As someone said recently:
Fri 28 Aug 4:38
2 AnnanFay
Take a look at the AFK/QUIT players. You will find an astonishing pattern.
Firstly that Hexagons have the lowest number at 1 of 8, well ahead of Circle’s second best 3/8.
The second interesting pattern is based upon colours. You should find that the only colour group which has no AFK/QUIT is Majestic Orange.
Thus we can safely conclude that an Orange Hexagon is the optimal style!
Fri 28 Aug 4:51
2 AnnanFay
Seems to apply to other games as well. Here’s a little graphic for a 64 game I am currently playing:
http://i.imgur.com/PbV4AAk.png (Blurry = AFK, Grayscale = QUIT)
Oblong, square and circle are by far the worst shapes. Blue is pretty much the worst colour. It’s weird how consistent it is, the only two Blue players are Hexagon and Cross, which, along with star, make up the best shapes.
For the record, here is our current status: http://i.imgur.com/EkqaZ3U.png
As an update to the above, game status is ~6 players left of which 3 are hexagons and 3 are orange. There is a fourth Hexagon hanging on with 1 star remaining (#NeverSurrender #F7)
In the 64 game mentioned above the top 10 are 4 hexagons and 4 cyan.
All of this is obviously anecdotal. It would be really interesting to see more data on the subject.
Have you seen any patterns like the above?
Do you take shape or colour into account when picking allies?
My current theory is Circles are at the top of the list so lazy people, or newbs, pick the shape. Hexagons are obviously the best shape, so maybe people who join first will pick them and are also more likely to be active in the game. In order to discredit this theory we would need to have data about join order.