I've always been a big fan of puzzle magazines. Dell/Penny Press/Games, you name it. I'd take them to school and do them in class because I'd get all the homework done in the time we had to work on it in class and then would otherwise sit around bored. Anyway, the magazine 'Math Puzzles & Logic Problems' was my favourite one, and of the puzzles that would show up in those Paint by Numbers was my favourite. It's also known as Picross I believe. You get a grid with a bunch of numbers on the top and left and need to use the process of elimination to work out what squares of the grid needed to be shaded in to make a picture. (It's the closest I'd ever get to 'art'.)
Anyway, the other day I started seeing Facebook spam for a game that looked like it might contain Paint by Numbers grids. I haven't given a Facebook game a try since the debacle that was Plants vs Zombies Adventures and I figured I'd give it a spin to see what was up. I've had a lot of fun with some Facebook games, after all, and I do like me some Paint by Numbers...
The game is called Riddle Stones and it is a bit of a debacle. I set it up to only post updates to myself, not to my friends, and went off to play it. I played through something like 12 levels in the first day, so probably 30 puzzles or so. It had posted 50 things to my feed. FIFTY! And that's all the junk it posts without asking me about it. It also prompted me at least once per puzzle, often more, to make posts on my own to my feed. Presumably those posts would be seen by my friends because it would be me posting them, not the app on its own. Every time I got a faster time than anyone who had played the game it wanted me to brag about it. Every 3 puzzles it wanted to brag about that too.
The UI was either very badly designed or deliberately terrible to be confusing. After having Who Wants To Be A Millionaire steal 5 cents by tricking me into clicking a button that changed meaning I'm leaning towards the latter. I'm actually not sure how alternating if I wanted to click green or orange or nothing was confusing me into paying them money but I'm sure it would have happened at some point. It kept asking me to make it full screen before every single puzzle. Why? Once, sure. That might be helpful? After I decline to do it? Leave me alone!
The game itself was pretty boring when it came right down to it. I'm used to doing 25x25 or bigger puzzles; these ones were all either 5x5 or 10x10 with most of the grid filled in for me in advance. You can't make a puzzle with all that much thought in a 5x5 grid, nor can you make a puzzle that looks really cool. The game seemed to be designed around doing things fast, not smart. You could click in the wrong spot several times before you'd 'die' so there wasn't much sense in using logic. I can spend a couple seconds to work out the right answer or I can just click a couple extra times and brute force it. Blah.
But what it did do was prompt me to go looking for some real Paint by Number puzzles. I found a cool site that looks to have a ton of puzzles of all shapes and sizes, including some with extra colours. I like it! Interesting, challenging, free, not annoying to me, and not annoying to my Facebook friends. Wins for everybody!
Showing posts with label Facebook Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook Games. Show all posts
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Plants vs Zombies Adventures
A new game just came out on Facebook and Ike pretty much immediately linked to an article about how this game merged two popular time wasters into one awesome game which was going to kill workplace productivity. The two games in question were Farmville and Plants vs Zombies. I actually played Farmville for a fair amount of time (basically until they removed the ability for me to give pigs to all my friends) and never really played the original Plants vs Zombies but really liked the World of Warcraft quest that spun off of it. And I love tower defense games in general. So even though I hate Facebook games with a passion after several of them bombed on me (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire stole my money, Scrabble started pausing games to serve ads, and Mystic Warlords of Ka'a took people's money and then shut down) I decided to give this a try.
On the surface the game starts off as a standard tower defense game. They moved away from the core Plants vs Zombies gameplay of having straight lines and infinite range plants and switched into a preset zombie path with finite plant range system. Not a big deal, but it is a change. You have peashooters and sunflowers and it all makes sense. Then the first twist gets thrown at you... Plants that you put down during a tower defense mission don't just cost you sunpower that you have to collect as usual. You have a finite number of these plants and when you use one on a given map it's gone forever. In order to keep playing map after map you need to generate a supply of these plants to use on each new map. The way you do this is by playing Farmville. Your town has 10 planter boxes and you can pay an ingame currency (coins) to grow more plants. The type of plant determines how many coins it costs to grow and how much time it takes.
How do you get coins to buy plants? Well, after each map any plants you use explode into a few coins, so you get a small amount of recycling that way. You can also build houses on your map that generate coins over time. Go to your town and click on the houses to get your coins out of them. They only build up coins for 3 or 4 hours though, so you better keep coming back often to get all of your coins! You also need to keep coming back often so you can grow more plants!
How do you get more houses? You spend another ingame currency (zombucks) on them. How do you get more of those? You do the tower defense missions and kill zombies! So it has nice interplay going on there. Play tower defense to get currency to play Farmville to get currency to play tower defense. Nice if the numbers are balanced properly, anyway. Terrible and frustrating if they're off in some way...
And off they are. I was able to play the game for maybe 45 minutes before I stopped being able to play. Part of this is not understanding what was going on. I gained the ability to make a new seed so I immediately planted a bunch of those in my farm garden. Turns out those seeds take an hour to grow, so half of my plots of land became worthless. It also turns out that the asparagus plant is strictly superior to the pea plant. (It shoots 4 square instead of 2 squares for the same amount of damage and same attack rate.) But it also turns out asparagus takes 10 minutes to grow instead of 1 minute. And costs twice as many coins. So while the tower defense missions are 'easier' with asparagus, you just get to do fewer of them since you can't grow enough plants to keep playing and you can't afford to buy them all even if you wanted to. So either I play with worse plants or I don't play as often as I want.
Or I pay them a bunch of money. Because that's what this game is designed to do, after all. Encourage microtransactions. There's a third type of ingame currency that you seem to only get by paying real money for it. You can spend this currency on pretty much anything you want. More planter boxes so you can get more plants? Done! Tons of coins? Done! $2.50 will get you a planter box. $20 will get you enough coins to buy 336 asparagus plants. Want a garden gnome for your town? (DO I?!) $1.50 and you can have one! Want to use beeshooters instead of peashooters? (They have more range and I suspect do more damage or attack faster.) You can't grow those at all. But you can buy them for a mere 40 cents each!
The numbers could be set up to make this a fun game I could play for a long time. Instead the numbers are designed so that I can pay them a lot of money in order to play for a long time. Or I can play for half an hour every 4 hours for free. It's set up to tell me when my friends outlevel me though, in order to guilt trip me into paying money when they do.
I can't say that I disagree with the design from a business point of view. The game was pretty fun for the 45 minutes I was able to play. I was able to unlock new things, and see achievements, and blow zombies up with plants. I'm sure there are plenty of people who will spend some money in order to play more often. But I hate this business model. Maybe because I'm a game locust who wants to play it all in one sitting and this business model is set up to get all of my money. It's not that I don't like paying money for games; I do. Even for free to play games, like League of Legends. I just hate having to pay extra in order to play at the rate I want to play, and I hate paying extra to be better.
So I'm not going to pay, and as such I'll probably end up not playing either. But if you're someone who plays games in shorter chunks than I do, or who wants to give the Popcap guys all of your money, give this one a try. It seems fun.
On the surface the game starts off as a standard tower defense game. They moved away from the core Plants vs Zombies gameplay of having straight lines and infinite range plants and switched into a preset zombie path with finite plant range system. Not a big deal, but it is a change. You have peashooters and sunflowers and it all makes sense. Then the first twist gets thrown at you... Plants that you put down during a tower defense mission don't just cost you sunpower that you have to collect as usual. You have a finite number of these plants and when you use one on a given map it's gone forever. In order to keep playing map after map you need to generate a supply of these plants to use on each new map. The way you do this is by playing Farmville. Your town has 10 planter boxes and you can pay an ingame currency (coins) to grow more plants. The type of plant determines how many coins it costs to grow and how much time it takes.
How do you get coins to buy plants? Well, after each map any plants you use explode into a few coins, so you get a small amount of recycling that way. You can also build houses on your map that generate coins over time. Go to your town and click on the houses to get your coins out of them. They only build up coins for 3 or 4 hours though, so you better keep coming back often to get all of your coins! You also need to keep coming back often so you can grow more plants!
How do you get more houses? You spend another ingame currency (zombucks) on them. How do you get more of those? You do the tower defense missions and kill zombies! So it has nice interplay going on there. Play tower defense to get currency to play Farmville to get currency to play tower defense. Nice if the numbers are balanced properly, anyway. Terrible and frustrating if they're off in some way...
And off they are. I was able to play the game for maybe 45 minutes before I stopped being able to play. Part of this is not understanding what was going on. I gained the ability to make a new seed so I immediately planted a bunch of those in my farm garden. Turns out those seeds take an hour to grow, so half of my plots of land became worthless. It also turns out that the asparagus plant is strictly superior to the pea plant. (It shoots 4 square instead of 2 squares for the same amount of damage and same attack rate.) But it also turns out asparagus takes 10 minutes to grow instead of 1 minute. And costs twice as many coins. So while the tower defense missions are 'easier' with asparagus, you just get to do fewer of them since you can't grow enough plants to keep playing and you can't afford to buy them all even if you wanted to. So either I play with worse plants or I don't play as often as I want.
Or I pay them a bunch of money. Because that's what this game is designed to do, after all. Encourage microtransactions. There's a third type of ingame currency that you seem to only get by paying real money for it. You can spend this currency on pretty much anything you want. More planter boxes so you can get more plants? Done! Tons of coins? Done! $2.50 will get you a planter box. $20 will get you enough coins to buy 336 asparagus plants. Want a garden gnome for your town? (DO I?!) $1.50 and you can have one! Want to use beeshooters instead of peashooters? (They have more range and I suspect do more damage or attack faster.) You can't grow those at all. But you can buy them for a mere 40 cents each!
The numbers could be set up to make this a fun game I could play for a long time. Instead the numbers are designed so that I can pay them a lot of money in order to play for a long time. Or I can play for half an hour every 4 hours for free. It's set up to tell me when my friends outlevel me though, in order to guilt trip me into paying money when they do.
I can't say that I disagree with the design from a business point of view. The game was pretty fun for the 45 minutes I was able to play. I was able to unlock new things, and see achievements, and blow zombies up with plants. I'm sure there are plenty of people who will spend some money in order to play more often. But I hate this business model. Maybe because I'm a game locust who wants to play it all in one sitting and this business model is set up to get all of my money. It's not that I don't like paying money for games; I do. Even for free to play games, like League of Legends. I just hate having to pay extra in order to play at the rate I want to play, and I hate paying extra to be better.
So I'm not going to pay, and as such I'll probably end up not playing either. But if you're someone who plays games in shorter chunks than I do, or who wants to give the Popcap guys all of your money, give this one a try. It seems fun.
Friday, April 13, 2012
TSN Predictor
I've been playing a Facebook 'game' for the last couple years now called TSN Predictor. It isn't really a game by most people's definitions but then it really isn't a Facebook game (in the sense that you can't spend money and get no benefit from spamming your friends) either. It's more of a combination between a contest and an advertisement. The basic idea is you try to predict the winner of an NHL hockey game each day and whoever put together the longest streak of correct predictions at the end of the month wins $1000. Then at the end of the year one of those winners also wins a car. I believe they can afford to do this due to the ads on the page for the car sponsor and because it advertises when the TSN network is televising NHL games.
There's also a 'double down' question each day which you can answer or ignore. If you ignore it (or if the question is a draw) then nothing special happens. You get 1 added to your streak if you pick a game correctly and get your streak reset to 0 if you picked a game incorrectly. Forget to play and nothing happens at all. Get the double down right and pick a game right and add 2 to your streak.
April was a short month as the regular season ended after 7 days. As it happened after 5 days I was sitting in 3rd place with an ongoing 8 streak. The 6th was Lounge Day and I forgot to play before we left. I ended up sneaking into the MathSoc office to play, but didn't want to spend too much time so I picked quickly and left. The situation had 2 people ahead of me with 9 points and only 1 game being played that day. Both people ahead of me picked one team to win (it's interesting that it shows me their picks) so I quickly picked the other one. I also picked the double down question (total goals scored in the game, over/under 4.5). My reasoning was that there were other people tied with me at 8 points and a bunch at 7 as well. So even though I was going to catch up to the 9s if I got the game right I could well be passed by people tied with me. Also, there was still another day to go and I figured I might well need 2 points on the 6th and 2 points on the 7th.
People at Lounge Day asked about the tiebreakers. I didn't want to catch up to the 9s, I wanted to pass them. Did I need to do that? Well, I didn't have time to read the fine print when I was sneaking my pick in but I figured I should look at it now in case the situation came up again. (I seem to recall coming 2nd in April last year...) It turns out the tiebreakers are, in order: total success %, total correct picks, random roll.
Total success percentage as the first tie breaker means I had the edge against everyone. I only had 8 points of the possible 9 after 5 days but it's because I forgot to play on April 1st. No one else was in that situation so everyone else at 8 points had a worse tiebreaker. The guys at 9 were currently at 100% but if they got the game wrong on the 6th (the only way I was tying them was by picking opposite them and being right) then they'd have a loss and I'd be beating them. The second tiebreaker wouldn't matter in such a short month but could be key in a full month. The third tiebreaker is completely random and I should pick an extra double down question rather than leave it to randomness since presumably I can pick a yes/no question with better than 50% accuracy.
So... Should I have picked the double down question on the 6th? Knowing now that I completely dominate the first tiebreaker I'm not so sure. Certainly I should have gone through everyone near me's picks. If I could end up at a 9 streak with control of the tiebreaker I could then figure out how to approach the last day. My thinking was that I needed to beat the current 9s and to guarantee I stayed ahead of all the current 7s. In reality I was fine against both of those and only really had to worry about the current 8s.
I'll try to reconstruct the day in question...
9 points - 9/9 - pick StL, under
9 points - 9/9 - pick StL, over
8 points - 8/9 - pick Pho, over
8 points - 8/8 - pick StL, under
8 points - 8/8 - pick Pho, under
7 points - 7/8 - pick Pho, over
7 points - 7/7 - pick Pho, over
7 points - 7/7 - pick StL, over
7 points - 7/7 - pick StL, over
7 points - 7/8 - pick StL, under
6 points - 6/7 - pick Pho, over
6 points - 6/6 - didn't play
6 points - 6/7 - didn't play
Assume Phoenix wins and I get the double down right... What are the outcomes of each possible choice?
OVER
10/10 - ME
10/11
9/10
9/9
8/9
UNDER
10/10 - ME
10/10
NO PICK, OVER
10/11
9/10
9/9 - ME
9/9
8/9
NO PICK, UNDER
10/10
9/9 - ME
I'm behind the 8-ball if I don't pick. Because I have people at 8 points going each way there's always going to be a 10. Then I again need to hope they get something wrong on the last day. Not picking and having the under happen is particularly bad as that guy also had a 100% pick percentage. I'm not convinced I need to pick something. And since both ways have a single other person at 10 points I don't see a huge difference between them. The over is a little better as I have the tiebreaker on that 10 pointer but either way I'm pretty sure I'd need to pick a game and the double down on the last day as well. I should pick whichever one I think is most likely to happen.
I picked the under. Unfortunately the game ended up having 5 goals scored in a Phoenix win. The final scores ended up being 11 - 10 - 9 - 9 - 9 - 9. The guy who ended up at 10 points actually didn't pick the double down on the last day! There was a guy at 9/9 at that point who could have won with a 100% tiebreaker if he'd gotten the final day right on both counts. I don't know that I would have been able to take that risk if I was him...
There's also a 'double down' question each day which you can answer or ignore. If you ignore it (or if the question is a draw) then nothing special happens. You get 1 added to your streak if you pick a game correctly and get your streak reset to 0 if you picked a game incorrectly. Forget to play and nothing happens at all. Get the double down right and pick a game right and add 2 to your streak.
April was a short month as the regular season ended after 7 days. As it happened after 5 days I was sitting in 3rd place with an ongoing 8 streak. The 6th was Lounge Day and I forgot to play before we left. I ended up sneaking into the MathSoc office to play, but didn't want to spend too much time so I picked quickly and left. The situation had 2 people ahead of me with 9 points and only 1 game being played that day. Both people ahead of me picked one team to win (it's interesting that it shows me their picks) so I quickly picked the other one. I also picked the double down question (total goals scored in the game, over/under 4.5). My reasoning was that there were other people tied with me at 8 points and a bunch at 7 as well. So even though I was going to catch up to the 9s if I got the game right I could well be passed by people tied with me. Also, there was still another day to go and I figured I might well need 2 points on the 6th and 2 points on the 7th.
People at Lounge Day asked about the tiebreakers. I didn't want to catch up to the 9s, I wanted to pass them. Did I need to do that? Well, I didn't have time to read the fine print when I was sneaking my pick in but I figured I should look at it now in case the situation came up again. (I seem to recall coming 2nd in April last year...) It turns out the tiebreakers are, in order: total success %, total correct picks, random roll.
Total success percentage as the first tie breaker means I had the edge against everyone. I only had 8 points of the possible 9 after 5 days but it's because I forgot to play on April 1st. No one else was in that situation so everyone else at 8 points had a worse tiebreaker. The guys at 9 were currently at 100% but if they got the game wrong on the 6th (the only way I was tying them was by picking opposite them and being right) then they'd have a loss and I'd be beating them. The second tiebreaker wouldn't matter in such a short month but could be key in a full month. The third tiebreaker is completely random and I should pick an extra double down question rather than leave it to randomness since presumably I can pick a yes/no question with better than 50% accuracy.
So... Should I have picked the double down question on the 6th? Knowing now that I completely dominate the first tiebreaker I'm not so sure. Certainly I should have gone through everyone near me's picks. If I could end up at a 9 streak with control of the tiebreaker I could then figure out how to approach the last day. My thinking was that I needed to beat the current 9s and to guarantee I stayed ahead of all the current 7s. In reality I was fine against both of those and only really had to worry about the current 8s.
I'll try to reconstruct the day in question...
9 points - 9/9 - pick StL, under
9 points - 9/9 - pick StL, over
8 points - 8/9 - pick Pho, over
8 points - 8/8 - pick StL, under
8 points - 8/8 - pick Pho, under
7 points - 7/8 - pick Pho, over
7 points - 7/7 - pick Pho, over
7 points - 7/7 - pick StL, over
7 points - 7/7 - pick StL, over
7 points - 7/8 - pick StL, under
6 points - 6/7 - pick Pho, over
6 points - 6/6 - didn't play
6 points - 6/7 - didn't play
Assume Phoenix wins and I get the double down right... What are the outcomes of each possible choice?
OVER
10/10 - ME
10/11
9/10
9/9
8/9
UNDER
10/10 - ME
10/10
NO PICK, OVER
10/11
9/10
9/9 - ME
9/9
8/9
NO PICK, UNDER
10/10
9/9 - ME
I'm behind the 8-ball if I don't pick. Because I have people at 8 points going each way there's always going to be a 10. Then I again need to hope they get something wrong on the last day. Not picking and having the under happen is particularly bad as that guy also had a 100% pick percentage. I'm not convinced I need to pick something. And since both ways have a single other person at 10 points I don't see a huge difference between them. The over is a little better as I have the tiebreaker on that 10 pointer but either way I'm pretty sure I'd need to pick a game and the double down on the last day as well. I should pick whichever one I think is most likely to happen.
I picked the under. Unfortunately the game ended up having 5 goals scored in a Phoenix win. The final scores ended up being 11 - 10 - 9 - 9 - 9 - 9. The guy who ended up at 10 points actually didn't pick the double down on the last day! There was a guy at 9/9 at that point who could have won with a 100% tiebreaker if he'd gotten the final day right on both counts. I don't know that I would have been able to take that risk if I was him...
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Conclusion?
Yesterday I got an email from someone at Ludia which appears to be the Quebec based company that developed the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Facebook game. It was in response to my complaint about feeling like they tricked me into giving them 5 of my Facebook credits with sketchy button changes. In a nutshell the response said that Facebook lets an app take credits for minor purchases without confirmation. Everything in this game is a 'minor purchase' so they don't have any reason to confirm anything. It was made pretty clear that what happened to me wasn't an accident and they intentionally set things up to make it very easy to get your credits.
He then apologized if I was confused but claimed to be unable to refund credits. The claim was Facebook handles everything to do with credits and gave me a link to complain directly to Facebook. He said the only thing he can do is give me a free play, which he did. Huzzah? Having never used the limited number of daily plays as it is this doesn't really help me out at all.
I went to the Facebook link he gave me and it's solely for troubles with _buying_ credits. Once Facebook has your money they don't seem the least bit interested in helping you out. It doesn't even seem like there's a way to contact anyone at all for other reasons. I just ended up in a help file loop which was relatively unhelpful. On the plus side I did find out how to make Facebook stop caching my credit card information!
In conclusion there doesn't actually look to be any way to dispute a Facebook app taking your credits. What's to stop me from writing an app that just steals credits from people without notifying them? (Morality aside that is.) As long as it falls under the 'minor purchase' category it doesn't seem like there's anything at all requiring the app to tell you what it's doing. Even if you noticed it doesn't seem like there's any way to actually complain about it!
Part of the problem is certainly that you're required to buy Facebook credits in large numbers. You can spend $5, $10, $50, $100, or $200 at a time. So if you legitimately wanted to buy something in a game for $2 you're stuck with at least $3 of credits just sitting around. Where my evil app could siphon them off slowly... Of course Facebook wants it set up like this because they get the full $5 up front and if I never want to buy again they just get to keep the extra $3 forever without splitting it with any apps.
Now there's still a part of me that wants to keep making a stink about this. Yell at the guy from Ludia. Go up the chain to their manager. But it's only 50 cents and my outrage levels are rapidly waning. Frankly I'm not even sure the problem really lies with Ludia. They have a sketchy UI but one that seems to be completely kosher as far as Facebook is concerned. I think the real solution is to uninstall this game in particular and scale back what I may play on Facebook in the future. I'm fine with paying for games but I don't think I want to pay Facebook anything anymore which means not playing new games on there enough to like them enough to pay for them. There are certainly plenty of other games to play elsewhere!
He then apologized if I was confused but claimed to be unable to refund credits. The claim was Facebook handles everything to do with credits and gave me a link to complain directly to Facebook. He said the only thing he can do is give me a free play, which he did. Huzzah? Having never used the limited number of daily plays as it is this doesn't really help me out at all.
I went to the Facebook link he gave me and it's solely for troubles with _buying_ credits. Once Facebook has your money they don't seem the least bit interested in helping you out. It doesn't even seem like there's a way to contact anyone at all for other reasons. I just ended up in a help file loop which was relatively unhelpful. On the plus side I did find out how to make Facebook stop caching my credit card information!
In conclusion there doesn't actually look to be any way to dispute a Facebook app taking your credits. What's to stop me from writing an app that just steals credits from people without notifying them? (Morality aside that is.) As long as it falls under the 'minor purchase' category it doesn't seem like there's anything at all requiring the app to tell you what it's doing. Even if you noticed it doesn't seem like there's any way to actually complain about it!
Part of the problem is certainly that you're required to buy Facebook credits in large numbers. You can spend $5, $10, $50, $100, or $200 at a time. So if you legitimately wanted to buy something in a game for $2 you're stuck with at least $3 of credits just sitting around. Where my evil app could siphon them off slowly... Of course Facebook wants it set up like this because they get the full $5 up front and if I never want to buy again they just get to keep the extra $3 forever without splitting it with any apps.
Now there's still a part of me that wants to keep making a stink about this. Yell at the guy from Ludia. Go up the chain to their manager. But it's only 50 cents and my outrage levels are rapidly waning. Frankly I'm not even sure the problem really lies with Ludia. They have a sketchy UI but one that seems to be completely kosher as far as Facebook is concerned. I think the real solution is to uninstall this game in particular and scale back what I may play on Facebook in the future. I'm fine with paying for games but I don't think I want to pay Facebook anything anymore which means not playing new games on there enough to like them enough to pay for them. There are certainly plenty of other games to play elsewhere!
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Short answer: this guy!
Unfortunately I've not stumbled into a large amount of money. I'm instead referring to a Facebook game by the same name as the television quiz show that became popular when I was in University. The Facebook game adds some social steps (the first few questions are answered by a group of players and their values fluctuate based on how many people get it wrong) but at its very core it's a time limited trivia game with 4 multiple choice answers just like the tv show. Instead of actually winning cash (wouldn't that be nice) you accumulate a running total of cash won across all games which is treated as an experience total. Make enough money and you level up!
It's a fun little distraction if you like trivia, which I do. But as with all Facebook games you should ask yourself how they're intending to make money. Well, you're limited to how many times you can play each day. If you want to play more than that you can buy more from the store. On the surface this looks like the only way for them to make money though they do have little rewards for spamming your friends. In short, it's like pretty much all Facebook games. Spam your friends and pay if you want to play a lot...
Of course it turns out there's a second way to spend money on the game and I feel like I got scammed into using it. To explain how we'll need a little background...
The tv show had lifelines where you could get help from outside sources if you weren't confident that you knew the answer. The Facebook game has the same sort of thing. At the start of the game you get to name two of your friends to be your lifelines. Then during the course of playing the game when you need to select an answer you can click on one of those two people. You automatically get credit for the right answer in the game and your friend gets sent the question. If they get it right then both of you get some experience. If they get it wrong then both of you get substantially less experience.
One of my friends, Ike, ran a Millionaire game show for MathSoc when we were in University. I used him as my lifeline the first time I played (I think I only had 2 friends even playing at the time so I had no choice.) and he made a comment on Facebook about how someone was crazy for sending him a 'Real Housewives' question. I sent it off because there's an immediate payoff for sending it off even if the other person won't have a clue! But then I felt bad after he commented so when I played again a couple days later I kept my eye for a question he'd probably know. (By this point I had 4 friends playing which leads to the selection screen above. My other two friends were auto-chosen but I wanted to tag in Ike and send him a good question.) Lo and behold the very first question was about Steve McQueen. (My complete lack of knowledge about movie actors was the stuff of legends amongst my University crowd so I really needed the help.) Turns out Ike knew the answer (hurray!) and commented on Facebook that that was more like it.
Encouraged by the positive reinforcement I went in to play again with Ike as a lifeline to see if I could send him another good one. Here's the screen I saw when I went to change my lifelines...
Notice the difference? I didn't! For those who may not play a lot of Facebook games the little icons on the buttons there say that I can pay Facebook credits (which have to be bought with real money) in order to unlock those guys as lifelines for my second game. The layout is the same. The buttons are in the same spot. The lines start with the same words. I wanted to do the same thing I'd just done so I clicked in the same sequence I'd clicked before. Instead I clicked on a button which wanted money! I guess this is their main way to make sure you spam ALL your friends to sign up... They gave me 6 games to play today but I only have enough friends to lifeline 2 games. But for losers like me I can pay money to pretend I have more friends!
The kicker? It didn't ask for confirmation or anything that I wanted to spend money. It just made a quick cash grab and went on with its life. 5 credits amounts to about 50 cents so it isn't like they walked off with a lot of my money but it really pissed me off when it happened. Nevermind that sending Ike a trivia question isn't worth 50 cents... I feel like they didn't make it clear that's what was going to happen. Worse, I feel like they intentionally designed their UI the way they did in order to trick me. (I have reported them with the 'Dispute an item purchased while playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Game' link, so we'll see what happens.)
What may be the worst part of this is Facebook has apparently cached my credit card information. I had those credits on hand (left overs from when I bought some stuff in Galaxy Legion) but it bothers me that an app can snag credits without confirmation and that Facebook has stored the information needed to sell me more credits. What if that button had cost 50 credits? Would it have auto-charged my credit card to buy them?
Unfortunately I've not stumbled into a large amount of money. I'm instead referring to a Facebook game by the same name as the television quiz show that became popular when I was in University. The Facebook game adds some social steps (the first few questions are answered by a group of players and their values fluctuate based on how many people get it wrong) but at its very core it's a time limited trivia game with 4 multiple choice answers just like the tv show. Instead of actually winning cash (wouldn't that be nice) you accumulate a running total of cash won across all games which is treated as an experience total. Make enough money and you level up!
It's a fun little distraction if you like trivia, which I do. But as with all Facebook games you should ask yourself how they're intending to make money. Well, you're limited to how many times you can play each day. If you want to play more than that you can buy more from the store. On the surface this looks like the only way for them to make money though they do have little rewards for spamming your friends. In short, it's like pretty much all Facebook games. Spam your friends and pay if you want to play a lot...
Of course it turns out there's a second way to spend money on the game and I feel like I got scammed into using it. To explain how we'll need a little background...
The tv show had lifelines where you could get help from outside sources if you weren't confident that you knew the answer. The Facebook game has the same sort of thing. At the start of the game you get to name two of your friends to be your lifelines. Then during the course of playing the game when you need to select an answer you can click on one of those two people. You automatically get credit for the right answer in the game and your friend gets sent the question. If they get it right then both of you get some experience. If they get it wrong then both of you get substantially less experience.
One of my friends, Ike, ran a Millionaire game show for MathSoc when we were in University. I used him as my lifeline the first time I played (I think I only had 2 friends even playing at the time so I had no choice.) and he made a comment on Facebook about how someone was crazy for sending him a 'Real Housewives' question. I sent it off because there's an immediate payoff for sending it off even if the other person won't have a clue! But then I felt bad after he commented so when I played again a couple days later I kept my eye for a question he'd probably know. (By this point I had 4 friends playing which leads to the selection screen above. My other two friends were auto-chosen but I wanted to tag in Ike and send him a good question.) Lo and behold the very first question was about Steve McQueen. (My complete lack of knowledge about movie actors was the stuff of legends amongst my University crowd so I really needed the help.) Turns out Ike knew the answer (hurray!) and commented on Facebook that that was more like it.
Encouraged by the positive reinforcement I went in to play again with Ike as a lifeline to see if I could send him another good one. Here's the screen I saw when I went to change my lifelines...
Notice the difference? I didn't! For those who may not play a lot of Facebook games the little icons on the buttons there say that I can pay Facebook credits (which have to be bought with real money) in order to unlock those guys as lifelines for my second game. The layout is the same. The buttons are in the same spot. The lines start with the same words. I wanted to do the same thing I'd just done so I clicked in the same sequence I'd clicked before. Instead I clicked on a button which wanted money! I guess this is their main way to make sure you spam ALL your friends to sign up... They gave me 6 games to play today but I only have enough friends to lifeline 2 games. But for losers like me I can pay money to pretend I have more friends!
The kicker? It didn't ask for confirmation or anything that I wanted to spend money. It just made a quick cash grab and went on with its life. 5 credits amounts to about 50 cents so it isn't like they walked off with a lot of my money but it really pissed me off when it happened. Nevermind that sending Ike a trivia question isn't worth 50 cents... I feel like they didn't make it clear that's what was going to happen. Worse, I feel like they intentionally designed their UI the way they did in order to trick me. (I have reported them with the 'Dispute an item purchased while playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Game' link, so we'll see what happens.)
What may be the worst part of this is Facebook has apparently cached my credit card information. I had those credits on hand (left overs from when I bought some stuff in Galaxy Legion) but it bothers me that an app can snag credits without confirmation and that Facebook has stored the information needed to sell me more credits. What if that button had cost 50 credits? Would it have auto-charged my credit card to buy them?
Monday, December 12, 2011
Galaxy Legion: Permafrost Sub-Network
I mentioned yesterday that there are currently two holiday missions available in Galaxy Legion. The second one is called Beneath the Snow and has returned from, I believe, last year. I wasn't playing the game at the time so it's new to me. It's a mission with a pretty fantastic experience ratio: 65 experience for 25 energy. There are a few missions in the game which are better but not very many so it's worth considering doing the mission just for the experience even if it had no reward.
As for a reward... It takes 50 rounds to get a reward and you can get the reward 15 times. The reward is a planetary structure which takes up 1 space and provides 1 research, 50 cloak, and 50 population. These bonuses get doubled if built on an icy planet. (Note: If you build one of these on an icy planet and then convert that planet to an oceanic with a mass surface melter it will retain the doubled bonus.)
Any building with a 1-to-1 ratio and an added bonus is pretty good. A building with a 2-to-1 ratio and a pretty substantial bonus is amazing. You really want to have one of these on every icy planet you have with a reasonable research boost on it. Beyond that there isn't a huge need to get extras to put on other planets but they're still good to have on practically anything. A little cloak can go a long way towards protecting a planet, after all.
Given the great experience return on the mission and how good the building is I think everyone has to get one of these for every research icy they have. Beyond that I think it should be a relatively high priority to finish the mission off completely. I already have!
As for a reward... It takes 50 rounds to get a reward and you can get the reward 15 times. The reward is a planetary structure which takes up 1 space and provides 1 research, 50 cloak, and 50 population. These bonuses get doubled if built on an icy planet. (Note: If you build one of these on an icy planet and then convert that planet to an oceanic with a mass surface melter it will retain the doubled bonus.)
Any building with a 1-to-1 ratio and an added bonus is pretty good. A building with a 2-to-1 ratio and a pretty substantial bonus is amazing. You really want to have one of these on every icy planet you have with a reasonable research boost on it. Beyond that there isn't a huge need to get extras to put on other planets but they're still good to have on practically anything. A little cloak can go a long way towards protecting a planet, after all.
Given the great experience return on the mission and how good the building is I think everyone has to get one of these for every research icy they have. Beyond that I think it should be a relatively high priority to finish the mission off completely. I already have!
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Galaxy Legion: Scruuge X-Deflector
Galaxy Legion recently added two new temporary missions. These aren't typical temporary missions which form a chain that will come into the game permanently. Instead they are special winter holiday event missions. I would guess they'll come back next year but that's going to be a pretty long delay if you want the rewards. On the plus side these missions last 3 weeks instead of 2 weeks to give people a better chance to collect them all.
The first mission is called Avarice of the Scruuge and is worth the standard 55 experience for 25 energy. It takes 90 rounds to complete it and can be completed up to 4 times. The reward is a fight with an easy NPC which drops a module. It's size 13 for 30 defense and 60 hull. Neither of those amounts are especially exciting but as a reader pointed out a couple months ago the upkeep cost on special modules is really small. For this module it's 3400 credits per day. Assign half of that value to the defense and you're paying 57 credits per defense per day. Compare that to my main defense module which has an upkeep of 107200000 per day for 626 defense. That's 171246 credits per defense per day which is more than 3000 times as much. My main modules are more space efficient but cost a ton more.
You do also get some hull. 60 hull is not a very big number. It probably doesn't even give me one more shot before I have to repair, but a bunch of small amounts do add up.
This module adds to two stats that I don't have a burning desire to max out but they are both also useful for almost everything I do. Given the small upkeep cost I think these modules are no-brainers to pick up and use. Especially given the fact that you only have 3 weeks to scoop them up before they disappear for at least a year and maybe forever and I think you should definitely get this done if at all possible.
The first mission is called Avarice of the Scruuge and is worth the standard 55 experience for 25 energy. It takes 90 rounds to complete it and can be completed up to 4 times. The reward is a fight with an easy NPC which drops a module. It's size 13 for 30 defense and 60 hull. Neither of those amounts are especially exciting but as a reader pointed out a couple months ago the upkeep cost on special modules is really small. For this module it's 3400 credits per day. Assign half of that value to the defense and you're paying 57 credits per defense per day. Compare that to my main defense module which has an upkeep of 107200000 per day for 626 defense. That's 171246 credits per defense per day which is more than 3000 times as much. My main modules are more space efficient but cost a ton more.
You do also get some hull. 60 hull is not a very big number. It probably doesn't even give me one more shot before I have to repair, but a bunch of small amounts do add up.
This module adds to two stats that I don't have a burning desire to max out but they are both also useful for almost everything I do. Given the small upkeep cost I think these modules are no-brainers to pick up and use. Especially given the fact that you only have 3 weeks to scoop them up before they disappear for at least a year and maybe forever and I think you should definitely get this done if at all possible.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Galaxy Legion: Vendoring Scanners vs Rebuying
I recently capped out my first research tree in Galaxy Legion. I now have access to the top tier (and very expensive) scanning module. I spent a week saving up the cash to build them and went on a scanning spree today. I found a handful of good planets but not nearly enough to satisfy my need for more stuff. I'm going to have to scan again once I collect enough star chart purgers...
Up to this point I've always vendored my scanners as soon as I finished a scanning run for a few reasons...
However, a couple things have now changed. I can't get better scanners so what I have now won't become obsolete ever. I have a 15% reduction in upkeep cost which prolongs how long I can store them without losing money in the process. Planets are starting to get pretty expensive to take and develop but I can still take probably 3 more planets right now if I sell off the scanners.
Should I keep the scanners around as an investment in the future? How often do I need to scan to make it worth storing them? What are the numbers here? (All numbers are per scanner. I can use 5 at a time so quintuple these to get the total costs.)
Initial cost - 6490M
Upkeep cost - 208M
Resell value - 2450M
Repair cost - 4900M
I currently have the scanners purchased and equipped. Going forward my options are either to sell them off right now and rebuy the next time I want to scan or I can unequip them (triggering 10% of a repair) and pay upkeep on them every day until I use them again. So next time I scan I can either pay:
initial - resell = 4040M
OR
.1*repair + x*upkeep = 490M+208xM (where x is number of days between scanning runs)
The breakeven point here is going to be:
4040M = 490M+208xM
x = 3550M/208M = 17.1 days
Now, you expect to get one of each artifact per day for every 4000 artifact points you make per hour. I'm a little over 8000 now, so I should be getting 2 star chart purgers per day. This means at the breakeven point I'll be able to find 34 new planets. Today I scanned up 95 new planets and only found a few that were really good so I'm probably going to want to get more than 34 planets from my next run...
So either I need to wait more than 17 days between scanning runs or I'm going to have to get more star chart purgers from the bad experience repeatable mission.
It is also important to note that if I sell off the scanners I have now I get to make immediate use of that cash. So even if I was planning on scanning again in 17 days I'm going to be better off vendoring the scanners and rebuying them.
I thought I was going to be convincing myself to hold on to these things but I've managed to do the opposite. Well, I think I may have convinced myself to do the star chart purger mission... But even if I do that I'm not going to scan again soon enough to justify holding on to the scanners. Time to vendor them!
Up to this point I've always vendored my scanners as soon as I finished a scanning run for a few reasons...
- I'm not terribly patient (though I am more patient than Andrew) and am typically broke after buying the scanners. I'd have found a bunch of new planets and want to colonize them and selling the scanners would give cash to immediately get an extra planet or two.
- I was very unlikely to scan again until after researching even better scanners. So the current ones would be obsolete...
- Scanners have a fairly hefty upkeep cost and storing them in my cargo hold for a long time may not be very efficient.
However, a couple things have now changed. I can't get better scanners so what I have now won't become obsolete ever. I have a 15% reduction in upkeep cost which prolongs how long I can store them without losing money in the process. Planets are starting to get pretty expensive to take and develop but I can still take probably 3 more planets right now if I sell off the scanners.
Should I keep the scanners around as an investment in the future? How often do I need to scan to make it worth storing them? What are the numbers here? (All numbers are per scanner. I can use 5 at a time so quintuple these to get the total costs.)
Initial cost - 6490M
Upkeep cost - 208M
Resell value - 2450M
Repair cost - 4900M
I currently have the scanners purchased and equipped. Going forward my options are either to sell them off right now and rebuy the next time I want to scan or I can unequip them (triggering 10% of a repair) and pay upkeep on them every day until I use them again. So next time I scan I can either pay:
initial - resell = 4040M
OR
.1*repair + x*upkeep = 490M+208xM (where x is number of days between scanning runs)
The breakeven point here is going to be:
4040M = 490M+208xM
x = 3550M/208M = 17.1 days
Now, you expect to get one of each artifact per day for every 4000 artifact points you make per hour. I'm a little over 8000 now, so I should be getting 2 star chart purgers per day. This means at the breakeven point I'll be able to find 34 new planets. Today I scanned up 95 new planets and only found a few that were really good so I'm probably going to want to get more than 34 planets from my next run...
So either I need to wait more than 17 days between scanning runs or I'm going to have to get more star chart purgers from the bad experience repeatable mission.
It is also important to note that if I sell off the scanners I have now I get to make immediate use of that cash. So even if I was planning on scanning again in 17 days I'm going to be better off vendoring the scanners and rebuying them.
I thought I was going to be convincing myself to hold on to these things but I've managed to do the opposite. Well, I think I may have convinced myself to do the star chart purger mission... But even if I do that I'm not going to scan again soon enough to justify holding on to the scanners. Time to vendor them!
Friday, November 11, 2011
Galaxy Legion: Extracted Lithovoric Stem
The new mission this biweek is actually incredibly similar to the last one. The last one gave a building worth 10% more research points, this one gives a building worth 10% more mining points. The only difference is this one costs 125 less energy up front but requires you to kill an NPC. It probably takes less energy to kill the NPC and you do get some bonus experience for killing the NPC but basically they're about the same idea.
I wanted to get all of the research one and I think mining points are a little better than research are at this point in time so I wanted to get all of these ones, too. So I did.
Now I can only hope that in two weeks I get to get 10% more artifact points on my 15 best planets...
I wanted to get all of the research one and I think mining points are a little better than research are at this point in time so I wanted to get all of these ones, too. So I did.
Now I can only hope that in two weeks I get to get 10% more artifact points on my 15 best planets...
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Galaxy Legion: Xecti Signal Repeater
It's time for the next temporary mission in Galaxy Legion: The Broodmind Hunt. This mission returns to the old standard where each button press is worth 55 xp and costs 25 energy. You have to do the mission 75 times to get a reward and you can get the reward 15 times total. The reward, for a mere 1875 energy, is a planetary building of size 1 which increases research produced by 10%.
At first glance this seemed pretty good. My top plasma planet makes 390 research per hour so adding 10% onto that would be 39 research which seems awesome. But then you need to consider that it takes up a space so that number goes down a little. You need to actually consider how good it is not so much in terms of raw production but in terms of how space efficient it is. (That plasma, for example, has 52 base production. Assuming I have to replace a 2 research for 1 space building then this new building is worth 5 research for 1 space.) Ok, in that light it's simply amazing. But that's on my best research specific planet. How does it fare elsewhere? I jiggered my spreadsheet a little to work it out...
I could put it on my artifact specialized dyson planet for a gain of 68.35 research points but it would only be worth a little over 3 research per space. My 15th best gain in terms of actual production is 18 points per hour and is worth around 3.6 research per space.
I'm pretty sure the right answer is going to be just putting them where they make the most actual stuff but it doesn't really matter. If I put it where the building is most efficient or where it makes the most stuff it's still an excellent building and really worth getting.
This mission chain has rarely given me something I really wanted all the copies of but this one has managed to do it.
At first glance this seemed pretty good. My top plasma planet makes 390 research per hour so adding 10% onto that would be 39 research which seems awesome. But then you need to consider that it takes up a space so that number goes down a little. You need to actually consider how good it is not so much in terms of raw production but in terms of how space efficient it is. (That plasma, for example, has 52 base production. Assuming I have to replace a 2 research for 1 space building then this new building is worth 5 research for 1 space.) Ok, in that light it's simply amazing. But that's on my best research specific planet. How does it fare elsewhere? I jiggered my spreadsheet a little to work it out...
I could put it on my artifact specialized dyson planet for a gain of 68.35 research points but it would only be worth a little over 3 research per space. My 15th best gain in terms of actual production is 18 points per hour and is worth around 3.6 research per space.
I'm pretty sure the right answer is going to be just putting them where they make the most actual stuff but it doesn't really matter. If I put it where the building is most efficient or where it makes the most stuff it's still an excellent building and really worth getting.
This mission chain has rarely given me something I really wanted all the copies of but this one has managed to do it.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Galaxy Legion: Xectiphage Tower
Today saw the launch of the next 2-week mission in Galaxy Legion. This mission finally broke the experience ratio pattern that has been true for the last few missions... It's up to 70 experience for 30 energy. This makes it a slighter better experience return on energy investment than has been the case. (2.33 vs 2.20) Unfortunately it has the additional requirement of needing an engineered virus artifact along with the 30 energy. It takes 20 shots to get a reward and you can get the reward 15 times.
The reward itself initially seems really weak. It's a planet building with no production value at all. It is 2 space for 300 defense which is really bad. (You can ultimately research planet buildings which are 1200 defense for the same 2 space.) It also has the added bonus that you get to pick one of three lists of races and then the planet is immune from invasion by those races.
How good is this? Well, the top legion in the game has 60 people in it. 20 of them are in the first list of races. 16 are in the second list of races. 24 are in the third list of races. (The third list also has the two races which get bonuses to invade planets so they're the odds on best choice.) Even still, if someone in that legion finds your planet they can just share it with the rest of their legion and still have a full 60% of their membership capable of invading your planet. If someone really, really wants the planet they can even race change into a different race from the list to take it from you.
In short, this building is terrible when it comes to long-term defense. There are ways around it and it's too weak on its own to justify building.
But what else can be done with it? Well, you could keep them on hand and then when you notice a planet is being attacked you can build it to make it immune from the attacker. He'll still be able to share it but you can be annoying with it... I guess that's something?
Another thing you can do is use it as a temporary defense when you invade a planet. You can prevent the original owner from attacking back which does have some value. Chances are you're going to build a ton of defenses on the planet and then temp flux it away in a week. This building will prevent the original owner from pinging it every week to prevent you from fluxxing it. They could keep sharing it to get someone else to ping it but I bet they get bored in a real hurry.
For that reason alone I think I want to get a couple of these to keep on hand. I can always mylarai extractor them back off once I finish fluxxing them away!
It's a good thing I only want one or two of them because the virus clause is actually a huge problem. You may recall an earlier mission which required 500 flux probes. I still haven't completed that mission. 300 virii sounds easier than 500 flux probes but it turns out you actually get 2 flux probes at a time so these are even harder to get a hold of. I hope I don't want the final reward from this mission chain since it's going to take many months to build up to 300 virii!
The reward itself initially seems really weak. It's a planet building with no production value at all. It is 2 space for 300 defense which is really bad. (You can ultimately research planet buildings which are 1200 defense for the same 2 space.) It also has the added bonus that you get to pick one of three lists of races and then the planet is immune from invasion by those races.
How good is this? Well, the top legion in the game has 60 people in it. 20 of them are in the first list of races. 16 are in the second list of races. 24 are in the third list of races. (The third list also has the two races which get bonuses to invade planets so they're the odds on best choice.) Even still, if someone in that legion finds your planet they can just share it with the rest of their legion and still have a full 60% of their membership capable of invading your planet. If someone really, really wants the planet they can even race change into a different race from the list to take it from you.
In short, this building is terrible when it comes to long-term defense. There are ways around it and it's too weak on its own to justify building.
But what else can be done with it? Well, you could keep them on hand and then when you notice a planet is being attacked you can build it to make it immune from the attacker. He'll still be able to share it but you can be annoying with it... I guess that's something?
Another thing you can do is use it as a temporary defense when you invade a planet. You can prevent the original owner from attacking back which does have some value. Chances are you're going to build a ton of defenses on the planet and then temp flux it away in a week. This building will prevent the original owner from pinging it every week to prevent you from fluxxing it. They could keep sharing it to get someone else to ping it but I bet they get bored in a real hurry.
For that reason alone I think I want to get a couple of these to keep on hand. I can always mylarai extractor them back off once I finish fluxxing them away!
It's a good thing I only want one or two of them because the virus clause is actually a huge problem. You may recall an earlier mission which required 500 flux probes. I still haven't completed that mission. 300 virii sounds easier than 500 flux probes but it turns out you actually get 2 flux probes at a time so these are even harder to get a hold of. I hope I don't want the final reward from this mission chain since it's going to take many months to build up to 300 virii!
Friday, October 07, 2011
The Final Fantasy Legend Monsters: Not Fun?
I've done a little bit of playing recently and have maxxed out one of my 4 monsters at tier 13. There are tier 14 monsters but the only way to get to them is to eat the meat from some of the final bosses so for all intents and purposes that character is done getting better. He can still eat meat and if he transforms he's guaranteed to stay at tier 13 so he can't really get worse, either. Presumably the abilities at tier 13 are different and powerful so figuring out which tier 13 monsters to use will be a thing but by and large that character is simply done getting better. I found some non-random encounters (talk to a guard and get an instant fight) which spawn monsters frequently used to get to tier 13 so the remaining 3 characters will likely get maxxed out in an hour or two whenever I get around to putting that time in.
And then? There will be no possible way to get better. It will be a matter of muddling my way through the 'plot' until I either beat the game or reach a point where I need to find the right mix of top tier monsters to beat a hard fight. Money has practically no use to me either (I can pay to stay at an inn but since I can just eat practically any meat for full health and abilities I'm not sure that's going to matter) so there's really going to be no reason at all to fight. Running from fights can fail so I guess just holding down the attack button might well be faster in the long run. At this point I'm either going to win, or not, and there's not a lot I can do about it. (And since other people have won with 4 monsters I have to believe I'll be able to do it, too.)
Working out how the mechanic worked was interesting and fun. Writing the Java program was fun. Even wandering around and figuring out the path to tier 13 was fun. But I'm really dreading actually playing the game now. Part of the reason RPGs are so compelling to me is the ability to make numbers get bigger. Another is the story/cutscenes. A third is to get challenged. I'm pretty much done the first part and really don't have high hopes for story or cutscenes. Since there's no way to really get better challenge is pretty much out the window too at this point. I win or I don't. I'm going to plow my way through this, honest, but I don't know that I'm going to enjoy it much...
Is the problem with monsters themselves, or with a party of all monsters, or just with the way I've approached it? Maybe a party with a single monster could be interesting since you could still level up the other characters in more standard ways and just feed the monster when it made sense to do so. But then it feels like either you make a plan for the monster and probably make him awesome compared to your party for most of the game or you don't make a plan and he constantly languishes at low tier since there are way more transitions backwards down the chain than there are ones forward.
It's a little like the Dynasty Hockey Facebook game. It was fun while doing random matches was actually progressing my team, but I reached the point where I had to do a bunch of trivial matches for basically no reward except paying the upkeep on my buffs. Grinding out stuff when I can make progress is fun. Grinding out stuff for no reason is just tedious. I stopped playing that game as a result and have pretty much lost interesting in playing The Final Fantasy Legend in the same way. But maybe the plot will get better after I rebuild the statue...
And then? There will be no possible way to get better. It will be a matter of muddling my way through the 'plot' until I either beat the game or reach a point where I need to find the right mix of top tier monsters to beat a hard fight. Money has practically no use to me either (I can pay to stay at an inn but since I can just eat practically any meat for full health and abilities I'm not sure that's going to matter) so there's really going to be no reason at all to fight. Running from fights can fail so I guess just holding down the attack button might well be faster in the long run. At this point I'm either going to win, or not, and there's not a lot I can do about it. (And since other people have won with 4 monsters I have to believe I'll be able to do it, too.)
Working out how the mechanic worked was interesting and fun. Writing the Java program was fun. Even wandering around and figuring out the path to tier 13 was fun. But I'm really dreading actually playing the game now. Part of the reason RPGs are so compelling to me is the ability to make numbers get bigger. Another is the story/cutscenes. A third is to get challenged. I'm pretty much done the first part and really don't have high hopes for story or cutscenes. Since there's no way to really get better challenge is pretty much out the window too at this point. I win or I don't. I'm going to plow my way through this, honest, but I don't know that I'm going to enjoy it much...
Is the problem with monsters themselves, or with a party of all monsters, or just with the way I've approached it? Maybe a party with a single monster could be interesting since you could still level up the other characters in more standard ways and just feed the monster when it made sense to do so. But then it feels like either you make a plan for the monster and probably make him awesome compared to your party for most of the game or you don't make a plan and he constantly languishes at low tier since there are way more transitions backwards down the chain than there are ones forward.
It's a little like the Dynasty Hockey Facebook game. It was fun while doing random matches was actually progressing my team, but I reached the point where I had to do a bunch of trivial matches for basically no reward except paying the upkeep on my buffs. Grinding out stuff when I can make progress is fun. Grinding out stuff for no reason is just tedious. I stopped playing that game as a result and have pretty much lost interesting in playing The Final Fantasy Legend in the same way. But maybe the plot will get better after I rebuild the statue...
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Galaxy Legion: Modulated Xecti Disruptor
It's time for the next temporary mission in the chain! The energy and experience remain the same as always, 55 experience for 25 energy. This time you need to do it 90 times before you get a reward and you can get the reward a total of 4 times.
What do you get for your 2250 energy? You get an interesting ship module. It's size 15 for 40 cloak and 20 attack. For an attack module that's a really inefficient ratio but it's pretty decent for cloak. And since it's a mission reward the upkeep is going to be substantially lower than top-end guns so pretty much everyone should get all 4 of these as soon as they can. You often want to have the most attack possible at any given time and this module just makes the number bigger, space inefficient though it may be.
You're actually better off getting tactical officers instead of decks to put this on if you value the cloak at nothing, so maybe this isn't so hot? Well, it turns out there is an added twist. If your race is Zolazin or if your class is spy or hacker then the cloak bonus is doubled. And if your race is Konqul or Drannik or if your class is raider then the attack bonus is doubled. Pull that off and this becomes much better than tactical officers.
Right now I'm none of those things. (I'm a Mylarai miner.) So is this module actually worth putting on? For 15 rank points I can get the deck space to put this on or I can get 30 tactical officers. So is the 40 cloak worth giving up on 10 attack? I'm not sure it is. I do eventually intend on switching my race back to Konqul at some point, so I will want to have these on hand at the very least. So I'm going to get them for the future and will probably decide at some point that the cloak is good enough to make space for these.
What do you get for your 2250 energy? You get an interesting ship module. It's size 15 for 40 cloak and 20 attack. For an attack module that's a really inefficient ratio but it's pretty decent for cloak. And since it's a mission reward the upkeep is going to be substantially lower than top-end guns so pretty much everyone should get all 4 of these as soon as they can. You often want to have the most attack possible at any given time and this module just makes the number bigger, space inefficient though it may be.
You're actually better off getting tactical officers instead of decks to put this on if you value the cloak at nothing, so maybe this isn't so hot? Well, it turns out there is an added twist. If your race is Zolazin or if your class is spy or hacker then the cloak bonus is doubled. And if your race is Konqul or Drannik or if your class is raider then the attack bonus is doubled. Pull that off and this becomes much better than tactical officers.
Right now I'm none of those things. (I'm a Mylarai miner.) So is this module actually worth putting on? For 15 rank points I can get the deck space to put this on or I can get 30 tactical officers. So is the 40 cloak worth giving up on 10 attack? I'm not sure it is. I do eventually intend on switching my race back to Konqul at some point, so I will want to have these on hand at the very least. So I'm going to get them for the future and will probably decide at some point that the cloak is good enough to make space for these.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Mystic Warlords of Ka'a!
A new game has hit Facebook very recently (I think within the last hour) and I'm already hooked. It's a game derived from an episode of the funniest show on television: The Big Bang Theory. In one of the earlier episodes the gang is playing what seems to be a card/board game called Mystic Warlords of Ka'a. Raj wants to win a local tournament and is trying to find a way to get Sheldon (who is awesome at the game) to team up with him. The hook ends up being WHEATOOOOOON!!! and is the episode which brings Wil Wheaton to the show as a sporadically recurring nemesis for Sheldon.
The game showed off in the show seemed to be little more than players playing cards with ludicrous names until someone won. There seemed to be some hierarchy for what cards beat which other cards but they didn't flesh anything out beyond the fact that enchanted bunny was really bad.
The game on Facebook shares a name, and it shares some characters from the show, and a primary mechanic is that you play ludicrously named cards back and forth until someone wins. They added on a concept of life totals, and a sub-game with combat that reminds me a lot of the Facebook game The Warlords in that you randomly get cards in play and they attack according to a predefined AI with no player input. The also turned it from a card/board game into a full on CCG where you build your own deck. One of the promotional quest cards you can earn? Enchanted bunny!
I was hoping the game would just be a marketing engine for CBS and the tv show (seems like a great use of funds would be to hire a couple co-op students and have them churn something like this out) but unfortunately it seems to be taking the standard path of a Facebook game. You get a limited number of actions which recharge over time and you can pay some real money to get more actions. Because it's a CCG you can also pay money for more cards to build stronger decks.
I'm going to play it for a while for sure, if only because it's themed on The Big Bang Theory and (like most people who would read this) I strongly identify with one of the characters on the show. I don't intend on shelling out cash for a marketing tool, but I will be part of the marketing engine itself by posting about it... Go play the game! Send me some free gifts and I'll send some back!
The game showed off in the show seemed to be little more than players playing cards with ludicrous names until someone won. There seemed to be some hierarchy for what cards beat which other cards but they didn't flesh anything out beyond the fact that enchanted bunny was really bad.
The game on Facebook shares a name, and it shares some characters from the show, and a primary mechanic is that you play ludicrously named cards back and forth until someone wins. They added on a concept of life totals, and a sub-game with combat that reminds me a lot of the Facebook game The Warlords in that you randomly get cards in play and they attack according to a predefined AI with no player input. The also turned it from a card/board game into a full on CCG where you build your own deck. One of the promotional quest cards you can earn? Enchanted bunny!
I was hoping the game would just be a marketing engine for CBS and the tv show (seems like a great use of funds would be to hire a couple co-op students and have them churn something like this out) but unfortunately it seems to be taking the standard path of a Facebook game. You get a limited number of actions which recharge over time and you can pay some real money to get more actions. Because it's a CCG you can also pay money for more cards to build stronger decks.
I'm going to play it for a while for sure, if only because it's themed on The Big Bang Theory and (like most people who would read this) I strongly identify with one of the characters on the show. I don't intend on shelling out cash for a marketing tool, but I will be part of the marketing engine itself by posting about it... Go play the game! Send me some free gifts and I'll send some back!
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Dynasty Hockey Leagues
I have now played my way through a full league in the Facebook game Dynasty Hockey. They managed to stick to their guns as far as having any given match only impact one person's stats which is a little unfortunate, but they also made it so cherry-picking weak matches isn't really feasible which is nice.
Basically how it works is there are two phases to a league. The first phase lasts 3 days and you can play 60 games total. There are 32 teams in the league and you can play each other team at most 3 times. So each team has 93 possible games of which they should play 60. Cherry-picking the weaker targets still exists here since the top 12 teams should all end up playing the same 60 games. But now it isn't good enough to merely be able to beat 10% of teams since if you're not in the top 12 of your league you'll actually have a harder schedule. (You can't play against yourself but everyone else can!) So there's real incentive to be good instead of just good enough. Also, other than advancing to the play-offs there is no reward for winning. Every game you play is worth 5 RP (game currency) regardless on if you win or lose, so even the bad teams are encouraged to play their 60 games and maybe get lucky.
The teams are split into 8 divisions of 4 and after the 3 days are up the top 2 in each division advance to the 'play-offs' while the bottom 2 get to play in a consolation play-off. This means that while 16 teams advance it isn't guaranteed to be the best 16 teams. A weaker team can get lucky with division placement and be able to squeak into the play-offs. The 3rd best team could even fail to qualify!
The play-offs are a 1 day event where you get to play 15 games and can play each team at most once. Since there are only 15 opponents you 'have' to play everyone once. Again, playing a game is worth 5 RP regardless on win or lose. Finishing with a better record gets you more cash and a better draft pick for a new player. (I ended up with the 4th pick in my draft and was able to snag the favourite player from my youth: Sergei Fedorov!) I ended up only playing 14 games in my play-off due to the way tiebreakers worked. (I was pretty much guaranteed to lose and the first tiebreaker is goal differential. I figured it was worth not earning the 5 RP to make an extra $2M bucks.
Everyone who makes the play-offs gets promoted to the next tier of league. The top 2 players in the consolation bracket also get the promotion so even if you were in a brutal division you can keep advancing. (You just earn less money and a worse draft pick.)
I wish there was a way to actually impact your opponent's record other than by making your team be hard to beat, but given that restriction this system actually seems pretty good. The final stage where you simply can't be the best without beating the best is nice. Multiple people could end up undefeated at 15-0 which is a little weird, but then the goal differential comes in and over 15 games it seems pretty likely that the 'better' 15-0 team will have the higher goal differential. And if they don't? Well, they only lose $2M and a slot in the draft.
One thing that does disappoint me is I'm unable to put together the Russian Five line. Not because the players don't exist in the game (they all do) but because the game has slotted all of Fedorov, Larionov, and Kozlov as centers. The glut at center for the Red Wings is really sad for me since I can only have 3 centers on my team. Clearly two have to be Fedorov and Yzerman but who gets to be the third? I currently have Datsyuk and Delvecchio and will need to toss one of them aside should I get a chance to draft Stevie Y.
Basically how it works is there are two phases to a league. The first phase lasts 3 days and you can play 60 games total. There are 32 teams in the league and you can play each other team at most 3 times. So each team has 93 possible games of which they should play 60. Cherry-picking the weaker targets still exists here since the top 12 teams should all end up playing the same 60 games. But now it isn't good enough to merely be able to beat 10% of teams since if you're not in the top 12 of your league you'll actually have a harder schedule. (You can't play against yourself but everyone else can!) So there's real incentive to be good instead of just good enough. Also, other than advancing to the play-offs there is no reward for winning. Every game you play is worth 5 RP (game currency) regardless on if you win or lose, so even the bad teams are encouraged to play their 60 games and maybe get lucky.
The teams are split into 8 divisions of 4 and after the 3 days are up the top 2 in each division advance to the 'play-offs' while the bottom 2 get to play in a consolation play-off. This means that while 16 teams advance it isn't guaranteed to be the best 16 teams. A weaker team can get lucky with division placement and be able to squeak into the play-offs. The 3rd best team could even fail to qualify!
The play-offs are a 1 day event where you get to play 15 games and can play each team at most once. Since there are only 15 opponents you 'have' to play everyone once. Again, playing a game is worth 5 RP regardless on win or lose. Finishing with a better record gets you more cash and a better draft pick for a new player. (I ended up with the 4th pick in my draft and was able to snag the favourite player from my youth: Sergei Fedorov!) I ended up only playing 14 games in my play-off due to the way tiebreakers worked. (I was pretty much guaranteed to lose and the first tiebreaker is goal differential. I figured it was worth not earning the 5 RP to make an extra $2M bucks.
Everyone who makes the play-offs gets promoted to the next tier of league. The top 2 players in the consolation bracket also get the promotion so even if you were in a brutal division you can keep advancing. (You just earn less money and a worse draft pick.)
I wish there was a way to actually impact your opponent's record other than by making your team be hard to beat, but given that restriction this system actually seems pretty good. The final stage where you simply can't be the best without beating the best is nice. Multiple people could end up undefeated at 15-0 which is a little weird, but then the goal differential comes in and over 15 games it seems pretty likely that the 'better' 15-0 team will have the higher goal differential. And if they don't? Well, they only lose $2M and a slot in the draft.
One thing that does disappoint me is I'm unable to put together the Russian Five line. Not because the players don't exist in the game (they all do) but because the game has slotted all of Fedorov, Larionov, and Kozlov as centers. The glut at center for the Red Wings is really sad for me since I can only have 3 centers on my team. Clearly two have to be Fedorov and Yzerman but who gets to be the third? I currently have Datsyuk and Delvecchio and will need to toss one of them aside should I get a chance to draft Stevie Y.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Galaxy Legion: Repairing
I got to thinking today... What actually impacts the cost to repair your ship? I'm planning on looking into how to defend a base and knowing the costs of repairing will help with that. I had a few ideas that I wanted to test...
- Does it matter what modules you have equipped?
- Does it matter what modules you have to pay upkeep on?
- Does it matter how much damage is being repaired?
- If so, is it by sheer quantity or by percentage of your max?
The first was easy to test. Take some damage, look at the repair cost, then put on a scan module. The repair cost didn't change. So, what you have equipped doesn't matter.
The second was also easy. I had a broken scan module in my inventory. I repaired it and the repair cost went up. So, what you have to pay upkeep on impacts the cost of repairing.
The third and fourth required a little manipulation but wasn't very hard. I played around a little bit by unequipping some hull modules and making note of how much it cost to repair each amount. It definitely varied as I changed the amount repaired and it turned out to vary exactly by percentage of hull repaired. In fact, the amount it cost to repair was UPKEEP/6*percentage_repaired.
I guess this wasn't all that much of a mystery and it didn't really take long to work out, but I wanted to know and now I do. Huzzah!
Monday, September 19, 2011
Dynasty Hockey
I've recently started playing a new Facebook game, Dynasty Hockey. It's a typical Facebook game in the sense that you have a recharging set of actions you're allowed to take, you get bonuses if your friends play, and you can spend real money to just be better. The reason this game is interesting is you're building a hockey team out of current and historic hockey players.
The gameplay itself is a little on the weak side. Your recharging action is to play a game against another team, but the game is completely simulated. Your team faces their team, some goals are scored, and somebody wins. If you win you get a big bonus (two types of in game currency and the ability to buy a new player for your team), if you lose you get a consolation prize (20% of the in game currency you would have won, no new players). The person you play against has no change in their stats at all. It's as if you didn't do anything to them at all, win or lose, so other players are more like random NPCs than they are actual pvp opponents.
In and of itself that might not be so bad, but the problem is you get a list of 20 potential opponents and their approximate stats. Since there's no benefit to choosing the difficult game, a huge difference in the reward if you win, and a limited number of games you can play it should be pretty obvious that you want to cherry-pick the weak games and avoid playing anyone who might beat you. And since the game doesn't track how often you get challenged there's no punishment for being a bad team. As long as you can beat the truly terrible teams you're doing ok.
I just finished off the leveling aspect of the game and have moved into a league which provides a drastically smaller pool of opponents. Presumably we're going to play down to the end so if I want to win the league I'll need to be the best team of the 32 who signed up as opposed to just being good enough to beat the bottom 5-10% of players at any given level. (My record was 672-30 when I hit max level and if I was to start over I bet I could get there in more like 670-0. Most of my losses were in exhibition games that didn't use my game action number up and I now know how to properly spend the in game currencies.)
I want to see how this league thing plays out but mostly I'm just sticking around in the hopes of getting a chance to sign Gordie Howe. I already have Vladimir Konstantinov and Alex Delvecchio from Red Wings teams of the past!
The gameplay itself is a little on the weak side. Your recharging action is to play a game against another team, but the game is completely simulated. Your team faces their team, some goals are scored, and somebody wins. If you win you get a big bonus (two types of in game currency and the ability to buy a new player for your team), if you lose you get a consolation prize (20% of the in game currency you would have won, no new players). The person you play against has no change in their stats at all. It's as if you didn't do anything to them at all, win or lose, so other players are more like random NPCs than they are actual pvp opponents.
In and of itself that might not be so bad, but the problem is you get a list of 20 potential opponents and their approximate stats. Since there's no benefit to choosing the difficult game, a huge difference in the reward if you win, and a limited number of games you can play it should be pretty obvious that you want to cherry-pick the weak games and avoid playing anyone who might beat you. And since the game doesn't track how often you get challenged there's no punishment for being a bad team. As long as you can beat the truly terrible teams you're doing ok.
I just finished off the leveling aspect of the game and have moved into a league which provides a drastically smaller pool of opponents. Presumably we're going to play down to the end so if I want to win the league I'll need to be the best team of the 32 who signed up as opposed to just being good enough to beat the bottom 5-10% of players at any given level. (My record was 672-30 when I hit max level and if I was to start over I bet I could get there in more like 670-0. Most of my losses were in exhibition games that didn't use my game action number up and I now know how to properly spend the in game currencies.)
I want to see how this league thing plays out but mostly I'm just sticking around in the hopes of getting a chance to sign Gordie Howe. I already have Vladimir Konstantinov and Alex Delvecchio from Red Wings teams of the past!
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