Zebra, I know you’ve been frustrated by some rules not being explained enough/at all - but I’m curious to do a quick straw poll here. My perception is that the game’s rough edges are mostly gone and that it does a decent job of explaining itself after a few plays.
I’m not trying to discount your experience here - it’s really valuable feedback, and there are absolutely issues that I’ll be addressing as I get the game ready for release! - but I’m wondering if your frustration is shared by others.
Obviously, the game is still in early access, and so will continue to improve before release. But my current plan is to not write any sort of comprehensive manual or anything, and instead rely on the game itself to teach the basics, and let the fan community take care of discovering and discussing strategies.
But if the game is simply inscrutable/opaque to players without the benefit of wikis and forums and whatnot, I’d consider that a design failure that needs to be corrected by release. The sense I have - Zebra’s experience notwithstanding - is that this is not the case, but I’d love to hear more feedback on it.
To expand on this: the campaign will, among other things, extend the existing tutorial by hilting rules and nuances. (For example, level 3 involves an introduction to the Saboteur, who’s not really explained in the first two levels.) The AI will improve - it’s currently bad at The Masquerade and The Wharf (though today’s patch will make it better at The Wharf). And the campaign will have you fighting against multiple baddie thieves (not just Lygrave), each of whom has his or her own personality/play style - the idea being that this will also help players discover potential strategies (and their counters) before going online.
All that said: online, against experienced players, will always be where you go to learn the most about the game :)
There are too many situations that pop up that would be far better assessed by me if only I had a rule book. So, it’s frustrating me far too often. Maybe I’m running into these situations and others aren’t, or very likely they just know the game much better.
Here’s one - my Gang has five health. I buy a Thug and try to get him to join the gang. Doesn’t work and I’m sitting there wondering what is wrong. Finally, I contact Tim who advises me five is max health until some other building is upgraded. No way for to know without a rules set, so I’ve wasted 3 and a tempo.
I’ll gladly play funsies but a league, no. Not without a rules set that I can digest. I completely understand the priority is to finish the game and only then to compose the rules. Fine. No problem. But if I’m going to play with blinkers on, it won’t be in a league.
That said, I love the game and will be all over it when it comes to iOS.
Yeah, there are two pieces of “missing” information in the game - information that you can figure out, but that the game doesn’t currently tell you - that are on the list to address before release. They are Gang Max Health, and the number of bribes available in a given match. (It’s currently always 3, but that could change.)
Beyond that, I believe that all other rules are directly exposed/explained in the game’s UI and tutorial…
I found that just playing led to learning all the rules pretty quickly. Yeah, there were times when learning something the hard way hurt my position in the game. Its not like there is a lot at stake, especially with the cumulative time commitment of a full game being maybe 20 minutes. By the time @belouski had run me over 10 times in a row, I had a pretty good handle on the mechanics.
@belouski and I wondered whether you had to fully evict urchins on the cargo ship to ‘reset’ the turn timer on the VP but we discovered that, indeed, you have to have two urchins there for two whole turns. That’s kind of obvious (and fair!) but we did wonder. Perhaps that’s something that could be clearer?
The other bit of information that wasn’t clear to me was the saboteur not being able to trap an estate with a guard but that’s been addressed in the latest patch so good catch.
Other than that though, I’m at a loss to identify anything else that you can’t discover through play. I mean, the three limit on bribes is going to be tricky to discover (and well done to whomever gets enough lanterns for that!) I worked out the gang max health on one of my last games against @lordkosc before the patch. I saw his gang at six health and figured I could use another thug to up mine from five but… that didn’t work so I just guessed that I’d hit the gang health limit and he’d got a Strangefellows. I placed the thug somewhere else. Not a major issue but not exactly good use of three coins either!
I’ve not been on Antihero this weekend so apologies to the invites languishing there. I’ll be back on it this week!
The current turn you can replay by exiting out of the game before you submit your turn. When you come back in, it replays their turn plus whatever you’ve done up to that point in your turn.
Agree, this isn’t ideal. I’m planning to add a “Replay Turn” button to the in-game menu that’ll perform the same function.
(I’m currently focused on single-player as we push towards a 1.0 release, so quality-of-life fixes like this probably won’t come for a little while, but it’s on the list!)
