Opinions on tiebreakers

Well, I think I disagree somewhat with metzgerism on this. I agree that "race-games" like Settlers ("race" as in where the first player to achieve a certain goal wins the game, not just racing as a theme) can have an intense end game sometimes, but at the same time these type of games can have a lot of issues regarding to its end game, such as runaway-leader problems, kingmaker problems, leader-bashing, etc. Often it is hard to balance the end game in such a way that you do not introduce a new problem when solving another problem. That doesn't mean such a end game mechanic cannot work, just that certain games and mechanics lend themselves better for it than others.

If you do not have a racing game, but instead evaluate the winner based on victory points or some other scoring mechanism then you have to think about how you are going to deal with draws. One option is to simply let a draw be a draw. I think this is fine for games where the difference in points is usually fairly large and a draw doesn't happen that often.

In games where the difference in points is usually fairly small, a draw is bound to happen more often. Most players play a game "to win" and if a game ends in a draw fairly often it may feel somewhat unsatisfactory to players, especially a longer, strategic game, as the player has invested more in the game. In that case you may come up with a tiebreaker. Typically you'll want to evaluate the resources that a player has left at the end of the game, because a player who has more resources left has played slightly "better" than the other player. I think it is important that a tiebreaker doesn't come across as too arbitrary, but should be a result of playing a better game than other players. If there isn't really a good tiebreaker available, then I would prefer no tiebreaker rather than an arbitrary one.

If its in game splitting of points ties are fine but In general people want clear winners so having a tie breaker is important.

That being said I do have a family game, aimed at 8+ where I have instructed tie players to shake hands and congratulate each other. I guess it all comes down to audience you designing for.

I agree with most of the sentiments above-

the level of dissatisfaction from a fully drawn game is both greater and more common than the level of dissatisfaction from going to tie-breakers... thus it's generally better for most audiences to include adequate tie-breakers.

as Rene noted, it's important for the tiebreaker to also be meaningful (you don't want it to feel like a coin-flip, which would be equally unsatisfactory), and you may want the "game experience" to include ties for specific reasons, as Dralius said.

So usually you want to have a way to break ties- and it's also important to include a note if you intend ties to actually tie, i've played too many games out to a draw, only to find the rulebook doesn't address it one way or another.

I do not believe in ties. I agree with those who said that you are playing the game to win, and my opinion is that it's the job of the game (and therefore the designer) to select a winner for each play. It's true that in some cases there will simply be 2 players that performed at the same level, and in such cases a draw is acceptable, but in my view those cases should be designed to be vanishingly rare.

Victory Points (whatever they're called in the game) is a measure of how well you played. However, it is a discrete measurement. In Soccer for example, a lot of effort might go into a goal, but it's only worth 1 point. A team could really outplay the other team for 90% of the game, but 1 good block by the goalie and the 'bad' team could win or draw, despite overall worse play. Basketball on the other hand is a high scoring game - point totals of 80-100 are not uncommon, and each goal is only 2 points (2-3% or so). If a team plays worse over the course of the game than the other team, they will lose the game.

In Basketball there are a lot of possible endgame scores that are close together (70, 72, 74, 75, 76...) so 2 teams finishing with "about the same" amount of points aren't too likely to tie. Soccer on the other hand has games that end at about 2 or 3 points, and therefore are much more likely to tie. What can we take from this? My point is that in a game with many smal scoring opportunities that sum to a large final score, it's less likely there will be ties than in a game with fewer, larger scale scoring opportunities. In case I did a bad job explaining it, here's an illustration:

In a game with only 1 scoring opportunity (of 1 point) where each (of two) players has a 50-50 chance of scoring it, then there is be a 50% chance of a tie (0-0 or 1-1) and 50% chance of a winner (1-0 or 0-1). In a game where there are 2 scoring opportunities (1 point each), and at each one each player has a 50-50 chance of scoring, what are the chances of a tie? Well, there are 64 possible combinations of scores, and 20 of them result in a tie, so the chance of a tie is about 30% - much less than 50%!

So more, smaller scoring which adds up to a larger score total can decrease ties. Note though that if everyone is scoring all of those opportunities, it's not really the case that there are "lots of small opportunities" - really what you want are lots of chances for players to gain a little bit on an opponent.

To address something I brought up earlier, the scoring system is a game is a discrete measure of how well you played - but what about the spaces in between point totals? How much "better" do you have to play to score the next VP? What if next time you play better than you did, but not THAT much better? You'd get the same score, even though you played better. So now what if you and your opponent play almost as well as each other, but you play a little bit better - not enough to get to that next VP threshold... often times THAT is what a tiebreaker is meant to capture - to indicate who, according to the designer,
played better" for 2 players who ended up with the same score. Usually this is awarded to the player who has more "stuff" leftover, or is in a better position if the game were to continue.

I do not like ties in games, and I am fond of awarding tiebreaks based on player performance. Players will know ahead of time what a tiebreak condition is, and therefore they can play accordingly. If it's "most money," then they are free to keep money on hand just in case they end up with a tied score. If they decide not to do so, and then end up with a tied score, then they can't really complain that they lost to someone with more money now can they?

In some games it makes sense to have a draw, especially in a more social game, or a shorter or more luck driven game. But it's my preference in a game of any complexity at all to award a clear winner.

Most of the time, I HATE tie games (for all the reasons already mentioned..time invested, playing "to win", etc.) Sometimes, the mechanics of the game will dictate that ties are not only possible, but likely. There's a boardgame called Scotland Yard that comes to mind. There's a thief player and all the other players are officers with Scotland Yard. Object is to catch the thief. So. You'll either have one winner (the thief) or many winners (the other players caught the thief). <--I hated this game, though. Is it because of this mechanic? I can't honestly say. I think there were other flaws with this that bugged me. I think it's almost impossible to win if you're the thief (or perhaps it's the other way 'round? Maybe it's too easy to be the thief?) I don't remember, but I believe the flaw here was that one side or the other is unbalanced and THAT's why I didn't like the game...not because ties are possible.

I've mentioned this game before (in a different example), but I'll mention it again. My daughter had a 4th grade family project to do and one of her options was to create a board game. She was studying the Titanic at the time, so we made a game called "Survive The Titanic". The object was to make it to a life boat before the ship sinks. With this mechanic, those that made it to the lifeboat won the game and those that didn't make it, drowned. (and lost). There were cards you could play on people to push them over the side and things like that, so it's not cooperative, but it did allow more than one person to win. I suppose I'm bias in this case because we made the game, but a tie in this situation doesn't bother me at all.

Are there other games out there that use a Players vs Game mechanic? This seems really interesting to me. I'm sure there are games out there like that...do they have a clear cut winner, or do all the players win and "beat the game"? This is intruguing to me because so many games are "me vs all the rest of you guys".

For the record, I don't agree that a tied game is a pointless waste of time, like one poster mentioned - a tie can be just as intense and meaningful a play experience as a win or a loss.

I think Dominion's tiebreaker is meaningless. It unties some drawn results and not others.
Furthermore, the "equal-turns" variant is worse in my book - it changes the endgame conditions and makes the tiebreaker worthless. It would have made more sense to me to say that if you are tied, the player who's turn was next is the winner.

I feel like Race for the Galaxy's tiebreaker mechanic (whoever has the most extra cards left over at the end) is fairly meaningless, in that it doesn't signify much. At no point when this comes up has it ever felt like 'oh, wait, that DOES make his interstellar Empire better than mine.' The left over cards sort of represent potential . . . but potential to do what? The abstract game is over.

There's a funny little paragraph in the Axis and Allies Revised rules somewhere about declaring an individual winner within the winning team, which is pretty meaningless in that it doesn't mean anything about who played better. I think it's whoever has the most territory. USA starts with 40 points, and spends the whole game building up an invasion force. Russia starts with 24 and spends the whole game being pounded on. I wonder who invades more points worth of territory . . .

;)