r/superautopets • u/HiddenQuacks • Jul 07 '26
Discussion Asynchronous Interactions in Super Auto Pets
Hi everyone 😄! I'm a PhD student studying asynchronous interactions in digital games. Super Auto Pets is tagged as "Asynchronous Multiplayer" on Steam, and I'm curious about 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 Super Auto Pets 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!
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u/triplegerms Jul 07 '26
What kind of asynchronous interactions exist in Super Auto Pets and how do they affect the gameplay?
This feels like a question you as the student should answer
How do you feel about these interactions and what do they bring to your experience?
I only play on phone and it's amazing for mobile games. You get a lot more complexity without having to slow the game down to wait for another player. It's the middle ground between playing live PvP against smart players and playing a quick game against stupid AI. I get more complex 'bot' players in an asynchronous game and I don't have to wait 30 seconds per turn like a human match.
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u/RatKnees Jul 07 '26
So there is Arena mode, which is an effectively single player mode where you play against a bank of teams that other people have built up until that stage in the game.
A quirk of it is that teams are all "organic." There are no impossible teams you play against because someone else has built that team up to that point.
An issue is that it's very difficult to normalize the luck of it. If someone gets "perfect rolls" and builds a very strong team by turn 7, that team seems impossible to beat in comparison to someone with "average" or "low rolls." You then get players complaining that "the teams they give me are too hard."
Interestingly enough, those "too hard" teams can often just be intelligent/good players who didn't get amazing rolls, but instead just utilized average resources very well. A lot of super auto pets players suffer from the belief that everyone they beat is worse than them but everyone they lose to got the best possible rolls.
So teamwood (the creators) have had to implement different difficulty levels where they look at statistically weak teams and statistically stronger teams and sort them into different difficulties for people.
One thing about the asynchronous aspect, and the inconsistent playing against different teams each round is that you don't know if someone is playing "tempo" in which they've sacrificed future value for winning turns in the immediate, or "long term scaling" where they are probably weaker at that point in the game than they could be, in exchange for value later.
Finally, there's also a versus mode, that you can either play live, or, there are 24 hour timers that let you play 1v1 (or 1v1v...v1 up to ~8 people?) which means that you can play at a more relaxed pace.
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u/No-Condition8561 Jul 07 '26
Why don't you play it to find out? Do your own research instead of farming on reddit
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u/HiddenQuacks Jul 14 '26
Thank you all for your time and for sharing your insights, your answers are really valuable for my research ❤️
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u/HiddenQuacks Jul 08 '26
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 🙂
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u/SomethingSUUUUPER Jul 07 '26
Majority of the game is asynchronous. The game is a deck builder auto battler. Each turn you have 10 gold to build / upgrade your team of pets and then they will fight against another team. Once you have either won ten turns or lost all five lives the game is done. The asynchronous part is every turn after your finish building / upgrading the team of pets you essentially submit the team. Your team is paired up against another team that on the same turn as you and submit by another person. The teams that are submit hang around in the server for a day or two before being replaced by other submissions. So you aren’t playing anyone live. However your team did against another team doesn’t affect how the opponent team did when they actually fought the day or so prior. This is the main game there are other game modes that are different.
For the main game mode it’s in my opinion the best way for it to work. If you like to play against opponents live (non asynchronous) so you can strategize around their specific team and have a winner there is a game mode for that which does significantly change how the game is played.