Kongai-o? The name means nothing.

Kongai’s a really good game in it’s own right, and I was pondering why I don’t play it more than I do. Part of the reason as mentioned on previous posts is that the method of collecting cards still slightly wrankles me, which is offputting. But I’ve now got a big enough collection that it’s not really an issue – I have more card combinations available to me now than I’ve been able to use as it is anyway.

One reason is that I find to play Kongai well, especially against completely unpredictable strangers, my brain needs to be switched on so much, I need to be so alert, that if I am in a good state for this kind of playing level, I’ll usually end up playing something else that needs my reflexes to be good too – like a regular fighting game most likely. Thanks to my work and lifestyle my ‘quality gaming time’, when I’m mentally and physically fully switched on, is already a very precious resource for me – it’s not something I want to squander.

I also have noted that Kongai gives me the feeling I’ve ‘maxed out’ my own skill already. That might sound odd for someone with such a relatively small play-time on the game, but really, I do think I’ve got a lot of it sussed.  I’m well aware my main weakness is a failure to ‘do the math’ due to laziness in certain situations when I really ought to be calculating moves more carefully.

Of course this ‘max skills’ impression is likely really quite a false one. I am sure there is still lots for me to learn, especially in the matchup area, and of course, I can also win more cards to improve my deck further to what I think I’d like it to be. This last point is especially apparent now that Kongregate has added some really nice card collection features so I can see all the lovely cards I’d like to get my hands on. It’s a really nice feature on it’s own that encourages me to play more.. but still doesn’t do quite enough to entice me.

What would entice Remy77077?

Trying to look at this from a wider perspective, I was wondering about what I would do to resolve this, and I hit on what I think is a pretty good idea that would also completely solve the card acquisition issues I have. And it’s incredibly simple. Basically, an XP system: Instead of a random % ‘drop rate’ of getting a new card when you win a game, instead, give the player some points towards their next card. The amount of points could potentially be random, or perhaps related to the level of person you beat or whether it was a ranked or regular game. The reason why this would work so well is that most people love to see a progression like this – just take a look at any grinding in an MMO, XBox Achievements etc.. it’s so prevalent in today’s gaming scene I feel I hardly need to make an effort to prove this point. Then after a certain amount of points, allow a player to win a random card, or alternatively, allow them to save up even more points (double? triple?) to instead pick a specific card they want.

The amount of points needed to get to the next ‘levels’ would of course change with your card collection, so it would be very quick&easy to get the first few cards, increasing to much higher numbers later on; mimicing the effect changing % drop rates as they currently are, and mimicing the ‘level’ treadmill systems that so easily entices people to play.

I cannot think of any disadvantages to this idea over the current system of card collecting and I believe it would also encourage a lot more people to play Kongai, or at least get existing players more interested in playing it more – admittedly there doesn’t ever seem to be a shortage of players as it is, but I am sure Kongregate would always like more. The only reason it could possibly be bad for Kongregate is if they only want to use Kongai as a draw to get people to play their other games. But if that is the case, I am not sure why they allow people to win cards just by playing Kongai at all.

You know when you’ve been Kongai’d

*dodge*

*crunch*

Intercept!

Intercept!

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

Ok, I’ve been playing a lot more Kongai. It really is a good game! It became a lot more fun when I didn’t have to use Amaya anyway Although, on Amaya, it was interesting to me that I had very quickly concluded that he seemed to be rubbish, and then I check a few forums and find out he is near-universally regarded as the worst character in the game, possibly the only all round ‘bad’ character in fact, in desperate need of a buff (sic) in a future patch. At least I figured I’d understood the game ok to have worked that out so quickly myself. He’s still the best looking guy in the game anyway

If only these were my real stats!

But it really does fascinate me at times (although that one of my regular opponents enhances the fascination at least 1000-fold I must admit). One of the most intriguing aspects is just how well it models the mental game of high level play at fighting games like Street Fighter. Even when it ‘feels’ like a guessing game, it is hardly ever really a pure guess. There’s a lot of number crunching logistic-play optimisation kind of things you can do in Kongai, which is pretty much pure maths – and hence rather dull in my opinion, but Kongai remains interesting because there’s almost always another viable option, and you’re often weighing the mathematical “solution” against a healthy dose of instinct, and of course yomi. Which was a major design goal of the game, and one which it achieves with aplomb. Even the sometimes-decryed “luck” aspects in the game, actually mirror high level Street Fighter very precisely. For example, the 90/95% hit chances on many moves is very much what a good player feels when doing a ’special move’ in Street Fighter. You know you’ll almost always pull it off correctly, but there’s just a chance that you’ll mess up certain moves, which could affect your choice of what option to take.

 

One of the other really fun similarities with Street Fighter is ‘training your opponent to do silly things’. For example, I was told by regular opponent that I take a certain action in the game too much; and I agreed that I do – but the reason was I’d developed that tactic because when I am playing a random unknown new opponent at the game, I want to ‘train’ them that this is something I am going to do, just to set them up for later when I purposefully won’t do it and this will hopefully cause them to make mistakes when “guessing” against me.

 

However, huge positives aside, I still stand by my earlier comments though; the method of collecting ‘cards’ is a huge black mark against playing the game. Even though they’ve improved it so you do gain a few cards very quickly, which is much nicer, it still doesn’t make it fun going up against someone with the odds stacked against you to try and win those cards. It is fun to gradually increase your collection and improve your choices and your deck, and I wouldn’t mind the method of collecting cards at all if the method of matchmaking was fair (ie: based on your usuable card collection size as well as rank/skill level). Or alternatively allow you to pick your card when you do win one, at least perhaps just from a subset of two or three. I’m a great example of the reason this would be good: I have a collection of 13 cards now, in theory, but actually, 5 of them are basically unusable to me. Also it rather dampens the fun of the “random card win” when each time I seem to get something new that I can’t use. The fun of alea just seems to let me down every time.

My record is now 36-16 and I’ve been playing with clearly sub-optimal decks for all of this time. But my current main deck is not a bad deck at least; well it wasn’t too bad as soon as I’d got a new character - anyone to replace Amaya instantly improved it. And now at least every character I play has some kind of item that isn’t totally useless for them, but none of them are the items I would choose if I had a full choice. But to fix the matchmaking method I have been playing a lot of private matches, so my record is probably rather misleading. I’d like to try ranked matches, but I really don’t want to do this until I’ve got something close to what I’d consider a good deck. I think I’ve only had one open game on Kongai so far when my collection was clearly giving me the upper hand. I won easily, and it felt like I was cheating.

What about the “Kongregate Challenges” to win cards you ask? Well, let’s just say every game I’ve played on Kongregate for this reason I’ve only given one star or two stars. They are all terribly boring RSI-inducing click fests… or worse. The only challenge I enjoyed doing was the one that involved playing Kongai itself. Even more irritating is that I know there are other decent games on Kongregate, it’s just a shame they don’t seem to ‘promote’ those games with challenges.

But anyway, Kongai is free & does prove to be a lot of fun… so, I do recommend it. And I’ll happily throw ‘practice games’ on Private Match too if you’re new and want to play me and win some cards

What a Donkey-Kongai

As you might have guessed by my taste in games and the fact his site is linked on the sidebar on this site, I find David Sirlin a very interesting fellow. I’ve actually locked horns with him in the past as long back as the heyday of usenet and alt.games.sf2 – although I was hardly a regular poster, having never been able to play fighting games at anything approaching a ’serious’ competitive level until the very recent advent of decent online play. (Although I’ve always been a potent Theory Fighter ) But it turned out over the years I actually have far more in common with him and far more that we’d agree on – especially in matters of gaming taste – than we would disagree. In fact I suspect that most of my early disagreements have been down to poorly worded interpretations of his points by others; rather than his actual argument when explained in detail. Anyone who thinks that “playing to win” at Street Fighter involves kicking their opponent in their real-life shins so they can’t play properly, or who quotes Sun Tsu as a defence for why they pressed their opponent’s Start button during a fight has really missed the point somewhat.

In any case, one of the games I’d been following the progress on with a great interest mainly due to David Sirlin’s involvement is Kongai. It’s a ‘Collectible Card Game’ (CCG) meta-game for the free-to-play webgames site Kongregate. And an intriguing game it is too. It’s actually more like a Vs turn-based RPG battler than a card game though. I’ve played quite a variety of virtual and non-virtual CCGs too, but this doesn’t readily compare to any for me. Also the ‘collectible card’ aspect is only really about the cards you get to select your team of characters from. You can call your team a ‘deck’ as they do if you prefer, but as you’re only picking three characters it feels more like a King of Fighters team selection than a 60-card Magic deck to me. I also ought to mention the fact the art for the game is very good and is done by, the often-fantastic, Udon.

Since Sirlin was on the case with the balancing, I had pretty high hopes this game would be interesting fun & also not suffer from the usual drawbacks of collectible card games.

 

 

Sadly, that does not seem to be the case at all.

The big problem is that as a new player who just wants to play Kongai (and then potentially get interested in the rest of Kongregate and its meta-game antics) you simply can’t even begin to COMPETE on a level playing field. Firstly your more ‘well-endowed’ opponents will be picking from a wider field of characters – which is not necessarily a problem if all characters are balanced – but does become a problem if certain combinations of characters are not so well balanced, which the game itself indicates is the case. But secondly and far more problematic is that there are also “item cards” which are essentially power-ups for your characters. So even with the same cards, you end up playing what feels initially like a Ryu vs Ryu match… until you realise your opponent’s Ryu also has a regenerating energy bar!

Can you imagine being introduced to playing Street Fighter like this?

You mean we can’t even play fairly until I’ve UPGRADED? I can only play as Super-Saver class, except at weekends, when I Upgrade… UPGRADE TO DONKEY!?

*sigh*  I do expect to get whupped by an experienced player at a game like this, and I don’t mind losing at all, but I expect to at least have a level playing field apart from my (lack-of) skill & knowledge -especially since this is a major thing Sirlin appears to stand for in games. If there has to be some kind of handicapping health items or whatever in a game like this, it should be given to the new player, not the more experienced one.

So for me right now, this appears to be a total waste of what could be an interesting game by Kongregate. They have recently introduced some ”newbie-friendly” changes which I need to research to see if it has made things any better… but unless it lets me at least have the same chance at abilities as my opponent eg. – is a matchmaking system so I can play people who only have a similar size card collection & lack of item cards as me too much to ask?… then I’ll still see this as a waste of time sadly, despite how fun the game appears to potentially be. Luckily they do seem to have added a way to play a specific opponent, so I will have to try and get a few equally “noobish” friends to play against at this.

But at the moment I can only recommend it if you are an existing fan of Kongregate and have lots of cards to play with already.