GameDesign - Informed vs. Uninformed decisions in game

I have one more thing that might shed some light on what other people do.

You said " no-body in their right mind (who is just remotely familiar with the game) will ever use 3 diamonds to open a box whoes content you don't know." But that's not true. Or else there are millions of people not in their right mind.

Five words. "The thrill of the chase". Lots and lots of people regularly pay real money on raffle tickets with the hope of that big jack pot. They buy these tickets not knowing what, if anything, they will win. The first box I paid to open gave me five diamonds. Talk about an adrenalin rush! Loads of people everyday, buy the post man's 35 card package, just trying to get that tractor or windmill and there is a whole thread here about people paying even more (5 diamonds) to buy a mystery net not know what will be in it, all in hopes of getting the elusive pearl. So based on your comments there are a whole lot of us not in our right minds

But I know you didn't mean it like that, right. Some people like the uninformed choice, the surprise, the unknown. What better place to take those risks than in a game that doesn't have to cost us any money.

I personally don't gamble. I don't like the odds, but two of the best times in my life were when we went to a fund raiser Las Vegas night. If you are un-aware of what these are, I'll try to summarize. You usually pay an admission fee or a set donation and you get a set number of chips. The host sets up various games of chance that you might see at a casino in Vegas. Slot machines, roulette wheels, back jack tables, etc. Everyone gets to play all evening, buy drinks and food etc. At the end of the evening there is an auction or raffle where you "buy" donated goods and services with your evening's "winnings". All the money goes to charity. They are really fun because you get the thrill of gambling without any real risk while doing a good thing for charity. Hay day provides a little of that. The thrill of chasing that elusive tractor or pearl but no chance of spending the house payment at the casino.

Anyway. That's why the not always knowing what the prize will be is fun to a lot of us.

As a poker player, I know as well as anyone about the thrill of the chase. I love the randomness and excitement of it.

But don't get misled by the conversation, because random and uninformed really are two different things. If some things become informed, it will not change the randomness of it, and it really wouldn't change the excitement of it.

Here's an example of random against uninformed.

For boats- if it wasn't random, that would mean there is a clear pattern. I.E green/blue/green/purple/green/gold (for simplicities sake). This means as soon as you saw that pattern, you know that every other boat is going to be green, and in between that the blue/purple/gold cycle around. This would be boring as anything and you'd have had enough within a week or two. To clarify, this is not what is being suggested.

Instead, the cycle is as random as ever, but upon arrival- you find out what voucher the boat has. The excitement is still present in the 4 hour waiting time- what voucher will I get?



The biggest thing here though, by far, is people don't like change. Let me put this to you- when we get the boats, the items are all told to us beforehand. What if someone wanted to change that now so that you DON'T see the items? How many of you that advocate the randomness and uninformed nature of the game would support a change where we don't see the boat items?

What about if Hay Day had been created originally where you see the vouchers for truck orders and boat orders, and the townies tell you what items they want before you put them through? If someone complained that it was too transparent, would you honestly say that you would prefer it to be changed?

Think honestly about what the game would be like, what would change, and whether that change would actually be for the worse. SC have done a great job making a great game- but games get better by evolving, and no game has a perfect system. There will always be things that could be improved.

Makes sense the way you say it. The needs of the coming boat were added because of the time element in filling a boat. I was a part of the captains achievement helpers which was started because it was so hard to fill twelve consecutive boats. Several things were changed since the addition of the boat including being able to flag crates for help. First you could flag them all, but that was changed to just three. The uproar about that change was huge, but it made sense to me. Someone could get the achievement without filling a single one of their own crates. Anyway more and more changes were made including not having double and triple of one item. Eventually it became possible if not easy for someone to get the achievement without our help and we disbanded. Just a bit of history there. So your example about randomness with the boats has an added element, but I get your point.

I don't know why they don't tell us what the voucher color is when the boat comes in, but you can bet more boats would be turned away. Not that this would hurt the game though, but it would change the global boat events that's for sure. I think the town will affect the current event A lot.

I also understand resistance to change, more than most because of my children and their conditions, and you have a good point there. So often it is so hard to see past the initial change to see the effect it will have. When they first started the town teasers, I was really against it. But I like it now. And knowing what the townies want wouldn't bother me nearly as much as knowing what the special gift was. I just don't know how they would do it. It would be nice if we could find out what they want and then have the option to send them to the next place or back to the town hall or waiting area. Sort of like having an item on back order. But since there is no time element like the river boat, I guess they just figured that we could just let them stand there till we got what they wanted. A bit sloppy but not impossible.

Sometimes , and don't tell anyone ;) I think that supercell is a lot like Apple. They deliberately hold something back in order to have something great for the next update. I think that's the case about a new shop for clothes that everyone seems to think is coming. The town is too new to add a new shop right now, just like it was a big enough update that the summer things had to wait a bit. But that's just conjecture.

Personally, I think the uninformed part of the game is actually pretty much randomness which I'm in favor of. On a basic level (and as a game designer) I think it's more entertaining. There have been various psychological studies and such proving the point, as well.

On the whole, it's not a big issue for me. I doubt my game style would change much at all if I knew what vouchers I was going to get, or what the little people would give for rewards. Of course, I would just focus on the gold vouchers and what I needed while tossing the other stuff. On the whole, I think that would make the game less fun.

I agree that spending 3 diamonds to open an unknown chest is something I would never do. Yes, the random chance is entertaining, but I don't like to make uninformed decisions if it isn't likely to be profitable. For the same reason, I rarely do boat or truck orders unless I need the xp or I have an excess of the items. The random chance of a rare item or voucher isn't much of a concern.

Basically, if you have 50% to get a red item and 50% to get a blue item it's more fun than knowing which it will be beforehand. I don't view the unknown random chance as an uninformed decision. I view it as a calculated risk or a negligible concern. Hay Day is very much a resource management game and part of that management is constantly making informed decisions. Nearly everything I do in Hay Day is based on helping out or an informed choice. I rarely base any decision on random factors unless I've calculated the odds.

If probabilities and game coding are considered, all the things mentioned in the opening post aren't actually uninformed decisions, but just good/bad decisions based on random chance. And axes and Tar buckets are both useful. Axes are pure profit and xp when used on bushes and tar buckets can be sold for money to someone who might need them.

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Originally Posted by alcibiades

First of all, you clearly have not understood the difference between uninformed and random. Those are not the same thing, as I tried to explain in OP, and like Dysdave did a perhaps better job than me at explaining further up on this page. I'm fine with customers giving random items, but I don't want to be uninformed about what I get - i.e. I want to know in advance what item they will give. Secondly, I never said every item on the list needs to be addressed, but I did list them as options, and as such I'm open for discussion of them.

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Dressing a made up term and calling a random dice role 'uninformed' does not change it from being random. You know what will come out of a visitor, you know what can come out of a red box, and you know what can come out of an ore/jewelry truck order. Every thing on that list has a loot table that it draws from and even at level 50, I have a fairly good idea of what is what.

edit: As my game design experience is limited to economic balance and in game commerce, I did google the terms to see if they actually existed in game design and the definitions you are presenting do not match the documentation explaining the terms. (see: Game Design Workshop, Fullerton) amazon preview had enough text to answer question:)

The town would simply be boring if all the construction guys gave were hammers or the pink dress lady always dropped paint, country guy could drop maps...

If you are told what is in the red box, and you have the choice to use diamonds or not, do you honestly think SC would not figure out the relative demand of things and price each item on the red box loot table accordingly? It would effectively eliminate the 5 diamond drop. I much prefer the pure unknown of it.

I see what you are saying but you are simply trying to turn this apples of a game into an orange game. Two different animals, especially seen with these ios based mini games. A lot of your logic would be more applicable to a larger construct, say an mmo. For this mini-time sink of a game the knowledge you are trying to throw around is beyond the scope of the game.

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Originally Posted by Tiggerr129

You said " no-body in their right mind (who is just remotely familiar with the game) will ever use 3 diamonds to open a box whoes content you don't know." But that's not true. Or else there are millions of people not in their right mind.

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That's interesting. I wonder where you have the numbers from, but then again, my assertion that no-one would do it was also based on the very limited empirical basis of my own evaluation of the game and talk within my neighborhood. Let's create a poll to get a larger data sample!

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Originally Posted by maxell

Dressing a made up term and calling a random dice role 'uninformed' does not change it from being random. You know what will come out of a visitor, you know what can come out of a red box, and you know what can come out of an ore/jewelry truck order. Every thing on that list has a loot table that it draws from and even at level 50, I have a fairly good idea of what is what.

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I still stand by my oppinion that random and uninformed are two different things. Whether the term "uninformed" is also used in other contexts within gaming theory I don't know, I'm using the word in its more general meaning of making a decision without knowledge of the outcome, but not being a native english speaker, this might be a bad choice of word. Anyway, just to clarify, here are examples of how I see different combinations of random/none-random and informed/uninformed potentially coming in play:

• Random un-informed: All visitors can give all items. We don't know in advance which will be given.
• Random informed: All visitors can give all items. We know in advance which item will be given.
• None-random un-informed: Each visitor gives a specific item. We don't know in advance which item will be given [but obviously would fairly quickly figure out the pattern, making it a de-facto informed choice]
• None-random informed: Each visitor gives a specific item. We know in advance which item will be given.

One could throw in one more option:

• Optional: All visitors can give all items. We choose ourself which item we want as reward.

I'm adding the last option here because it's my impression that some people think that's what I advocate for, and that is most certainly not the case - that would indeed make game trivial. What I advocate for is random informed instead of random un-informed as we have now. An important distinction is that random informed will not give you endless amounts of the rare item, you will essentially get the same amount of rare materials as you get in random un-informed (assuming you fill all orders in un-informed system!), but the difference is you can send away customers who give un-desired items, which effectively saves you a lot of resources.

The latter part is crucial for me, because I see HayDay - like someone also mentioned above - as a resource-managing game. And for me, un-informed decisions are contraindicated in any form of managing game, because the entire basis of managing is to use information to make the best decisions. Now obviously HayDay is not only a resource-managing game, it's also sort of a city-builder game (with all the farm decoration and stuff) and then has that third element which is all the randomnes. And clearly we are drawn to the game for different reasons - for me, the combination of management and decoration is appealing, while the random elements are contrary to the management aspect. But others who are drawn to the random elements obviously will prioritize other things.

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Originally Posted by maxell

edit: As my game design experience is limited to economic balance and in game commerce, I did google the terms to see if they actually existed in game design and the definitions you are presenting do not match the documentation explaining the terms. (see: Game Design Workshop, Fullerton) amazon preview had enough text to answer question:)

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Just thought I'd point out that the distinction between informed vs uninformed is reasonably similar to the related but distinct concepts of information and randomness in Information Theory. I was drawing on my (limited) understanding of this theory in my earlier post. Essentially I was saying I liked fishing because knowing the lure, fishing spot and circle size help you narrow down which fish you will catch, without necessarily limiting it to a particular fish. In the language of information theory, the lure used, fishing spot and circle size convey information about the fish to be caught (information theory lets you quantify how much).

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Originally Posted by alcibiades

Thirdly, the reason I drag red boxes into this discussion - and that is partially a detour from the original topic, but none-the-less connected, and since you bring it up, let me elaborate - is because red boxes is one of several game features that we could call dummy features - by which I means features that are there but don't serve the purpose they are put there for, or in the case of red boxes only do it partially. The red box has a dual function:

• It can be unlocked, in which case it gives you its content for free
• It can be locked, in which case you can choose to spend an amount of diamonds (currently 3) to open it

The first function obviously is fine - it's mana from heaven, no complaints about that. However, the second function is essentially useles because no-body in their right mind (who is just remotely familiar with the game) will ever use 3 diamonds to open a box whoes content you don't know, simply because there is an overwhelming chance of the content not matching the value of 3 diamonds and/or the content being something you don't have particular need of at that time.

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I think the locked boxes serve an additional purpose you haven't considered. Freemium games work on the idea of offering players rewards in exchange for either the users time or payment in the premium currency (diamonds in Hayday) that can be bought for real money. We're familiar with this in the standard form: Want a new town? Well either you can wait three days or give us 97 diamonds to get it now.

The red boxes are really the same. Want to have a chance to get diamonds or useful items for your farm? Well either you can spend the time to go visit your friends farms and look for mystery boxes or you can spend diamonds to open the first one you find. You shouldn't think of the diamonds as paying for the items inside but paying for the time you don't have to spend looking for an unlocked box. The locked boxes are what makes it time consuming to find the unlocked ones. With this in mind, the diamond cost is probably similar to speeding up a machine.

I know you think the diamond cost of speeding up a machine is ridiculously high (I agree), but clearly there are enough people willing to buy diamonds to make HayDay profitable.

Well you totally skipped the rest of my post dealing with raffles and casinos etc. that loads of people in their right minds participate in daily, so I am done. Your poll doesn't mean much on a forum where we tell people how to get the boxes more regularly by not closing the window. Knowing that you can increase your chances of getting an open box by increasing your chances of finding the box, changes the whole equation. And since your poll won't reach the 98% percent of hayday players who don't use the forum! your sample size is way too small. Especially since your original audience was all people in their right minds.

Have fun with the rest of your discussion.

Speaking for myself only here and after weighing the merits of your position, I could forsee a detrimental impact upon my play if, hypothetically, the uninformed random elements were changed to the informed elements you're advocating.

Having advance notice of all items town visitors would request prior to service and having knowledge of the reward/prize they would give for said products would indeed aid in making an informed decision on whether to invest the resources, yet by the very act of knowing the outcome of such informed action, I would then be able to choose whether to engage in said transaction for the proffered reward. Using the aforementioned poker analogy, I would only play the hands I knew in advance I was going to win.

As such, if I believe my resources are more valuable than the prize offered, I would decline until such time a more worthy reward came along. To engage in such behavior repeatedly, because of pre-defined limited space for resources, would effectively bring my play to a halt. Why should or would I sell premium items for a green voucher or a box of nails when, through the repeated refusal of such offers, I know they will eventually command a gold voucher or a map piece?...but until such time, those items are warehoused waiting for the right client with an acceptable offer to request them.

Game progress can only be achieved through supplying a demand. Being informed, if the demand's reward is not sufficient, then I do not supply, which will lead to an inevitable stagnation until an acceptable prize came along, say, once every 24 visitors. What would be my incentive to play if I knew that I was only going to transact business with one out of every two dozen customers? Being informed sounds pretty dull to me in that instance.

As the system currently stands, without being informed of the variables, every transaction becomes potentially a gold mine from each of those 24 clients. Value is in the eye of the individual beholder, and maybe it is the thrill of the unknown, or perhaps I am a truly lousy poker player, but I think I prefer the possible odds of 24:24 rather than the guaranteed 1:24.

Great thread, BTW. It's made me think, and has been very revealing as to how fellow farmers evaluate and prioritize when playing!:)