Mechanics to avoid

What? The opposite is true, at least if you are going by rule of thumb (I wouldn't dare qualify such a statement absolutely).

If you are playing a strategic game with an element of chance at some base level, then you still have the non-random state information of the larger parts of the problem to work with. In other words, you use dice or what not to randomize the individual battles somewhat, but otherwise the units are where they are at, they have their mechanics fixed even if those mechanics are chained to dice-generated variances, the board areas, whether they are geographical abstractions or not, are generally fixed, and typically you know what the end goal is, etc..

So the only major luck involved is on the dice, really, assuming your opponent doesn't make too many random mistakes. A skilled player will be able to optimize his battles and this reduces the effect of luck, to the point where good luck helps him but he would win anyhow, and bad luck is mitigated through careful play.

A bad player, on the other hand, is ruined by 'bad' luck, which they have more of because they cannot optimize their battles, and may or may not capitalize on good luck, either squandering the margin, or just getting dumb lucky again. In general, it doesn't work out for them as well.

In either case, luck is dominated by skill because skill gets you stabilization of the higher level game states. It is skill which eventually avalanches, so that no amount of luck will help a losing player, at which point they simply concede the game and leave you hanging with a hollow victory.

So that is the key issue of balance for most strategy games. If you make it mostly pure skill (which hard core people like), then you need to play at conventions or something if you are very good because eventually your friends just get tired of losing all the time. If you put too much randomization into it, the game turns into a crap-shoot and your player base is turned off because most people play war simulation board games so they can play at solving puzzles and test their skill against the opponent(s) at the same time.

Right now I am playing around with some different mechanics to get a subjectively optimal feel that would make me happy. I want a game that requires a fair amount of skill and optimization, but which has some new twists on randomization at various heierarchies of the state information, so that is harder to dominate the puzzle through careful play. The randomization shouldn't make your skill arbitrary, however, and it should be fun no matter what. I am also employing varying degrees of hidden information, so that nobody can be entirely sure if another player is winning or losing simply by looking at the visible state information, but will have a fairly good idea of how they are doing.

In the end, I want a wargame where a highly skilled player can still be knocked out of play when the odds would appear to be with him, and where it is rare to just quit because you can simply see that you can never win. It shouldnt be too often, but enough that players know they still might have a chance. It should keep a skilled player on his toes, and more than anything, it should be fun to play.

Im getting closer. Ive been dreaming of this game for years.

Any end-game mechanic that doesn't guarantee an end in reasonable time. Munchkin comes to mind as a game that is broken but could be fixed with a simple tweak (e.g. the game ends the first time the deck runs out of cards).

My WIP has player elimination and while this is sometime "scenario"-based, you can forge your own alliances with another player and turn the table against two (2) other players. So the game may start out as being "every man for himself" and can be transformed into "2 vs. 2" game.

The key point I want to make is that knocking-out ONE (1) opponent will tip the tide (because it will become 1 vs. 2) and that will mean a quicker way of disposing of the opponent. You can even play a variant 2 vs. 2 where the FIRST player eliminated from the game results in the opposing team being the victors.

Never the less, Player elimination is an aspect of the game - that A> Requires you to think about MORE than just yourself B> Realize that just because you are stronger - doesn't mean you will win the game, especially if two (2) players join forces to take you down.

Cheers.

With player elimination it might be interesting if it still allows the defeated to affect the game.

Like return as a ghost or something, unable to win the game but able to mess with players still in the game. Nothing too big, but just enough to satisfy the defeated player.

i use player elimination in Knossus in the way you (Willem) describe
The game is essentially a balance of "do I spend my time getting ahead or stopping my opponent getting ahead". Theres two key elements I wanted to use:

Communal lives - you respawn until these are used up, giving a finite end to the game

When eliminated you can only stop your opponents - so the game gets harder and ends faster if multiple eliminated.

This thread has me wondering if a minor rules tweak in the "standard" win conditions of The Singularity Trap would make sense.

Currently a winning faction (single player only if 1-3 players, can be 2 players in a 4-5 player game, can be 3 players in a 6 player game) has to declare with 25 or more of the 37 planets and hang onto that number for 2 full turns.

Since alliances can shift and overlap actual player elimination (as opposed to being reduced to a couple of planets) is unusual to the point of not coming up yet.

But, now I wonder if I should specify/recommend whether beginning number of players OR current number of players determines number of players that can form a winning faction vs leaving it as an open question for "house rules".

Are you suggesting that game mechanics should accurately model a real situation? What's inherently wrong with worker placement and deck building?

Ask 100 designers what mechanics should be avoided and you'll end up with every mechanic ever implemented.

Same goes if you ask 100 gamers.

Everyone has their opinions, and every.single.one.of.them is right because opinions are just that .. personal opinion.

Let's take for example a thread I was JUST following on Facebook regarding using Dice for combat in a wargame;
The opinion was split 50/50 on whether or not pure luck/dice rolling is good or bad. There are those who hate, hate, hate dice rolling, then there are those who love it to no ends.

Implement whatever mechanics best serve your game and implement them in a way that they work together in a cohesive manner that makes the game enjoyable to your specific target audience. You can't please everyone.

Unenforceable rules.

Well, perhaps because as designers we design for other people, not for ourselves?

As are games with dice. That's not a reason to stop using dice rolling as a mechanism, if it fits your game.

What I meant was any commonly used dice-based mechanism, like for example combat resolution with target number.
It doesn't change my point. There's an infinite number of games and finite number of mechanisms.
How many times a particular mechanism has been used in other designs has no impact on the quality of a game whatsoever. What does have impact is the specific implementation of a mechanism and how it fits into your game.

Let's not go into arguing about terminology.
I've explained what I meant more clearly above.

Because "Player elimination" is such a controversial mechanic, we've created more than one (1) scenario players can play. So there is a possibility to play until one player reaches the Victory Goal - versus other scenarios where "Player elimination" is the "core" of the scenario.

By offering BOTH, we feel that we're offering the game to a wider audience. While a Victory Goal game might take 45-60 minutes to complete, a last player standing scenario could take upwards of 120 minutes (30 minutes per player).

The other aspect is that although elimination occurs (in some scenarios), it doesn't mean that the time eliminating players is more than 30 minutes. In other words, what this means is that it could take 30 minutes from when the 1st player is eliminated to declaring the Victor of the game.

So it's not so unreasonable (in terms of time). If a player plays 75% of the game and misses out on the last 25% ... it doesn't seem too bad. In terms of time this amounts to 30 minutes (out of 2 hours)...