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LEGO Building Instructions

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Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#91

Post by lukas099 »

bluetomcat wrote: post #29
dsr_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own take: Some people want to play with playsets. Some people want to display models. Some people want to create art. Some people want to construct machines. Some people want to assert allegiance. Some people want to collect. All of these aims are valid. The diversity of ways to buy LEGO supports them all, while maintaining a high-quality, largely compatible, reasonably consistent medium.

In recent years, there is a general drift towards "collectible display models". This means that the piece count in most sets is inflated by a majority of small "finishing" pieces. The models are finicky to build with lots of unusual building techniques (attaching bricks on sidewalls, for example) and are not easy to repurpose into something else in a reasonable amount of time. In the 1990s, it was a "construction toy…

Sounds like a greater diversity of pieces for free-play construction to me.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#92

Post by photonerd »

thirteenfingers wrote: post #18
photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

I personally agree about the whole point of Lego being free form building - and I still have some Lego magazines from the days when that was explicitly encouraged by Lego - but you need kits and instructions to get to the point where you can do free form building. It's like composing music, you're going to have a very difficult time of it if you don't first study a whole lot of existing, well-constructed music.

I mean… I didn’t. At all. So I’d dispute the “need”, tho it’s of course a learning option I guess.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#93

Post by photonerd »

onemoresoop wrote: post #11
photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

Neither did I till I had a kid. My kid loves following instructions, builds a set a few times, then he goes into creative mode and builds his own way. Instructions helped my kid learn the basics of instruction following which is a good skill to have for a 5 year old.

Yeah I have a 2 yr old & larger blocks. He’s all about free building atm.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#94

Post by photonerd »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #81
photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

I'm with you. I remember my childhood experience with Legos. Me and a friend down the road would drag out this big bucket full of random stuff. We'd build forts, and then crazy many-wheeled trucks that would assault them. The whole thing was about those designs just springing from the imagination, and I really don't get what fun building toward a prescribed design would be, especially since it's so low fidelity.

Right, exactly.

Like I understand the appeal of model building but Lego models aren’t very good models & look like ass compared to (often a lot cheaper) model kits.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#95

Post by globular-toast »

photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

I love following instructions. It's so relaxing for me to just follow without having to figure anything out. Building my own stuff with Lego would be a completely different thing and I never enjoyed that, probably because I'm not very good at it.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#96

Post by photonerd »

m3kw9 wrote: post #69
photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

Why did you buy the specific kit just to build your own stuff? The process of going thru the process and the satisfaction of finishing is rewarding

I didn’t. That’s my point. Kits were rare (usually just suggestions with a slight subset of blocks) and most “sets” were 100s of pieces & so infinite options to build.

Now that’s still available but VERY much tertiary.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#97

Post by photonerd »

XCSme wrote: post #65
photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

It's like assembling Ikea furniture. Some people like it.

I like model building. But Lego models are not very good models

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#98

Post by jmmv »

mirkules wrote: post #41
kroltan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack. What! That is the best part! Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most satisfying sounds I know, the clatter of a bajillion pieces of precision plastic, each with their different cavities and sonority, moving around each handful you scrape off to the side…

> no kids yet You will know no fury as when your kids intentionally mix up all the pieces for fun. We have hundreds of LEGO people, and my kids intentionally dismembered them into their individual pieces (including HANDS!). But how can you get angry at kids playing??? twitch

It sounds like you should watch The Lego Movie (:

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#99

Post by photonerd »

mcphage wrote: post #34
photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

> The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. The point is that Lego can be played with in a bunch of ways. It's parts that you can do whatever with, and it has instructions for one or more models that you can make. Some people like the sheer possibilities of making things up, and some people find that daunting. Lego supports both, and anything in between. Following the i…

> The point is that Lego can be played with in a bunch of ways.

Indeed: the exact opposite of a set of instructions & specific, custom produced, build pieces.

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