Speed and New Releases

DAZ0273

Agreed with all of the above. The examples I gave simply showed that, for whatever reasons, the Dev's don't tend to try and fight against the tide of playerbase response when it alters significantly from what they are hoping for. They don't force the playerbase into these events.  Will we see Sinister 600 again as the jury was well and truly out on that one? Will be interesting to see.

In terms of 7 x clears, as long as people are trundling along they won't change anything. Especially as there are people willing to replace those who leave.

We should also bear in mind that these events don't appear out of nowhere - there has been actual dollars spent on the development of these events and so for the Devs to discontinue them their metrics must be telling them something. With Sinister 600 - they monetised the character art assets by using them as a V.I.P. incentive for Ock's costume and a flatout cash grab for Goblin, they may have even made enough from that to mean they don't have to run the event again if it meant altering it. Who but the Dev's know?

In practical terms we are going to be playing "Boss Rush 2" later today, so that is also another cost recycled and improved upon.

HoundofShadow

And that's going to take a lot of efforts. I can see ~ 13800 alliances in the game. Conservatively speaking, even if each alliance has 10 members on average, that brings us to 138,000 players. Factor in 30% of them being inactive brings us to 96,660 players. You need to gather about 30,000 to 40,000 players or majority of the whales to push this through. The Whales live in a different world than most players are, so it's not easy to reach them. Reaching out to 30,000 to 40,000 requires huge efforts. Somewhere in MPQ, I'm sure there are groups of players happily using their favourite characters with animations on, finishing 6 non-optimal clears to get full progressions. 

As for those events that have been taken out, it might prove that while some players frequently ask for challenges in PvEs, the reality is when it is being implemented, many players dislike challenges of various kind. I won't be surprised if Sinister 600 is taken out of rotation because those players can't cover up for weaker players like they do in normal boss events, thus affecting the top prizes that they can get.

bbigler

Spudgutter said:

seriously, you are all over the map with this one.

"I've quit several times because of the time commitment"  "That's why I don't see a problem with the time demands of the game."

Completely contradictory.  again, i doubt they want to base a model off of a person who keeps quitting.  do you send them a message every time, so they know why?  how are we, or they, supposed to know why you quit, especially if you come back?  makes no sense, and not a business model any of us would agree is sustainable.

"What you want is to get the same rewards for less time and you think that would be fair. But that's not fair to people who put in more time than you, it would take away their reward for working harder." 

Huh?  how does that even make sense?  if they reduce the time commitment, they reduce it for *everyone.*  i can't stress this enough, *everyone* gets more for less.  plus, i have read your sentence several times, i still can't see the logic, that my playing less somehow takes away rewards for others playing harder?  huh???  if they reduce the time constraint, and people still want to put in the extra effort for placement, bravo.  now they are clearing 6 times instead of 7, and they get some more of their life back as well.  

"The good news is that the stronger your roster becomes, the less time it should take to get the same rewards. This has been true for me. "

yes.  that is literally the point of the thread.  that speed is too much of a focus, so people are not using newer characters as much because they aren't as fast.  no one disagrees that better rosters play faster.  even one of the larger proponents of staying in the 4* realm fell to the dark said and said his play times are faster.  if they ever go to the route that other have suggested before, that pve is 100% progression, without losing any rewards, that would solve the issue.  i am just being more pragmatic.  they raised the clears required in the past, i advocate for them to lower it back down again.

lastly, and loudly for those in the back, i will borrow a quote from vhail;

"(3)  Sure, demi/d3 have behaved that way in the past, but my argument is that they shouldn't behave that way in the future.  

stop trying to use that argument that "it has always been this way." because it hasn't.  there didn't used to be ddq.  there didn't used to be 5*.  there didn't used to be two stores to spend cp.  there didn't used to be crash of the titans.  there didn't used to be elite tokens.  there didn't used to be clearance levels.  there didn't used to be champing.  there didn't used to be saved covers!

I never said "it has always been this way" as an argument, so I don't know why you're acting like I did. I'm well aware of the history of the game. 

My statements are not contradictory if taken in context. Personally, I have an issue with the time commitment of the game because of my personal desire to progress at a certain speed, but not everyone is like me, nor have I suggested that they make their business model for players like me. So, I don't think the majority of the player base has an issue with the time vs progression ratio. How long have you been playing consecutively? Why haven't you quit if you have a problem with the time commitment?

To understand the effect of reducing max progression from 5 clears to 4, consider this: there are different groups of players that clear a different number of times. The groups are 7, 6, 5 and 4 or less. Groups 7, 6, 5 have a significant advantage over group <=4 because of getting max progression rewards, plus better placement rewards, plus node rewards. If you reduced max progression to 4 clears, then groups 7, 6, 5 have less of an advantage over group 4. They are still going to clear 7, 6 or 5 times because of placement and node rewards. If a 5 clear player wants to drop down to 4, he'll be sacrificing placement and node rewards to save time. So, reducing max progression from 5 to 4 will not benefit players that always clear 5, 6 or 7 times, but it will take away some of their advantage for doing so. I'm not saying a change like this will break the game, I'm just saying that it benefits the bottom end of players only and takes away a little advantage the top end players have.  Try looking at this from all player's perspectives, not just your own. 

bluewolf

In terms of difficult events, as I alluded to earlier, there are a lot of varied rosters playing this game.  Every person who is here as a 3/4/5 player started as a lowly 1/2 player, grinding away and sometimes feeling like they reached their limit with a difficult node.  Making events more difficult can scare some of them off/interrupt the process of making MPQ a daily routine.  The other issue with difficulty increases is that they still fall under the umbrella of the grindy design, so FFW might have been more acceptable as a harder event with less clears, but not as a 7X event.  

Sinister600/Places of Power both have issues with:

1.  Difficulty.  Some people thought them to be harder than expected at certain difficulties, perhaps as a result of compressing the normal SCL divisions into 3 ranges(right? or 4? less, at any rate).  And the grind remained there as well.  So there were plenty of complaints, especially in light of:

2.  Coordination and/or playing up (see difficulty).  Getting enough people into a node to reach maximum alliance rewards sometimes was tricky communication-wise (not everyone is paying close attention or what have you) and sometimes people played harder nodes than they would have chosen to try to meet alliance goals, which ends up causing people to make a decision between letting the player play at the appropriate level and missing rewards for the alliance vs forcing them to play up and get frustrated while trying to provide the needed points.

You could look at this as a problem of the alliance not having strong enough members, but it went against the boss alliance event design which allows different roster strengths to all contribute to an overarching alliance goal.  Simply making the alliance rewards differ by SCL (just like all other PVE) while allowing all the players in the alliance to contribute points to the alliance (just like every other PVE) while playing at their own level would solve, probably, the biggest issues with the event(s).  Of course, it's easy to say "Do this" to the development team, but I would think this correction would meet the goals of the developers to keep player engagement while maintaining different/appropriate rewards for different roster strengths and reducing the coordination headaches for alliances.

This thread has gotten quite far away from the OP's intent......

Straycat

Which stats matter to the devs? If its just number of clears, well we had tappers doing hundreds of extra clears. We have people happily doing 5 clears, and people unhappily doing it, but that looks the same.

If we assume they want us to use more of our roster, then they should probably want to make some changes. Because as is, there is little incentive to use anything but your fastest team. And the longer you play, your best team gets stronger. Not saying the game is unsustainable in its current state, and its hard to see any ROI if people would still play 5 clears more as a habit than as entertainment. Players can and will min max the fun away from a game, so a good game dev does kinda have to protect players from themselves.

Spudgutter

bluewolf said:

I don't really feel like there's much of  way to influence the developers' set goals on this particular play requirement.

Straycat beat me to it.  They got rid of tapping because people kept talking about it.  

If we keep telling them it needs to go down, maybe it will go down.  We wont know if we dont try.

Bigler, i am done arguing with you.  You just dont get it.  Anyone who has butted heads with me in the past will tell you, i always argue what is best for everyone, sometimes to my own detriment.

I was one of the few that was for the first wins based pvp, because it meant lower rosters could get 4* easier, even though i would lose the cp at 1200, because i only play to top 25.

I was for the first iteration of vaulting, because then newer players could hoard a small amount of cp, thus get to a stage where they had several covers for the 12 4* that were in the LT at the time, and make their early progression easier.

For pve, what you dont seem to get is that those numbers you gave; 7, 6, 5 and 4 now become 6, 5, 4 and 3.  How many times do i have to say *everyone* gets to play less?  I am a 6 clear person, but play suboptimal because i dont want the stress of it.  Because, to bring it back to the op point of the thread, i dont want to play using just my fast characters for speed.  I use the fun ones.

randomhero1090

Wow....  a lot going on in this thread....

The one interesting thing a read was discussion around the care a player has for the revenue a developer takes in on the game.  I think in general the majority of players don't care about how much money a dev makes on a game.  However, that tide is starting to turn a bit with the F2P/Micro transaction model.  You see more of this "support the dev" thing going on.  I saw it with PUBG early.  Seeing it now with the release of Apex Legends.  However, these are brand new games.

@Straycat nailed it above.  We use the fastest because there is no incentive to do anything else.  I ask a group of vet players once....  would you like to see some PVPs that didn't allow the use of 5*s....  a resounding YES.  What's that tell ya?

HoundofShadow

It's not that I care about the revenue of the devs. The reason for bringing this up is because this is what drives most real world decisions. The upper management cares about ROI, revenues, profits etc because their performances are judged based on metrics like these. What does it has to do with the players? From my pov, it actually affects the players indirectly.

Over the years, there are a lot of suggestions to solve problems like dilution, iso-cost to champ 4* and 5*, supports, making sure that every players draw at least 1 5* for every 7 pulls, bad streak pulls, etc. Things like reducing iso-cost to champ 4* or 5*, increasing rewards, giving players guaranteed at least 1 5* within 7 pulls, so on and so forth requires a little tweaking of number which takes a couple of hours or even minutes. But the players are puzzled why the devs are not doing all these simple changes.

As revealed, the devs have "budgets" for rewards and even for characters' powers. If you have noticed, whenever the devs make changes or add in something to the game, they will also take out something. This kind of change always angers many players. Some players expect that the devs can only do this: add in more good stuffs, keep what is satisfactory untouched and remove all the negative aspects of the game. In short, the devs are expected to tilt the balance towards the players. On the other hand, the devs have to work within constraints set by their managements or the beancounters. In order to execute the above suggestions, the devs need compelling reasons to tell their higher up and saying that more players will be happier is not a compelling reason enough. The next question the upper management is going to throw back at the devs  is probably "where's the data or evidence to support your suggestions?" And the beancounters are going to crunch out numbers detailing the effect of those changes.

One poster actually set up a poll or topic in the past asking about excluding 5* from PvP to increase variety of character usage. For every group of players that replied "yes", another group of players replied no. What does it tell you? It simply tells me that there are at least two groups of players with opinions that contradicts each other.

bbigler

Spudgutter said:

.....

For pve, what you dont seem to get is that those numbers you gave; 7, 6, 5 and 4 now become 6, 5, 4 and 3.  How many times do i have to say *everyone* gets to play less?  I am a 6 clear person, but play suboptimal because i dont want the stress of it.  Because, to bring it back to the op point of the thread, i dont want to play using just my fast characters for speed.  I use the fun ones.

If you're suggesting to start the node timer after 3 clears AND reduce max progression to 4 clears, then I'll agree that it benefits everyone. But if the node timer still starts after 4 clears, then competitive players will still clear 7 times. It doesn't matter how many clears it takes to get max progression because they're going for placement, max progression is a given. So, it seems that you don't "get" competitive play. Some players like to "green check" all nodes and to them it also doesn't matter how many clears it takes to get max progression. 

I also care about the player base and game as a whole, and I'll even support things that are good for the game even if I don't like them personally.  For example, I don't like costumes, but I believe most players would like them if they were easier to get.  I also keep new players in mind since they are essential to keeping the game alive. That's why I've been trying to show people the fastest way to progress from tier to tier......I even wrote a very long guide about it in another forum section, but I'll admit that it's mostly for competitive players.  Perhaps someone should write a guide for keeping the game fun if you're not competitive. 

bbigler

@HoundofShadow is on to something......good changes might not be within the budget of the game. This is complicated though. It's a business, so they make decisions to keep the business alive, so revenue and operating costs are crucial. But in order to get that revenue, people need to want to play their game, so they do need to make the players happy. But revenue comes from spending, so players need an incentive to spend, which is usually to get a gameplay advantage. Thus, the players most likely to spend have a competitive nature and some disposable income. So I believe the entire game is designed to attract and keep competitive spending players, which makes sense of a lot of things. Why are there placement rewards for almost all events? Why is progression slow without spending? Why do we have regular monetary HFH deals? Why are top rewards difficult to obtain for non-competitive, non-spending players? 

Of course, they understand that not everyone will spend and that FTP competitive players exist, but this other audience rounds out their game and possibly creates some converts to the spending way of life. VIP is the gateway spending drug.  Is it coincidence that the so-called "achievement" to get costumes is by spending money? Your achievement is going from "free" play to "spending" play. The point here is that the game is not designed for FTP players in the long run, so FTP players will run into problems that could be solved by spending money, such as roster slots. 

So, back to suggested changes.....I think it's hard for us to know what changes will or will not affect their revenue. But they need to keep the player base happy and spending. That's keeps them alive. If FTP players got everything they wanted (in terms of rewards), then what's the incentive to spend? 

Straycat

bbigler said:

@HoundofShadow is on to something......good changes might not be within the budget of the game. This is complicated though. It's a business, so they make decisions to keep the business alive, so revenue and operating costs are crucial.

I dunno. Its a living game. The devs are supposed to keep the game balanced. Most of the time we suggest fixes for perceived inbalances. Of course they aren't going to be 100% generous; a lot of times that would hurt their revenue.But they can make changes focused on player retention and not just direct revenue. They can do some things just to make a better product.

Dormammu

I don't mind the amount I play MPQ to be competitive, and I feel I am a highly competitive PvE player with a roster I am very pleased with. To give you an idea of how much I play:

Standard PvE: 7 clears, top 10 player in SCL 7/8. This equates to about an hour a night. Optimal clears are ideal for me in slice 4. This is my leisure time. Some people sit in front of the TV and watch the news and a half-hour of Late Night. I play MPQ instead.

Boss Events: Play to the hilt Thursday & Friday; by then my alliance and I have milked all the progression rewards and I take the weekend off.

Standard PvP: This is what I do on the toilet and during work breaks, standing in line at the grocery store, riding in a car (as a passenger), sitting in waiting rooms, or any other time I'm board. I get anywhere between 0-16 wins per event.

SHIELD SIM: Whatever. I dabble. Don't really care. 

Support Circuit: So far I've played 4 clears at SCL 6. I appreciate the extra ISO and CP. Easy money.

Special PvE: Things like SHIELD Training I max out and get everything I am able. I enjoy these.

This is my equilibrium to avoid burnout. I don't want to play any more, and I don't want to play any less. What I want is more variety in the meta. I like PvE. I like that speed is a factor. I'd still enjoy PvE if speed wasn't a factor, but the race is a bit of a thrill to me. What I don't like is the obligation to use 4% of my roster to achieve that speed.

The problem as I see it, is for every fast character released, there's 20 clunkers released in-between. Why does Thanos have to be the only one who does what he does? Is there no possibility of another character with something similar? Why does Thanos get to be the only guy who does passive AoE while it costs everyone else double-digit AP??? Why is Grocket the only character who can possibly make some strike tiles at the beginning of a match? Does Rocket have some sort of patent on this move?

The rift between some of these characters (at the same rarity) is enormous and baffling to me.

bbigler

Totally agree @Dormammu, I play the speed game with just 4 characters and even though I like the speed and saved time, I would like to be competitive with more variety. I remember reading that the devs purposely release meta breaking characters in order to shake things up.

We do have other characters that do passive AOE (4*Carol, 4*Jean, 3*Hulk, 2*Storm) but Thanos does it the best. We do have other passive strike tile makers, but Grocket does it the fastest. We have other passive AP generators, but Thor does it the best. We have other passive tile buffers, but Kitty does it the best. (4*Carol does all of these except strikes cost some AP). 

I'm not sure what the solution is to increase variety though. Removing placement rewards should help, but that won't happen. They can keep releasing new top-tier characters, but then everyone will just settle on a new meta, even if it's just 5% faster than the old meta. I think the future of the PVP meta is not 1 team but 2. 1 for climbing and 1 for Defending (if you float). We might be there already with Thorkoye and Gritty. Perhaps they'll release a meta-breaking defense character that's so difficult to fight that you would rather skip it because it takes too long. 

HoundofShadow

The answer can be as straightforward as:

1)  When the devs design characters, they don't ask themselves "How can I make this character the next Thanos or the next R4G so that they can help players to finish a match at the same speed as them or in less than 4 matches?"

A longer answer would be:

The design process goes something like this: the devs will research on the personality and abilities of character X. Then, they will choose three characteristics that best represent X. These abilities tell a story about X. As for choosing colours of abilities, they have a set of guidelines to help them assign abilities to colours and calculate the damage or ap cost of ability. Since you played long enough, you will notice that red is usually direct damage, yellow is healing, green is AoE etc.

Other factors they look at is the current state of game. Things like shaking up the meta in PvP, encouraging the use of certain characters or exploring different gameplays. 

I think there are a lot of flaws with your assertions. The reality is this:

1) Speed rules the meta for top players or competitive players. As a matter of fact, speed rules in many other RPG games as well. This is not a "problem" unique to MPQ. In a game of tie, speed is usually used to determine the winner.

2) The devs didn't release each new character so that they can compete with the meta. If they did that, this game will be downright boring because every characters will finish a match in fewer than 4 turns or worst, 2 turns. They release characters with different abilities so that players can have fun playing with their favourite characters.

3) Characters with "high" ap costs are not appreciated by competitive players. Currently, any power more than 6 aps seems to be considered high because players are "supposed to" finish match in 4 turns or fewer.

4) The devs did not create a culture of speed. Competitive players created it. 

You need to recognize that the devs should not be catering to only the top or competitive players. There exists players who just want to play for fun, not for competition.

Dormammu

Some strong points, Hound.

HoundofShadow said:

The devs did not create a culture of speed. Competitive players created it. 

But I disagree with this. We compete within the parameters of the game. PvE is about who can do it the fastest. Yes, there are other factors to optimal play (node order, time of clears) but the difference between first and second is who did it faster. PvP is much more forgiving on speed, these days, but still plays a role. This is not a complaint. Simply a statement of what the devs have presented to us. I'm willing to play within these parameters and enjoy it.

But characters set the pace, and the devs design those too.

HoundofShadow

The devs could implement a lot of innovative solutions generated by the players in the forum such as do x number of times, perform x abilities under Y conditions etc to reduce or remove the speed pressure and to encourage variety of roster usage in PvEs. Things are going to be refreshing for a while until competitive players find the optimal strategy to do these tasks faster.  Words spread, time passed, and we are back to the speed meta again.

Actually, we already have such scenario that happened before: alliance events. There are no additional rewards for alliance placing first yet top alliances will subtly turn this alliance event into a competition of "We're the first alliance or the first 10 alliances to finish this alliance event."  You don't see these threads nowadays because other players were pissed off by them.

The straightforward solution is to remove placements in all PvEs and shift all top rewards to progression, or reward all players with the top placement rewards regardless of the players' positions. It sounds like a happy ending for all players. Every players get LTs or 3 4* covers without fighting for placements in every PvEs. But, it comes at the expense of the company's financial performance, at the expenses of game balances and Whales are unlikely to be happy with this. I fear that if this is being implemented to please all or most of the players, LT or even Classic Tokens will suffer the same fate as Master Support Token: a guaranteed 4* becomes a guaranteed 3* in LTs or Classics.

If you remember, there existed an era where players in the speed meta were getting boot out of the top placements by players in the tapping meta. Long story short, the tapping meta got put down and speed meta rules the land of PvEs again.

As for PvPs, placement are determined by points and players lose points if they have defensive losses. The higher you go, the harder you fall (more points lost defensively). Top players feared that they get taken over by other players. They feared losing the top spots. They have 75 point targets on their back. That's why you have groups of players or alliances coordinating outside the game helping each other to jack up points in PvP SCL 7 and above, promising one another not to attack each other, or hit them only after their shield is out so that they can secure the top spots.

There's one solution that can easily destroy this unfair coordination and encourage variety of character usage: remove points gained or lost from defensive losses and defensive wins. This , however, will bring in a new meta: a meta similar to tapping. The good news is 3* players have the opportunity to get 1st placement in SCL 9 if they are willing to play 100 or more PvP matches per day. I used to play another established  match-3 RPG game and the top players play an average of 200 PvP match a day to stay on the top.

Characters somehow set the pace but remember, the devs are creating characters that appeal to different categories of players. We have characters for those on the top and we have characters for players who don't care about being on the top. 

At the end of the day, with all things being equal, and considering whatever constraints or budgets the devs have, whether you like it or not, speed is still going to be the deciding factor on who's going to get the top 1 or top 10 or top X placement rewards in PvEs or even PvPs when there is a tie. 

Yepyep

HoundofShadow said:

Based on past and historic changes, the amount of rewards correlates with how much effort they expect from the players. Asking them to reduce the number of clears from 5 clears to fewer clears while not reducing the rewards is like telling your boss that you want to have lesser work done or fewer job responsibilities without decreasing your salary. I'm not sure if that's possible for most of the people in real life. The devs has metrics and data for almost everything in the game. I'm sure they have more than 5 years worth of metrics and data telling them how to regulate the amount of resources in the game. 

Look at Support. Players asked for easier access to Supports and look what happened. They could have simply added Support tokens as part of progression rewards but they came up with a new event with Support tokens available to the top 3 placements in a 24-hour run events with 7 clears. Why? Do they know that players appreciate just putting only Support Tokens in progression rewards? Of course they do! But they chose to make the players work or chase for it because they make decisions based on the data and metrics that they have.

The point systems look pretty complicated and assigning different points to over 200 different characters are going to be time consuming. Even adding the counter for the most number of coloured tiles for NightCrawler took them a long time due to coding issues. They have to go through new phases of catching new bugs, many rounds of testings, more meetings just so that the players can get the same rewards using lesser time? This suggestion, realistically speaking and based on ROI alone, is not worth the effort for them to implement. You need to remember that they are a subsidiary of a listed company, so ROI is important to them, given that they have limited development time. If it doesn't help them meet their corporate financial goals, it's unlikely to be implemented.

So, I think this is correct. And it reinforces a sentiment I felt early in my play but haven't for a while: this job is like a game.

This will drive me away. When, I don't know. Whether, I know. I don't need my fun to be a job.

Straycat

HoundofShadow said:

The devs could implement a lot of innovative solutions generated by the players in the forum such as do x number of times, perform x abilities under Y conditions etc to reduce or remove the speed pressure and to encourage variety of roster usage in PvEs. Things are going to be refreshing for a while until competitive players find the optimal strategy to do these tasks faster.  Words spread, time passed, and we are back to the speed meta again.

Basically you're saying that we can't solve it so why even try? Thats not a great attitude. Sure the game has survived years with the same format, that doesn't mean it needs to stay the same.

As you laid out, removing placement or defensive losses have way more impact, and still doesn't incentivize slower characters. It does remove some of the liabilities of using a slow roster, but 5 clears is a chore, and we always want to finish our chores quickly. Even progress only boss events penalize you for using a slower character, since the boss gets super fast in the late rounds and you miss out on rewards if you lose. Yes, speed is everything. If they think that is a problem, then they should work on a solution.

Lets say this is the crux of the proposal: give more points for using more of your roster.

The goal: Make max progression less of a grind. Make more of the roster relevant.

There will be a way to min max it, and maybe after 2 events of team switching 90% of players default back to the speed meta because they get bored anyways, or never changed their habits at all. It at least doesn't hurt to have options, and it shouldn't make anyone mad. Placement would be dependent on a new balance of speed and depth with optimal playing time, but I don't care about that. This idea is to make progression better.

Maybe its not worth it to them, I'd rather not speculate since I don't know their inner workings. But it would incentivize using more of the roster, which they imply they care about when they do character reworks. It would maybe lessen burnout, which helps keep people playing.

bbigler

Just a few comments from the comments above......

Is the speed game the fault of the devs or the players? It's neither actually. It's the natural result of players figuring out the best way to play a game and save time doing it. Yes, the devs created speedy characters AND a speed based reward system, but even if all placement rewards were removed and all "speedy" characters were nerfed, players would still figure out the fastest teams available and use them daily because their time in real life matters.  Even if you're just "playing for fun", you still want to try out new characters and strategies, but that requires rewards, and the faster you get those rewards, the more characters and variety you have. I think everyone wants more time in their life, so finding the fastest teams available is always beneficial. 

I've actually created some prototype board games and card games myself. I wanted to create games that I liked to play. So strategy was key, but luck was also involved to give variety and make it possible to come back when you're behind. I discovered that I needed balance in my games. A balance between being easy to learn but still complicated enough to have great variety and multiple strategies to win. I hate games that only have 1 good way to win. But I did find it difficult to create multiple winning strategies that were all equally as good as each other. All strategies could work, but some were better than others. And if there was a tournament using my games, the top players would have figured out the best strategy and played it over and over, despite my efforts to create variety and multiple winning strategies. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's unavoidable for a best strategy to dominate a game, so all other strategies (being characters in this game) are viewed as inferior. But the premise of any game is to win, so it naturally drives people to this ultimate state of the game. The good thing about this game is that it keeps changing, which also changes the best strategy and gives some variety to keep people interested. 

Yepyep

OJSP said:

Yepyep said:
this job is like a game.

this is brilliant. Intentionally or not..

Anyway, the joke was intentional...