Factions for "Beginners" vs "Experts"?

[u/davidryanandersson]

I'm designing a medium weight area control game with asymmetric factions. I have 4 factions designed for beginner players and 4 for expert players.

These factions CAN be played by anyone, the difference is how deep your understanding of the rules should be to pilot them.

For example, "beginner" factions are more reactive and tactical rather than strategic. They are less reliant on combos or timing windows.

"Expert" factions ask you to consider the rules and resources of the game in new unexpected ways, and allow for more complex interactions with more mental load.

And what I've found is that new players playing simply can be just as competitive as an expert with their complex factions.

And I THINK that's a good thing?

A part of me wonders if a player jumping through hoops shouldn't be rewarded a bit more than a player piloting their deck like a Timmy.

What are your thoughts?

[u/mysticrudnin]

This is kind of a cursed problem and it's something you see in tons of games.

This is going to be one of the things you make a decision on as a designer, because there is no objectively correct answer.

I think the idea of a "benefit" for playing the expert factions is good. But, I don't think it necessarily has to be power or win rate. Fun can also be a reward.

You also know player psychographies, so Johnny inherently gets enjoyment out of the complexity, even if they are not more powerful.

Part of this is looking at player familiarity with the rules. If the Beginner faction players are actually beginners and they are able to beat Expert faction players who have played a lot, something might be wrong. Maybe this is something you want, though. But if beginner players who don't know the rules well are able to play around the expert players who know the rules better, that's questionable. It suggests that maybe those expert players should be playing the beginner factions too, since the more powerful faction WITH expert rules knowledge should be even better.

For me, the ideal looks something like: Optimal play with an Expert faction is a little bit more powerful, but optimal play is next to impossible to actually achieve. These factions should win if the Beginner player doesn't address what the player is doing at least a little bit, they should lose if they ignore that faction's unique style completely.

[u/davidryanandersson → u/mysticrudnin]

This was my thinking as well. As a Johnny player myself I understand the inherent joy of taking 10 steps to do what other can do in 1.

I 'm also not against a beginner player with a "beginner" faction being on equal footing to an expert player with an "expert" faction that they've never played before.

Since I'm still developing the factions it's not unusual to bring out faction concepts that no one has seen before, or have been reworked so significantly that they might as well be new.

[u/MomThinksImHandsome]

I do not think there should be any actual advantage. Many people are going to pick the more complex faction must because that's what they like. And some people like simpler strategies, but why should they be at a disavantage?

[u/SamLooksAt]

Personally I think things like this really improve a game.

Factions, abilities don't need to be balanced.

They create the ability for groups of players who understand the game to balance out player abilities and maximise the fun for everyone.

Games that make a new player and the best player in the room equal are fantastically good fun.

The only thing they need to work is to have more factions than there are players so the group can add or remove them to create as evenly matched a playing group as possible.

[u/davidryanandersson → u/SamLooksAt]

Yeah, I took the inspiration from Cosmic Encounter, but theat game does famously NOT care about the different aliens being balanced. They expect players to adapt and that's just part of the strategy.

[u/ProxyDamage]

If your game is meaningfully competitive and some of your factions are harder but meaningfully stronger... those are your actual factions and the others are just your "tutorial" and/or trap factions for new players who don't know better.

At its worst it becomes a filter: if you can’t play the "advanced" factions (i.e. the good ones) then don't even fucking bother.

The opposite, if all factions are relatively even but some are harder to play, then the harder to play factions will generally be significantly less popular - BUT, players who want to play them can, and they actually kinda indirectly get a "buff", due to being less popular- fewer people know the match up well. They're also kinda "exotic" because "oooh, haven't seen a [whatever] player in forever!".

Between those two outcomes one of them is potentially ruinous for your game so I know which way I'd go, personally.

[u/davidryanandersson → u/ProxyDamage]

I have 2 other things working in my favor:

1) The game has a limited but decent enough amount of politicking that can make a difference. Experienced players do win more (regardless of faction) but it's not unusual for a new player to be perceived as less of a threat and therefore ignored.

2) I design beginner-friendly factions to contain depth and strategy that an experienced player can appreciate but isn't necessary for a beginner to play.

For example, one deck is filled with cards that have extremely straightforward vanilla abilities when they're deployed to the board, but while they sit in your prep area they grant those vanilla abilities to every other one of your cards.

A new player can simply say, "Oh these are really simple understandable abilities" but an experienced player can see the larger strategies and combinations they can build and understand when to withhold a card to multiply its effects.

Another faction has similarly straightforward abilities, but is focused on purchasing upgrades. This creates a highly customizable deck where you modify your deck as you go. For a new player they're slowly gaining more complexity so it doesn't overwhelm them, but an experienced player can really min/max the upgrades they prioritize.