In Boom Beach, there is an enemy base configuration called Fearless. It has lots of big guns, but the enemy headquarters is too close to the beach, so the lossless way to approach it is to bomb the two big guns by the beach, drop tanks to clear a few small guns, then have everyone huddle in the corner like scared children while they safely plink away at the HQ. Perhaps “Fearless” refers to the enemy commander who thought putting his HQ in front of the defenses was a good idea.
: Zubon
When getting my PMP certification, one of the principles hammered repeatedly in the training materials was “no gold plating.” “Gold plating” is going beyond the approved project to give the customer more than was asked for. You give the customer exactly what was asked for, says the code of ethics, and you get approval through an integrated change control process if you want to go beyond that.
When crafting in Shop Heroes, you can randomly get a critical success, which raises the quality of an item. Higher quality items are worth more, are stronger, and break less often on quests. The customer, however, ordered a lance, not a good lance, and will not accept a good lance to fill that order. You can spend energy to suggest the good lance (at a higher price) or spend another 10 minutes crafting a lance. If you get “lucky” with crits, that customer might be waiting a half-hour while you keep trying to work down to his standards.
: Zubon
At Tobold’s suggestion, I have been trying Shop Heroes, and I think Recettear converts to a mobile/social media game nicely. Why be an adventurer when you can be a shop owner selling things to adventurers? In the inverse of normal MMO mechanics, it is the adventurers who buy random crap, and they buy a lot of it because most of it has a 5-10% chance to break every adventure. Strangely, they do not actually use equipment you sell them, but rather you sponsor their adventures by equipping them with goods from your shop. Those items they break.
I would like to highlight the game’s City upgrade mechanics. I am not high enough level to see what it does in the late game, but it immediately seems to encourage players to be pro-social in a variety of good ways, while also making the high-level players’ drive for advancement subsidize the low-level players’ development. It does undermine the permanence of social bonds, which may be a good or bad thing depending on your view of this sort of thing.
The City is the equivalent of a guild hall, and it starts with a few buildings. Some of them help you get resources, like a mine for iron. Upgrading it increases the rate of iron provided. Upgrading your town hall expands your City, both in terms of population and getting new buildings. New buildings provide bonuses like new adventurers, bonuses to them, crafting bonuses, and raising the level cap on your crafters and adventurers. Those bonuses are effective for a limited time after anyone invests in building upgrades, 30 minutes for a minimal contribution up to 24 hours for a full upgrade bar. City members’ contributions are broadcast to all members, with an overall contribution rating on the member screen.
While there is an obvious anti-social incentive just to leech off others’ contributions, there are a variety of pro-social incentives here. If you want to raise the level cap for yourself, you contribute to the team. If you want to activate bonuses for yourself, you contribute to the team (even minimal contributions add up). Beyond mechanics, there is the social incentive of receiving public credit for contributions, along with the implicit social obligation to contribute to the team embodied in that members screen. That can turn nasty, in the way some MMO players consider a low gearscore to be leeching, although it also promotes reasonable stratification by player type if hardcore players who contribute a lot end up in cities with other hardcore players who contribute a lot. I would also expect to see social cities, where a few workhorses power their casual friends.
The last detail: your contributions go with you if you change to a new city. Wow, that’s big. Have you ever contributed to a guild only to be the last surviving member? Given it your all and had to abandon your sunk costs? Shop Heroes has no guild sunk costs. If you want greener pastures or to switch to a friend’s guild, you bring your investments with you. If you kick someone out, s/he takes her/his investments too. That might make someone hesitant to kick a toxic but rich person from the city, but I have yet to find how to be toxic in this game. Chat is hidden by default, and we are all off in our own shops.
: Zubon
In recent months players have been submitting an average of one million questions a day to Trivia Crack’s “Question Factory,†a section within the app, says its 29-year-old founder and chief executive, Maximo Cavazzani. Since each submission must get a positive rating from at least 100 fellow players to make the cut, only about 1,500 new questions are being added to the game each day.
— “Can an App Be Too Successful” by Sarah Needleman, Wall Street Journal
I played Ingress for a while last year. I am still getting responses about portals accepted or rejected, and I have at least 50 more in their queue. Back then, the Ingress web site said portals were accepted or rejected in 4-6 weeks (not months); right now it says that due to the backlog they have suspended the achievement related to submitting portals (and also quietly removed a turnaround time).
I have wondered if the time delay is an intentional strategy to reduce exploits. If the average player quits before their submitted portals go live, there is less incentive to submit dodgy “couch portals” (portal you can reach from home/work).
: Zubon
At SynCaine’s suggestion, I have been playing Boom Beach. Because most of the guild started playing about the same time, most of us hit the same wall at the same point: the PvP system in the game discourages playing. It is a variant on the problem seen with Marvel Puzzle Quest.
PvP opponents are matched via “victory points.” Victory points are acquired by clearing NPC bases and by successfully attacking in PvP; victory points are lost by being unsuccessfully defending in PvP and for having uncleared NPC or PvP bases on your map. You get more bases on your map (to clear or leave uncleared) by expanding your map. PvP is used to raid other bases for resources; one successful attack, and you clear the base off your map and take some resources. Sometimes clearing an NPC base will award an extra victory point.
Your goal in gaming the system would be to be the highest level player at your victory point level. I intentionally avoided expanding my map for a while to avoid the temptation to clear more enemy bases. For a little while, I was clearing every base and advancing quickly, which is to say I was flying face-first at a wall that matched me against a PvP base 17 levels higher than me. Clearing bases is good for getting small amounts of resources, but when you start getting raided five times per day, your resource situation becomes a bit more perilous. Of course, if everyone games the system, we are back to the same problem just with fewer resources in play.
So for the past week or two, most of the Boom Beach guild has been slowing down. Leave NPC bases on your map when they pop up, avoid PvP, fail at PvP defense and watch your victory point total get knocked back down to “reasonable opponents” level. The daily reward includes an incentive to have more victory points and you want stronger opponents because they’ll have more resources, but the gain per victory point seems small and stronger opponents are only good if they are strong but not stronger than you.
And now back to gaming matchmaking systems in F2P games. It is legitimately difficult to design a good matchmaking system, particularly in an environment with free (and large scale) entry and exit.
: Zubon