FTA effect (First Turn Advantage)This is one of the most problematic things in turn based games. Look at a simple game like Chess, did you know that the white pieces have a 5% higher chance of winning because of the FTA effect? (quoted from
this guy)
As a second player you simply can’t deny the first players move and for this reason you are already steered. It’s almost like a tough guy standoff where usually the guy that throws the
first punch wins.
I’m not that tough, I’ll probably throw a move like this:
Let’s focus again, so how does the FTA apply to Troll Face Card Quest? Since we don’t have mana in our game you can simply play any meme, any turn. Now if I play a 4ATK/4HP as my first meme this means I can blow 4ATK in the face of my opponent without him being able to do anything to defend himself. As player 2 the only thing you can do is go defensive against the 4/4. But since you can only play one card a turn, the next turn the opponent can directly go full attack in another lane. This leaves us with a very unbalanced game.
Hearthstone managed to balance the game in such a way that first player only has a 1,3% advantage of winning.
They did this by introducing the Coin card.
Again copied from
Joaquin Galante, the pros and cons of going first in Hearthstone:
For the player who goes first:
• Ability of making the opening move
• Ability of making the first play at every mana slot during the match, (loses effectivity after the cap of 10 is reached) effectively marking the pace of the game.
For the player who goes second:
• Gets extra card to adjust his mulligan.
• Gets extra card in hand.
• Gets “The Coin”
• Ability of making the first play at the mana slot where The Coin is used.
• Ability of using “The Coin” not only as a gain of mana that turn, but as a spell for combos with other cards.
Seems pretty OK right. Awesome let’s copy this idea!... oh wait, fuck, we don’t have mana.
We had to come up with something different, something better, something so devious that it leaves people baffled. And we called it FIRST BLOOD.
Our game starts with the coin flip that decides who will play first, after the coin flip the First Blood phase is entered. During First Blood both players draw 3 cards and get to pick any of those 3 to put face down on the center lane of the table. When both players placed their memes, the memes are revealed and the first battle scene happens. Now the outcome of this fight decides the start of player one.
Remember we also have something called rage, you gain rage by getting player damage or having memes killed. So in the case where the first played gained a big advantage in the first round and killed your meme, next turn he can play another meme and control 2 lanes and deal 2 times player damage, heavily ramping up the others player rage who in return can do a powerful move to turn the tides. This rubber band effect is emphasized by also giving the second player an additional boost in rage from the start.
We feel that with this we balanced the FTA quite a bit but still the metrics will have to prove whether we were right or wrong. Any suggestions and feedback is mucho appriciato!.
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