Sure, just like most card and board games ever played. Not to mention matching games (Dungeon Raid, something you like is fighting a random number generator as well). aren't you the guy who also says its art is terrible, oh yeah ....
Forgive me, but I have not read every post in this thread. If the developer has not contributed to this thread by now, I would say now is probably a good time to take part.
The game plays quickly enough that I'm willing to put up with the randomness and I took it from the get-go that the game was more about dealing with the situation at hand. Both that and the "forced to buy" reminds me a lot about my job - yay Telecom funds... ) I'm no expert on this game, but I've played it enough to know a couple of turns in if it's really going to go strongly one way or the other. No big deal to me, a game is over quick enough. You can get a bad starting hand in Magic as well. This isn't Diplomacy, Chess or whatever. (Blokus?) For some reason, now I really wish I could play Republic of Rome on iOS... Sorry about the rant. So when's the tournament starting again? Thanks Crunc for the game this morning!
yeah, I think he forfeited at the very final turn and probably either gave up his last round or forfeited during my last round...
I don't why we are still into the "randomness" thing -- I used to win a game of Shadow Era just by having the right card shown up which sent the opponent's piece of pesky armor to the graveyard. Com'on I played MtG before too, definitely not as pro as you guys, but I cannot know exactly what would be the next card drawn all the time, right? I just have a very well educated guess on. As for the strategy(?) thing, I think many here agrees this game is more on tactics and gambits and back in these 10 pages, there have been quite a lot of discussions on that already. Read them and study the cards. I have not played the physical version and trust me, play and discuss here sure give you a very good idea that this game is not a random game. And I check, it seems there is no way you can examine enemy hand nor the discard pile. Only constructs and the "graveyard" are open to public. @crunc, your GCID, please? The only randomness of a card getting in the way is "Dungeon Solitaire", there is no way to win this thing, except by chance.
Having a game with Camzy now and I foresee that I will be pawned for this game.. I felt a sense of doom when you acquire both Master Dhartha and The All-Seeing Eye the last turn.
There are ways ...... but not at the end. You need to force C into fattening his deck in a bad way (assuming you get the cards to do that) ....
That sums it up. And this game plays very quickly (at least when not played asynch), so that it has more luck to it then, say, Dominion, is not a problem. Luck is not a bad thing at all in games, in fact it wouldn't be a game at all if it didn't have luck - it would be a puzzle (not that there's anything wrong with puzzles, just that they aren't games). The key is playing such that you improve your odds and you win more often. Speaking of which, I really don't think I like playing this game asynch too much. It drags the game out way longer then it should be. I'm finding I like the game a lot more when I jump into a random opponent game and we play it all in one go. Fortunately the game plays beautifully live, with seemingly no delays. I'd rather play people from here, though, and I'd rather play 3 or 4 player games.
There are lots of games that have no luck involved - chess, checkers, mancala, wizard hex. And there are lots of games that fall under the "puzzle" genre (many with luck involved) - tetris, bejeweled, all the hidden object games. That said I agree that luck isn't a bad thing. However, while I love this game, I do sometimes think it would be nice if I could pick a strategy for the entire game instead of playing more turn to turn. I'm still addicted though. One question - is it possible to see how many honor points a player has from his deck? The only way I've seen that available is to count them up.
There isn't a way to count up. But contrary to what you've said, I feel the fact there's no one strategy to employ makes this game fab.
I just have to say, the ability to play asynchronously means games like Carcassonne and Ascension get almost 100% of my play time (and future IAP monies), as I am far too busy to sit down and play single games from beginning to end, most days. I'm averaging about 3-4 complete games of Ascension/day, all asynchronous. I have anywhere from 8-10 games going constantly between Carc and Ascension; it's incredibly fun. I really hope more board/card game devs look to including asynchronous play in the future. I haven't touched Ticket to Ride or Catan in ages, for example.
I agree with art, I find sometimes the luck of strategy frustrating or the fact that there are two or three cards that are difficult to counterbalance. For this reason, while still with luck involved, I start to appreciate kard combat much more. Regarding async games .... I hate them! I mean, cacassonne plays great, but games that are meant to be fast like ascension not. In fact when I see I am in an async game, I forfeit ... Too slow. Same for games like ticket to ride, they play badly if very slow.
Lack of strategy? Why then have I won 9 of my last 10 matches? This game is more skill based than lots of people give it credit for.
I don't really agree, because when playing chess, for example, you aren't playing alone. You can try to guess what your opponent will do and in some cases you can be pretty darn certain, but overall there is still some luck involved as humans aren't entirely predictable (and sometimes they just makes mistakes). Without any luck at all, with complete predictability, the game would play out exactly the same every time. I.e. it would be a puzzle. Yes, chess has far less luck then Ascension. Which is probably why I'm not much into chess....
That's the beauty of asynchronous play: it's purely supplementary to the 'regular' experience. Not everyone has the time to sit down for 15-30 minutes and complete a game without interruption. At that pace, I'd be lucky to get in a game or two a night, and only at night. For those that want fast play, you've got that. For those that want to play asynchronously, you've got that too. In Ascension, they just need an option for 'Quick Play', like in Caracassonne, and then you could be guaranteed a non-asynchronous game.
I wouldn't want a separate "Quick Play". I really hate that Carcassonne doesn't allow you to set up fast playing games with more then 2 people. Carcassonne isn't that fun with only 2 players. What you need is a lobby that shows players online status, and the ability to (optionally) set a turn time limit (30 seconds? 1 minute?). Then people who wanted to play the game through could see games that were going to played that way, and see that everyone signed up was actually online. As it stands, you can jump into a random 2 player game and be pretty sure it will play live, but with 3 or 4 players it seems to almost never work out. EDIT: another thing I just realized I really would like this game to have is the ability to see the online status of friends and, ideally, have it have an xbox live like notification of GC friends coming online in Ascension, *and* the ability to send friends messages, so you could ask if they are up for playing a game live to the end. I suppose that might require improvements to GC, but I'm not sure. We certainly need such features!
It may only be semantics, but nothing of what you've described above is "luck" by the dictionary definition. A game of chess does not play out the same way not due to the presence of luck, but due to the myriad of viable strategy options available to each player.
Thanks for the invite Crunc. Sorry if it takes a bit for me to make a move, I work days and I have a 2 year old so it can be hard to play all in one sitting. Another thing I wanted to mention is I don't always get the notifications for Ascension for some reason so that may be another reason for the delay.
