This is fine, but it feels like Panzer General, where you are nominally moving around panzers, but in reality solving an optimalization puzzle. That’s not what I want in this type of game. It’s a personal preference I guess.
I actually can’t stand Panzer General type puzzle/strategy games, so I don’t agree that this is what this is, but I guess I don’t know how to explain it better, either.
Yeah - I don’t get it either. Forces me to be tactical early - do I go for the loot? Do I wait to open the door? If I open the door will I have enough left? And I’m not usually down to just weak cards at the end - those are often the first ones discarded.
For me the exhaustion mechanic feels like it reinforces the theme, as well as offering interesting resource management decisions.
We haven’t failed any scenarios so far, but it has been close some times. We frequently comment how the difficulty feels very tightly balanced.
I’ve read a few quotes from the developer that his goal was never to make the game so hard scenarios cannot be beaten (this is also why you keep gold/xp when you lose) but rather that it feels like it was a close call and everyone feels empowered when they complete a scenario. I think in the scenarios we’ve played, he’s nailed it.
I still think playing this game solo is a bad idea. You need everyone coming up with suggestions and strategy every turn, one person doing all the thinking by himself (let alone all the set up and) is going to struggle (at least if it was me he would). I also feel like the story beats, the various paths the tale can take and the choices of where and what to do next, are amazing conversation pieces to have around the gaming table that you lose out on if you are solo-gaming.
Actually, the more I think of it, the more I think this is a terrible game to play solitaire style.
I play it solo, and was thinking about this the other day. I don’t have any problem with the gameplay, but my main problem is the setup and take down, which gets amplified when I lose a scenario. It’s almost like I need a dedicated room where I can just keep the whole thing out all the time. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible with two young kids rampaging around the house.
I can see the appeal of playing with others - but I don’t even understand how someone would have a dedicated enough gaming group to play 50 - 90 scenarios together. I’ve got a group that I see 3 times a year, there is no way we will ever get this out in that context. It boggles my mind that anyone can actually complete the whole thing with a group.
Definitely. Some of the City/Road events that trigger on having specific classes present really add to the experience. In addition, it seems like a lot of them fit together over time to tell parts of a larger story.
I doubt people actually are. I think Gloomhaven is a lot like a lot of videogames. When you look at the stats, you’ll find a lot of people own it, but probably very few people actually play it through to completion, do the optional content, etc.
Hell, isn’t there some stat about games on Steam, how a surprisingly large number of purchased games aren’t even played?
Perfect thanks
Can you point me to a scenario where the successive rooms don’t have increasingly powerful monsters? I don’t mind spoilers. Based on the four or five times I’ve played, and a look at the random scenario generator, that’s exactly the pattern. Weaker monsters up front, some badass baddie McBadAss with a couple of elites waiting in the rear. But if you “can’t disagree with me more”, what am I missing or getting wrong?
Well, sure. How is this not true of most boardgames? I love that sort of thing.
Oh, please. How is having to burn the cards for powerful abilities not “getting weaker”? That’s fine if you don’t mind the dynamic, but it’s disingenuous to characterize it as not getting weaker. Don’t even.
Yeah, that’s my experience with the scenarios as well. How can you figure out the key to the lock the scenario presents. To be fair, I presume each character is a different type of key, and as they level up, the solutions can be more varied. But the early going is really rough if you don’t enjoy tedious Mage Knight style puzzle management where simply stepping into the next space drains the same resource as casting a fireball. Ugh.
You know, this is a great point. I think if I had more of a sense that Gloomhaven was a horror game – which I presume from the title is what Isaac was going for – I’d be more keen to the idea of exhaustion in the same way I’m fine with investigators losing sanity in a Lovecraft game. But early on, it just feels like generic elf wizard dungeon magic wand enchanted dagger yadda yadda yadda. To me, that’s the stuff of power fantasies, not depleting strength.
Which, by the way, is one of the things that attracts me to Kingdom Death: Monsters. It’s based on horrible things killing your dudes, and the persistence is in the settlement more than the individual characters. The dark artwork, freaky miniatures, and even the big empty (early on) board all say “horror” to me, and my dudes don’t even get so tired they fall over! :)
Dig:
https://twitter.com/Qt3/status/968612684064157696
I cannot tell you how flummoxed I am when you guys keep saying this. WHAT AM I DONIG WRONGG??!?!?!???O&(&(^**%(
This is true of soooo many solitaire games. Spirit Island, Unicornus Knights, Dawn of the Zeds, Pandemic Legacy, and now Kingdom Death: Monsters all want to occupy the table for an extended period of time because the set-up and tear-down is so involved. It’s like having to wait a half hour for a game to load into your computer before you play it, and I’m too lazy to get up and swap out a disc in the PS4. Furthermore, if you’re having to share a table with other people in the house – I’m lucky enough to have a dedicated table for solitaire gaming – I can imagine how frustrating that must be.
I love that stuff, which along with the progressing character dynamics feels like an aspect of the legacy game. Although I guess “campaign game” would be a more accurate way to put it. I suppose “legacy” implies ripping up cards, marking boards, and using stickers.
-Tom
I mean, yes, when you play a loss action, you have removed that particular powerful option from your set of options. But they aren’t the primary arrows in your quiver. Turn to turn, you’re meant to be running the actions that don’t lose you cards, and moreover, when you rest you’re meant to be dumping the card that least contributes to your survival going forwards. So like I say, your options are shrinking, but your overall power level mostly isn’t. Loss actions are the big guns you break out to seal the deal, or to put a desperate situation back on track, and once you’ve popped them they’ve served their purpose already. Mostly, you don’t want to use them until the late game because doing so early in the game not only costs you the option of using it later when you may need it more, but it also costs you several turns on your clock in a way it really doesn’t when you’re finishing things out.
I wish we knew. It’s hard to tell from your complaints other than maybe you’re spending loss actions too readily? And even then it’s hard to tell if you’re actually doing that or just don’t like them conceptually. I will say, if you’re running a Spellweaver, that is probably the single worst class for someone who doesn’t like the loss/exhaustion mechanics. Most other classes have significantly fewer loss actions (the one I’m playing currently has almost none and I rarely take the tiny handful that it does) since they’re not expected to be able to recover them reliably, and rely much less on using them to pull their weight.
Okay, here are some examples for a 3-player game, which is my only real experience.
Scenario 1 has three rooms.
Room 1 - 6 normal guards
Room 2 - 2 normal archers and 1 elite archer and one elite guard (4 total figures)
Room 3 - 1 normal skeleton, 1 elite skeleton, 1 normal archer, 1 elite archer (4 total figures)
Scenario 4 (another Kill All Enemies scenario) has 4 rooms.
Room 1 - 2 normal guards, 2 elite skeletons
Room 2 - 3 normal cultists, 3 normal archers
Room 3 - Optional room, has 1 elite earth demon and 1 normal elite demon
Room 4 - 1 normal wind demon, 1 elite wind demon, 2 normal cultists (just 4 figures in this last room)
It’s important to note that while some enemies may be more or less challenging for some party configurations, no one enemy “type” is more powerful than another. Just because you suddenly face two Earth Demon’s doesn’t mean anything - every enemy is on the same level, which is your average party level divided by 2 and rounded up, so if everyone is at level 1 still here, the enemies are as well and you can play them at level 0 for a slightly reduced reward, as well.
I could go on, but honestly I’d rather not, this took up valuable Into the Breach time. If you don’t believe me there isn’t really more I can say or do to sway you, nor do I have any interest in doing so - your opinions and experiences are yours alone, of course, and I respect them. I do disagree with your overall assessment, like I said, even if I can’t help you pinpoint what you might be doing wrong.
That said, I’m sure you aren’t forgetting any (or at least many) of the rules, but there is a lot going on and when I played a few games on my own, it was just about impossible to remember all the little ass-saving rules on my own. I don’t know how many times one of us thought a situation impossible only to have someone else remind the table of a rule or an item they hadn’t used yet.
“I can’t get there in time to help…”
“You haven’t used your boots of striding yet.”
“Oh, shit, right, okay this will be easy then, hang on.”
I’ve said it before, but playing with a group (when that’s possible, I know it isn’t always of course) is a lot of fun and I don’t think I could have completed most of what I have done by myself, nor had half as much enjoyment as I am having neither. This is an experience you want to share with good friends and family.
I’ve often found the first room most challenging (especially the infamous room in scenario 1), because you’re spawning in a fixed position surrounded by monsters who are all already present and often within arms reach, whereas later rooms you have a lot more control over positioning. But it’s true that a lot of the scenarios have more elites and/or some sort of special enemy or boss in the late part.
I guess I don’t understand why you have a problem with it if you agree that the card loss mechanic is a resource problem and you like solving them. Just because you’re getting ‘weaker’? I just don’t get the hangup.
My wife and I have lost 2 out of the 5 we played, then won them on the 2nd try - so you’re not completely alone when it comes to losses.
Please continue to explain to me how to play the game. Insert eyerolly emoticon.
For the record, I know what I’m doing wrong: playing at the “default” difficulty level. That sure does bode well for whatever tuning to expect later in the game.
Wha…? You couldn’t be more wrong. Look through the AI decks. Check out how the creature cards scale by introducing new attributes. That stuff just gets more pronounced as the creatures get more powerful. You think a wind elemental isn’t more challenging than a bandit? Hoo boy.
I’m going to stand by my initial observation. By piling elites and more powerful enemies like earth/wind demons in the later rooms, the monsters definitely get more powerful while you get weaker. It’s the core structure of the game design. Just look at the template for random dungeons if you don’t believe me. Are you telling me rooms 1, 2, and 3 aren’t stocked with progressively more challenging enemies? This is like malkav arguing that you don’t get weaker as you go. Seems like you guys are weirdly invested in disagreeing with basic observations about the game because they’re made by a guy who’s not digging the game.
But thanks for at least trying to explain yourself instead of just posting a funny gif. And I trust you’re enjoying the power curve in Into the Breach. Hmm, my characters and mechs get more powerful as I play. You’d think there’s a reason so many games do that… :)
We prefer playing games that aren’t designed for solitaire play.
Gotcha! :)
Then you’re dumber than I am! The first room is easy because the monsters aren’t as powerful and you have every single card at your disposal, regardless of how you use it. Every. Single. Card. There will be no room like that later in the game.
Battlefield Earth is a movie and I like movies. That doesn’t mean Battlefield Earth is a movie I like. You know what else is a resource problem? Mage Knight. Agricola. Power Grid. I don’t automatically like those games either.
I gave a detailed explanation of my issues with the game and reducing them all down to “maybe you don’t like resource management” is pretty facile.
-Tom
Your taking what I thought was a discussion and making it seem like an argument. I’m not going to argue with you. I was never trying to change your mind, but you asked and I answered. I’m sorry Gloomhaven isn’t the game for you, and I wish you could enjoy it like my friends and I have been.
I’m not sure I get some of the issues with exhausting cards. I mean, that’s still a staple of so many CRPGs even now. You get stuck in a dungeon and you’re unable to rest and your priest or mage is basically tapped on spells, and your frontline melee characters are low on endurance and really can’t/shouldn’t be just jumping into the middle of a fight and drawing all the aggro.
I mean, that’s how it feels to me when I play Gloomhaven.
Yeah, tell me again how easy that first room in scenario 1 is. There’s nothing that hard in the rest of the scenario.
Number of monsters and your position relative to them, especially if they get to act before you do, are frequently (though not exclusively) more important than whether they’re a putatively harder type than the thing in the next room. And you may have access to all your cards, but you’re much less free to cut loose than towards the end of the game when those enemies going down will win you the scenario. Nor does that extra breadth of options make it meaningfully easier to deal with those enemies than when you’re down to a tight selection of your best cards.
@tomchick, I don’t think I disagree with the points you posted
- you certainly don’t stay as strong in the end as the beginning since you are literally losing access to some of your tools.
- I agree that in the small amount that I’ve played, the monsters are tougher at the end.
I guess I don’t get why you keep crying that your getting weaker like it’s the worst thing ever. I mean, to each his own but to put so much weight into that one thing … I don’t get it. Obviously it’s your opinion and it’s how you feel, so I’m not going to try and tell you you’re wrong. Like @triggercut said, exhausting cards really isn’t unique to Gloomhaven.
Also, why are you being a prick to @malkav11 just because you think what he says is incorrect? I haven’t seen him give you any attitude. He explained something to you that you already knew.
“Please continue to explain to me how to play the game. Insert eyerolly emoticon.”
“You love a game where you get weaker and weaker until you can’t bend over to pick up a penny or walk down a hallway to open a door? Welp, okay. I guess it takes all kinds.”
It’s like when you get into debate mode you gotta belittle people. Granted it is pretty tame, but can’t you make your point without doing it? I thought that was part of the expected behavior on the forum.