Have you ever played Hero Academy?

[Anyr]

(08-06-2012 10:29 PM)Kamikaze28 Wrote:  Hiding this information is a design decision I find lacking. The information is there and skilled players will keep track of this in their heads or by other means and as you pointed out, knowing what your enemy can and cannot do is quite essential to making the right decisions.
Take for instance Carcassonne (for iOS) - you can always look up what tiles remain in the undrawn stack and calculate your chances of finishing a road or a city. Skilled players know the deck by heart, but attaining this kind of routine takes time and/or effort and distracts from the 'true skill' which is making the right decisions at the right time, not memorizing the deck and counting cards.

Agreed 100%. An automatic deck tracker is one of the most requested features on the Hero Academy forums. IMHO, adding such an ability wouldn't cheapen the game's strategy in the slightest; It would just remove the necessity of keeping deck information in a text file when you have 20+ games going at once.

Likewise, I'd very much like to see this problem removed from Outwitters as well. I'll often scout ahead and catch a glimpse of (say) a sniper in a crucial position, only for the scout to be immediately killed. On the next turn, I'd naturally want to use this information to my advantage; Unfortunately, that next turn might come several hours later amidst a torrent of other matches, by which time I'll have completely forgotten about the scout's discovery. It would be great if the game displayed the last known positions of enemy units in 'foggy' areas, rather than leaving such things to the player's memory.

[Kamikaze28]

(08-06-2012 11:09 PM)Anyr Wrote:  Likewise, I'd very much like to see this problem removed from Outwitters as well. I'll often scout ahead and catch a glimpse of (say) a sniper in a crucial position, only for the scout to be immediately killed. On the next turn, I'd naturally want to use this information to my advantage; Unfortunately, that next turn might come several hours later amidst a torrent of other matches, by which time I'll have completely forgotten about the scout's discovery. It would be great if the game displayed the last known positions of enemy units in 'foggy' areas, rather than leaving such things to the player's memory.

That's the replays purpose - displaying last known positions of units in the Fog of War is tricky. Say you discovered a Soldier at some position on turn 39 - your enemy destroys your Runner on turn 40 (the discovered Soldier and the unit send to destroy the Runner will now be displayed in the Fog somehow to mark their last known position) - on turn 41, you move a Soldier in the direction of the Runner, you discover an enemy Soldier, is it the same Soldier you discovered before or is it a new one? The game knows the answer to that question but it should never tell you this in any way.
I think the replay functionality is way better than to display shadows of units in the Fog of War. These shadows can become quite confusing as well once they pile up.

[Anyr]

(08-06-2012 11:27 PM)Kamikaze28 Wrote:  That's the replays purpose - displaying last known positions of units in the Fog of War is tricky. Say you discovered a Soldier at some position on turn 39 - your enemy destroys your Runner on turn 40 (the discovered Soldier and the unit send to destroy the Runner will now be displayed in the Fog somehow to mark their last known position) - on turn 41, you move a Soldier in the direction of the Runner, you discover an enemy Soldier, is it the same Soldier you discovered before or is it a new one? The game knows the answer to that question but it should never tell you this in any way.
I think the replay functionality is way better than to display shadows of units in the Fog of War. These shadows can become quite confusing as well once they pile up.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification. Posts like this are very helpful to me, since my knowledge of these two games is very asymmetric right now. I know a lot about Hero Academy, but when it comes to Outwitters, I'm still a complete newbie.

[wonderpug]

With Outwitters, I'd rather have some way to make notes on the map than have the game automatically display markers of last known positions. Often-times I just need to track whether or not a starter sniper has been dealt with yet, or if I know a back door has been left open, or where a Bombshell was last deployed, etc. Sometimes I have to rewatch an entire replay just to get reobtain information that I had a turn prior, but just forgot.

[Kamikaze28]

(08-06-2012 11:40 PM)Anyr Wrote:  Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification. Posts like this are very helpful to me, since my knowledge of these two games is very asymmetric right now. I know a lot about Hero Academy, but when it comes to Outwitters, I'm still a complete newbie.

You're welcome.

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(08-06-2012 11:51 PM)wonderpug Wrote:  With Outwitters, I'd rather have some way to make notes on the map than have the game automatically display markers of last known positions. Often-times I just need to track whether or not a starter sniper has been dealt with yet, or if I know a back door has been left open, or where a Bombshell was last deployed, etc. Sometimes I have to rewatch an entire replay just to get reobtain information that I had a turn prior, but just forgot.

I'm right there with you. The replay is fine for now, but it's definitely not the end of the road. Once the immediate moles in Outwitters have been whacked there is the possibility of adding some kind of notes feature, maybe?

[GreatGonzales]

Well, after 40 votes, it appears that the majority (65%) of Outwitters forumnites have played Hero Academy before, and nearly half (45%) are hardcore Hero Academy folks. Pretty interesting! I think the reason for this is twofold:

1. The two games are similar (both "fantasy/cartoony" asynchronous strategy games)
2. Hero Academy has been out for a while now and has a very mature hardcore community, which has largely descended upon Outwitters once they heard of it. For example, the number 1 Outwitters player is also top 5 in the Hero Academy league.

Thanks all who took the poll! If this thread stays active, it will be interesting to see how the population shifts in one direction or the other as time goes on...

[Cookie]

(08-06-2012 11:27 PM)Kamikaze28 Wrote:  That's the replays purpose - displaying last known positions of units in the Fog of War is tricky. Say you discovered a Soldier at some position on turn 39 - your enemy destroys your Runner on turn 40 (the discovered Soldier and the unit send to destroy the Runner will now be displayed in the Fog somehow to mark their last known position) - on turn 41, you move a Soldier in the direction of the Runner, you discover an enemy Soldier, is it the same Soldier you discovered before or is it a new one? The game knows the answer to that question but it should never tell you this in any way.
I think the replay functionality is way better than to display shadows of units in the Fog of War. These shadows can become quite confusing as well once they pile up.

The replays certainly provide more information, but it is also a rather slow way to present information. A metaphor would be watching a video compared to reading a book.

There are of course some complicating factors (like, with the Mobi it is possible that a unit moves and is then transported), but after the opponent has moved a sniper, killed something and then ended up in the fog of war again, I definitely wish that there had been a shadow to tell me it's there.

[E!NSTE!N]

(08-06-2012 11:27 PM)Kamikaze28 Wrote:  That's the replays purpose - displaying last known positions of units in the Fog of War is tricky. Say you discovered a Soldier at some position on turn 39 - your enemy destroys your Runner on turn 40 (the discovered Soldier and the unit send to destroy the Runner will now be displayed in the Fog somehow to mark their last known position) - on turn 41, you move a Soldier in the direction of the Runner, you discover an enemy Soldier, is it the same Soldier you discovered before or is it a new one? The game knows the answer to that question but it should never tell you this in any way.
I think the replay functionality is way better than to display shadows of units in the Fog of War. These shadows can become quite confusing as well once they pile up.

That's a valid point. But what I really would like to see are the last known positions of enemy units between my last turn and the actual turn.
So for example I scout with a runner and discover some enemy units. In my opponents turn he sends in a runner of his own and kills my scouting runner. Now all units my runner has been seeing - including the attacking enemy runner - should stay displayed in the fog of war.
If one of these units moves out of the fog we already see the originating position of that unit. In that case you would remove the unit displayed in the fog. All other units I saw during my last turn and which don't move out of the fog stay displayed.
When it's my turn again and I move into the fog I see the real units there. It could happen that I don't lift all the fog my enemy caused during his turn. If he in his turn moved one unit from the still-fog-area into the not-fog-anymore-area than that unit would be displayed twice as I cannot know if the unit is the same I saw before. But then it's up to me to draw my conclusions.
When I submit my turn all units that are still in the fog (meaning I didn't lift the fog there) vanish. That means I still have to use the replay function from time to time to look deeper into the past. But it doesn't make it necessary any more to watch the last turn of my opponent several times to get all the positions he attacked right now, which is often the case when - say - three of his runners kill three of mine.

[worldfamous]

OK, no one in these forums can honestly tell me that, after playing the new Team Fortress 2 puzzle game on Hero Academy, they are still not interested in playing. I took a break from HA, but I'm really excited now. Dem's some fun toons to play with! Pretty lame that they delayed the release for a week though.

[GreatGonzales]

(08-09-2012 01:08 PM)worldfamous Wrote:  OK, no one in these forums can honestly tell me that, after playing the new Team Fortress 2 puzzle game on Hero Academy, they are still not interested in playing. I took a break from HA, but I'm really excited now. Dem's some fun toons to play with! Pretty lame that they delayed the release for a week though.

You know, it's funny since I used to be one of the most active Hero Academy players out there...I'm just not super excited about the team fortress team. Part of it is that I'm into Outwitters right now, and part of it is that Hero Academy has been out for a long time and has become somewhat stale to me. But also I just do not appreciate that they deviated from their normal fantasy setting and made what I perceive to be a sell-out move in making TA the next team. How many awesome team ideas did we come up with on the forum? Dozens. And they went with...team fortress 2? Come on.

That said, the TA team's mechanics do look deliciously complex and different, and I will very probably end up purchasing the team. But no, I'm not super excited about it.