated it but is still committing to do the entire thing, like, no game is worth the time/effort if you don't like it! Walk away!
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Mar 13, 2017 16:06
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I'd forgotten about the dumb intro, and thinking more about it, I have no idea what the point of that was. Seafall is not a game of destroying things so it's just an opening gently caress you that serves no other purpose.
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Mar 13, 2017 18:45
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FISHMANPET posted:I'd forgotten about the dumb intro, and thinking more about it, I have no idea what the point of that was. Seafall is not a game of destroying things so it's just an opening gently caress you that serves no other purpose. That's thus far the only Legacy instruction we've completely ignored. I get that they were trying to make a statement with it, but even aside from the statement being misleading, "you never get to play your first choice character ever again, haha" is a dumb statement to make, especially when there's no mechanical reason for it and it's pretty easy to destroy pretty much all the women/POC the first time around if your group is so inclined.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:43
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Deathlove posted:
Unfortunately, the way it works with my group is that we usually put up with games even if we don't like then. We all have slightly different preferences and there is no reason to get bent over not liking a game because sometimes you'll want to play a game that other people won't like. It's not going to be problem however because after the first actual game the apparent lack of balance means my group is going to quit within 2-3 weeks. I'm going to be updating my thread with the game by game, but holy gently caress is this game not even remotely balanced. 2.5 hour game that was determimed in turn 1 when the first two players completed milestones before anyone else even got a turn and were so far ahead that the game was over.
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Mar 18, 2017 15:29
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my group got to game 5 before giving up - i really liked the game because it clicked with me (and consequently i had all the victories, most milestones and most of the upgrades) but the other three people were checking out by about half way in. i think the prologue does a kind of poo poo job of explaining a complex game because at least one of the other players is a Good Smart Gamer and he even struggled to focus
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Apr 6, 2017 10:17
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So 5-6 games in my group has rage quit. I am at least 30 points ahead of second place. I decided that gently caress this game, I'm exploring is my strategy. Then I lucked into some free upgrades to research and exploring. I broke the game over my knee because the other players were trying to build colonies. Anytime they were close, I would go explore a far away island and end the game on points. When we finally advanced the plot I unlocked the two plot options to automatically win the game beforr the first winter. When the kraken island revealed that I would be affected literally 0 by it, while everyone else got tons of enmity. They rage quit. gently caress this piece of poo poo. Iy got the ending it deserved.
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May 19, 2017 18:04
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Heh. Thanks for the update.
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May 19, 2017 19:16
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So we're almost at the end after game sixteen. Last night I found the Island at the End of the World and now we know the next game will be the last. Our table was pretty even through much of the game, but I personally started to pull away at the end. Granted I was still only 15 points up over second place at the start of last night's game, but I'd been in first place for several games in a row, while second through fourth fluctuated wildly. Sadly, the player in fifth place had been stuck there for ages and had gone into "well I'm just gonna gently caress around now" mode. I'm way ahead now because of the bonus I got, and indeed I'm the Empress so I kind of don't think VP matter much anymore. In any case, there's been a ton of drama and player combat, especially in regards to grabbing the tablets and advisers needed to do what I just did. Pretty exciting, save for our fifth place Lord who's kind of been spinning her wheels for a few weeks. I'll give a final report when we finish the game next time, but for now 4/5 of our table is still have fun, and the last player keeps showing up so it's probably not TOO bad for her. I hope.
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Jul 13, 2017 00:59
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