A few thoughts on Outwitters

Sichas · 07-10-2012, 06:29 PM

So, just up front I'd like to state that I'm an iOS game developer as well, so for the game devs reading this forum, I'd just like that noted that I am trying to look at these issues from all perspectives available to me. I'll also do this in a positive negative flip flop way, so that it doesn't get ranty and whiny.

1) Holy cow this game is incredible! This is the iOS game I've been wanting to buy since the App Store launched in 2008, but I didn't know exactly how I wanted it. This is definitely it. 5 stars rated.

2) Issue: Chat is not synchronous across all devices. I switch between my iPhone and iPad quite often during the day, and if I sent 10 messages from my iPhone, I'll have 10 little bubbles to go check on my iPad, just so they go away. If that could be changed so that unless there's a NEW message from the time my account last checked that chat, that would be swell. GameCenter may be a limiting factor on that, however.

3) I'm so excited about the GameCenter friend implementation in Outwitters! Not a heck of a lot of my personal friends have an iThing, so it's great that I can chat with people during the game and friend them as well! I've gotten to know a few new people quite well! Fantastic!!

4) Oh my goodness the "must resign on your turn" thing has to go!! 7 days is WAY too long to wait on people who stop playing, and then there's nothing I can do about it. Honestly, I'd rather take the loss. I would hazard to say 2 days of no movement for league play and 1 day for casual. (I.e. I finish my turn in a casual game, my opponent has 24 hours to hit the "done" button) A "second chance" solution would maybe be to archive the in-progress game so that the late player could choose to take their turn later, but it wouldn't still be in my queue unless they DID decide to play it. Essentially, I don't care what happens as long as the game isn't taking up space in my list.

5) The unique x7 pieces for each team are quite cool! The only one that I'm personally just not a HUGE fan of is the Adorables. I totally get it and get the strategic value, it's just simply that in the games I've played with it, I definitely haven't viewed it as a game changer. However, different teams were a GREAT design choice and I can't wait to see more!

6) I'm not knowledgeable at all about what your private server setup is like, so I don't know how hard the server is being hit with this game or how much space all of the games take up. If you coded your own back end server, I would hazard to say that everything to and from the client is parsed as a data array to be stored, and I can't imagine that 1 game would take up more than 2MB. (If that's wrong or you do something different, I'd love to hear your solution, just one dev to another. I love comparing strategies) So that said, what would increasing the game cap beyond 20 do to your servers? This largely fits with #4, and I'm going to create a side-bullet point to combine the problems more effectively.

6.5) The real issue for me here is that I've got about 10 2v2 games going on, and 8 of them haven't seen any turn progression at all in 3 days. As in, I moved, and the guy that moves after me hasn't moved in 3 days. My plea is this: please find a solution that allows players to get out of this sort of situation easier. Whether that's a higher cap, some sort of game archiving, a easier resignations, something else would be good.

6.6) A note on easier resignations: one abusive thing I can see with that is people resigning because they're going to lose. If resigning was just a good way to get out of a stagnant game, yep, that's crummy. What about the time until you can resign with no penalty is an algorithm weighing both time played, turns taken, damage done, and time since last move? That way people can't just skip out of games for no reason at all. And maybe you could only resign from 2 or 3 a day with no penalty, and anything beyond that would just count against you the same as a loss.

7) Truly, I love this game. It's amazing. The graphics. The music. The mechanics. The interface. This game feels like the iPad and iPhone were created to play this game. It's actually, in my mind, a completely perfect game. My criticisms I view only as quality of life changes, not problems with the actual game. Great work, development team. I've recommended this game to many friends and encouraged them to get some DLC as well as Tilt to Live. We love your stuff! Keep it up, and I look forward to actively participating on this forum!

Cheers,
Matthew Mitchell
CEO, Novus Entertainment

Kamikaze28 · 07-10-2012, 08:05 PM

Wow, that's one helluva first post! Welcome to the forums.

It's nice to see that your enthusiasm isn't crushed by the inarguably existing problems and issues.

One of the first "oh, wow"-moments I had during beta was my observation, that gameplay depth in Outwitters does not arise from complex or difficult to understand rules, but from very simple ones. The heart of Outwitters is a very pure and clean TBS without bells and whistles and doo-dads or teams where every unit is different from other teams. Simple idea, perfect execution (relating to gameplay, league issues are a different matter).

I look forward to reading more from you.

Sichas · 07-11-2012, 09:43 AM

Hey thanks for the kind words! Hoping some of the developers see it (are you one? You seem to be everywhere) and consider it a bit Smile

I really like how the only different pieces between teams are the big guys. And, doesn't really matter which one you take. They're all good. Except I still don't like the Adorables!

awpertunity · 07-11-2012, 12:38 PM

I agree with 4. I have like three non-leagued games that my opponent hasn't moved in that I tried to just resign and take the loss, but apparently I can't...

FeXd · 07-11-2012, 02:37 PM

I dot see people's problem with forfeiting / resigning. If I have made a bad play, especially late in the game, and my loss is impending, why shouldn't I be able to end the game and free up a slot? Otherwise, I will have yet another game sitting stagnant which has an inevitable loss waiting for me.

Also I am all for upping the game limit; I'm currently sitting on 16+ games that I can't get out of. Several have 4 days since last activity.

Dan Gleibitz · 07-11-2012, 02:59 PM

(07-11-2012 02:37 PM)FeXd Wrote: I dot see people's problem with forfeiting / resigning. If I have made a bad play, especially late in the game, and my loss is impending, why shouldn't I be able to end the game and free up a slot?

Because:

It's bad sportsmanship.
It ruins the fun of your opponent and denies them the joy of victory.

Kirenx · 07-11-2012, 03:13 PM

(07-11-2012 02:59 PM)Dan Gleibitz Wrote:
(07-11-2012 02:37 PM)FeXd Wrote: I dot see people's problem with forfeiting / resigning. If I have made a bad play, especially late in the game, and my loss is impending, why shouldn't I be able to end the game and free up a slot?

Because:

It's bad sportsmanship.

It ruins the fun of your opponent and denies them the joy of victory.

How is it bad sportsmanship? You have played a game, you realize you have lost, you concede, the other player wins. There is little difference between this and playing out another few pointless turns to see the same result. I remember when I used to play competitive MTG, it was common-place to forfeit, or "scoop" when you knew it was over, in fact dragging on a game that was decided would have been considered poorer sportsmanship than simply admiting you lost. If a players only joy is derived from forcing their opponent to watch the last few turns while they push their decided victory to the end, that seems to speak more of their own poor gamesmanship than anybody elses.

FeXd · 07-11-2012, 03:18 PM

(07-11-2012 03:13 PM)Kirenx Wrote: If a players only joy is derived from forcing their opponent to watch the last few turns while they push their decided victory to the end, that seems to speak more of their own poor gamesmanship than anybody elses.

Very well said. I also come from a competitive TCG background and see it the same way.

Also, I find it funny that somehow I posted bitching about 7 day timers and game limits, only to refresh the game news feed and find that the new limit is 4 days and game limits are being looked into. Whoops! And kudos for the changes! Great steps.

***onealexleft*** · 07-11-2012, 03:53 PM

Thanks for the feedback and compliments!

(07-10-2012 06:29 PM)Sichas Wrote: 1) Holy cow this game is incredible! This is the iOS game I've been wanting to buy since the App Store launched in 2008, but I didn't know exactly how I wanted it. This is definitely it. 5 stars rated.

Thanks!

(07-10-2012 06:29 PM)Sichas Wrote: 2) Issue: Chat is not synchronous across all devices. I switch between my iPhone and iPad quite often during the day, and if I sent 10 messages from my iPhone, I'll have 10 little bubbles to go check on my iPad, just so they go away. If that could be changed so that unless there's a NEW message from the time my account last checked that chat, that would be swell. GameCenter may be a limiting factor on that, however.

It's definitely annoying, especially if you play on one device for a while before switching. Can't promise anything at this moment, but it's definitely something we're aware of and hope to fix in the future.

(07-10-2012 06:29 PM)Sichas Wrote: 4) Oh my goodness the "must resign on your turn" thing has to go!! 7 days is WAY too long to wait on people who stop playing, and then there's nothing I can do about it. Honestly, I'd rather take the loss. I would hazard to say 2 days of no movement for league play and 1 day for casual. (I.e. I finish my turn in a casual game, my opponent has 24 hours to hit the "done" button) A "second chance" solution would maybe be to archive the in-progress game so that the late player could choose to take their turn later, but it wouldn't still be in my queue unless they DID decide to play it. Essentially, I don't care what happens as long as the game isn't taking up space in my list.

Games have been shortened to a max of 4 days. We're working on the 'giving up' out of turn portion as well.

(07-10-2012 06:29 PM)Sichas Wrote: 6) I'm not knowledgeable at all about what your private server setup is like, so I don't know how hard the server is being hit with this game or how much space all of the games take up. If you coded your own back end server, I would hazard to say that everything to and from the client is parsed as a data array to be stored, and I can't imagine that 1 game would take up more than 2MB. (If that's wrong or you do something different, I'd love to hear your solution, just one dev to another. I love comparing strategies) So that said, what would increasing the game cap beyond 20 do to your servers? This largely fits with #4, and I'm going to create a side-bullet point to combine the problems more effectively.

The game is run primarily off of Google App Engine. Which means we pay for server-time, data, processing, etc. Like we mentioned in the witter's digest, we're looking into increasing this in the near future. If you want more technical details you can PM me and we can take the conversation to e-mail.

awpertunity · 07-11-2012, 03:56 PM

(07-11-2012 03:13 PM)Kirenx Wrote:
(07-11-2012 02:59 PM)Dan Gleibitz Wrote:
(07-11-2012 02:37 PM)FeXd Wrote: I dot see people's problem with forfeiting / resigning. If I have made a bad play, especially late in the game, and my loss is impending, why shouldn't I be able to end the game and free up a slot?

Because:

It's bad sportsmanship.

It ruins the fun of your opponent and denies them the joy of victory.

How is it bad sportsmanship? You have played a game, you realize you have lost, you concede, the other player wins. There is little difference between this and playing out another few pointless turns to see the same result. I remember when I used to play competitive MTG, it was common-place to forfeit, or "scoop" when you knew it was over, in fact dragging on a game that was decided would have been considered poorer sportsmanship than simply admiting you lost. If a players only joy is derived from forcing their opponent to watch the last few turns while they push their decided victory to the end, that seems to speak more of their own poor gamesmanship than anybody elses.

I completely agree with this from both points of view as well. I am very quick to resign when I know I have lost a game, and at the same time, it really annoys me when my opponent drags on a game they have clearly lost when they could just be forfeiting.