@gunxsword - dude chill out. You haven't even played the game yet. How the hell do you know if it will be good or bad yet?
Give me one game that forces the player to pay in order to save their game. Oh and did I in any post comment on the quality of the game? I believe all my comment/rage is directed to the 'pay per save' system, not to mention that I've already (and repeatedly) implied that I like this game. I'm ready to play this game even if this flawed system is in place, but the decision of the dev to include such a system of saving game progress raised some doubts in me. I fully approve the dev's desire to create a 'risk/reward' mechanic but this is clearly not going to work (who won't save before/after a trip?). A death penalty will be more appropriate for the purpose.
I was saying that you don't know how the system will turn out. It could turn out to work very well for all we know.
This game is different. As an independent developer, I get noticed by doing something bold and something unique. This isn't a casual candy-bar app. Sure, you could play it in 10 minute sessions, but the game is designed to be a bit challenging. This isn't a cookie-cutter iOS app, with a starburst icon, pretty candy colors and chirping birds. This is something different... something for the "hardcore" players... but I think casual players can rise up to meet the challenge. In this game, the death penalty is dying! You lose your progress. The depth of that penalty is based on the player's greed. Are they being cheap, trying to save their gold... or are they being cautious... by saving often! Game Center Ranking is based on player gold, so there is reason to be greedy. I like the system. It uses human impulse. Those players that stay focused, understanding the balance between greed and risk, can maximize the amount of gold that they collect.
Ok, seriously? 2-3 kills can make differences in the leaderboard? If that's the case, then I'm assuming that individual enemies are hard to kill and WILL actually make cumulative differences overtime. Otherwise, it will be ineffective. Players who grind will still beat others who don't, regardless of how often they save. And have you considered alternatives to ranking players? If players are ranked according the amount of cash they have, there's no way to distinguish skill differences between first place who grinds a lot and say 50th place because their rank is decided by the amount of cash they earned throughout the entire game right? I wouldn't mind if there was a survival mode where healing costs money so that every penny will count, since players are pursuing the highest non-cumulative score possible without dying.
Don't GO!!!!!! Seriously, it might not turn out to be 'that' bad... Look more on the positive side... Anyway back to the argument, I've formed some more points against the idea of 'pay per save': 1. For people who play this game on devices that does not have multitask, saving will be essential to them, since a single phone call can wipe their progress if they didn't save. This basically turns saving into a 'need before greed' scenario where these people will be firstly: disadvantaged from high-scores because they have increased fear and need to save and secondly punished more severely then others due to the lack of multitask. 2. Rather then the 'pay per save' system, how bout considering a time based 'insurance scheme' that covers the player's losses in case of death/accidents at a cost? Like charging ~5-10% premium for each item(s) to be insured such as money or gear (sale value)? This falls in line with your ideology since the player will be forced to make more economical choices: save money but risk losing uninsured items, insure some items and leave others uninsured or have full cover at higher costs. *Edit: I'm not arguing
So OK, now that I've had a refreshing 3 1/2 hours of sleep, I've thought more on this matter. Here are the changes I'm going to make... Survivor moved to Primary ranking - This ladder is skill based. Grinding does suck. Loot increased - The amount of gold entering the system will be dramatically increased. So, it will still be like 15 gold to save. But when a single enemy can drop eight times that much, that's really a non-issue.
k... so basically you're saying that you need to go back to a sort of... 'base' or something, in order to save your game... so if you travel too far from your base, you run the risk of not being able to make it back and be able to save your game? That... I think I can handle... the 15 gold to save your game just doesn't make any sense though, if you get 8x that for killing 1 enemy... why even charge to save? it just seems like a useless mechanic... whatever though... guess we won't even be able to tell because it's so small of an amount... I'm back on board I guess... I do like the idea of risk/reward... and that the leaderboard is not based on how much grinding you do, but on your skill... that's a VERY refreshing change from most RPGs in the appstore. =o) Can't wait til this one hits the US store... I'll be all over it.
Great to hear about the loot increase! I'm a loot fanatic . Anyway, I can't wonder but ask 'why bother' leaving the system in place? More than likely people will blame the game instead of themselves if they die and didn't save due to the infinitesimal cost of saving. Oh damn greed, one of the seven sins of human nature...
I have been considering in-app purchases for future versions of the app, but I don't know if I want to get involved with the whole Lodsys patent stuff. Also, I don't want to muck up the game with real-life loot greed. I tried to build BOT like a stand-alone NES or Genesis cart. I don't want to use in-app purchases for virtual currency... especially since Gold is one of the Game Center leaderboards. I'm not sure about content expansions though. I'm waiting to see how this Lodsys stuff turns out.
Hi everyone! So, I stated that a promo video and screenshots would be available before BOT launched. The screenshots are already online, so now I'm happy to present the promo video... http://photics.com/videos/bot-promo.mov The official page for BOT is not online yet, but that's where the video is supposed to go when the game is live.
Not surprisingly, BOT is still in review. So while I'm waiting, I'm adding translations for the app listing and Game Center. So far I've got... English, German, Italian and Spanish. French is up next. I'm thinking I can skip the different versions of English, so that just leaves the following... Brazilian Portuguese Dutch Japanese Korean Portuguese Russian Simplified Chinese Swedish Where's Polish?! Apple should have this on the list!
The translations are complete. Most of the different languages are covered. Basically, I skipped multiple versions of the same language. UK English is not that much different from English. I started some sandbox testing of Game Center today. WOW... my phone got stuck in Japanese. It took me a while to figure out how to change it back. HA HA! Anyway, I don't think the leaderboards are unified. I tested out the Japanese leaderboard and it seems to have different scores than the English one. Bummer! It's still pretty cool to see BOT on Game Center in different languages. I'm still waiting for Apple to review the app.
