BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

For concision I’d consider dropping all the hash stuff and keeping it closer to the existing guess system where it’s just said out loud and the targeted player has to respond to it. So I can make a Guess post saying that “I think that Snap 042, which Jonathan hasn’t yet responded to, matches 3 of his current Criteria”, and you’d give it a thumbs up or down.

Would also be a good idea to limit it to guesses on a third party’s photos. Otherwise a player could deliberately recreate a recent photo as best they can, and make a Guess based on the target’s previous matches for it, which would very probably pay out.

I like it. I completely changed the proposal to simply alter the existing Guess rules to call out a guess of the number of criteria that will be satisfied, and score along the same lines if the guess is correct.

I found some holes that I had to patch up, so if you read the revised proposal, it’s worth a re-read at this point.

I think this makes guessing a lot easier and thus quite a bit more trivial.

On the other hand, it does have the potential to make Private Criteria more dynamic if Seekers can force churn on other Seekers more often. It becomes a more strategic tool than just getting an award for a Guess.

Right now, as hard as Guesses are, after the first successful Guess, it’s not worth the effort to try for more.

It’s still one guess a week.

Is the scoring a little to narrow.  Seems like over the last 6 or 7 snaps, the occurrences are 0:0, 1:3, 2:10, 3:3, 4:1, 5:0

Seems like 2 criteria would be an optimal guess.  This may change based on this proposal but I don’t think much.

I suspect that after being hit with a few correct Guesses and getting their criteria reset, some Seekers will in fact vary their criteria a bit more to prevent the optimal guess being 2.

There’s also variability in the Exposure value at the time of the Guess, and while the Guesser can try to maximize Exposure by holding off on a Guess for as long as possible, they do so at the risk of missing the opportunity for a correct Guess before the Target changes their criteria.

Like Kevan said, It’s only just one guess a week.  With really only three active players that might guess, that’s like one reset a week.  Not much to modify behavior, IMO.

Guessing a number every week seems not engaging but I’m still pondering this one.

We could certainly change the cadence in another Proposal. If we pair that with raising the number of correct Guesses required to win an award, that would address Josh’s issue with Guesses being too easy.

I think overall what I’m struggling with is the contention between Guesses that are too hard and Guesses that are too easy. Trying to narrow Private Criteria to make Guesses easier seems like the wrong way to go, but I acknowledge that changing what is being guessed also has its problems.

Where I land on this is that making Guesses easier makes it a more engaging mechanic, even if it is easier, so the counter is to raise the bar for how successful Guesses count towards victory. Raising the bar for earning an award for Guesses and lowering the Score gain for them would both be acceptable to me.

I’m wondering if there someway to salvage our original guessing game.  Maybe some rule where the guess must match a portion of the Private Criteria and would also satisfy the critieras scoring.

CoV while Conjunction Junction is pending.

Maybe. The problem is that language is varied enough to allow either escaping guesses with the right wording, or making guesses too easy with overbroad guessing powers.

Take the example of allowing guesses for a “noun-adjective” pairing. You could guess “blue car” but if I had “contains a navy blue car”, would that be the same? I could argue that they aren’t equivalent because a light blue car wouldn’t satisfy it.

That’s why I thought that inverting the guess made more sense: guess the criteria match on a Shot, rather than trying to guess the criteria itself. It allows room for the vagaries of language while guessing the kinds of Shots the Seeker wants to match.

Yes, with that argument guessing criteria seems completely flawed.

The problem I have with the reverse is that is she divorced from the original concept. For instance, just guessing numbers is a solid approach, I’d argue with a look at the current S/U score, an educated guess maybe better than a 1/3 or higher probability of hitting.

That just seems wrong to me.

Maybe it’s an argument for repealing Guessing, then? Seems a shame, but it also seems hard to resolve satisfactorily.

@NadNavillus: would you go for the idea of guessing the specific Private Criteria that will be matched? So rather than guessing “3”, you guess “1st, 4th, and 5th Private Criteria”? That would be more challenging, and perhaps closer to the idea of guessing at the contents of a Seeker’s Private Criteria without having to be word-specific.

Yes, on first pass, I think so.

Not that I’m against this yet, just on the fence.

My goal is to make a revision of Guessing palatable enough such that your “Conjunction Junction” proposal is no longer necessary for the purpose of fixing Guessing. I’m trying to determine what will get you there.