So many repeats

[KuWizard]

Here's my proposal, which may sound a bit crazy: the server should look at the last several games of each player, and choose 13 words that none of these players have seen in a while.

While I don't know how Just One is currently implemented, I have enough experience of developing for BGA to be able to tell you that this, while a nice idea, isn't possible to do in the BGA framework. You can't query any database other than those that exist for that specific table.

Maybe some BGA in-house developer knows a way to get around this, because in theory it should be possible - but there's nothing documented and I can well understand not wanting to let game developers do anything outside the scope of a single table.

That's what I thought. But there's a legacy games API (see "X.game.php - main logic" in Studio docs) which can be useful in this case

[SonicJuz]

This discussion is exactly why I think we shouldn't ever let engineers rule the world (alone).

This topic discusses (and the three others that were linked) indeed a way to maximize randomization.

A great deal of the game is to bring people together and make them communicate better or more originally, and one of the base it uses is duplications of words propositions (ad is the cas with RL player who chooses from the card's list): on one hand the player's experience of definitions, on the other hand successful vs unsuccessful tries.

The purpose of a game is not always the maximum score but the maximum fun, what is to find differently depending of your inclination. I've noticed during my games several categories of players of Just one that rely on the redundancy:
-those who haven't a developped school background/are non native speakers (some of whom find through this game a way to improve their vocabulary)
-wordplay addicts
-informative people who always are on the lookout for a definition that encompasses a new semantic value
-anxious people/people who enjoy the fact to be together more than the competition - the most words are known, the less stress, the easier it is to focus on what's beside the game answers.

This of course is not exhaustive. But what is final is: the first thing on topic to discuss is what effect redundancies have on the gameplay, is it something that people wish to suppress, and which type of people.

There are numerous other things that can be criticized about the game - for example what the definition of what a word is it uses, or how a word is in the same family as another. Generally, it does not use the most scientific approach to linguistics. Some of those are discussed below, in a very profane manner, still missing the point of the purpose of the game. Redundancy is just one of the aspect of the game where perfection may not be the best route...

[cigma]

Algorithm 1 (13 distinct cards out of 110 are chosen randomly and for each chosen card 1 word out of 5 is chosen randomly):

Code: Select all

0 repeats:  4.0 %
1 repeat:  13.8 %
2 repeats: 22.9 %
3 repeats: 24.1 %
4 repeats: 18.0 %
5 repeats: 10.3 %
6 repeats:  4.6 %
7 repeats:  1.7 %
8 or more repeats: 0.7 %

Algorithm 2 (13 distinct words out of 550 are chosen randomly):

Code: Select all

0 repeats:  3.9 %
1 repeat:  13.8 %
2 repeats: 23.0 %
3 repeats: 24.0 %
4 repeats: 18.0 %
5 repeats: 10.2 %
6 repeats:  4.6 %
7 repeats:  1.7 %
8 or more repeats: 0.7%

Algorithm 3 (13 distinct cards out of 110 are chosen randomly and the same randomly-chosen index, from 1 to 5, is used for every card):

Code: Select all

0 repeats: 11.5 %
1 repeat:  17.6 %
2 repeats: 19.7 %
3 repeats: 16.3 %
4 repeats: 12.4 %
5 repeats:  8.8 %
6 repeats:  5.7 %
7 repeats:  3.4 %
8 or more repeats: 4.7 %

Hello KuWizard,
what are our chances to get the algorithm change from 3 (as now) to algorithm 1 or 2? Or to give players the opportunity to choose 1 out of 5 words (as in the physical game)? I think this would increase our fun a lot. Thank you!

EDIT: I opened a suggestion report for this: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=103348

[KuWizard]

Cannot add to anything I posted just a couple replies before in this thread. Ready to share the code and review the result if anyone would like to invest their time

[Dorian Gray2]

Cannot add to anything I posted just a couple replies before in this thread. Ready to share the code and review the result if anyone would like to invest their time

Yea, could you share the function that does the ramdomize? Ive never coded anything for BGA, not sure if that's a good starting point. It looks like I don't have to bother with their api too much.

[Dorian Gray2]

IS the game here on BGA coded with "110 cards with 5 words each"?

It is in fact coded as 110 cards with 5 words each. And yes, game randomly selects a card on the game start. After that it randomly chooses a number from 0 to 4 as $wordID. Then it picks this shuffled cards list and uses this one $wordId 110 or 13 times with random $cardId. If 110 words is not enough (Infinite words option), it does $wordID+1 (or $wordID = 0 if previous $wordID was 4) and takes 110 words 4 more times. Then it puts everything in a database. So what you will see in a database after game setup is 13 (or 550) combinations of $cardId-$wordId with the first 110 $wordId being the same. But cards are shuffled which means it's still random distribution after all.
Hope this helps

Yes, that helps. So for example, if $wordID is 1, it would take the first word for every 13 card?
That would be like 5 options for the card index combinations.

I guess the fix would be to use a different word index for every of the 13 cards. that would be like 5^13 = 1.220.703.125 options.

So, you would have to recalculate the wordID for each card, instead of computing it once on game start. Seems to be a pretty trivial change, isn't it?