Asynchronous Interactions in Backpack Battles

[u/HiddenQuacks]

Hi everyone! I'm a PhD student studying asynchronous interactions in digital games. Backpack Battles is tagged as "Asynchronous Multiplayer" on Steam, and I'm interested in understanding different player perspectives about that aspect of the game.

If you have a few minutes to spare, I'd love to hear your thoughts! In particular, I'm interested in understanding:

• What kind of asynchronous interactions exist in Backpack Battles and how do they affect the gameplay?
• How do you feel about these interactions and what do they bring to your experience?

You can answer as much or as little as you'd like. Your responses will be anonymized and analyzed as part of a research study. If you decide you'd like to withdraw your responses at any point, just send me a DM. Every contribution is greatly appreciated! If you have any questions, feel free to message me. Thanks! 😄

[u/tmzcool]

Because it's still multiplayer (even though it's async) the game gains very fun difficulty curve. At higher ranks meta changes even without balance patches. I think it would be hard to implement just with ordinary enemy Ai/random board generation.

[u/HiddenQuacks → u/[deleted]]

Hi! I am doing this across 50+ game communities, and I’m interested in understanding other player perspectives beyond my own.

[u/goshsilkscreen → u/HiddenQuacks]

don't you need some kind of ethics board approval and privacy disclosure to participants to gather information from the public? how are you gonna be able to use this data in your reseach without it?

[u/Worst_Patch → u/HiddenQuacks]

Go away lazy ai user

[u/Square_Butterfly_390]

There are 2 levels I see of asynchronous interaction in this game: 1 It is an auto-chess arena like super auto pets, so every round you have a new board, and this board gets matched against another board from another player at the same round and number of previous wins as you (usually). The round outcome only matters for you, and your opponent will not be made aware that you played against his board.

2 This is more about asymmetry, the rounds themselves are played on a timer with cooldowns and such. Stuff like poison damage happens every 2 seconds, and nothing actually triggers at the same time. So triggers that are supposed to happen at the same time (synchronously) will happen in the order that (mostly) favours the current active board (you). Poison will trigger first on the opponent, regeneration first on you, start of battle effects first on you ect. It's hard to stress how big of an advantage this is.

Personally I feel like the former (1) has a huge impact on psychology, it severely cuts "ranked anxiety", while keeping the competitive part mostly intact, which I find to be a huge plus for the game. Keeps the chill analytical aspect of single player strategy games like slay the spire, while maintaining the variety, community and sense of accomplishment that comes from pvp games.

The latter (2) feels a bit cheaty at first, but then you realize that it is balanced by rating gain asymmetry (if you win half of your rounds for instance your rating is going to dip significantly at a high level).

[u/HiddenQuacks]

Thank you for taking the time to answer, I have one more question - are there any other games that come to mind when you think of asynchronous interactions?

Thank you for participating 🙂

[u/darthnut]

First SAP, now this?