GameDesign - Informed vs. Uninformed decisions in game

I would like to hear other HayDay players oppinion on this subject, because something that annoys me greatly in HayDay is the extreme favoring of uninformed decisions in the game. I'm curious if other players feel the same.

To clarify the concepts, by an uninformed decision I mean one where we don't know the (exact) outcome of the decision. An example of this is the town customers, who come asking for some products, and while we know that we will get some reward if we fill (all) their requests, we don't know what the reward will be - we may get a valuable red brick or map piece, or we may get a useless axe or tar bucket. The equivalent informed decision would be telling us up front what special gift the customer is carying - then we would be able to decide for ourselves whether we find the "price" worth paying for the gift.

Here's a list of notable uninformed decisions in HayDay:

• Not knowing what gift we will get from town customers
• Not knowing what items they will want in the second and/or third store when deciding whether to fill their request in first store
• Not knowing what voucher we will get from filling jewelry or bar truck orders
• Not knowing what voucher we will get from filling boat completely
• Not knowing what personal reward goals are when doing events
• Not knowing what kind of fish that bites the lure (while some can be recognized by size/behaviour/habitat, many can't)
• Not knowing what items hide in locked red chests

I want to point out here that uninformed decisions are not the same as random features. The WoF is a random feature, the misery gift catalogue is a semi-random feature. There can of course be overlap between the two (you could say that the type of fish we catch is random) but an important point is that you combine the two - for instance, we could have a fishing system where we knew what fish we were catching but still kept the random element of the weight of the fish.

The problem with uninformed decisions are that they create frustration. On the other hand, informed decisions promotes strategy and challenge in the game. For instance, with the current fishing system, if I want to catch an Asp, I need to use a purple (or gold) lure and have middle circle bite. However, purple lure/middle circle also matches Rainbowfish, Bluespotted Sunfish, Arctic Char, Green Sunfish and Longear Sunfish, and neither of these fish have a behaviour that significantly different from each other - and they all live in all areas. So all I can do is throw out a lure and hope for the best. If instead each of these fish lived in distinct areas, they game would offer me the opportunity to actually control which fish I catch - saving me the frustration of losing a valuable lure on a fish I don't need. Furthermore, this would add the challenge of learning which fish live where, which will make the game more fun. Of course, the random element of the weight could still be there, making certain that if I want both bronze, silver and gold weight, I'll need time, perseverance and luck - thus securing the longevity of the game.

Imo. most of the currently uninformed decisions could be changed directly into informed decisions without changing much else in the game. Why can't we know upfront what voucher the truck order or boat order will give me? This will make it much more meaningful for me - I might decide to actually fill a challenging boat order if I know I get a valuably voucher, instead of just sending it away - something that's even more relevant now that town consumption means that 9/10 boats go down river empty. This would make game more varied and more fun. Sure, there are some features that would need an overall tweak, but don't they need this anyway - for instance, who ever pays 3 diamonds to open a red chest that will give you 1 (one) item which can well be an axe or saw? Obviously it doesn't make sense to tell us if a chest contains 5 diamonds and then let us pay 3 diamonds to open it, but perhaps chest prize should be lowered to 1 diamond and then chest also only contains 1 diamond (or perhaps 2 diamonds). Anyway, I'm getting lost in details here ...


So what do you think about the uninformed decision in HayDay - do they make the game more fun, or do they just cause frustration?

I wouldn't mind knowing the items townies want from each building in advance or the specific voucher a boat order will bring, since after selling two jams, a candy, & a pizza to a townie, I'm rather loathe to forgo that sort of investment, only to turn them away on the third building. Still a mallet isn't a knock your socks off, WOW reward either. Same for boat orders...4 crates of jam, cheesecake, & sugars are worth far more than a pitiful green voucher.

That being said, where would the mystery be if players knew what the contents of the chests were? As a non-diamond purchasing player, if I knew which chests contained them, why of course those would be the ones I concentrated on. The same would hold true for those on the hunt for tools or EMs. With that type of play in force, it would be almost a guarantee that SC would tweak programming to reduce the amount of items available to find, which IMO would add to frustrations. I imagine a good many players depend on the chests for daily freebies as do I.

I can certainly empathize with your fishing frustrations, even though I'm not a big lure fisher, but forgive me for having to say that as a avid fisher in RL, I had to giggle a bit at your fishing suggestions. If only it were so easy in RL! If I knew what bait to use precisely in which spot, my name would be in the record books for sure! Not making fun of your frustration or suggestions, but in the virtual world of fishing for digital pixels, Hay Day is pretty close to the mark. I, for one, vote to let the fish be fish. After all, throwing a lure out & hoping for the best is exactly what fishing is all about!

As far as vouchers for truck orders, there is a chart that gives the color of voucher most likely to be received for jewelry orders, and with regard to event prizes, I'm neutral on that. I've gotten my share of saws & dynamites for X amounts of cakes & cookies, but I've also gotten my share of gold vouchers & special decor items (not just the advertised global prize) from them too. If it isn't something that flips my wig, no big deal, it goes into storage or the RSS. Either way, I got it by doing something I would have been doing anyway.

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Originally Posted by LadyJEM5

That being said, where would the mystery be if players knew what the contents were? As a non-diamond purchasing player, if I knew which chests contained them, why of course those would be the ones I concentrated on. The same would hold true for those on the hunt for tools or EMs. With that type of play in force, it would be almost a guarantee that SC would tweak programming to reduce the amount of items available to find, which IMO would add to frustrations. I imagine a good many players depend on the chests for daily freebies as do I.

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Yes, your point about the diamond chests are valid - that was why I suggested a "same for same" prize/yield on diamonds in chests, so that diamond chests would only be valuably when you found them unlocked - if a chest only contained 1 diamond and you paid 1 diamond to open it, balance would not disrupted by you knowing what was in it. I think there should still be a chance to find a chest unlocked, but point is no-one in their right mind ever uses diamonds to unlock a chest as it is now, so basically we have a game feature here where half of it is completely pointless.

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Originally Posted by LadyJEM5

I can certainly empathize with your fishing frustrations, even though I'm not a big lure fisher, but forgive me for having to say that as a avid fisher in RL, I had to giggle a bit at your fishing suggestions. If only it were so easy in RL! If I knew what bait to use precisely in which spot, my name would be in the record books for sure! Not making fun of your frustration or suggestions, but in the virtual world of fishing for digital pixels, Hay Day is pretty close to the mark. I, for one, vote to let the fish be fish.

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Well the game is not about realism - after all, in real life, pigs don't walk on after you strip bacon from them either ... The game should be about having most fun, and from a game-design point of view, the current fishing system doesn't make sense. I mean, why bother having different fishing areas, when the fish live in all of them? What's the point of having the picture of the waterfall behind some fish and the picture of deap water behind others when the fish live in all areas? After all, even in real life, some fish live in some habitats, while others live in others. But I appreciate your input, but as one who uses a lot of time lure fishing, I can only say the current same not only seems illogical but also has caused me immense amounts of frustration.

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Originally Posted by alcibiades

Yes, your point about the diamond chests are valid - that was why I suggested a "same for same" prize/yield on diamonds in chests, so that diamond chests would only be valuably when you found them unlocked - if a chest only contained 1 diamond and you paid 1 diamond to open it, balance would not disrupted by you knowing what was in it. I think there should still be a chance to find a chest unlocked, but point is no-one in their right mind ever uses diamonds to unlock a chest as it is now, so basically we have a game feature here where half of it is completely useless.

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Forgive if I seem particularly dense, although it is the wee hours where I am, but would not a one for one prize/yield be equally pointless? Why would a player spend a diamond to get a diamond? Perhaps I'm missing something because I don't spend diamonds to open chests, but I was under the impression that for those that do, the paid chest always contains an item. I myself wouldn't necessarily call 3 or 5 (I'm not exactly sure which it is) diamonds for a saw a great bargain, but when a roll of tape costs 8 to get an upgrade, then it would be worth consideration.

I guess everyone is different, I can see your point but I like the surprise of the 'uninformed' decision. When I get something good it feels more like a win. Maybe I'm not really a serious player.....

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Originally Posted by LadyJEM5

Forgive if I seem particularly dense, although it is the wee hours where I am, but would not a one for one prize/yield be equally pointless? Why would a player spend a diamond to get a diamond?

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That's exactly the point, it needed to be so that you wouldn't be able to harves indifinite diamonds by going for all the locked chests with diamonds in them. This way, you would still get the occasional diamond rewards from open chests with diamonds in them, while closed chests with diamonds in would just be "blanks". However, this would make opening chests with diamonds an actual option when content was not diamonds, but perhaps some BEM or SEM that you needed, or just gold.

I actually prefer not knowing. What fun would it be knowing exactly what ur going to get? The element of surprise would be taken out of the equation and the game would be mundane, IMO. Not knowing forces u to try. The end result might not be what u had hoped for but if u knew what the outcome would be...a green voucher from boats, an axe from the townies, u wouldn't even attempt to complete the task at hand.

Totally opposed, though I certainly support your right to this opinion. Someone in a thread a few weeks ago mentioned the psychology of indeterminate outcomes. Something about how rats? pushing a button for food will grow weary of the exercise if food drops every time, but will remain engaged if the drops are sporadic. The element of surprise is part of the charm, IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Haystacker

I actually prefer not knowing. What fun would it be knowing exactly what ur going to get? The element of surprise would be taken out of the equation and the game would be mundane, IMO.

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Not sure I agree with this - for instance, for many months before the town update I used the voucher spreadsheet which ment I pretty much always knew what voucher I would get from my truck orders - which was awesome. Sending away green vouchers and filling the others was much more satisfying for me, and trust me, the excitement was not less each time I got an order that gave me gold voucher - even when I know in advance that was what I would get.

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Originally Posted by Haystacker

Not knowing forces u to try. The end result might not be what u had hoped for but if u knew what the outcome would be...a green voucher from boats, an axe from the townies, u wouldn't even attempt to complete the task at hand.

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I disagree with this - quite on the contrary, as things are now, because I don't know, I will throw away any order/customer that is bad/challenging - without trying. On the other hand, if I know I would actually get a very desired item, I might just consider filling that sugar boat, or whatever the item at hand is.

As game is (for me) now, I already make the decision only to fill some orders/customers - I just make the decision on an uninformed basis. That for me is unsatisfactory. But I appreciate your feedback and realize that we (as: The HayDay players) have many different approaches to the game, which is also why I started this discussion to hear how other players feel about this.

alcibiades, this is one of the more thoughtful and better presented game behavior change threads. So thanks for that.

But I wouldn't want such a change, either. I find that I am generally opposed to the "I have an idea to make the game easier" threads. In this case, you're basically asking for it to be turned into a trivial choice of "Do I want to trade 6 popcorn for a handdrill?". No thanks.

There is strategy to the town. Keep a log of your townies and try to find behavioral patterns. Or pay attention to the amount of XP they give: I was super excited to finally get my beach cafe, but now never import somebody to it since the XP is just so freaking low to be not worth the trouble. In what I call the V2 town (from server update on Jun-6 until today), I find that Salesman has 71% chance of giving town expansion items, whereas Locals just 52%. So yeah, you can strategize, but it's harder. But I like that. And there is certainly planning: do you want to import one more person to the last spot in the spa, even though in 45 minutes somebody will free up in the diner and need to go to the spa?