why do legacy games fail? Seafall

[@FaBCrucible]

I've finished this game twice (with two different playgroups) and planning on starting a third play-through with a different group, so I'd like to think I've got a decent grasp of the game, and my opinions are somewhat valid. First campaign, we had 5 players, and followed every single rule as written and house-ruled nothing. This caused some issues as far as the game ending too abruptly, as some players were trying to focus on unlocking more content, or achieving 'cool' milestones, while others where just focused on min-maxing everything and ending the game as quickly as possible. The reason this was a problem, is that in a game about exploring the unknown seas and figuring out what is happening, winning doesn't necessarily involve any of that (at least at first). Without getting into too much details, we had finished the entire campaign with players voicing how the game could have been great, but left us disappointed in some areas, namely how someone could just win out of nowhere, causing all the buildup the other players were doing to go to waste. The constant break from action so we could read from the Captain's Book was also a problem, as it messed with the flow of the game. Taking all I had learned from my first play-through, I felt like a great campaign could be had, with a few tweaks. First of all, don't play with 5 players (if you must, that's okay, but for me 3 seems ideal and 4 should be okay), because of the minimal interaction between players, there can be a lot of downtime for players between each of their turns. Secondly, and I find the most important house rule: Any Glory point reward, except treasures, is halved (and rounded up). This prevents players from going from being even-ish on points, to ending the game on the spot with 5+points difference. The end of the game is much more predictable, and allows all players to play accordingly, instead of players planning out the next couple of turns, only for one player to just shoot far ahead, for no good reason (this is mostly true for some milestones that are way too generous). Thirdly (and this is slightly spoiler-y), advise players to try and focus on exploring the seas and developing their own assets, and reserve combat for when it seems like the only option. The game punishes players for being too hostile in the form of enmity to warn players that combat isn't always the answer. This second campaign (with three players this time) ended much closer as far as points where concerned (less than 10 points difference between first, second and third place), and all players had finished sessions having won multiple times each. To address your concerns for the story, there are a lot of hints as to where the seafall story leads (mostly found in the milestone story parts in the Captains Book), and the story does in fact lead to what it hints at. I found the overall story servicable ,but not mind-blowing.

[@GreyWizardInsights]

So we started this 2 weeks ago, wow, we really love it so far, I'm dreading it getting disappointing, because so far, its everything we love about legacy games.

[@travissmith1303]

@@GreyWizardInsights So you put out a bad review of a game that you had no idea of how it played...? Really hoping there was a follow up after your playthrough

[@itsallfunandgames723]

This video makes a REALLY fantastic point that game designers should all hear. These decision points can lead to different outcomes, but they need to be equally interesting outcomes. It too often feels like a coin toss to see if you have an interesting game or not, and sometimes I think designers, perhaps not even intentionally, make the less rational, more wacky decision the "right" one which makes it even worse.

[@andyackerman7123]

Thank you for getting to this, for me! ;)

[@andyackerman7123]

I'd like you to do a recorded playthrough and then make edits, to shorten it.... And make a series of it ;)

[@GreyWizardInsights]

If I had an editor I’d totally do that. But I suck at shortening videos 😂 one day though I’ll find an editor and I’ll be doing a lot more boardgame plays!

[@DeathStar1995]

I'll be honest with you dude. (KIND OF SPOILERS?) Me and my playgroup have gotten through hard D&D campaigns, 3 hour games of Mtg Planechase but when My group and I was finally able to understand how everything worked(Which took about 3 hours) it still didnt keep our attention. The reason is it's a very economical game, meaning that yes your a pirate your going to attack and explore stuff but 9 times out of 10, especially after like the 3rd milestone whatever subspecialization you wanted to go for your unfortunately are going to be buying and selling materials for your entire Round. And after 7 or 8 turns in a round(i apologize i cant remember) All the gold you made, and work you put in gets reset back to your base values. It made turns strategic but frustrating because you have to plan out and waste setting up later turns rather than progressing the story, oh and when someone does that it makes it not fun for anyone else. Because the past hour or so you all have pretty much done nothing and then one person does 17 different things, gets a pat on the back and jumps ahead significantly in this games version of Doom in CW, so much so for the rest of that game you pretty much know whose going to win and that's not really fun anymore. It usually went we all start out fine, one of us spends money the wrong way in a risk/reward scenario but really doesn't pay off so they start to check out. Then another person gets the huge story boost so another player checks out, so its pretty much the guy winning and maybe one or two other people who are still trying to win but they themselves could really check out at any time, and that's no fun like you said. I dont know that was just my experiences with it and it wasn't like we played twice and stopped, we pretty much beat half of it but theres a huge gap in interest from the early game to the mid game, so significant that that's why we ultimately stopped playing but you may have better luck. I fell in love with it when we started, and so did my group, it had unique and interesting ideas that some people may not have actually thought pirates had to do. It doesn't allow you to do enough or it doesn't give you enough for the hard work you did. It you open anything open a colored player box just to get an idea of what your working with. Again you may have a different experience I just dont think that time investment is worth it with this one. (Also yes, you get hints at the beginning of the game about a great dark eldritch force, but it doesn't go anywhere after 3 of the 6 boxes were open but unfortunately I wont know the end either)

[@GreyWizardInsights]

Maybe i’ll just sell it, i really want to experience what it promises, but i dont want the heart ache of having to choose to either quit when it gets bad or push the group through past when we stop caring 😭

[@cmpruiett]

All your criticisms of Legacy games are not valid in Sea Fall. There are great new mechanic reveals all the way through.

[@GreyWizardInsights]

We are 1/3 through seafall. Excellent, though i get where people think the story narrative is building up for something amazing, but then doesn’t deliver (i hope it does, but lots of people say it doesn’t so i’m keeping my expectations low). I’d definitely kickstarter a seafall 2.0 to see where he could take it with everything he learned from this one

[@azathoz]

I can't stand legacy games. The concept itself is atrocious to me. To buy a game and ending up destroying and tossing it to the trashcan is so stupid, such a waste of resources, even from an environmental side is criminal. I have near 200 games and I don't care if I can't play all of them 20 times in my life. I just want to be able to do it if I want to, but with legacy games it's not possible, you destroyed the game and now is useless. What a moronic concept. I'll never get why so many people defend this.

[@willscurran]

Some of the top games are legacy games (Pandemic x2, and Betrayal). Click bait much?

[@GreyWizardInsights]

I love Pandemic and Betrayal! But so many others don't live up to their expectations, and Seafall is, IMO, is close to amazing but instead just isn't something people enjoy playing. At least not my group and not many other groups. I wasn't intending this as clickbait, this is me, sharing my opinion, about a topic I love (legacy games) and what frustrates me about them.

[@willscurran]

@@GreyWizardInsights OK fair. But "why do legacy games fail" ... is stating a fallacy up front to invite controversy. Pandemic Legacy Season 1 is #2 on board game geek. Seafall suffered from a bad launch surrounded by a minority of Internet Trolls. It's a great, well designed game.

[@GreyWizardInsights]

Thats where we disagree. If I read a title "Why do cooks fail", I think I'm going to read about why some cooks fail, or if I read "why do kickstarters fail", I think I'm going to read reasons why kickstarters fail. In college, I got a lot of pushback for the amount of qualifiers I would use to narrow the subtle context of my statements, and the general response was that in modern language, its better to be shorter and more concise. My title neither says "all legacy games" and it doesn't say "some legacy games", so you're absolutely right that you can read it to imply "all" and it becomes clickbait for you, where as I assume no extra words, so it just doesn't mean that for me. Heck, in the thumbnail, I even use the word "some". Why? Because the thumbnail is for humans, and the title is for the search engine where shorter titles do better. I'm definitely crafting the title in a way to get more views. I intentionally start my titles with Why or How because I've noticed that videos that start that way do better. Are they all clickbait? Or are they trying to capture some quirk in the youtube search engine, I guess its a matter of perspective. If I was trying for clickbait, I'd probably use some sexy pirate girl pleading for her life with the phrase "How Legacy Games Fail!!!" TBH, it sounds fun to make a thumbnail image like that and I have half a mind to make it just so people can be like "what the heck is Rich doing with his clickbait images" and then they can read these comments and realize what I did. ;) Seafall wasn't a great, well-designed game for my group. I enjoyed it, despite regular problems trying to figure out things that were too vague, but my group, who loves Pandemic Legacy, Charterstone, Betrayl Legacy, etc really disliked this game and quit. But its ok for you to like it, this is just my opinion, and why my group refused to finish it, many other people dislike the game too, and not because of some group of internet trolls, because for them, this game isn't good. I'd absolutely love a Seafall 2 that fixes whats wrong with Seafall 1, but I don't recommend anyone buying this game. I do appreciate the discussion and I'm not upset about it, I just disagree!