Why I don't play Treasure hunt

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
1

Continuing the discussion from Discussion about pay-to-win frustrations:

There were discussions, so I just go for TLDR-ish. TH has 2 major letdowns. One is the obvious ‘extra turn’ limit. The other, more serious is the internal economy. 4 and 5-matches, especially cascades puts you into a WORSE economic position.

Both points can be trivially fixed. The latter i.e by spawning multiple targets like in galactrix crafting or by falling-in tiles are not the cheapest but based on those removed. Plus in the final payout every next tier must be more than 3x the value of previous.

With such changes It would be a “strategy” game in the original sense. (Sure with the current rules it still is, just for the best output you must play a very weird way that goes against most traditional m3s. I seriously doubt playing that way would be fun for all but the nerdish.)

Reshaping it that way need not even contradict any other economy targets. It’s all about the relative value between tiers. What is assigned to tiles in the final state can be tuned by that.

The way it is it is but a time waster. What is no contradiction with your observations – there is a good niche for time-wasters. Especially on mobile. I was actually mentioning that, probably multiple times, GoW looks switching its player base. From strategy players to hoarders and time wasters. Who most likely fit the economic targets too.

In practice it does mean that – you just didn’t. Despite the minimal dev effort.

You know, if you just introduced a clone of TH with altered rules, that doesn’t even pay out anything, just announces a score, I’d play that. Consuming real treasure maps.

And that could be improved with little effort further by just tabulating scores, pay nonresources (like trophy for some score), etc. Several variants could run along. Just like with arena – variants with different levels, card sets, etc.

Chasing the usual public for freemium game consumers NEED NOT be completely tied to alienating the other player types. It just HAPPENS to be happening. Because … reasons.

Just like in other games genres. Some games have sophisticated combat, abilities to use wisely, cover, enemy recognition, resource management, stealth… Others just want you spam the A button.

And there is audience for both. All the late trends I see shows general shift to the latter. Good PC games get “consolized”. With all the effects. Some good review said about the recent blue X-Com that it compares to the old X-Com like playing guitar hero to playing an actual guitar.

To summarize my point, I see GoW started well but for long time is going in that direction. And it just sucks being me.

2

Ignoring all of the overarching themes pertaining to wondering where the game is actually going, because I have other things to worry about… I will just talk about Treasure Hunt.

The economy of Treasure Hunt seems unconventional. No argument. Basic 3, 4 and 5 matches are:

  • We can trade 3x A for 1x B, which is worth less than 3x A, but comes with 2 more spaces).
  • We can make the same trade, adding in 1x A for not losing a turn (and another space).
  • We can make the same trade, adding another 1x A for gaining a turn (and another space).

The thing to note is that while, yes, we’re getting less than the sum of its parts, we also get space which is filled by more things dropping.

On the other hand, its tricky sometimes, when higher-tier things get involved. To say nothing of the shenanigans that happen in cascades - because, yes, its got a more-than-decent chance of voiding perfectly good loot by matching five at once several times in a cascade that only gets you one extra turn. And we have little control over this, which makes it frustrating. Trading in five green chests for a single red and an extra turn isn’t something I would normally deliberately do - having it happen by accident and actually not really add an extra turn… ugh.

The fact that it actually makes us think on occasion is fine, but the fact that the payout is nowhere near the equivalent time spent playing the main part of GoW… not so much.

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with the economy of treasure hunt i look at it like this
3copper coin>1silver that is worth 3 gold
then 3silver coin>1 gold coin worth 10 gold
i do not claim to know the coding but i have a working theory that what shows up after a match 4 during the drop is the same worth in gold as what was matched in the 4,5,6,7 matches and that does not include cascades.
Of course i cant figure out a way to prove it with out recording it and doing Schrodinger maths that might be hard to do. at this time i have spent a weeks worth of glory on 30 maps and made back 225 glory after about 5 of them and have 25 more to go. It seems like a huge time waster but that is because we probable do not know what the exchange rate of souls and glory and gems are to gold. More maths ahead. i would need an updated treasure hunter info graph spreadsheet thing to figure it out.

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TO put it extremely simply, I don’t play it because in the time that I can play a single TH I can play multiple invades with each invade meeting me more gold than a single TH. True you can get gems, keys and souls, but at such low rates that I don’t see it being with the time.

I think the primary target audience is players under level 100 which is over 90% of the player base. It works great for those players also, do more power to them, but I won’t touch it.

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5

it depends on your definition of low. if you are unlucky then ya one or 2 gems some glory not even 1000 gold but if you get a few green chests maybe a red then you get about 1k or more gold with about 50 or so souls and 30 or more glory 2 or 3 keys not including gems that at red chest is about 5 gems each if you are lucky for it to proc instead of the 500 gold or 10 glory. the biggest change they made was the keys so far that i can tell

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It’s just not worth the time for me to see if I’m going to be “unlucky” or not.

7

The closer i get towards 450 gems, the more i am tempted to play a few maps, otherwise i am preferring PVP.

I’m at 407 now, so i will probably play a few :wink:

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ya the glory it worth maybe worth a couple of pvp matches(one pvp match is 3 glory) on average and you probable have a ton of maps and are feeling the item burn effects of too many items and cant think of how to rid yourself of them. or bad times the map is worth one pvp game in gold aand glory. other times(more often than not) it is worth more than a few pvp games(rarely is it worth 10 or more pvp games but it is possible) - YouTube

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I was thinking another alternate version, lazy-TH. You’d just pay the map and immediately get the rewards. No matching or whatever. It would pay the average of whatever the current one provided over long time.

Suppose we actually had it in GoW. What would be the popularity compared to the real?

I would bet the big majority of the folks Sirrian mentioned would use it instead of playing.

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in order to make it fair though its payout would end up being lower by far. if we were to compare pvp against TH then the payout for TH is greater and safer than that of pvp for a single game with only 15 moves. If you lose a game of pvp then you only have a max 100ish gold(depending on difficulty) and 40 souls(depending on difficulty). And a win can be up to about 1k or so with 40 souls and 3 glory. green chest give 5 glory so really turn for turn your payout is never less that 100 gold in TH and you don’t need a special team to win against whatever the meta is. The reason low level players do this is there is no risk in playing it and you are always given something for your time.

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I put my nephew to play them lol.

I dont think they really worth it but for fun are awesome.

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Agreed I play more for the fun/to break things up

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I distinctly recall seeing a suggestion - multiple times and places, actually - of bundling treasure maps. As in, use five in one go and get five times the rewards (or less, since its being made convenient and all). That would probably make them worth sinking time into.

I believe the newly accelerated economy in 1.0.8 (increased glory everywhere else, extra gold from kingdoms and in some cases the VIP multiplier) has driven maps further towards obsolescence.

14

Treasure maps, in my opinion, are much more valuable when you are starting out.

When you are first starting, and don’t have the Dragon Armor, or some other major gold bonus, the maps provide a nice gold boost. Even the souls during the early part of the game feel useful.

Once you hit late game, they are really only useful if you get enjoyment out of the challenge of trying to get as many vaults as you can. The rewards at that point don’t feel as impact-full.

It’s OK to have different mini-game that are more or less useful to different level players.

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15

I like Treasure Hunt, actually. It’s certainly not perfect (the multiple 5 matches in a single cascade IS very frustrating), but I find that for resources and time spent, I get more out of it than I would doing anything else, simply because I ALSO want glory, keys, etc., not just gold.

Plus, in terms of psychic rewards it’s a nice break because unlike PvP, you can’t lose; you may not “win” a lot, but you always “win,” so there’s less pressure, which makes it a nice break.

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Agree with Elendil52, I also enjoy playing TH and find it’s a nice component to the game. Though I’ve only been playing for 4 weeks now, things may change in the future, but only time will tell.

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I think you should either be able to spend 1 map to play normally, or spend all available maps for a reward multiplied by the amount of maps you have. I think that only being able to spend one or everything also adds a sense of danger. Is it worth it to risk it all and have a bad game? I think that risk balances the chance of higher rewards.

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That’s not a bad idea either. I can see those with a larger number of maps available, seeing that as a good way to use them, especially adding in the chance factor/risk you mention.

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Multiple 5-matches in a cascade shouldn’t be cause for frustration. Those extra 2 voids created are likely the reason why your chain continued after the 5-match. The longer the chain, the more progress your board makes per action toward the next vault.

High performance in TH is partly about creating volatility and hence long chains + high chance to chain into 4/5-matches when you can’t force them.

You raise volatility by clearing copper (which can’t spawn in place like all other gems) and by clearing boxes from the middle/top.

20

To echo what others have said. I think the first and possibly only change needed to treasure hunt is to let the multiple extra turns actually provide extra turns. Crashing the board into a great cascade should feel awesome and right now you just feel a little robbed. That poor guy yelling Extra Turn can’t hardly keep up and every time past the first you just want to strangle him for taunting you. Also (yeah I know I said one and only) a 7 cascade chunks just like it does in actual play but doesn’t reward anything. That should at a minimum count as a 4 of a kind match and not cost you the turn. Usually there is a four of a kind in there somewhere, but watching 7+ 3 of a kinds fall and hearing the chunking sound on them and then getting nothing is also kind of disheartening.

I personally have never really been overly worried about that whole 3 of A is less than 1 of B. First because you also get extra stuff falling in which you have to count the value of that as well. Second because I generally want what is in the later chests more than the earlier chests anyway, so I want them to progress. Now clearly when I am low on moves and the game is nearly over I am going to focus on mopping up coins, but that is not a big deal to me and I think the coins actually progress relatively well.

As to being able to play multiple PvP games in the time of a single TH I don’t find that to be the case. Both take me about the same amount of time. With PvP I have to consider the board, the spells, the recent AI cascade and likely actions between every turn. With TH I can often plan two moves at once and then execute them quickly. My general plan remains intact turn to turn with the exception of long cascade turns. So while I take more turns in TH than in PvP I am able to execute those turns faster.

-Razlath

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