Monday, August 25, 2014

Level Screw Series - Part 1: When CLA Turns into Level Screw

This is the follow up to my Card Level Advantage (CLA) series. In these articles I wrote about one of the most important aspects of randomness in Solforge. I described how it can be measured and also how its effect on the game is very dependent on the cards themselves. In the last two articles I wrote about how players can build their decks to account for CLA and how they can play to both take advantage of it when you're ahead and minimize the disadvantages it can bring.

I really enjoy the game of Solforge and dealing with CLA is a big part of the game and is part of the randomness that makes the game dynamic and challenging. However, its not without its problems.I believe there are two main problems with this: 1) It is confusing for beginners and 2) It is frustrating for veterans. For this article I will talk about problem 1 and in future articles I will go into all the details that revolve around problem 2.

Was it luck or was it me?


In my experience, when someone discovers Solforge, they will usually get hooked on the simple but addictive gameplay and the exciting level-up mechanic which gives a very clear sense of progression within each game. Eventually, they'll play a game where they lose because for a couple of turns they drew level 1 cards while the opponent drew level 3 cards. The main problem here for people starting out is that it is difficult to distinguish when a game state has been influenced by extreme bad luck (which certainly happens) or if it was just a little bit of bad luck aided by bad choices on behalf of the player.


Many new players I've seen immediately blame luck fully and do not stop to consider the possibility that if they had done some things differently, they could have won somehow. Even if winning was impossible due to extreme bad luck, a good player should always look back at a game and look for opportunities for improvement. Having said that, getting beaten up by what seems like really bad luck can take a toll on human nature and discourages learning.

Positive ACLA can win the game


In part 1 of the CLA series I defined what is Acumulated Card Level Advantage. If you haven't read it yet, please do so. In general, the player with the highest ACLA in the game will have an advantage and it is to be expected that, all things equal (specifically player skill and deck strengths), that player will win. Community member Dehboy wrote a statistical analysis of Solforge, showing evidence of this behavior.

I should clarify that Dehboy's analysis is measuring level 3 cards played and that doesn't measure ACLA exactly since it doesn't take into account cumulative CLA over multiple turns nor does it account for cases when the highest level card wasn't played or how leveling cards make it more likely for one player to draw higher level cards but gives them a board disadvantage in the early turns. Regardless of this, the conclusion should be the same, the player who draws more powerful cards is more likely to win.

This can be a turn off for players wanting a more skill based game but its exactly how all other card games based on randomness work. The important thing to realize is that in most games, ACLA will hover around 0, going back and forth between the players, keeping the game relatively fair and allowing each player's skill and deck strength to determine the outcome. This is why win rate is fairly consistent for each player.

How luck affects different skill levels


I don't have access to Solforge numbers but if the player base follows the same patterns that most other games do and we graph win rate vs number of players we should see a bell curve with its hump centered at the 50% win rate line, meaning a large percentage of the players are close to a 50% win rate.

Having a graph that looks like that means that the closer a player is to the 50% line, the more luck affects their games. This is because they are more likely to face opponents of similar skill since most players will actually have a win rate close to 50% and the closer the skill level is to an opponent's, the more effect luck has on the outcome of the game since both will have a similar quality of play and be making a similar number of mistakes.

Most people will start with low skill and improve as they understand the basic rules of the game, but while they are learning the subtleties of the game, they will undoubtedly end up in the 50% bell curve hump, along with a good percentage of other players and during this time, most games will actually feel like they depended completely on luck.

New Player Experience


Combining all this should give a picture of what the new player experience can be like. After understanding the basic rules, they might try to play more competitively but will end up losing to what always seems to be bad draws. While it may be true that they are losing during a moment of negative ACLA they won't realize that they could have made many decisions during deck building and during their earlier plays that could have allowed them to minimize the effects of that negative ACLA so that they could then take advantage when the ACLA turned the other way, which is what usually happens. This can leave a new player with a very bad taste in the mouth and if the only source of feedback are other players making them feel like they are dumb or ignorant then its unlikely they will come back to the game.

This is an unfortunate side effect of how the randomness works for Solforge. Its so in-your-face that it hides the way that gameplay decisions affect the game and trying to explain this to someone often end up sounding patronizing.

Leveling Up The Tutorials


I think that making sure that new players understand the subtleties of ACLA that I have tried to explain in these articles is important and its a great opportunity for improvement in the Solforge client. There is currently a tutorial that explains how the game works but it only focuses on the basic rules and the interface, which is enough to get a person playing but in no way good enough to understand what you can do against the randomness in the game.

Stoneblade has repeteadly stated that one of their highest priorities is working on a single player campaign mode and that it will also work as their new tutorial. I have high hopes that this will help to educate new players on the random elements of the game. I'm hoping it has some form of teaching the tips I mentioned in the CLA series articles about underdrops, blocking, and all the other suggestions that matter in the game. Perhaps as the adventure in the campaign goes along you will be given specific cards and suggested to play them in certain manners, helping you see how they affect the game in the long run.

Linking to Knowledge


Even with a well executed tutorial there will always be a lot of information missing because its not possible to fit it all or make it work in a tutorial. For that I'm hoping that Stoneblade adds ways to access the wealth of information that exists on the web directly from the client, or at the very least from their home web page.

The Solforge official site has many useful articles that can help a new player get much better by they aren't accessible unless one is searching for them by name or tag, making it useless for someone who doesn't know what they are looking for. In addition there are multiple community created strategy sites like Ghox's Socks and DeadOnBoard that host many useful articles, including, for example, Konan's guide for beginners.

Solforge also has a very prevalent group of streamers that show exactly what one needs to think of when playing. It would be great if Stoneblade linked to these streamers and had some way for them to tell players in the client that they are currently streaming.

Closing Notes


Solforge is a fantastic game, but its design makes the randomness seem harsher and more uncontrollable than it really is. Any player can drastically improve their win rate by understanding the subtleties of the game. Unfortunately, at this time its not easy to figure out those subtleties and I believe many players can get turned off by this. In my opinion it is very important that Stoneblade create an engaging campaign that teaches the knowledge required to get past the randomness in the game and also improve their client and web site so that the information that already exists is made more accessible to people interested in the game.

While its entirely possible to increase your win rate by building good decks and playing them properly, its undeniable that there will be games where negative ACLA goes beyond a certain limit and makes it impossible to win. This causes a great deal of frustration and is a whole different problem with the way the leveling game mechanic is implemented and not amount of knowledge or skill can get rid of it.

With the release of Set 3, Stoneblade has designed many new cards to try to reduce this frustration but its still an interesting problem to  analyse. In the next article I write, I'll go into a deeper analysis around the whole concept of level screw, the real and uncontrollable level screw, how it affects players and I'll look at some of the suggestions that have been made to try to tacle it.

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