On 4/8/2022 12:52 PM, ais523 via agora-discussion wrote: > On Fri, 2022-04-08 at 19:45 +0000, nix via agora-discussion wrote: >> On 4/8/22 13:34, Jason Cobb via agora-discussion wrote: >>> Also, while timing scams are interesting gameplay, I don't think it's a >>> good idea to change the rules for the sole purpose of making them easier >>> to perform. In this specific situation, the timing element is likely to >>> be repealed soon anyway. >> >> Tangent to this topic: >> >> I feel like there's a recent push for these minmaxing/optimization tools >> (automation, acting on behalf, contracts) etc. The problem is that >> minmaxing/optimization is basically solving a puzzle. And once a puzzle >> is solved it's boring. This is what happened with Cards in Sets, they're >> solved now thanks to contracts. That was a fun exercise that took us a >> while of play. But that was a sub-game. If Agora as a whole becomes >> solve-able, it becomes boring. > > Huh? I don't think Cards are solved at all, and that's part of the > reason I find them interesting. We've solved the problem of forming > sets using cards from players who are active and willing to trade, but > there are lots of cards that players are unwilling to trade, or held by > inactive people, and making sets with those is much harder.
I think the set-cashing part (so, like half the game) is nearly solved by the contracts - it's suppressed in-person dealing on discord noticeably, when a critical mass of players are just throwing things in a hopper, there are fewer opportunities to careful trading 1-by-1 (and the fun of guessing what a good deal is to different players etc). > The consequence is that our current economy has really interesting > liquidity issues, and in practice players have been known to form > suboptimal trades because they need products more quickly than they'd > get them by forming a set and distributing the resulting products > fairly. > Both are going on, and I agree the resource-spending side of it isn't solved, but I've noticed that the card trading has just slowly tilted more towards the contracts over time. -G.
