A Review of Tap Ranch

First of all sorry for the long absence on the blog. I don't have a good excuse for you so I won't waste your time with a poor one.

Well, then on to business! There was a request a while ago after I reviewed Tap Birds to do a similar review for Tap Ranch. Unfortunately at the time, my play time on TR consisted of a whole ten minutes. Having played up to level 16 now, I feel I can make a good review of the game.

First, I have to admit I was lukewarm about this game going into it. While TB and TF offer beautiful backgrounds, and pretty fish and birds, Tap Ranch didn't really appeal to me artistically. Who wants to to site around watching a cartoon chicken bob its head around? I also had trouble with the name. a ranch is normally a large farm that specializes in one animal (my grandfather had a mink ranch, for example). This game seems more like a homestead, which may be part of its appeal. It projects nostalgia about how farm life used to be before all the big companies took it over.

Now, on to the game. Let's start with the good points. Bay View's third game has definitely eliminated a lot of the irritating aspects of TF and TB. First, there is no need to switch tanks or aviaries. All of your farm is in front of you all the time. You just pinch to zoom in and out. The algae and poop has been eliminated along with the constant feeding. Instead of tapping 50 times to feed, you just tap once a day to water and all is well. They also have a one hour sunflower for those who don't like waiting the standard four. The graphics, while cartoonish, are acceptable, except for the rabbits that look more like pigs. The best are the bee who do a little jig above the alfalfa before producing honey.

Tap Ranch is also a wonderful game for those who like mathematical calculations. The calculations are quite complex since a product could go through many changes. Should I just sell my alfalfa for the 5 coin profit or should I buy a beehive and a cow to earn an extra ten coin profit? These are all questions a speedster like myself would consider as we race to the end. Unfortunately the end is not well defined here, but perhaps a mansion on the biggest plot of land would be a good finale.

But there are problems with Tap Ranch, which revolved around the use of the Ranch Buck currency. Ranch bucks cost the same as Bird Bucks and Fish Bucks, but the prices are much higher. Some of the crops, such as raspberries are bought with Ranch Bucks, which doesn't make sense to me, since they are not decorative, are not particularly profitable, and are sold off in a couple of hours, never to be seen again. Who would waste 3 RB on that?

The biggest problem however, is the livestock feeding feature. Many of the crops, Corn, Wheat, etc, can be fed to animals or processed in machines to increase profit. For example, I can feed corn to my chickens and they will produce eggs. This is all good and interesting, but the problem is that it takes for ages for the chickens to process a good-sized harvest of corn. Each egg takes a minute, and I can only put in three-eggs worth of corn in at a time. I also have to collect the eggs and put them into my inventory before I can sell them. This all takes time, lots of it, and sorry to say there are few things as boring in the gaming world as watching chickens dunking for corn and waiting for an egg to pop out. Sorry to say, but I have better things to do.

The only way to solve this problem is to either sell my crops without giving it to the animals and therefore forgo the extra profit or by using automatic operations (AO). AOs make the feeding and collecting processes automatic. Leaving you free of this boredom. Problem is they cost RB, a lot of them (granted they are on sale right now as I write this). You get 20 free ones with every level up but they only last a minute. You need 15,000 pack for 400 Rb if you want any freedom from this nightmare. Of course that will set you back $20 or so, and even those 15,000 will only last you about a month. Is TR worth, $20 a month? Not for me it isn't but perhaps for some.

In short, I played TR quite regularly for a week, got up to level 16, but got too tired looking at my cows, sheep, bees, chicken chewing away to continue. Perhaps if the RB prices were to fall a bit and more AO were given I might want to continue, but in its present state I'll pass. For those of you who want to relive the homestead life,however, please give it a look.

MVP Fish: Most Valuable Fish

When talking about Tapfish I often get asked about what is the best fish to raise. Often when people ask me this, they generally mean which fish will make them the most money. However the amount of coins a fish produces is only one factor in when choosing a fish. Recently I talked to one tapper who was feeling down about leveling up. She said it was going too slow through the 70's.

Looking at her coin total, I was surprised that she had almost as many coins as I did! "1.5 billion coins! Only level 73? What on earth were you doing?" Apparently she was raising electric eels and nothing else. Considering she had to wait 4 long days every time just to refill her tank, it is no wonder she was feeling down about leveling up. Hers was the classic case of a person too caught up in the coins too look at the big picture.

What are the factors, then, that make a good gameplay fish? Here I will try to judge the fish from all aspects of the game so we can determine an MVP. Note that I am talking from a gameplay perspective, how pretty a fish is does not figure in, and fishbuck fishes are naturally eliminated. Bred fish have restricted quantities, so they are also excluded from this talk.

1. Profitability

Of course we will start here, simply because it is the easiest recognized. Lets calculate the profitability of some key fish in the game on a profit per day basis. 91% happiness, bulk sold.

We will use this as the base of all the fish we consider.

2. Points

Points are much more valuable than coins because they are harder to come by. Just look at my friend in the story above. However with no way to determine how much more valuable they are I will make an arbitrary judgement by multiplying the coin total by the total number of points they can produce in a day. In this sense a green snapper's total will be multiplied by 6, a White Grunt by one, and an eel by 0.25 because it takes four days to produce a point.

3. Reasonableness

A valuable fish should be easy to buy. Something like a Scott Fairy may seem to turn a good profit, but people starting out in the game probably could not afford more than one or two. In that case, one's money is much better spent on something like Grunts or Goldfish. This is not a big factor, however, so in my system I will subtract 1coin from every 100 coins it costs from its profit. A reasonable fish like a Goldfish or Green Snapper would not lose any coins, a Grunt would lose 42, while a Scott Fairy would lose 480.

4. Breeding

Breeding fish plays just a small role, in the gameplay aspect of Tapfish, but it does have its advantages. Let's give a 10 point bonus to any fish that can be bred.

4. Availability

A valuable fish should be a fish that you can readily use. Since a great white shark is only available at the end of the game, it has a value of zero. I will calculate the availability of fish, not on their level, but by what percentage of XPs are still needed to reach that level 80. For instance, the electric eels on Level 65 requires that you obtain 600,000 of the 1, 600,000 XPs you need to complete the game, that is 37.5 % of the total number of XPs, so its total will be multiplied by.625. Of course using availability is debatable because its importance depends on where you are in the game. A person on level 70, for example, does not really care that a spiky puffer was made available on level 45, whereas a person on level 40 would certainly care. With this in mind, I will make pre and post availability scores for each fish.

So who is our MVP? Calculating the score for every fish would take time, so I will shorten the list to fish I consider "contenders" and/ or are often used.

Here we go!!!

(Profit per day ×Points) - Reasonability+Breeding=sub score×availability=MVP Score

Green Snapper (20*6)-0+10=130*1=130

GoldFish (45*2.6)-0+10=127

Barracuda (2285*0.17)-230+0=148*0.8=118

White Grunt(2856*1)-42+10=2824*1=2824

Scott Fairy (3955* 0.4)-480 +0=1102*1=1102

Gray Reef Shark(4572*0.5)-450+0=1836*1=1836

Spikey Puffer (3400*0.2)-550+0=130*0.78=102

Electric Eel (15000*0.25)-750+0=3000*0.625=1875

Great White (11625*0.1125)-1500+0=-192*0=0

From this sample of what I feel are the most likely contenders, we see that the Eel has the highest sub score at 3000, but since it suffers from an availability issue the White Grunt wins out. Figuring out other fish like the Boxfish or Swordfish could be interesting, but I don't think it would fair any better. Using these calculations, then, I hereby declare the White Grunt being the most valuable fish in Tap Fish, followed by the electric Eel, and then Gray Reef Shark! Note that if even I didn't dock the Grey Reef and Eel for being expensive, they still wouldn't have caught the White Grunt.

So what are you waiting for? Hurry up and stock up on White Grunts!

No no no. What this means is that no matter what you are after, points, coins, or breeding, the White Grunt would be a good choice. If you go to either extreme, then fish like Eels and Green Snappers come into play. But when in doubt, buy Grunts!

Thoughts about Breeding Trophies

Good evening everyone. You may have thought I would be talking about the decision of Tap Fish to put all the high Level Fish on Fishbucks instead of coins, but since that idea lasted a total of two hours due to the incredible backlash they got, I decided not to touch it as well.

No tonight's topic is something I don't know much about: Breeding Trophies. To me breeding trophies were never a big part of my Tap Fish game; it seemed to be more of a distraction as I waited for my other fish to mature. I didn't count, but I would be surprised to learn if I had bred over 20 fish.

However as it turns out Breeding has become for many people, one of the most enjoyable parts of the game. In fact, when Bayview Labs announced on Face Book that I had set the Tap Fish Record, many people thought it had something to do with breeding. "Did he breed all the fish?" "How could he breed them all without Fishbucks?" "You can't recognize the record unless he had all the breeds!"

I couldn't help but chuckle over this, because breeding is actually a very easy thing that had nothing to do with the game play aspect. You could breed all 500-odd fish if you had 2 hours and about a hundred bucks. Nevertheless, it is interesting the passion people put into breeding. It matches the passion of leveling up.

One interesting question is question that comes up from time to time is this: "I bred a fish, now where is my trophy?" Given the little icon, some people assumed they would get a little electronic metal trophy indicating their success. They don't realize the fish themselves are the trophies.

Perhaps it is a regional thing, or perhaps many Tap Fish players know little of fishing, but sport fishermen call big-sized fish "trophies". A trophy fish is a big fish that you take to a taxidermist, which stuffs the fish for you to hang on your wall above your bear rug and next to your deer head. Where I grew up in Canada I saw many such trophies. In Japan, they put an interesting twist on this trophy idea. They the fish they caught in ink, and then lay it on a big piece of paper for it to make an imprint. This type of calligraphy is really quite beautiful and conveys the size of the fish caught quite accurately. Taxidermy and calligraphy would be called true trophies which Tap Fish conveys, but it is not surprising that many people who have never fished would not know this.

Still, getting a little bonus for breeding a fish is actually a little interesting. It could add a new fun element to the game if Tap Fish did it. This is what I propose: make decorations locked the way high level fish are locked. After breeding a certain about of fish, say every thirty fish, you could then unlock a new decoration or plant for your use. That plant of decoration could then be considered your trophy. This would give a sense of gameplay to breeding and make the game even more enjoyable than it is now.

Finally,I would like to thank Sarah for providing me with today's picture. She has successfully bred all 500+ fish. Good job!

Review Of Tap Birds

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay in the blog. I was off on vacation for a while but back to work tomorrow.
Today's topic is about another Bayview product, Tap Birds. Tap Birds appeared near the end of my quest, and lots of people have asked me if I was going to play it and set the record for it as well. I would love to set the record, but Tap Fish took too much out of me to seriously take it on. Moreover, fish have always been a bigger interest in my family.
My father has kept fish in a pond for many years, birds (especially ducks) on the other hand, ate our crops! My dad taught me to use a gun at the age of twelve and we had many duck hunting trips together. Heck, my father hated birds so much that he would open the living room window, take out a pellet gun, and shoot down from the trees any woodpecker or squirrel he thought was making too much noise! My mother hated this, but the farm cats (of which there was a legion) worshipped my father and as they ate whatever came tumbling down.
Well lets get back to the topic at hand. After much delay I began to play a bit of Tap Birds last week and presently I am on Level 10. First the good points. The graphics are very beautiful, much more stunning than Tap Fish. The backgrounds in particular are works or art, and I love the option that allows you to preview backgrounds before you buy. The birds are also animated better than I thought they fly naturally and land on branches and on the ground. This is much better than the fish in Tap Fish that do nothing but swim (and in some cases like the blue crab, very unnaturally). In this aspect Tap Birds is a definite treat to look at. I give it an A.
How about game play? Unlike Tap Fish, Tap Birds limits you to 25 birds an aviary, worth 4 XPs each. You get 2 XPs when you buy. In this aspect Tap Birds is much faster at getting XPs. The downside is that this same feature makes it difficult to make coins well. The birds also make very little profit. There is no Electric Eel or White Grunt equivalent in Tap Birds. Even the highest ranked bird, the Greater Adjutant, makes a measly 100 coins profit! It must take a long time to collect coins in this game, although XPs will come quickly. I give this aspect a B.
How about function aspect. Here is where Tap Birds get annoying. Lets start with the food. You just can't tap anywhere like in Tap Fish. You have to tap on the feeder on the right (I'm a lefty, however). Under the feeder is a purple bar graph to tell you when it is full. This is all fine and dandy, but the full feeder does not contain enough food to feed all 25 birds, so you have to tap on it again after you just filled it. Kind of defeats the purpose of having the full bar in the first place. There is also an annoying step where you have to choose the feed to give, between the default feed or worms (which cost 5 coins each). Apparently there is no real advantage that I can see to giving your birds worms. Nevertheless, the game annoyingly asks you this every time you feed. It is a time-wasting unnecessary step.
As for stocking aviaries, I like the idea that we have to put the eggs in nests; seems very natural to me. However, it is a little difficult to correctly tap those little nests, so I often have to tap well over 25 times to make sure they are filled.
The thing I dislike the most about Tap Birds, however, is cleaning the bird crap. The algae in Tap Fish, was acceptable, but this bird poop looks absolutely horrid! Do I really need to look at that every time I open the game? I wish they could change it to cleaning fallen leaves. That would be more visually pleasing. I give functionality a D.
Overall I give Tap Birds a B, mostly on its stunning artistry. The makers definitely put good time into making the birds and backgrounds. They are really enjoyable just to look at. Probably if you like Tap Fish, then you will like Tap Birds as well. Good luck tapping and here's hoping my father and his cats stay away from your aviaries!

A Needed Reform (Part Two)

Yesterday I talked about the need to reform the Fish Egg store. I suggested new categories, but I didn't get around to talking about what fish would be in each category. Today I will not talk about every single fish in every single category, but I would like to high light the main points of each category.





Coin Fish



All fish that can be bought with coins go here. Arranged from cheapest to most expensive. Note I am talking about strictly fish. Eels, penguins, dolphins go somewhere else.



Coin Breedables

Just as it reads. Coin bought breedables go here. Presently, that would be 11 fish.



Fishbuck Fish

As with coin fish, limited to strictly fish, the rays go somewhere else.



Marine Life

In addition to the present company, I will include the frog, Eagle Ray, Sawfish(really a ray), penguins, dolphins, Electric eels, Manta Ray, stingrays, for a total of 16 fish (the shark will disappear) I will reposition the killer whale to a much higher level. (My god, the eat penguins and Great Whites, for Pete's sake!)



Sharks

All the present sharks, plus the addition of the Hammerhead and Great White. I think I will retire the unnamed level 40 shark. It had its day, but looks like a silly minnow compared to these sharks.

Character Fish

All the fish that are not really fish get put here. The two bunny fish, Memorial day, Canada, Jackpot, World cup, 4th of July. I debated putting Sammy fishie here, but he is realistic enough to say in the Fish buck breedables.

So how is this for a system? I think it is straightforward and to the point, and it should make it easier for tappers to find the fish they want. Add your suggestions if you have any.

Take care and good luck tapping!

A Needed Reform (Part One)

I love Tap Fish. I love Tap Fish so much that I am willing to forgive them for cutting the price of the Angler 75% just twelve hours after I bought them. I love them enough to forgive them for extending their three month old tank contest another three weeks. I'm even willing to forgive the fact that while my Canadian Maple Leaf costs fishbucks, The American tappers can buy their flag with coins. When it comes to Tap Fish, I'm willing to forgive a lot.

However there is one thing that I thing that I believe needs a drastic reform, something that makes me me wince every time I see it. The fish egg store needs a massive overhaul. Four months ago, the fish store made sense. You had your starters, your marine life, and your exotic, and these categories made sense. The starter fish looked like starters, marine life was basically things that are not fish, and the exotic fish like the Sea horse, Lion Fish, and Leafy Sea Dragon looked exotic. From then on things began to go haywire. First came the oh-so-realistic bunny fish, which someone decided was a starter fish. They pushed it so much that they used to be listen at the top of the category, but the negative backlash has now put them near the bottom. Then came the Super Exotic Fish, and the Limited Edition. The Limited Edition turned out to not be no so limited as every fish like clockwork comes back from the dead once a month.

The real tragedy, however, is this Super Exotic category. It is like the Exotic but so much more super! This is the place Tap fish makes us believe that a goldfish is somehow rarer than a Leafy Sea Dragon! Whereas the Starter category had the fish arranged by selling price with most of the fishbuck fish listed on the bottom, the Super Exotic seems to have no organization at all!

Take a look. Right now the super exotic holds 22 fish (more than the exotic) that are placed in this order: coin fish, fishbuck fish, fishbuck, fishbuck, fishbuck, fishbuck, fishbuck, coin, coin, coin, fishbuck, fishbuck, coin, coin, fishbuck, coin, fishbuck, coin, fishbuck, coin, coin, fishbuck. Confused? Many people are. Some of the most often used fish, like the White Grunt, are placed near the end. which many ones we would only rarely buy (how many Goby fish do you have) are placed right near the top. I personally have heard at least two cases where people accidentally bought Fishbuck Mollys, when they really wanted Grunts. Some people have commented to me that this is a deliberate deception, that Tap Fish wants us to buy fishbuck fish by mistake so they can earn more. I can't believe this, however. This is a problem of laziness, not malice. Perhaps the Tap fish people are too busy managing their new games like Tap Birds and Tap Ranch they have no time to give their original game the once over.

How would I do it, then? How would I make over the categories? Here is my suggestion.

Fish Egg Store Categories.

Coin fish

Coin breedables

Fish Buck fish

Fish Buck Breedables

Marine Life

Sharks

Character Fish

Seven categories. The algae eater can go into fishbuck fish; it doesn't need its own category. Limited edition always end up not being so limited, so let's get rid of this gimmick and put them into the rest of the fish population. Every fish will be assigned a level it would open up to, with the Killer whale given a much later level while the eel and swordfish gets an earlier one. the original level 40 shark, we love you and all, but you have been made obsolete. You will be eliminated from Tap Fish.

Exactly what fish goes into what category? Let's discuss that in Part two (coming soon!)

A Proposal for Level 100

Perhaps you are wondering about the odd picture on the left. Why is it not a tank. Well, it is connected to our topic today. If there were 100 levels, what would it be like.

First, what would the total XP needed for 100 be? Tap fish of course raised the levels from 40 to 80 about 3 or so months ago. At first the XP needed to advance a level were unbelievably high, but an update placed it at 10,000XP per level in the 40's, 20,000 XP in the 50's, 40,000 in the 60's, and a whooping 80.000 in the 70's. 1.6 million XP's were needed in total to reach the highest level 80. However if this doubling trend would continue to Level 100, that would mean 160,000 per level in the 80's and 320,000 per level in the 90's for an additional 4.8 million points! That is a total three times higher than the present point total. Having a game that required 6.4 million XP to complete however would be boarding on absurd. Even for me it would take almost a year to complete.

What, then, would be a realistic point total? I would suggest 100,000 points per level in the 80's and 150,000 in the 90's. This is still incredibly high, but still possible compared to the present doubling scenario.

Next is the question of fish. For this criterion I have three opinions. First, it should be something that visually adds to the game. Some people have suggested sea snakes, but wouldn't they just look like eels? Electric eels already look bad enough, and I don't see anything electric about them. Just because a fish or marine animals sounds cool in real life doesn't mean it translates well in Tap Fish. We already have the brown pieces of string that are the eels, do we really need other colored pieces of string to accompany them?

Second, it should follow in an order that makes sense. Right now we have killer whales on level 15, although they are much bigger and even eat most of the species that are above them. Killer whales are even known to eat Great Whites on occasion! With this in mind, it would be silly to have seals above the Great Whites because the seal is the staple of the Great White diet. This does not mean that the fish necessarily have to be bigger and badder, but they should add an element to Tap Fish that justifies them being ranked higher than the Great White.

Third, I think there should be a new fish every level. Given the time it takes to reach each level after 80, the tapper should have some sort of reward of reaching such high levels. Personally, I found it to be a very long lonely road from Manta Ray to Great White.

Who are the candidates from super high level fish? Here are a few ideas of mine.

1. Sperm Whales: The biggest of all toothed whales.

2. Coelacanth: A survivor from the dinosaur age, one of the coolest-looking fish.

3. Tuna: One of the biggest and most sought-after sushi fish in the world.

4. Blue Marlin: The worlds best game fishing fish.

5. Ocean Sunfish: Heaviest known bony fish in the world.

6. Narwhal: The horn on this whale is actually an out-of-control tooth.

7. Polar Bear: If we have penguins, why not polar bears? Polar bears have been discovered swimming in the open ocean, 500 kilometers from the nearest land mass.

8. Humpback Whales: The singers of the sea. Starred in Star Trek IV!

9. Sturgeon: The caviar fish can grow to huge sizes and has a cool shape.

10. Gar: A big fish with a scary head.

11. Atlantic Cod: For a long time the most commonly eaten fish in the world, the cod is now on the verge of extinction. It deserves this for it's contributions to civilization so far.

12. Oar fish: It long, unique shape led this fish to often be mistook for a sea serpent.

13. Right Whale: This endangered Whale was so named because it was so easy to kill, meaning the "right" whale to kill.

14. Sail Fish. Can zip along at 110 km/hr (70 miles)

15: Lungfish: Gills and lungs, what else can you say?

16: Megamouth Shark: Only 50 have ever been caught or sighted.

17: Walrus: Those tusks would look cool, and it is much tougher than a seal

18. Blue Whale: Why? Because it is a blue whale of course!

19. Kraken: I'd love to see Tap Fish's take on this classic sea monster.

20: The level 100 fish is the fish pictured in the opening picture. That's right! The Turkish Doctor Fish. These little suckers get their thrills eating the dead skin and crud on your feet. Used to treat skin disorders. Why such a little fish for the 100 level? It is a tribute to the Wizard of Oz. The great big powerful wizard is really just some dorky guy hiding behind a machine. Having the Doctor fish would show that even a little fish can have a big role. Tap Fish, let's give the doctor fish his due. Doctor fish for Level 100!

Well this is my vision, if you have the time, share your as well!

(By the way, those are my feet!)