PS. Just so I'm being completely open, a user posted a response to my suggested guidelines here, saying my premise wasn't too sound:
http://www.sirlin.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2049&postcount=19
I "passionately" responded in this post:
http://www.sirlin.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2109&postcount=22
I'm not proud of my response, even if my points are valid, but I wrote it, so I'm not going to try hide it; unfortunately, sometimes I find it hard to fathom that people hold the (limiting) beliefs they do, but it's mostly a perspective thing; everybody is "right" from their perspective, and trying to "prove" otherwise is not fruitful.
@ filbert:
Re: unlocking cards - I'm sure Kong have a proposed solution, but to offer my specific suggestion, see this post:
http://www.sirlin.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1945&postcount=10
Sirlin, designer of Kongai, liked my suggestion and wrote about it here:
http://www.sirlin.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1961&postcount=12
If I seem "pro-Bruce's-card-unlock-suggestion", it's because I am. I've thought long and hard about all the factors involved with unlocking things in games, and even studied different ways of doing it, and my suggestion is the most reasonable I could come up with for both players and Kongregate.com (from both a business and a "fun" standpoint). I put an unreasonable amount of effort into the things I think about and really believe that Kongai would benefit from using the guidelines I describe.
— Bruce
@ qwert008:
Great points re: Generals Insignia having a visble effect on the damage displayed on the attack buttons. I have lots of other UI related suggestions that I'd like to make (to give one example: extra info that isn't displayed, but, considering the other info that's displayed, should be; etc).
I think I'll post them in Sirlin's forums and link to the suggestions from here. For some reason, I don't trust sending suggestions via email—they just seem too easy to be ignored or lost. Perhaps that's an irrational fear of mine. *shrug*
— Bruce
moose111 (and everyone),
Feel free to put forward such suggestions to here *and* Sirlin's forums (Sirlin designed Kongai):
http://www.sirlin.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=16
I've asked Emily (co-founder of Kongregate), and she says it's fine for us Beta testers to post there.
- Bruce
It's very unlikely Kongregate are going to allow a very robust starter card-selection system, but what *is* good is you guys mentioning it often as you are. There's an underlying issue beneath the starter card issue, and your mentioning it let Kongregate know that, as a player, this issue is important to you.
— Bruce
This game really does do a lot of things right. I played this game back in Jan 2008, and after playing it again now, I'm still impressed. This is easily up there with games like Sonny, Oroboros, and even Kongai in terms of merits. I still cringe at the word count in the instructions screen, especially comparing it to the rest of the game. Again though, I'll help out with that. I've gotten much better brevity these last few months, so it should be no problem. This is, again, a very impressive first game.
- Bruce
Oroboros has been overthrown! This game is now the best non-Kongai game on Kongregate.com. (And I'm not even kidding.) *Learn* from this game, flash developers. It does what so many games do not.
- Bruce
SeanCooper,
Never break the WSAD convention unless you have a good reason to do so. I don't believe you do (although you might), and as such, I recommend you let players configure moves in the order of "up", "down", "left", "right" (or W, S, A, D; that's what they'll be doing).
- Bruce
I want to mention to the Kongregate devs/staff and Sirlin if he's reading this that you should pay attention to what Sausaletus says. He knows his stuff, and what he says is worthy of consideration (note: you don't have to listen to him, but at least consider it). He’s at a similar level to Mario when it comes to feedback. How do I know this? I've read more of Saus’ posts and comments then you'd care to know, and he has all the traits of someone you should pay attention to. I’m no Kongai pro (see Mario for that), but I do try my best with what I do, and what I’m saying here is no exception.
- Bruce
Lots of you are mentioning the "luck" factor when it comes to % chance to get off a move. As someone who never has any issues with this, I'd like to point out that it really isn't so bad (I miss, but it never really costs me a great deal in the overall scheme of a match).------
It's all about making better decisions. Like lag in a video game, it's something to compensate for. Having no randomness would be great, but it removes a lot of the "should I chance it?" situations. You just need to play on a level where you take into account the fact your move has a % chance to not work. Do this, and your matches won't be so bad. (This is coming from a 30:8 player, btw. I don't proclaim to be an expert, but I'm not too bad, either.) I also highly recommend picking cards that match your style, but I know that's not easy for some of you.
- Bruce
This has probably been considered and will probably be fixed, but I'll mention it anyway. --------------------
"benstucky" said:
"After playing the game for bit and understanding some of the strategy, I wish I could change the 3 starter cards I choose. it would be a nice feature to be able to re-choose those three starters."
--------
The user "obzinator", many other users I talk to, and myself are in agreement with benstucky. At least, it'd be nice to have a message on the start-card selection screen saying "Choose carefully—you can't re-choose!".
- Bruce
(Add this to the comment before this one.)
PS. I guess you could make "select your range" a decision when you start a match, but it'd put one player at too much of a disadvantage, I think. Plus, you'd have no information to work with but what you know about your deck, unless you've played your opponent before and know what he uses, which is a lame skill to test, IMO. At least when you start at the same range you can make an informed decision relative to your deck and your opponent's card.
“Its stupid that the range at the start of the battle is “close”. Doesnt encourage you to start with a ranged person. And it gives an obvious advantage to close-range people”
I was thinking of that recently. I think the game is designed that way intentionally. In fighting games both characters start at the same range, even if some are better in close range. Kongai is a bit limited in that regard since it’s basically a fighting game broken down into turns and you can't have a "medium" range. I wonder how well Kongai would translate into real-time and how consistent it would be with Kongai. Would it be better, worse, or just “different”?
- Bruce
"It seems very confusing to me that I see -12 pop up, then the character flashes and dies, THEN the hit point meter at the top of the screen falls to 0. I REALLY think that the meter should fall to 0 BEFORE the character flashes and dies."
David Sirlin also agrees on this point, and so do I. I'm sure Kong will fix it eventually, but if they're not considering it, I'd like to ask them to please consider it. It makes for a much more intuitive, user-friendly experience, IMO.
- Bruce
Kaizerwolf
The thing you're "passing" on is not an attack - you're passing on changing ranges. There are two phases – the movement phase (where you select your range, which includes not changing range) and the attack phase. What range you are in determines what attacks you can use. The range mechanic ads a whole lot of strategic depth to the game. It’s a good thing.
- Bruce
"I would like to see to only have 1 item in total in a fight.
Not 2 of the same on 2 characters."
I have to second this. Perhaps it's just that my opponent had phlactery (sp?) on two of his characters and managed to escape death 3 (!) times, but I feel being able to use the same item twice gives too much of an advantage to players with lots of cards. You can deal with it, but damn, it makes it hard and is certainly an edge that seems a little strange when you compare it to the rest of the game's balancing decisions and mechanics.
- Bruce
IMO, it's good that Mellora gives feedback. The devs and whatnot will be able to filter what's relevant, but it probably would help if he submitted it in fewer comments.
David Sirlin, who designed Kongai, has this to say on imbalances in his book, Playing to Win (www.sirlin.net/ptw): ------------------------------------------------------------------- "When players think they have found a game-breaking tactic, I advise them to go win some tournaments with it. If they can prove that the game really is reduced to just that tactic, then perhaps a ban is warranted. It’s extremely rare that a player is ever able to prove this though. In fact, I don’t even have any examples of it." ------------------------------------------------------------------- Imbalances will be subtle on Kongai, but Sirlin still gives good advice (except replace "tournaments" with "players like Mario, Rhine, Sooty, and other players with ridiculously good win/loss ratios).
- Bruce
This is a great game, although a little difficult to understand at fist -- I feel the explanation could have been better.
It'd be awesome if you got some more colours to experiment with as the levels go up, and if you had some sort of purpose. I'm playing the game at level 10, and I've experimented with most of the potions, and now I feel like I've gone through all of the "content". It's a damn solid base, there just needs to be some sort of variety there -- something to mix things up and challenge your potion usage, without making it a massive "remember potion amount values" test.
- Bruce
Oh, and to the fickle masses who would reply to my comment with un-kind words - don't make me look in your profiles and start counting all the RPG’s (read: laborious grind-fest games) you have in there. ;)
(I jest, by the way. Of course, if you didn’t “get” the humour in LightSprites, you won’t get my subtle humour, either. Oh well.)
While everyone else may hate it, I quite like this game, HeroInteractive. It probably helps that I “get it” while everyone else is too busy looking for a way to level up or earn badges to appreciate it.
I think the "grab multiple balls" mechanic would be made a bit more easy to use, and to be honest, I don’t think I’d play this game again after playing it already, but I don’t do that with any Kong games (they just can’t beat a video game for PC or console; that’s not the point of many Kong games, anyway).
It’s very refreshing to see a game with such colourful visuals, clean presentation, and innovative, intuitive mechanics. I rate it a 5/5 for “worth playing!”
-Bruce
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