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Comment by xixixao | Hacker News Reader

I would love simpler (harder) instructions! It's too easy tbh brick by brick as it is today. 1964 looks lovely. I also have a gripe with the complexity of modern bricks (besides "basic bricks" sets). It's getting harder to build something else than what the model is.

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This 1980 style was also lovely. I rebuilt this model a few years ago - these instructions strike the balance just right. They make you think.

https://lego.brickinstructions.com/lego_instructions/set/886...

But maybe if you want to sell more you must have instructions that anyone can follow?

Those sets were marketed as 'Expert Builder' in the USA, so maybe the challenge was part of the point?

The 1980s is where LEGO instructions peaked. It all went downhill from there.

Oh my god, i yearned for that set so hard, but never got it. I got the tractor and the crane which I built with my daughter more than 40 years after my dad gave them to me. That was weird and comforting at the same time.

Agree one hundred percent. The build together option seems only required because ik modern instructions there are only like a few parts per step. Back in the day it was like 10-15, which meant every step took longer. It seems too automated today, too verbose. And yes cross building is difficult because of a lot of very small parts.

In the 80s you would get the harder instructions through the "alternative builds" on the back on the cardboard box. Just an image without instructions.

The problem is that modern sets are made up of much higher numbers of parts (especially small ones). Building them would take forever if you had to pause and think every other step, or had to play where's Wally with a dozen new small pieces all the time. Lego would first have to backtrack to simpler sets again before fixing their instruction manuals.

Yup, it's more or less defeating the whole purpose of Lego which is that you can build whatever your imagination comes up with. If I wanted an Airfix model I'd buy an Airfix model, not a click-together Minecraft simulation of one.

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