I've only been play this game for a couple of days, but it's clear that competitive games against reasonable opponents usually end in a coin flip due to the core mechanic of both players revealing information on the same board. This coin flip theory is supported by the winner of Season 22 in Arena having a rating of 1756. Higher Arena ratings are correlated to how much skill is involved in a game. This rating is similar to Can't Stop (1782), a very luck dependent dice game.
I believe changing this core mechanic could drastically improve the competitive experience and allow better players to demonstrate their skill and achieve better winrates and higher Arena ratings. To keep it simple, I would suggest still having a single layout to play against, but both players would be solving it independently of each other. The winner would be whoever solves the puzzle in the smaller number of revealed clues.
Pros:
* Players would be tested on how efficiently they can solve the grid instead of having the first 90% of clues be effectively a waste of time. This efficiency is more in line with what the IRL game is testing players on (see below for how that works).
* Players could finish games at their own speed and would always be playing as you wouldn't have to wait on your opponent to finish until you've solved the puzzle (similar to how Gamme Logic works).
Cons:
* There's still some luck in this format especially on opening clues, but I say it's still way better than the 50/50 nature of the current format.
Thoughts? This game is a great logic game and I know the IRL version is more in line with what I'm suggesting (each player builds a board for the other player a-la battleship). I could see the battleship mode actually getting stale as there are probably more "optimal" ways that players would conceal or hide information that would be predictable but take many clues to find. This is why I suggest the random board where both players have the same board to keep it more fair.
I believe changing this core mechanic could drastically improve the competitive experience and allow better players to demonstrate their skill and achieve better winrates and higher Arena ratings. To keep it simple, I would suggest still having a single layout to play against, but both players would be solving it independently of each other. The winner would be whoever solves the puzzle in the smaller number of revealed clues.
Pros:
* Players would be tested on how efficiently they can solve the grid instead of having the first 90% of clues be effectively a waste of time. This efficiency is more in line with what the IRL game is testing players on (see below for how that works).
* Players could finish games at their own speed and would always be playing as you wouldn't have to wait on your opponent to finish until you've solved the puzzle (similar to how Gamme Logic works).
Cons:
* There's still some luck in this format especially on opening clues, but I say it's still way better than the 50/50 nature of the current format.
Thoughts? This game is a great logic game and I know the IRL version is more in line with what I'm suggesting (each player builds a board for the other player a-la battleship). I could see the battleship mode actually getting stale as there are probably more "optimal" ways that players would conceal or hide information that would be predictable but take many clues to find. This is why I suggest the random board where both players have the same board to keep it more fair.
