Maximizing the Player Engagement: Improving Live-Ops with Brand-New Mechanics I — Royal Match’s Magic Cauldron
Let the Magic Cauldron take you on an exciting adventure! — a time-limited event consisting of 15 unique steps, each with its formula waiting to be discovered. Remember, the more complex the challenge, the greater the reward. Let’s dive into the cauldron to begin this enchanting adventure and make magic happen!
A month ago, Royal Match introduced a brand-new, unique live-ops event, Magic Cauldron. Around the cauldron, glorious King Robert, with fellows, pursuing something new!
In the introduction pop-up, we see King Robert, his butler, and his pet around the Magic Cauldron with careful eyes on the cauldron. The event begins once you tap the Continue button and see the unique colored elixirs.
We are trying to guess the correct sequence of the elixirs to produce the prize in the book. Initially, we have five elixirs to guess from. After making our first attempt, we can identify the correct and incorrect colors. The incorrect ones leave a mark on the wall with the same color. Moving on to the next step, we start with one location filled with the correct color.
Let’s dive into the experience of the cauldron and analyze the LiveOps event from various perspectives.
Getting a Déjà Vu?
In mid-December 2021, the game “Wordle” became popular during the pandemic. Every day, a five-letter word is selected, and players try to guess it within six attempts. After each guess, the letters are marked with colors to indicate their positions: green is used when the letter is correct and in the right position, yellow is used if the letter is in the word but not in the right position, and gray is used if the letter is not in the word at all. Magic Cauldron shares some of the same rules with Wordle, such as both games are feedback-driven, marking the correct color and indicating the incorrect placements.
Around the Cauldron Full of Broken Elixirs
The event consists of 15 stages. Three colors are used for the first three stages, and a new color is introduced every three. Each shelf means a new try, a new sequence of probability. The probability of guessing the correct order is getting harder when new colors are added.
In the best scenario, we need 75 elixirs, and the best scenario means that we must correctly guess every color (which means a 1/24 ratio for four colors and a 1/5040 ratio for seven colors). In the worst scenario, we need around ~340 elixirs to complete the event. Down below, what the worst scenario for four colors looks like :)
We don’t have to try every sequence; thanks to being a feedback-driven game, correct and incorrect placements reduce the count of probabilities and the difficulty. After I finish the game, I also watched plays by other people on YouTube, I noted all attempt counts for every stage, and here is the mean attempt counts.
Maybe with each new stage, the game may generate a random number between one and the number of colors in the stage, and this number can be your number of tries needed to beat that stage. So that means we will grind around for a while.
Do we really have control over the event?
🛎🛎 The illusion of control is when we believe we have more power and control over things than we actually do.
For example, some crosswalk buttons, particularly in New York, are placebos, meaning they do not affect anything. Despite this, people keep pressing them because it gives them a feeling of control and influence over their environment.
However, to complete the event, we must collect around ~210 elixirs, which we can obtain from winning different levels. We receive five elixirs after completing super hard levels, three from hard levels and one from normal levels. We need to beat approximately 130 levels to gather the required elixirs, which means lots of playtime :) . Additionally, we earn 16 elixirs after every ten levels.
Maybe it’s your Lucky Day
The chances of guessing the correct sequence on the first try are very low, and it mostly involves a significant amount of luck. The outcome is highly uncertain, and the odds do not favor a correct first guess. The count of broken bottles also convinces us that it must be pure luck. However, we must admit that correctly guessing on the first try excites us.
Craving on Weekends
Magic Cauldron runs from Friday morning until late Sunday. While players have more time to complete levels, they don’t have enough lives to maintain the weekday excitement.
🔒 this topic will be one of the upcoming writings 🔒
Magic Cauldron is a great example of using autonomy and luck factors that keep players engaged. I will continue to mention the events in Royal Match in upcoming writings. If you're curious about any game or feature, feel free to contact me at any time using the accounts I've left here. You can also just say hello!
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