Okay, here are last week’s notes on the game:
- Players felt that the world map was too big for what was trying to be done, they suggested axing several of the territories (About half) to funnel players together.
- Several players wanted to try where the Money rating didn’t affect rolls, but was instead (Money Rating * 100) is the amount of money you got, this I disagreed with after testing it for several rounds as money began to pour in too quickly.
- Combat needs to be reworked, I suppose, as at one point I toppled Mike’s Empire across the Asian subcontinent in only a few turns, and a few turns after that, Jo destroyed my Empire and bank system in one turn as well.
- Buildings need a rework in defense, Mike lost his Forward Base (And stopped playing) after he left it undefended. I lost my bank after Jo attacked it, although I had one defender.
- Length of play and effort to destroy enemy HQ are skewed.
The list isn’t long, but it’s large enough to demand a massive rework on several fronts, changes:
- Reduced the map size, eliminating many of the low S/M rating areas.
- Kept dice rolls in effect for gaining money, it seems to work fine to be, but we’ll see if more players advice change.
- Combat, okay this one is a little fudgey on how to change, with Combat being entirely dice based, a D6 is the only real way to get through this, I guess I should implement the “Motor Pool” building’s escape rule into all minions from teh start of the game, with the Motor Pool giving a +1 or +2 to the escape rolls. This means minions have a chance (On a D12 roll of 1, 2, 3, or 4) to return to their headquarters.
- I suppose including “Defense” measures in a bank/Forward base, such as “Requirement of 1 minion in the bank/base at any one time is required.” or maybe applying three “Security guards” to any base whom receive a -1 to their rolls on defense, but only act in defense.
- It seems that simply giving players a free minion when they lose their last one isn’t enough to keep them in the fight. The requirement to build a Satellite Launch Pad in order to find the enemy’s HQ (Steep price attached), means that the game takes a lot longer than it should, with players ending the fight by simply conquering enough territories (Raking in maybe 6k at a time, as Mike did) to buy enough minions to stop all player advances. I can’t seem to think of how to fix this except for removing the Launch Pad and putting the HQ in a hidden place ON the map via cards for each territory to choose where yours is, and having players “Gather Intelligence” on a region, maybe.
05/08/2009 at 13:17 |
This game had a lot of potential. It felt like Risk mixed with Monopoly, which is a unique and interesting concept. My major beefs with this game were unnecessary complexity when it came to gaining money, a lack of feedback when it came to player progress, and the ease of a lucky player to dominate gameplay.
Mainly, you were speaking about players fighting over territories to gain the most wealth. However, when I played, there was very little PvP and few of us actually had any intentions of attacking the other players. Perhaps reducing the size of the play area would allow for more border conflicts earlier in the game.
Overall, a good start to a potentially awesome strategy board game. Keep up the good work!
05/13/2009 at 08:57 |
Tyler,
I agree with Kyle – this is a fantastic game idea! Good ideas for your modifications, too. I’d even suggest thinking back to Venture Bros. and other media that explore the nature of evil overlords and henchmen to help add color and role-play. Is there any way you can make your players feel more like they are evil geniuses?
For revisions, sometimes it might be necessary to change only a few things at a time to see how the system works. If you modify many aspects of the game, this can set the whole thing out of balance. This means playtesting can take longer, but at the same time, you can learn more from each test.
-Devin Monnens
05/13/2009 at 23:06 |
This game was really fun. I actually think I liked the original intent of the game better than the revised version. The reason I liked it better was because I thought that the idea of finding out what kind of mad scientist you are at the end was really unique.
I know that there were some kinks in the game and that you were trying to work those out in class. I really wish that I had had more time so that we could have ironed it out a bit. However! We do have all summer in which we can iron out the kinks and play test to our hearts content
Honestly, I think that you should continue working on this game because it is really unique and as Kyle said, it has a lot of potential – it just needs to be shined up!