Oversimplification

[astral brick]

Sign of the times:

- numbered bags

- step by step instructions

- use of different colors in relation to specific parts (regardless of the outcomes on the look of the models when the elements are visible).

To be added: functional illiteracy, short attention span, inability to go beyond literal interpretation (the most serious issue of the aforementioned ones).

Zeitgeist or just rhetoric of the old times? Whatever the opinion is, the need of focus and the sense of challenge may increase both personal satisfaction and skills development at the completion of the set.

Therefore the excessive simplification does not simply concern the building experience, it is an a priori value judgement of paying customers.

[JintaiZ]

I do not think the LEGO sets are oversimplified. First of all, people have been asking for more numbered bags for a long time as it is just hard to find the parts they need to build. Also, different colors for specific parts are used so it is easy to figure out where you put specific elements.

[KotZ]

21 minutes ago, astral brick said:

- step by step instructions

... as opposed to just putting the steps out of order?

[Vindicare]

I don’t mind the numbered bags for larger sets. I couldn’t imagine having to dump everything from Ninjago City or Welcome to Apocalypseburg! out on a table all together. Imagine doing that with the Colosseum!  And it makes building on a smaller area more manageable. 

But the instructions...that’s something else entirely. I can’t stand how slow & simple they’ve become. We don’t need a step where the baseplate is the step or one piece added is the step. The unnecessary colored bricks I understand, it’s so you have your bearing of which end you’re building on & such. 

[Peppermint_M]

Ever build Medieval Market Village? Man, numbered bag would have helped there! 

I don't know what sets you are building, I have only noticed simplified steps in City, a theme that caters to younger builders. 

Then there is the art and "adult" sets. They are created to catch attention of the inexperienced builders and therefore need to be easier for the builder. After all, they have not spent the years building many AFOLs have. 

Case in point: Brother in Law is a LEGO fan, bought himself the Saturn V. Built it in an afternoon. His friend, a fan of space/NASA and all that, bought himself a Saturn V. Took more than a week, had to phone for help as he had missed parts in the instructions. 

One persons oversimplification is another's welcome help.

 

[Aanchir]

Honestly, I feel like making LEGO building accessible to a wider audience is a much more important outcome than making already proficient builders feel better about themselves/superior to others. It's a toy, not a puzzle — and it's not like it'd be considered praiseworthy for any other sort of toy to makee its instructions needlessly unclear or package its components in the cheapest and least organized manner possible.

If you really don't like the numbered bags, there's no rule that you have to open them in order. Just go ahead and dump them all out in a single pile like you would have with older sets. And if the step-by-step instructions bother you, go ahead and try to recreate as much as you can from the box art and only consult the instructions for the parts that are harder to figure out. That certainly seems a lot more rewarding than treating basic elements of user-friendly design as an insult to your intelligence.

Furthermore, I don't have any idea what era of LEGO you grew up with, but it's not like sets of the past didn't include gratuitous features designed to simplify the building process — including ones that feel ridiculous in hindsight. Several sets of the 1960s came with baseplates that had studs only where they were needed for that particular model, while others from 1969 to 1990 printed white dots to mark the studs where parts needed to be attached for that model. The manuals of early LEGO Town sets like 1592 included special callout windows to explain how to connect basically any parts that weren't a simple stud-to-antistud connection (windows to window frames, doors to door hinges, hinge tops to hinge bases, etc).

And of course, it goes without saying that many sets today have far more intricate/complex builds than many of their classic counterparts from the 70s and 80s — so isn't it pretty much common sense that even kids of the 80s would've probably needed considerably more guidance to build a set like 71705 Destiny's Bounty than one like 6285 Black Seas Barracuda?

The Bounty has an entirely brick built hull and figurehead, multiple interconnected Technic mechanisms, extensive SNOT techniques, multiple sections rotated "off-grid" with hinges, and 20 different colors and more than 480 distinct elements for builders to differentiate. The Barracuda has a prefab hull and minifig figurehead, is built almost entirely studs up and "on-grid", includes no Technic mechanisms, and has fewer than 10 colors and 200 distinct elements for builders to differentiate.

There's no honestly no comparison between sets back then and sets like this one — even as adults, it took more than a day for my brother and me to build the set in its entirety — even with the two of us often building a lot of sections simultaneously when we already knew they would be identical or mirrored on the final model.

So yes, the manual is more than three hundred pages long, and yes, it's broken down into 14 numbered bags, and has some brightly colored bricks and plates buried inside the model. But honestly, it would've felt lazy and cheap if LEGO had omitted conveniences as minor as those just to save a few bucks on printing and massage the egos of middle-aged builders who are convinced that kids these days aren't challenged enough.

Edited December 13, 2020 by Aanchir

[koalayummies]

75192, toss instructions into recycling, open all bags, jump into that pile like Scrooge McDuck.

[dr_spock]

Just use the pictures on the box if you need a more challenging build experience. 

 

 

[Mylenium]

13 hours ago, Aanchir said:

Honestly, I feel like making LEGO building accessible to a wider audience is a much more important outcome than making already proficient builders feel better about themselves/superior to others. It's a toy, not a puzzle — and it's not like it'd be considered praiseworthy for any other sort of toy to makee its instructions needlessly unclear or package its components in the cheapest and least organized manner possible.

I don't think that's the real point here. It's probably more to do with the fact that indeed we've arrived at a point where even sets for adults sometimes only have three pieces per step, which is actually quite ridiculous. And I'm willing to argue that even in sets aimed at kids like Friends or City there is no rational reason to dumb it down to a point where plugging a flower onto its stem has become its own step in the instructions. Dunno, since I only started out with LEGO five years ago (with Technic no less) and had done a lot of nerdy stuff with mechanics and electronics before, but I can't help but feel at times that LEGO really oversimplify things where it wouldn't be necessary. You know, buying a complex, technically challenging, large set is typically not something you do on the spot without thinking about the intricacies its build may entail or where you store it. So for what it's worth, I'm not advocating that LEGO make things intentionally difficult for less experienced users, but perhaps we can get back to a level where the instructions have some level of "common sense", where not every pin or stud has its own page.

13 hours ago, Aanchir said:

just to save a few bucks on printing

You mean pennies... Printing is dirt cheap.

Mylenium

15 hours ago, astral brick said:

- numbered bags

Nothing against those. If you 've ever built a reasonably large/ complex set, this quickly becomes a very convenient or even essential feature. Not saying that modular buildings or large T-Rex couldn't be built "the hard way" without numbered bags and everything scattered, but it's just nicer that way. It can of course be debated whether it's always necessary for a 200 piece Ninjago set or similar...

Mylenium

[howitzer]

Something has indeed happened over the years.

8868 had 60 pages in instruction booklet which included both A- and B-models. 42043 had 484 pages in the instructions book which included only the A-model. Both are flagships of their era and functional marvels. 42043 is slightly larger and has few more functions than 8868, but still they are not that different in scale or complexity.

[MAB]

I built a few 90s sets with my kids last week and I made a couple of errors when building, where I had missed adding parts when they were meant to be added. Sometimes older instructions are like having to do a spot the difference puzzle at each step. Whether that enhances the build is up to the individual. You can always skip over every other step, or skip forward five steps or whatever you feel if you prefer that way of building. You can also choose to ignore the boxes indicating which parts are added in the steps. The main cause for frustration though is not the number of parts added per step but the lack of a guide telling you which parts to pick out, so it is sometimes difficult to spot if you have missed anything from one picture to the next. That doesn't really happen with modern instructions since each step indicates exactly which pats are needed and there is a check that you have completed that step before moving on.

 

[Peppermint_M]

Or you can truly up the difficulty and design your own things and make a MOC instead of building a set with an instruction manual!

[Lira_Bricks]

I think 8279 is a good example of an old instruction booklet that is really confusing: https://www.lego.com/cdn/product-assets/product.bi.core.pdf/4133413.pdf

It:

• jumps from the A-model to the B-model and back
• never mentions when you have to apply a sticker
• goes from page 30 to 31 without telling you what to do with the part you just made, only for it to reappear at page 33
• has distracting visuals (background, page numbers, application-like part list,...)
• uses six(!) styles of arrows as far as I can see (black thin, black bold, yellow, blue, beige with box and red). It does not really help either that on a lot of pages it uses red arrows on top of red elements.

I hope Lego does not do this again. They have now included minifigures in the instructions of some Friends and MonkeyKid instruction booklets. Hopefully it stops there.

[NathanR]

I think it depends on who you are, as to whether Lego sets are oversimplified or not.

If you are a seasoned Lego builder, then having instructions that add one or two parts per step is a bit ridiculous. I got to a point with the Speed Champion cars that I could breeze through them on autopilot, and could be surprised to find the model was completed.

Adults who haven't played with lego for a while are probably grateful for this simplification, as it makes for a smoother, less frustrating build experience. I remember one of the first Architecture skyline sets had a step where you add a 1x1 technic brick, but the instructions also showed a 1x1 brick with one stud on side and 1x1 brick with 2 studs on sides as well to make very clear which type was to be added. I felt like Lego was insulting my intelligence with that, but I do accept it as occasional builders may not be familiar with the wide variety of bricks currently available (there is that general perception that "back in the day" Lego was just basic bricks and plates, and people who believe that probably do need help with the dizzying array of SNOT bricks that are available).

I've also seen kids struggle to assemble 50 piece MOCs where instructions were done as old-school spot-the-difference manuals without individual part callouts per step. I still can't figure out if it's a case of kids getting dumber, or that they just struggle with all the part/colour combos available.

 

I do hate the use of numbered bags though - it really spoon-feeds the build to you. I miss being surrounded by several open bags of various parts. I used to love building technic sets and watching the giant bag of black technic pins get slowly emptied. I think the 42000 came with two bags of black pins, and when I opened the box I just stared at them realising that I was in for an epic build. I'll grant you that with the original version of 10188 Death Star, the lack of bag numbers made it a huge challenge (and at times, it was very frustrating to find the relevant pieces), but it gave me a huge sense of achievement when I finally managed to finish it. I know dislike of numbered bags is a dangerous opinion to have on these forums, and it's one that got me lumbered with the unremovable label above my profile pic, but this is my personal preference.

[neonic]

I haven't bought Lego for the last ... many years but I helped my niece a few times with there Lego friends set. Well, the picture on each step can be handy, especially with more bigger/technical sets.
the Numbered bags ... it might be handy for when the made the sets in the factory? For me, I always opened all the bags and throw all the parts on a tray or something like that, to prevent that little round pieces run off. And than the instruction on the table and grabbing to find the right parts. Just fun.

the Instructions are, in most cases, a bit to 'simple'. For example. I've seen an instruction for a flower. a Shaft, and three flowers. How difficult can that be. Also with instructions, they show you how to build for example a piece for the right side, later the same, but then for the left side. I also made it together. Just like the exhaust of the truck (model team). Every picture you had to put two grey rounds for the exhaust. I just grabbed all the pieces and made it at once.

So that's my opinion. I know, some builds are more challenging than others but I've seen instruction it looks like ... how dumb they think people are. To many pictures to show you how to make a thing of ... a few bricks.

[JintaiZ]

2 hours ago, Lira_Bricks said:

I think 8279 is a good example of an old instruction booklet that is really confusing: https://www.lego.com/cdn/product-assets/product.bi.core.pdf/4133413.pdf

It:

• jumps from the A-model to the B-model and back
• never mentions when you have to apply a sticker
• goes from page 30 to 31 without telling you what to do with the part you just made, only for it to reappear at page 33
• has distracting visuals (background, page numbers, application-like part list,...)
• uses six(!) styles of arrows as far as I can see (black thin, black bold, yellow, blue, beige with box and red). It does not really help either that on a lot of pages it uses red arrows on top of red elements.

I hope Lego does not do this again. They have now included minifigures in the instructions of some Friends and MonkeyKid instruction booklets. Hopefully it stops there.

I think it's the fact that very old models have worse instructions than newer ones rather than just one specific model with confusing instructions.

[MAB]

1 hour ago, NathanR said:

I do hate the use of numbered bags though - it really spoon-feeds the build to you. I miss being surrounded by several open bags of various parts. I used to love building technic sets and watching the giant bag of black technic pins get slowly emptied. I think the 42000 came with two bags of black pins, and when I opened the box I just stared at them realising that I was in for an epic build. I'll grant you that with the original version of 10188 Death Star, the lack of bag numbers made it a huge challenge (and at times, it was very frustrating to find the relevant pieces), but it gave me a huge sense of achievement when I finally managed to finish it. I know dislike of numbered bags is a dangerous opinion to have on these forums, and it's one that got me lumbered with the unremovable label above my profile pic, but this is my personal preference.

This one is so easy to solve though, just open all the bags and mix the parts together. If you enjoy sorting LEGO or like to look for small parts in a huge pile, then the numbered bags are easily overcome by mixing them up. Whereas if you find it frustrating that you are spending way much more time looking for pats rather than actually building, then opening the numbered bags in the correct order provides a much better building experience. The current LEGO solution woks for both camps.

[jimmynick]

22 hours ago, KotZ said:

... as opposed to just putting the steps out of order?

I think as opposed to playing spot the difference between all pairs of steps

20 hours ago, dr_spock said:

Just use the pictures on the box if you need a more challenging build experience. 

Like the old-school B-models! Lovely

Sometimes when I buy a set and want to feel like a kid again, I do open all the bags and dump the contents into a pile on my carpet ( can feel the ghost of Ole Kirk Christiansen coming for me!) but it does substantially protract the building process. I think the last time I did it was for the 20th Anniversary Slave I. There's a time and a place for everything

[Mylenium]

3 hours ago, NathanR said:

I still can't figure out if it's a case of kids getting dumber

There are enough studies that e.g. prove that today's kids have less spatial acuity and dexterity due to spending less time with traditional crafting hobbies and doing less sports. One needn't even think of ADHD and all that. It's also just as weird that a lot of kids can't even verbally describe colors. Not to sound like my mom, who is a retired special education teacher, but it probably does play a part...

Mylenium

[NathanR]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

This one is so easy to solve though, just open all the bags and mix the parts together. If you enjoy sorting LEGO or like to look for small parts in a huge pile, then the numbered bags are easily overcome by mixing them up. Whereas if you find it frustrating that you are spending way much more time looking for pats rather than actually building, then opening the numbered bags in the correct order provides a much better building experience. The current LEGO solution woks for both camps.

No, I think you miss my point. I liked the sweet spot that sits halfway between a "huge pile of all the bits" and "small numbered bag holding just what you need for the next stage of build". With the unnumbered bags open, but not tipped out, there was a lovely balance between a logical organisation of parts and the ability to rummage around to find the right brick.

[Aanchir]

7 hours ago, Mylenium said:

I don't think that's the real point here. It's probably more to do with the fact that indeed we've arrived at a point where even sets for adults sometimes only have three pieces per step, which is actually quite ridiculous.

Sometimes I've built sets that had just three pieces per step, and I had no problem with it. I mean, it's a toy that you build for fun, not some kind of cognitive assessment.

It's possible that part of why I feel this way is that over the course of my life I've done a lot of building as a social activity with other people like friends or siblings, with all of us alternating between steps. In that kind of situation it's much more fun and engaging if your turn comes around more frequently than if you're spending longer stretches of time sitting and waiting for another builder to finish with all the parts on their step, or frequently handing the model back to the previous builder if you notice that they missed some of the ones on their step.

Plus, while my twin brother and I have more or less had the same aptitude for building our whole lives, other "building partners" are often less experienced. The building process feels much less frustrating and more rewarding when both builders can complete their steps fairly quickly, whereas when a less experienced builder is clearly struggling for much longer with their steps than their more experienced partner, it can result in the more experienced builder feeling bored/impatient and the less experienced builder feel inadequate/self-conscious.

And this DOES apply even to adult builders — I've been building consistently since childhood, but a lot of other adults haven't built a LEGO set in years and aren't anywhere near as used to the parts or the process of putting them together. So if a set aimed at adults ever seems a bit simple for you, that's probably a sign that LEGO is trying to make it more accessible to adults who are just getting back into the hobby, or even building their very first set in their entire lives.

All in all I just don't see why this would be a big deal for anyone. It's not as though it's a personal insult to your intelligence or anyone's — it's just an experience that's intended for builders across a wide range of proficiency levels, and I feel like the benefits of having that broader level inclusivity far outweigh individual moments of discomfort for builders who are blessed with greater skill and experience than others.

[koalayummies]

31 minutes ago, Mylenium said:

There are enough studies that e.g. prove that today's kids have less spatial acuity and dexterity due to spending less time with traditional crafting hobbies and doing less sports. One needn't even think of ADHD and all that. It's also just as weird that a lot of kids can't even verbally describe colors. Not to sound like my mom, who is a retired special education teacher, but it probably does play a part...

'kids these days', 'hah, phone bad', 'millenials/zoomers ruining ________ industry'... ok boomer.

[Aanchir]

3 hours ago, koalayummies said:

'kids these days', 'hah, phone bad', 'millenials/zoomers ruining ________ industry'... ok boomer.

I dunno, I think I can probably agree that today's kids tend to spend a lot more time learning different sorts of skill sets than earlier generations might've. I mean, generational shifts are definitely a real thing. But I don't have an especially negative outlook about this sort of thing myself — this year has given us plenty of examples of how stuff like knowing how to get around and find things online, differentiate between reputable and non-reputable sources,  or spend social time with friends remotely can be to a person's well-being at any age.

There are also quite a number of skills like visual-spatial skills or hand-eye coordination that translate very well from popular hobbies today like video gaming to LEGO building. Do you have any idea how important stuff like literacy, color and pattern recognition, directional skills, numerical skills, memory retention, problem solving, and time and resource management are to many of the types of video games kids enjoy playing?

In my own experience, I knew the names of colors like "Cyan" and "Magenta" MUCH sooner than a lot of my peers in elementary school specifically because of the time i spent playing computer games, so it feels bizarre to act as though tactile crafts or hobbies are the only way of developing that sort of skill. Particularly when many AFOLs seem to struggle with certain color identification skills like recognizing lavender as a shade of purple (not pink), or knowing what the term "pastel" means.

Part of my frustration with the sorts of complaints we often see in topics like this one is that as an autistic adult with ADHD and NVLD (nonverbal learning disorder), I strongly feel that the reasonable response to differences in thinking, learning, and experiencing the world is to accept that they exist and try to design experiences to be accessible to anyone, whether or not they fit some hypothetical norm. I would not have had anywhere NEAR as much success in academics or other parts of my adult life if I hadn't been taught to understand the differences in how I think and learn, and learned ways to accommodate for or even benefit from some of those differences.

There's nothing to be gained from denigrating kids who struggle with things that are much easier for others. Nor is it fair to them to pathologize the stuff that makes them different and try to forcibly "break them out of it" like people used to do (and sometimes still do) to kids who were autistic, gay, transgender, or even left-handed. As such, perspectives like "if I could handle this back when I was that age, why can't everyone?" feel unintentionally hostile to these sorts of natural differences in how kids experience the world around them. Chances are that back when we were kids (yes, ANY of us), there were still quite a few kids who lacked skills that helped LEGO building come more naturally to us. Kids back then probably could have benefited just as much from being offered more user-friendly "universal design" philosophies as kids today.

[howitzer]

One definite change - and a good one at that - is every step having a box where quantity and type of each part to be added is specified. This helps enormously in ensuring that every part needed is added in each step, and I think only Technic sets had these in the early 90's.

While the instructions indeed are made today much simpler than 30 years ago, I don't think it's a big deal. Yeah, they could add more parts per step and such, but apparently TLG sees that their current method of making instructions is good, so why change that? It's not like they would achieve enormous cost savings by having half as much pages in the booklets or whatever, and if there's someone out there who benefits of these simpler instructions, who am I to complain?

[astral brick]

7 hours ago, NathanR said:

I do hate the use of numbered bags though - it really spoon-feeds the build to you. I miss being surrounded by several open bags of various parts. I used to love building technic sets and watching the giant bag of black technic pins get slowly emptied. I think the 42000 came with two bags of black pins, and when I opened the box I just stared at them realising that I was in for an epic build. I'll grant you that with the original version of 10188 Death Star, the lack of bag numbers made it a huge challenge (and at times, it was very frustrating to find the relevant pieces), but it gave me a huge sense of achievement when I finally managed to finish it. I know dislike of numbered bags is a dangerous opinion to have on these forums, and it's one that got me lumbered with the unremovable label above my profile pic, but this is my personal preference.

Thank you for having described so well your experience. You have perfectly caught the sense of this thread.