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Post by soawesomeness on Aug 14, 2014 22:33:05 GMT
To give some background, I work in the gaming industry. First, I worked in marketing for iOS games, then as an associate product manager for a social iOS app, and now as a game master. When I play mobile games, I usually play it for a few hours until I get a good grasp of the game and play it intermittently- basically hardcore for the first few days (if the game is complex) and then casually after that.
I saw Godus on the iTunes store while looking through games to download and research in my spare time. I came across Godus and loved the art. The thing that turned me off the most was knowing it was a city builder but the art was so appealing I had to at least try it out for the FTE and see the monetization practices in game. Not to mention, a majority of the games I work on are city builders.
First impressions and recommendations:
-Art is amazing. I absolutely love it.
-Story is pretty cute (at least from what I see), but more depth would be great.
-I love the flair text for everything, including the push notifications.
-Monetization with the wiggling resource cards when the player is doing an action with little or no resources left is pretty smart.
-Sticker packs should have a description of what's inside. Kind of sucks that it doesn't.
-Love the idea behind the pricing of packs. I'm actually really surprised that there isn't a $0.99 pack in the store though.
-Pricing for Wheat is kind of strange. For 10 wheat, effectively $2.50, I can play for about 2-3 more minutes just building more buildings (in early-game at least). For iOS users, wheat is a pretty rare commodity- why not have a special first-purchase pack that has a 50 pack of wheat for $4.99 in addition to the gems? Not only would this entice players to purchase wheat at a pinch point, but you'd have the foot-in-the-door for future purchases.
-Festival idea is pretty adorable, but I've only seen it once so far. I wish there were more or varied early game interactions with those critters.
-Accidental sculpting is inevitable and extremely frustrating. Why not have two finger sculpting with one finger on a fixed button to activate sculpting and the other finger manipulating the land?
-Wheat, like many others mention, slows down the game from bearable waits to extremely long and excruciating waits. The jump isn't transitioned well enough, so I would imagine that the drop off of players when they discover wheat is very high. To balance this, I would recommend cutting down the wheat producing time to 10 or 15 minutes, and increasing the faith price of the Farming Settlement to higher.
-More tips would be really instrumental in letting a player know what to do during/after they have wheat while they wait.
-Events in-game seem pretty bare. Currently I see Swamped as an event. It doesn't seem like this event will drive monetization since the timer for this event is 4+days long and doesn't rush players to spend in order to replenish their boat people. I like the event awareness in the loading screen though.
Overall, it feels like there still needs to be a good amount of balancing to be done, especially for the player's first day experience.
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Post by Danjal on Aug 15, 2014 0:39:44 GMT
I'll just ask you one thing - are you aware that what you are playing is effectively equivalent to a 50.5% alpha/beta version of the game?
And as such likely subject to the nature of games in beta (I.E. significant balance and system overhauls resulting in worlds resetting and such)?
Also, thats why the balancing needs work...
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Post by soawesomeness on Aug 15, 2014 18:05:31 GMT
I'm actually working on a few beta games currently. Unfortunately was not aware this game is in beta as our technique is to make this game available world wide as a full product, and not in beta and assumed since this was available in the US, that it was out of beta. That's what happens when you jump in and see first impressions. (:
I really am blown away by the game as it does have huge potential. I look forward to seeing more content releases and balances in the game when they come!
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Post by 13thGeneral on Aug 16, 2014 3:04:41 GMT
Thanks for posting that overview. It's great insight into the other side of the coin for us desktop players, and helps get a better overall picture of their thinking and direction with the game. I backed this game development on Kickstarter on the premise, and promise, of a very innovative and imaginative God Game (for the PC) and have yet to see that potential even closely reflected in the last few iteration builds; but I'm hopeful it'll somehow all pull together eventually.
Please keep us updated with your further insights and impressions of the mobile (iOS) version as it progresses... if you stick with it that long.
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Post by soawesomeness on Aug 18, 2014 22:02:00 GMT
Day 4 of constantly playing this game. My boyfriend asks why I keep playing this game even though I hate it and it's because I'm the type of person to really know a game before quitting on it (especially when it's visually beautiful).
-Unlocked miners two days ago. I don't know what to do with the stuff the miners make, unfortunately. Pretty appalled that the resource can only be collected once every 12 hours.
-The farm issue has been resolved. I basically made as many Farming Settlements as I could (I think I have 5 now) and they total to about 200 wheat per day, however it took me two full days to set this up of constant watching the game and checking in every 5 minutes.
-I've run out of stickers and yet have unlocked so many cards that I don't know what to do with them. It costs me so much Belief to dig to get stickers. ):
-Stuck on one of the sailing levels for a few days (9/10) due to the sculpting not being very accurate. The most frustrating part of this is that I would get push notifications that the boat is ready to send out but when I play and try to run another island stage, I can't due to lack of followers. It seems like a lot of the push notifications as a whole might need to be reconfigured to be more accurate.
-After every land extension, I really dislike how I can't view all by zooming out all the way. Not to mention the visual cutoff where I can only see most but not all of the land is annoying. It seems like more of an inaccurate display edge or something.
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Post by Danjal on Aug 18, 2014 22:04:23 GMT
My boyfriend asks why I keep playing this game even though I hate it How I love this bit. I think that every single person on this board has had to answer that question atleast once. Why do you keep on trying if its such a bad game? or That looks boring, why do you keep playing it? As for the rest: - Ore is used in the reinforced beacons later on. The beacons that take 12h, 24h, 48h and upwards. - I wonder, your first post mentioned something about buying wheat? I take it that opinion changed? - Stickerpacks are available for gems, aswell as belief =p (See where this is going?) - As for the last 2, yup, known problems. We've been trying to get them to fix them for over a year now. |
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Post by 13thGeneral on Aug 19, 2014 2:26:50 GMT
My boyfriend asks why I keep playing this game even though I hate it How I love this bit. I think that every single person on this board has had to answer that question atleast once. Why do you keep on trying if its such a bad game? or That looks boring, why do you keep playing it? Yup. Had that conversation, twice now. One with my wife, one with a co-worker (we were discussing games at work). That has to say something about the game. If the devs pick up on anything, it needs to be that. |
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Post by Danjal on Aug 19, 2014 9:48:05 GMT
Instead, the devs pick up on the fact that those few of us that are persistant and WANT the game to work are sticking to it.
And they hold that up as a sign of their success. See, these people keep playing even though they complain so they must like the game very very much.
I wonder what'll happen if they do not realize how much they are deluding themselves on that - and one day we also give up hope and leave.
It'll be a sad and empty day in the office...
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Post by soawesomeness on Aug 19, 2014 19:04:24 GMT
I'm very cautious about saying the health of a game and the future of game studios. Nothing grinds my gears more than hearing a game won't succeed and a game is dying even before it reaches the gate. The perception players have on the future of a game is always heavily skewed as future features are generally not announced before deployment as the schedule and content could and often do change after announce but before release.
That being said, this game has a lot of potential and it sounds like they have more plans to refine and continue development of this game. After all, it's still in beta yet it's received a lot of reviews (which is actually quite hard), even though the reviews are negative. As they say, any press is good press...
Anyways, back on to the review. I'm kind of plateaued, as I don't really feel like I want to progress further as nothing is making me want to progress and expand. Sculpting costs too much and I don't feel like it's currently worth it. I may actually stop playing the game soon as my gameplay is tapering off slowly, and no new features really is being introduced into the game. It's very costly and perhaps not a good thing to let the users progress through the game by their own game progress (card system is too slow for mid-core and casual players, which is what a city builder's demographic should be).
The UI for completed iron/ore is very hard to see. I would suggest putting a halo or making the ore jump so that players know it is available to collect. A very big gripe since I feel like I've missed available collections before.
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Post by soawesomeness on Aug 19, 2014 19:11:20 GMT
My boyfriend asks why I keep playing this game even though I hate it How I love this bit. I think that every single person on this board has had to answer that question atleast once. Why do you keep on trying if its such a bad game? or That looks boring, why do you keep playing it? As for the rest: - Ore is used in the reinforced beacons later on. The beacons that take 12h, 24h, 48h and upwards. - I wonder, your first post mentioned something about buying wheat? I take it that opinion changed? - Stickerpacks are available for gems, aswell as belief =p (See where this is going?) - As for the last 2, yup, known problems. We've been trying to get them to fix them for over a year now. It's more that I hate that it's badly designed right now. It has so much potential that I don't like to see the product as it currently is. I'm not saying that it looks boring, but that I want to both understand the game and see the later game flow. As I mentioned before, I love that it's very pretty. I like pretty things. Sticker packs are available for gems but the issue here is that even though you do buy sticker packs, it doesn't really help too much and doesn't complete many cards. It would only help maybe one or two towards completion. Not to mention the sticker packs don't have descriptions so you don't actually know what you're going to by. No person should or most people wouldn't buy a pack that they don't know what's inside. 10 Wheat is actually really insignificant for the price point they placed it as. Since now I'm making over 200 wheat per day, 10 wheat wouldn't help with anything except help me make 3 buildings or so. Buying belief is okay. The quantities they have are nice, but I wish it wasn't as costly to make mistakes as it is now. I'd love to buy the Belief packs but the issue is that I feel like half of the belief I buy would go towards mistakes I would make or mis-sculpting something I wasn't trying to sculpt. To be honest, my favorite part of the game is sculpting. I understand pinch points in the game and where it would be compelling to have users pay for things but currently, the places where players are compelled to play are in the wrong places and are not balanced well enough. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2014 19:26:20 GMT
It's interesting to see the tone of your feedback evolve as you make it further down the rabbit hole. I agree that the game is pretty, however, it will be interesting to see your final summation when you unlock the last beacon and realize (SPOILERS) there's nothing left to do, there's no story, that's it, you've reached the end of "Bulldozer Simulator 2015."
To be fair, at least on PC, this isnt a finished game and we have much more "promised" content to look forward to.
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Post by Danjal on Aug 19, 2014 19:39:33 GMT
The game has potential, it definitely does.
Thats exactly why most of us are still here.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2014 19:48:00 GMT
The game has potential, it definitely does. Thats exactly why most of us are still here. On that note, can you imagine the Godus 22cans would've handed us had die-hards like you not stuck around to "keep the ledger straight". |
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Post by Danjal on Aug 19, 2014 19:53:55 GMT
The game has potential, it definitely does. Thats exactly why most of us are still here. On that note, can you imagine the Godus 22cans would've handed us had die-hards like you not stuck around to "keep the ledger straight". A mobile game with store, micro-transaction purposes and all? |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2014 19:57:18 GMT
On that note, can you imagine the Godus 22cans would've handed us had die-hards like you not stuck around to "keep the ledger straight". A mobile game with store, micro-transaction purposes and all? I was thinking more that without you guys we'd be neck deep in "A PC game with store, micro-transaction purposes and all." |
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Post by Danjal on Aug 19, 2014 20:37:43 GMT
Well, thats what I meant, we'd have a mobile game with store, microtransaction purposes and all - but on PC.
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Post by soawesomeness on Aug 22, 2014 0:43:06 GMT
Oh noes, I'm so sad. I had a whole thing written out and then I got distracted with work. ):
Erg so summary:
-Played once yesterday, starting to get bored. Haven't even finished all the expansion beacons but I'm too lazy to make builders make the trek to the beacon as 1.) they could get lost 2.) reshaping the land might make me run out of belief before and 3.) I don't see any reason to, other than collect all the cards.
-Probably won't play much, if at all in the near future. Imo I can see what I can do in terms of settlements- and there's only building, farming, and mining settlements.
-Basically learned what I needed to learn in order to get a good gauge at what this game is all about
-Impressed by the art, not impressed by gameplay, monetization mechanics, or much of anything else, really.
Thanks for reading, all. This is likely my last update.
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Lord Ba'al
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Aug 22, 2014 21:27:56 GMT
Thanks for reading, all. This is likely my last update. Well I hope that doesn't mean you won't stick around. Playing Godus is and will always be optional on this forum.  |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2015 19:23:55 GMT
soawesomeness, though I doubt you'll ever see this, I have to state that your gameplay impressions quite nearly match my own.
The game had promise, and it is a pity 22cans threw that potential away.
The microtransactions are there as a pay-or-wait for poor mechanics stretched out like Dungeon Keeper Mobile. Pay-or-wait is okay on some, but not when it becomes a painful focus of the game's core design.
All it becomes after a while is a sandbox where you're expected to rent a gold shovel if you dig more than a small plot of land every day.
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