With the approaching release of Under Dark Waves, I've kinda gone down a rabbit hole of threads tonight seeing how people still felt about AH3. Honestly, it's been collecting dust for my household since Dead of Night. It feels like there are two camps for poor AH3: Either it's perfectly fine or it's deeply broken. My group has been in the latter, everyone in agreement that something's just not... right. Mostly in regards to the Mythos Phase & Cup. It's apparent Nikki & FFG were taking cues from Pandemic and crisis management mechanics, but something's off and it's clear that a TON of people think that same thing.

I've been unable to keep up with FFG Lives or announcement, but does anyone know if there's any chance of, well, fixing AH3? I know that's a weird question, but it seems like a lot of players are unhappy with core mechanics of a game that has a lot of promise. Is FFG just going to keep trucking along or are they going to take any player feedback into account on this one?

Side Note: Anyone have any house rules they've found for their own fixes?

My croup enjoy this game more than any other mythos games, but maybe the AH Lcg, so the system is working wery well indeed. But if you personally don`t like this, I think that there is very Little you can do rule wise. The game has been buld around the game mechanics and if They don`t appeal to your croup it is hard to say how to change it without making a new game.
What part of the game you don`t like? If it one of the core mechanics, this may not be for you, but if it some difficulty related there Are may ways to adjust the difficulty to easier or harder.

But as I said this is one of our favorite games at this moment, so the core mechanics seems to be about perfect. And there is nothing wrong of having different opinion. Different people like different games. It is just natural!

You kind of answered your own question. There are people who are happy with the game and those who aren't. FFG isn't likely to alter the game just to switch from one group of fans to another. As Hannibal stated, different people like different games.

It's like when D&D went from 3.5 to 4th edition. It caused a huge division in fans. So much so that many of the fans of 3.5 created a whole new game called Pathfinder just to keep the spirit of 3.5 alive. (Ironically when D&D 5th edition came out, Pathfinder went the opposite route and abandoned their old system to become a wholly different 2nd edition to try to compete with it.)

2nd edition Arkham Horror was an amazing game, but 3rd edition was designed to appeal to a whole different type of player. Just because you liked one doesn't mean you will like the other.

On 9/18/2020 at 5:21 PM, Daedalus said:

2nd edition Arkham Horror was an amazing game, but 3rd edition was designed to appeal to a whole different type of player. Just because you liked one doesn't mean you will like the other.

That's true but I have one big problem with this game and that problem is Arkham Horror LCG which I find so much better that I just have no reason to play AH3, sadly.

On 9/21/2020 at 4:00 AM, Shironeko said:

That's true but I have one big problem with this game and that problem is Arkham Horror LCG which I find so much better that I just have no reason to play AH3, sadly.

That's a great problem to have After over 18+ months of trying to piece together a full cycle of...well, anything... I've finally just given up on trying to get into the LCG and am about ready to just pull the trigger on AH3 now. Put all 3 skus in a cart, boom done. My research shows me that the LCG is indeed an amazing game, but like all of the LCG's you either get in at the beginning with a good subscription or pre-order habit, or you forget about it.

The internet says "just be patient", but I could literally hire a full time assistant to scour the web 40 hours a week trying to cobble that game together and come up with nothing. It's not the first LCG to run into this issue, but in my experience it's the most unfriendly to newcomers from a supply standpoint. And that was before Covid wrecked shoppe.

I tried the LCG in a solo game, I died in the second room and decided that, similarly to Elder Sign, the game was too much luck based. I've had way more fun with 3rd edition. I also enjoy Eldritch Horror and MOM 2nd edition. But I got in too late to get Arkham Horror 2nd edition. Each to their own...

I and many others believe the base difficulty to be a little overtuned especially for larger playgroups with too much activity pressuring the investigators to always be in react mode right from turn 1. The fact is the game doesn't scale that well and that draws away from the more narrative experience that AH2 had. Some people like that exaggerated sense of pressure, but many veterans of AH2 don't and it's something FFG needed to do something about.

Under Dark Waves "officializes" a few additional game modes including story mode, which replaces a doom token with a blank token in the mythos cup. It also has a challenge mode that makes the game even more punishing for those that like that aspect more.

I haven't played it extensively yet, but I think these mode options are a big win and the story mode in particular makes the game more enjoyable for the average player group.

4 hours ago, Einlanzer80 said:

Under Dark Waves "officializes" a few additional game modes including story mode, which replaces a doom token with a blank token in the mythos cup. It also has a challenge mode that makes the game even more punishing for those that like that aspect more.

I haven't played it extensively yet, but I think these mode options are a big win and the story mode in particular makes the game more enjoyable for the average player group.

Just received my copy of Under Dark Wave and saw this in the rule book! This answered my initial question, I guess. I never expected FFG to completely reinvent the game. Interested to see how this little tweak adjusts the game.

The mythos bag in the LCG is such a great tool for difficulty adjustment and scenario variety, I did have some degree of confidence that they'd take advantage of chit pull in AH3 the same way. I'd also expect future expansions to possibly contain additional bits to throw in ye old opaque container.

Been trying to decide between this game, or finishing off my Eldritch Collection. The 'level' adjustments in UDW might just push me over the line if I can swallow the misprints. My group lies somewhere in-between casual story mode and full on late-game Pandemic assault.