A dead option looks like a live one#

SLOP2875 · Week 6

Swipe, or press →

Three cards every level#

An earlier build of the specimen had seven cards in the pool.

Three of them did nothing.

The claim#

An option that does nothing is indistinguishable, to the player choosing it, from one that matters.

Nothing happens when you pick it.

Nothing happening is not an event.

How they were found#

Damage, attack rate and pickup reach each measured within 1.5 s of taking no upgrade at all.

25 runs.

Why they were dead#

Damage was dealt per second of contact.

A weapon that spun faster touched each enemy more often, for proportionally less time.

The attack-rate card was worth exactly nothing.

Two ways to ask#

Take only this. Several levels of one card, refuse everything else.

Never take this. Choose normally, but one card is banned. Count what is lost.

Same player, same seeds. They disagree.

Take only this#

Movement speed, the 100 ms player, median survival from no speed to four levels:

66.0 s, 66.0 s, 66.0 s, 66.0 s, 55.4 s.

Worthless, then harmful?

66 s is the first boss’s deadline#

With no speed, 36 of 51 runs end on it. The median sits on that wall.

Runs that kill the first boss, same five builds: 0, 0, 0, 8, 18.

And the boss shrinks#

It is sized by the upgrades the player holds when it arrives, the starting weapon included.

Speed only: one to five upgrades, 884 hp down to 408 hp.

Choosing normally, or with one card banned: 6 to 8 upgrades.

Never take this · baseline 12 wins of 51#

Take only this is a rigged question#

for any card whose value is in what it lets you do next.

Here it is rigged twice: refusing every other card changes the boss as well.

Thursday#

That table, from your own simulated player.

The name of the card you were most wrong about.