Once more we would love to get your opinion in order to point us into the right direction for our next project(s).
There are a couple of suggested topics below, but feel free to comment on everything else you might have on your mind.
Space / Science Fiction RPG
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Would you be interested in a similar RPG with a space / science fiction background instead of a fantasy background?
Something like missions / scenarios on different planets with space marines / battle mechs / robots and weapons like laser guns / light sabers and such? I just wonder whether this is an idea we should pursue from your point of view.
Kingturn RPG
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Judging from the overall feedback so far, it seems that most players consider Kingturn as a general improvement over our first two titles Sw&Ear and Knighturn.
Since nothing is perfect, though, we are especially interested to hear whether there is something that we have done better in Sw&Ear or Knighturn from your point of view.
Sw&Ear Tales of Andaria – Remastered HD version
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Sw&Ear starts to look and feel a little outdated now. We thought about republishing an overhauled Tales of Andaria version (Kingturn like graphics, sound, and AI, elite opponents, legendary items and so on). Problem is that we cannot just update the existing version to this new one (incompatible save games, some of the older devices are not supported any longer, Kingturn graphics engine runs faster on new devices but much slower on old devices (almost unplayable)). I wonder how annoyed buyers of the old version might be, if we republish Sw&Ear as a new game. And what to do with the old version? Take it from the market or leave it parallel to the new version?
first – i’ve played sw&ear and knighturn multiple times. they are awesome! so far kingturn seems a little easier? I liked how unforgiving the first 2 were on the highest difficulty if you didn’t pay attention to everyone’s move/sp/etc. on some of the missions. I’m not very far in kingturn, so maybe it gets a lot harder. Also – anything with battle mechs is, by definition, awesome. Thx for your hard work on these games.
The beginning is a little easier, but it gets more difficult later on. If you are looking for a similar challenge like in Sw&Ear and Knighturn, switch the Spawn probability to ‘Always 100%’ and set the difficulty to ‘Strategist’ (both via Game Options). And if you can beat all scenarios with difficulty setting ‘Master’ and spawn probaility ‘Always 100%’ you are better than me. Some of the later scenarios I couldn’t beat with these settings so far
.
A sci-fi srpg would be fun, but would it need to be space-based? A post-apocalyptic srpg would be pretty fun and wouldn’t need much beyond a few units and base types. It would be more on-par with your current offerings.
What mechanics you create in that type of game could make it into a subsequent space based game as well.
Space / Science Fiction RPG
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To be honest, I would not like it. I don’t think it would sufficiently add to the game for all the efforts it might cost you. Fantasy is the traditional setting for games such as your and there is a reason for this. It’s wildly popular. I feel your energy could be better spent on expanding the current system that trying to merely transport it to Sci-Fi.
Sw&Ear Tales of Andaria – Remastered HD version
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That’s a tough one. It’s a good idea but I think it might be better in a couple of years after a few more games. Sw&Ear isn’t that old yet and in a couple of years, the problem with the older devices won’t be an issue anymore. I would definitely leave it on the market in parallel to the old version.
Kingturn RPG
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Perhaps you had more dialogues back in your older games. Many scenarios in Kingturn feel like they could use a bit more dialogues. Especially at the end when the player is victorious. They often appear like a reward for a victory. And personally, I find a good dialogue often much more rewarding than being able to recruit a new class… that I don’t really need anyhow. I feel late-game scenarios could really have used more dialogues. Some dialogues with the main character’s father, for example.
You will be pleased to hear that we have written 7 additional dialogs for the main story already.
Now we are checking all bonus scenarios carefully, to see whether we can further contribute to the story without adding any meaningless blah blah.
All additional dialogs will be available in Kingturn 1.5 which is scheduled for release in about 1 week.
Edit: Altogether we will add 12 additional dialogs to Kingturn 1.5 (plus the dialogs that come with the 3 new Lvl 15 scenarios planned for V.1.5 as well).
I have some more feedback for you.
Spending $5 on Kingturn was a good weekend diversion. I had dabbled with the Sw&Ear demo many months ago, and I was pleased to see how much of an improvement Kingturn is.
I love the spawn counter; I always hated games where your opponent can constantly spawn new units. You’ve solved the problem rather elegantly.
I’m about 1/6th complete – I just finished the Treasure Map II quest. With my limited playing, though, I did have some suggestions for you…
1. Add the settings menu to the battle menu or camp menu. I’d like to be able to adjust my game volume without having to quit out.
2. Add more repeatable quests in the beginning. Some of us like to grind. You can still do that, but you have to retreat to do so. It would be nice to just have a few repeatable scenarios where nobody is placed on the field and there is a reward for beating the scenario.
3. Cancelling a unit’s special ability menu can be a little tricky. I’ve accidentally hit the “stay” button a few times instead of the “cancel” button in the lower corner.
4. Itemization is my biggest pet peeve with this game. Why should I spend $$$ on a new item when new item sets appear after every scenario? I feel like I’m just throwing money down the hole. If you reduced the number of weapons/armor/jewelry, gave them meaningful bonuses, and only offered upgrades every 3-4 scenarios, I wouldn’t feel like equipping my army was such a money-pit. Another thing you can do is increase the selling price for items.
5. Once you bring a unit onto the battlefield, you can’t get rid of them (unless they were summoned monsters). I wish I could retire units that are no longer useful. I would even be okay if they were put on a 1 or 2 turn cool-down.
6. The new passive skills are blah. When I think of passive skills, I think of giving a unit the ability to teleport when moving, or giving their weapons an inherent holy-based damage. Stat boosting passives do not do much to differentiate units.
To add to suggestion #1…
If you turn the music off, you cannot adjust your Android phone’s “Media” volume with your phone’s volume buttons while playing. If you try to adjust your volume, you end up adjusting your phone’s “Ringer Volume”. The only time you can adjust the “Media” volume is when a sound effect plays.
Very interesting. I wasn’t aware that an app is allowed to take over control of the stream the phone’s volume button is connected to. But it turns out that you are right. Implemented already and available in the next patch.
And since I disregarded my claim not to reply directly to user comments now, I can as well continue …
I like your idea of adding an options icon to the Ally camp very much, although for a slightly different reason. I hope this will encourage users to change the difficulty setting more frequently, once they have realized that the game starts to get too easy / difficult for them. Implemented as well and available in the next patch.
I just can’t resist to comment on your suggestion #4 Itemization as well
. Anyway, I think this topic is worthy a general discussion, and it would be great to hear other opinions as well.
I would guess that most players agree with you, and feel that they are wasting their gold because better items become available soon after they have bought something (the quality of items offered by the merchant depends on the level of your highest-level character).
But here’s a different point of view:
In most RPGs / strategy games I have been playing in the past, the player was able to have the best equipment available at nearly every moment of the game.
Isn’t that somehow pointless? Wouldn’t it be much better to make buying equipment part of the strategic decision?
When I designed the game, I wanted to challenge the player to make decisions like ‘Should I buy a better armor for my warrior now, or am I better off buying a good staff for my mage?’.
That’s also the reason why the sell prices are very low. Your decisions should have consequences (in this case lack of money for other gear).
I think in general Kingturn is very forgiving, mainly because I never liked game design where you have to replay an entire scenario just because one of your most important / favorite characters died (permanently).
But some things should have consequences. In this case it’s the decision which equipment to buy in order to make it through the next scenario.
Thanks a lot, guys, for your very insightful comments so far.
I don’t want to disturb this very constructive flow of ideas, so I will try to hold back with replies unless there is a question.
I just wanted to let you know that your suggestions are very much appreciated, and that we’ve already started to work on several improvements based on your comments.
I agree with you in that item purchases need to be a strategic decision. After all, there are only 3 things in the game that require gold: Training, Items, and New Mercs.
What I disagree with is the future opportunity cost.
You asked the following question…
“Should I buy a better armor for my warrior now, or am I better off buying a good staff for my mage?”
…but the true question is more like…
“Should I buy a better armor for my warrior, a good staff for my mage, or should I hold off for a few scenarios until I need an upgrade?”
I like having to make the decision between arming my different characters. I don’t like having to decide to upgrade now versus later, because most of the time I’ll choose “later” and amass my gold. What is my incentive to buy upgrades when I am already overpowering enemies due to Nicolette’s spells?
The only thing that works against my hesitation is that the upgrades are incremental. It doesn’t matter if a new weapon comes out that does 2 more damage or new armor comes out that mitigates 1% more damage. These don’t boost the power of the item significantly. I only upgrade when I see that there is a clear-cut difference in quality. I’m dissuaded from buying the latest and greatest.
Instead of incremental upgrades, why not reduce the number of items offered? Give them more meaningful bonuses.
If you want to stick to your itemization system, why not consider creating a sale system? Make the newer items cost 100% of their value, but then significantly discount the older items in the shop. That way, the strategic decision becomes…
“Should I buy a top-of-the-line staff for my mage or mediocre armor for the rest of my warriors?”
Enough talking – I have some Grimlogs to kill.
Ah, I think I start to get your point now.
).
This is indeed a very thoughtful analysis of the status quo and sounds like an interesting approach to improve the item system (now I’m judging user comments again, shame on me
Maybe let’s start with the two points I entirely agree with:
1) “Should I buy a top-of-the-line staff for my mage or mediocre armor for the rest of my warriors?” I think this is the way to go.
2) This kind of decision is indeed not supported as well by the current item system as it probably should be.
Now the question is how do we get there?
To implement your suggested sale / discount system sounds very tempting.
I have to think this carefully through now, to fully understand all the impacts such a system might have on the game’s ecosystem.
I am not convinced of the benefits of reducing the number of offered items, though.
Allow me to elaborate this using bows as an example:
- The ‘worst’ standard bow has an attack value of 4 (Lvl 1 – item)
- The ‘best’standard bow has an attack value of 32 (Lvl 15 – item)
While this doesn’t seem to be much of a difference at first glance, this changes immediataley once skill usage comes into play.
The damage of the skill ‘Aimed Shot’, for example, is based on 125% of the Atk value. This results in an effective weapon damage of 6.25 (Lvl 1) and 40 (Lvl 15). In case of a critical hit, this is suddenly quite much of a difference.
We have spent a huge amount of time with character and weapon balancing, and we have tried all kinds of different Atk ranges for the ‘worst’ and the ‘best’ weapon. So I am claiming boldly now that the above Atk range setting is a quite good one in terms of balancing.
So what kind of options does this leavs us now in terms of reducing the number of offered items?
Possiblity 1 – Offer items in the same way like now, just removing several item levels in between
Player Level 1 – Available item Level 1
Player Level 2 – Available item Level 1
Player Level 3 – Available item Level 1
Player Level 4 – Available item Level 4
Player Level 5 – Available item Level 4
Player Level 6 – Available item Level 4
Player Level 7 – Available item Level 7
Player Level 8 – Available item Level 7
… and so on …
Well, this is quite likely not what you had in mind. There is only one benefit I could see here: To help the player resisting the temptation of buying an item which is not much of a benefit for him. But that’s probably not good enough to make up for all the disadvantages of this approach.
Possibility 2 – Offer also items that have a higher level than the player. Something like:
Player Level 1 – Available item Level 4
Player Level 2 – Available item Level 4
Player Level 3 – Available item Level 4
Player Level 4 – Available item Level 7
Player Level 5 – Available item Level 7
Player Level 6 – Available item Level 7
Now that makes much more sense. But it basically also means that you give the player a chance to overpower some of his units. This is not necessarily a good thing in terms of balancing.
But I got lost in details now, and quite likely I have pretty much misinterpreted the idea you had initially in mind.
Anyway, you have made a very clear and valid statement concerning a weakness of Kingturn’s current item system.
Now it’s up to us to make the best out of it
Thanks a lot!
This is a very interesting discussion.
I tend to agree with PC about how the current equipment system is a weakness and can be frustrating.
Perhaps the solution with having only 4 levels of equipment could be to have them overall far less powerful.
Level 1 weapons -> attack 4 -> poorly crafted
Level 2 weapons -> attack 6 -> average
Level 3 weapons -> attack 8 -> excellent
Level 4 weapons -> attack 10 (very expensive) -> masterfully crafted
I would make them all available right away from the beginning. So you would have several options: Do I spend my hard earned money on the level 2 – level 3 equipment for many characters or do I put everything to purchase the highest level equipment for a single character?
This way, even a level 3 character with level 4 equipment wouldn’t unbalance the game and seems overly powerful. It’s the traditional DnD system. A level 1 character with a longsword + 3 isn’t that much powerful that he can go and defeat a level 3 creature with mundane weapons easily. Yet, my level 4 weapon that I purchased at the third scenario would still be a very decent weapon at the end of the game, only beaten by magical weapons that you can only obtain from quests anyhow.
This is a very interesting suggestion. It is also difficult to argue against this DnD-like approach, since the character and item design of DnD is quite likely one of the best on the (RPG) market (imho it is the best system).
I just wished we had this discussion before the release of Kingturn. This would have made things much easier
.
If we hadn’t released Kingturn already, I would quite likely go the way you’ve suggested.
Maybe additional variations of your item list above (e.g. skills added to some of the items) in order to make the game more interesting for item hunters.
If we wanted to apply this system for Kingturn now, we had to do several things:
1) Pull out most of the items from the game
2) Lower the attribute progression for all characters in order to make the difference of Atk+6 between Lvl 1 and Lvl 4 weapons meaningful (right now a Lvl 15 assassin has a base Atk value of 64)
3) Remove or change the focus system (too much impact on the attribute change)
I guess that most players wouldn’t be very happy about these changes. Not to speak of all the effort and problems that means for us
.
But reading yours and PC’s suggestion, another solution for Kingturn comes to my mind now (basically just a combination of both of your suggestions).
How about this?:
1) All items are offered from the very beginning.
2) The item stats remain the same, but the PRICE differences are more meaningful: Cheap low level stuff, very expensive high level stuff (really, really expensive).
This approach has several advantages over Kingturn’s current one:
1) Choices like “Should I buy a top-of-the-line staff for my mage or mediocre armor for the rest of my warriors?” are now possible
2) It doesn’t really matter whether the player decides to overpower one of his units. Due to the high price of high level items, the player is forced to ‘underpower’ his other units for some time.
Two things would have to be done, yet:
a) Find the right price structure (I think I have to do some math here, based on the overall expected ‘income’ during the game, as well as an estimated resell rate and corresponding costs)
b) Determine a reasonable sell % price (right now it is 30%). Random item drops shouldn’t have too much of an impact on the available gold, from my point of view.
Any suggestions concerning the sell rate?
This approach requires only a few changes, so the risk of screwing up the whole game is considerably low.
Did I miss an important point?
What’s your opinion, guys?
EDIT: To make it more concrete …
Current prices:
Sword Lvl 1: 31 gold
Sword Lvl 15: 423 gold
A careful first suggestion for the future prices:
Sword Lvl 1: 30 gold
Sword Lvl 15: 700 gold
The prices in between levels are not linear but (pseudo) exponential.
I guess the prices for mage staffs must be even higher, e.g. 900 gold. Multiple opponent attacks make buying a lvl 15 staff much more attractive than buying a lvl 15 sword, for example.
In general more gold should be available to the player, because he doesn’t have to rebuy equipment that often.
Players who have completed half of the game already won’t be too happy about these changes, though (they might have spent quite a lot of their gold already).
But well, you can’t have everything
To be honest, my suggestion was more for the next game that you will make (I hope!) than for Kingturn
I understand than applying this for the existing game might be too complicated. I will write again later concerning your idea.
I never thought you meant it for Kingturn
. I mainly mentioned the potential impacts to make the whole topic more understandable for other players who might stumble upon this discussion.
eh, alright
Concerning your idea, my main fear is that the player might be overwhelmed by how many items he could purchase. 15 basic bows, 15 bows with critical… Just scrolling down the store to find that piece of equipment you want might be a chore and might cause some confusion. If prices are right, I would not be afraid for the game balance. It just seems to me that it wouldn’t be very… uhm, elegant.
What do you think?
After one night’s sleep, I also find my suggested solution not that compelling any longer.
In a quick test I’ve listed all items in the merchant’s store, and it turned out to be indeed very clumsy.
And according to the psychologist Dan Gilbert, giving the player too many choices is the best way to make him ‘unhappy’ (have a look at this remarkable video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTO_dZUvbJA).
Another thing is that I shouldn’t take the impact on players who are in the middle of the game already too lightly.
We probably would have to offer both versions: The current version for players who have started the game already. The new version for players who start a new game.
I think we have come a little closer to a better solution, but my previous suggestion is probably not good enough, yet.
I beat kingturn, sadly. I wish there was more to play.
Here are my post-play thoughts, opinions, and suggestions.
* Kingturn was the best Android game I’ve played.
* I’d like to play the other games in the series, but I don’t want to have to go back to the 100% spawn rate that the other two games had. You spoiled me.
* I was disappointed that the “60-65″ scenario count also included the dialog-only scenarios.
* I was disappointed that the Grimlog mage that joins you leaves your group. I was also disappointed that you weren’t given the opportunity to recruit Grimlogs, Undead, or Bandit Charlatans.
* The spawn probability system is a little wacky. It doesn’t always decrease by the same amount each time. Is it a non-integer number behind the scenes? It would be nice to make the spawn probability decrease by a fixed integer amount every time.
* I had a unit at 100% experience not level up until I got to 102% experience. Is this too a non-integer number? If the display says 100%, I should level up.
* The bandit, wolf-rider, warrior, and assassin need some loving. They are the the only classes that don’t have a co-class with the same weapon/armor type. (Actually, I would say that the bandit needs loving the most – that was my only class that wasn’t at 15.)
* Many units have redundant abilities. Once you learn one, you won’t use the other.
Examples:
The warrior has two spinning attacks.
The bandit archer has two cripple skills.
I’d rather have seen these skills upgraded and new skills added. I think, for example, that the warriors need a different multi-attack skill to help balance them with mages. Maybe a T pattern skill called “Spear Swipe”? It would be useful for enemy warrior-types to reach out and my row of mages that are behind my own row of physical fighters.
* The wolf-rider’s “Combined Attack” skill should do double damage. It doesn’t appear to have a large enough damage multiplier to justify its cost.
* Leather/Plate break skills should negate any physical damage reduction on leather/plate users. These skills don’t do enough damage. It’s pointless to use the plate break skill on plate wearers because the plate wearers have a high enough defense to negate any benefits from the attack.
* Sometimes, when trying to kill units with physical attacks, the unit will counter right before it dies. If the dying unit does this, it leaves no treasure.
* Units killed by the Trickster’s “Say Goodbye” skill yield no treasure. This may be good because…
* Is the Trickster a broken class? I have 10 of them in my roster, all trained to lv15, all with HP-focus, and all equipped with +30HP amulets (and nothing else). I summon them as needed and either use them as meat-shields, invisible path-blockers, or rapidly summoned suicide bombers? As long as I have 1 free battlefield slot, I can summon and suicide all 10 of these guys. They made short work of the new v1.5 scenarios on the King difficulty setting.
* Sometimes, a multiple-strike attack will not hit all enemies at once.
* The top legendary staff in the game adds +ATK/+POW/Holy. The top rare staff in the game adds the same amounts of +ATK and +POW, but adds +15% crit instead of Holy. Thus, the more-easily-obtained rare staff is better than the epic staff because magic users use POW-based multi-attack skills. (Summoners are the only magic class that lack an attack skill driven by POW, and as such, they are the only class that benefits from this staff.)
* At the end of the game, you have a gold glut. You’ve itemized all your characters to their maximums. I wish I could spend my gold Diablo-style on random equipment.
Wow, that’s quite a long list.
So I’m going to address just the most important points:
* I was disappointed that the Grimlog mage that joins you leaves your group. *
.
That’s exactly the emotion we intended to provoke. Those players who came across the Grimlog mage Utakah in Knighturn and Swords & Earrings already, wouldn’t have expected anything else from this selfish little fellow, I guess. That’s just how he is
* I was also disappointed that you weren’t given the opportunity to recruit Grimlogs, Undead, or Bandit Charlatans.
The story of Kingturn’s predecessor Knighturn allowed us to make pretty much every class within the game available to the player. Allowing the player to recruit undead in Kingturn, for example, wouldn’t make much sense from the story’s point of view.
However, since the very beginning we have planned to add a (free) new campaign where the player takes over the role of Utakah the Grimlog mage. There it would be possible to recruit these classes, as well as 2 or 3 entirely new classes.
Whether we can afford to build this free new campaign, mainly depends on the player community now. If we keep getting more of the recent ‘not enough scenarios’ comments which have shied away plenty of potential players already at the worst possible time for us, we quite likely won’t be able to do that.
* The spawn probability system is a little wacky. It doesn’t always decrease by the same amount each time. Is it a non-integer number behind the scenes? It would be nice to make the spawn probability decrease by a fixed integer amount every time.
Despite of the graphics / scaling system, we are using integer values throughout the game.
We tried to reproduce the phenomenon you have mentioned, but couldn’t find anything unusual. But there’s a good chance that you’ve got that wrong because the spawn system is a little tricky. Despite the fact that after each turn the spawn probability is increased again, the reduction of the spawn probability depends on the difficulty setting as well as the scenario itself. The scenario dependence reflects how many opponents are available in a scenario. So this would be only a bug if two defeated opponents translate to a different spawn probability reduction within the same scenario.
* I had a unit at 100% experience not level up until I got to 102% experience. Is this too a non-integer number? If the display says 100%, I should level up.
Agreed. This is a bug we’ve found already and fixed now in Kingturn 1.5.1. Thanks for the hint.
* Leather/Plate break skills should negate any physical damage reduction on leather/plate users. These skills don’t do enough damage. It’s pointless to use the plate break skill on plate wearers because the plate wearers have a high enough defense to negate any benefits from the attack.
Very good idea. We’ve changed these two skills in Kingturn 1.5.1 accordingly. Let’s watch the wolves tearing apart Knights now
* Trickster / Say Goodbye broken topic
That’s a topic we can make very brief. After reading your post and checking on your suggested tactics we entirely agree.
The skill ‘Say Goodbye’ is game breaking overpowered, and without making substantial changes to the whole max ally system, we cannot even prevent the player from repetitive suicide bombing with the Trickster. Looking at all the other problems that come along with this skill (see below), we’ve decided to entirely remove it in Kingturn 1.5.1. The Trickster got another (new) skill instead: ‘Stealth Shot’.
* Sometimes, when trying to kill units with physical attacks, the unit will counter right before it dies. If the dying unit does this, it leaves no treasure.
We could only reproduce this phenomenon in combination with a previous usage of the skill ‘Say Goodbye’. If we didn’t overlook something, this should be fixed automatically now.
* The top legendary staff in the game adds +ATK/+POW/Holy. The top rare staff in the game adds the same amounts of +ATK and +POW, but adds +15% crit instead of Holy. Thus, the more-easily-obtained rare staff is better than the epic staff because magic users use POW-based multi-attack skills. (Summoners are the only magic class that lack an attack skill driven by POW, and as such, they are the only class that benefits from this staff.)
Well observed. While it was intended that the Legendary Staff is especially interesting for summoners (mages are strong enough already imho), making the rare staff better than the legendary one was of course not the idea. Problem fixed with adding a critical chance bonus to the legendary staff as well.
Thanks for the update.
Also, thanks for letting me know about the variable spawn rate. I see now that it does depend on the scenario.
I didn’t mean to give the impression that I thought the game was too short. I was just sad that it ended.
I’m replaying the game through King difficulty right now. Those first few scenarios are tough. You have to kill 2 enemies per turn in order to keep ahead of the spawn rate increase, and that isn’t easy. It’s been a good challenge.
I especially liked how the difficulty didn’t dummy-down the experience or gold rewards. I’m actually more over-leveled now than I was when I played through the first time on “Strategist”. My coffers are brimming with gold, and I’ve even come across a few rare and legendary items dropped by the more common Elites.
One thing I didn’t care for on King was the battle pacing. Because the per-turn spawn rate increase is greater and the number of enemies increased +2 (from Strategist), the battles are more defensive. It’s much harder to capture enemy bases. The only way to win is to whittle down the spawn rate and then capture the bases unopposed.
I think that this could be addressed in future campaigns with the addition of more palisades on maps. Palisades are easier to capture because they don’t spawn defenders.
Anyway… Good Job. You’ve got me playing a second round, and I rarely do this.
No offense taken at all, quite the contrary. Your contributions have been most helpful for further improving the game. Thanks again for all the effort you’ve put into your posts.
Hi,
In terms of what you should focus on next, I’d say stick with what you know and do best – fantasy srpg. This requires less work than starting a whole new sci-fi game with brand new level design / characters / animation etc.
I’ve played your srpgs since Swords & Earrings and have loved each one, they continue to improve and I especially liked the graphical overhaul and spawn % addition to Kingturn.
If there was anything I’d say the series needs though, it’s some kind of Skirmish mode. The only problem I find with the games now is there doesn’t feel like there’s anything to do after you complete the main campaign, other than playing on harder difficulties (which I plan to do)
Adding Skirmish would also hopefully quieten the users moaning about not enough levels. You’ve already got the AI and difficulty settings, so all you’d need are a selection of skirmish-only maps, a choice of how many bases and palisades on the map and possibly certain scenarios, like only-mages or melee-only characters etc.
You could even add the possibility of more than one computer AI with different coloured bases? Although I realise this could add complications for the AI programming..
Another possibility would be to add a player multiplayer mode where players can pit their teams against one another in a kind of “draw something” way, so it doesn’t have to be real time playing against each other, although this would take a lot of work I guess!
Anyway, I’m babbling on now, so yeah, skirmish! And keep up the great work
Alan
It’s nice to have another player of the ‘first hour’ joining the discussion
.
I have been planning to add more replay value to our games since Sw&Ear already, but have postponed this idea again and again.
.
But I think you are right, and it is finally about time to really do that now
So far we have 3 different ideas for ‘skirmish modes’ to evaluate (actually all of these ideas come from players):
(a) Based on your suggestion: A special skirmish scenario is added to the map after the last main story scenario is completed. At the start of the scenario, the following things will be chosen randomly: The battlefield (either a few new ones or any battlefield of another scenario). Max Ally, Max Enemies, type of enemies and position of barracks and palisades. Lvl is the average lvl of the player’s party, for example.
(b) New Game +. All scenarios become available for replay on the map. The Lvl of all enemies is set to Max.
(c) Survival mode. Enemies come in waves and will sooner or later overwhelm the player. The goal is to survive as many turns as possible.
So far my favorite idea is yours (a).
Solution (b) is also very tempting, but there are a couple of difficulties involved:
)
)
- Prevent ‘new allies’ of a scenario to rejoin the player’s party
- How to deal with bonus scenarios the player hasn’t played, yet (especially additional scenarios we might add in the future)
- Balancing (although I didn’t try it yet, I guess that in the first scenario of Sw&Ear, for example, Belayne and Damios would to be shred to pieces by 9 Lvl 15 vampire bats
- In case of follow-up scenarios, some map markers are at the same position on the map. In other words, map markers of later scnearios would completely cover the map markers of some of the earlier scenarios (this is indeed one of the few advantages of our ‘scenario list’ in Sw&Ear and Knighturn compared to the map used in Kingturn
Whatever we decide to do in the end, this topic is right on top of our priority list now.
I have another feedback item for you.
Scenario #9 needs to be re-balanced. This is the scenario that you lose if your opponents kill any NPC.
The NPC at (4,6) is easily killed by the Bandit at (3,3) and the Warrior at (7,3) on turn 1. The NPC has 52-60 HP. The Bandit has an ATK of 29-37. The Warrior has an ATK of ~30. Under any difficulty with damage = 100%, there is a good chance that the NPC will die. The Bandit will hit the NPC, and the Warrior will “Reach Out” and kill the NPC. The NPC, Warrior, and Bandit are out of reach from any of your troops.
As a simple fix, make the Warrior into a Bandit. This will make the NPC only get hit once before you get a chance to save them.
Thanks for the hint. I remember this scenario quite well because we encountered similar problems during our scenario tests.
I will check this scenario again in order to make sure that a ‘bad luck kill’ won’t happen.
However, there is a solution to make sure that the NPC at (4,6) is not killed during the first turn …
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*** !!! Spoiler !!! ***
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This only works if Yvonne and Nicolette have reached Lvl 3 already.
Move Yvonne to position (6,10) and use Change Position on Nicolette.
Move Nicolette to position (5,8) and use Change Position on the NPC on (4,6).
Anyway, this solution is not obvious enough and you might get into trouble with the NPC on (9,8) then instead.
I will make the scenario a little bit easier.
Yeah, you can reach (4,6). But you were right about the NPC at (9,8). Since King dumps 4 enemies out of the barracks at (10,8), you can’t save the NPC at (9,8).
Thanks for the commitment to fix it. I don’t mind challenge, but I like to win by skill and not luck.
Seconded. It should be possible to win by skill.
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Guess you will need quite a lot of the later one, if you try to beat all scenarios on difficulty ‘King’
I’ll try to fix it asap, so you don’t have to switch to a lower difficulty in between.
I’m back after playing more on King difficulty. I’m finding that the mid-game (30 scenarios) isn’t much more difficult than it was on Strategist. I only need to kill 2 enemies per turn to keep my spawn rate constant. Also, you can still grind up some of the lv14 scenarios to get your troops over-leveled. That helps too.
I did have a new finding on the “deathless loot” bug.
If you kill a necromancer that had used blood bolt, it will not show its death animation and will not give any loot. I suspect that the necro will also counter-attack, but I haven’t confirmed this.
Very well observed once more. Thanks a lot.
We fixed the problem now and changed the underlying mechanics slightly. This should be the last thing we have seen from this type of bug.
The fix will be made available soon in Kingturn 1.5.2 together with the overhauled scenario 9 (The border village).
If you haven’t submitted 1.5.2 yet, I found another bug.
The Stealth Shot you added to the Trickster does not have the flag that prevents it from being used while on a barracks or palisade.
Yikes! Thanks a lot. Kingturn 1.5.2 will be published today or tomorrow.
Thank you again. I have managed to complete the main content on King difficulty level.
I just have the add-on War-Of-Nations scenarios to work through, but I already beat that on my first play-through.
King difficulty is still too easy. In fact, I think that the extra enemies makes it easier. Fighting more enemies yields more gold. I was able to equip my entire army when I needed to. Having More enemies also gives me a better chance of killing my quota of enemies per turn. (You only need to kill 2, 3, or 4 enemies per turn, scenario dependent, to make progress with the spawn counter).
There was one thing that I found that I didn’t like about King difficulty. I was disappointed to find that spawned Elite units only gave standard rewards. Elite units that start out being deployed always drop an item and have the chance of dropping rare or legendary class items. I would focus on killing starting Elites, and I would put off killing spawned Elites until I had killed the weaker enemies around me.
In order to get rare equipment, I would farm easy-to-kill starting Elites, such as Lord Barrington. (Easy-To-Kill – I can kill them with 3 units on Turn 1.) I’d kill ‘em, retreat, kill ‘em, retreat. It would have been nicer to have gotten those rare items from spawned Elites rather than having to farm.
That’s my last comment. Thank you for the game. What’s next?
Thanks a lot for the feedback.
We will take the following changes for the next release carefully into consideration:
- Further decrease the spawn probability degeneration after a kill for the difficulties Master and King
- Add a damage bonus for enemies (e.g. 10% for Master, 20% for King)
- Spawn stronger elite units from time to time (random based) that grant a higher chance for rare or legendary item drops
To further elaborate the last point:
Elite units come in different strengths (Elite Level). The higher the Elite Level, the higher the hit points of the unit (related to its starting hit points), and the higher the chance of rare or legendary item drops.
Spawned Elite units can actually drop rare and legendary items. But the chance is lower compared to most preset Elite units on the battlefield, because spawned Elite units have a comparably low Elite Level.
As for Lord Barrington: The current design seems to be indeed very unfortunate in terms of a rare & legendary item drop exploit.
He is too easy to kill for his relatively high Elite Level.
We will overhaul his design for the next release.
Well, what’s next?
We will republish an overhauled ‘Sw&Ear – Tales of Andaria’ version based on the Kingturn engine (probably in July and quite likely as a freemium version).
Tales of Andaria comprises a few classes that don’t exist in the current Kingturn version (e.g. Amazon, Ranger, Claw Beast and Vampire Bat).
There is also a chance for another (free) campaign to be added to the current Kingturn version within the next months.
But it is too early yet to confirm this.
1. Adding a damage bonus to enemies on Master/King won’t affect things too much. The sheer number of enemies act as a damage bonus because there are more things trying to hit you. It may make some scenarios harder, but it’s not a difficulty increase across the board.
I can’t see this making things more difficult for me because I used terrain and invisible allies (Stealth or Intervention) to create a buffer. A flat damage increase is also countered by having more units in reserve.
2. Increasing the spawn probability degradation (SPD) is a good step toward a harder game. Maps where the SPD was 2 were harder than maps with SPDs of 3, 4, or 5. I was actually surprised that many of the later maps had SPDs of 3. They were easy because of this.
3. Lord Barrington? Nerf? Noooooo!
He’s not my only source of loot. In my original game, I farmed the Assassin and Paladin Elites on War-Of-Nations II. There were a few other farming spots, but I didn’t farm much of anything until I started hitting lv15 scenarios.
4. Freemium? As in, you pay for scenario packs? That’s fine by me. If you rework SwEar with the Spawn system, I will definitely buy it. I definitely got my $5′s worth of playing out of Kingturn.
I own and play all three of these titles daily. I honestly would love to see a sci-fi version. I even have to agree with an earlier poster that a post-apoc game could be a lot of fun as well. Though for simplicity sake, a spacemarine type game might be the easiest way. Either way I would definitely try a lite version of either and can almost guarantee I would purchase both.
How about a way to delete characters you don’t want to use? In games like this, I tend to pick one character from each class and use them heavily, and ignore the others. Why bother balancing them out when they can’t die permanently? So then I get stuck in certain scenarios using characters I hate who are too weak to be of any use.
Hi Vince,
The main problem is that almost all characters that automatically join the party are key characters, meaning they are part of one or more in-game dialogs.
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If the player were allowed to delete these characters, the story and the dialogs would pretty much fall apart
You can release any mercenary that you have hired manually, however.
I’m not sure whether I fully understand your point about getting stuck with too weak characters.
Did you hit the limit of 45 characters in the barracks and cannot hire more of your favorite units?
You are aware of the Training option where you can pay gold to level up units, right?
You should definitely make use of it, if some of your characters lack behind in levels and start getting too weak.
The number of units you will need to finish the game mainly depends on your play style and the difficulty setting.
While you probably don’t need to hire any additional mercenaries for ‘Casual’ difficulty, you will most likely have to do so for ‘King’ difficulty.
Personally, I’ve never hired more than 40 units for any of my playthroughs, though.
But I would love to hear, if anyone thinks the 45 cap is too low.
Hey niebu,
I think he means that in most scenarios there are some characters that are already there in the start, like a (perhaps weak ) soldier that speaks only once in the scenario. I’ve gotten a bit annoyed a few time because of that (The game gave me my bad archer when I had a better archer in barracks).
Ah, thanks a lot for the heads-up, Purgatory. That’s a very good point.
Luckily I have an excuse for this design decision as well
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a) Initially I had planned to move all units back to the barrack(s) after a scenario dialog was finished, to give the player the freedom to choose whatever units he likes best. Especially during later scenarios I found it very tedious, though, to move 8 or more units out of a barrack at the beginning of each scenario.
For my personal taste this was slowing down the game pace too much.
So I’ve decided to always preset a few characters on the map, while the remaining free spots can be filled by the player.
b) I wanted to encourage the player to use some of the key characters more frequently. Especially those units that are used in one of the few ‘no-barracks-available-scenarios’, where the player has to rely on these key characters that are hopefully quite well developed at this time.
As a side note: I think some of the class types are underestimated by the majority of players, especially warriors.
I have to admit, though, that this design decision is debatable.
Thanks for your hard work on these games. They are some of my favorite android games! You’ve done a great job with the dialog, plot, and character interaction, which a lot of indie games fall short on.
I could see playing and loving a sci-fi / post apocalyptic / cyberpunk / or steampunk game, but, honestly, I’d probably be just as happy with another installment in the existing universe. I like how you tied the three games together at the end of the sw&ear remake and am eager to see what happens next. I’d love to see more energy go into continuing improvements to the engine, than having to design a whole new set of sprites.
And I didn’t mind having to buy the remake. Your prices are reasonable.
Thanks again!
Hi Talik,
Thanks a lot for your encouraging words.
I think it’s quite a blessing that most of our (core) players are tech-savvy and knowledgeable enough to understand the tremendous amount of work that’s behind Kingturn & Co.
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And I am especially happy whenever I read something positive about the story
Not only because the story is personally important to me, but also because it is kind of a weak spot for me as a non-native English speaker without professional writing skills.
I entirely agree with you on the sci-fi game topic. We will mainly focus on improving Kingturn instead of creating another complex (sci-fi based) game universe. At least for the time being.
In-between we might publish a less complex and more casual game, though, in order to raise funds for the one thing we are passionate about:
Playing and making (strategy) RPGs that are mainly focused on game play and fun.
In skirmish mode first scenario, you can kill the tutor and win then have no hero o.o
Killing the tutor … that is just wicked and deserves punishment
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You are right, of course. Killing the tutor should result in a scenario loss.
Fixed already for the next patch.
LOVED the games finished 2 of them about to start 3rd one. Have you thought about using t he engine for world war 2 games like panzer general of old?
My favorite games on the market! And I keep checking back for a new one.
I think a scifi would be fun or a superhero xmen-ish type game.
Gameplay wise (and I admit I never played on the hrder difficulties).. I found in kingturn and plus,I was really wanting more unique characters. As for the underworld, I ended up hitting character max before the end of the game by just purchasing 1 or 2 of each merc…
I think one of the following would be a good way to go about future games.
1- less merc buying, and more unique heros
2- larger battle fields with more units out at a time
3- maybe have 2 senarios linked. Such as I have these 8 units in this senario so I can’t use them in the next on.
Personally id play a game with no hirelings and only a group of unique heros with cool abilities
As for the items. personally I used the auto equip mostly and just made sure it equiped my favorite few chars properly. I spend all my gold on lvling my units so I never bought items. I think other comments talked about items, so I’ll leave it at that.
This might also be a personal choice, but I used the ‘move+’ stat on 90% of my units. Kinda wish it wasn’t an option just so I could use the others more.. but the movement is just so useful (at least on the default difficulty)
And finally, I agree with an earlier comment about passives to stats being kinda boreing… passive stuns or range reduction are more fun. one thing I thought would be cool is if some classes had 1 of 2 abilities which was random. So if u owned 3 archers maybe 1 of them would have a different ability than the other 2.
So hopefully some of what I said made sense. And it doesn’t sound to negative. Because these games rock and I hope u keep making them for long time!
Thanks a lot for your detailed post, joel.
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It’s always very insightful to hear how our players are actually playing the games.
The things they do and the things they don’t do, especially if it is something we didn’t anticipate (e.g. buying no items at all
Thinking about it, it’s actually not that surprising, though.
) more than two years back.
We’ve been reducing the training costs a couple of times since our initial game release of Sw&Ear (aka Kingturn Plus
Maybe the training costs are a little too low now.
As for the passive skills … I fully understand that most of them don’t look too exciting.
It might have been a different story, if Kingturn would support a skill point system where the player can invest several skill points to boost a particular attribute more substantially (e.g. spending 5 skill points to boost the Atk value to +50).
The main reason why we didn’t use an ‘investing skill points system’ but came up with the focus system instead is this:
We didn’t want to force the players to micromanage all of the troops (manually investing skill points for 30 to 50 units after each level up).
An alternative might have been an automatic skill point distribution which can be revised by the player for individual units. I have been thinking about such a system in the beginning, but couldn’t come up with a satisfying design so far.
But it might be well worth to consider this carefully again for (potential) future titles.
But I am digressing …
Right now we need the passive skills in Kingturn for unit balancing.
It was rather difficult to balance the various units over so many scenarios with 5 different difficulty settings.
So while the passive skills don’t look very exciting, they are quite useful to make some unit types catch up with stronger ones during mid- and end-game.
But this is something we’ll definitely try to design better in the future
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As a final note:
If you feel like playing one of our titles again (maybe in half a year or a year) you should definitely give one of the higher difficulty settings (like Master) a try.
Quite likely you will find yourself forced to come up with totally different tactics compared to the standard difficulty setting, – with a higher emphasis on tactical skills like ‘Change position’.
I have Kingturn, plus, and Underworld and so far these have been my favorite games on android.
Some feedback:
1. Kingturn skirmish mode you can start out a scenario with no blue camps and automatically lose.
2. Certain scenarios allow units with higherrange to just come over and step on your camp if the get the first move. This only happens in skirmish mode.
3. Plus seems to have a chrono trigger style new game + where you exit the game with only the two repeat scenarios left, open one of the other games, then reopen plus and you can kill level 1 bats with level 15 characters. You then plow through thegame collecting more items. Not sure if this is intentional but i like it. Unfortunately i cant getUnderworld to do this. It would be fun starting over with a giant. The game plays fine too.
4. Grimlogs need some type of knight and archer class. Poison arrows, swords. Poison could impact attributes for a few rounds. Slightly but stacking. Or have incremental hp penalty.
Thanks for your feedback, Jon, and sorry for answering with such a delay.
We have addressed issues 1. and 2. in a new patch today (Kingturn 1.9.3):
- In scenarios where barracks are randomly assigned to the factions, the engine will make sure now that there is at least 1 ALLY barrack
– Some scenarios modified, so fast enemy units cannot conquer all player barracks during the first turn any longer
While it is difficult to entirely avoid losing a skirmish scenario during the first turn due to the random nature of the skirmish mode, this should happen much less now.
3. That’s an interesting glitch you’ve found there
. This is not intended, and there is a (small) chance that you screw up your save games by doing so.
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You’d better backup your save games first before you use this ‘feature’
As much as I would love to have a New Game + mode in Kingturn, there are a couple of problems related to the way we manage our scenarios and save games (I have addressed this topic more thoroughly already in another blog post).
4. Noted, seconded, and postponed for future releases
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Thanks for the quick patches! Since posting i noticed that the replay issue is on both kingturn and kingturn plus. Underworld prevents this from happening because scenario 1 autostarts on new game.
If you don’t want the issue invoked on kingturn and plus, autostarting the first scenario and avoiding a selectable scenario 1 probably fixes.