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[outer fulcrum]

Welcome @dry river! Any feedback from the community will show up here.
Please note that this thread discussion is not shared with SMG.
It is solely for the RISK Community to discuss ideas & provide constructive feedback!

[dry river]

Should the controls and mode of game play for RISK GLOBAL DOMINATION show preference for people capable of clicking fast or for the players with the best strategic minds? It is a strategy game after all and could easily be inclusive for many people who have great strategic game play ideas but for whatever reason cannot click enter enter repeat at the necessary speed and visual accuracy to compete on the current platform.

[pliant carbon]

If you're talking about it being unfair for mobile players, I'd agree that needs work, but addressiing the topic more broadly - all games have mechanical advantage elements generally - particularly timed games - for example if a chess player can move their pieces more accurately and quickly they have an mechanical advantage. For the game of Risk as a whole, I'm not sure there is a way to nullify all mechanical advantage or that you would even want to nullify it completely. Someone who trains for mechanical advantage or has played lots of Risk and acquired it naturally is showing a commitment to the game and has a (perhaps earned?) advantage as a result. Your skill in a game is built by lots of methods, I think most would agree that limits on how much of an advantage (or no advantage) comes from financial wealth and capacity to purchase things of benefit would makes sense. However, a player who is committed to the game at the highest level would surely be willing to buy a handful of key emotes for $10, so within limits I'd say it has a place too. It's all where you draw the line in the sand. You can move the line around but there's always a line. If you are playing on a slow lagging internet connection and you keep waiting half your turn for it to stop lagging, yes you will win less games than if you have a 10G internet plan running off ideal equipment - Not much SMG can do about that - In my opinioin the mobile being slower issue does need addressing but amongst desktop/laptop users the playing field and state of mechanical advantage isn't really way out of wack in terms of how games of skill generally work - if you want to argue the game as a whole should only be a game of strategic skill, it's an interesting argument, though I'm not sure it's achievable or even desirable that you remove mechanical skill entirely. That said the line in the sand is probably not in the perfect place and we should remain open to adjustments to improve.

[dry river]

You have some good points. The differences between mobile and pc would be a widely experienced example of the kind of difference in mechanical advantage that I’m talking about, but I wasn’t specifically addressing that. The fact that the game is structured in such a way as to advantage persons with superior mechanical ability or access to technological superiority is a CHOICE and risk is a strategy (and luck) game. I am questioning that choice. As well as asking if other players are married to that choice when so many more accessible modes of play could be chosen. Is that choice worth the exclusion from competitive play of any players who due to income, access or physical limitation cannot compete with the mechanical ability or technological advantage of certain players. Is this the best way to play risk a strategy game online?

[lapis locust]

Yes.  I primarily play on a computer with a keyboard and recognize that in some cases (primarily if attacking a large number of territories in a single turn) I have an mechanical advantage over most mobile players.  I fully support steps that would level this playing field.  Ultimately, it means more when games are won on skill vs. luck or some other advantage.

[pliant carbon]

Leaving aside mobile slowness which we all agree is a problem and none of what is below really applies to, I think some mechancial advantage is ok for reasons previously mentioned (it's an earned advantage in most cases). Is there too much right now - could be? Debatable

There are cases of actual physical impairment of a Risk player where it would not be palatably fair in my view: I think this is a very small number of players that I would put in this category. I wonder if there could be some compensatory mode for that, but wow that's a challenge to create, and still maintain the ecosystem as a whole. This would be important and useful for sure.

On the large scale I'm not sure trying to remove all mechanical advantage is in the game's best interest. Skill Gaps are important, how big the mechanical skill gap should be is hard to measure and assess, but I think it's fine to have some gap. While there are some things definitely that could be corrected (having the right mouse roller wheel to fortify on huge troop number games for example), I think in many cases there's a tendency for a player who feels like they are disadvantaged mechanically to overestimate/overdramatize how much of a difference it makes because they don't want to do the work to improve their mechanical skill, or have trouble accepting defeat. Similar to a player who claims he is just unlucky (of course you can prove their dice rolls are all 16% but then they'll just claim they get worse spawns than anyone in history). Justified or not it may lead some players to quit the game because they feel mechanicall disadvantaged and that is problematic. So good ideas to modify to the right amount of mechanical advantage or at least make clear there is some fairness to why the mechanical advantage is the way it is are useful. But I would be in the camp that supports there being some mechanical advantage in the game.

[lapis locust]

It is easy to dismiss the significance of an advantage when you are the one that has it.  When rolls are reversed, perspectives often change.

[pliant carbon]

True

[dry river]

I agree that removing all mechanical advantages is not feasible, and that certain mechanical advantages are earned through hard work and skill acquisition. But how much should the game of risk be decided by input speed? I think productive system changes are possible if we could agree that having games more decided by the strategic skills of players is the goal.

For example I will use the well known mobile vs. pc issue since it is probably the easiest for the most people to relate to: If we can agree that we want to maximize the effect of strategic skill and minimize the impact of pc speed advantage the most sensible solution is not to slow pc speed or mobile click speed, but design a system that allows players to click as fast as humanly possible (obviously the games will move with slightly less delay since there is currently some lag in both pc and mobile input response. Some significant pc speed advantage will remain, no problem). The primary fix is in how the game timer works. It should be a timer which allows a player who is clicking to make actions to continue to click to make actions as long as they choose. The timer should only count down on inaction. What is the result now games move faster and pc players can play as fast as they want and mobile players can get all the moves they wish to make into that one or two critical turns in a game. The pc player still has a speed advantage in that they have more of their inaction timer time left to think if they care to use it, while the mobile player uses almost all of that time just transitioning from action to action. So there is still inequality obviously but it is a fair system emphasizing the importance of strategy.

As a side note I believe this kind of turn timer system may just leave enough room for the kind of alternative forms of move input that are necessary to work around certain disabilities, so it may be an all sizes solution of sorts. Not perfect obviously, but perfection was never the goal.

[pliant carbon]

Yes I've heard the idea of increment (like chess) for each move and it seems like something worth exploring for sure. Something like 30 seconds turns instead of 60 but with increment of 1 second added for each move for example (or whatever is needed for a good mobile player to make attacks if going at full speed - maybe. 1.5 etc.) does anyone know how many territories a good mobile player can attack in 60 seconds or so? Anyway, I suppose players could have the option of turn timing in setting up the game anyway - some might set half second increment, some might set 3 second increment. Nothing wrong with having that option in my view.

[dry river]

Yes this idea of incremental timers has been pretty thoroughly explored. I think the distinction between the kind of additive timer you propose and the timer on inaction only is critical. We Don’t need to know how much time the player needs to cover the board or anything else just need to figure out how fast the slowest of slow mobile players can click form one thing to another at maximum effort and set the inaction timer at that… I think somewhere less than 3 seconds would be my guess.

My version has the added advantage that even if it slams you out of your turn it forces a 5 second fortify phase at the end of turn, (another significant disadvantage of mobile is the missed fortify in spite of clicking on it).

There would still be different timer options but for clarity let’s talk about the one I will call “60 second turn timer equivalent”. It would on any turn round excluding the first turn round (a special case we won’t get into here) consist of 20 seconds to notice it’s your turn or think or act whatever and then infinite time as long as on board actions are taken continuously without ever allowing the inactivity turn timer run out. Then five seconds of forced fortify timer if you have not completed your turn and clicked end turn before it pops up. I estimate that the average turn would be somewhere on the order or 15 to 30 seconds long with some players turns lasting a bit longer, but no one could ever just sit and let a timer run for longer than 23 seconds without being slammed into fortify mode with their troops randomly auto placed.

There would be longer versions for more relaxed play… say the “90 second turn timer equivalent” and the “120 second turn timer equivalent” etc. (with probably 30 and 40 seconds for the base timer for those two mentioned).

[pliant carbon]

This could be better for some scenarios and worse for others, overall it's a layer of complexity that may not be as clear and clean as increment or as functional. I see so many scenarios where you might want to pause in your run after you've been in it for 30 seconds for 5-10 seconds to assess a split or determine if a cap roll is worth the risk etc... with increment you could work with your time in a more adjustable way. If you had a 3 or 5 second inactivity timer it would be much harder to play moves where adjustments or splits were complicated.