Alex & Adam - Getting +1 Wit for Kills: Why it's a really poor change to Outwitters

[oneadamleft]

We're glad Ravernoth is enthusiastic enough to do all of this analysis. Sincerely. Here's why we haven't back-pedalled on the kill bonus just yet:

It breaks up stalemates faster by giving the player with more kills more momentum. It allows smart aggressive players to move up reinforcements on their attack run, and smart defensive players more resources to react. It also makes it slightly harder to count wits and predict each other's moves. Making the games less predictable is, in our opinion, more fun. Some of our testers agree with that. Some have not.

Here's the data we've collected from replays provided by our testers so far:

Total games: 63

Overall Averages:
Winner's kill bonus spread: +2 wits (ranging from -5 to +9 wit advantages)
Winner's cap pt bonus spread: +2.25 wits (ranging from -5 to +15 wits)

Special Unit Kill Wit Averages:
Bombshell loses by 0.25 kill wits, wins by 4.8 kill wits*
Scrambler loses by 4.3 kill wits, wins by -1.8 kill wits**
Bramble loses by 2.5 kill wits, wins by 3.8 kill wits
Mobi loses by 0.5 kill wits, wins by 1.3 kill wits***
None loses by 1.5 kill wits, wins by 1.6 kill wits

* Bombshell's highest kill bonus spread was +9, which Bramble also reached. Bramble is used a lot more often, but did reach high kill spreads as many times as Bombshell.

** Scrambling doesn't give a kill wit in the current build.

*** Only 5 replays featured Mobi.