Balancing the Mobile & PC Speed gap

[brittle flare]

When i first started playing risk (over 2 years ago) the attack speed on mobile was significantly faster than what it is today. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but one of the past updates implemented a feature that forces an attack delay, making it next to impossible to chain attacks quickly on mobile.

Previously, mobile user were already at a disadvantage compared to PC users, but this change made the disadvantage even more significant.

The current attack speed just feels extremely limited, requiring players to wait instead of being able to rapidly launch attacks. This limitation forces us to have to build a precise rhythm, which is so easily disrupted on maps with challenging attack lines.

I suppose the purpose of this post is to try understand the rationale behind this seemingly unnecessary change that made a problem that already existed even worse, and to also explore the possibility of reverting it back to its previous state. I think restoring the old attack speed would massively contribute to addressing the speed imbalance in the game.

[atomic jungle]

I searched for some past messages on this a while ago. There was a bug where rendering graphics could interrupt the battle calculation, making all your troops disappear after a battle.

They couldn't fix this, so they introduced a delay after each attack on PC, so this state shouldn't occur (slowing down PC attacks). But very fast mobile players could still enter the state, so after that they applied the same delay to mobile users.

(Imho, it's just as bad for PC. And hardware limitations: screen, mouse, etc., exist for most games.)

[brittle flare]

That interesting, i didn’t know that. Thanks for the info! My knowledge on programming & fixing bugs in games is literally non existent so i won’t even pretend to know the complexity behind trying to sort an issue like that. But logic tells me that fixing one issue, by causing another issue doesn’t seem like the most optimal solution.

I don’t think the actual speed itself is the problem, it’s the obvious speed discrepancy between mobile/pc players. If you take the fastest mobile player & put them against the fastest PC player, PC wins 100% of the time. This in-balance can be seen in almost every single game. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but i don’t think there is an argument that Mobile speed even come close to matching PC speed.

I think they should add platform specific balancing, introducing whatever mechanisms necessary & possible to ensure that the speeds are equal, or even consider introducing slight variations in the gameplay mechanics between mobile/pc, taking into account the inherent advantages and limitations of both.

Although, again im not sure how challenging or difficult this is to do. Probably far easier said than done.