Ahh.. ok, Thank makes sense then.. my main characters are all between 8-10. I'll come back to it. I have to say, the majority of your level designs are very nicely balanced! Good job there
Epic 4.5 star review on the first page! http://toucharcade.com/2014/09/29/tactics-maiden-review/ Last week the Touch Arcade forums' voted Tactics Maiden their game of the week. There should be no doubt left that Tactics Maiden is a winner and good candidate for Game of the Year.
At least 0.5 to 1.0 of these stars can be credited to undeadcow, Nullzone and JCaps for their relentless work of pushing me in the right direction during the beta test. Many of the cool features like pad lock units, in-game statistics and skills like 'Web Haul' are based on their suggestions, and it was amusing to see how they have managed to turn a beta test into an early-access-like-project (more than 1200 replies generated by 4 people in the beta discussion group). Tactics Maiden is by no means a perfect game, of course, and should I ever believe so it's time for an early retirement. And despite the somewhat disappointing number of downloads and App Store ratings so far, I'm as committed as ever to improve upon the game in the future. It speaks volumes for the toucharcade community and the toucharcade staff in particular, to show so much interest in a commercially less relevant title like Tactics Maiden. @Shaun: Thank you so much! Also for all of your other (unrelated) RPG reviews which have saved me several times already from making foolish design decisions.
Once the (over)due patch 1.8.5 has been approved by Apple, the next patch 1.9.1 will be queued up right away. Here's an incomplete preview of patch 1.9.1 already: - Battlefield sprites are used as replacement for character portraits as a default (can be reset to character portraits via Game Settings) - Overhauled scenarios to make them more interesting: 19, 20, 22, 112, 143, 144, 145, 161 ... (more to come) - Spider merc available in scenario 112 (scene 112 is unlocked after scene 19) - Spiders can wear amulets now (think of them as collars, then it makes somehow sense ) - Units in stealth cannot loot chests (this feature was mistakenly deactivated shortly before the initial release) - Improved 'Battle Cry': For units that have finished their turn already, the atk boost will be carried over to the next turn. - Fixed 'Rabid Bite' sound and animation - Commoner's 'Throw Knife' cannot be countered any longer - AI tweak for poisoned units: They won't try to recover lost HP on outposts or pillars anymore but attack instead. - A few UI inconsistencies fixed (e.g. resetting the mercenary list after inspecting a particular unit)
It was a pleasure being a beta tester glad to see the game was well received by many and the review was excellent. All that's left is to get the perfect 5 star rating next time #
Maybe it is too early to ask, but is another sequel planned? I would like to keep throwing money at you. As an unfortunate side effect of your purchase model (Try then unlock full via iap), I can not purchase and extra code or two for friends.
During the next weeks I will mainly focus on further polishing Tactics Maiden, e.g. fine tuning the existing scenarios and probably adding a few new ones. Everything else depends on the success of Tactics Maiden. Having done these titles for almost 5 years now, and taking everything into consideration, I think it is past time for a change, though. So my best guess is that Tactics Maiden will be the last title of its kind.
Post-campaign content Around early November additional post-campaign content will be added to Tactics Maiden: Exploring the depths of Mt. Helamor where you can level up your main campaign units without limitation. Everything included in the full version like always. The concept is still work in progress, but I will reveal additional info soon(er or later).
I'm a huge fan of tactics games like this. I'll just add my two cents right here. 1). Favorite skill right now is bewitch. Very useful to freeze an enemy on a camp to prevent summoning. This allows you to easily take it the next turn. Strategies like this make the game fun. Please add a melee skill that parents all moment too. You could call it grapple and give it to one of the less played melee classes. 2). I also love the stealth units in this game. Ambush with hide 3 is fantastic. Rogue for best class by far! 3) I dislike not being able to replay past levels. I lost the ranger npc in an early level before really understanding the reward mechanics and haven't seen another since. If we stop getting xp past a certain point why not have a replay sub menu with a list of past scenes. Would be helpful towards leveling up a new character. 4) Also, why is there a menu for equipping a character, this should be doable from character management. There should be a tab in the skill menu screen that goes to equipment. Use the menu freed by losing the extraneous equip tab to give us a replay menu. 5) most of the buffs in this game are very rarely useful with a duration of one turn. If battle cry lasted 2 turns I'd use it. The same goes for the knights defensive team buff and pray. The exception being priests sanctuary for taking a resource. If a buff requires me to position multiple teammates and provides a minor benefit it needs to last 2 or 3 turns. And if they lasted 3 turns I'd actually use warriors on my team. Right now my melee slots are just knights and rogues/assassins. Because buffing is weak the optimal strategy seems to be just use a team with the best damage/health a toss in a healer. There isn't much synergy. This leads to shallower team building. So here is my proposal for the melee classes. To make the primary classes more differentiated and useful. 1). Pikeman, make hamper 0,1,2,3 reduce movement speed by 1,2,3,4. Make retaliate last 1,1,2,3 turns. 2) Warrior, make battle cry last 1,2,2,3 turns. 3) paladin, pray needs to last 2,2,3,3 turns. The pow buff of bless should last 3 turns. 4) Knight,, shield allies to last 2 turns at max level. Bulwark is useful already.
Yep, that's a nice strategy. My personal favorite is 'Place Swap'. It takes some time and practice, though, to understand the true beauty and power of this skill. There are more rangers available later during the game, but missing out on the first one will leave you indeed for quite some time without a ranger. While this isn't much of a problem, imho, I see your point and will check where another ranger could be made available early on. From an RPG point of view I'm not a fan of making past levels available for replay. Imagine you could replay any completed quest in a game like Oblivion at any later time. Setting the interrupted story flow and all the technical consequences aside for a moment, it would make strategic decisions like "Do I save padlock unit A or B if I cannot manage to save both" pointless. Yeah, the menu for equipping characters is indeed not necessary. But personally I find it a convenient shortcut for going straight to the inventory of your main characters (respectively the first characters in your 'list' depending on the sort order). But I guess most players can live without it. Battlecry 2 turns instead of 1: Sounds very reasonable. I'll try this out for some time, and if it doesn't break the game balance, let's do that. Prolongued Pray: I have mixed feelings about this. If you skill the paladin accordingly, he can make a lot of damage after Pray. I also like the idea of a Paladin just preparing for the next attack (e.g. while closing in on a target). A high damage buff for 2 turns might be too much for a non-damage dealing class. I'll think about it. Prolongued 'Shield Allies': A shielded 'Flurry' rogue running around with high physical and bow defense for 2 or more turns? No, no. Latest if you play end-game levels on 'Queen' difficulty, you will find the skill as it is not only useful but mandatory. Edit: Prolonging Retaliate to 2 turn sounds interesting. I don't think it should be stackable, though (meaning Retaliate recast during the 2nd turn shouldn't add more Ret%, but should replace the previous buff instead). You might want to give warriors a try as well, especially against larger numbers of magic resistant units. Personally I love bandits, but how useful they are depends very much on your playstlye.
Thanks for the quick response! Also I hope I didn't come across as too negative, I think this is a great game.
Not at all, no worries. And I really appreciate any kind of feedback. For the next patch 1.9.1 I've already added another Ranger merc to scenario 12 - Summerford. Any preference for the Ranger's name? It's your ranger, after all .
Prolonged Counter @Jhffmn: The more I think about a prolonged 'Counter' skill for Pikemen, the more I like your idea. Just now I've realized, though, that the current buff system has a few flaws when it comes to replacing buffs that last longer than 1 turn. The main problem is that the source of a buff (= the skill type) is not tracked at the moment. To make a long story short, there's an alternative implementation to your suggested 'Counter' design, which would be an improvement already, I think: Instead of: "Increases retaliation damage and D-Phy for 1 turn (Pow)" "Increases retaliation damage for 2 turns and D-Phy for 1 turn (Pow)" Only for those interested in technical details: ************************************** Since Ret% is only buffed by the skill 'Counter', it's save to remove a previous Ret% buff in order to replace it, if 'Counter' is recast during the second turn. This isn't working for D-Phy, unfortunately, because there can be several D-Phy buffs applied at the same time from different sources (e.g. Counter and Shield Allies), and the system simply doesn't know which of them can be removed. To illustrate this: Let's assume the D-Phy buff of Counter would last 2 turns as well: 1) A pikeman casts 'Counter' in turn 1 2) In turn 2 a Knight cast 'Shield Ally' on the Pikeman, and both D-Phy buffs stack. So far so good 3) In the same turn 2, the pikeman casts finally 'Counter' again. And there's a problem now. Only the D-Phy buff from 'Counter' should be replaced, but the system cannot distinguish between the D-Phy buff coming from 'Counter' and the one coming from 'Shield Allies'. Until now buffs have always been stacked in Kingturn and Tactics Maiden, so I've never thought about this problem before.
So I've tried to rate Tactics Maiden in the App Store and it refuses to let me. It says I must first have it installed or downloaded before I'm able to write a review... I do indeed have it installed on my device - mini2 - so it's a real head scratcher!
Just now I've tried to rate my own game (shame on me), and I've got the following error message: "You must own this item to write a Customer review." As far as I remember, I didn't use a promo code for Tactics Maiden with this account (which should lead to this error message, as far as I know). It would be nice if someone else could try to rate Tactics Maiden, to see whether there is a general issue. Should be someone who didn't download TM via a promo code. Thanks a lot in advance!
Yeah, same exact message I received. I must definitely didn't receive a promo code so it should be cause for concern.
I've done some research, but couldn't find a case where rating an app wasn't possible in general. So I assume this is just coincidence, or maybe an issue related to the recent iOS 8 transition. Anyway, I've contacted Apple now, so let's see how this works out.
@ScotDamn: Here's the answer from Apple: Only customers who have purchased or downloaded your app are permitted to review or rate your app on the App Store. All reviews and ratings are applicable to a specific version of your app so that customers can easily see which version of your app the rating or review applies to on the App Store. It is possible for a user to rate and review your app only once. If he or she chooses to rate or review a second time, the new rating or review will replace the previous rating or review. Also, customer ratings and reviews only apply to the territory in which the app purchase was made. They won’t appear in all storefronts worldwide. Customer reviews may need to be approved before being published, so they may not appear immediately. If a customer contacts you about a missing review, please direct him or her to iTunes Store Customer Support at http://www.apple.com/support/itunes.
Now that doesn't really say anything. As someone working in Techsupport, canned answers like this drive me nuts. Always gives me the impression that whoever replied didn't even read my problem description.
