a lot like the great and powerful Oz Eli and all, I already wrote two long and I think, at least mildly well thought out critiques of the actual gameplay issues along with a couple of the f2p elements that do start to feel very forced. The game had/has so much potential, but is so rough around the edges: [*]upgrading a card that one of the two copies is in your deck requires well over 10 taps of back and forth between the deck screen and upgrade screen [*]units can’t move through one another [*]turn order makes sense with the "fatigue meter” but there is no easy way to see a dynamic adjusting turn order that could be tucked away on the side or or bottom [*]AI is not. Simply put units do nothing until you walk up to their grouping/ They just sit and endlessly discard on their turns. [*]disconnects are still WAY to common in a single player game. [*]deck building is like the anti-Hearthstone. It is almost like they went out of the way to not simply show you which cards are in your deck and how many you own. There are lists, and critic dots and such, but I still don’t just get how to glance at the screen and see how many of a given card I own and how many are in my deck. These things could have been fixed, and could even be overlooked if the developer showed signs of actually giving a shit. But these dudes are not Rodeo Games. They took a game that could have been amazing, and clearly cheapened it, cut every corner, and ignored every input from players that would get in the way of having as many ways to pay real money as possible in every single place in the game. The Forbidden Fruit mission is a good example. I personally had replayed a number of missions 2-4 over to get the chest rewards and had at that point unlocked one of the other decks without paying a dime so I was able to complete that mission without having to buy anything or artificially augment the mission via premium currency to get through it. But, for any normal player that would like to not grind away, that mission is a pretty glaring jab for a buck or two. Wait till your character is level 4 or 5. The f2p is all of a sudden very real when you want to buy that next level skill and have no way of making the absurd about of coin it costs to buy. Or the total free to win aspect of the forge. Who wants to play multiplayer when I can make the most insane cards in the game, as many as I want, and upgrade them as soon as I want if I am willing to shell out $75+. This isn’t Magic the Gathering advantages that people with excess money or time have either. Those games still require skill, and the numbers and odds can be lessened by good deck building and knowledge. Luck can be clearly minimized in those games. In this game you can buy packs. Or buy Rare cards in the forge until you have a totally unbalanced deck that someone paying a reasonable about of money to play could never hope to compete with. The fact that you can carry 3x rocket launchers, 3x las cannons, 3x heavy bolters, etc. just makes the whole thing really absurd. It takes the tactical aspect of the miniatures completely out of the equation. The maps also are not big enough, there are not enough utility options, and movement and firing are so laborious and rigid that the strategy is pretty much shot too. The only reason you would as the developer be so hell bent on getting multiplayer into a game with so many rough edges left in it at launch is because of the pay to win aspect that is so prevalent. Once humans want to beat up other humans you might actually hook some whales and make a quick buck. In the end I have no problem paying for games. I don’t care if the game starts as free or premium. I see the game as how much fun was it, over how long, and how much did it cost. I will pay $60 for Shadows of Mordor for ps4, Ill pay $40 for Warhammer Quest broken up over smaller content purchases, or I will pay $40 on Hearthstone expansions or whatever over time, or 2$ for a coin doubler that makes the game less grindy and more smooth for that price that made sense vs the enjoyment the gamer got. Why? Because the games rock and they are not there to just cheapen themselves while they suck money from me while trying to hide the fact that they are, at the most basic level, flawed games that are seen as a passing commodity rather than a work of pride that can make you a bunch of cash.
We do listen. But we are a very small team, can't work on many things at once. Quoted issues are known for a long time and we'll do better, I promise. In 1.0.2 we've already done changes about disconnects issue and we'll see what else we can do. Pay-to-win is not something we'd want to do. Who would play pay-to-win anyway? Not in turn-based strategy genre for sure.
Seriously? This isn't your first game man. Who would pay 2 win a match 3, social game, word game? Like...I don't know... Candy Crush, Clash of Clans et al, and Scramble et al? You mentioned money as your primary concern a number of times while none of the broken or non working gameplay issues got fixed. And Rodeo games is like 5 people.
Not first? Mine, personally? Well, in most of aspects it's the first one, actually. I'm not finding excuses anyway. We'll fix, please give us benefit of the doubt. 'Money concern' was never used in that context. Believe it or not we want to make an interesting game first of all. If some elements of the game are not good enough - we'll work on them.
It's nice to hear, I still get that earry feeling that I'm being squeezed for money. I would love to buy boosters. As a former Magic player or baseball card owner buying boosters was the best but I have that sneaking suspicion indeed to save my credits for leveling skills, leveling squad dies, unlocking more decks, runes, runes and more runes. Suggestion - 1) make the main quest 250c instead of 100. It will help alleviate that feeling that my pocket book is getting squeezed or will be continually in the future. Or 2) who doesn't like getting drops in combat. Let the mobs drop 1-10c and/or 1-10 mats. These you keep whether you fail the mission or not.
Well said man. It's almost my impression about the game too. Developer definitely has earned applauds for the gameplay and graphics. I would gladly give the price of warhammer quest for it, plus extra form IAPs,which seems reasonable enough for me. But free to play and premium currencies for both leveling up and deck building? That's a huge letdown on the players' side and a loss of income on theirs.
I dislike the IAP a big deal. A shame though. I love warhammer. I can live with the online at all times requirement.But IAP is a big let down for me. The graphic style reminds me of Relic's Dawn of War.Game plays great on iphone 6 plus. I was expecting the game to be more like xcom. Expectations were too high. I would have paid premium for something like that. Meh. I will play until IAP gets in the way.
You doesn't loose anything. Because of disconnect you can miss what card you craft (or not if craft failed on higher craft levels) but you can find this cards in your collection, server doesn't care about disconnects. I had this issue, when you wake up your game from sleep and then try craft instantly.
The game would be whole lot better if its a one off paid game that cost $10 than a free to play with bottomless money sink. I just dont feel comfortable with free to play as a lot of them bait and switch from a fair and skilled game to a straight up pay 2 win. I am in Mission 3 and it does feel like the game start to squeeze me with pain so that I pay up for some IAP. Space Wolf could be the next Space Hulk or XCOM of 2014 but the freemium model is confusing and feels exploitative to me. If it is a $10 one off game with further missions or content packs like Warhammer Quest or Space Hulk, i'll gladly pay for them.
Dude, what you wrote is some best critique I've ever seen. You might wanna start a career in touch arcade. You've got a blog or twitter or anything I can follow? I'll play games that you recommend. This game is not perfect. But it's the best since, I don't know, hearthstone? Well, second best if you would include banner saga, which is technically not a new game though. The way I see it, we've got too much expectation for it. Maybe we could just have fun with what it has to offer? For me, no multiplayer mode, thanks. Btw I've paid a full price for everything offered in WHQ. Did those really add up to $40? That's a lot of money for an IOS game! But why do I feel like doing it again? Waaagh!
Unfortunately that is the reality of the mobile market. It's been proven time and time again that most mobile customers will not touch a game that isn't free up front. Free download with a full IAP unlock does even worse since people feel cheated if a free game asks for a price to unlock after a few levels. Some devs make it work with premium or premium + premium IAP, but it doesn't make sense for most devs to go down this route. This idea that devs leave money on the table for not going premium is simply not true. We here at TA represent a tiny minority of the total iOS gaming world. So rather than ignore the reality that free to play is here to stay (and will continue to grow more), let's give games like Space Wolf a chance rather than crapping all over it and deleting because it's free to play. There are great and fair implementations of free to play that reward both players and devs (with good revenue), yet we never even let those games come to light as every free to play game is trashed/deleted and then ignored on here.
Very thoughtful post. I hate free to play, but your argument is pretty damn compelling, and reminds me that I've made some bad calls on F2P games that I actually ended up liking once I stopped pouting.
Does anybody know if there's a way to enable a grid overlay? I like to count movement and range distances in games like this.
While there are some valid complaints about the game, it seems like a lot of people are just having issues because the simple tactics one would use for this genre elude their understanding or are just lazy pieces of crap who feel the need to complain about having to click or actually see how much effort the opponents count is at. I've been playing pretty much non-stop since US release and the only true complaint I have is that the forge is a complete scam. Charging two currencies just to insure that I actually get something for the gold spent is completely uncalled for.
Would you consider allowing ones own team members to move through their own occupied squares? Is a little annoying having to play out or wait out turns in order to get around. Or are you calling that an intended game mechanic?
Frustratingly Dissapointing As a long time Space Wolf fan I was extremely excited when this game was announced and have been following it closely. Turn based tactical combat, light RPG elements, card battle system. It seemed like it was made for me! I really had high hopes for it, surely the developers who put this much care into developing a rich world that adheres to the Space Wolf ethos wouldn't let the game but ruined by IAPs and freemium tropes? How wrong I was. Apart from the glaring gameplay issues the game is massively skewed towards making players spend money. For the sake of brevity I will list my most dire concerns below: * The difficulty ramps up way to steeply to be anything other than a shameless push to get players to buy premium currency. And its pretty obvious too. As other people have said I too am quite happy to buy "coin doublers" etc but I won't spend what I consider to be a lot of money on a game that still freezes me out of gameplay with timers! * Currency is gained at a laughably slow rate. Even as someone who loves turn based strategy and Space Wolves I simply refuse to replay the levels 20+ times to afford the various upgrades and squad purchases. * Admittedly the Lore should take a back seat to interesting and challenging gameplay but when a group of chaos cultists (or traitor imperial guard not sure) can devastate a group of Space Marines in a few turns something has gone wrong. I'm referring to mission 4 where by the time you reach the Chaos Marines my squad was already in a shoddy state. * Why do I have to spend an action point, and use up a card just to hit an enemy standing to the side of me? Melee combat with enemies on adjacent squares should only require a player to spend an appropriate attack card the movement should be FREE. Perhaps this could be limited to only the square to the left and right but even so I find this decision brutally unfair. At the moment I'm simply not enjoying myself with the game in its current state. I wish that was not the case because there is a lot to love here. I think buried under all the IAPs and unrefined gameplay mechanics (always targeting the Space Wolf with lowest health is NOT clever AI) is a great little tactical strategy game that I would love to spend hours with. But I won't. Why? Its just not fun.
