thanks for voting

rich

Hey Rich! Great post. Very interesting. For my part, I vote a "C." This game is spot on. It is awesome, and it is becoming more balanced all the time. There is a wide range of scenario difficulty available to all players, no matter how much one likes easy or difficult.

Glaurung: my friend, you are a broken record. It seems to me that each time a less-than-nightmare-mode scenario crops up, you complain that it is boring and you blame the designers for poor development. You are just wrong in this regard my friend. The designers are listening to the players and they are doing a fabulous job. Try to relax a little and enjoy the game for ALL of its fun and beauty!

thanks for voting Durin

rich

Glaurung: my friend, you are a broken record. It seems to me that each time a less-than-nightmare-mode scenario crops up, you complain that it is boring and you blame the designers for poor development. You are just wrong in this regard my friend. The designers are listening to the players and they are doing a fabulous job. Try to relax a little and enjoy the game for ALL of its fun and beauty!

The reason he (and sometimes myself) cant enjoy the game somtimes, is because many many quests are so easy that you beat them without thinking and blow right through the quest stages and when its over your like "wow what just happened?" "I beat it that easy?" The reason the hard quests are much more fun is because you really have to use all your best strategys, spend time thinking about if you should quest with ____ amount of characters or whatever, and you really are "playing" the game rather than on an easy quest all you do is commit tons of characters to the quest and defeat all the little enemies without hardly even noticing it.

it has been enlightening reading this poll and its comments, and i thank everyone who has/will be voting. what is personally interesting to me is your comment above khamul.

if i take for example, other games i play, strategic military ones most with a steeper learning curve than this one, i will spend sometimes 20 minutes planning moves before i commit. i put an enormous amount of thought into it, and i am successful, even at hard difficulty levels...so what i feel there must be what you, glaurung and others feel here.

what is interesting is that i dont put anywhere near the amount of thought into this game when i am planning. anyone who has ever watched me play (only a handful of people that is) will know i sometimes rush into moves, often messing up....why do i do this?

well my theory is the 'bilbo' inside me is too dominant for me to get any (or rather much) 'boromir' fun out of this game....i just dont see it as the strategy game like others i play. that is not to say it isn't, becuase it is, i just dont treat it as one. i am too busy admiring the art, thinking up themes, rp-ing.

therefore what i think i will do, even just once or twice, is to play it as purely 'boromir'....forget that i am playing in tolkien's world, treat the cards as statistics.. and see how that goes...perhaps i shall have an enlightening experience, perhaps i shall still lose as much! who knows..

other players of course probably dont share my ideas on this, as i know many players both enjoy the theme and get a lot of boromir enjoyment out of this game, whereas i have always treated this as an 'immersion' game, rather than a challenge.

..so, that is a rather rambling post that has more to do with my own thoughts than anything else (it isn't my way of saying 'this is why i lose...it isnt becuase i suck ..incase you were wondering ), but i just thought id share them, as i see now more than ever how much the player types determine our (or at least my own) success, even if we dont realise it.

rich

Rich: You're welcome! Thanks for the great thread!

Khamul: I understand your points; they are certainly valid! As to being disappointed with certain "easier" scenarios, there are ways to make them harder. Two come to mind chiefly: 1) add nightmare variant cards to them to make them harder (I know that there are only so many "nightmare" cards available at the moment), and 2) try playing with a wider selection of cards, i.e. not just the ones that are the most powerful.

As to not playing with the most powerful cards, well, some players just find it too hard to not play with the cards that are obviously, in a strictly mechanical way, the best cards for the resource price. I understand this, but I don't choose to play this way alone, because, when I do, I end up leaving well over half the player cards I have purchased in a box collecting dust, while continually recycling the same old strategies...at least until more "powerful" cards are released.

Anyway, to each their own! As for my take on this game, there are plenty of options for all! Happy gaming!

I have 1 core set and all expansions/APs released to date. My vote is C.

However, I think a more interesting poll may be what people think about how fun the scenarios are to play as that is perhaps a more important consideration than difficulty level (maybe a poll for another thread).

a) Getting more fun with each cycle

b) Staying the same

c) Getting less fun with each cycle

In my opinion, so far the developers have done an excellent job making each scenario unique and with a slight variation of the core mechanics and I would vote a) above. However, there is only so much variation one can come up with to the core mechanics before it would become somewhat repetitive I think and I wonder how far away that point is?

therefore what i think i will do, even just once or twice, is to play it as purely 'boromir'....forget that i am playing in tolkien's world, treat the cards as statistics.. and see how that goes...

People are of cause welcome to put whatever they want into whatever game and play them for whatever reason. I just don't think you can blame the designers too much if you want something out of a game that it isn't.

Very nice rambling indeed sir

thank you my friend indeed i agree, the designers have obviously read well into the books and material, in fact more so than what i thought when i first bought this game.

so yes, you make a good point- i also do not think the desingers go into the planning thinking of the cards as numbers...it would certainly show if they did it this way, and there would be no clever hints at the lore of middle earth, such as denethor's ability etc.

so, when one reads it that way, then it is easy to see how it is hard for the designers to make quests both thematically rich and challenging to the point where you need all your strategic wits to win....but i think they do very well at this balance all the same. quests such as osgilliath (POD) are player favourites, and still remain so, and i think this is becuase of the successfuly challenge-theme balance the designers have got right

rich

I vote D.

I only own everything through Darrowdelf. I play solo, but with two decks (emulate two players).

All quests are winnable, I don't like powerdecking. I like theme. I like campaigns, i.e. stringing quests together vs. doing a single mission. I prefer to create a single deck and go through, I really dislike creating new decks. It is a chore for me...I'd rather go to work and do my career because I at least get paid for that.

The game is more about building your deck then actually immersing yourself into missions. That is where this is an epic fail for me.

I vote D because I cannot just choose cards I like and have a shot. As many mentioned, you have tons of choices for cards and heroes, but you'd be a fool to exclude certain ones. It's like making a boardgame with melee and casting characters and you only stand a chance if you use the casting characters and the melee ones are nerfed.

If I take the time to powerdeck it, I'm sure it would be C or better...but I honestly spend more time building my deck than I actually do playing and immersing myself into a mission. There is something wrong with that.

I don't mind Legendary, even though it takes forever to put away and set up, because the game itself lasts a while. Games like Descent are fun because even though there is setup time between quests and encounters, there is a string and a progression and a feeling of epicness.

This game is a series of independent missions. Nothing more. I get that many of you love it. I just don't.

thanks for voting Shmoo

rich

Rich, I vote for D, almost I wanted to say E.

In the last couple of weeks my playergroup mainly tried the most difficult quests like Ithilien, Laketown, Cair Andros, even Druadan forest is insane with 3 players, not thinking about 4. Playing those quests made me realize how ridiculous certain quests are due to difficulty and this lowered my game-fun significantly (although i see myself as a very experienced player). This is very sad. Its not that I would not be able to create apropriate decks to beat those scenarios, of course I have them, but I am kind of bored of the 90%-use of Glorfindel and Dain-Decks.

I like to play with the full amount of available heroes, but its just not possible to play some of the news quests with this wish.

As a result I found myself now in the Easy-Mode (playing solo, normal in MP) which increased the game-fun very much. My actual deck contains the heroes Gloin, Boromir Leadership and Bifur and I love them.

Thats all I have to say about difficulty.

My vote is for: C

I like it a lot, and now, i like creating special decks for each quest. A lot of dificult quests become easier when 2 or 3 players construct special decks for it.

thank you both for voting

rich

Hm ... Maybe i was quick to answer C while i had only played till road to rivendell. Tried watcher in the water solo yesterday and won at 7th attempt, it seems pretty hard ... The long dark seems even worse and i am getting close to HoN expansion box .... So maybe i did not have a clear view of the game

im gonna say B, i play the game in two handed solo most of the time....it is funny but easy, im not a ULTRA DECK player but ecept for the POD and HON quests i found the game pretty easy ( also dol guldur ).

in italy we dont have the first 4 ATS pack but i've heard that they are easy too....so my hope is still in nightmare mode...

thanks for voting cricco

@nickpes: that is interesting as i found the long dark one of the new i would class as too easy....what are you finding hard about it?

rich

I'd say C - it's just about right at the moment. I think with the introduction of standard/easy/nightmare that will continue to be the case. If thats handled right, it should keep the difficulty level just right for everyone.

@nickpes: that is interesting as i found the long dark one of the new i would class as too easy....what are you finding hard about it?

Yeah Rich: I consider Long Dark one of the easier quests available. It is quite conditional isn't it? If you fail too many location tests and draw that card that raises your threat by 7, then yeah, it is killer. But, generally, I always am successful against this quest.

@nickpes: that is interesting as i found the long dark one of the new i would class as too easy....what are you finding hard about it?

Yeah Rich: I consider Long Dark one of the easier quests available. It is quite conditional isn't it? If you fail too many location tests and draw that card that raises your threat by 7, then yeah, it is killer. But, generally, I always am successful against this quest.

Try with 2 players or better 4. you will see big difference.

About TLD I wrote that it seems worse, hadn't try it by the time. Indeed it must be easier than WitW

I tried one game yesterday evening, lost but on the first three turns out of the encounter deck came a card that made two damage to each of my character unless I passed the locate test (failed after discarding 4 cards!!!) , and another I had to raise threat by seven ... with a troll already there I had not best of luck. I had mainly a rohan deck

I do not use cards that came after TLD pack (even though I have all the packs) and as I played through it I got the idea that with a dwarf deck it should be easy ....

I feel D.

(But I'm never a solo player) Although I play multiplayer solo at times to test.

thanks for voting

rich

I would say C. I didn't really care one way or another about the game back when it came out but played regularly with an enthusiastic friend and I really like every quest out there that I have tried so far. I'm not even much of a power gamer and as long as we don't loose on the first turn ie bad luck, I even enjoy loosing.

thanks for voting

rich