This is going to seem irrelevant but if you hear me out I think you will find that it isn’t. When going through the tutorial, you are encouraged to roll and then choose from the options that pop up. For example “Two 5s: 100 Points”. At first I thought you could only ever choose exactly one of the popped up options and were then required to roll again or bank. As I played more I found that I could choose multiple popped up options if I wanted to, as long as they didn’t “overlap” dice. For me it was an “Oh I’m just an idiot” moment.

Anyway I think it’s natural not to watch the computer like a hawk, but I noticed that the computer did, in fact, seem to have overall better luck than me, despite my having good confidence in my strategy. Then I started watching very carefully and I noticed that the computer would frequently roll “Two 1s: 200″ or “Two 5s: 100″, yet only one of the two dice would become “locked” in place.

I flipped out. I started noticing it happening all the time and filed a bug report. It turns out that it is not a bug because the player can do so as well by individually clicking on the dice along the left. Something that was NOT addressed — let alone clearly explained — anywhere in the tutorial nor the rules.

Furthermore it is, as I see it, a huge advantage to be aware of this option, as choosing one five instead of two fives can vastly improve your chances of avoiding a zilch.

So if I did have constructive criticism to give, I would say that the tutorial and the instructions need to be clearer. Something that would be VERY easy to do and wouldn’t change the game at all.

Without having the advantage of making the best choices (and probably never noticing that the computer players are exercising options that we aren’t), it would explain why the game seems unfair, or favoring the computer.

My second point that I want to make is that I never received a response to my bug report, so I started looking around the sites more. I found the explanation about “Why the computer player sometimes only chooses one die.” This note by the game author explained everything in what I viewed to be a tone that implied we should have known all along, ending with “Please stop sending bug reports about it.”

Obviously if so many reports are being sent, all of these complainers did not understand the rules of the game, so I think the appropriate response would be to explain the rules better in the game instead of making an otherwise unnoticeable link to an explanation somewhere at the bottom of the game description.

The developer’s reaction left a bad enough taste in my mouth to write this long post about it. So, there you have it — perhaps the game just seems so unfair because we’re not informed enough to play with a good strategy!

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3947/intelligent_mistakes_how_to_.php

From the article:
“As I found with the “positional play” in snooker, random outcomes that happen to favor the computer are perceived as being intentional. If the ball ends up in a good place, or the poker AI makes a lucky call and wins on the river, it can be perceived as unfair or even cheating.”

4 stars is a good score, good enough to put you in the monthly standings depending on the month. But all the greats (the ones with millions of plays), they are noticeably higher than 4 stars. Zilch has a good score because it’s a good game. With the right modifications it could have been more accessible which I believe would have lead to a higher score.

It’s worth mentioned however, that I don’t believe a Kongregate score is the end-all indicator of how good your game is. It’s simply an indicator of how well your game is liked by people who go to Kongregate.

My Sweet 16: School Musical 2.13
My Sweet 16: 2.24
Critter Cannon: 2.64
Tiki Balls – Curse of Tane: 3.0
Zombieland: 3.07
BattleMachy: 3.23
Discarded – Online: 3.93
Battalion Nemesis: 4.18

Like I said, I liked Battalion Nemesis, and I’m not trying to diss you here. I think 4 stars is a great score. But you seem to be saying it’s not adequate and that if you get 4 stars you’ve left “low hanging fruit” on the vine. So can you explain how exactly 4 stars is such a poor score that the developer of Zilch should feel like he’s somehow failed to properly serve or respect his players when your top score is less than a quarter point above his and most of your games are far far below?

His players weren’t making specific complaints about losing, they were complaining because they said the rolls were rigged or flawed. You seem to be arguing that if he disregarded their actual complaint and assumed they actually meant that it was too hard and therefore made it easier for players to win in the beginning then that would have addressed the problem of people thinking the dice were unfair. I disagree, if anything making it easier in the beginning and having it get harder as people progressed would make them even more convinced the hard opponents were cheating.

He already made it so you don’t get to play the ‘realist’ opponent until you’ve won 10 games. This is important because while it is true that ‘reckless’ and ‘cautious’ don’t perfectly match an ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ paradim they are close enough to it in practice because ‘reckless’ is *always* reckless and that’s a pretty easy trait to exploit. Realist is much harder because he actually has a good strategy. So the developer did include a ramp up in difficulty as you suggested.

After I made my earlier posts here I read a blog post on his site about why ‘realist’ will take 1 dice instead of a pair when he has the chance (so he has a greater chance of getting a high combo with a greater number of remaining dice) and saw several posts after that claiming that they didn’t know they could do that. Putting aside the fact that Zilch is a dice game where you select which dice you want to keep and which ones to reroll so it shouldn’t be any mystery which needs to be explained that you can *select which dice you want to keep and which ones to reroll*… he took that feedback and made it easier to see what the computer was doing so people could extrapolate that yes, they too could *select which dice to keep and which to reroll*. In other words he took the feedback and modified the game to account for and improve it. How is that not properly responding to player feedback again?

Yes, it’s not a 5 star game. But I haven’t seen many of those. Have you? 5 out of 7 of Kongregates top contest leading games for November have only 4 stars. The other three have such a small fractional percentage over 4 that you can barely see the mark in the point of the 5th star. So this game is ranked among the best of the best and that’s a bad thing? Kongregate’s ranking system is an average. Just a couple bozos can pull down your 5 stars to 4 by giving you a 1. So I think your claim that he’s lost out on 20% of his game’s potential is extremely simplistic. Not to mention the fact that its a *dice game* he made a 4 star dice game! How do you make dice exciting enough for 4 stars? Well I guess he licked that one because he did it! Not to mention the badges and accomplishments and even a Kongai card attached. This is not a game that deserves to be used as an example of poor programming, or of poor regard for it’s players!

I guarantee you if that he would have followed your advice there would have been just as many people complaining that it was too easy. Or getting bored because it wasn’t enough of a challenge on the first or second play (there are over 9,000 other games to try all competing for attention), and they would have given him 1’s and he would still have ended up with only 4 stars.

But then I guess you could write a blog post about how he failed to please the people who wanted a challenge or failed to create a stimulating and engaging experience.

Zilch is good enough to get a 4 star rating. What’s worth remembering is that Kongregate uses a 5 star system. This means that Zilch’s rating is actually missing an entire 20% of the total rating it could be getting. One way to look at this is not that your game is lacking in 1 out of 5 areas, but that 1 out of every 5 players does not like your game. Judging by the comments and the developer’s blog posts, my guess is that the “rigged dice rolls” is the biggest issue.

With that in mind, we arrive at why I originally wrote my article. Zilch is a good game that could have been better. It made some mistakes, but we all make mistakes. The most important thing about a mistake is that you learn from it. Even better if you’re able to share a lesson with other peers.

I’d like to cover some of your smaller points just so you’ll stop bringing them up. You asked why any developer would make crooked dice rolls. This happens all the time. Making an AI with an unfair statistical advantage is much easier than programming a competent AI, and time is money. People who play a lot of games know this, and will begin to blame cheating computers for why they are losing a lot. No one likes to lose and the computer can’t defend its own integrity, so it’s an easy target.

Which brings me to the next point you keep making. You say that to cater to babies who just want to win all the time, developers should throw up a “you win” screen every few minutes. But this kind of screen is not a game by definition, because it never presents a challenge to the player. A fair fight has 50/50 odds. Pitting a new Zilch player against an AI with a strategy and understanding of the rules probably skews those odds in favor of the computer. I suggested creating a beginner mode and skewing the dice rolls in favor of the player to make things more even again. With a few wins and some confidence, allow them to tackle the fair AI and they’ll be more likely to stick around after losing.

Having a good game design is unfortunately only a fraction of what it takes to have a good game. Equally important is your ability to communicate the game design to the player. In the world of small flash games, your design is almost all you have; flash games aren’t known for their vast content. With the design being such a large part of the game, and communication being equally as important as the design, you’re left with a very important communication task and not a lot of content to do it in. This is probably the most difficult part of making a flash game.