[vintermann]

It's bad in this dimension for being a popular "eurogame". All it has to avoid it is a few hidden points from development cards. But most of the non-eurogames are far worse in this regard (e.g. in monopoly, this is far more common), and Catan would never have gotten away with it today. It's from 1995 after all.

[aidenn0]

True that non-eurogames are pretty bad here; Vinci suffered from this problem so badly that its successor (Smallworld) made every player's points private.