Blood Bowl 3

[zapotec]

If there is no skip or super fast animation option i'll not buy it

 

[Grunker]

So ... what will be different in BB3? Better camera control maybe? New graphics? Why would I want to buy this instead of playing BB2?

BB2020 is a whole new (and imo shitty) ruleset.

I think it's a mixed bag. Mostly good, but the stuff that's bad is real bad.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[sser]

I can tell GW came down on the devs with strict aesthetic rules. One thing about BB2 is the animators/artists did amazing jobs in interpreting the lore and characters. This looks like a huge draw back from that.

 

[Harthwain]

This looks like a huge draw back from that.

They could be making models to imitate Blood Bowl 3 figurines specifically.

Compare this:

Spoiler

To this:

Spoiler

This could mean we will see Blood Bowl 3 figurines for a Dwarves. But, yeah, not a big fan of their new looks.

 

[sser]

This looks like a huge draw back from that.

They could be making models to imitate Blood Bowl 3 figurines specifically.

Compare this:

Spoiler

To this:

Spoiler

This could mean we will see Blood Bowl 3 figurines for a Dwarves. But, yeah, not a big fan of their new looks.

Yeah that's what I mean -- GW sticking corporate fingers in the pie. They want uniformity across the titles. Same reason they dropped Bretonnians, a fairly well balanced and unique faction developed out of house, and replaced them with Imperials, a very boring looking team that's basically Humans but worse.

When BB2 released, the BB concept was still a bit of a redheaded stepchild. The only reason BB1 released was because the company made a ripoff which alerted GW's heatseaking missile lawyers to the scene and both parties agreed to just print it out as an official BB1 game. So I imagine there was much creative leeway up until now.

 

[bionicman]

On topic: Looking forward to BB3 cause of the new rules and some new teams.

Off topic: The Codexian Blood bowl 2 league is missing one contender (we're at the second round, one participant dropped out), so if anyone in this thread plays BB2 and would like to sub-in (and is not already participating), write a post here: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/codex-bloodbowl-league.137843/

 

[Serus]

I'm not sure what is the appeal of this series is. If one wants to play multi fumbbl is a thing. For SP it sucks due to non-existing AI. Is the appeal the graphics or what?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the packaging as a whole i guess, and how easier is to put it together instead of having to learn to paint and spend a fortune on miniatures.

 

[Harthwain]

I'm not sure what is the appeal of this series is. If one wants to play multi fumbbl is a thing. For SP it sucks due to non-existing AI. Is the appeal the graphics or what?

If you mean Blood Bowl 2 - for a lot of people it would be graphics, but for me in particular it's how well the UI was done:

• You can select to see the grid or/and to see all skills or just extra skills.
  
• You can see how far you can go as you plan your route (including GFIs).
• You can choose to use a skill or not.
• You can see your assessment of chances when planning a risky move (and you can select it to be displayed in percentages or dice numbers).
• When highlighting a player you can see all tackle zones of that team, making it easier to plan your actions.
• Skill icons are easily distinguishable via their background colors and they look good to boot.

By the way, I was looking up at the changes in Blood Bowl 2020 (somebody made a compilation here) and I have to say I find most of them to be sensible.

The biggest suprise is how they changed leveling up.

Picking a primary skill remained relatively the same. Randomly selecting a primary skill could be fun and can result in some skills seeing use. Considering you get a skill for half the price of selecting a skill, it could be worth it if your target "skill group" contains a lot of abilities you would consider useful. It's essentially risk versus reward at this point. Secondary skills got pricer though. Like, waaaay pricer - you need to have DOUBLE the amount of SPPs to pick it. So you could pick two primary skills for the price of a single secondary skill. And improving stats is not only ridiculously expensive, it's also RANDOM and increases your TV by a lot, so I find it highly questionable stash SPPs for that (especially at later levels).

All in all, it will still allow for the creation of unconventional builds (evenmoreso as you can now pick them), but going outside of primary skills will require knowing precisely what build you want and it will have to pay for itself. In fact, we might see the opposite happening: the game forming the rigid meta faster, because now there will be enumerable cost associated with leveling up "uncoventional" players. And people like to go for quick and easy solutions. For me personally it's a bit of a blow, because rolling for skills was very fun part of the game (probably THE best part of it) as you never knew what opportunities you'd have (other than the guaranteed choices, of course).

 

[sser]

You and GW are underestimating players' ability to min-max. People already fire players who level-up a bunch and don't net certain skills/characteristics (Werewolf, Witch, for example). With PC's ability to sim games at a much faster rate than a boardgame, you'll see people figure out the best routes to take and I think that "risk/reward" concept will drop off. It also incentivizes restarts on the open ladder way more -- after all, why not just play a game or two, roll random skill options, and if those are junk just reroll the whole team?

It's a terrible design, IMO, and I also hate it for reasons you already listed which is that it totally takes away from procedural character development. The fun part of leagues is seeing the superstars that come about naturally or the shock when they die, but everything is mostly pre-determined it's like who gives a shit. Technically any swinging dick can make the same character if they want to. The allure and 'league lore' aspect of it is dead.

 

[Harthwain]

You and GW are underestimating players' ability to min-max. People already fire players who level-up a bunch and don't net certain skills/characteristics (Werewolf, Witch, for example). With PC's ability to sim games at a much faster rate than a boardgame, you'll see people figure out the best routes to take and I think that "risk/reward" concept will drop off. It also incentivizes restarts on the open ladder way more -- after all, why not just play a game or two, roll random skill options, and if those are junk just reroll the whole team?

What you say is true. However, the distinction has to be made when it comes to larger, perpetual leagues (Cabalvision Official League, for example) and smaller, custom leagues. In smaller leagues you will have less time to "farm" SPP, so taking random skills could come in handy at some point, and you can't - technically - just drop your team and "re-roll" it. I can even see coaches who have cheap linemen taking their chance and either being OK with their random skill or firing that player and hiring a fresh one. Although this approach might be less viable now, considering your treasury no longer adds to TV when buying inducements (then again, you probably don't want to sit on more than 100k, because of Expensive Mistakes).

 

[Teut Busnet]

Wait, is the Mutation Skill 'Iron Hard Skin' the only thing against 'Claw' they did? I heard they nerfed it somehow?

Always thought 'Claw' was op - and silly - with how it reduced everyones AV to 6 and was looking forward to some changes... .

 

[Harthwain]

Wait, is the Mutation Skill 'Iron Hard Skin' the only thing against 'Claw' they did? I heard they nerfed it somehow?

Always thought 'Claw' was op - and silly - with how it reduced everyones AV to 6 and was looking forward to some changes... .

My understanding is that Claw and Mighty Blow no longer stack. Also, Mighty Blow no longer works "passively" (like, when someone tries to block you and rolls "attacker down" or "both down").

Here is the best description of the change that I could find (quoting after someone from reddit):

Page 78 Claw Skill description: "When you make an Armour roll...a roll of 8+ before applying any modifiers will break their armour..."

Mighty Blow is a modifier so they no longer stack (page 80 Mighty Blow description calls it a "modifier").

By the way, some Star Players can have their Mighty Blow skill set higher than the usual +1 modifier.

 

[flabbyjack]

I would rather watch real football than play Blood Bowl. And I fucking hate real football.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I get that. Nobody actually loves this game. It's more like toxic love/hate relationship with an ex-stripper.
But sometimes it feels so goooooooood...

 

[Saint Scylla]

Disappointed with the starting teams:

Black Orcs
Imperial Nobility
Chaos Chosen
Chaos Renegade
Dark Elves
Dwarfs
Elven Union
Humans
Nurgle
Old World Alliance
Orcs
Skaven

Was the goal here to recycle as many models and animations as possible? Seriously:
- Orcs + Black Orcs
- Old World Alliance + Imperial Nobility + Humans
- Old World Alliance + Dwarves
- Chaos Chosen + Chaos Renegade + Nurgle
- Dark Elves + Elven Union
It's only missing the Underworld Denizens...

 

[Harthwain]

I get that. Nobody actually loves this game. It's more like toxic love/hate relationship with an ex-stripper.
But sometimes it feels so goooooooood...

The game is interesting, because anything can happen. I won't deny there are some boring games (when one side dominates the other completely), but such in nature of Blood Bowl.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

no lizards, no buy.

 

[Harthwain]

Disappointed with the starting teams:

[...]

Was the goal here to recycle as many models and animations as possible

I wouldn't be surprised. That way they can claim that Blood Bowl 3 offers 12 teams, when Blood Bowl 2 offered "only" 8, but they can keep some of the more unique teams stashed away for the future DLCs.

That said, Imperial Nobility are essentially reskinned (and somewhat upgraded) Bretonnians, which was its own legitimate team.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Yuck. Consolized interface.

 

[Harthwain]

Some observations:

• Go For It squares has been replaced with black'n'white "warning signs". They not only don't convey information about what they do (at least not from what I have seen), they also look awful. Good job.

• The pitch is has very dull brown-yellow color. Probably because it's an Orcish stadium or something like that.

• The team colors could be made more vibrant.

• The icons are super big. They will probably be scaled down on PC. However, I doubt we will be getting interface made with PCs in mind, so what we see is what we'll are probably going to get.

• The non-block dices appear directly on the screen, instead of the bottom.

 

[Jaedar]

Yuck. Consolized interface.

Looks about the same as bb2? Could be worse.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Yuck. Consolized interface.

Looks about the same as bb2? Could be worse.

I don't like the giant circle thing in the middle of the screen for follow up yes/no. Seems like a weird design.