Got the game and am I glad I bit. It is pretty enjoyable, but I think it definately does have a fairly substantial management side to it. No, it's not on the level of Kairosoft games. But it's enough to pull you out of the match three experience and have to focus on what you do and don't need (basically, resource management). I guess I like 10000000 because I think there's more of a critical element to having to battle things and open chests, etc., that makes the match-3 itself more challenging. I have Puppy Sanctuary and while it has a pet-sim part of it, I don't do much with that and focus on the match-3 because it's fun with quite a few powerups and challenges with locked blocks, etc. That all said, Puzzle Craft is a great game and I'll continue to play it. Just not as sure if I'll be as hooked as I have been to others in the match-3 genre. Can definately see the appeal to it, though, and why it's getting a lot of votes.
See, for me, I didn't see anything as resource management. For me there's the match-3 and the "overworld" where you can do things to immediately influence the match-3 game so you can get right back into it. Sorry, I didn't mean to give you the wrong idea.
No problem, it will probably grow on me. I guess having to plan out what resources you need to get before you even get into the match-3, it just takes you out of the puzzle element a bit and more into thinking about what things I need to build this or get that. I'm sure I'm in the minority (well, I know I am based on the votes its getting). Definately plan on spending more time with it!
Well, I won't bother participating in the future. He has a "criteria," but won't disclose it? Ha, ha. So, basically, whoever he wants to win, regardless of what the community has to say, wins. Yeah, that sounds like fun. Ridiculous.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that's the case... I understand not wanting to disclose his criteria, as knowing that would allow devs to work around it if they were so inclined... but I'm sure it's fair, and doubt Echo has any personal feelings thrown into the outcome of each poll.
Any time a voting process is anything but transparent, it's not a real voting process. That's the bottom line. He basically just turned this into a "suggestion" thread, rather than a voting thread. It's now his personal GotW. That's cool, but I have no interest in that, really.
Well, I don't think Echoseven is cheating and make this his own GOTW, because he is actually voting for Puzzle Craft. I try to check the first 20 votes for Horn and Puzzle Craft. All Horn's votes are valid while Puzzle Craft: obviously Dan@Chillingo is disqualified, and then angrypaul (no post and join 20/08), Hacy (no post and join 22/8). Sadly it is indeed correct. It's not an easy work to validate all the votes in GOTW archive and it takes time, so I think we should appreciate Echoseven for what he does, not to mention that he's also giving us the new games out in New Zealand each weeks.
I actually agree that the criteria for legitimate votes should be made clear. There's no reason to keep it a secret. I feel like it used to be stated and only recently became a secret. It's pretty simple in this case, PC received several votes from people who joined TA after this poll started, which has traditionally been disallowed. Still if there is more to the criteria that we don't know about, it should be made public.
Because after doing the poll every week for months, I totally have a vested interest in rigging it, right? The criteria is nothing that isn't already stated in the rules. The main reason I didn't want to specifically state it is the one time someone took over from me, I couldn't quite explain it to them. What I do is check through every vote for the top 3 games. If someone registered very recently and has 0 posts, their vote doesn't count. If someone has registered recently, and has a few posts, I check through them to see whether they're about the game they voted for, and if they seem like a legitimate member and not a spammer, or whatever. For example, if someone has registered 3 days ago, has 2 posts and they're both about Puzzle Craft, I wouldn't count them. Developer votes are obviously out. Every poll I go through about 50 users whose names I don't recognize. Every week I save a record of the amount of nominations for each game, too. Based on the criteria, you can go back and check through the past polls, if you're so inclined. There's nothing rigid like 'under 50 posts, no vote', which makes it harder to explain, but to me it's pretty obvious when there's cause for a second look.
