Sure that would be great, usually 8pm EST or around there works for me. Might send a email to all the persosn who signed up for the newsletter about it and in that case do one a week early to them and another one a few hours before?
I'd be interested too but as for me I'm in the UK and you'll have people from all over the place so unsure if it's easier to post a video?
We will be sure to post the video on our YouTube page after we do this. I am trying to pick a good day where we can have a few folks from the team available to talk about some of the strategy and balance work. I will report back when we have that setup. Tomorrow we are going to have our UI artist on our development stream going through some new integration in Unity and probably playing the game a bit.
I would like to suggest collecting questions here and via email so those who can't attend still have a chance to get a Q&A when they watch the recording?
I did email but I guess you've been busy. I was wondering how it works with factions is it you pick one and that's your faction for good? Do you get to try both out first? Or can you swap game to game which side you are?
I mentioned this in an email response. We are currently thinking that players will choose a faction permanently and stay with that choice. This means that we are considering ways to let players switch or possibly play both factions somehow, but I think that will be the minority of players. For the record, I plan to play as the Survivors.
We are going to be doing a development stream tonight at 5pm EST on our Twitch channel with one of our Artists (Lauren) doing some concept art work for a new sniper rifle for the Machine Gunner unit (check out the picture below, he needs a BIGGER GUN). She will also be answering questions about the game and several of us will be in chat to talk about the game. Drop questions in here and I can make sure we cover them and then it will be on our YouTube channel on Thursday afternoon.
I do really like all the art I see and I wish I had a better connection at home so I could watch things live but sadly it's not the case : ( I'll keep spamming you with emails though!
Thanks to everyone that came by the stream. We will be doing another one tomorrow at 3:30 pm EST and I will post more details about it later. Here are the YouTube videos from the stream for anyone that missed it. Lauren did some concept art and answered questions along with a bunch of us also answering questions in the chat. Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4 Video 5 Video 6 Video 7 Video 8
I'll try and check the videos out when I can. I'd of thought this thread would pick up more interest by now. You know my feelings from emails anyway but I really would feel like I'm missing out on half the game to be stuck playing one side although I understand for it to be faction based and global it makes sense.
We are considering some options to let players play both sides with a single account. The challenge we have is trying to make sure this cannot be abused but I think it is feasible. The gameplay is different for each faction to try and appeal to players that might prefer one over the other. I personally like Tower Defense so I enjoy the Survivor gameplay more.
It is not pay to win but there are some timers in the game. Battles over cities are limited time and they take place over a few hours or days. They are a little bit like a raid event in a MMO game. The world is constantly moving and opening up new cities for players to fight over and that moves on actual server time.
Aye my point there was we wouldn't know which side we enjoy playing most without giving both a good test first. But even still I like to be able to swap between gameplay in things like that it keeps me happy and going longer. I'm sure you'll figure out there's a few things you could do and your very active here and in hearing what we say here and emails so I'm sure the game will turn out great.
Addressing the question of which side a player wants to take; Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a test run with both sides upon launching the game. Like a tutorial of sorts. Give them a good test run there so they will know what side they'd prefer. After the test run, amp them up on their choice - an initiation on their permanent choice. Another thing that sticks out to me is how you want the coordination of players to work. Unfortunately in my experience on mobile, there isn't a ton of it. This might be because mobile players jump in games on their lunch break or while waiting in line. I think it might be helpful to streamline coordination. Before the battle, have players choose a clear role they will fill. You could also have a creative notification system where your guild can alert its players. Regardless of what you guys choose, the more streamlined the coordination is, the better in my experience. I think you got a pretty interesting game here though. Looks like buckets of fun and holds a lot of potential. You guys are doing a great job.
Right now we are planning to have an option to try both factions before you make a choice. Hopefully this will make it easier to decide on a faction. It will only be a single mission, but it should provide enough flavor to understand what mechanics and what the gameplay will feel like over the long term. As for coordination, this is something we are working hard to figure out. Right now we use push notifications to let players communicate with each other, this is mostly just for guild oriented battles. We have not put chat into the game yet, but it is on the upcoming feature list.
One mission to decide is better than nothing but I still feel I'd be missing half the game, does it run on account creation or by device? Personally I always have push turned off and generally would keep it off even for this game unless I was at home waiting around anyway but generally if I'm not on my games I'm busy. Chat/message system would help a lot along with guild leader/officer being able to update the guild page with info.
We just uploaded a video from our Twitch stream on Friday. We had Alexander Sliwinksi (the news director from Joystiq) come and hang out with us while we went through all the new stuff that went into the game last week. Check it out here.
The game looks like a lot of fun. It sounds like there will be a lot of strategy involved in deciding which troops/towers to bring to each battle. I'm intrigued by the MMO portion, I can see a lot of potential there, but I'm not sure I would be interested if it required a monthly fee. One of my pet peeves with tower defense games is when they are vague about how much you gain by upgrading a given tower. I'd rather know I could spend X Dollars to raise the attack rating from 10 to 15 vs spend X Dollars to make it better (whatever that may mean).
