After playing Ticket-to-Ride Pennsylvania, I wrote a post about the amount of set-up time created by the way the game resolves players who are tied for most shares (the major feature of the expansion is competing to own shares in railway companies).
The concept is it gives you a relatively precise way to 'price' mechanics, at least as far as set-up goes. I.e. if a given mechanic provides X benefit and it costs Y in set-up time (e.g. +3 minutes) we can judge whether or not it's worth the additional set-up.
This relatively straightforward with set-up because it's generally regarded as a good that shorter is better (even if that's not always achievable) and time is highly measurable. But I was thinking - could this be applied more generally? Are there other aspects of games which are relatively objective we could measure to determine the cost (for players) of introducing mechanics in order to better compare them?
The initial thinking is here, if you're interested:
https://naylorgames.com/2018/06/07/when-is-a-mechanic-worth-the-set-up-t...