Fun with solving puzzles (and dragons): Thoughts after 500 days of PAD

by Cixelyn • 10 years ago

67 5 10 years ago

minimaxir• 10 years ago

For those that are adverse to freemium gaming and the various F2P shenanigans that many apps employ: Puzzle & Dragons is arguably the most generous F2P game I've ever played, giving out expensive premium currency daily. As a result, you can get atleast a month of playtime without hitting a paywall.

While the board mechanics mentioned in the linked article are fun and interesting, there is little variation in gameplay style from level-to-level, and as a result, PAD is grindy as hell and is the reason I've stopped playing. A modern freemium mechanic other apps use to combat player dropoff for this reason is Auto play, which lets the game play itself (or simulate a runthrough of a round) for the same rewards. There's been a lot of debate in the gaming community on whether this is good design, but Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, a F2P game which implements both styles of Autoplay, has been doing very well on the Top Grossing charts.

jawbone3• 10 years ago

The fact that autoplay makes for better retention of gamblers is not a long term asset; Autoplaying means it is straight up games of chance, and casino gambling is usually regulated differently from games of skill.

Acording to a recent estimate, something like 0.19 % (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11354546), and given the type of f2p under discussion, "the autoplayers", that fraction should be compared to something like the the rate of gambling disorders in the US population (around 1% for adults, 6-9% for youngsters http://www.ncrg.org/sites/default/files/oec/pdfs/ncrg_fact_s...)

glandium• 10 years ago

I tried installing Puzzle and Dragons once on my Nexus 4, and it was crashing at startup. The game uses native ARM code in a .so that couldn't be loaded because of (IIRC) missing symbols. I had a pretty standard Android install, nothing special about it, so really, I don't know how it ever worked on Android at all for other people.

alanfalcon• 10 years ago

Fascinating article. I got a little bit into the gme a couple years ago - just enough to get a taste of the crazy depth availble (and dedicated grind required to get far) before realizing that it was probably not a game I wanted a lose a couple of years of my life to. I had no idea about board maximizing websites though.

greggman• 10 years ago

Being I was corrected by an GungHo employee I'd just like to point out the name is "Puzzle & Dragons" Puzzle is singular, Dragons is plural.

I also attended a talk in Tokyo by the designer of Puzzle & Dragons who pointed out he considered it an action game. It was specifically designed to require you to move fast. Since you can manipulate the entire board in a single move but you have a limited amount of time to do it the faster and more accurately you can move a piece the better you do at the game making it an action skill based game, not a typical pick 3 game.

Yes I realize that partly what the article is about.

Fun with solving puzzles (and dragons): Thoughts after 500 days of PAD

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