Asked a Yes/No question on mechanics, but Closed for Opinion Based?

Question

This was my question on utilizing a common token change to a commonly played board game (which has recently been voted into deletion):

---

However, a Meta question on the topic of "Are Questions on Balancing Mechanics On-Topic" (that is in reference to a much more open-ended mechanics question, which included the query of "is this mechanic too 'weird'") was answered by a moderator with a positive "Yes".

Perhaps I'm new, and there's something I'm missing, but the example question seems to be much more opinion-based than my own.

Could someone help me understand why? I'd like to make sure I don't repeat this mistake in the future, but I'm not seeing enough of a pattern to learn from this.

Answer 1

I disagree that this is a simple yes/no question as it seem pretty clear that it does have a big impact on the balance of the game with the question being what kind of impact it would have (positive/neutral/negative). Each group based on how they work together overall might rate each of the impacts differently.

In my opinion I think a better question would be to ask what the impacts from this rule would be as those are less likely to be opinion based.

Answer 2

It wasn't a yes/no question at the time it was closed.

Being yes/no doesn't make a question immune to being closed as primarily opinion-based anyway. “Are these mechanics cool?” is a yes/no question. Anyway, let's dive into this case.

If you visit the question's revision history (accessible by hitting the "edited X time ago" link at the bottom center) you'll be able to see when it was closed:

In this case we can see it was closed after revision 2. We can click the "2" to and expand to see what the revision looked like at that stage.

“Any pros out there able to give some advice?” being the operative question makes this a discussion question fitting our questions to avoid asking criteria. It won't attract a best/correct answer; instead it's chatty and open-ended. Every answer will be equally valid, because every answer will ostensibly contain advice. Naturally this would be closed as opinion-based.

The question has since been edited, but it will remain closed until enough people decide it's worth reopening.

(My observation: never ask for “any advice?” or “any tips?”, because we will get exactly that: an endless list of advice and tips of arbitrary quality, instead of actual solid answers. Always directly request a comprehensive answer or solution to your problem.)

Answer 3

I suspect that the original "too opinion based" was related to the wording of the question as asking for advice. With the edits, the focus on mechanical conflicts makes it looks a lot more objective to me, and I think it is now an acceptable question.

I have undeleted the question. You can now vote to reopen it, which will push it into the reopen queue if it doesn't go there automatically.