Recent posts by Dagbog on Kongregate

Topic: Kongregate / New Downloadable Game - Bomb Buddies

Takes too long to install, compromises security (EXE file, external login), this is not why one goes to Kong. You are trying to compete with AAA games here, you have no chance. Now if you are going to have AAA titles with background streaming custom made for your site, then maybe… yeah, tough luck. And yep, I can choose to skip those games… the same I can choose to skip your site, so there.

Topic: Kongregate Multiplayer Games / [The Pride of Taern] An EXTREMELY annoying glitch.

Just press REST twice (or three times?) so the game knows for sure you are not resting. It is a glitch but solution is this simple.

Topic: Kongregate Multiplayer Games / [Thunderstone] Difficulty

There is some randomness, but generally you will uncover rather simple strategy as you continue playing. It can be a bit daunting and overwhelming right after tutorial.

Buying stuff that gives lot of coins is good first hint – feast, spears.

Losing daggers, rations and militia to hungry mobs is usually beneficial, best card in starting hand is torch, and that says a lot about the rest. Sometimes you will not get gold for anything better, so “rest” and kill some militia instead of buying useless chaff that only dilutes the deck.

Topic: Kongregate Multiplayer Games / [Thunderstone] Victory Points

Indeed, VP is not secret information, it is very obvious, you can count it on paper, just the UI forgets to track it.

Imo, it is just lame trick to cover the snowballing weakness of the game – on many occasions if you knew VP, you would know you’ve already won, and just be bored going through pointless motions.

Topic: Kongregate Multiplayer Games / [Immortal Empire]A rant from a sort-of experienced player

Karma, what you completely missed is, since this thread is mostly about pulls, the reply regarding industry standards was also about pulls, not something patently obvious.

Your latest suggestion is very raw – what happens when your scout makes contact with a mob while your support is still parked in the spot of latest encounter, even further back than it is today?

There are two issues to pulls:
- turn based = one-rounding
- map contains two play modes, scout and fight

And again, the second part was assessed by industry long time ago as indeed being two modes, even when the transition is seamless. The first part is something you mention yourself in hints, but seem not willing to fully realize it is valid for both sides, and the implications of it.

Edit: Now it should be clearer what I suggested above: if you cannot make the transition, get rid of one mode.

Topic: Kongregate Multiplayer Games / [Immortal Empire]A rant from a sort-of experienced player

The whole pulling feels wrong – vision, resource pools, cooldowns, buffs, durations…

Mechanics promote idling, inching forward, which is not fun and having fun is punished.

Suggestion? That should have been done 2 years ago when designing the game. Today I would say:

- make regular encounters rather easy, small pulls, frequent, many of them trigger at short range (so they can be packed more closely and visual contact does not give aggro)
- make bigger pulls be preceded by cinematics, aka you see what is where ahead of time, reset chars to full after cinematics (short! cinematics please)

If you want to be original instead of taking what the industry refined over decades and I just reinvented (lol), do it, but then I would suggest forcing semi-permanent combat via wandering monsters, ambushes etc.