Re: [GZG] Gzg-l Digest, Vol 37, Issue 24

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http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn Thu, Sep 30,
2010 at 6:23 AM, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:

>
>> There is a fundamental decision to be made here before going too far
down
> such routes, though - and that is, do we go all-out to make the game
as
> "munchkin-proof" as possible, or do we accept that there will always
be a
> certain percentage of players for whom the fleet design stage IS the
game,
> and their enjoyment comes from bringing their perfectly min-maxed
fleet to
> the table and beating the cr*p out of their opponent?
>
> We may not agree with their gaming style and mindset (I sure as hell
> don't), but does that mean we should just ignore them as a valid part
of the
> fanbase and try to legislate them out of the game?
>
> I'm not arguing one way or the other here, just playing Devil's
Advocate
> and getting the discussion rolling to see what comes out.... ;-)
>

There will always be min-maxers. Always. As long as there are points to
play
with in designing things, there will be people who like to design, and a
subset of people who like to design "the best" as far as the design
system
allows. That's going to be a feature of any "design your
ship/fleet/force"
game system. The best that can be done with FT3 is to mitigate the
glaring
"this design wins ALWAYS" holes and do what can be done to make FT3 a
fun,
viable game system for people to play. Munchkins will either gravitate
to
themselves or will be excluded from groups*

* - this is not to say that if a munchkin-heavy group is formed and a
"sane"
person tries to play with them, the sane person will likely be turned
off by
the munchkin group and leave; unfortunately, we can't regulate that, and
one
has to hope the sane soul will find a path to other sane individuals for
a
more enjoyable gaming session.

It is difficult to compare FT to point-generated ground-based systems
because ground-based games have so many OTHER variables to contend with
(e.g., terrain) that space-based games typically don't (and even if
there is
space terrain, it is rarely that abundant). So you'd have to look and
see
how other space-based point-generated game systems handle it. I'll bet
they
have the same issues.

Mk