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Post by darkrose on Aug 12, 2008 17:53:22 GMT -5
I voted "too hard; always has been" because this is the first version I've played. It actually starts off fairly easy, but quickly becomes tough.
One thing that might help would be some tips or instructions--I feel like I'm flying completely blind, and that's certainly not helping.
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Post by spiffy on Aug 13, 2008 0:54:45 GMT -5
Adding to the above comment.
In the last update, when the blueprint requirements were raised, we were offered a throw away comment about how you could combine some tools for a massive combo, but no further details were given.
I seem to stumble on huge multipliers, but am unable to recreate them in the smith, and with no detailed FAQ or formula its completely hit and miss.
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Post by timehorse on Aug 13, 2008 10:19:04 GMT -5
My main beef with the 1.0.0.1 version was that the requirements for each blueprint and magic book were VERY unbalanced: they each required tonnes of Rain (or maybe it was Wind, I can never tell which column is which in that grid view) and this meant tedious play collecting lots of rarely used (Earth, Fire, Moon) and very few of the always or almost always need (Water, Wind). Combine that with my own statistical observation that I believe the Earth comes up more frequently than any other element and I believe Wind the least frequently. Fire comes up a little less often than Earth and Water and Moon come up about the same, a bit more often then Wind.
Now, in 1.0.1.0, my play was messed up due to a bug that I have not been able to reproduce which caused my Wind and Water counts to go from like a few hundred to on the order of 20,000 in just a few moves. I was testing the swipe technique in the mine (which, worse case should have just allowed me to collect more elements faster rather than cheating on a blueprint) when this happened. IMHO, swiping is not cheating per se, but if random play is more lucrative than thought and skill, I think we have a problem. OTOH, if I have exposed a bug, I would be happy to report it as such, though as yet I have not been able to reproduce it.
However, even with the "better than average" swipe method, I have completed a number of 2 and 3 level blueprints, but those at 6 still escape me, even with swipe. I am not a skilled player because I can't figure out mathematically what each tool does -- I understand some of it, and the alchemist is the easiest to understand, but what does a skill level do, I really don't know. More tools or more time or just making the time-stopper actually STOP time in the blueprints would be a start. I would even more suggest the ability, through a tool or scroll to "adjust" the balance of elements for a short period of time. For instance, say I plave my tool to complete a Moon: now, the moon will have a 50% bonus of appearing for the next 10 seconds. If we assume a uniform distribution before this tool -- 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% -- we would then have: 15% 15% 15% 15% 40% for the given period. Skill levels here could have meaning: the higher the skill, the longer the time OR the higher the adjustment, though obviously much beyond 50% and you end up just producing row upon row of Moon-triples.
As a simple diversion, mining is fun, but if it's just a matter of matches, columns gets old pretty quickly. The Tower Challenges are the funnest aspect of the game, but they are limited and can only be played one. Also, I never even understood what 1.4% means: does it mean each generates 1.4% more crystals, or 1.4% more element for each element collected? One thing though I would request, besides of course letting us replay magic books without totally resetting our character, would be, as a no cost bonus, allow people to play the ORIGINAL Mountain Lava for fun. I was working on it and had a few more ideas I was working toward when the patch came out and was too busy collecting Water to play that level as often as I would have liked. I think I got to play it twice before the change.
So, I would suggest more balance over-all, be that time, requirements, resource frequency or a new or better tool. And secondly, I don't mind trying to keep the level of the game secret, but could you AT LEAST make better descriptions of what is actually going one with each tool in the game?? Thanks!
Jeffrey.
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Post by timehorse on Aug 13, 2008 10:59:33 GMT -5
Oh, and following on from others, the iPhone 3G vs. the iPhone Edge vs. the iPod Touch all have different CPU speeds AFAICT. I have the iPhone 3G and do NOT see a noticeable time slowdown with Swiping. Someone on an iPhone Edge or iPod Touch may on the other hand be seeing the famous clock slowdown. So, this gives a hardware-dependant advantage to slower units and that also dilutes potential game enjoyment. You mean I could win level 6 IF ONLY I had an iPhone Edge instead of an iPhone 3G?
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Post by colin on Aug 13, 2008 11:05:19 GMT -5
I have the original iPhone and haven't seen the slowdown that some have reported. More often than not I don't get close, even with swiping like mad. I tried the two thumb swiping someone mentioned, and although I did get up to 7X multipliers, I still didn't complete the challenge, swiping at the speeds needed to get the multipliers you need to finish the challenge, is unpredictable at best.
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Post by Avaia Carasel on Aug 13, 2008 11:07:43 GMT -5
Oh, and following on from others, the iPhone 3G vs. the iPhone Edge vs. the iPod Touch all have different CPU speeds AFAICT. I have the iPhone 3G and do NOT see a noticeable time slowdown with Swiping. Someone on an iPhone Edge or iPod Touch may on the other hand be seeing the famous clock slowdown. So, this gives a hardware-dependant advantage to slower units and that also dilutes potential game enjoyment. You mean I could win level 6 IF ONLY I had an iPhone Edge instead of an iPhone 3G? I was wondering about this. I'm running on a 4GB iPhone. This makes me feel a lot better about the future of AF, because if later versions of the hardware can keep up with the code better, then this may just turn out to be a temporary problem. Just as a point of reference, I decided early this morning to reset my character and start from the beginning. Just using fast swiping, with the game speed set as fast as it will let one go at that level and without rotation in the mining game, within 1.5 hours, I had completed the all Level 1 and 2 blueprints, and all Level 1 and 2 magic books, plus levelled up everything to Level 3, as it shows in my new .sig. I started about 0200 EDT and stopped about 0330 EDT. Of course, I've already seen all the puzzles, so I can do them very quickly. I even discovered toward the end and double finger fast swiping that allows me to constantly push up blocks at the same time I'm moving them around. The funny thing is, as somebody else mentioned somewhere on the boards, that as you get more and more tool blocks appearing in the mining game, the more effective fast swiping becomes. Still, even at Level 1 and in the blueprint challenges, fast swiping is quite the effective measure.
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Post by Avaia Carasel on Aug 13, 2008 11:13:31 GMT -5
One "easy" solution to defeat, or at least diminish a fast swiping technique would be to add more elements, thus reducing the statistical chances that randomly swiping would return a match. I'm not really sure how feasible this is, though, given the small screen size. The balance might be too hard to manage.
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Post by bbri2k on Aug 13, 2008 11:20:26 GMT -5
I'm new on here, but appreciate the site... I'm 8/8 and 4/4 on everything except for Time Stopper and Strategist, which I am 6/8 on both. I got there mostly prior to the recent upgrade. I have gotten to 100% on both, but not in the categories necessary... My only ideas are to 1) pray for luck 2) attempt to hit the furie combo to hop up to X11, X12, X13 etc... (which I still don't know how to consistently do - appears to be random for me but I'm still working on it - any ideas?) Usually I can get 70-100 on the ones that require 150 I believe, but that's about it... Maybe if the speed was slowed down and the requirements the same for more planning... My wife is hoping that no changes will be made because I think she's ready to divorce me
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Post by bbri2k on Aug 13, 2008 11:25:31 GMT -5
Now, in 1.0.1.0, my play was messed up due to a bug that I have not been able to reproduce which caused my Wind and Water counts to go from like a few hundred to on the order of 20,000 in just a few moves. I was testing the swipe technique in the mine (which, worse case should have just allowed me to collect more elements faster rather than cheating on a blueprint) when this happened. IMHO, swiping is not cheating per se, but if random play is more lucrative than thought and skill, I think we have a problem. OTOH, if I have exposed a bug, I would be happy to report it as such, though as yet I have not been able to reproduce it. I have also had this bug - it hit twice I believe - I currently have 160,514 available crystals, approx of which 64000 are wind and 50,000 are water...
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Post by Avaia Carasel on Aug 13, 2008 11:33:54 GMT -5
The resource counter bug (thousands, millions, billions) seems to appear much less frequently when swiping as it does when swirling, which might be a clue to tracking it down. Also, I've never gotten it above thousands when swiping, but have hit the limit of 2^31-1 (on all counters, even, at once) while swirling.
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Post by thejuggler on Aug 13, 2008 11:36:47 GMT -5
The infinite multiplier bug is well documented ... since its an exploit in the current game, I don't really want to post the details again... but its directly tied to the Stuck Tool Block problem. (Search and you shall find )
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Post by eliu87 on Aug 13, 2008 11:38:02 GMT -5
This is rather interesting, since I have an iPod touch, which I suppose you could call the least hardware-capable device of the three, and I haven't seen any clock slowdowns while swiping fast...
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Post by Avaia Carasel on Aug 13, 2008 11:38:40 GMT -5
I think this is a different bug! I've never seen the large multipliers appear on my screen, yet the resource counters suddenly jump orders of magnitude.
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Post by ewiley28 on Aug 13, 2008 23:45:15 GMT -5
I know it won't be an easy addition, but if you add the capability for multiple characters at some point, we could really go back and look at the difficulty across the levels.
I know that's way down on a list, but it was a direction I hadn't thought about before.
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Post by asmeurer on Aug 14, 2008 0:05:45 GMT -5
They are separate bugs. I got the mega crystals bug back in 1.0.0.1 and my mining ended immediately. I also had no jump in any elements, or maximum chains. I just got the stuck tool bug in 1.0.1 and was able to get mega chains, but my mining never seemed to end. I also came no where close to millions of crystals with the stuck tool bug as with the first one.
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