+1! I have no problem spending money on the iOS platform. I have X-Com, Battle Academy complete, Panzer Corps complete, The Great War, Magic 2013, 2014, 2015, Carcassonne with all extras and many more games which costs much more than 10,- Euro! But I hate to pay again and again for no "real content" ... and if I pay to unlock something, then I want to have it unlocked on all my devices ...
This would be my main point, but time is short. It's Tuesday, and this weeks release coverage is eminent, and with it, the entire boards focus will shift. If Rapture is not featured, don't see the community continuing to discuss it much longer without a significant development. You said yourself, a major change to IAP structure would take time to implement, but the clock is ticking. A price drop to FREE would not only peak the interest of the skeptical, but would also cause a stir from those who took the plunge at the opening price. Either way, it will maintain the momentum and keep the focus on your product. Seize the day!
Thanks to your explanation i didn't played it at all, not only for the iap's but also because of the 2 star rating for the actual game. With another game i will be happy to return the favour.
Bought the game I bought the game because I want to see if the developers are misrepresenting the truth or if the community is. The developers are stating that the IAP has no impact on game play (a key difference between it and any game that is pay to win). The community (or a few members of it who have purchased it) are saying you need to pay to win/progress in the game. I haven't had a chance to play it but after I do I will give an honest opinion. I drop money all the time on all sorts of games. I am looking to have an enjoyable experience and don't mind paying for it. In another forum they mentioned that in order to pass a mission you need to pay. If you don't need to complete missions to complete the game then I have no problem ignoring certain missions and don't feel it is a negative of the game for them including that. Why shouldn't they include things to make people want to pay money, the difference is whether you get the full experience of the game without paying. It seems to me like quite a few people expect to pay $3 and get a game that we would have had to spend $15 five years ago to get. That is not a valid thought process. If you want everything unlocked and the developer to not have any way of making extra money they probably would have charged more then anyone would have paid for. Then you would be complaining that the game costs too much. As a society we are expecting more and more games to be cheaper and cheaper but also have no IAP or purchasable goods. These people spend months working on these games. Do we honestly feel they should get nothing for their work? Some people have stated they would pay $8 for this game if everything were unlocked. Ok, so you do that (which in all honesty you wouldn't do, who would spend $8 on an unknown game) but who else would. Probably not many and then the hundreds of hours these people have put in result in them making a few hundred bucks. The idea of making this a free game when it sounds like the developers have built a game that doesn't require IAP is ludicrous. Would you work for a full week and expect to not get paid? If the IAP is required to play then the argument to make it free to play is a valid one and time will tell if that is the case. Time to see if the developers or the community is being honest. My money is on the developers (literally) but I have no problem coming back here and stating my view, whether I am right or wrong. Chris
@Chris: I wrote several times, that I would have no problem to pay 10 or even 15 Euro for the game with all options enabled ... and of course on all my devices! So, I think, this is a more than fair wish from me as a gamer ...
Thanks Topher. Looking forward to see what you have to say about it! It looks like there are a lot of others who are like me(game looks interesting but price with the possibility of p2w is putting me off)
First Impressions As far as the comment above. To my earlier point, you might be willing to pay that amount but not many people would. So, even though you would be nice and pay more the developer would earn less by charging more. After playing a few games (still very early on so my opinion could change) This game is not pay to win. It is pay if you don't want to put the time in and learn the strategy. I played my first game on the lowest difficulty and crushed the AI. I then upped the difficulty and got beaten pretty quickly. However, if I did that the first time I played Civilization the same result would have happened. I wouldn't have said that Sid didn't give me enough tools to win. I could be wrong and with further playing I might see that but so far I don't agree that this is pay to win. As far as the missions. You can skip any mission you want for the cost of $2,500 coins. You earn coins every time you play a mission. On the lowest difficulty I won around 250 coins and the game took about 3 minutes. So, in about 30 minutes I could skip a mission that required me to pay money. Doesn't seem like a deal breaker to me but maybe as I level up it costs more to skip. If I encounter an issue where I can't progress any further without paying I will let everyone know. Chris
Well, I'm reading this thread, and I'm going to post my own opinion. Be prepared for a huge wall of text about how I feel about the whole IAP thing. Basically I'm a guy which came from the Atari/NES/Genesis era and up. I'm used to pay $50-60 for games, as long as they give the average user hours of entertainment, let's say, around 30 hours to finish, maybe with some great replayability. Ok, a few years later, I enter the world of iOS and Android, and seriously, it sucks. Major. I've never really thought about doing this on consoles, because I *WILL* buy games based on the factor that it gives me fun. Based on all these years which I've owned several iOS and Android devices, I've learned to hate 98% of the IAP. Be it timers, be it premium currency, be it extra items unobtainable otherwise, whatever. Because they BASICALLY hide the fact that all games for those mobile platforms will try to hinder your progress towards the end goal, whatever that may be. It leaves you with a game that without the whole IAP, it would give you around 5 hours of fun, maximum. Here's the thing, I'm ok with that. I will pay $5 bucks for a game which lasts that long, hell, I've paid even more for short indie games, and my Steam is full of them, I have over 1240 which I've paid like $5-10 bucks each, up to $60 and more for full price games, famous series and many others that are not quite indie, but not quite full games as well. Money is not the problem here, I have a budget like everyone else does, I just chose to buy games that I like/see on youtube/read about/get recommended the most, and I'm not a kid anymore, I'm 30+ with a steady job, and I can buy over 4 full priced games ($60) per month if I want to. Do the math for mobile games. this is about the poisoning on the mobile market. I believe we all have iPhones and iPads so really you can't be stingy with your wallet, stop lying to yourself if say you can't buy games. I feel that every app on the iOS and Android platform should have two options for EVERY game. One with IAP, so you can be mislead to spend over $200 on Candy Crush-type games (I have friends that have done that, heard it from themselves, yes), and a full version, without any IAP, which I would have paid really like $5-15 for the entire game. This is not about the player choosing to restrict or not the IAP on your device, it's about having fun. If the game is well designed it will not be a problem at all to play/buy such game. Mobile developers are surely getting lazy and want to get more bang for their buck (well, truly, who doesn't, I do too, if I could make me a clone to work for me instead, I would. That's what the passive IAPs do). I've decided when I play "free" games that I will seriously never spend more money on it if I reach a pay wall and delete the game, excluding those very very very few games that have "coin doubler" sorts of IAP, which could very well be the price for the full game as I mentioned before. Slowly started to prefer through all these years to pay for full priced games on every platform. Please give me all the Dragon Quests, Final Fantasy, X-Com, Shadowrun, Bastion, Iesabel, Minecraft and whatever else for $15-20, I will gladly pay for it, because I know they will allow me have fun and play for as long as I want to without being worried to spend more cash on IAP. Baseline is, if the game has IAP, currently it's a complete deterrent for me to go and play it and pick as one of my favorites. If the game is announced as full price/no IAP, a game which I might not have thought/heard about before, would CERTAINLY gain that same chance of me to try and love it. In the end, I guess it's all to blame on the users, because you're the ones paying for it. Stop it, and watch developers stop doing that, too. Apologies from a frustrated user for the long read. Going back to Iesabel and Goblin Sword. All that said, I really liked Rapture, and the IAP struck me in a bad mood, because I really liked the game presentation, but, I will try it out later on. If I really reach a pay wall as some stated on earlier posts, I'll just get a bit more frustrated, that's all.
I'm sorry that's simply not true - go to the threads of any game that's price $10 and upwards like Bioshock, Final Fantasy or Corpse Party. You'll have at least a dozen complaints about how the game is too expensive. You've been a member for a month; trust me, when you've been here longer you'll see how cheap many others here actually are. Anyway, I'm just about to settle into the game and will leave impressions soon.
I'm glad you didn't take that as an attack on you guys; I honestly love you guys that are willing to pay out good money for good games - I wish we had more of you!
All that needs to be said. Sometimes I have this utopian dream of mobile users having the same mindset of console users. Silly me.
Right, I've played a couple of games so I feel comfortable giving initial impressions. Admittedly, I clearly haven't played as long as Mythbuster has so it's worth checking their review too. I'm not, if I'm honest, a massive fan of the Galcon formula. I've enjoyed playing Risk at times but I find the adapted gameplay to be a little repetitive and light in actual strategy. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from World Conquest when I bought it, but it looked interesting enough to risk it so realising the genre was a little disappointing. That disappointment was quickly subdued though. It looks great, even on my iPad 2. Where games usually stutter on my older deivce, this is buttery smooth. Rotating the globe is visually delightful and I had no crash issues despite not even restarting my device beforehand. It's also good to see that it can handle multi-tasking and I could close it to check my emails and then return to where I was mid-game. It's a small point but something I always appreciate. The gameplay is the lovechild of Galcon and Civilisation. There's a startling depth to the game which becomes apparent during the tutorial. There are four boosts, four ideologies and twelve miracles to utilise alongside the typical combat and management of troops. On top of that, there's a simple research tree that progresses automatically, unlocking features such as naval navigation enabling you to send armies over the sea. It takes the generic simplicity and blows it out of the water. The miracles are by far my highlight of the game; they generally fit into two categories: modifiers and damagers. Each one is unique though; Tornados move erratically across continents, quite possibly detouring into your own territories if you're not careful. Meteors strike massive areas with huge destructive force whilst Radiation spreads across entire landmasses, reducing the population of each dramatically. You can use strong harvests to boost the rate of unit regeneration or raise moral to increase power. It adds a huge depth to the gameplay and makes things unpredictable. Considering the fast pace of managing the entire globe, predictable and slow are the last words I'd use to describe it. There are definitely IAPs involved but I didn't once consider using them during gameplay, it was just far too hectic to give it a second thought. At the same time, they're on a fairly prominent section of the screen so I can understand why they're on the forefront of people's minds. I could easily see them being removed without affecting the balance of the game in anyway, which does raise the question of whether they're necessary in the game at all. I'm a pretty poorly skilled gamer, yet I powered through my first game on the default difficulty and plan to focus on the third mode from now on. If I can manage that then I can't see anyone else ever really needing them. They're so optional that they end up not serving a purpose really, which just makes them a distraction with negative connotations. The other IAPs are actually pretty interesting; the extra planets will add a lot to the gameplay so I'm definitely tempted to save up for them or buy them outright. The themes and races are purely cosmetic so make of them what you will, they don't particularly appeal to me as such. Overall, it's not much of an issue to me but I can totally understand the negativity - It may well stem mostly from the use of the word "boosts". It's a word I think we all hate as it conjures images of freemium at its worst; if that was modified (or to be honest, totally removed) then I don't think anyone would even mention the IAPs again. It would probably be a good idea to modify the "Complete a match using a custom atmosphere color purchased from the shop" so that it appears much later or not at all; such an early indication of there being IAPs can put some off. The rate you earn coins is slightly low, but given that there are only four planets that offer gameplay changes then I don't have a huge issue with it. Purchase of the doubler would quickly ensure everything of value is unlocked whilst still giving you value for money. This is something I think the game does very well, providing content for a reasonable entry fee - there are five different difficulties: easy, default, hard, very hard and impossible (to paraphrase). Combined with the challenges that cycle like a F2P runner's would and you have a reason to keep playing. Overall though, it's a very solid 4 star game (as much as I hate rating things). I don't regret my purchase and I definitely intend to keep playing after reviewing it which I use as my indication that I'm enjoying games! It's a hard one to define in terms of recommending it as some people may be expecting a stat-heavy turn-based sim from the visuals but it's a strong arcade strategy game with surprising depth and beautiful visuals. Edit: Holy poop, apologies for the wall of text. tl;dr: I really enjoyed it and wouldn't hesitate to suggest it to strategy fans. The IAPs didn't worry me though they could use a little reworking to avoid negativity.
@Pete: As I wrote before, I love also the gameplay ... but: Just think about one fact: You can buy the other planets for aound 5 bucks ... ok ... but: Next week you get the new iPhone 6 ... and then you cannot restore all your purchases, because you paid just for "in game gold" ... so you have to pay again or you must play, play, play ... then you buy a new iPad ... same game ... In my opinion that must be changed. If you buy a gold pack, then it should be restoreable so that you can use it on every device ... that would be a real fair deal! Also: In my opinion it is a real negative point that you cannot gather your troops together in one of your own countries ... so you are not able to protect your border. And: Yes, as I wrote, the game will become hectic ... there should be a way to slow it down ... With these three tings I would rate it with five stars. I hope you can understand my opinion.
Great to know the IAPs seem to be purely optional. That in mind and seeing the developer here lending an opinion with proper thought and grammar, Tundra has earned my $2.99 [and hopefully no more unless the game is super amazeballs ]. Will post my thoughts when I get an hour or two to spare. Crash reports scare me a bit as I prefer gaming on my older mini that loves to run out of memory, but we'll see!
The argument about the $8 game nobody or few would buy is mute because if the dev is clever he would release it as free fir the first chapter or 20 minutes with a full game unlock. That way the gamer is not committed to fork out $8 before trying and it puts the onus on the dev to make it worth the money instead getting $50 from IAP sales for really an $8 game. In the end and the bottom line is it's the devs call and if he simply wants to make as much as possible he has to take into account our side. Just like unlimited phone calls have a. 'Fairplay' clause it's ok for devs to make money but at the same time we want our money 's worth not pay to continue schemes which we are seeing a lot of. I've bought plenty of $20 games but why? Because they're worth it. But I'd question very seriously a $3 game that you eventually must sink $20 into. If the game's that good slap a $15 price on it in an IAP unlock but it's when the game isn't that good that you can't do that because people will look and not buy. That's why cheap games with IAP come under intense scrutiny.
