Thanks to this thread, I discovered both everlands (a nice little intro to hex board games) and RK's samurai, which is an absolute gem. I might pick this game up at a later point.
This is a fantastic game! I had never played the board game; however, in anticipation of the app release, I reviewed the rules posted at BGG, and I was able to jump right into the game. For those concerned about the learning curve, I propose that a quick review of the rules is well worth the time invested. I think the actual game is a fantastic, quick-paced tile-laying game with just the right mix of strategy and luck. The fact that each army has its unique strengths and weaknesses makes this a game with a great deal of replayability. As for the app itself, i think the developers did an excellent job providing smooth gameplay mechanics and stunning graphics. This is a game that is just as much fun to look at as it is to play. So far, I find the medium-level AI to be quite challenging, and I haven't even attempted the difficult setting. My few complaints are the same as many other posters (online mode and in-game help), and have already been addressed several times by the developers. Besides creating a great app, I would like to thank the developers for their continued participation in these forums, especially in addressing the questions and critiques. As it stands, this app is one of my favorites that I own (online multiplayer notwithstanding, it ranks right up there with Carcassonne and RK Samurai for me). Still, it's nice to be reassured by the developers that improvements and bug-fixes are ongoing and upcoming. They have instilled great confidence in me that this app is not only great investment, but practically a steal at $2.99, especially with future improvements coming. Well done!
I wish This is more like carcassone and samurai. It's a top notch game that's officially licensed. The price will just go up as the devs start adding more features. When they add multiplayer I'd put the price at 4.99 to stay on par with both carcassonne and samurai. Carcassonne will go up to 9.99 once the universal iPad update goes live. Conlan hasn't mentioned a price increase for the universal update of samurai, but it wouldn't be a surprised. I don't think this is getting a universal update (separate app?) but if it were to get it the game would sell at 9.99 and be completely worth it. I'd expect the price to go up before it ever went down. Last time I checked it was #17 in the Boardgames section (carcassonne is #25)
Agree, this is well worth $2.99 and the devs would be crazy to give it away free. They deserve the small asking fee for such a great game and as others have said this should at least increase to $4.99 when the promised updates hit (for instance the online). There is no reason that this game with included online wouldn't get as much money as Carcassonne or Samurai (the three of these games are my favorite app store games ).
Or keep it at $3, because the sceptical people who don't know much about the game mechanics and want a help button possibly won't buy it now, and raising it to $5 when it's implemented makes the people who may just dive in and 'take a risk' have a hard decision.
Sorry, this sounds like complete malarkey to me. Can you come up with a an example of a single successful game out there whose price went up after features were added? Like it or not, prices only tend to go down. The only way developers have managed to raise the effective price is by adding DLC. I acutally think the way that apple could help developers here would be to disallow price changes for the first X months after a game was released. Or after the last price change. Whatever the developer submitted as the price would be the price for a few months. Then consumers wouldn't wait for some expected price drop, and developers would be freed of the presure to drop to 99 cents. This would put all the FreeDailyApp websites out of business (which would be sad for me because I have found a bunch of games I had never even heard of that way), but it might be - on net - a help to developers. I personally am not particularly price sensitive, but I have stopped buying games on release unless I plan to play them right away. I don't care if a game's price goes down after I have enjoyed it, but I feel like a fool when it goes down before I have even started it up.
Why is it malarky? The devs of Carcassonne specifically said they are increasing the price when it goes universal. DLC is another way for devs to make money but how exactly do you make Online multiplayer and Universal functions into DLC? You can't. There is no way to monetize the time and work involved with bring those features unless you increase the price Neuroshima Hex is 2.99 and I think that's an appropriate price point. At 4.99 they would be competing with games that have more features. When Neuroshima Hex gets multiplayer it makes sense to raise the price to match games with similar features. If it stays at 2.99 then great, but that means they have to sell a lot of units to make up the development costs and the way the appstore is there just isn't a way to guarantee volume sales. It's absolutely no different than when a dev releases a game on a limited time sale. They are rewarding customers that buy early because the profit from those purchases fund future features (from new modes, content, etc). Disallowing price changes would be a terrible idea. What if a dev sets their price point to low? Now they are making huge sales numbers, potentially flooding their servers (if the game is online), and not making enough to cover their costs. What if a dev sets their price too high? Now they are getting absolutely no money at all and by the time they are allowed to change it there is no more interest in the game because we've all moved on to the next big game release.
The one thing that annoys me on these forums is a sense of 'justice', normally coming from people who have BOUGHT THE GAME.
I would hope no one wants it to go up (Who has money like that!?) but if the dev is taking the time to add GC based Multiplayer and wants to take the price to 4.99 I would still recommend the game cause I feel like it's worth the price. The only reason I haven't picked it up is cause I'm out of work, and if the price goes up by the time I can I'll still get it.
Its malarky because while developers may want to raise their prices, as far as I can tell, no one has been successful at doing so. The developers of Carcassone may want/plan to raise their prices (and I will be the first to admit that their game is worth a lot more then the $5 I paid for it), but its a safe bet that if they do raise their prices, it will not be long before they lower them again. The people most likely to buy their game have already purchased it. Raising the price isn't going to convince more people to buy it. The is particualalry true for Carcassone, since it already looks great on the iPad. I'm sorry, but this simply isn't true. Its called DownLoadable Content, but developers are free to charge for add ins for their games with or without any content being downloaded. They could add in multiplayer, but not enable it without a fee being paid via the DLC mechanism. I'm believe that the iPad native functionality happens via a function call, so enabling native iPad functionality could also be done via a fee. This also misses the point that the people who are most likely to pay for these new features are the ones who purchased the game already. They are not impacted by the price change. The only ones who are impacted are the ones who weren't willing to buy it at the old price. The problem with that logic is that while you pick up the market of people who think that it is worth $5 with multiplayer, you lose the market of people who don't care about multiplayer because, as you have said, without multiplayer its about a $3 game. I agree with you here. But, if you look around, I think you will find that most of those "limited time sales" become the regular price. I think if you will look, you will see that there are very few developers raising thier prices after release. In addition, I think if you look, you will have a hard time finding a developer who is getting "huge sales numbers" and is not happy with the result. My idea was to free developers from the forces that are forcing them to lower the price of their games.
I haven't read the whole thread, sorry if it's already known but i think i encounter a nasty bug. It's hard to explain, but it concerns tiles becoming invulnerable. These tiles have a sort of white marks on their edges.
So The Outpost was my favorite faction but now I'm starting to really like playing with Moloch. I think I like Moloch because all the armored units. Although I haven't gotten that good with The Hegemony yet and I do like the melee, ranged combo attack units.
The question was if the game would go down in price or be free. I'm saying the game is worth more than the current price and as they add more features I'd expect the price to go up to match similar games before it goes on sale. As for the Multiplayer and Universal being DLC is flat out impossible. The way the appstore is set up a game is labeled as "Iphone Only" "Ipad Only" or "Universal". Even if you added an explanation to the description it's still possible to buy the game from the list view and only seeing the + sign to indicate a universal build which it isn't so it constitutes false advertising. The appstore only lets you charge for content not features. New game modes, playable characters, skins, themes, music, etc. is all content. Play your own music, Tilt control scheme, TV out, and multiplayer are all features and you can't charge for them. MMOs have a loop hole because they don't charge for multiplayer, they charge for access to their servers for a certain amount of time. And just to be clear I know this because of devs I've beta tested for at different times have mentioned it. In the past few days I've seen quite a few major tech sites doing reviews of Neuroshima so I can't imagine that they would be getting this increase in sales and decide to lower the price. It's true that the "sale" price usually ends up the regular price but that's generally because they are making their volume sales figure or in some cases have already made make their development costs. As for a game that increased price when a feature was implemented? Small World for iPad. They lowered the price after some bugs but after they added AI opponents they raised the price to 6.99 and it hasn't dropped since.
