Recent posts by kaboomba on Kongregate

Topic: Game of Thrones Ascent / Wow...just wow.

Topic: Game of Thrones Ascent / the random factor.

chance of winning is just

1. your total battle stat / (your battle stat + enemy battle stat) x 100%
2. the game then rolls a 100 sided die to determine whether you win or lose.

by battle stat, i mean the specific battle/intrigue/trade statistic that you have on the pre-combat screen. im not going to delve into the percentage bonuses from equipment and talents and how the pre-combat stat is determined from all these, because it is long and filled with complications and bugs. the current state of knowledge indicates that arbitrary factors like the presence of siege works or number of friends does not factor into these calculations however.

there is also a base approx 5% chance of losing, so even if have 500 of the specific battle stat versus 0 of the enemy, you still ahve a chance to lose. the use of this system is likely to tie into the ‘realism’ aspect that people tend to think is a big draw in the game of thrones franchise.

most of the discrepancy in win/loss expectations, is because most players tend to, either a) not understand the system, or b) think that a big difference should mean a close to 100% win rate on either side. and c) because people tend to misunderstand statistics (omg 90% win chance means i should win every time!)

as for this formula, i read it on the disruptorbeam forums from some guy who did a statistical analysis. i’d say its fairly reliable, it looked legit with number of trials etc. you can probably find the post in question if you look hard enough, and correct any discrepancies from my memory.

Topic: Game of Thrones Ascent / Higher tier resources

drop rate is as rare as the equipment in vol 1.

yes, much rarer than common resources.

Topic: Game of Thrones Ascent / Real money for everything ?

Is there a reason for such hyperbolic language and ideas?

Topic: Wartune / Wartune Memes *Offensive*

What does dryad bombing mean?

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / The Imperial Propagandist - Issue #3

a perfect example of the malaise that taketh over some of our younger population. im not sure you could have proved my point any better had you tried.

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / The Imperial Propagandist - Issue #3

the body of all text which is worth reading, is not exclusive to twitter-length sound bites.

in fact, one might postulate that the body of text regarding stuff which is worth reading, specifically excludes ALL twitter length messages.

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Leather Raiding- a beginners guide

for immense justice!~

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Girls of the Dungeon

i changed it to be a pm to avoid more derailing. but if you want to call me out on that its fine.

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Girls of the Dungeon

i dont think this doesnt belong in the forum

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Veni Vidi Vici

congratulations!

also, here is a bunny

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Girls of the Dungeon

i don’t really agree with much that you said. i didnt chime in before because its your thread. but it irritates me when people embrace this mainstream perspective wholeheartedly and just agree to what i find to be questionable attitudes about just how horrible it is to be a girl gamer. i apologize in advance for derailing your thread somewhat.

about 1/2 my friends on kong are women. before kong the online guilds i was in all had plenty of women – the stable ones of course. (though i wouldnt say up to 50% in the past) even before i reached my teenage years, the offline gamers i came into contact with, did not illustrate any gender divide.

sure, in gaming, if you acknowledge your gender out of the blue you face harassment by tons of adolescent males. but its the same with if you suddenly highlight Anything at all. legions of idiots can gather to drool and agitate over just about anything under the sun.

i’ve always felt that its more of a problem with how we educate adolescent males in particular (as opposed to both men and women), to indulge in brash, boastful, idiotic, offensive, pointless, anti-social behavior. and to indulge in such especially when there are no practical consequences. (relevant because people are relatively shielded from identification on the internet) socializing them (males) as a collective, to only respond to brute force and the lowest common denominator is what i see as the real problem here. this is significant because i see most of the female harassment done by this group of people (adolescent males).

i will grant you the point about how gaming developers dont cater properly to its female audience as being completely legitimate however.

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Improvement for regional market

makes sense. would you summarize this into the suggestion thread please?

its only good to collate suggestions together. thanks.

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / The Tutorial, Please Improve it

Piggybacking on holy’s post, I really do understand the organizational temptation to attempt to monetize even at an early stage.

But this is ultimately a short sighted and self-defeating position.

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / The Imperial Propagandist #1

Ima take out a full page spread as commission:

Nothing but the best For the best. Supple for all your combat and daily needs.

Leather source customizable. After all, only the best raw materials can produce the best products. And you always know what you want best. Select from different shapes, skin, hair, eyes, ears, and outfits (profession of leather source)

Quality. You know it when you see it.

A Kab -since 2012 brand. All rights reserved.

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Suggestions thread

@shark
Thanks. I think I was trying to take the dev perspective in this particular post, to argue in terms of concrete advantages in terms of numbers and appeal – while I don’t have the statistics, my assumption is that the majority of users would be americans, so that argument may not be as cogent if they look at it from a financial point of view. Of course, theres also a moral issue in that too, by indirectly discriminating against some users. That should be taken into account as well, as well as how gamers intuitively grasp this and the impact on their overall impressions. I guess Im just trying to argue only from the lowest common denominator.

@nightowl_pellets
Thanks for reading my lengthy post. Also, I had previously gathered that these specific suggestions were under some form of consideration. However, my objectives were not only to try to state the advantages out clearly and convincingly, but also to convey the urgency behind implementation of these features. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough before.

Being a developer for a social media development company, you have to be far more familiar than I am, about the concept of critical mass for a player base. Many games acquire much of their users at launch. These numbers normally change slowly. Only some select games (very few) get to the next stage where at some undefined point, it achieves critical mass, acquires a large enough following then user numbers explode, after which it tends to perpetuate itself, acquiring new users through word of mouth, through inertia, etc. I don’t have access to your specific numbers. But it really seems likely from my end, that 2 rooms is not enough to count as critical mass. Right now it seems like u’re banking on niche appeal to ‘build and conquer’ gamers, or dungeon keeper fans.

Front page status on kong or publicity by being on the ‘hot new games’ tab, is a limited resource, and quite expensive I believe. The kongregate server problems have already impacted the advantage you could have had. Every day development dallies or debates on these features is another day of potential revenue evaporating into nothingness. Well, I don’t think I put it that well here, but I wont bother to write more. This is probably one of the reasons you guys expanded to kong. Im sure whoever you have in charge of business development knows exactly what Im talking about. Its obvious!

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / The Imperial Propagandist #1

Op-Ed:
What happened to the economy? – underlying causes and proposed solutions

Poverty is a problem. Whether it is creatures missing their payments and starving, or dungeon keepers forced into begging for a handout from alliance mates, poverty touches demons from all walks of life. Few reasonable overlords can dispute the economic realities of our time, no matter how insulated they are from rank and file goblins. The foul blight of poverty spreads its cancer across the pristine landscape of Solace, our dignity in shreds, shattering our lives and our families, leaving no dungeon unplumbed.

What happened? Pomegranate (lvl 40 warlock) said, ‘Young minions just dont share the work ethic of us older generations.’ Cozen (lvl 60 thief) ‘Bloody taxes, over 80% of my income gets taken away by the freaking government and redistributed to those idiotic orcs.’ Steroids (lvl 65 orc), ‘Oink Gruajkzopiw Izt’ (direct translation from Orcish: fucking welfare recipients!)

Things have changed. We used to live in an equal opportunity society based on hard work and individual merit. Everyone had similar chances for advancement, displaying their merit upon random elves. Initiative was rewarded and ingenuity encouraged. From the tiniest imp to the mightiest balrog – we lived in a meritocracy.

The moral fibre of our generation is being tested. We are now at a crossroads, with two drastically directions our society can take, Will we continue to move towards elven style socialism and a welfare society, or will we embrace the qualities that make us proud demons – self-dependence, hard work, and individual merit?

We need to re-incentivize success. The improper protection of poor overlords only erodes their self-respect and work ethic. Stop hobbling job creators by artificially preventing them from extracting value from poorer overlords. Only when success is properly rewarded, will the most productive members of our society, be able to create jobs and drive consumption, causing a wealth effect to trickle down through the entirety of demonic society.

It is often a tempting but misguided viewpoint that the solution to poverty is to protect poorer overlords and minions from the ravages of corporations, cartels and monopolies. Especially since we witness their suffering first hand. But the problem with that is two-fold. First, satanic intervention as a solution to poverty is seldom effective, as policies are often dictated by Beelzebub through rent-seeking behavior. Second, this neglects the underlying erosion of virtues such as self-reliance, and ignores individual freedoms and property rights, leading to questions about fairness.

Only when individual overlords are empowered enough to succeed and fail on their own merits, will Solacian society be able to recover its dynamism and resourcefulness, the very qualities that once made Solace great. Allow the most successful to put poor overlords to work, no matter how they wish – let them impose region wide taxes on inactives and welfare recipients if they wish, let them extort, bully, kill the homeless if they wish. While counter-intuitive, this is the only way towards Progress and a better demonic society!

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Suggestions thread

I have 2 suggestions.

First:
Some sort of alliance market that is open only to stonegaters (or some sort of tech milestone) in the same alliance, which might be a very practical way to foster greater coordination and inter-alliance cooperation.

Large alliances may use spreadsheets and other tools, but these are one-time only sunk costs. For small alliances especially, the initial cost in the amount of coordination needed to produce tangible benefits may prove to be too high.

A plethora of small alliances would probably prove a greater incentive for consistent player activity (which should be the goal of course) than a handful of continent spanning ones.

Second:
I somewhat hesitate to make this suggestion. Not all that well thought out, but I think a mechanic for long standing players to receive small amounts of dungeon coins over time would prove beneficial to the devs. The advantages of such may not be readily apparent to you, but let me elucidate.

1) This mechanic may perhaps be made as some sort of login bonus, increasing activity and rewarding consistency. (I know you already have this, but perhaps 1 dungeon coin or something would prove to be better carrot, as the attractiveness of the rewards diminish over time) I leave the amounts to your own internal calculations. We all know that games like this depend on daily logins, as the attrition rate is very high once players disrupt their gameplay schedules.

2) Helps stave off the huge amounts of criticism and prejudice from ‘free’ players, who in large numbers write off microtransaction based games as ‘greedy’ or ‘money-grubbing’

3) Once free based players start using dungeon coins, it breaks a habit, giving them greater incentive to spend small amounts of coins. This is especially so as I feel many of the shop items are reasonably priced (many microtransaction based games don’t fulfill this criteria) Being on kong also is an advantage, as free players have the ability to simply use kong offers for this. (This doesnt affect you, im would think kong transfers the money at a similar rate, without concern for the source)

You may critique this suggestion in the sense that – since free players can simply use surveys, will awarding a few dungeon coins produce any real difference? However, I assure you the difference exists. Sometimes it is all about pushing your players to make their first purchases.

I am rather a veteran of this genre, and understand that these kinds of microtransaction, daily login, build-and-conquer mmos have a limited player pool, thus my entire perspective about expanding appeal may not be very useful. But part of this is because build-and-conquer mmos especially, have a very bad reputation as purely pay-to-win. Some sort of dungeon coin award would go a long way to combatting this perception.

I feel that this game is particularly well made, with layers of complexity and detail that many developers do not bother to include. While the current kongregate server may prove to be a large increase to your player base, much more can be done. Games like caesary or wartune (other kong mmos) remain hobbled to the negative pay-to-win stereotype, but this one has the potential for much more. Consider the success of daily log-in games like tyrant or dawn of the dragons. I know these may not be the best comparison (being merely daily log-in of another genre, rather then build-and conquer), but I think that some of their success has a lot to do with their presentation and small little gestures like these to the player base, which make them feel appreciated.

You don’t want one matgb, one sharkhunter. You want dozens of them. You dont want 2 rooms of players that may dwindle in number as the game goes off the front page. That is the role of a game with average to sub-par production values and little complexity. You want 20 rooms. In tons of small competitive alliances that form strong bonds and support each other and create player retention. (there is much less of a social factor on kong, its different from facebook) You want to give people the initial benefit of alliances and Then give them greater incentive to organize.

Welp, this brings me in the direction of making more suggestions for fostering intra and inter alliance competition, but lets leave this to another time. But you developers are no fools. Im sure you get my point. And that purely destructive competition is not sufficient to foster a large player base.

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / The Imperial Propagandist #1

how much does advertising cost?

say for a 100 words, or do you go by space? 2’ by 2’ for instance

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Bug thread

fixed. Thank you!

Topic: Dungeon Overlord / Bug thread

I’ve noticed there isn’t any official bug thread for users to report their bugs, so here is one for anybody to piggy back on.

First – the ‘support’ function doesn’t seem to work for Kongregate users. When I click on the option, it urges me to ‘update my profile’ with my last name. This is a profile that I never created, and even spells my name wrong, as ‘Kabam’. My dungeon overlord name, in the first place, is kaboomba.
Pictorial evidence: http://prntscr.com/jhcz7

The ‘register’ link does not work. Next I had attempted to find a place for me to register on nightowl. While I did make a misspelled profile on the forums (in accordance to what was apparently assigned to me), there was no option to update any form of personal data. In any case it was self-evident that it was the wrong place to register.

It seems that support is better for facebook / beta users, while kongregate users have to jump through some hoops, and at the very least face a comparative delay in the availability of support. Please fix this.

Second, now we come to my bug.
A brief description – 2 creatures in my dungeon have the misplaced status of ‘on mission’, even as there are no missions sent forth. They did not die, continue to consume upkeep, and do not appear in the graphical interface of the dungeon. This error persists through both refreshing, as well as clearing of the cache. Paydays do not reset this either.
Pictorial representation: http://prntscr.com/jhdk6

Sequence of events leading to this bug:
1. Remove trap doors (thief population furniture), and place dark nooks (thief levelling furniture)
2. Start training thieves
3. Send multiple attacks which include said thieves.
4. Discover that said thieves disappeared en route.
Attacks in question with game timestamp, for reference: http://prntscr.com/jhe8m
5. Replace dark nooks with trap doors.
6. Wait for a payday, thieves remain ‘on mission’, and do not show up.

Keep in mind that all these actions took place while the game froze multiple times, in respect to the recent flash crashing and loading bugs. My guess is there could have been multiple client server conflicts.

Note: there were also several times in the weekend, where I had major problems in confirming different actions. For example, attacks which i cancelled sometimes went through, sometimes teleported in respect to travel time, sometimes never occurred etc. You get the picture.

While this was not a major problem, the crashing experience as well as this current ‘on mission’ bug, has proven to be extremely disruptive to gameplay and gamer ‘quality of life’. This coming just as Dungeon Overlord is being featured on the kong front page can’t be helpful either.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if these bugs were fixed asap. Thank you for your time.

Topic: The Grinns Tale / Socks

floor 13 farms you about 200 wood in a single hit, together with a sock chest.

Topic: The Grinns Tale / <TO DEV> marketplace building

botting in a game is for losers

Topic: The Grinns Tale / Moar questions (not a troll thread don worry)

Are there any hair slot items that give stats? Either upper or lower face there.

Topic: The Grinns Tale / Moar questions (not a troll thread don worry)

the developer simply said that rallying does not increase the chance. nothing further in the specific response i saw.

regarding the rest regarding the %tage bonuses, i am unfamiliar with specifics. haven’t seen anyone collate data, or do a reasonably exhaustive form of research on this.

you could search the forums for specific information. there may be information that i am not privy to.

http://thegrinnstale.com/forum/