Uzur are you a dev for the game? I ask because i recently got into the second wave of beta people and wanted to share thoughts with others, but didn't know what i could say. Mostly wanted to talk about the game experience so far.
This is a good game, but kills lack 'oomph'. It feels like you killed paper every time an enemy is downed. Development feels cluttered in an iPhone; everything feels like a sea of text and you constantly have to go to other areas to work on one thing. Minor quips though, this is a great f2p game.
Well, its a few things so ill try to lay it all out and hopefully its helpful. First off, the interface. Im playing on an iphone 6 and find the overall interface is ok with some areas of clutter. Text for me is totally fine. Ive been able to read everything and only caught one typo so far (I took a screengrab so ill try to find it and upload it). The issue for me is when im in the base on the normal interface; basically things tend to overlap. This mostly happens 2 times when I am in the tutorial in the beginning of the game and when I am away from the game for a while and multiple things are done (soldiers healed, production complete, etc.). Ill explain each with some possible remedies: 1 Tutorials. This is kind of a biggie since its an early game impression and sets the tone for new players. Sometimes in the tutorial, the game asks me to do something with a little bar telling me on the top. This is ok, but it covers the items it is asking me to do. For example, I get a notification telling me to go to the barracks of the squad section. But the notification telling me to go there covers the Barracks button. As a new player who probably doesnt know the interface, they will have no idea where to go. I only knew because I went their once before. A possible way to fix this is to set a time for tutorial notifications to either auto disappear after a moment or have a clear buttons after people read them to make them disappear manually when the user is ready. 2 Being away from the game for a while notifications. These are nice to have, but sometimes come up all at once when I come back. So the result is 3-4 notifications coming up on top of each other in a jumbled mess thats unreadable. This isn't a huge deal to me since there is audio saying Soldier healed and whatnot, but it looks amateur when most elements of this game are quite polished. Maybe these notifications could go in a game log with a small button on the side. Might be nice too since if this game is online based- this could be a chat log. These are always nice for new players to ask questions in as long as the player base is helpful. However, this is really only true if this game will be completely online based. If not, the game log could simply be important in game notifications people can go back to incase they missed something. 3 The quest log (I didnt mention this above, but its interface related). I like having this and I also like how certain quests that move the story forward are labeled yellow so you know they are important. However, given that multiple people give you quests at the same time, they can easily fall off screenview. I actually didnt realize I had 10-12 quests at once until I saw they were scrollable. I personally think quests should simply be 3 little buttons on the side labeled Contracts, Research, and Manufacturing. Each can hold multiple quests and bring up a new menu when you choose it where you easily see all related quests. This is also handy since the current layout is hard for me to find the specific quest I want. The suggested interface can help alleviate that. Ok, now onto the gameplay. Overall, I enjoy it. You have found a nice balance as a F2P game with a similar style to xcom which isnt easy to do. The game while not having quite as much personality as xcom, feels like it could be almost endless because of that. This has a plus/minus trade off, but I think ultimately a plus for the hopeful longevity of the game. I do have a couple suggestions for it though. 1 Currency. A lot of thought went into the currency system and it shows. Timers can be easily quickened, special items can be purchased and made, gear can be purchased All of this done with in game currency. No specific real money items required. Best of all, you can practically play missions endlessly to get this currency so as a F2P person, I can be competitive. However, the currency comes in rather slow considering its used for just about everything. After I play a few missions I have multiple people asking for my money and can only give a little bit to one person. Shadow markets help, but produce small amounts of money. I think there should be ways to get bigger chunks of money at higher risk or during certain events. Suggestions to fix: It would be really cool to see difficult boss battles that you can only play once every 3, 6, 12, 24 hours (take your pick) that give you good chunks of cash (im thinking depending on difficulty 1k, 5k, 10k, etc. with some possible rare items dropping; maybe gear or components that dont often drop). These should cycle around events so people will log in often to see what boss/event battles are available and play when they refresh. Awesome way to get users to come back and a way for them to get chunks of money with feeling like its an endless grind. Another way to easily get users to come back are daily login rewards. Not really a huge thing to fix low currency problems, but helpful. Lastly, you could provide a way for people to automate their missions. Either sending mercs on solo missions to get some cash on their own or allow you to hit an auto button when you are in a mission. This would still play the mission out on screen so people still have to wait, but would feel less grindy. 2 PvP rewards. The armor you get for PVP is cool and I like the idea of it. Right now, it feels like it takes forever to lvl up. This might be because its beta and that will feel better once its live, but only getting 1-5 exp when I need 200xp for the first level up seems way too long to me. Maybe some lesser rewards from the store for lower levels that you can attain quicker? Small weapon upgrades or add on gear, then every 5 levels you get a new armor and weapons. Those are my thoughts so far. I will also say that I play Summoners War and I find the currency/system for that game works quite well. The game is overall quite different, but they have found a good mix between F2P and P2P. I have also seen big budget commercials by them so I assume they are fairly successful (dont often see that for apps...) I wish you guys luck. I think this game a lot of potential to pick up where xcom left off and create a nice market for you. I will definitely keep testing and will absolutely play it when the official game is released. Thanks!
Whoa! Thanks a lot for this really huge post about the game. We have been changing game interface in the last months and this process is still going on. Notifications in tutorial are in discussion now on how to make them better, more elegant and easy to follow. Notifications about healing and other processes are being changed right now. Quest log - that's a thing. We are thinking of it, there is an actual issue with big amount of quests at the same time. Thanks for idea with merging similar tasks. Moving on to gameplay. Your suggestion about bosses is a good one. There will be such kind of missions in PvP mode, but a little later. And there is still a lot of work on PvP. We are going to improve this mode.
Missions in PVP sound interesting - maybe playing with other players in co-op? Having a co-op player mode would be awesome - maybe a big alien nest raid or a Jericho base raid with a buddy's squad for increased rewards or rare materials - love the idea especially for those players not too into PVP, but want to p[lay with others. Thanks for the reply!
It's in soft launch now in several countries. That's not my words but those of the creators on their facebook. The problem is: where ?... Not in canada and Australia. Will someone be cleverer than me and find ?...
Made a Latvian account just for this lol. Better be good. Downloading now. And better be in English. Installs but won't launch. Looks like it picks up some localisation error (which would be correct) and exits out. Bugger. Gotta wait.
It's XCOM and resource building. IAP aren't that bad, since it's only one currency. My only gripe with this game is the weak combat and character designs. There isn't much room to actually coordinate attacks, in most situations.
iPhone 6+. When I launch it it goes to launch but then immeditely drops out with an error message. Can't remember exact phrase but it's something about the app not liking my App Store ID region, even though I was signed into the Latvian store. Didnt know apps once installed could even check for this, and I was actually signed into the Latvian store. Never seen this before, so it's a shrug from me, and I'll wait.
