Same sort of problem with Quidditch. Whichever team gets the golden snitch automatically wins, so the whole game would realistically just be everyone trying to get it and ignoring everything else. JK is very bad at designing world rules. Maybe that’s why she’s so bad at comprehending reality as well.
I know there’s been a fair bit of discussion and I only skimmed it, but the main issue I could see is if one team actually ignored everything for the snitch, it’s feasible the other team could get 15 goals literally for free before you actually succeed. But the video game nerfing the snitch tells you everything you need to know about whether it can be balanced at all.
I’m not sure about the video game rules but the game state when a team is up by 150+ doesn’t make sense either. Because the team down by 150 would be disincentivized to catch the snitch despite that being a main objective, as it would immediately end the game with them losing. The matches need to be on a timer for the rules to make any sense, but I guess that would have been less interesting to write 🤷♂️
Sure, but I’m one of the very few people in this thread that didn’t go in that direction so I’m not really sure why you’re directing that point at me.
Though I guess the main point would be that if the game can only end after someone catches the snitch, you’d still rather it be you than the other team.
In many sports, how much you lose by matters for certain things like rankings and such. Like say the other team has 160+ more points than you. Clearly your team is catastrophically terrible at the game to have ended up in that position. You’re probably not catching up.
Even if you have faith they could make 2 goals, there’s no real way to time catching the snitch at exactly the right moment, nor to make sure the other seeker doesn’t get it in that time.
So in general it’s probably better to put your team out of its misery and lose by 10 points rather than by over 300 points.
I hate myself for remembering, and am likely wrong, but isn’t the snitch worth 150 points and ends the game? So if the opposing team was 151 points ahead catching the snitch would lose the match? I’m not going to look it up, I don’t care enough about being right in regards to Harry Potter and I’m not even sure why I commented outside of my inate need for information to be correct…
That’s correct - however, 150 points is a ridiculously high number that’s almost impossible to overcome. Every time the snitch was caught, that team won the game.
This was a thing in the third book where Harry had to make sure they’re a certain number of points ahead before catching the snitch so that they’d not just win the match but also their school league.
You’re definitely right about it being a poorly-contrived scoring system, but there are a few games in the books where the team lost the game but grabbed the snitch. It’s always described as a “stem the bleeding” type decision
Edit: sorry, now seeing the replies to your other comments saying this, I guess you know by now 😅
It’s fifteen goals. While unlikely, it’s totally possible for a team to score fifteen goals more if the skill difference is high enough and the game is allowed to go for long enough.
There were some historic matches mentioned in one of the books, that apparently went on for weeks or even months, fifteen goals would be a really low number for that kind of match. The duration of a match only depends on how good the seekers are, a match can be over in five minutes which is really lame, or go on for ages which is also lame.
Yea, I kind of remember this in book 4 where in the world cup Bulgaria (Viktor) caught the snitch, but the other team (I think Ireland) scored more points.
That’s why the Weasly twins were upset because they had placed that bet with Ludo Bagman who ran away with their money.
(Just to let you know, I enjoy HP as a kid but now, Fuck JK).
They won the bet, got the money… And the money was fake gold. (Leprechaun gold). It disappeared. So they were out the money. Not sure if gambling was legal or not, so I don’t think trying to report someone as stealing your gambling wins was feasible.
Anyways, yeah the only professional game in the books we saw was the exact scenario that people are complaining here would never happen. As in he caught the snitch to save themselves from complete embarrassment. A score of 370-10 or some shit looks a lot worse than just losing by a few points and putting off the inevitable
I mean, magic is inherently kinda jenky as a core concept. “The Magicians” series does a much better job of painting a magical boarding school and gets a bit meta-textual on the question of what the edges and limits of a magical world are expected to be.
I’ll happily spot you that Welters is a better wizard game than Quidditch. But it’s also more like Chess than Wizard Hockey, so it loses the narrative excitement in exchange for a more plodding and introspective exchange.
Shave down the Snitch aspect to, like, 20 points instead of 150 or whatever dumbshit Rowling originally ran with and it can create a few interesting edge cases for not catching the Snitch until the proper moment that can make the game more fun. Other than that hang up, its a very visually stunning and theme appropriate game for a bunch of kids on flying brooms to play.
Not necessarily. HP is just written with a soft magic system.
I quite like the Light Lightbringer series, which has a hard magic system.
It’s so much more fun for me to read about creative ways of magic to be used when it’s based on physics of the world it’s in, when I could theorise about what’s possible and be amazed by the characters’ ingenuity.
I always found the whole snitch thing so stupid simply from a game rules perspective. Like most team sports have you work as a team to score points. Everyone participates and are more or less responsible for the outcome of the game. In quidditch you have that and then you have one team member that is just more special than everyone else, they can just control the outcome of the game by themselves. It goes against the whole concept of team sports.
Like most team sports have you work as a team to score points. Everyone participates and are more or less responsible for the outcome of the game.
A better writing of the game would have had other players working as a team to spot the Snitch. Or alternative strategies for leveraging the extra player in the early game, when finding the Snitch was unlikely. Or even just a history of the sport, or variations of amateur and professional rules, or a pro-league that got more than a casual mention for the first chapter of the fourth book and then never again.
you have that and then you have one team member that is just more special than everyone else
You could argue the pitcher in baseball or the QB in football fill a similar role.
But yes, the need to make Harry a Mary Sue at every opportunity definitely dragged on the series. The better parts of the series were when he wasn’t the center of attention and was more just an observer of a magical world.
I love the Magicians. Just finished a rewatch not too long ago. Their approach to magic is definitely much more entertaining than the HP universe. Especially the hilarious concept of “sphincter magic” that Penny tries to learn when his hands get messed up. That show did a great job with the meta humor.
My head canon is always converting magic into sci fi. The wizards are the descendants of a civilization that created the tech but they’re so far removed they don’t know anything about how it works, or about simple spells that would shortcut all the fancy shit. Doesn’t really explain the Snitch though, other than “they’re more about tradition than logic”.
My head canon is always converting magic into sci fi.
Arthur C. Clarke will be by to collect royalties.
Doesn’t really explain the Snitch though, other than “they’re more about tradition than logic”.
Lots of sports spring out of a bunch of silly children’s games that get increasingly bureaucratic to sell tickets.
Why not end the game with a timer or at a certain score count? Why introduce a fairy trapped in a golden ball who has some kind of personality, rather than just being a buzzing semi-invisible toy? Why not yadda yadda?
Same concept but kinda from the opposite direction, kinda like elder scrolls. Magic used to be super powerful and utterly broken but over time it’s degraded for one reason or another some things and groups still have access to the old magic but as a whole it’s pretty inaccessible. This is kinda how magic works in Elder Scrolls, the magic of the Dawn Era and Merithic Era were fucken broken world bending shit that did things like turning Solstheim into an island instead of a peninsula, but the world has since gained too much internal stability or perhaps instability to allow such things all that often, but scratching into that requires getting into Elder Scrolls meta physics which just no.
In The Goblet of Fire, Ireland beat Bulgaria despite Bulgaria getting the snitch. The problem with the snitch isn’t that the team that gets it automatically wins but that this particular match didn’t make sense because Bulgaria knew that getting the snitch would cause them to lose, so they would have instead focused on preventing Ireland from getting the snitch while they tried to get within 150 points.
I think a reasonable game could be played with those rules, given how quickly goals are scored and how hard it is supposed to be to catch the snitch. It’s just that it didn’t make sense at all that Krum was celebrated. Catching the snitch was worse than scoring an own goal in soccer because it directly and immediately caused his team to lose the match. The rioting of the death eaters after the match is understandable, but the way everyone else behaved towards this obvious fraud is not. The Ministry should have started a match fixing investigation.
Same sort of problem with Quidditch. Whichever team gets the golden snitch automatically wins, so the whole game would realistically just be everyone trying to get it and ignoring everything else. JK is very bad at designing world rules. Maybe that’s why she’s so bad at comprehending reality as well.
I know there’s been a fair bit of discussion and I only skimmed it, but the main issue I could see is if one team actually ignored everything for the snitch, it’s feasible the other team could get 15 goals literally for free before you actually succeed. But the video game nerfing the snitch tells you everything you need to know about whether it can be balanced at all.
I’m not sure about the video game rules but the game state when a team is up by 150+ doesn’t make sense either. Because the team down by 150 would be disincentivized to catch the snitch despite that being a main objective, as it would immediately end the game with them losing. The matches need to be on a timer for the rules to make any sense, but I guess that would have been less interesting to write 🤷♂️
Sure, but I’m one of the very few people in this thread that didn’t go in that direction so I’m not really sure why you’re directing that point at me.
Though I guess the main point would be that if the game can only end after someone catches the snitch, you’d still rather it be you than the other team.
In many sports, how much you lose by matters for certain things like rankings and such. Like say the other team has 160+ more points than you. Clearly your team is catastrophically terrible at the game to have ended up in that position. You’re probably not catching up.
Even if you have faith they could make 2 goals, there’s no real way to time catching the snitch at exactly the right moment, nor to make sure the other seeker doesn’t get it in that time.
So in general it’s probably better to put your team out of its misery and lose by 10 points rather than by over 300 points.
I hate myself for remembering, and am likely wrong, but isn’t the snitch worth 150 points and ends the game? So if the opposing team was 151 points ahead catching the snitch would lose the match? I’m not going to look it up, I don’t care enough about being right in regards to Harry Potter and I’m not even sure why I commented outside of my inate need for information to be correct…
That’s correct - however, 150 points is a ridiculously high number that’s almost impossible to overcome. Every time the snitch was caught, that team won the game.
They won the game, but they may have lost the league if winning comes down to point differences.
This was a thing in the third book where Harry had to make sure they’re a certain number of points ahead before catching the snitch so that they’d not just win the match but also their school league.
You’re definitely right about it being a poorly-contrived scoring system, but there are a few games in the books where the team lost the game but grabbed the snitch. It’s always described as a “stem the bleeding” type decision
Edit: sorry, now seeing the replies to your other comments saying this, I guess you know by now 😅
It’s fifteen goals. While unlikely, it’s totally possible for a team to score fifteen goals more if the skill difference is high enough and the game is allowed to go for long enough.
There were some historic matches mentioned in one of the books, that apparently went on for weeks or even months, fifteen goals would be a really low number for that kind of match. The duration of a match only depends on how good the seekers are, a match can be over in five minutes which is really lame, or go on for ages which is also lame.
Is there any example of a real life sport where one play (that can only be done once per game) equals making 15 goals? That’s just bad rules.
Not a sport, but in mahjong, dealer yakuman are worth 35x a 1-han hand
Yea, I kind of remember this in book 4 where in the world cup Bulgaria (Viktor) caught the snitch, but the other team (I think Ireland) scored more points.
That’s why the Weasly twins were upset because they had placed that bet with Ludo Bagman who ran away with their money.
(Just to let you know, I enjoy HP as a kid but now, Fuck JK).
They won the bet, got the money… And the money was fake gold. (Leprechaun gold). It disappeared. So they were out the money. Not sure if gambling was legal or not, so I don’t think trying to report someone as stealing your gambling wins was feasible.
Anyways, yeah the only professional game in the books we saw was the exact scenario that people are complaining here would never happen. As in he caught the snitch to save themselves from complete embarrassment. A score of 370-10 or some shit looks a lot worse than just losing by a few points and putting off the inevitable
Ah, good call, I didn’t remember that! A really stupid rule regardless.
I mean, magic is inherently kinda jenky as a core concept. “The Magicians” series does a much better job of painting a magical boarding school and gets a bit meta-textual on the question of what the edges and limits of a magical world are expected to be.
I’ll happily spot you that Welters is a better wizard game than Quidditch. But it’s also more like Chess than Wizard Hockey, so it loses the narrative excitement in exchange for a more plodding and introspective exchange.
Shave down the Snitch aspect to, like, 20 points instead of 150 or whatever dumbshit Rowling originally ran with and it can create a few interesting edge cases for not catching the Snitch until the proper moment that can make the game more fun. Other than that hang up, its a very visually stunning and theme appropriate game for a bunch of kids on flying brooms to play.
Not necessarily. HP is just written with a soft magic system.
I quite like the Light Lightbringer series, which has a hard magic system.
It’s so much more fun for me to read about creative ways of magic to be used when it’s based on physics of the world it’s in, when I could theorise about what’s possible and be amazed by the characters’ ingenuity.
I always found the whole snitch thing so stupid simply from a game rules perspective. Like most team sports have you work as a team to score points. Everyone participates and are more or less responsible for the outcome of the game. In quidditch you have that and then you have one team member that is just more special than everyone else, they can just control the outcome of the game by themselves. It goes against the whole concept of team sports.
A better writing of the game would have had other players working as a team to spot the Snitch. Or alternative strategies for leveraging the extra player in the early game, when finding the Snitch was unlikely. Or even just a history of the sport, or variations of amateur and professional rules, or a pro-league that got more than a casual mention for the first chapter of the fourth book and then never again.
You could argue the pitcher in baseball or the QB in football fill a similar role.
But yes, the need to make Harry a Mary Sue at every opportunity definitely dragged on the series. The better parts of the series were when he wasn’t the center of attention and was more just an observer of a magical world.
I love the Magicians. Just finished a rewatch not too long ago. Their approach to magic is definitely much more entertaining than the HP universe. Especially the hilarious concept of “sphincter magic” that Penny tries to learn when his hands get messed up. That show did a great job with the meta humor.
Needs more explosions and an anti exploding kid spell, but otherwise a solid thumbs 45 degrees up.
My head canon is always converting magic into sci fi. The wizards are the descendants of a civilization that created the tech but they’re so far removed they don’t know anything about how it works, or about simple spells that would shortcut all the fancy shit. Doesn’t really explain the Snitch though, other than “they’re more about tradition than logic”.
Arthur C. Clarke will be by to collect royalties.
Lots of sports spring out of a bunch of silly children’s games that get increasingly bureaucratic to sell tickets.
Why not end the game with a timer or at a certain score count? Why introduce a fairy trapped in a golden ball who has some kind of personality, rather than just being a buzzing semi-invisible toy? Why not yadda yadda?
Rowling definitely left a lot on the table.
Same concept but kinda from the opposite direction, kinda like elder scrolls. Magic used to be super powerful and utterly broken but over time it’s degraded for one reason or another some things and groups still have access to the old magic but as a whole it’s pretty inaccessible. This is kinda how magic works in Elder Scrolls, the magic of the Dawn Era and Merithic Era were fucken broken world bending shit that did things like turning Solstheim into an island instead of a peninsula, but the world has since gained too much internal stability or perhaps instability to allow such things all that often, but scratching into that requires getting into Elder Scrolls meta physics which just no.
In The Goblet of Fire, Ireland beat Bulgaria despite Bulgaria getting the snitch. The problem with the snitch isn’t that the team that gets it automatically wins but that this particular match didn’t make sense because Bulgaria knew that getting the snitch would cause them to lose, so they would have instead focused on preventing Ireland from getting the snitch while they tried to get within 150 points.
Yeah, another comment pointed that out. And as you pointed out, it’s a stupid rule regardless!
I think a reasonable game could be played with those rules, given how quickly goals are scored and how hard it is supposed to be to catch the snitch. It’s just that it didn’t make sense at all that Krum was celebrated. Catching the snitch was worse than scoring an own goal in soccer because it directly and immediately caused his team to lose the match. The rioting of the death eaters after the match is understandable, but the way everyone else behaved towards this obvious fraud is not. The Ministry should have started a match fixing investigation.
The “reason” given in the books was that he knew they couldn’t out score Ireland to catch back up. Like resigning in chess.
bro quiddich is ass.
I’ve never really thought about it, but your right if you think about it, it makes zero sense.