Bought this game months ago, paid full price, played one game and was confused. Haven't touched it since. I think it was the menu music, that turned me off from trying to learn it. I was always afraid someone would think I had some music from a renaissance fair on my iPod, and I would spend the rest of the week hearing my friends and family teasing me about it. Calling me my liege and saying things like hail and well met lords and ladies.
Happens more often than you'd think, but you also missed out on all those roasted joints of mutton, so you be the judge.
Yeah, speaking of "loaded, personally-invested nonsense," huh? Doing a bit of generalizing there? Careful: that moral high ground can get a bit slippery ... Look, beyond that, I've not got much to add, and we're going around in circles here. You think the $10 price point is fine; I feel the developers might have to re-think it based on how much the landscape has changed in the past 15 months. Both points of view are valid, although neither is backed up by much fact, and only time will tell. In fact, I'll concede that they likely won't change the price, given the app's history; it has never been lowered once. Sadly, neither one of us is actually talking about the game, which makes us both look like idiots. If we keep this up, we're going to end up here. And no one wants that ...
The game's easily worth $10, but in the App Store it might be a hard sell to people who don't already have it, especially since it's hard to tell in advance whether it's really worth it for them. I think if they're going to keep this price point, the game needs a demo version where you can play 1v1 against the easy CPU only. They don't seem to be fishing hard for additional sales, though, and I suspect they're content with just hawking the expansions (when they eventually come out) to people who've already bought the main game.
I think they should start selling Carcassonne for 99 cents and then have in-app purchases of weapons you can attack your opponents with. That and zombies.
I simply said that the price is working for the developers at the moment; whether or not they'd profit more by lowering the price is not something we can know for certain, but it is something the developers don't think is a concern at this point. Even temporary sales are off the cards, and it isn't as if the developers have been out of touch with the world since they released the game. I don't actually own Carcassonne on iOS (although I've played it), specifically because I'm not yet willing to pay $13.99 for it (partially because my experiences with the app store - and Murphy's Law - state that a sale or free day is inevitable the week after you buy something). That doesn't mean that I don't believe the price is fair. I agree that there are likely many in my situation, who would buy the game if it were cheaper, but until the game faces direct competition the developers can hold to their pricing, apparently seeing that more people end up giving in than not. If there is no price drop or sale at the release of the upcoming expansions, I'll probably pick everything up at that point anyway, simply because there is no alternative other than not having the game. Of course, this is exactly what the developers are counting on, and why they can charge what they do. Well, as I said in my initial post, the developers have indicated that the price point is working for them, and they have specifically stated that they have no plans for sales on more than one occasion. They're quite responsive on their social sites, if you want to ask them questions directly regarding their pricing decisions and the possibility of future changes. The fact that they've never lowered the price, nor ever had sales, would indicate that they're not having trouble profiting at the current price point, even with other boardgames coming on to the market. As I mentioned, there's no true competition for the Carcassonne game itself at this point; this is a perk that most of the unique gamer-style boardgames share. Back on the subject of the game's progress, I'm hoping that the development process for the expansions has resulted in a framework that will speed up the creation of subsequent expansions, or it'll be halfway through next year (if not later) before we see the next ones. While a "lite" version would be good, they'd need to be careful not to hand over too much like the Ascension app, which was brilliant but unintentionally too good, and basically provided people with the full game for free if they weren't interested in multiplayer. Still waiting for the Ascension expansions too, speaking of that game. ^_^
Completely agreed. Hence, 1v1 only, vs. the easy CPU opponents. I think that's a good taste of the game without simply dishing it out. I didn't realize you didn't own the game, so you might not be aware that the CPU comes in multiple difficulty flavors (as opposed to me saying that the CPU is easy in general).
Agreed on this. Ascension Lite gave away too much of the store; that's no way for a developer to stay in business. BTW, the Ascension expansion is slated for "fall." From reading around at a couple of places, it sounds like a lot of it is already locked down. There was even a working version being demo-ed at GenCon last month (although it didn't have the full card set). There's video of it at BGG.
The thing is that for many people, if they can play through a whole game/match in a lite version (even on easy, or with a single opponent), that's enough reason not to buy the complete product. It's the same as with Ascension and the lack of multiplayer: people who weren't interested in that aspect (and there are many) still now had the "full" game in their hands, for all intents and purposes. Ascension's demo has since been pulled, and I suspect the above was a large part of the decision to do so. Oh, I've played the iOS version of the game, as I mentioned; there's no need to worry about explaining it. ^_-
I'm hoping they don't miss it. If you look at the developer's page, they've got four games/expansions all labeled "fall." I'm less than optimistic, to be honest ... http://www.incineratorstudios.com/mobile.php
If they designed the original game effectively, it shouldn't be too hard to apply standard stats, attributes, abilities or functions to new cards, and the artwork is obviously long-completed. Honestly, even the work on the new interactions and rulesets for the expansion/promo cards (fate, etc.) doesn't seem like it should take that long; I wouldn't think they'd miss the proposed release - not by much, at least. Depends on how much time is being dedicated to the other titles, I guess, considering the amount of detail in the others. I'd have to assume they're using the same basic engine for all of the games, albeit customised for the rulesets of each, or there's no way they'd get them all out in time. On another note, I wish they'd stop leaving second generation iPod Touches off the list of compatible devices; Ascension works just fine on these, and there's no need to potentially exclude a market, no matter how small.
Shame you are not playing it, you can always turn the sound off. It is one of the most enjoyable multi-player experience on the iOS platform. It takes a while to learn the game but once you have it clicked, you will love it. There is also fun in learning, I'd be happy to teach you along the way via the chat window send me an invite username is gospvg
Lol. Because Ascension is waaaay less nerdy, amirite? Carcassonne has the best tutorial of any game I have ever played, board game or otherwise.
No your right especially all those sounds in ascension when you banish the monster cards, that makes me cringe.
Are you only able to play one game at a time in this? I justcant seem to find a way out of the game screen I have right now... Lol Help?
