Making Eyewire more competitive

Feature Requests
#1

I’ve been mulling about this topic in my head for a few days now and have thought of various ideas after playing the game heavily for the past week. These are all separate suggestions because of their various technicalities in implementation.


Player Stats
Player stats, such as total number of cubes traced, cubes traced per day, average cubes traced per day, number of trailblazers traced, average score per cube, time attack stats, and highest score achieved.
This would allow the game to have leaderboards in all of these stats rather than just high scores. (This would also be a great assignment for those who are doing database management and MySQL fun)

Game Modes
Time Attacks, these would allow players to play only cubes that have already been trailblazed. After the arbitrary amount of time, the player with the higher score wins a match. This would increase the amount of time attack matches they’ve won, which would be yet another player stat that can be used as a leaderboard.

Trailblazers, this would be a game mode only unlocked for advanced players (An XP system would probably need to be implemented for something such as this) and would allow players to only conduct trailblazing. Because of the constant nature of trailblazing, points awarded for this game mode could be an average of the last hour of scores made on the game. These averaged scores wouldn’t contribute to the calculations of the average scores, and would allow trailblazers to gain more points per cube, but not affect the overall pace of scores in the game.

Reviewers, this would allow players to only play cubes that have already been trailblazed. This game mode would allow players to compete for a high score much like how the game is now, but simply gives them the choice to not have to trailblaze. (This is great for the beginners who don’t even know what trailblazing is) This game mode can even be the default game mode for players, and using the Level/XP system, unlock the other game modes for them.

Additional Game Features
Achievement System, this would allow players to unlock achievements in the game for performing various actions. Awards for this could be small badges displayed next to their names in the chat, custom name colors, or even awards in the forums that they can choose to display. This would be yet another system to get people to play the game more actively as they can unlock achievements.

Level/XP System, this would allow players to slowly gain levels or XP over time, almost like the cumulative score. Levels could unlock things for players.

These are all just ideas that I have been bouncing around in my head and are all aimed at making the game even more competitive than it currently is. I hope you guys have a chance to review this for discussion at your meeting tomorrow.
#2

Nice thoughts/ideas…some I’ve thought of (or something along the same lines) but I’m not a game designer by any means and you said them and much more better than I could! I know there’s been talk of achievements, and I’m hoping new stuff will come rolling out soon. It’s such a great project, and I can only see it getting better from here.

#3

Thanks @viper!  Great suggestions and we appreciate your input after spending substantial time on the game. We’re working on a weighted trailblazing feature but hadn’t thought of something like a “time attack” – we’ll discuss this at tomorrow’s lab meeting. 


Amy
#4

I’m afraid time attack would negatively impact results. We want precision, not races. Only incorporating well traced cubes (those where precision isn’t of much importance anymore) most likely won’t have any added value to the project, since it’s not likely new branches will be found. If they are found, they don’t yield an improved score …


I’m all for adding more ‘game’ to Eyewire though, and there are definitely dozens of opportunities to explore. You should keep the impact of gameplay in mind though. Gameplay in a project as this needs to promote good results, not impact them.

I think most additional gameplay would need to come from added functionality. E.g. adding the ability to review cubes of your choosing (which was in the works last time I heard) would allow you to choose your own ‘play style’. One could excel in finding new branches others have missed.

I also feel it’s important to incorporate some kind of experience system, similar to how ‘reputation’ on Stack Exchange works. You can prevent a lot of ‘gaming’ in the system by only allowing those people with a certain degree of experience to access certain features. In this way you can create a self-moderating community.

To summarize: you need to hire more developers. ;p
#5
To summarize: you need to hire more developers. ;p

ding ding ding!!! :slight_smile: