nice addition.

Love the ravens My favorite birds of course

Originally posted by Meatpod:

This is unfortunately a step in the wrong direction. Thankfully, since its an option, its a minor step (unless it splits the playerbase...) but a bad step still. Be warned in the future:

When you remove a powerful character, tactic, or card in a game, you make the next most powerful element just as powerful, sometimes more so. This can actually hurt the balance of a game. In this instance, cards like Killdeer and Redstart are much more powerful. If your opponent gets them early, there are less cards in the deck to give you a strong start. I would even argue the Killdeer is way way more powerful than Ravens, since unlike Ravens you don't need to have a 1-cost Water bird to be as effective early.

Unpopular opinion but I think developers need to listen to players less in some cases, especially when it comes to game balance. Vocal minorities outshine large swaths of players who are indifferent or having a perfectly good time. Please be careful.

Truly an unpopular opinion from a vocal minority. I salute you.

I find it hilarious that this game takes longer to put out an expansion than the actual physical game.

Originally posted by Helion:

Can somebody tell me why the rulebook suggests to ditch the ravens? Are they too powerful? Are the two birds redundant? Has this decision to do with football? I honestly don't know why they are (optionally) gone, and would like to know!

It's because in the Oceania expansion you get a new food type called nectar, which is way too powerful to get from the raven ability, as you can use it to substitute any other food and also get additional points at the end of the game for using it. In the tabletop game ravens were also banned, so Wingspan PC team not removing them outright but adding it as an option is a very nice thing indeed. Our tabletop group actually found nectar to wholly unbalance the game and make it revolve only around getting nectar instead of strategizing with the other food types. We decided to keep the ravens, but instead drop nectar-containing dice from 5 to 3, which i REALLY hope is also an option in the digital.

Originally posted by Casa_Pluis:

I understand the explanation. But the way and the title with what it is announced doesn't sound very friendly to my intelligent, magnificent, gracious, black feathered friends.

The title might be confusing, but this is a huge good thing, as in the tabletop it's suggested to just remove ravens from the game after Oceania. Now we can opt to keep them.

I have the boardgames for a long time now... base game, European and Oceania Expansion too. In Oceania Expansion they have introduced a new gatherable resource called Nectars, which I believe a little no-brainer resource. Basically anytime you gather resource, it is better to take the nectar than any other resource if you can. It makes the ravens and crows OP because they can give you any type of resources (including nectar). So in my opinion it is not the bird which is OP, but the new resource makes it broken.

So when we played the board game, we have never really REMOVED the ravens and crows (as the rule book suggested it), rather we forbid to gather nectar with those birds. I sort of wished there will be an option for this in the game version... unfortunately there isn't. It's not a big deal, but I do not like the idea of "removing" contant for the game. Especially because originally ravens and crows were fine... and nectar is not a well balanced mechanic.

Originally posted by 素晴らしいポッサム:

The official rulebook also suggests removing the "birds named after a person" bonus card now too, doesn't it? But for some ridiculous reason, not because it's OP, hopefully devs won't feel the need to waste any time adding an option for that...

The developers of the steam version likely will add this option for the Asia expansion if/when they get around to making that expansion. The suggestion to remove the "Historian" card is an optional choice for players who feel that the card is significantly weakened by the addition of all the new Asia expansion birds none of which have historian names.

We still keep it in, because it's still a decent bonus card and better than a lot of the very weak new ones.

But, again, as I've mentioned in other replies in this thread, it really doesn't make sense for people to be upset that the steam version implements rules and options that are explicitly included in the official rules.

For all we know, the contract requires the steam developers to implement the game exactly as it is written in the official rules.

Originally posted by Meatpod:

Unpopular opinion but I think developers need to listen to players less in some cases, especially when it comes to game balance. Vocal minorities outshine large swaths of players who are indifferent or having a perfectly good time. Please be careful.

???

People objecting to nerfing the ravens are probably the vocal minority, not players who want to nerf the ravens.

Also, the decision to include a suggestion to remove the ravens from Oceania was likely the direct result of the game designer (Elizabeth Hargrave) doing what she thought was best for the game and best aligned with the general consensus of the game community.

Originally posted by MyYac:

Didn't you read that this is an option available in single player and custom games?
It's an option, not something you have to do, and it's not something you're asked to do in an online matching game, so why are there so many complaints? Don't know how the game works? Why are there so many stupid users?

And shorten game turn times.

People are stupid and do not read carefully.
There are numerous objections in this thread to an implementation of an OPTIONAL modification that comes directly from the official rulebook. It's astoundingly stupid. (The objections, not the rule modification.)

Originally posted by RiCE:

but I do not like the idea of "removing" contant for the game. Especially because originally ravens and crows were fine... and nectar is not a well balanced mechanic.

Originally, the Crow was fine. The Raven has always been overpowered and game-ruining.

That's unnecessary. Since the oceania expension, taking eggs has become weaker and the other bioms became stronger. No need to take out the ravens.

Originally posted by Helion:

Can somebody tell me why the rulebook suggests to ditch the ravens? Are they too powerful? Are the two birds redundant? Has this decision to do with football? I honestly don't know why they are (optionally) gone, and would like to know!

Even without the new nectar tokens, the ravens are way more efficient than most other birds. They provide "off-row" actions. When you place ravens in grasslands, you are essentially taking two turns worth of actions in one activation (laying eggs, then trading an egg for resources). The Killdeer and Franklin's Gull cards (trade one egg for 2 cards) are also stupidly overpowered for this reason.

Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

That's unnecessary. Since the oceania expension, taking eggs has become weaker and the other bioms became stronger. No need to take out the ravens.

I actually agree with this. If anything, this option should have been implemented before Oceania -- along with banning the rest of the Power 4.

Originally posted by Socium Domini:

Ravenist not to say another word !!!

I'm surprised in this day and age that we can just exclude a "black bird race", this is not inclusive and send a weird message that seems to come from no where ?

What kind of message are the creator sending here? i'm confused.

That these birds are broken? My friend group stopped playing Wingspan because Ravans and Killdeer are basically auto wins.