FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

Shraaaag

Joined: Feb 15, 2004

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 17:20

Zombie69 wrote:

Valid point, but i'm not an animator. As a gameplay programmer, my work involves game design.

Alas, being a gameplay programmer or game designer doesn't say anything about your competance. There are more awful games than good games, made by people with those job titles.

I'm a software developer, that doesn't mean I'm good at it or not, or if I can tell you a particular software sucks or not. It just means I develop software.

Your opinion as a game developer wouldn't be more worth than your opinion as a gamer. And it's still an opinion, everybody is entitled to his or her own.

pythrr

Joined: Mar 07, 2006

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 17:35

there is a new edition?

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Zombie69

Joined: Jul 02, 2007

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 17:37

I have indeed posted about it multiple times before, mostly on TBB, and i don't have the links for those. I won't repeat everything here, but i will give the basic points, for those who haven't read them before. Everything else follows from this, and i could go point by point and tell you why i think each single change is for the worse, but i'm pretty tired of having this discussion, so i won't. The 2 basic points, from which everything else derives, are these :

1. 1st ed, 2nd ed, 3rd ed and 4th ed were written by Jervis Johnson, a man who clearly knows how to design games. LRB 1-4 were written by the BBRC, composed of Jervis Johnson, Andy Hall (another Games Workshop game designer), and 5 hand picked, highly regarded, high level coaches, who knew how to abuse loopholes, and therefore knew how to fix them. LRB 5-6 were written by an internet forum where anybody could post, and indeed where the vast majority of posters not only had no clue about game design, but didn't even have a lot of experience playing the game. If you followed that forum, you know it was a mess, with discussions going in all directions, no structure, and a lot of ridiculous arguments going unchallenged. To think that anything good could have come out of that is ridiculous. People who think that way either were part of that forum (and are blinded by the fact that they see LRB 5-6 as their baby), or didn't witness the mess that was the whole process.

2. The primary objective of LRB5 is in my opinion laughable and even destructive to the game. The self-professed main goal was to create a ruleset where any team could have a chance against any other team (yes, you read this right, they believed that a ruleset where a TR100 team had a realistic chance of beating a TR300 team was actually better). The proper solution to TR300 teams crushing TR100 teams of course isn't to write a ruleset where the TR100 team can actually win, but rather to build your league in a way that the TR300 team won't play against the TR100 team. Of course, they were oblivious to this fact. The idea itself is destructive for the game, because one of the most interesting aspects of Blood Bowl is team building, and what's the point of building a team if any TR100 team can come up and beat your carefully built TR300 team?

If you want to discuss individual changes, go ahead and bring them up. There are good, game design reasons why each of those changes (ok, maybe 90% of them, sometimes even monkeys get lucky) is for the worse. I might discuss a few of them if you're interested in hearing the specific argument against those changes. But basically, each of them can be traced back to one of the two points above, and as a summary these give a pretty good idea of why LRB5 is worse than LRB4.

Grod

Joined: Sep 30, 2003

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 17:41

Zombie69 wrote:

Valid point, but i'm not an animator. As a gameplay programmer, my work involves game design.

This kind of elitist "I have experience so your opinions are worth diddly-squat" kind of elitism won't get you very far. I bet you don't have much success in real life with such arguments, so why bother online? Do you really think it makes us listen or respect you more?

Stick to well-reasoned arguments and win people over with logic and rationality. Not statements of "trust me, I know more than you".

But it is certainly good to see your crusade against LRB5 is still being waged. I hope by now of course that you have actually played some LRB5 games?

[edit]: your last post is more what I am talking about. Stick to ones like those! Wink

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Purplegoo

Joined: Mar 23, 2006

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 17:57

Some good changes, some bad changes, all Blood Bowl. If FUMBBL was LRB 3 - 6, I'd not really care.

People overstate how good or bad the new rules are. Give it six months, you'll get over it either way.

You'll be surprised, you zealots on either side. You'll find something you love or hate when the change happens. If you're hanging on or quitting around change, you're wasting valuable BB time. Sad

DukeTyrion

Joined: Feb 18, 2004

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 18:02

Zombie, much as I would like to allow you the space in this thread to continue to make yourself look a fool without help, I can't help picking up on one point in your posts.

You argue that LRB 5.0 will not be as good because JJ did not write it. Then you argue that it will not be as good because TR 100 teams have a slim chance against TR 300 teams, when it was in fact a guideline from JJ himself that it become so.

Either you like the design route JJ takes, or you don't ...

DukeTyrion

Joined: Feb 18, 2004

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 18:07

Purplegoo wrote:

Some good changes, some bad changes, all Blood Bowl. If FUMBBL was LRB 3 - 6, I'd not really care.

And what was wrong with Blood Bowl version 2, that's when the game was really at it's peak Wink

JoeMalik

Joined: Mar 03, 2008

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 18:08

It doesn`t really matter (atleast to me) if this change was intended by JJ, but do you think it is a good change? That a TR 100 team should have a significant chance vs. a TR 300 team?

Zombie69

Joined: Jul 02, 2007

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 18:13

DukeTyrion wrote:

Zombie, much as I would like to allow you the space in this thread to continue to make yourself look a fool without help, I can't help picking up on one point in your posts.

You argue that LRB 5.0 will not be as good because JJ did not write it. Then you argue that it will not be as good because TR 100 teams have a slim chance against TR 300 teams, when it was in fact a guideline from JJ himself that it become so.

Either you like the design route JJ takes, or you don't ...

I did write the 2 points above as separate for a reason. If Jervis hadn't come up with that mission statement, then point 2 would just derive from point 1. As it stands, these are two separate points.

Yes, Jervis Johnson is a good game designer, but even good game designers make mistakes. For example, 4th ed was mainly regarded as a mistake that shouldn't have been, and was retracted within a year of it coming out. One of the reasons they then went with the nomenclature LRB was because they didn't want to make a 5th ed, which would acknowledge the existence of 4th ed.

Since the rules for big guys (which first came out as an internet variant for 3rd ed, written by Jervis himself), he has unfortunately mostly come up with pretty bad stuff. I credit the good changes of LRB 1-4 much more to the 5 non-GW members of the BBRC, because at that point Jervis had become pretty disconnected from Blood Bowl, as could be seen from discussions with him (some of which i was part of).

Wraith

Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 18:23

Zombie69 wrote:

Valid point, but i'm not an animator. As a gameplay programmer, my work involves game design.

Let's be honest here... a programmer is a programmer. Unless you're part of the development/design team, the only input you have in the game's development/design, is when the confines of coding/resources/time interfere with the design concepts.

For example, the designers wanted an ability to work a specific way and you get the responsibility to code it... due to coding/resources/time issues, you tell the designers that their vision will not work and offer alternatives that try to accomplish the same concept. Although, if you have a competent development/design staff, this should be pretty rare.

I'm an animator, the art director tells me what to do. Be it with concept art, rigging capabilities or artistic style. Most game makers use a pipeline, if you're not at the top of that pipeline, than you have almost nothing to do with the game design (outside of the technical limitations of turning concept to reality). Again, this should be a pretty rare situation outside of "mom and pop" companies.

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Zombie69

Joined: Jul 02, 2007

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 18:41

Wraith wrote:

Zombie69 wrote:

Valid point, but i'm not an animator. As a gameplay programmer, my work involves game design.

Let's be honest here... a programmer is a programmer. Unless you're part of the development/design team, the only input you have in the game's development/design, is when the confines of coding/resources/time interfere with the design concepts.

For example, the designers wanted an ability to work a specific way and you get the responsibility to code it... due to coding/resources/time issues, you tell the designers that their vision will not work and offer alternatives that try to accomplish the same concept. Although, if you have a competent development/design staff, this should be pretty rare.

Maybe half of my input on game design are of the kind you talk about. The other half is when i disagree with something purely for game design reasons. Of course, sometimes my opinion just differs from the game designers', but quite often i've made them change their design with good argumentation.

Maybe this is different in other companies, but where i work, we are encouraged to voice our opinions and participate in every aspect. And of course, as you've pointed out, programmers have more input than animators regarding game design to begin with!

I'm not saying i'm a professional game designer (professional game developper is more like it), but i'm saying i know more about game design than 99% of the people who posted on the LRB5 forum, which actually isn't hard. And i also have more experience playing Blood Bowl than 99% of them, which again isn't hard.

Oh and by the way, i was also one of the 3 people who wrote the OBERWALD, a compendium of 3rd ed (and early LRB) rules clarifications and house rules. Just sayin' Wink

http://www.midgardbb.com/BloodBowlOberwald.html

Last edited by Zombie69 on %b %22, %2010 - %18:%Mar; edited 2 times in total

Optihut

Joined: Dec 16, 2004

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 18:44

Zombie69 wrote:

Valid point, but i'm not an animator. As a gameplay programmer, my work involves game design.

Either you're the programmer or the designer; typically there is not much overlap. Unless of course, you're working in a very small development studio - back when I was programming games, I was in a way the designer as well, but we were only a 3 men team.
EDIT: I guess the above was a moot point as it has already been addressed in another post.

That said, designing board games and designing computer games is quite different, so your professional opinion may not be worth as much as you think it is.

Purplegoo

Joined: Mar 23, 2006

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 18:47

Zomb; no harm to you mate, clearly you like rules discussion and enjoy sticking your two penneth in, and have over time.

Being a member of a group that essentially wrote and compiled some house rules isn't really going to hold much weight, however many times you mention it.

Whether it should or not, who knows. Just saying. Going on and on about rules changes is going to do you no good. It's done. It's here, pretty much all discussion is pretty moot, whether you think you could have done a better job or not.

No?

Zombie69

Joined: Jul 02, 2007

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 18:55

Purplegoo wrote:

Being a member of a group that essentially wrote and compiled some house rules isn't really going to hold much weight, however many times you mention it.

I'm sorry, i honestly wasn't aware i had mentioned it on Fumbbl. The part that's relevant in my opinion isn't the part that lists house rules, but the one that clarifies official rules. The relevance is that it shows i know the rules really well, which in my opinion is a prerequisite if you're trying to change them.

Purplegoo wrote:

Whether it should or not, who knows. Just saying. Going on and on about rules changes is going to do you no good. It's done. It's here, pretty much all discussion is pretty moot, whether you think you could have done a better job or not.

No?

Well, it isn't here yet. Part of me is still hoping that LRB4 will remain the competitive division on Fumbbl, with official tournaments and all. This can happen if that's what the majority wants (and from the poll, you can see that LRB4 is still the favorite ruleset). If it doesn't happen, i'll just have to leave the site and find something else to do. It's worth fighting for imo, don't you think?

DukeTyrion

Joined: Feb 18, 2004

Posted: Mar 22, 2010 - 19:02

Zombie69 wrote:

Well, it isn't here yet. Part of me is still hoping that LRB4 will remain the competitive division on Fumbbl, with official tournaments and all. This can happen if that's what the majority wants (and from the poll, you can see that LRB4 is still the favorite ruleset). If it doesn't happen, i'll just have to leave the site and find something else to do. It's worth fighting for imo, don't you think?

LRB 4.0 has only 32% of the votes in the poll. And you could argue 5 & 6 are close enough that those people are voting for the same thing. I voted for Blood Bowl 2, but would still prefer LRB 5.0 over LRB 4.0.

Anyway, I think CHrister has already made it clear that FUMBBL is moving to LRB 5.0, but I think he suggested there would still be an LRB 4.0 division, so if you were really that attached to LRB 4.0, you could carry on there.