My argument is based on the fact that until you're at the absolute peak of skill all the money in the world won't do you a bit of good, and once you are getting there, you don't need money. If you think blowing about $4.25 every game to buy all 29 items is going to improve your score more than random chance until you are very good at the game, I have a few bridges and vacation homes I'll make you a good deal on Arguing over whether real money transactions significantly affect the scoring in this game at any level of skill is like arguing whether prayer has too much effect on making planes fly.
I admire guy who takes such a strong and hostile position on something that is so clearly not true. Just so there is no confusion. Let me give you the following two scenarios: 1) You start a new game, and as your first seven moves you buy seven crystals. You then pick a blank spot on the board and create two small rock and join them, then two more small rocks and join them, and then join the two large rocks. Bang, you have 100,000 points. Now you play the rest of the game normally. You will end up with 100,000 more points then if you hadn't done that. 2) You play a game with no store items. You are about to play the very last move, but instead you buy 6 bots and clear out some 3x2 section of the board and keep playing. Obviously, your end score will be higher. ANd just like that, with no impact of chance, you have two strategies for getting a higher score with the store then without it. And those would probably be called "fairly trivial strategies" that don't need any skill in the game at all to implement. Now that I have shown you that its possible, I bet you could find some non-trivial ways to use the store to improve your score even more. A beginer is going to find slightly better ways, but anyone with even a moderate amount of skill can use the score to double and triple their scores. It is foolish of you to believe otherwise.
Just so there is no confusion, let me clear up a couple of points: a) The crystals -> rocks -> mountains -> big chest chain is easy to do without buying crystals from the store. Perhaps not on my first seven moves, but it's something I do early in every game because there is nothing else particularly useful to use crystals on at that stage, and it's a nice pile of coins. b) The big chest (two mountains + crystal) is not worth 100,000 points; it is worth 50,000 points. As above, even if it was not pretty easy for any player to do, it's hardly a game-breaking point total AND is a staggering waste of seven store-bought crystals, as they'd be much much more useful to your score later in the game. Along with the fact that... c) ...without using exploits, it is impossible to do, as is your second example. There are not seven crystals or six bots in the store to be bought; there are four. This is not to suggest that you cannot score higher by using the store items intelligently; you can. Since the store items are intended to be (a) finite in number, so that no one can rob a bank and buy 69,105 crystals in one game, and (b) available in the same quantities to cash-for-coins IAPers as to those who don't, it's silly to claim that people who foolishly spend dollars on coins are getting a significant competitive advantage.
There are problems with both of these arguments. Example #1 will simply not happen. There's no advantage to doing what you suggest. Even a bad player can see this. It costs 1500 credits to purchase a crystal. You're only allowed to purchase 4 crystals per game, so buying 7 is impossible, but I'll continue anyway. If you purchase the maximum allowed crystals, you would spend 6,000 credits. If your board started with no other rocks on the field, then you would use two crystals to make two small rocks, one crystal to join the small rocks, and then your final crystal to make one additional small rock next to the large rock you just created. You'd get almost no points for this and no credits. Now, you've simply wasted 6,000 credits to do something that even a poor player could do within the first 50 turns or so, depending on draw. If you happened to get lucky and got two small rocks on the board to start, and they happened to be next to each other so you could join them, then you'd use one crystal to join the small rocks creating a large rock, two crystals to make adjacent small rocks, then your last crystal to join the two small crystals. This would leave you with two large rocks and zero points. Again, this is a waste of all of your credits. There's simply no reason to do this. With a little practice, you can join large rocks to create treasure chest once or twice, even in a bad game. This earns you 1,800 credits every time you do it. If you spend a few games doing this, then you can stockpile credits until you get a decent amount, then use those credits in a single game to try for a high score. A score of 100,000 is not a high score, so it doesn't matter if the person bought their way to that score or earned it. That person will not be on the leaderboard anyway. Again, this argument is flawed. You can only buy 4 bots per game. It would cost you 4000 credits to buy them. The ONLY reason you would want to do as you suggested is if you have a super high score (we're talking millions here)...and at that point, you have more credits than you need anyway. If you used the bots in a normal game, you would spend 4000 credits. If you joined a few rocks, you may earn 50,000 points and 1,800 credits, but that is not going to make a difference on the leaderboard and you will lose credits by using this strategy. C.Hannum's argument is that if you're a half-way knowledgeable player, and you have patience, then the IAP are not a concern. You can join rocks and create big treasure chests every game, earning 1,800 credits at a time. After 7-8 games, you'll have a stockpile of more than 15,000 credits, which you cn then use to try for an all-out score attempt. Anybody can do this. You don't need to buy anything to get to this point. You are, therefore, at no more of an advantage by buying the credits via IAP.
I think you are both missing my point. I would never do either of these "strategies". both strategies are somewhat stupid, and as you point out you only get 4 of each, not 7. My point was that to argue that you can't get higher scores using the store then you can get not using the store is foolish. Anyone at any skill level can get a higher score using the store. How much higher will certainly depend on your skill level. THis is not an argument against the store. I don't care about the high score table. My use of the store is relatively constant, and so as I improve, I am competing against myself. No, CHannum's arguemnt was He is saying that the store doesn't help your scores. That is clearly not the case.
No one said this foolish thing. They said that you can't get higher scores using IAP than without. That's true, because there are other ways to get coins.
This is correct and is exactly what C.Hannum is saying. You CAN use the store to get high scores. Unless you're extremely lucky, the only way to compete on the leaderboards is by using the store. However, everybody has access to the store. Everybody has access to the same number of items. And, everybody can earn credits or buy credits. It may certainly take you awhile to earn the credits, but it puts you at no more of an advantage than anybody else...and that is my point. IAP or not, you're not going score any higher than anybody else. The only difference is the amount of time you spend to get there.
That's what I got from his last post. I'll take your word that you need to read his other posts to get his full meaning. Too many posts in this thread to go back.
No, he is saying that REAL MONEY TRANSACTIONS do not help your scores, and I agree, because any competent player can build up the same coin resources pretty quickly that Mr. IAP pays real money for. If you are good enough at the game to have floating castles and such on your grid, you will likely benefit from four extra crystals and four extra bots in your endgame. The guy who pays $ for coins can do that; I can do that as well, and the only real money I've spent or plan to spend was on unlimited turns. Where is the real money benefit? If you are not good enough at the game yet to get beyond huts and cursing at ninja bears, the items you can buy from the store with coins may help marginally, but only marginally. Your scores will improve slightly but the cost:benefit ratio of your dollars is miniscule. Where is any meaningful real money transaction benefit? The store is an in-game resource. No more, no less. If you could pay $.50 each for unlimited crystals, as an example, then everyone would be perfectly justified in screaming about buying high scores. As it's currently implemented, though, paying for coins is essentially whizzing into the wind, because you DON'T get any added benefit from it that a skilled player can't obtain without it.
I haven't yet spent a dime in Triple Town and I've accumulated up to 30k before going on a robot and crystal spending spree. I will probably buy unlimited turns at some point but currently having to spend coins on turns increases the difficulty and fun for me. I hope they make a lot of money from this app though, the in app purchases aren't nearly as grating as some I've run into and it's a great game.
What's odd is that every time it does crash, I check my memory and it's at 60-70. It does seem to not like when I get notification center things (email, facebook, etc) though, so it is probably a memory thing. For now, clearing all multitasking apps and then rebooting seems to be the way to go. Otherwise, the game just keeps crashing on load after the first crash. Rebooting lets me play 15-25 minutes before the next crash. The game is still randomly asking for my iTunes login, but as I said, unlimited turns are working now, so not as ridiculous, just kind of annoying.
Not everyone has the patience to play sereal games, wasting hours, to collect 30k coins. Plus, there's a bug where you can buy unlimited items from the store, which again means certain people are getting a huge advantage. Ive played many games on triple town without using the store and many games with using the store/IAP and I usually double my score, at least, while using store bought items. The reason is, even being a very skilled player making triple castles (the highest honor of the game) often enough you won't actually have enough room, For instance, you build two castles next to each other, you need to build a third still, which means you need to build 9 trees, 3 huts, 3 houses, 3 mansions then you get your third castle to place between the other two.. I've never, not once out of probably about 50 games ever had enough room to do that, without a doubt I need to buy a crystal, not only on the castle, but often on the double mansion too, there just simply isn't enough room, without buying crystals from the store I never would have even gotten a triple castle before, which soared my points over the 1 million mark. I never would have hit the 1 million mark + without using the store. And on top of all that there's a bug that allows you to buy AS MANY ITEMS AS YOU LIKE from the store, which is basically allowing people to have unlimited gameplay, you can just keep on doing to coin glitch, then the store glitch Amd potentially play forever. I hit 1 million before I knew about the glitches, then once I found out I did it once or twice and almost hit 3 million, then the game became Incredibly boring because 99% of people in the top 50 would have cheated their way there, so I haven't played since. The coin glitch was fixed in the new update, so all the clever people won't ever update so they can keep on stealing as many coins and items as they please, and the leaderboards are forever ruined because of it, so that's why this games addictive fun has ended for me. And it was just after i bought the unlock fee too, but ohwell maybe someday the devs will add more to the game and I'll get addicted again, but until then, triple town was a fun little fling for a weekend on holiday, and nothing else.
Couldn't you enjoy the game if it had no leader board at all? Most games have leader boards with the top spots filled by cheaters. So what?
i was going to say something like that. i just enjoy the game for the sake of the challenge it presents to me, and the contest of seeing how far i can go personally. but some people do care about leaderboards, i guess.
The highest score I see on the all-time GC leaderboard is 1.2m points, which, you may be surprised to hear, isn't that high at all. In Facebook, in the exact same gameplay mode, we have folks who have cracked 10m. I myself have topped out at 3.6m. So it does not appear to me that the top of the leaderboard is overflowing with cheaters. The natural limit on items in the store prevents anyone from "buying" a highscore. To put this in perspective, in our experience the *vast* majority of players never break 1m points no matter how much they spend. It requires tremendous skill to crack that ceiling.
Ehm, what? The highest score on GC is 2,147,483,647. That's an awful lot higher than 1.2m points. In fact 1.2m wouldn't get you into the top 100. The scoreboard is full of cheaters, end of story.
Im also having issues with restoring the unlimited turns. I was having problems earlier about it asking me for my itunes login non stop like on every turn so i deleted it and installed it again and now its not letting me restore my unlimited turns. Whats up with this? Is it a glitch?
