Updates and changes are in full swing for Axie Infinity Origin with a recent update just released Thursday this week. One of the major changes to Axie Origin was to increase the turn times from 45 seconds to 60 seconds. This was ideally to accommodate players having trouble with the game unceremoniously ending their turns before figuring out what to do. However, in a recent poll by Product Game Lead Philip La, 63.8% of his respondents say that the ideal turn-time a lot shorter.
What do you think is the ideal turn-time for Origin?
— Philip La (@philipla) April 26, 2022
Origin is the latest iteration of Axie Infinity, a play-to-earn blockchain NFT game that gained mainstream popularity last year as an alternative form of income during the pandemic lockdown period. Origin just launched last April 7 with a modicum of success with more than 200k players testing it out on its release.
As with any Alpha launch or early access release, Axie Infinity Origin came with some bugs and balancing issues and one of the issues encountered was the turn time for each player in Arena mode. Many players have reported running out of time during their turn just deciding on what to do. However, in other cases, players would run out of time just waiting for animations for moves to complete so by the time you were about to make your next move, the clock has run out.
In the first major update to Axie Origin, the turn time issue was addressed by bringing it up 60 seconds. This gave more time for players to plan out what moves to make and allow for players to strategize. This, of course, meant that games took slightly longer but ensured that fewer players would default their turns due to running out of time.
This reporter also has an Axie account and found the turn-time to be too fast. In several games, the turn defaulted due to running out of time and some matches ended in defeat because of the auto-defeat mechanic if your turn defaults twice in a row. So the extension to 60 seconds was a welcome change for many players.
However, in the latest poll made by Philip La, 63% of 4,497 respondents shared that they actually want a shorter turn-time of 35 seconds which is 10 seconds shorter than the original timer. But why is that?
Why The Shorter Turn Time?
The biggest issue with the turn time is that there often is a hefty idle time for players while waiting for the animations of Axies to complete before taking your next move. Sometimes due to the long animation sequences, players end up defaulting on their turn because there simply wasn’t enough time, especially when players got extra energy to make extra moves.
There are two foreseeable ways to address this. Either, have a longer turn time or adjust the animations on the card moves. Between the two, I think the simplest option was just to adjust the turn-time.
However, adjusting the turn time in Axie Origin has an undesirable result. This makes matches longer than they already are. Axie Infinity Origin matches are sometimes two times longer or even more than a standard Axie Infinity Classic (v2) match. Tacking on an additional 15 seconds to each turn results in longer wait times between turns and longer matches in general.
Many Axie players, especially those who are in the competitive circuit or those who grind for rankings or achievements, are used to spending only a few minutes per match. So matches in Origin have been an adjustment for many players and those who are used to quick matches may find the longer playtimes frustrating. This probably explains the mindset behind the polls.
La stated on Twitter that they will focus first on increasing the speed of the animations in-game before making any further changes to the turn time. In his words, they will “see where we might be able to land” and will revisit the turn-time after.