Ok I have been playing this and experimenting with playing properly and losing on purpose to see the outcomes. The 10 crafts you receive that constantly refresh over time, is not a good idea. a bad player will deplete the 10 available and then will have to use stars which are hard to come by at a reasonable rate especially if you want to use them to upgrade your ship, or wait for the ships to refresh. This will just make players stop playing full stop, and move on to another game, and that's never good. There should be motivation to move on in a game, the moment you give a player reason not to play, they wont. This seems like another mechanism for using stars and either forcing IAP's to get more, or for slowing down upgrading the ship and again forcing towards iap's to purchase stars. The upgrade times for installing parts is another factor I don't like, its another mechanism waiting for an IAP's to be attached to it, which will also drive me away. I earned the stars, purchased the upgrade there should be no wait times, its not a real ship simulator with a ship needed to be built. Its a shootem-up, its supposed to be fast and frantic. I'm still on the fence as to if you earn enough stars playing each level, as to fast and you will max out the ship to early and to slow and it will feel like a grind, I need to play more to establish if I think the balance is right, even then it will be my opinion, others will differ. I am however more worried that it will be reduced to encourage IAP's. The reason I am so vocal about this is I love the Sky Force games, I would gladly pay £3 to £5 for one with no timers and install times but in its current form I am worried its another game that is going to give me reasons not to play it. On the upside, the graphics, sound and controls are great. Game play is hard but fair, I have replayed the first level a few times and the second, and the patterns of attack make it great for replay as you can remember the attack paths. The audio prompts are a nice touch. The game feels strange, in a nice way, as it evokes a lot of nostalgia with a lot taken from the older Sky Force games - rescue humans, the water and the land graphics and of course the light houses - but feels fresh and modern. Kudos for achieving this. Sorry for the ramble, its just my thoughts on this.
if it helps any at all to help someone decide if you'd earn enough stars - for the last couple hours that I've been playing, I've had an average of about 3,000 stars an hour. You can upgrade your main weapon for 300-600 coins (and more after you hit level 2), and others for 1000-2000 (for the initial unlock, then to upgrade them, the price goes back down and starts to go up like the main weapon - for instance, I unlocked the missiles for 1,000 stars and then upgraded them for 300stars [or something like that])... As you go up in difficulty (complete objectives to unlock the next difficulty level), you'll earn more stars as well... going from Normal difficulty on Stage 1 and earning about 160 stars to earning about 250 on Hard and 350 on Insane... and I didn't even collect every star, so... =oP I dunno, I really think that the balance is just fine. The game is difficult (just like previous Sky Force games.... but it's pretty far from being an IAP push.
I've finally beaten stage 3 (phew...only 3 planes left) and i'm glad to have fun (grind for others) to replay again and again, meanwhile earning good coins. Still haven't memorized all enemies and bullets. And i need more upgrades, otherwise it's game over. It can get brutally hard. While we get better and do more upgrades, the timers rise also...big ouch. But the good thing is, the game gets equaly better, intense better. For me, the iap push only goes directly to the timers/upgrade faster.
I have played more now and I agree, the amount you earn in the game is fine, not to fast and not to slow. The timers for ship spawns and upgrade timers should go. You can still sell star bundles in game for those wanting to speed up the process, this mechanism in the free or premium game would be acceptable, but not the timers. If you are aiming to make it a free game then, pay to remove adds and selling star bundles would not be a deal breaker for most people, I can see you getting a lot of negative feedback for the timers though, especially from fans of the existing Sky Force games. Out of interest - by way of comparison - the best old style shootem-ups I have played recently on mobiles are Plasma Sky, Syder Arcade HD, Radiant, xelorians and Alpha Wave I love those games they are fine examples of good quality shootem-ups, This version of Sky Force can quite happily sit amongst those as one of the best examples of the genre in my humble opinion Great game, and I must thank you for giving us a voice in the decision making, its very much appreciated.
Was getting constant crashes after trying to "like" ID on Facebook. The only way to start the game again, was removing my FB account from the IPad altogether. Otherwise, awesome game. My new favorite in a loooong time. Just get rid of the timers.
In brief : The game is amazing, every thing the graphics, sound, gameplay, controls, but I feel it's hardness begins early from level 1 compared with previous series, thanks to Idreams.
Anybody knows at what level I can get two missiles firing at once? I'm at level two and still only one rocket fires. An also, all the upgrades - do we keep'em, with all the upcoming updates? Or will it get reset? Thanks
@PraetorianX: You can't, actually. Aside from the bullets, the equipment levels aren't directly translated onto the number of the items on the screen. For missiles it's only the frequency they're fired and damage, that's increased. You also get to keep the upgrades. For many weeks now we've been making weekend challenges internally. Everyone gets a Friday build on their device, saved data is cleared and we fight to be the one with the best score before Monday. It's quite engaging and we're thinking of incorporating it somehow in the game, but rather as an addition, not a replacement to the current progress model. Now, for the beta tests - thanks for lots of valuable feedback, happy to get even more. It's quite clear that the timers are the most disliked feature, but I'd like to know some more about how you actually feel about them. I'm not saying that's the case here, but perhaps such strong negative feelings are based upon experience with timers in all the other games so far? We've tried to balance them to not be a problem unless you progress in the game, somehow, without actually building any skills in playing it. Or, as funem tried it, dying on purpose. It's prefectly possible that we've failed in our attempts, so here's a simple question - are the timers in Sky Force actually preventing you from playing it? Thanks again for all the time you've spent playing Sky Force 2014 already! Best regards, Peter, Infinite Dreams.
Thank for the answer Piter. My only complain about timers would be fighter timers. I don't like to be limited to 10 default ships. That would be it.
Believe me that funem won't die on purpose no more once he reaches the "one hour per ship timer" level. Funem, are you there already ? (Btw, Plasma Sky and Syder Arcade are two all-time favorites of mine) I had ten ships and tried insane mode in stage 1+2, twice each. Playtime around ten minutes maybe ? Oops, six ships left, need more power and/or more skills ? Two attempts on stage 5 (can you answer my question from the survey ?) Playtime around four minutes, no skills here yet. Need way more practice but only four ships left. Can't practice and game on further to discover the next stage...going back to - i don't like to say it, but going to grind for stars on stage 2/hard mode. Gives me 600 stars per game if i don't die lol. Edit: tried stage 5 another three times and quickly have now one ship left to use. Looks like i will be stuck here for a while. The next 10'000 stars go into health. Somehow is testing over at the moment. Forgot to mention the nice little details in this game. The pixelated counters/game over, both voices, the cursing not-rescued people and specially this one huge explosion in 3D right in my face. Moved my head quickly backwards to dodge, really amazing !
Personally I've learned to love Stage 5, as it can be the best source of stars in the whole game, but it seems the skill requirement for this is too high. Noted. Regarding your question - will you lose your weapons no matter what? No, it's possible to finish Stage 5 without getting hit by EMP. We've done it with fully upgraded weapons (and a decent laser) on Normal difficulty Could you, possibly, post a screenshot of your Hangar? I'm wondering how's your plane upgraded at the moment. Thanks. Best regards, Peter, Infinite Dreams. p.s. To which explosion are you referring, Qwertz555? The battlecruiser or the power plant?
The powerplant. The first time it exploded different (?) or i just wasn't aware of it. But i remember the noise/crash it made and i thought it's outside my window, playing with headphones. The second time it came right in my face, hell of an animation. I had a hard time to do the "stay untouched" mission on stage 2 hard mode. So many times i thought i made it just to scratch a little tiny bit while cruising between the bullet curtains of the two big boss ships. Same on stage 5. In my opinion, just cut back the hitbox a pixel or two. Do you understand what i mean ? Make the ship just "one pixel" smaller.
@Qwertz555: One pixel on iPad's retina wouldn't do you much good I'm joking, I understand perfectly what you mean. We'll test it to see the impact on the gameplay. Oh, I'm happy the explosion worked that well. Mission accomplished @PraetorianX: As in restarting completely or just getting back the stars you've spent (all or some part od them)? Best regards, Peter, Infinite Dreams.
The timers have actually stopped me from playing, whilst I waited for the ship upgrade to happen. During level three I died so many times whilst trying to save all the humans, my remaining ships actually got to zero and I had to stop playing. Personally, any time you make a game that has a timer that stops you playing, then something is wrong. Why would you want someone NOT to play your game ? Not all gamers are hard-core and if you put timers in the game the current way they are implemented, the reviews will point this out and you will segment your buyers to mostly hard-core gamers only. In doing this you may find you make less money as hard-core gamers will not require timers on ships as much as their runs will last longer and the need for IAP's will reduce, and the timers will not matter. I don't think the timers should be implemented in the game, they serve no purpose other than to utilise stars collected and slow progression. Personally if I were publishing this there would be two routes I would consider The premium route - I would remove the timers completely, I would make it a $3 - $4 game, add options to buy stars and buy ship designs. I don't mind IAP's in a game as long as the reasons for buying them are optional and not constructed like unnecessary timers. Buying stars in a premium title is fine as long as the bundle prices are reasonable and they were optional. The free route - If you went the free route you could still utilise the IAP mechanism, to unlock more ship designs with differing attributes, a bit like the original craft options in older Sky Force games. You could also make the first three levels free and an option to unlock the remaining levels with an IAP. You could still sell star bundles. Both would make money and should create no negative feedback if handled correctly. Whichever way you go, please remove the timers. I am already beginning to hate them in this game, I would put money on timers being heavily mentioned negatively in reviews and user comments on reviews if they are implemented. Which would be a shame as this is a fantastic game with a great pedigree. IAP's are ok in a game but not when you are being pushed towards paying for contrived purchases that do not need to exist. As you asked the question, may I ask why you feel the need for the timers and how you think they improve the game, I understand you need to generate revenue, but to the expense of gameplay ?
I don't think timers are meant to improve the game. Since it's a freemium game devs need the players to shell out the money for premium currency. You need to like the game enough to treat it as a drug and want to pay to continue playing. This is what all freemium games want to achieve. I am not too sure if it works well with SHMUPs though. I love the graphics and gameplay is fun but when I am suddenly prevented from playing I just stop and turn the game off. This is not FarmVille or dragonvale. Here the devs need to trigger another need. I think that this particular game will benefit more from having IAP ship packs or skin packs where you can customise your ships visually (for example). The purchases would remove the ads as well. The game is fun enough for me personally to want to pay to try different ships with different abilities, weapons and hull designs. Limited ships and timers will keep only hardcore fans playing as from the outset you frustrate players with all the negative triggers. There should at least be a premium unlock to remove the timers, ship limits and ads removed. I also think that 2000 star requirement to unlock various ship features is too high and requires too much grinding to be fun. Last point - pixelated menus look inconsistent with the rest of the game. I know that retro is all the rage but it just doesn't look right.
@PraetorianX: I'm not so sure about that one. It's not like you can make some irreversible decision about the ship's upgrades. Generaly more is better. If you wonder if you could finish a level without the main cannon, armed only with missiles and lasers, well, you probably could but I'm guessing it wouldn't be that fun. @syntheticvoid: Great! Did you pick up that VIP? I've yet to find one :] @funem: In general, the timers are developer's way of indirectly asking for players' money. True, it's not the most elegant way, but doing it elegantly often means failure for a project, or the company. Also, besides those who would gladly pay some money for a premium product, there are those (and there's a lot of them) who don't want to pay or can't pay. Timers make the whole game still accessible to them, given they agree to get it at a slower pace or maybe watch a video ad. And with such huge amount of games to choose from, it's hardly surprising. Anyway, I asked the question and I've got my answer. If anyone else wants to answer it too, a simple Yes/No will suffice. Let's not turn this thread into a freemium crusade, especially since we're really eager to meet the demands of premium players. @eugekava: Is it the font you disliked in the menus? We've got pixelated fonts during the gameplay, too. Personally I think it's a nice retro accent, but I guess it's a matter of taste. Thanks for the feedback. TL;DR Sky Force is now also available in Canadian AppStore! Best regards, Peter, Infinite Dreams.
Hi, Peter. To be honest I didn't notice the fonts in game. May be they are too small and clear enough not to notice. Retro is fine as long as it is consistent with the rest of the game. In this case I don't believe it is. Just looks out of place. Considering how beautiful the actual gameplay graphics are, I think the menus need to be as modern.
