Trends/bits from past expansions you hope won't show up in expansions?

Out of control unique assets decks- Eldritch got insane with its dozen different categories of unique asset decks that really didn't end up adding much beyond the simplicity of a single asset deck.

Flipping spells/items- This was a mechanic that sounded interesting at first, but after 5 years of it in Eldritch and Mansions, I'd be happy to never see it again. Just slows the game down.

Super long reckoning phases- No proliferation of reckoning effects to the point that they take 10 minutes to go through.

Power creep- Overpowered items/investigators from expansions that render older ones obsolete.

Skill impairments- Please, just don't. Getting impaired skills was often worse than death. Bumbling around with a crippled investigator was more punishing than just getting killed and starting with a new one. They were frustrating and not at all fun.

Overly punishing encounters- I like encounters exactly where they are right now. Make a check for a nice boost or fail for a reasonable penalty. I don't want past Arkham/Eldritch encounters of ridiculously punishing stuff. ESPECIALLY encounters that are all about avoiding punishment with no reward.

Clue encounters that do not give clues- Nothing was worse than the clue encounters in Eldritch that didn't give you the clue even if you passed the test, wasting an entire turn. It's hard to see how they could do this with the new AH3 clue system, but I hope to never see it again.

Encounters that don't do the thing the location says it gives- I love how 90% of the encounters right now actually do the thing the location says it will do, with each one having some little twists to make it different while still giving the thing to you (general store might let you buy all the items you want, or only one item but at half price, etc). I much prefer this to Eldritch having maybe a 25% chance of encounters doing the thing that the location space advertises.

Among the thing you mentioned I think power creep is the worst. I'd rather have half as many investigators, but for them to be at least somewhat balanced.

On 3/26/2019 at 5:39 AM, tsuma534 said:

Among the thing you mentioned I think power creep is the worst. I'd rather have half as many investigators, but for them to be at least somewhat balanced.

Well, the investigators are pretty all over the place power wise right now. Tommy/Calvin/Marie are hands down better than everyone else, while Rex/Dexter/Norman are hands down worse. Once we knew the scenario objectives, the only real challenge left to the game was trying to beat them using "the garbage three" investigators.

Maybe little expansion tweaks that balance out some of the more blatant original investigators (Calvin is just ridiculously good, Rex is ridiculously bad).

2nd edition especially had the power creep problem. The violinist (Patricia?) was ludicrous. You had unique items that blew all previous weapons away and gave the same (or better) benefits as spells but with zero of the risk or cost.

On 3/29/2019 at 9:38 PM, MrBody said:

2nd edition especially had the power creep problem. The violinist (Patricia?) was ludicrous. You had unique items that blew all previous weapons away and gave the same (or better) benefits as spells but with zero of the risk or cost.

I disagree. Not on Patrice (obviously overpowered), but on the general assessment. I've been able to beat any existing combo of Ancient Ones and Heralds with a random selection of investigators (so, yes, I had a Quachil game with both Dexter and Vincent and won). Some 2nd edition investigators were of course stronger than others (Rex, Wendy, Patrice especially) but on average each of them had their strengths, they just required to adjust a bit the playing style.

3rd edition is a nice overall game (some elements are really properly thought, such as the modular boards for example), but has some serious balance issues, not only in some investigators (Rex is good for the recycling bin), but also on the nature of the game (two stats are by far less important than the other three, inducing a skewed relevance of investigators; but it's not the only problem. Blessings are too good, curses are too easy to get rid of, allies allowed to chain basically create an impassible buffer of health and stamina, encounters tied to an outcome are forcing a similar deck construction for anything future coming AND they create variance issues in the deck distribution - i.e. formations of card clusters not guaranteeing the desired outcome. And don't start me on how the Mythos cup works, because it's simply nuts, saying "tokens = 2*number of players means proper scaling" means only you know nothing about game design).

I'm not saying 2nd was a better game (they are simply 2 different games, I don't even see 3rd edition as a new edition of 2nd edition, it's just a game set in Arkham, end of the story. And yes, 2nd edition had issues too, so, a 3rd edition might have been great), I'm just saying that the basic design of 3rd edition is kinda meh (very similar to all what happened to Eldritch especially in the last few expansions), and that I'm rather thrilled to see the game developed by someone else (with fresh ideas, and hopefully more courage to find different and new solutions).

So, I imagine what I was trying to say is that, even if I don't disagree with the OP list - touching certainly important pointers, I do hope that expansions also could address some of the issues of the game, to make it fun and balanced.