The “View Game Details” on the CB page are a little vague and could be dolled up a bit. The page is missing the list of badges available, namely I See All for 1 win and Fortune Teller for 25 wins. It also doesn’t provide any information on the number of points given for each win (1,000). Would you be able to include that information under the game details?

Speaking of badges, surely it’s time to consider another badge. Several players have over 1,000 wins – that’s a great accomplishment and could be recognized as such.

One more thing - I’ve noticed on the Buzz feed that wins at exactly .45 do not appear. Every other win after that point shows up and the winner’s name is posted (7:55 ***** guessed the word of the hour! It was *****.) At the top of the hour another message (The Crystal Ball has reset! Last hour’s word was *****. Guess this hour’s word and win a badge!) appears but no mention of the winner. It would be lovely if the blind guesses at .45 were given the same prominence as other wins.

Thanks Terry!

The last hour's word was singularize and it says no one guessed it but someone did long before the end. I have screen shots if you need them.

I noticed that too at the time, satguru. Perhaps a space at the end of the word that mucked things up? It would be nice to know why that happens - I've seen it before.

I'm moving my original post over to the Suggestions thread. It's gotten no attention here.

This past hour, the winning word was biegnet, which no-one guessed- for good reason: it is beignet misspelled!

" The “View Game Details” on the CB page are a little vague and could be dolled up a bit. The page is missing the list of badges available, namely I See All for 1 win and Fortune Teller for 25 wins. It also doesn’t provide any information on the number of points given for each win (1,000). Would you be able to include that information under the game details? "

Added.

As for more badges, I'd be up to adding a new upgradeable badge. Wes?

Thank you very much, Terry!

I forgot to add the Crystal Pyramid badgelet in this thread as one of the CB badges (I had moved my post over to the suggestion thread with that included but forgot to update here...v sorry.) Might you be able to add that to the game details as well please?

Thanks for considering the new badge! Looking forward to Wes' reply.

I'll discuss privately with Terry first before saying anything concrete here. I believe that Crystal Ball has some balance issues that will need addressing before we can consider more badges - in particular we need to ensure a better chance of winning for casual players without making strategic play entirely unviable.

Unfortunately, the obvious way of introducing divisions does not work here. Other challenges depend on there being exactly one word of the hour.

Also - while I won't stop anyone from making suggestions, please be aware that I've already looked at a lot of options. I think I came up with two possible remedies, one significantly better than the other. But we'll need to discuss before expanding the game. I hope this can go thropugh quickly

Thank you, Wes.

If anyone has an idea for an award that won't favor the optimal strategy (waiting for the statistically best moment and then making 5 super-fast guesses), that could of course happen sooner. But it would have to be something that would reward you for playing a different strategy. And it should not be an entirely random thing such as "be runner-up 10 times".

Any ideas in that vein, please PM. (I'd rather not discuss details of future awards in the open)

As the strategy's not secret then anyone who wants to be a regular winner can play it, and that would even everyone up. Now we know it's far from a game of chance but a game primarily of skill then we could just carry on with it and encourage everyone to play strategically.

Crystal Ball was designed to be a casual game - not one where you have to speed-type (or more likely copy/paste from a dictionary download) at exactly one specific second every hour.

It was, by the way, also not designed as a game where players would want to amass thousands of wins.

And I want to ask the competitive strategy players: Would you still consider the hourly "be there at the exact right time and enter words" routine even remotely fun if 100+ players did the same and you'd get a win rate of under 1% from it simply because everyone does it?

To be clear: The best change for Crystal Ball, in a vacuum, would be to have divisions like in many other games.

I could see 0-24 wins, 25 to 124, 125 to 499 and 500+ as viable here. It would clearly differentiate between those who enjoy entirely casual, maximized strategy, and somewhere in between and let everyone play at the level they enjoy most.

So far so good - but this is not an option unless we change several other things that rely on there being exactly one word of the hour. Obviously you can't have the same word for all divisions unless you only reveal it once all four have won. You couldn't even tell the winner that they just won - that knowledge could be abused to win a different division. So that's no option. Changing other challenges because of Crystal Ball needing divisions is also not what I'd really like to do.

Also, having divisions would be a major re-code. The list of guesses made would need to be managed separately by division.

So divisions are most likely not the answer even though, purely speaking of finding a game balance that keeps CB enjoyable for all player ranges, it would be the best.

You seem to have ruled it out anyway, but divisions would make the game much more difficult at every level, since the more guesses are made, the more potential words are eliminated. The top division, 500+ wins, would have 46 players, three of them at least no longer being active. Add in time differences, which would reduce the player pool further, and the game would go from very difficult to win to nearly impossible.

As for the strategy, I've always assumed that the 'wait for the third letter to appear' tactic was used by the majority of players (your 100+ mentioned in post #1295479). Even newbies would soon realise this. Also, the strategy can vary depending on the start letters - rare ones are likely to be guessed during the blind guess period, uncommon ones between .45 and .50 while for the very common ones (sup, ove and so on) waiting until .57 for a clue to the final letter might be better.

Well, it's a bit more than just waiting for the right clue which gives you the best mathematical chance if you really want to win a lot. You also have to be super-fast in entering viable words so that no one else comes first (which involves tight clock-watching, a fast connection and possibly a dictionary from which to copy/paste so that you won't have to type).

That was not really the intent of how the game was meant to be played however - it was intended as a casual game and the late guesses and extra clues were just meant to ensure every hour has a winner. Due to the strategy and how successful it can be if executed optimally, CB is currently the game that sees most cheat accusations and frustrated newer players - even way more than the "no one can get 990 in a duel" claims.


It wasn't planned that people play this game to get thousands of wins - which is also why Fortune Teller wasn't upgraded so far. Making it even harder than it already is to win even one game without clock-watching (by providing more incentive to go to 1000 and higher) is not encouraging for newer / casual players.

My favored idea right now to enable a fair and interesting upgrade path for Fortune Teller that still leaves newbies a better chance would be to scale bonus guesses inversely with win count. Instead of everyone getting 5, newbies would get more than 5 (7 at zero wins) and absolute pros who have above 1554 wins(*) would get only one (but then the first is the one that counts for most when you play full strategy). Existing win counts would be scaled down to match the new probabilities and keep competition comparable between old and new modes. Basically, at certain thresholds, winning becomes a bit harder - this would let new / casual players win more often and still allow for those who want to chase 1000+ wins a game.

(As a side effect, it would make it less appealing to use the dictionary for top level play, since most good players can likely come up with one or two words that fit the bill quickly.)

(*) This cap would apply to the re-scaled values. As of now, no one would yet have reached this - ClarkyB's 2500 scales to somewhere in the 1400s range - so it would be at least 2 tries for everyone. 3 or more if you're not yet tier 7.

Unless you've had an overwhelming response from members wanting to see the game changed, I say leave it as is. No matter the original intention, it has evolved into what it is and that's part of the allure of the game.

My original post was to suggest a way to acknowledge those who have gone to great efforts to win as many words as they have. If you're not inclined to offer a new badge, that's fine but leave the game as is please.

Thanks.

I do see a significant number - not extremely high but high enough - of messages in admin feedback of players who are frustrated at the fact that the top players win too much and it's too hard for everyone else to get to 25 or even to 5 wins.

I would not want to do anything that would make this worse - and certainly offering badges or upgrades for high win counts would provide more incentive to become a serial winner.

I see one more option that doesn't change the gameplay as such - you'd still get the same 5 guesses, same timing, et cetera - but also alleviate the serial winner issue:

- We decide on a "champion" threshold. This could be around 250 - lower than tier 7.
- Champions play normally, but they cannot outright win in the last 15 minutes (i.e. take the win away from another player). They make their guesses and if they get the right word, they do get a win credit, but this does not stop the game. As such, a champ would get no immediate feedback whether a guess was right or wrong(*). Champ wins in the blind guess time are treated normally and do end the game with the usual runner up system.
- Once the game ends, the official winner is either the non-champ player who got it or (if none) the first champion who got it. ALL champs who got it right also get a win credited to them and get listed as having guessed right.

(*) Really attentive players could of course check the list of guesses as, obviously, a correct guess would not appear there. I suppose this could be abused somehow, but I'd trust champs not to do so.

Would that be an option? It leaves gameplay exactly the same for champs - in fact, you could get more wins because multiple champs can coexist - and also makes it more accessible to newer / more casual players at the same time as opening up options for high level badges.

If this is not an option to you champs, we should focus on developing badges that can be earned by other means than just amassing win count with optimum strategy, such as "win with 20 different third letters", "win 5 times before the third letter was given" (could be upgradeable) or "win once in each clue tier, i.e. one blind guess, one in the 45-50 time frame, etc."

As someone who would be in a 250 'champion' tier, I wouldn't mind the delayed gratification of knowing I'd won.

I also wonder if winning guesses should be limited to just one per 24 hours? Some time ago, it was limited to three wins, but perhaps it's time to scale it back even further.

I'd rather go the champ route than limiting wins further. Making it less than 3 would essentially etch the leaderboard in stone forever as no one can catch up.

The Champs would allow competitive players an almost unaltered experience (with even slightly higher win chances) while letting casual players go for their wins without needing the split-second timing.

By the way, as per my sketch for Fortune Teller with champs, 250 would be tier 4. Tier 7 would remain below 1554 so that there is some room between maxed tier and HurricaneBill for those who'd want to see his score as a cap (and I would like to keep win awards below that level even if we were to one day have a Tier 8). Thus, some of the top players would instantly max the badge. However, we could still add further badges that build on other feats like my ideas above to keep things interesting beyond the Hurricane.

I'm also O.K. with being at a 'lowly' tier 4, with delayed gratification

As someone who is not a big fan of the game, I can think of two changes that I'd like to see.

1. Make the Crystal Ball daily challenge come up less frequently (or not at all).

2. Change the rules in the random guess section so that if multiple people randomly guess the word, the one with fewer Crystal Ball wins gets credit. I know that one of the most discouraging things for me in this game was that the first time I guessed the word, I didn't win because one of the regular players also guessed it and I was only given honorable mention (or whatever the title is for the people who guess it and don't receive credit).

That’s kind of my concern here. I’m also not a big fan of this game, partly because I don’t find it fun. It’s either people go in blind guessing and get nowhere or they take ‘the strategy’, which makes this a lot less about actually taking a shot and more about ‘just doing the strategy quicker’. The catch is during all of the other hourlies, along with the fastest-finger stuff I’m learning something.

From the outside I don’t see a way to create meaningful additions to this game without it just rewarding the same people who’ve already hit the high tiers, which which case it’s not a challenge for them— it’s just more of the same grind.

I'm sure with many old board games etc they were also intended as one type of a game and became another. In the end it's the players who make it what it is, the writer provides the format. There is an element of skill I don't think was foreseen at the making and as a result it has become another game played by a group of regulars who like playing it and often win due to constant practice. I don't see that as a reason to change it but to encourage more people to play it however they want. I only personally look up words when I run out, and only paste anything in when the autocomplete happens to provide the exact word I need, neither of which happen very often.

I would suggest two games, the existing one as it is, and another one with whichever version you work out to allow wins more evenly. That would also mean if people wanted to play both it wouldn't give the pros any advantage in the newer version.

Another vote for "not at all".

Another one here.

Anyone want to guess what my difficult daily challenge is today (the day after I posted this)...