Player Elimination VS Fighting For Third Place

This seems like a subject worthy of its own thread. I can kind of see both sides of the coin here although I'm generally in favor of player elimination. It sucks being stuck in a game knowing (by calculation or whatever) that you have no chance of winning. But in a game about Wall St maybe its better to stay in until the end and try to accumulate as much cash as possible since that's what people on Wall St would do. However in modern games its more likely you'll be spending your cash to accumulate Victory Points instead, which kind of kills the theme. Even some war games have you chasing VP's instead of chasing the enemy off the battlefield. What are your thoughts?

Depends on the theme of the game. Every horror game should have player elimination, because that's the closest a board game can get to modeling death. Economic games should base the winner on most cash at the end of the game, because cash is very much like victory points in real life. Prince of the City is a very appropriate game for king-making, so it's appropriate that players go into the final turn knowing that probably only a couple of people at the table have a real shot at winning. And I find it interesting that some people automatically consider VP to be bad, but have no problem with XP in the rpgs that they play. XP is basically VP, except that you can spend it on enhancing your character.

I'm going to have to pull a Barnes here and vote for "vying for third place in the eyes of the King. Some favor is better than living in the shadow of not pleasing the King."


Okay, I can't do it.


PLAYER ELMINIATION



If I can't win, ELIMINATE ME.



The people who piss and moan about "nothing to do" during games with player elimination makes me think they game with a bunch of assholes that they can't stand being around for any other reason rather than getting a boardgame in.


Which, given the type of people they generally are, I suppose that's fitting.

Huh.I just wrote this in the other thread. But I'll post it here again, with a couple edits.

Mad Dog wrote:

In the real world of earning profit, I would gladly settle for second or third because that's still a lot of money and success. In a board game I don't see the point, you either win or lose. You can play the game again and maybe the outcome will be different. If I come in second place, its because I failed to come in first place not because I fought someone for second.

Oh, yes. In games, Poker is the obvious case. Frankly, I couldn't care who 'wins' at all, as long as I'm in the black at the end of the night. Except in tournaments, and even then, I'm really looking to make back my buy-in. Anything on top of that is gravy. (Although, I admit, if it's down to the final two, I want that prize.

In fairness, I think it's reasonable to have other goals in a boardgame if it's clear you're not going to win. In fact, this allows much more interesting scenarios, in a way: you could pit smaller countries against larger ones, for example, and still have an interesting game. Wargames, too, as you mention, often require this, because slaughtering all your enemy's troops is actually anti-thematic. Again, VPs or different victory conditions allow for a thematic or balanced experience, even if the sides start unbalanced.

Otherwise, if I'm not going to win, all the goals I would have would be thematic, e.g. capture this city, retain an empire by holding this section of the map, corner the silver market, etc. Except for economic games, where money essentially is the VP count, I can't imagine being interested in saying 'ha, my buildings give me 37 VPs while you only get 36, you're last, neener neener neener'. Waste of time.

I've grown completely out of player elimination. 20 years ago, I play in my first family game of Risk. I don't have any real strategy other than "roll well" and end up making a bastion of last hope in Alaska. We're playing 6 players (parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts). My mom takes my last territory and I cried for an hour straight. It was awful.

Fast forward 10 years and I'm playing similar-type games with my friends where we have set up activities (stand alone PC or whatever) in the other room for people to do stuff after they are eliminated.

Fast forward 5 years and I play my first game of Settlers of Catan.
Fast forward 5 minutes and I'm giving away my copies of Axis and Allies and other like-minded games and option to concentrate on games that everyone can enjoy for the length of the game.


nowadays, the only way I can get my fiancee to play games is if they are fun to play regardless if you're winning or losing. We can play Agricola, Princes of Florence or Race for the Galaxy because she's having a blast making her little empire. Same with Through the Ages. So win or lose, she's having a blast playing and creating her little world within the game. Even Twilight Struggle which is highly confrontational, she loves playing it cuz she can make her own objectives halfway though the game if she sees she's going to lose "Well, I'm going to install communist regimes in Mexico and Canada so help me God." So at the end of the game, I win BUT AT WHAT COST?! My poor ol' Canada! They're serving borscht on Sparks street?! FORGET IT

To further the poker example from the other thread, when we get together with friends, we almost NEVER play tournaments or sitngo's because it involves people sitting around doing nothing eventually. Cash game all the way.


so yeah, having a reason to still play the game is really important. People want to play again the next time.

Shellhead wrote:

And I find it interesting that some people automatically consider VP to be bad, but have no problem with XP in the rpgs that they play. XP is basically VP, except that you can spend it on enhancing your character.

But that makes all the difference in the world. XPs have value. VPs don't, except to rank the order of players. I've never really seen anyone look at XP as a measure of victory before, normally because XP games usually have a concrete victory condition.

Bullwinkle wrote:

Shellhead wrote:

And I find it interesting that some people automatically consider VP to be bad, but have no problem with XP in the rpgs that they play. XP is basically VP, except that you can spend it on enhancing your character.

But that makes all the difference in the world. XPs have value. VPs don't, except to rank the order of players. I've never really seen anyone look at XP as a measure of victory before, normally because XP games usually have a concrete victory condition.

Everybody accepts it because everybody is absolutely stuck on the D&D model. I prefer Chaosium's system, where you only get better at the skills you are actively using or being trained in. No XP to award or track or spend.

Shellhead wrote:

Everybody accepts it because everybody is absolutely stuck on the D&D model. I prefer Chaosium's system, where you only get better at the skills you are actively using or being trained in. No XP to award or track or spend.

I don't think XP are inherently bad. But I do like other systems, too. I don't play PnP any more, but there are some CRPGs that use different systems. Oblivion is skill-based, for example. I like that, but in a computer environment you have to be careful not to wreck your own fun by abusing the system. It's much easier to maintain a level system using XP, but then you have the downside of excessive focus on combat.

That was one of the things I loved about games like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and System Shock 2. Your upgrades were purchased with points mostly achieved by completing goals, not killing things. So both games really allowed for multiple styles of play that weren't necessarily combat-focused.

I love crushing my enemies, but there are certain games where it is more thematically accurate and adds to the fun of the experience to play for points with everyone still around at the end of the game.

It'd be totally stupid if a player got eliminated in Bohnanza but totally stupid if no one got eliminated in a game of Risk.

Case by case I guess is what I'm saying.

It really depends on the game. In most economic games, unless you can go utterly bankrupt, it doesn't really make sense to have player elimination. On the other hand, a wargame with each player controlling a faction/nation doesn't really make sense without player elimination; being made someone's vassal or slave state or having an arbitrary "you can't eliminate people" rule (like in TEMPUS) are even less fun than getting wiped off the map.
Eliminating everyone else is even the winning conditions in some games, because that's what makes the most sense for the game. You could redesign the game so it ended sooner and a winner was then decided (based on VP or whatever), but then you get the "game ends just when it gets exciting" and "endgame condition feels arbitrary" problems.

I'm going to have to pull a Barnes here and vote for "vying for third place in the eyes of the King. Some favor is better than living in the shadow of not pleasing the King."

How is that a "Barnes vote"? I'm not a coward. Besides, your votes usually mean that the game loses Trashdome.

Elimination...it's totally dependent on the game, really. Some games need it, others don't. I do think that any game with a conquest-ish theme needs it. I don't really care if I win or lose any game I ever play, but if the theme of the game is that one player beats the crap out of all the other players, then I want to see people kicked out of the game. If they cry, fuck 'em. That means they take this shit too seriously to begin with.

The other day playing DIPLOMACY I was functionally elminated when Dan Baden betrayed a truce we had from the beginning of the game. As a result, I pretty much had no chance to do _anything_. So for the last three hours of the game, I was just hanging on with two armies and unable to do anything. I'd rather have just been dumped out and exiled to play video games for the rest of the day.

The Euros do it differently though, with all these catchup, leader restriction, and rubber banding mechanics. I hate that crap too. If somebody is winning, let them win for chrissakes. I hate it when games artificially limit leaders "just because".

I can't believe Vlaada said that about "beat everybody else" being obsolete. He's a sharp designer, that just sounds stupid. Some games just need to have that- like TITAN, for example. If the theme is "kill everybody" then why the hell would there be any need for second, third, fourth, fifth places?

There's a real difference between player elimination, and tying victory to eliminating everyone else. Probably the biggest problem anyone has with Risk and Monopoly (aside from the standard "dicefest" excuse) is that the game ties victory to the last person standing. That can take forever, and you can generally call it a good ways out.

Contrast that to games like TI3, where you CAN be eliminated, but it's not necessary to beat them. Waiting for everyone else to die can indeed get pretty boring, even for the person winning.

How is that a "Barnes vote"? I'm not a coward. Besides, your votes usually mean that the game loses Trashdome.

In the immortal words of Billy Hays: "I'm just fuckin' with ya."

MattLoter wrote:

Case by case I guess is what I'm saying.

This is true, but VPs are also hideously overused. There are a lot of games begging for set victory conditions (and even a handful that would be better off with elimination) that instead have a VP system attached.

I hate to beat on Age of Conan, since it was the F:AT whipping boy for a month when it came out, but if any game has ever begged for variable, player specific victory conditions and NOT victory points, it was that game. Stygia for example could be interested in manipulating two other nations into war, or setting up an economic base without any real army presence. Aquilonia could two or three- one purely territorial, another based on controlling Conan at certain points, etc. It could have been a balanced way to introduce a lot of flavor into the game, instead of collecting VPs.

Shellhead wrote:

Depends on the theme of the game. Every horror game should have player elimination, because that's the closest a board game can get to modeling death.

This is why I don't like how in Arkham Horror and Fury of Dracula you can be beaten in combat with something nasty, yet you wake up in the hospital. Blech.