Every game has a characteristic pace made up of round duration, how often something returns and how large those returns typically are. It is not stated anywhere, it takes ten minutes to establish, and it predicts how an hour will feel better than any published figure.
The three components
Round duration sets the ceiling on how much can happen per hour. Hit frequency sets how many of those rounds return anything. Median return size sets what those returns are worth. Together they describe the base game completely.
Any one alone is misleading. A high hit frequency with a tiny median is a balance draining steadily while the screen stays busy, and the frequency figure on its own would suggest the opposite.
Why the base game deserves the attention
Because it is where the overwhelming majority of rounds happen. A feature arriving once in a couple of hundred rounds accounts for a small fraction of the time spent, however much of the return it carries.
Establishing it
Two hundred rounds with a notepad. Running the Thai Temple demo for that long while tallying round count, returning rounds and rough return sizes gives all three components, and free play means the measurement costs nothing but time.
Exclude feature rounds from the tally. Mixing them in produces an average describing neither the base game nor the feature, which is exactly the problem the exercise is meant to solve.
- Time ten rounds and derive the hourly rate
- Tally returning rounds over two hundred
- Note the typical size of those returns
- Exclude feature rounds from all three counts
- Convert the result into an hourly cost
Turning it into a number
Rounds per hour multiplied by stake gives turnover; turnover multiplied by the house edge gives the expected hourly cost. That figure is what a session actually costs on average, and it is the only one worth setting a stake from.
The comparison that gives it meaning
Run the same measurement on a second title. Absolute figures mean little without context, and the contrast between two games measured identically shows immediately which one moves faster and which returns more often.
What it replaces
An impression formed from a handful of rounds and remembered selectively. Ten minutes of counting produces something that can be written down, compared against other titles later and relied upon, which no amount of unstructured play delivers.