Building Castles - Difficulty Levels?

Post by **davee123** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 9:13 pm

So, I've been building all the castle sets from 1978-1998 for a series of upcoming BrikWars games, and I noticed a few things.

I started off building 6080 King's Castle, and noticed how relatively few pages it had compared to today's instruction booklets. There seemed to be more stuff going on in each step than in modern instructions-- I found myself habitually adding a few elements and thinking "ok, time for the next step, right?" and realizing I had to go back and add more.

My assumption from that point was that as time went on, instruction manuals would get easier to follow, have more and more steps (with less going on in them). But in fact, I seemed to notice the opposite. 6085 Black Monarch's Castle was a bit more challenging to build (or so it seemed) than the other earlier castles, and once I got to the Ramp-And-Pit castles (6081, 6086, 6082, 6090) it seemed like things got even more difficult to follow.

Once I started thinking about it, it sorta made sense. The old gray castles (6080, 6073, 6074) were all pretty uniformly gray, while later castles did a lot of mixing black with gray, making it a little more difficult to analyze visually. And once you got raised baseplate castles, they had printing on them (which is more confusing visually), plus they were built at varying height levels, making the perspective a little more confusing.

The castles of 1997 and later are more modular in nature, making them a little easier (I think) to understand while assembling. You'd build sections A, B, and C separately (each sub-model being simpler) and then assemble them together into one larger structure.

But then again, I had to ask myself, was 6080 easy to build because of the reasons I was rationalizing? Or was it simply easier to build because that's what I grew up with as a kid? After all, my dark ages started around 1988, just at the point when black castles and Ramp-and-Pit castles started becoming the norm. Am I being biased simply because I'm more familiar with the older building style? Or were the castles of the late 80's to mid 90's really more difficult?

DaveE

The Blue Knight · Post by **The Blue Knight** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 1:53 am

Interesting question. I thought it was an age thing in my case

I find it more difficult to tell colors apart in the instructions. And I can relate about how much more is going on in each page now. Maybe these things were just easier as a kid? My son is 11 and just recently was able to follow the instructions without a tantrum over their difficulty. Dad would come over, get his glasses, get more light, get frustrated (wondering why he bought Bionicle) then realize dark green is black until the black peice is placed, then it's black again. Huh?

ottoatm · Post by **ottoatm** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:35 am

I usually find myself thinking that the older castles take more time and are a bit harder to build... the new castles often have very big pieces where the old sets would have many small, so I often find the bigger sets put together and ready to go in no time. I do understand the color thing... that can be a bit frustrating... it's more learning the "shades" for color that LEGO uses in the manual than anything else~

CVfan13 · Post by **CVfan13** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:39 am

Maybe it's just me, but for some reason, I always find the older sets take MUCH less time for me to build than the newer ones. I remember being a kid and having every new Lego set built so soon after opening the box, but as time goes on it seems like it's taking longer and longer. Either it's just one of those things that happen during childhood that seem different than they actually were, or it has something to do with today's Lego being different than the Lego of the past.

I think it's the latter. Today's models are so much more complex than the old and with all the tricks and traps (not to mention another catapult every other page

) that require many Technic pieces, and that's where the time-consuming complexities come in.

To test that, I've tried rebuilding some of my older sets that I still have CIB (Forestman's River Fortress, Witch's Magic Manor, etc.) and it took much less time than it took me to build the new Pirate sets I got a couple weeks ago. I suppose it all depends on the individual, though.

Post by **Ye Olde Republic** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 4:43 am

This is very interesting. I have also recently put together quite a few of the older sets. Other than the printing in the instruction manuals the biggest difference I noticed is that the older manuals had more bricks per step than the newer one do. IIRC, 6080 had up to ten pieces per step. This certainly could have something to do with build time as there was much less page turning going on.

On the flip side of that is the new instructions are frustratingly dark! They have been since the 2002 wave (I think) when they went digital. I can't stand that I can't tell black from dark grey, white from light grey and so on. I've long held that the challenge in building a LEGO set should be the build itself and not trying to read the instruction book. The difficulty in reading the new manuals could certainly be part of why the build takes longer....

timber_wolf899 · Post by **timber_wolf899** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:47 am

omen YOR!

ottoatm · Post by **ottoatm** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:54 am

timber_wolf899 wrote:omen YOR!

I don't understand what this means...

Heir of Black Falcon · Mon Jan 26, 2009 7:05 am

Otto,

YOR=Ye Olde Republic

I think the hardest part of the new sets is the dark instructions....

I do not know if they are any more or less complicated. Many of the old castles were fairly straight forward so perhaps in some degree they were a little easier.

Heir

Post by **davee123** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:27 pm

Heir of Black Falcon wrote:Otto,
YOR=Ye Olde Republic

Heh, I was more confused by the "omen" than the "YOR", but I figured that was probably a typo for "Amen!"

Heir of Black Falcon wrote:I think the hardest part of the new sets is the dark instructions....

Actually, I think the problem is that they're too light, not too dark. Quickly comparing the printing of black in my 1997 instructions to a new 2009 instruction book shows that they printed black a bit darker in the older instructions, and lighter in the newer instructions. Actually, I remember discussing this just a bit ago in Dear Lego:

viewtopic.php?t=16521

My LSO used to do print design and quickly concluded that they were probably too afraid of printing black any darker, for fear of it being too dark. And that obviously means that they have a smaller span of colors in which to print white, light gray, dark gray, and black.

DaveE

Mog · Post by **Mog** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:37 am

Were there many sets that had two instruction books, back in the day? KCS was, I think, my first set to have two books, but it was also the first time I ever got a "large" LEGO set (we had less money, when I was growing up).

When I left my "Dark Ages" one of the first things I noticed was that they started telling you - in pictures - to always build on a flat surface, and not to mix the bags. And they numbered the bags, too! I don't remember the bags being numbered - we had sets with multiple bags, but never numbered ones! - but again, we mainly got the smaller sets.

I've also noticed that with each step they show you, in a box, all the pieces you need for that step. That makes sense, I think. And they even have a "flip" symbol, too - before they would just show you the model upside down, which I guess could be a little jarring to younger builder (or a builder with bad eyes! Ahem). So I guess while the instruction books are a little more complicated visually, it seems to be simpler to build the actual models.

Sorry - as a graphic design geek I'm always sort of fascinated with instruction manuals. It's sort of amazing how LEGO can show people how to build these (really complicated, if you think about it) models without using words. It's the same reason I keep all my IKEA instruction books.