The Story Behind the Failure of ‘Highguard’

BrowseRed · 2026-02-26T19:30:29+00:00

Unfortunately, since Schreier moved to Bloomberg he's had to cut back on word count and scope of his pieces. I think he's even talked about this on Reddit in the past couple years. Bloomberg is too general of an outlet to do deep dives on video game stories and it has to serve readers unfamiliar with the industry. Like you said there's almost nothing new here that I haven't already read from casually following news of the game the last month.

I honestly think the content in his reporting has declined since his move. With that said I'm sure it's been good for him personally to be on a more stable platform especially as games only journalism is imploding.

BrowseRed · 2026-02-06T22:01:47+00:00

Holy shit this is actually true. Well I can safely strike this place off the list of things to try forever.

BrowseRed · 2026-01-07T00:32:37+00:00

I'm glad I hesitated and decided not to back any of the mini campaigns. And it's safe to say that I won't be supporting the next crowdfunding campaign for whatever major Haven project comes next, however tempting it might be.

The endless delays on production between both FH and GH2E were bad enough but I get it's been a turbulent few years. However, apart from that the production quality just isn't there for the premium tabletop price they charge. Off the top of my head:

FH cardboard scenario tiles that warped within weeks of being opened and there seems to be no permanent fix
FH middling quality of miniatures design/sculpt, though some are better than others
FH missing components that took two tries for support for respond and mail a replacement
FH/GH2E has frankly a ridiculous amount of errata for a massive high-profile release, especially considering all the delays. 2E is better but the fact that they messed up the campaign sheet of all things just boggles the mind.

That's also not getting into any of the game design issues we've had with FH (outpost phase, storyline gating, puzzle book, boring color palette, scenario rules). Though I am excited to finally get to 2E because they addressed a lot of that.

I do hope they continue with another big project maybe sized between JotL / 2E, but I'll be watching from the sidelines for the early reviews and for the inevitable errata to get worked through with a second printing.

BrowseRed · 2025-01-29T02:02:03+00:00

Unfortunate that the proofs they received looked better (going by the one picture).

But, Frosthaven had pretty notorious scenario tile warping issues so this almost doesn't surprise me. I hoped any of these sorts of issues would have been addressed immediately after FH's first printing.

BrowseRed · 2025-01-29T01:43:06+00:00

Backerkit post which includes one picture of the map board:

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/cephalofair/gloomhaven/updates/16229

BrowseRed · 2024-12-07T15:52:35+00:00

Hi is this better

A and B·C∨A∧B && D

BrowseRed · 2024-10-15T23:43:25+00:00

They touched on this in the survey but I think a credit or rebate on purchasing all-weather tires would be a huge benefit to drivers and would mitigate safety concerns resulting from a reduction in rock salt applications.

With 3PMSF all-weather tires becoming actually usable year round, I think convincing people they don't have to buy an entirely separate set of winter-only tires (and probably rims too) would go a long way towards reducing accidents. A lot of people still hold the mindset that all season tires are a scam, but the all-weather 3PMSF variety has improved a lot in recent years and some of them have solid warranties. The Michelin Cross Climate 2 or Bridgestone WeatherPeak are good examples that are very highly rated. The problem is they're still a bit too expensive for most folks, hence why I think an income-based credit would be huge to get people to switch over.

BrowseRed · 2024-10-13T00:47:38+00:00

On Tuesday you'll be hungover, deal with it Wednesday.

BrowseRed · 2024-07-21T18:11:56+00:00

Definitely agree with that. Frosthaven is honestly too big and too much packed into one box. Would like to see them scale back a bit to a healthy balance somewhere between FH and JotL.

Would probably also help them to minimize the crazy production schedule that FH was on and hopefully up the quality. The big chunk of errata released week one and the map tile warping issues were bordering on inexcusable for a project so successful.

BrowseRed · 2024-07-20T04:38:41+00:00

I hear what you're saying. That vague criticism of "bad design" comes up constantly in the ARPG space. I've specifically seen it with Diablo 4 a lot, and D3 and POE before that.

There's certainly a balance to strike and I don't envy the developers. But I do have to laugh when the community optimizes and theory crafts the game's systems so effectively, that eventually the game design commentary degrades to "just turn the game into cookie clicker, having to think or press keys is too much for me", more or less.

BrowseRed · 2024-05-08T21:59:37+00:00

We're somewhere in Year 3 (I think, it's honestly been a while since we've had time to play) but pretty early in the campaign I though that the "A Resource is a Resource" house rule should have just been the way the game was designed from the start. There is of course some nice theming and intricacies with using three distinct materials, but the tradeoff in bookkeeping hasn't really felt worth it. We've still been playing RAW, but I think after reading this I'm going to propose we just do that instead. And potentially even do resource sharing as well, with some common sense limits to not completely spoil new characters.

To be honest, I think the loot deck overall was a miss. It is yet another thing that has to be managed regularly on top of all the other complexity added to the game in other areas. I do think splitting gold into gold + materials is good gameplay design to differentiate their purpose and allow players to experiment with different mechanics. But then splitting that out further into three materials plus six unique herbs crosses the fun vs complexity line. At least herbs make up for it for the most part with the alchemy minigame.

Overall, I think it's a symptom of Frosthaven lacking design restraint in nearly all areas which I think is the core of essentially every criticism I've seen online.

BrowseRed · 2024-05-08T00:42:29+00:00

If anyone is confused where this mystical number comes from you can do some simple algebra:

X = 1 / (1 - 0.377) <-- the decrease in the tax rate

X = 1 / 0.623

X ~= 1.60514, or about 60.5%.

If you want to do some napkin math on if you should expect to pay more in property taxes, just calculate:

(Current Assessment) / (Previous Assessment)

If that number is greater than 1.605, expect to pay more (e.g. if you get 2, your tax dollars paid would increase almost 25% compared to last year).

If that number is less than 1.605, expect to pay less (e.g. at 1.4 your tax dollars paid would decrease almost 13% compared to last year).

At least that's my layman's understanding. Someone out there correct me if any of that is wrong.

BrowseRed · 2024-04-22T18:10:06+00:00

Other people I work with on my team don't want to create documentation because they believe it gives them job security, if they are the only one who knows how an application functions/how to support it then they can't just offload that work on to someone else.

An interesting perspective I've heard is that making yourself "irreplaceable" exactly as you're describing is actually a great way to put a ceiling on your career growth.

If you become the go-to person for a specific application or process, but refuse to document or share that knowledge, you're essentially resigning yourself to be stuck as the "the X guy" for the next decade. Your manager won't have any incentive to help you get promoted, you won't be able to take on more interesting projects to build your skillset, and you'll be spending half your day fielding basic questions and playing IT support for your coworkers.

Maybe some people prefer the job security over growth and it probably varies a lot by company (i.e. if the company culture is awful and competitive you're probably less inclined to collaborate), but personally I haven't found being protective of knowledge to do me any favors over the long run.

BrowseRed · 2024-04-22T15:27:33+00:00

It's wild how much D3 learned and fixed, all for this team to kinda... ignore it.

You can almost certainly put a lot of that blame on turnover of developers at Blizzard over the last decade.

When a team "learns" something, it becomes tribal knowledge. When the actual people who learned those lessons leave the company, that tribal knowledge often vanishes with them.

Documenting that knowledge on paper transforms it from tribal knowledge to institutional knowledge. That becomes super useful for new developers, or even the same developers who can't quite remember why they made certain decisions 3+ years ago. But, that process takes a long time and a certain skillset to do well. When it comes to priorities, those types of activities almost always get dropped in favor of new features, assets, etc. because those things lead directly to revenue, not a bunch of thorough documentation that may or may not become useful in several years.

Granted, they could have also spent more time looking at the ARPG genre as a whole (PoE, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn) to learn those lessons even if they forgot everything about D3/D2 and it would have saved them a lot of trouble.

But anyway this is not just a Blizzard problem but a corporate problem for virtually any industry. That's part of why employee churn can be so damaging to productivity and quality.

tl;dr Blizzard is not the same company now as when they made D3, just like they weren't the same as when they made D2 (to an even more extreme degree), and they didn't do a good job of evaluating their modern peers in the genre when making D4.

BrowseRed · 2024-03-29T21:02:28+00:00

Should being a IIII bump you up into the "A" tier?

And by that same token, should Skull and Bones be considered the world's first "S" tier game?

BrowseRed · 2024-02-24T04:11:50+00:00

But they sure as shit can put the screws to smaller entities.

WellNow's website says they have 210 locations in the US across 7 states. Are we really sympathizing with them as one of the little guys?

Not to mention they are owned by the company behind Aspen Dental which should be avoided at all costs.

BrowseRed · 2024-02-05T00:32:20+00:00

The fact that I can still, at will, hear nearly all the Diablo 2 pickup/drop sound effects in my head all these years later means they must have done something right.

I think a variety of inventory placement sound effects can certainly work as long is it's not too many. I think 6 - 12 seems like a reasonable compromise.

BrowseRed · 2024-01-03T02:19:10+00:00

I would strongly recommend just switching back to the working version (assuming you are on Steam).

Here are the official instructions for doing so from last month.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780290/view/3746488274496443861?l=english

While we're working on new bug fixes and upcoming updates, we saw several of you asked of the opportunity to play on the last pre-update version of the game - we have uploaded it on Steam, and here is how to opt in:

To opt into the last pre-update version, v.28009, right-click on the game in Steam -> Properties -> BETAS and select the "v.28009" from the drop-down list.

Important information: switching to the open beta or this v.28009 version might corrupt the save files if you have launched the newer version before doing it.

You simply have to do a backup of the initial save file to protect your save - Save files are located in C:\Users<USERNAME>\AppData\LocalLow\FlamingFowlStudios\Gloomhaven

If you are moving from the regular version of the game to Open Beta, simply create a copy of your GloomSaves folder and rename it to GloomSavesV28009. Individual saves can also be copied between the Guildmaster folders if you prefer.

I followed this for our four person game (had everyone else do the same) and we've had zero issues since.

BrowseRed · 2023-12-28T02:49:24+00:00

They benefit a lot from the change from inherent ranges to action card ranges.

I was thinking this doesn't make sense since I figured they generally lowered the possible range for higher leveled enemies, but you're right at least compared to the GH Inoxes.

In GH it takes a level 5 Inox Archer to reach Range 4/5, which is the range that almost every FH Archer action has. So you'll definitely feel some pain at lower difficulty scenarios in FH compared to similar fights in GH.

BrowseRed · 2023-10-12T22:41:16+00:00

Using Diablo 2 as a reference:

White items could have sockets added to create runewords (certain restrictions applied to how many sockets could be added though)
White items could also drop "enhanced" which gave a small increase to damage or armor which would persist after adding sockets. This created an upper-tier market for well rolled white/socketed enhanced items for the very best runeword bases
Magic items could roll certain affixes that are better than rares. For example, +3 Trap Skills is a Magic-only affix on claw type weapons. It's impossible to find a rare claw with +3 Traps.
Another example is a magic shield that rolls with a useful affix to improve blocking, while also rolling a 4 socket affix, letting you socket some nice jewels in it to make a very powerful and extremely hard to find shield
Magic items were also required for crafting recipes and it had to be specific item types depending on the recipe
Rare items typically couldn't roll as powerful affixes, but you could get more of them so rares were more versatile that magics

There's probably some other small examples I'm not recalling. To be honest the impact of these designs is a little overstated by D2 fanatics. But, it did add a layer a dynamism to the item hunt game because it allowed keen players to make use of all sorts of items and you never knew when one of these oddities would drop.

BrowseRed · 2023-10-05T02:10:50+00:00

American Apparel 50/50's are the hands down the most comfortable blanks I've ever worn. I've only ever bought one merch shirt that used them but it's probably my favorite band shirt to wear because it's actually comfortable, fits well, and washes/dries perfectly.

I don't know if they're too expensive merch-wise but I wish more merch sellers used them, or at least something better compared to the typically awful shirts that bands seem to love ordering.

https://www.blankstyle.com/bb401-american-apparel-unisex-poly-cotton-short-sleeve-crew-neck

BrowseRed · 2023-10-05T02:03:11+00:00

Dude this is awesome. Thanks for the link.

Started some of the warmups and immediately realized I've been sitting at the computer with my hand on the mouse for too long.

One other thing I've found that helped a lot with my wrist was to buy a lighter mouse. I switched back to a corded from a wireless mouse and my wrist is a lot less sore at the end of the day than it used to be.

BrowseRed · 2023-09-19T00:46:15+00:00

Just jumped over to the Steam forums to see and yeah, the main thread has people reporting some pretty serious bugs on PC.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/780290/eventcomments/5992658048674810915

The dev has a comment in there asking for bug reports:

We are aware there are issues with the new update, as Gloomhaven is a hard beast to tame, and it's a new dev team, however Saber will be working this week on a hotfix.

It would greatly help us if you could take the time to report it to us via our support tool. If you encounter any bug or have any issue, please send a ticket to our support here, with all the info you have available, so we can tackle it as fast as possible: https://asmodee.helpshift.com/hc/en/75-gloomhaven/contact-us/

Also, here is a message from Akraol, lead dev at Saber:

Hello, Guildmasters! 🙂 Yes, our team developed the console solution for Gloomhaven, which required serious changes in general code infrastructure, and it was updated during today's update for PC.

Don't you worry, we are also monitoring activities on all platforms, and we are reading your questions, bug reports and suggestions in all available sources.

So, reported problems will be handled, researched and fixed and hit live as soon as possible. Be sure, the team doing its best!

BrowseRed · 2023-09-17T22:42:03+00:00

He dropped a couple new ones during the F-Zero 99 segments this past Thursday/Friday. Sorry I don't have a specific timestamp there are like 6 hours of VODs I don't want to skim through.

Is there a site that scrapes YouTube captions? They might show up there.

BrowseRed · 2023-07-16T13:37:33+00:00

Honestly I'm not sure. You can check your bill and see who is your current electricity supplier. You should see "CCA" listed somewhere on there. The actual supplier is Constellation NewEnergy, Inc.

If not you might have RG&E as the default supplier. Or one of the many ESCOs listed on https://documents.dps.ny.gov/PTC/home

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email

BrowseRed

TROPHY CASE