I've started playing Pingimus on Arena and the game's mechanics leave me a little torn... Playing to win, as is ostensibly the goal in Arena, seems to contradict the "spirit of the game" somewhat.
The crux is the game mechanic to vote which guesses are "the same".
If you're trying to win:
- When you're voting at a picture and you're uncertain if you're right, you should always ask to combine your vote with every other answer that could be correct. Regardless of what those words are. So that you are more likely to get the point.
- When the phase to vote on combination suggestive comes up, if others have asked to combine answers on your drawing, you should always vote yes to all of them, regardless of what the words really are. So that more players vote correctly and you get more points.
Ignoring the actual guesses and combining terms that absolutely don't mean the same thing, is the right move to get points, but makes it kind of arbitrary.
So maybe
- The ability to vote to combine guesses should be disabled in Arena. Only the exact same guesses combine with each other, automatically (as today), no other guesses can be combined.
- Arena should be disabled? Other games that involve kind of subjective player voting on whether a guess is correct or not (Concept is one example), typically have competitive mode disabled.
Edit: I almost forgot. There is also no way to enforce the "no letters" rule! Or should we report players who add a stray letter for cheating?
Again opens up to be slightly arbitrary and another possible strike against this being a competitive game.
The crux is the game mechanic to vote which guesses are "the same".
If you're trying to win:
- When you're voting at a picture and you're uncertain if you're right, you should always ask to combine your vote with every other answer that could be correct. Regardless of what those words are. So that you are more likely to get the point.
- When the phase to vote on combination suggestive comes up, if others have asked to combine answers on your drawing, you should always vote yes to all of them, regardless of what the words really are. So that more players vote correctly and you get more points.
Ignoring the actual guesses and combining terms that absolutely don't mean the same thing, is the right move to get points, but makes it kind of arbitrary.
So maybe
- The ability to vote to combine guesses should be disabled in Arena. Only the exact same guesses combine with each other, automatically (as today), no other guesses can be combined.
- Arena should be disabled? Other games that involve kind of subjective player voting on whether a guess is correct or not (Concept is one example), typically have competitive mode disabled.
Edit: I almost forgot. There is also no way to enforce the "no letters" rule! Or should we report players who add a stray letter for cheating?
Again opens up to be slightly arbitrary and another possible strike against this being a competitive game.
