I play Dominion or Catan and I'm working away and suddenly somebody says "game over! I won!" and I'm thinking, well that was a waste of time. I'm resentful and frustrated - what did I do all that for if it ends at such a meaningless point?
And unless it's really one-sided (which sucks, and maybe there is an argument that Dominion lends itself to develop one-sided games without recovery) or whoever you are playing against is keeping mental count of everyone's point (which wouldn't be impossible, but I've never met someone actually bothering to do it) they won't be able to say "I won" before everyone has counted out their points.
Adjusting your play during the course of the game as the game gets closer to ending is a crucial part of the game. If you’re surprised when the game ends you weren’t paying enough attention!
I think the downvotes you're getting are unjustified, yours is a valid opinion to have. Player elimination games can be excellent, but IMO mostly only if they're short. Love Letter is a great example. King of Tokyo/New York and Loopin' Louie are two others I have. Player elimination is a pretty good mechanic for short games, so I'm reading your comment as more of a perfectly legitimate complaint about long games with hidden information rather than a lack of player elimination.
Also, I'm not definitely inviting you to my gaming group.
They all have one thing in common: they're social. You play with other people, rather than in the same room as other people.
I've watched some family members play Catan every holiday for years. They sit in virtual silence for 2-4 hours, all looking grim, hardly speaking. When its over, they seem relieved and exhausted. Its depressing.
Our club games have people talking constantly, laughing, chanting, enjoying themselves to the limit. They're fun. And that seems to me to be a critical threshold to deserve inclusion in the category 'game'.
Actually the one game that really tells you the character of a group is Codenames. In certain groups, the entire game is super serious and quiet with lots of time spent on thinking, while in other groups the game is fun and filled with discussion and jokes and so on.
Ironically I consider Catan a game that is mainly fun because of the social interaction the results from it.
And that seems to me to be a critical threshold to deserve inclusion in the category 'game'.
Is chess a game?
Try playing some of these group games like Carcassonne or Splendor in a 1v1 format. 1v1 strips away the chaos and makes every victory a corresponding defeat, and teaches you the mechanics in their barest form.
Then you come back to a big 4-player table with a newfound grokking of the game.
Playing with at least 3 or 4 players most games become more about diplomacy and getting other players to do what you want than getting good roll / cards. A good trick is to get hit hard at the start of the game (when you win a lot it is not hard to be a target) then once someone start getting ahead focus everyone on them while retelling how everyone fucked you over early-on. When you get in a position to win start speaking less to not attract any attention, don't use flashy combos. Then win.
If you play a lot, learn how one game can help you for next one: if don't break your promises or help someone when they need it; you may get some help next game. Or people will be a lot more willing to trust you, until breaking this trust can give you a win.
One the one hand, yes, it can make games more fairly balanced. It works well when a) all players are roughly on the same skill level, and can independently agree on who the current winner is, b) players are all playing to win, and c) players are willing to recognize that it's still just a game, and not take losing personally.
It can fail hard, though, and make a gaming experience more miserable. "retelling how everyone fucked you over early-on" reinforces the negative parts of the game play experience, and eventually you get people arguing over who's been screwed over worse. You get players who've had a strong showing arguing that "I'm not really the leader", and feeling singled out and attacked when they inevitably get ganged-up upon. Except then it's not merely their perception - the other players have discussed ganging up on them!
My immediate family is almost entirely board game enthusiasts, but arguments of that variety have almost driven apart that board-game-playing shared interest. Games such as Settlers of Catan are effectively banned, since they're really hard to prevent from devolving into "who got screwed over more" arguments.
It is even more fun when they don't. You can spend a lot of time arguing about who's ahead or on the way to be ahead and explaining why. I think the interaction between players is the most important in those games. Bluffing, teasing, making and breaking promises etc. If you want to play with no interaction just start a solo game on your PC.
But I agree with
> players are willing to recognize that it's still just a game, and not take losing personally.
and not only losing. I kinda like to be rough when explaining how someone missed some obvious better move than what they did (and this fucked-up what I had in store). But the colorful language is just for the game duration, out of it all is good.
> they're really hard to prevent from devolving into "who got screwed over more" arguments
We ended making stats of attacks during some games to settle those arguments. Result: everyone was attacking everyone almost equally in fact. It was a fun experiment and explained why everyone felt as the only target during the game.
Eventually we discovered Catan and games got markedly better because of the game dynamics. Haven’t played Risk since those days.
Still, even for a straight "first to 10 points" or "play 5 rounds", to my mind the positives outweigh the negatives. If you play until all but one player is knocked out then a) most players are gonna lose in a very personal, direct way b) players who've lost have to find something else to do while the game finishes c) there's no way to predict or plan how long the game's going to go on for. A lot of competitions involve a fairly arbitrary limit - why run for 100m rather than 110 or 90? Why play football for 90 minutes rather than 80 or 100? Why do 18 holes of golf rather than 17 or 19? Why drive 3 laps in Mario Kart rather than 2 or 4? Sometimes all you can do is find a point at which to draw a line under it.
I guess I object to a race that ends when somebody steps on a crack seemingly randomly, and the one with the most bling on their vest then wins.
Its the part about 'you have to come up with something to end it'. The theme breaks down then. Makes the game seem unfinished, like they couldn't think of some reasonable way to wind it up so they just gave up.
Pandemic ends when you contain the plague, or it kills everybody. You talk and socialize and cajole until the end, with everybody. There's a well-made game.
Plug: "Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards" are pretty awesome if you insist on elimination.
"Points reached, game over" is the only quibble I have with the two-player version of Agricola, "All Creatures Big and Small." The end game condition is reached far too quickly for my tastes so I wind up asking the other player if he or she would like to have a "house rule" of more points.
If you just blithely play out a self-centered strategy and are somehow surprised when Charlie claims the Longest Road card and declares himself the winner, then sure it might feel disappointing to lose.
Instead try to be aware that for the last two turns Amanda has been 2 ore away from completing her last city and winning, but someone would need to roll exactly a 9 to do it on her own, while Bob has already completed all his cities but is unable to build more roads and Caroline is staying one Knight ahead of his army size through the help of Amanda giving her resources for the greater good. Maybe your win-con is going to have to be to steal Amanda's longest-road card and build another settlement which is gonna be a long shot but maybe given Amanda's desperation for ore and everyone-but-you's unwillingness to trade with Bob, you can do it. Maybe you can beat the odds and come from behind, maybe you can't, but either way an abrupt "it's over you lost" can never happen -- only someone executing their win-con better than you did, with the table unable to stop them.