Blood Bowl 2

K

k^M

Blackwing Lair Raider
2,705
1,965
9 games in and there's the first rage quit. Every single dwarf on my lineup has tackle save the runner, and 4 surrounding an elf, mf'er dodges all 4 of them to run into the endzone?

RNG gonna RNG, but fucks sake how does that work.
 
Khalan

Khalan

Trakanon Raider
1,461
1,349
I bought it and played a few hours, but just submitted for a refund.

A) UI is horrible and clunky, just seems slow and hard to move players
B) Camera Angle forcing you to always auto center on enemy player is super annoying
C) Crashed 3 times during games, and before you tell me to update drivers, I did everything I was supposed to.
D) The skill icons are cute, but having to click each player and mouse over them to see what they all do is super annoying.
E) No grid

Could go on and on, but as predicted game is clunky and unfinished, I will wait a few months/years until it is fixed and take another look.
 
Laura

Laura

Lord Nagafen Raider
582
109
I can't form my own team in campaign mode?
Please tell me I can play a campaign against the AI using a team I formed (just like the original)...
 
Gavinmad

Gavinmad

Mr. Poopybutthole
42,489
50,656
k^M_sl said:
9 games in and there's the first rage quit. Every single dwarf on my lineup has tackle save the runner, and 4 surrounding an elf, mf'er dodges all 4 of them to run into the endzone?

RNG gonna RNG, but fucks sake how does that work.
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The difficulty of a dodge depends on how many tackle zones you're moving into, not how many tackle zones you're moving out of. So assuming your guys are spaced out evenly to make an X or a +, he's at a -2 for the first dodge and has no penalty for the second dodge. He needed a 4+ for the first dodge and then only a 2+ for the second. The only thing tackle means is that he can't use his dodge skill to reroll a failure. That's why you never box an elf in like that, you put one or two guys in base to base and then spread the rest of your guys out in his path so he has to make as many dodges as possible to move the ball forward.

Incidentally, Dwarves are not a very good team. Terribly mobility and ball handling so they're bad at scoring, and don't hit very hard. Even once you've gotten them skilled up into an unbreakable wall of guard, they'll still be bad at scoring. Play Orks if you want a bashy team that can still score ok.
 
Funkor

Funkor

Molten Core Raider
733
618
Khalan_sl said:
I bought it and played a few hours, but just submitted for a refund.

A) UI is horrible and clunky, just seems slow and hard to move players
B) Camera Angle forcing you to always auto center on enemy player is super annoying
C) Crashed 3 times during games, and before you tell me to update drivers, I did everything I was supposed to.
D) The skill icons are cute, but having to click each player and mouse over them to see what they all do is super annoying.
E) No grid

Could go on and on, but as predicted game is clunky and unfinished, I will wait a few months/years until it is fixed and take another look.
Click to expand...
Watched a few streams of this and a lot of guys are saying the game is sorta more friendly towards new players, but for veteran players it is a definite step back from BB1. Another big issues is you can't look at your opponent roster while picking inducements before game start, nor can you turn on text describing each player position so you know which players are your blitzers or whatever.

Lizardmen are out supposeably though so if you picked them as a DLC race check to see if you can play them yet.
 
kaid

kaid

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,647
1,187
Laura_sl said:
I can't form my own team in campaign mode?
Please tell me I can play a campaign against the AI using a team I formed (just like the original)...
Click to expand...
You can do it you just need to form a league and do a solo league. Then you can pick one of the various bowls that are premade or make one yourself to compete in. I was doing this last night with bretonians. The campaign is pretty much an extended tutorial of how to play the game it seems.
 
kaid

kaid

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,647
1,187
Gavinmad_sl said:
The difficulty of a dodge depends on how many tackle zones you're moving into, not how many tackle zones you're moving out of. So assuming your guys are spaced out evenly to make an X or a +, he's at a -2 for the first dodge and has no penalty for the second dodge. He needed a 4+ for the first dodge and then only a 2+ for the second. The only thing tackle means is that he can't use his dodge skill to reroll a failure. That's why you never box an elf in like that, you put one or two guys in base to base and then spread the rest of your guys out in his path so he has to make as many dodges as possible to move the ball forward.

Incidentally, Dwarves are not a very good team. Terribly mobility and ball handling so they're bad at scoring, and don't hit very hard. Even once you've gotten them skilled up into an unbreakable wall of guard, they'll still be bad at scoring. Play Orks if you want a bashy team that can still score ok.
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Dwarves biggest advantage is they are all pretty highly skilled so they tend to win even match ups on rolls and have high armor value. So the do tend to lose some games early in a season. But their overall durability tends to mean that over the course of a league play you lose a lot less cash to having to replace casualties and the guys you get stick around longer to get more skills. Having nearly everybody on your team start with block is pretty good and with troll slayer support you can fight the big guys off pretty well.

But yes especially in a one off game they have challanges. It is really hard for them to score so in a single one off game elves are nearly always going to beat them simply because they just need to get lucky on few dodges and bam they scored. Dwarves take pretty much an entire half to grind their way down the field.
 
kaid

kaid

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,647
1,187
Funkor_sl said:
Watched a few streams of this and a lot of guys are saying the game is sorta more friendly towards new players, but for veteran players it is a definite step back from BB1. Another big issues is you can't look at your opponent roster while picking inducements before game start, nor can you turn on text describing each player position so you know which players are your blitzers or whatever.

Lizardmen are out supposeably though so if you picked them as a DLC race check to see if you can play them yet.
Click to expand...
Gah I forgot to check if I could make a lizard man team last night as I was putzing around with bretonians. The lizardman teams are typically pretty nasty. The saurus are all str 4 so you have some seriously dangerous line beasts and their skinks while squishy are all agil 4 so its like having a black ork line and squishy elf runners/catchers. They are one of the bashiest teams I played in previous versions that was still capable of rapid scoring if needed.
 
Phazael

Phazael

Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
14,159
30,342
Got it on the console for mucking about. As someone who played a lot of CE, my observations are:

Pros-
AI seems better in some ways, mainly when it comes to forming cages correctly and prioritizing easy actions over hard ones.
Graphics are a vast improvement.
The UI is decent for console play and the controller works fairly well, once you get used to it.
Actions are presented as percentages, making for easier decision making.
Setting up custom formations by team is fairly easy and it actually remembers them.
Lots more announcer dialog.

Cons-
Cyanide is altering some of the core rules and rosters of the table game, with no actual testing to determine the balance ramifications. The stadium rules are the most game breaking.
Graphics are limited to very few models, making all the crowds look like generic humans and telling individual team mates apart at a glance difficult.
The AI still has no concept of crowd surfing, turn number, or aggressive scoring. It also hordes rerolls unnecessarily. Further, there are not difficultly level settings for the AI.
Campaign is slow, boring, and teaches new players bad habits.
Computer still cheats with the dice massively, just now there is no log. Might be a bug in the RNG as most of the time rerolls result in the exact roll you just made.
Initial team roster is fairly bland and lacking certain iconic teams (Wood Elves, Goblins, anything undead) in the mix. And yet they had time to make the really shitty Brettonian roster....
AI spends the entire timer doing nothing, then the clock freezes at 2 seconds while it rattles off all its actions in a row, making playing it very ponderous and boring.
Easy access to player information does not exist anywhere in the UI. In fact, the entire UI seems designed to discourage data mining of any kind.
Excess money above 150k counts against TV, leading to having to do the tedious process of hiring and firing staff to maintain TV, which is beyond dumb and accomplishes nothing except adding tedium.
They appear to want to implement aging, which we all know will basically just favor certain squads (which is why the LRB community abandoned it three versions ago).
Inability to fast forward animations in either turns or setup extends the length of games by nearly double in some cases. Compounding this is the fact that you lose clock time while these animations are going on.
They recast Ogre Bob and the new voice actor sounds like shit.
Matchmaking is beyond shit in this game if you play in public leagues.
Private league play has next to zero customizations options for the managers.


We'll see where this game ends up after more patching and how expensive it will be to buy back the teams we already had, but right now its a "buy if you are a fan, wait otherwise" title.
 
Gavinmad

Gavinmad

Mr. Poopybutthole
42,489
50,656
Cyanide is altering some of the core rules and rosters of the table game, with no actual testing to determine the balance ramifications. The stadium rules are the most game breaking.
Click to expand...
Well that settles it. Under no circumstances would I ever play this game even if it was offered to me free. The shit they did with making up a team and leaving out star players in the original was bad enough.
 
kaid

kaid

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,647
1,187
Funkor_sl said:
Watched a few streams of this and a lot of guys are saying the game is sorta more friendly towards new players, but for veteran players it is a definite step back from BB1. Another big issues is you can't look at your opponent roster while picking inducements before game start, nor can you turn on text describing each player position so you know which players are your blitzers or whatever.

Lizardmen are out supposeably though so if you picked them as a DLC race check to see if you can play them yet.
Click to expand...
Apparently the makers of this posted if you preordered via steam you are getting both teams not just the one you picked. and for other day one purchasers who did not preorder but got it first day are getting lizards for free.
 
K

k^M

Blackwing Lair Raider
2,705
1,965
Phazael_sl said:
Got it on the console for mucking about. As someone who played a lot of CE, my observations are:

AI spends the entire timer doing nothing, then the clock freezes at 2 seconds while it rattles off all its actions in a row, making playing it very ponderous and boring.
Click to expand...
This may be something specific to console, I have not seen this happen even once on PC. Does seem like a shitty glitch/bug if so.

I haven't come across most of these cons but not being a pro player, may be something I'll run into down the road. They use the rerolls they have (usually 2-4) to avoid ko's quite often, cheating is kinda RNG-ish but I've had a few lucky strings so hard to say.

I don't know how people make so much money that it'd impact team value, I finished an 8 game tournament broke though if it's a longer campaign maybe thats how?
 
Funkor

Funkor

Molten Core Raider
733
618
Gavinmad_sl said:
Well that settles it. Under no circumstances would I ever play this game even if it was offered to me free. The shit they did with making up a team and leaving out star players in the original was bad enough.
Click to expand...
After some public outcry they added an option to private league creation to allow the disabling of Aging, but didn't put in a way to get rid of stadiums (nor any of the other changes they did like increasing Orc Blitzer costs). These changes wouldn't be as annoying if you could just turn them off but they were too damn lazy to even do that correctly.

I'll be sticking to FUMBBL/BB1 for now unless they implement some drastic changes to BB2, or the inevitable complete edition comes out with all races on a steep discount. The new game just doesn't bring anything truly meaningful to the table beyond prettier graphics and the percentage display for actions. They could have done something interesting with a cosmetic store like DOTA2 or League but instead they'll nickle and dime out core features of the game (races) which is a way bigger turnoff.
 
Funkor

Funkor

Molten Core Raider
733
618
k^M_sl said:
I don't know how people make so much money that it'd impact team value, I finished an 8 game tournament broke though if it's a longer campaign maybe thats how?
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Take a durable bash team, like Orcs, to a high enough Team Value and you'll run into this. Doesn't take long to stack up 12 or 13 greenskins and Apothecary then the rest of your money is just used to fill in deaths on the roster or players retiring from too many stat downs or niggling injuries.

Inflated treasuries for some teams is a legit annoyance that there were talks about between Jarvis and the rest of the LRB team but then Games Workshop shut all that down and the rules have frozen in time for years. A more interesting approach to this from Cyanide would have been to implement the rules completely vanilla by default, and then add in a bunch of optional stuff on top of it that you could enable for private leagues. They could have taken polls for the community on house rules like this, or hell they could have added in some sort of mod support for thinking up house rules to let league managers run wild with.
 
Phazael

Phazael

Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
14,159
30,342
k^M_sl said:
I don't know how people make so much money that it'd impact team value, I finished an 8 game tournament broke though if it's a longer campaign maybe thats how?
Click to expand...
To add to what Funkor said, there are some teams that simply do not have the need or means to spend excess money, some of them extremely early in their development. In the RR league, I ran Zons three times and by the end I had nearly 2 million in treasury with no desire to spend any of it. I had the 13 players I needed and enough to replace the odd dead one here and there. I had 3 RRs. I had an apot. I had 2-3 assistants and cheer leaders. I really did not want to add three more galls and go deep into the spiraling expenses. Worse than that, I really did not want to buy inducements with excess money because I am conferring the same extra inducement cash to my opponent. So my treasury built up. If you play Flings or Gobos, you hit that wall even sooner.

The dumb part is that you basically have to buy/sell staff to keep the 150 you are allowed, which bypasses the whole mechanic with just the added tedium of doing that bullshit. At that point, why bother? No one is going to burn those war chests as they have no practical value to a developed roster, so all it adds is some tedium every match. The TV problem is as old as bloodbowl itself (and closely tied to the over the top bash issue) and this two second half assed attempt to fix it accomplished jack squat.
 
Funkor

Funkor

Molten Core Raider
733
618
Another fun fuckup they did:

Journeymen replacement players if your roster shrinks below 11 players are done as part of the inducement phase of the game, instead of post match. So players can farm out a Chaos team with 4 max level Chaos Warriors if they want, fire all of their beastmen, and their TV with only the 4 Warriors + Apoth would be something like 1110. So they'll get matched against lowish teams, get their free 7 beastmen to fill up the roster, and proceed to stomp a near rookie team to death. This is only a concern for public leagues since private ones can police bullshit farm teams but it would be nice if they could do the damn journeymen rules correctly.
 
I

Iwazaru_sl

shitlord
80
0
I never played the first version, so I do not have the attachment to the quirks and teams of the Chaos edition. Blood Bowl 2 is frustrating and infuriating in a way a game hasn't been in a good while. I'm having a blast despite it all. If someone starts up a league let me know. I'll pick one of the teams I haven't played yet and dive in.
 
K

k^M

Blackwing Lair Raider
2,705
1,965
Curious ya'lls thoughts on this - I tend to favor more bashy races (orc, dwarf) because comparatively it seems a bit smoother over all. I tried out an elf team to see how it played out with pass/running game instead and I want to like it, but it seems that in the time it takes you to score enough td's to even get block on half your team they are likely dead/injured. Same with the thrower, if I get 1 point per successful pass it would take quite a few games to even level one of those up.

For those of you that prefer that game, where do you fill in the gap in leveling players up vs. being a punching bag when blocks aren't reliable comparative to a team with block/tackle/guard?
 
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