Firstly, you have to be Level 6 or higher. You can tell if you can perform a Combo by checking in the bottom left hand corner of the screen - there should be two circles to fill up with your previous element rather than just one. Secondly, you'll need to use the elements alternately - so if you wanted to make a Fire / Air Combo, you'd go Fire, Air, Fire, Air. If you can cast spells of 5 glyphs in length or higher, you can add Aftertouch which can go either before or after the combo. So doing Arcane, Fire, Air, Fire, Air will perform a Firestorm + 1. You can even add an Aftertouch of one of the other elements - Fire, Air, Fire, Air, Air will still cast a Firestorm +1. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is to not use opposite elements anywhere in your spell. Got Fire? Don't use Water. Got Air? Don't use Earth. And so on.
here is my suggestion for the monetising system, based on all the F2P that can be turned premium : 2$$ for gold doubler 2$$ for material drop chance doubler 2$$ for unlimited energy this way the game can still be played for free with grinding and waiting, but can be a fully premium experience for those who pay 6$$, a very reasonable price point considering most games prices. i dont know who told you to think of a happy price and double it, but to me this seems unreasonable and un-obtainable. With Appstore prices, 10$$ is Implosion, Neon Chrome and Steamworld Heist quality, and 15$$ and above is Square Enix and Capcom classics. This doesnt mean your game isnt worth that much, but that simply these are the games people want to get at these prices, super quality from big name studios. This is from my point of view, both as a consumer and as what i would do if i was selling my own game.
The problem is that 99% of people aren't going to pay for anything in the F2P model. It relies on that 1% spending enough to cover the others. Let me throw some figures at you. Let's say the game cost $20k to make - it didn't, that's an extremely low figure, but it'll do as an example. Let's say the game had 250k downloads - a reasonable number as that's what Glyph Quest achieved. And finally, let's say that 1% of those 250k opt to pay the very reasonable $6 you've outlined above. That's $3k - of which Apple takes 30%, leaving you with $2100 or $17,900 in debt. Even if you double the number of users who spend that money, you're still over $15k short. This means you need to either: Increase the number of downloads - no small feat and can actually cost a fortune in User Acquisition. Increase the number of conversions - making more people spend a little money. Normally that means wait timers or gacha. Increase the maximum expenditure - making that 1% more valuable. Traditional F2P opts to do all of these things but emphasis is placed on the 3rd one. In fact, most F2P places no upper limit on expenditure. We're actively shooting ourselves in the foot trying to be nice and stop people spending 'too much' money on our game. I'll offer you another set of figures: (This is based on the assumption that we're equating fun play time with value) Currently there are 100 Quests in the game's main arc - that is, not including Challenge Mode or Daily Quests. Also, there are many more coming in future updates. Each one takes, on average, 4 minutes to complete That's 400 minutes of gameplay - not including time spent levelling up gear, looking after familiars or upgrading spells. You could get two trips to the cinema in that time - but it'd still cost more. I hope you guys realise that we're really not trying to rip people off. All we're trying to do is make ends meet and we're really hoping that there's some middle ground that allows us to go F2P whilst still feeling comfortable recommending this game to our friends.
I hope you also understand we love you here - was just trying to offer a perspective. From your reply, i would point the problem to the small number of downloads, which lessens the pool of the players willing to spend. Maybe some cost effective marketing would help? Or maybe i'm completely wrong. But anyway, i am posting because i am trying to be helpful - all my friends consider mobile gaming crap so opinions is all i have to try to help EDIT: what about incorporating some ads? last i heard this was paying, and many F2P do it with -watch to double your gold or finish the skill cooldown etc, incentivised advertising i think?
Oh, we're well aware that the rarified atmosphere of the Touch Arcade forums doesn't necessarily equate to the great unwashed internet With any luck, 250k downloads is a bit conservative. That was based on a UK and US appstore feature because the first game was only available in English. At launch, this one will be available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese (x2), Korean and Japanese, which should make it more likely that we get a larger feature. That said, we're still not counting our chickens because a feature is never a guaranteed thing. There's a FB ad campaign running in our soft launch territories, but it doesn't seem to be having much luck. The ratio of ad views to people actually downloading the game is pitiful. Again, it's all going to come down to the feature as we simply don't have the budget to go toe-to-toe with the UA of the big boys. We are going to try a different - read: quirky - approach though and throw together some videos. Hopefully these will be entertaining as well as plug the gaps in the tutorial (I'm looking at you, Combos) and get the folks rooting for the underdog: us. I'm well up for it, but the chances of you seeing Leanne on camera is slight to non-existant...
Alex, Can you explain a bit more about the Patron mode? What is the benefit of this mode compared to the benefits of having the "Starter Pack" and then max'ing out the Loyalty card? Am I correct this mode can only be unlocked with "real" currency so grinding is not possible? How fast is the timer being recharged at present? Assuming I got the "Starter Pack", how far am I away from unlocking the Patron mode?
Patron Mode removes the energy system completely. Completing a Loyalty Card is just like doing so in a coffee shop - it gives you a free go, then you get a new, clean Loyalty Card and can start again. In Patron Mode, however, there's no need for a free quest so completing your Loyalty Card will get you more Gems (hard currency). The only way of unlocking Patron Mode is with cold, hard cash. No grinding. We're about to introduce a Patron Pack that will straight up unlock it and contain the stuff you get in the Starter Pack (but with even more resources). But if all you want to do is top up with hard currency every now and then, each purchase will count towards it. Right now, Patron Mode's value is set to two lots of the largest Gem packs, so buying both the Alchemist and Loyalty Card should get you about a third of the way there. Your mana bar regenerates one quest's worth of mana every 15 minutes so takes a hour to completely fill up. BTW Gems are also awarded for completing the game's internal Achievements - which means you generally get a whole load of them at the start. They can be spent on upgrading spells (up to 5 times per spell), buying special items or Gold in the Shoppe and filling in for missing Materials during crafting (although this is a very expensive way of doing things - precise but expensive).
This game gets more polished with each version. This is the best of the three versions, except for the mana regen. After playing this for awhile, I would purchase an IAP that gets rid of the energy if it were offered. I think you need to make it a standalone purchase as well as a combo purchase. Dont complicate this with guess work on the consumer's end i.e. if you spend "x" amount of money the energy will go away.. Just tell us exactly what we will get for our purchase.
The next update that we're about to submit to Apple includes the Patron Pack - that bundles up the Alchemist, Loyalty Card, Gold Chest, Gem Chest and Material Chest all in one for less money than it would cost to buy them all separately. It also unlocks Patron Mode straight away. The gradual unlock of Patron Mode was never supposed to be a guess work thing - more of a 'ensure that nothing gets wasted' thing.
An update has been released. It features (amongst other things) that one-stop Patron Mode purchase thing. Essentially, it bundles the Alchemist (coin doubler), Loyalty Card, Gem Chest, Gold Chest and Material Chest into one, handy bundle for about 20% off what it would cost to buy them all individually. It also unlocks Patron Mode, thereby getting rid of the energy timer permanently.
Was just going to ask the same thing. I never got into the series, but always liked the idea, and it sounds like this is going to be better in so many ways. I really appreciate you guys are trying to accommodate the players that want a more premium-like experience.
If all goes according to plan, before the end of the month, although the powers that be have declared March to be a bit problematic should we require a Feature. So early April?
Our concern is that this approach is actually going to shoot us in the foot and the simple fact of the matter is that those people that want (and are prepared to actually pay for) a premium experience are so limited in number that they're not actually worth catering for. Don't get me wrong - I'd much rather just make premium experiences - it's so much simpler - but the mobile market just doesn't work that way anymore. I fully predict a raft of "What are they trying to pull? I'm not paying that much money for a game like this? Why should I pay? Stupid energy timers! This game is too expensive! Bloody developers, constantly trying to gouge their customers!" when we do actually release. Makes you wonder why we bother really...
News! Well, not so much news as an update of where we stand. We're nearly ready to push the button. In terms of features, we're about there. We've added stuff like Facebook support so you'll be able to compete with your friends on Quest leaderboards. Just some polishing to be done. There's always polishing to be done... We've added the Patron Pack for those of you that want a premium experience and the ability to optionally watch an advert if you run out of mana and really don't want to spend a gem or two on filling it back up again. Next up is the Bag of Holding - a magical bag that contains an amount of Gold, Gems and Materials that increases in size each day until it becomes so tempting that even the die-hard, I'm-giving-these-devs-a-damn-penny type person will have to think twice. The language select is in - you'll be able to play the game in your choice of English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Well, you will once we've done the translations prior to launch. We've tweaked some of the existing features too. Combos come in as soon as you've beaten the first boss, so hopefully more people will experience them. The Workshop has undergone a bit of a refactor too - there's more of a progression to it so it should be less overwhelming. That leaves the launch date. Let's say late April / early May. Yes. Let's say that and see what happens. More information as I get it - like Trailers and How To Play videos and stuff. Until then, the game is still available as it stands in select app stores if you really can't wait for it and want to help our DAU numbers that took a real hit when Zelda came out and are currently in the tank.
That's a fair question and one I should probably address. Well, the game is done. Ready. Good to go. All features we wanted to put in are in and working properly. Localisation has been done so the game is actually going to be available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Facebook integration is in so you can see how you stack up against your friends on the leaderboards for each quest - not just Challenge Mode. Here's hoping the servers hold up... or, here's hoping that we have so many users that the servers not holding up becomes a problem that we are happy to deal with I'm literally working on the App Preview video right now - we don't want to make the same mistake that we made with the previous game where all we had were a couple of screenshots and no video at launch. After that, we push the button - hopefully in the next couple of days. Once that's done, it'll be down to when Apple suggest would be a good time for them. Hopefully in a couple of weeks or so - but I'm guessing you've heard the "two weeks" line a few times in the past.
