Yearly Review 2022
2022 Recap #
After 365 days of 2022 it is time to take a look back to see what happened and what might and/or will happen in the future with regards to Exponential Idle.
Quick warning: this recap will touch basically and potentially every topic and might spoil you, so don’t say you haven’t been warned!
Before I get into it, a few shoutouts absolutely have to be made.
Shoutout to LE★Baldy who made it possible to have this here on the guide today by sacrificing sleep and even transfering the rankings from Discord to the website!
Shoutout to the other guide editors who make this site possible!
Shoutout to all, who helped making these before (especially XLII and Huevos Revueltos for the rankings tracking, Alex for iOS updates and surely many more for ideas, pointing out mistakes and input)!
Shoutout to the community (especially on Discord as this is where the rankings were done first) for being amazing and there to read, talk, discuss and have fun with the game and outside the game! Without this nothing would happen and I’m grateful we’re still having the community growing!
And finally a shoutout to Gilles who made the great game without which this couldn’t exist!
What happened? #
A full year means a lot of things happened. Or at least it should mean that. Luckily for us that holds very much true for 2022!
The most important event has to be the release of Update 1.4.21 or in more understandable terms: the release of custom theories. Coincidentally this was also the first major event of the year happening on 16.01.2022 and the main trigger for me to start a news section for the rankings.
Over the course of the next months we got 4 official custom theories, 2 theories to help automate parts of the game and over a dozen unofficial custom theories in development (while most probably not knowing a bunch more which aren’t publicly known yet). Another handful of theories are ready to be tested for adding them to the official, so all in all a great success which lead to countless hours of fun!
Most of the other minor updates aren’t exactly interesting for the casual player but we did get the game translated to 2 more languages (Czech and Serbian) which takes the total number of languages up to 28!
The communities and the game itself are in great shape with the Subreddit r/ExponentialIdle having almost 6400 members, the Discord server surpassing 10000 members for almost 10600 users and the game itself having now over 500000 downloads (while I don’t have exact numbers this means more then doubling and being around 4x the number of downloads!).
Enough official news, coming to some more specific news!
Beginning with the custom theories:
- General needed knowledge:
- All official custom theories also give tau for the main game but at a reduced rate (10% of their rho for all of them except 40% for Euler’s Formula)
- Tau is given up to a cap of e150 (raised on 4th May this year from e100 after the old cap was reached to quickly)
- Weierstraß Sine Product by xelaroc: this was the first added custom theory already included in 1.4.21. I won’t recount everything as you can look to the rankings and news yourself for some history. Just the most important knowledge condensed:
- The first person to complete it on the old tau cap of e100 was Playspout
- The currently highest value of it on any save is e126 also by Playspout
- As it was optimized for the old cap of e100 tau (or 10% of the rho) it is currently the one custom theory no one will be able to finish (meaning reach the cap of e150) but the highest value on a main save is about e106 (this should also be by Playspout)
- Sequential Limits by Ellipsis: this was the second custom theory, added a week after 1.4.21 was released.
- The first person to complete it on the old tau cap of e100 was Playspout (who also was the first person to complete both of them)
- The currently highest value of it on any save would be e155 (if not for the cap) also by Playspout
- The highest value on a main save should be e132 by d4Nf6Bg5
- Euler’s Formula by Snaeky (idea), peanut (programming) and XLII (balancing): released at the same time as the next official custom theory and the first one to be developed by a team. As it was the faster one, it was mostly chosen to be played first and it is also listed third.
- The first person to complete it on the new tau cap of e150 was Playspout.
- The currently highest value of it on any save would be e160 (if not for the cap) also by Playspout
- It is so far the only theory which was completed for the new cap on a main save (actually so far I know of 7 completions: Playspout, NGZ001, BlackSeal, Finalultima, XLII, and dyme)
- Convergents to \(\sqrt{2}\) by Solarion: released at the same time as Euler’s Formula.
- So far nobody has completed it on the new cap
- The highest value of it on any save is e130 by Playspout
- The highest value on a main save should be about e124 by BluePlusSymbol
Next we had some big developments regarding guides and strategies:
- This site was developed far beyond what it was prior (but you already knew this or noticed this when you are reading this recap)
- Several new strategies for theories were found (see the guide here as well) - amazing after how much was already known after the first 8 and a half month or original theories
- We got even more tech: XLII developed a better and publicly available simulator for theories with a whole bunch of strategies and more neat features included (previously we had the first simulator by Antharion, which was at first not publicly available, then a port by xelaroc of this sim hosted on repl.it and finally a bot on the Discord server which used the previous one in the background)
Finally some more stats and records related updates:
- We got 2 players who managed to get 1,000,000,000 minigame stars (first XLII and then NGZ001)
- Combining the highest values for all theories on main saves gives us a tau value of e6956 tau while the highest tau value on a single save has just surpassed e6800 (about e6802) by (who could have guessed) Playspout
- Theoretical maximum by combining all the highest values from alt saves gives us a tau value of e7607 which shows how much we still have to gain
- Over 1000 players have reached ee50000 f(t) and over 100 players have broken ee60000 f(t)
Ranking developments #
Over a year the leaderboard is bound to have fluctuations, so let’s take a look at some stats and changes. First some facts:
- Over the course of 12 editions of the rankings we had 33 players included, out of which 2 come from the iOS leaderboard
- We had 14 honourable mentions
- The highest f(t) changed from ee60000 to ee67409 (and currently ee67488) -> an increase of ee7409 (or ee7488)
- The lowest f(t) changed from ee57892 to ee65601 (and currently ee65868) -> an increase of ee7609 (or ee7876)
Before I start to list the changes over the years for the players, something for the eye! The user Huevos Revueltos has started compiling a lot of leaderboard values for the Top 20 and now even the Top 100. From the 7th of October onward he has created the following visualization of the development of the current Top 25:
Current Leaderboard rank | Last Rankings rank | Player name | Current f(t) | Placement change |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | HeadedArt26 | ee67488 | Rank 4 -> Rank 1 (+3) |
2 | 2 | Eldrail | ee67353 | Rank 3 -> Rank 2 (+1) |
3 | 3 | AdamH99 | ee67253 | Rank 20 -> Rank 3 (+17) |
6 | 4 | GenErationNation | ee67017 | Rank 2 -> Rank 6 (-4) |
5 | 5 | BlackSeal94 | ee67105 | Rank 6 -> Rank 5 (+1) |
4 | 6 | VintageSurfer56606 | ee67154 | Rank 7 -> Rank 4 (+3) |
7 | 7 | Finalultima | ee66766 | Not in Top 20 at the start of 2022 |
8 | 8 | axolotlgud | ee66597 | Rank 17 -> Rank 8 (+9) |
9 | 9 | TREDEC42 | ee66550 | Not in Top 20 at the start of 2022 |
11 | 10 | colinc719 | ee66524 | Not in Top 20 at the start of 2022 |
12 | 11 | Antharion1988 | ee66400 | Rank 5 -> Rank 12 (-7) |
10 | 12 | spqcey | ee66548 | Not in Top 20 at the start of 2022 |
13 | 13 | ReckonCrew | ee66359 | Rank 11 -> Rank 13 (-2) |
16 | 14 | SnaekySnacks | ee66259 | Rank 18 -> Rank 16 (+2) |
15 | 15 | UpArtz | ee66292 | Rank 19 -> Rank 15 (+4) |
14 | 16 | adequateryan | ee66305 | Not in Top 20 at the start of 2022 |
17 | 17 | harumaki200 | ee66023 | Rank 8 -> Rank 17 (-9) |
18 | 18 | JuannTitor | ee65983 | Rank 16 -> Rank 18 (-2) |
19 | 19 | Fireburner80 | ee65925 | Rank 12 -> Rank 19 (-7) |
23 | 20 | d4Nf6Bg5 | ee65601 | Not in Top 20 at the start of 2022 |
25 | 22 | GrimJuniper55831 | ee65556 | Rank 1 -> Rank 25 (-24, stopped playing) |
What’s in store for 2023? #
A new year should hopefully mean new things as well. So we can try to make some predictions or easier: collect known information about the future of Exponential Idle (or at least for the next year).
A bit sadly the foreseeable future is done rather quickly:
New custom theories should get added though an actual timing is currently unknown.
Besides this we have some general happenings (rankings and news will continue monthly, guide will keep getting updates) but nothing explicitly planned. So in a way it is up to you all to see where it will go: write new custom theories, engage in the community, grind the leaderboard, develop ideas yourself and suggest them in any community or just have fun in your own way.
Thank you for reading and I can end only on one wish:
Happy New Year and happy idling for 2023!