GNamer Fantasy Games League (And your Year Four winner is...)

Cappa wrote:

Monster Hunter Rise coughed and wheezed it's way to a abjectly miserable 87.

Cappa wrote:

Meanwhile, It Takes Two roared towards an almighty and stunning 87!!!

Something doesn't quite add up here.

Big move from me as I used my one drop on SMTV which might backfire as I do feel it be very good, just we've only had like two trailers ever, and I can just see it getting delayed to 2022 compared to the rest of my games.

As this gave me a spot, I used all $69 on Lost Judgment, it's a lot of money and with E3 coming up might have been worth waiting for something. Just I know Lost Judgement is definitely coming this year and get me like 15 points.

I did almost drop Fantasian as it's not been reviewed on Opencritic because Mobile (I should have remembered from last year) but as Special Notes say "score the game manually", which I hope Jay is a fair League Manager and gives me my whooping 9 points (Meta score is 79 at the moment) for it.

Nice.

masofdas wrote:

Big move from me as I used my one drop on SMTV

er... I don't have a lot to contribute here

That's okay Jim, I don't have a lot to contribute to this year in general.

Little disappointed only 19 point's for Ratchet but that and Fantasian 9 point's will put me on 57 in total already.

Also The Medium coming to PS5 soon which means more reviews which could go either way depending on what likes of Push Square think.

Not liking how my chances are panning out considering I picked the wrong bloody Forza game and that we saw nothing about Hellblade at the Xbox conference. It's looking good for yourself this year Mas, I reckon.

I see there's been a few pick ups, managed to get Metroid Dread and Riders Republic myself but missed out on Forza 5 to Andy, that was the one I wanted most as well, think Muss has got a good pick with SMT as well. I've got a few more pick ups in mind but I reckon we'll see some more big announcements soon. I'll be disappointed if Mas wins purely because he managed to get points from Marquette and that game is baaaaad.

I tried to pick up Metroid Dread and SMT with two equal bids. I just wanted to get my roster finalised so I didn't have to check it anymore You beat me to Dread though so I'm still on the lookout for one more game.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I think I got hammered by a few "will not release" games from my draft which probably puts me out of contention.

I absolutely forgot about this. By which I mean: I checked on Tuesday, the new games weren't up yet, and I then forgot until Sunday.

I think I'll probably sit out of next year's if there's a similar weight on bids, which I agree we had to do this year. It's pretty tough for me to stay engaged after half my games get delayed or released below 70% straight off the bat (looking at you Story of Seasons).

In all the excitement I also completely forgot about this, would've loved to have Metroid Dread on my list.

You got to do it next year, Balla how will Maquette Rulez defend its crown?

I half-heartedly put a £20 bid in for the new Forza Horizon after I seen it trending on Twitter, but then completely forgot about this too.



Still, it wound up being a decent E3 for my picks, that’s most of them got confirmed release dates for 2021. I’m not confident either way if they’ll be any good though – I know bugger all about these games, you could put a screenshot from Monster Hunter Stories or Back 4 Blood in front of me and I’d probably guess wrong what it is.

I just wanted to pick Winderjammers 2 and be happy

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I just wanted to pick Winderjammers 2 and be happy

I just hope Windjammers 2 comes out because there's been hee haw on it since the start of the year. I thought for sure we'd at least hear a release date over E3.

Balladeer wrote:

I absolutely forgot about this.  By which I mean: I checked on Tuesday, the new games weren't up yet, and I then forgot until Sunday.  

I think I'll probably sit out of next year's if there's a similar weight on bids, which I agree we had to do this year.  It's pretty tough for me to stay engaged after half my games get delayed or released below 70% straight off the bat (looking at you Story of Seasons).

Here is my suggestion for how to do next year...

For me, the most fun part of doing this each year has been the draft. It's been seeing people pick things up, little bit of light ribbing in the chat, and feeling a little bit worried that the one game you know about is going to get picked by someone else.

I think a shorter draft was definitely needed this year, and this year has also suffered a bit from COVID, but I also think the bidding isn't perfect. This is because it favours the early birds (unless your strategy is to wait, I guess) and if there's one thing this forum isn't, it's organised At least, a lot of us aren't. So we often end up in these situations where rosters are left empty at the end of the season because everything else has been snapped up.

So what I would do is introduce a gentleman's agreement on transfer windows. I think it would be quite nice if we said, "right, 4 times a year or something, we'll open a window," a week in which we can all bid. Outside of transfer windows, there are no bids. Maybe we make an announcement in this thread or whatever as a reminder, whatever we need to get people aware. But I think making it feel a bit more like we're all in the same room, or at least bidding at about the same time, could make things a bit interesting.

Don't know if that appeals to anyone, but it might be worth a go as a little shakeup?

I'd be open for more draft picks as well next year potentially depending on how we all feel.

Maybe 8 drafts 4 pick ups and a window in March, June, September and December or around events like after E3, Gamescom etc.

That might well be a good option. Stops somebody who actually pays attention all year through (=Masofdas) shafting the rest of us.

Thinking about it, if you have windows you could have a game get announced or dated and comes out before the next transfer window, sure it's going to be missed by everyone, just could be some good things not getting picked up.

I’m not really into that Transfer Window idea to be honest. It’s nobody’s fault other than the individual if they’ve got empty rosters, and it’ll never be a case that “everything else has been snapped up”. There’s just too many quality games available for equal bidding all year round, especially in 2022. Next year, I think everybody could probably fill out their twelve-game roster twice over. 2022 is looking stacked.

If you miss out on a game you’d want because you forgot or because you got outbid, then you’d surely just have to be craftier about how you choose your games in the future? That might involve looking at lower-profile indie games or riskier PC picks, but that’s part of the entertainment too, right? It really doesn’t require paying attention all year either, though I think early, scattered or even late bidding are all perfectly valid ways of going about it.

You're right as halfway point and if you look at Top 12 on Opencritic, lot of PC or Indie stuff that gems can be found.

Annoyingly a lot of the best indie stuff is either shadow dropped or early access, imagine if someone could have got Hades last year, then there was Chicory just the other week.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

it’ll never be a case that “everything else has been snapped up”.

Nah, there's a reason why Boyfriend Dungeon has been perennially sniffing about the front page of the "Top games available" list. I've often felt there was nothing in that list that looked any good. You can chalk that down to COVID, being outplayed, not looking at the right times or not looking hard enough, but either way I think it'd be more fun if it felt like there were more bidding wars.

We've had 12 times this year where people have bid on the same game if you look at the league history, and 5 of those bids were over Forza. Most of the bids submitted are for pennies really and they might still be under a Transfer Window, but at least the system might make it feel like there's more risk putting in a $1 flyer. As things are people aren't really getting outbid, active players are just picking things up.

A Transfer Window might not change the sums put forward on a lot of the games, but it would make in more likely that some recognisable game, either announced or given a firm release date, are available during the windows we're allowed to bid within. A cannier player would still have the advantage. They can still follow all the news, have a better idea of release dates for a greater number of games, and use their money better. It's just that now they'd have to do so while everyone else is active.  

That said I don't mind if things stay largely or entirely the same, I'm sure that I'll end up playing either way.

I'm still with Muss. Yes it's nobody's fault but my own that I missed the bidding - that doesn't stop it from feeling like a snowballing feeling of what's-the-pointishness that bidding windows, by concentrating the easily distracted completely-at-fault mind on certain points in the year, could have prevented.

Muss wrote:

Nah

Aye

Balladeer wrote:

I think I'll probably sit out of next year's if there's a similar weight on bids, which I agree we had to do this year.

I think our introductory draft wholly depends on what's been announced for 2022 - if there's a plethora of titles to pick from, we go for a bigger draft. I'm not wanting a draft where we're picking indie titles we've never heard of solely to facilitate a deeper draft. I'm pretty confident we'll have a bigger draft next year though considering the amount of delayed games we've had this year thanks to COVID impacting the games industry big time.

Muss wrote:

So what I would do is introduce a gentleman's agreement on transfer windows. I think it would be quite nice if we said, "right, 4 times a year or something, we'll open a window," a week in which we can all bid. Outside of transfer windows, there are no bids. Maybe we make an announcement in this thread or whatever as a reminder, whatever we need to get people aware. But I think making it feel a bit more like we're all in the same room, or at least bidding at about the same time, could make things a bit interesting.

Don't know if that appeals to anyone, but it might be worth a go as a little shakeup?

I quite like this idea actually. I do think the best we've seen the bids has been after a Nintendo Direct or E3 conference where we'll see a flurry of bidding activity. It would also help solve my major gripe with the bidding system in that it's much too easy to pick up titles with £1 bets so you've got a huge chunk of cash to dump on a big release when it gets announced and you totally outbid everyone else as a result. It makes the bidding process much too boring - I understand Cappa's point about making sure you're keeping up with the league but even when I've been regularly checking available games, it's still been boring nabbing a game with a £1 bet. A bit of strategy and a bit of chatter around the bidding process would do nicely, I think.

Course, it's up to everyone to chime in on a change like that.