The Arcade's Grueling Imbalance (Put into Perspective With Crappy Math)

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I want to preface this by saying that I adore Tower Unite. I know it may be a little harsh to come in with my first post being about this and being critical and negative, but as a devoted player I believe that I should feel free to vocalize my feelings. I’ve felt this about the arcade for a very long time, but I don’t seem to see anyone in the plaza really talking about it, they just accept how the arcade works and run with it.

For all of you arcade addicts with your Wowazela’s, I don’t mean to impede on your bragging rights by requesting that the arcade games’ payouts be seriously re-evaluated. I just think that as of right now there is a serious problem with how the arcade works, and most people I speak to tend to agree quite heavily.

So to establish the issue, as you may expect I need to address Coin River. I’m fully aware that Coin River can give up to like 5k or more on a really good game, which is doubled on Arcade Weekends. Let’s actually address how Coin River’s payouts work, putting them into perspective with my admittedly mediocre math (I believe the numbers to be roughly true, though they may not be the most accurate representation cause I am not the brightest bulb when it comes to mathematics.)

Let’s say a poor game of Coin River on Double Ticket Weekend gives 5000, a good one gives 7,500, and a great one gives 10,000. These numbers are actually quite generous, which I think will make my point all the more strong when we see the numbers at play. I also timed my games of coin river, and they roughly took 2:30 minutes.

I’m going to use Max rank as the goal we’re working towards here. I could be wrong, but paying attention to the EXP distribution it appears to be ticket payout divided by half. So this would hypothetically mean we would have to accumulate 2,000,000 tickets to get max rank.

The formula I’ll be applying will be (((2,000,000/Expected Payout)*150)/60)/60=[Hours To Get to 2 Mil]. The idea is to divide the max rank to the expected payout to calculate how many games it would take, assuming you were to consistently get that payout. Multiplied by the average length of a Coin River game in seconds, crunching those seconds down into minutes, and then into hours.

So, assuming this is Double Ticket Weekend:
Poor Games of Coin River= 17 hours
Good Games of Coin River= 11 hours
Great Games of Coin River= 8 Hours

So, this means that it would take anywhere from 8-17 hours, being generous with the payouts, for you to max rank arcade. Now that doesn’t seem insane yet, that actually seems rather forgiving, but let’s consider the context.

You have to:

  • Wait for a Double Arcade Weekend
  • Only play Coin River
  • Hope and pray that the 4 machines available per plaza server aren’t getting hogged up (they probably will, cause everyone has the same idea)
  • Take into account refilling for tokens, as the game costs 60 tokens. Your machine WILL get stolen one way or another.
  • And again, these numbers are rather generous.

Now, even assuming the numbers are doubled to account for the lack of a double ticket weekend, that time isn’t actually super unreasonable for something like max rank. You’re supposed to earn that, I agree that that part is fine. The problem lies in the fact that it takes as long as it does even with optimal conditions, and the worst part is all you’re doing is spamming the space bar. Coin River has its charm the first couple times you play it. But after the 30th time you start to feel demoralized as you’re doing the most optimal play, and all you’re doing is pressing the space bar a bunch of times. Meanwhile, there are games like Wheel of Fire(?) or Who’s Hue, where their jackpot prizes are around 1000 tickets, a number that Coin River DECIMATES, Double Tickets or not. Coin River’s very existence pretty much invalidates these games entirely. You rarely see regular visitors playing anything other than the coin games. Most of the time when you see people playing anything else, they often don’t know any better.

A lot of Tower Unite’s value, I feel for a lot of people and definitely for myself, is the fact that playing games, no matter what you’re doing, will always net you a reward. The addiction to it’s gameplay comes from having silly fun and then watching the funny rank go up, at least for me and other people I know. Believe me, I would love playing the Arcade, Planetary Piano is one of my favourite Tower Unite activities. But man does it just beat me down when I feel I am accomplishing nothing in comparison to the Drinking Bird someone left over their space bar getting over three times the amount you’re getting in the same amount of time.

My main solution isn’t to lower coin river’s payouts or to lower the cost of prizes or whatever, it’d be to raise the payouts of everything else. Make games that require technique, even of the most basic motor skills, give you SOMETHING compared to the middling 200 ticket payouts for a solid game. I understand that a lot would have to be considered to rebalance every game, but I feel like the Arcade is just far too daunting when the only way to be efficient in there is to just not have fun and submit to Coin River. No other area in TU works like this, and it’s confusing that it’s being neglected when you don’t really even have to add anything. The games are perfectly fine! They play with minimal glitches, a good number of them are genuine fun, nice recreations of arcade games and I think there is so much charm to it on paper. But if I was a dedicated player, which I am, I’m not going to enjoy playing Planetary Piano so much that it becomes not fun. As a friend once said, “you could give me the greatest burger I’ve ever had in my life, every single day, but soon enough I am going to learn to hate that burger.” Inversely, you can give me a meal with perfect calories and nutrition, but so long as it tastes like trash I’m not going to want to eat it. I fail to understand why we can’t have a balanced diet all around, where people can feel more free to eat what they want to eat. Even if Coin River were to still reign supreme, it’d be nice if the other games at least held a candle to it.

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I mean…maybe I’m just not understanding your point but achieving max rank is supposedly to be a long term goal. Getting to max rank in 8 hours is already pretty insane. If anything, some of the machines (like Coin River) should actually payout less, so that you can’t just max rank in less than a day. That being said, the payouts seem fine to me the way they are.

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While this is related to maxing rank, which is something that should take time, I agree the rest of arcade machines should have a better payout. In fact, this should also apply to casino, so both arcade and casino aren’t as empty, except for selected machines

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Compared to literally everything else in the game it’s aggravatingly slow. Yes, it would take 8 hours to max rank Arcade- in the most optimal conditions, a decent bit of luck factored in, on a machine that each plaza only has 4 of, during a special event that lasts roughly 3 days, and of all game’s its the one where it’s literally just you pressing a space bar. And it’s less about how good coin river is, and more so about how Coin River is the ONLY one that performs that well. Like I said, other arcade games will have their big ol’ jackpot rewards be something like 1000 tickets, where one game of Coin River will give you about 3000 normally on a good day, without double ticket weekend bonus. It just doesn’t make any sense that Coin River is the only game that can pull that off. I’d argue that Coin River being able to do that invalidates the other games because the fun factor can only last so long if you don’t really feel like you’re getting all that much out of it, especially in a game with heavy emphasis on social status and rank.

I’ve spent 35 hours in the arcade according to game stats, and I’m only rank 34. No other game in TU is that unforgiving. I have treated Arcade max rank as a long term goal, and every time I look at it it comes down to a crawl unless I’m playing Coin River, which as I’ve made clear isn’t exactly the most exhilarating game ever made.

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Coming from someone who has played coin river enough to both reach max rank and buy the funni wowazella, I agree that the payouts for the other machines should be buffed; I want to be able to play Planetary piano or Lonely gun or Stacker or many other machines without constantly thinking that Coin River would be so much faster even though I am so incredibly tired of that game.

As for rank taking so long, I don’t really mind that as much since they’re supposed to be a long term goal your always working towards; but again, the payouts for other machines being given a boost would help with that because otherwise to be optimal its just “Oops! All coin river” again anyway.

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That’s why I said, if anything Coin River should be nerfed a bit. I don’t play for rank, though, I play to just relax and have fun, so I guess that’s why I doesn’t bother me as much.

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Adding an addendum to this post:

I used the max rank as a metric to put things into perspective. I’m actually quite okay with the idea of the theoretical max rank for arcade being something like 30 hours, that’s pretty normal all things considered. Why I chose this, however, is to help put into perspective just how grueling that is when of all games you’re playing, it’s coin river. It would take a ludicrously longer amount of time to try and get that rank without coin river, but with coin river, it’s 30 mind numbing hours of obliterating your space bar.

TL;DR:
The problem with the Arcade is that the only game that can even attempt to provide a seemingly smooth progress is Coin River. The point isn’t “max rank takes too long”, though that was the goal I used cause I think it’s kind of a universal goal for any player and any game in the plaza. You can try and max out other games, and none of them will be as agonizingly slow as Arcade because Coin River is the only way you’re going to make decent pace.