gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/s/farkle/17055

I'm not sure I'm right here, but hear me out.

I just made it to second place, so I don't think I'm just blaming my poor luck on the game when I say that getting high scores is harder than it should be.

The issue isn't the number of points, obviously. It's that aside from collecting ones and fives and occasionally three of a kind, it's really hard to get a roll that scores anything. I've gone multiple games without any of those roles, and the only reason I made it to the top two today was that the three of a kind which I got happened to be three ones.

If I can come close to winning the day without any six-die combinations and with multiple farkles, I think that means very few people are getting those rewards which make the game fun. Therefore I think it would be a better game if there was a little bit more candy involved.

I really don't think I'm conflating ease of scoring with fun here.

My two suggestions: Frist, allow some mechanism for scoring dice that fit with dice you're already holding. They should be worth less than if you rolled the combination all at the same time. For example, if I'm holding three sixes and I roll a fourth six, maybe I can pick it up for 50 points.

Second, allow runs of just five length. 12345 or 23456.

These should be worth less, maybe 300 points. They are a lot of dice for not so many points, but hopefully they can enable an extra fill sometimes.

I think changes really would make the game more interesting and more fun. But I do like it as it is! Thank you so much @gritty, and of course I have no expectation that you will agree with me or have time to implement these suggestions even if you did agree.

hey there, thanks for playing and enjoying the game. also thanks for the thought out suggestion.

to your point - these are actually the standard rules for the game, but there are of course variations. the difference, I think, is that with the real game you have unlimited rounds, so long as one person didn't hit the point goal. there's more farkles and it's okay there. here, it's a bit more risky.

I'm not against any suggestions like this, and I'd have to think on it. I'd also like to see what others who play think of the game rules as they stand.

as a side note, I got 4 straight fills yesterday in one round so it's possible to have a breakout round.

> I got 4 straight fills yesterday in one round so it's possible to have a breakout round.

Does that mean you got four straights, one after another?

The probably of that should be extremely low on real dice.

If so, that makes me worried about the random number generator. I have this sense of getting too many repeating patterns on consecutive rolls. Has anyone else noticed something similar?

Yes, I have noticed something similar. Often times when I reroll only one or two dice will change. I’m not convinced it’s a bug, though it could be random. I interpret @gritty to mean just four fills ‘straight in row’, not necessarily four straights.

@skyjake - @satch is is correct, 4 fills in a row. poor word choice.

I'm using systemrandom which is, from what I read, about as random as you can get without using the cryptographic library.

I just finally checked it out. It's exactly the game I grew up playing in Highschool, only 3x1 was equal to 750 for us not 1000!

Firstly, farkle is farkle, and its rules are what they are. Having said that, I agree that there is little to do if you don't get a good hand up-front ... once you hold a die, many good combinations disappear,... Also getting three 2's is hardly worth it if you can keep going holding a single die.

And the issue of only having 10 rounds, makes the likelihood of a game going without any exciting point scores a lot higher.

I think that because of this, my suggestions have the potential to make the game a lot more interesting.

Honestly, before writing this I wasn’t aware that Farkle wasn’t a game that @gritty made up, haha!

I totally understand, discomfort about changing the official rules and having it no longer be ‘Farkle’ as most people know it. But on the other hand, I do think that games evolve, and we have every right to adapt it to be the best it can be for us.

@gritty Oh I see, that makes more sense.

Granted, it is easy to see patterns in randomness, especially when there are only 6 possible values.

Farkle is too hard

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