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Make the game more realistic

DeletedUser

Guest
In honesty. The game is as unrealistic as it can be. There is not a level of difficulty. Just a level of stupidity. It is no skill to provide a person with 10% to play the game and then expect them to conjure 300% with that 10%.
If you want to make these special offers, make it worth the while. The whole game is stupidity, it you want people to spend money, make the offers realistic.
If you cannot make the offer realistic provide an option to close the offer. It is annoying to see the waste of time blocking space.
The winter magic is a waste of time. I would like to be able to close it. Most of the offers is not even worth the effort to obtain it.
I like the graphics. In general, was the game more realistic, it would be fun to play it.
 

Eryn Galen

Adventurer
In honesty. The game is as unrealistic as it can be. There is not a level of difficulty. Just a level of stupidity. It is no skill to provide a person with 10% to play the game and then expect them to conjure 300% with that 10%.
If you want to make these special offers, make it worth the while. The whole game is stupidity, it you want people to spend money, make the offers realistic.
If you cannot make the offer realistic provide an option to close the offer. It is annoying to see the waste of time blocking space.
The winter magic is a waste of time. I would like to be able to close it. Most of the offers is not even worth the effort to obtain it.
I like the graphics. In general, was the game more realistic, it would be fun to play it.

Here's a suggestion: find another game to play.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
The game is fine. The concept is good. I guess it took a lot of effort for the developers to do a few clicks and make it unrealistic. The rewards could do with much improvement. So can the offers they make if they want people to spend money. 30 one min time reduction and the additional useless items they expected people to buy for the price is just a laugh a minute. I see people talk about being unlucky. It has nothing to do with luck. If the game was more balanced between what they require and the rewards, it would be a more interesting and fun game to play.
 

Timneh

Artisan
It seems that there are far more things that you do not like than things that you do like. It puzzles me why you continue to play a game that has so many things that you do not like.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I guess when there was as indication of making the game balanced and fair the developers mistook the word stupendous as a way to make the game more interesting. Most probably as it matched their level of common sense and intelligence.
People has on several occasions in different aspects of the game raised their concerns that the game is unrealistic. I did receive the alert that due to many complains they have improved the winter magic aspect of the game. If this current state of the winter magic is the level of improvement, it must have surpassed stupid before the major clicking by the development team to make a few pointless improvements.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
For unskilled players, however, sentries can act as a sort of impassable barrier. They may not have the tactical positioning or teamwork skills to effectively destroy turrets, which means turrets provide "binary gameplay", something the designers themselves were aware of. This sort of "casual player wall" is not unique to complex games: when we test our own games, we designed the puzzles, so the solutions are obvious.

Casual players may not be able to see these solutions in the same way, so no matter how obvious we consider it, we need to make sure they don't end up hitting an impassable wall.

In Practice

So how do we actually go about developing our game? Well, first off, decide what sort of game you want to make. When we started developing Cosmic Logic, we had a fairly solid idea of what we wanted: a simple puzzle game, essentially snooker/pool with a twist, which challenges the player to solve puzzles within a limited number of shots. We wanted to attract as many players as possible, so we needed to make it relatively casual, but with enough content to keep more serious gamers engaged.

Here are some basic points to consider.
How Difficult Is It to Understand the Game?

Generally speaking, serious gamers are more tolerant of tutorials than casual gamers. Serious gamers don't necessarily enjoy tutorials, but because of their "advanced gaming skill", they tend to enjoy games which are more complex. This complexity means additional rules, which must be explained.



Where Is the Challenge?

What makes your game hard? Is it devious puzzles and tests of skill, or is it lengthy boss battles and pixel-perfect jumps?

It can be hard to make the distinction between "fun hard" and "unfair hard"—all players are different, and some players may find gameplay elements frustrating that others find trivial. In fact, you can look at a game like "Super Mario Frustration", which is little more than a series of unfair challenges. It's obvious someone out there liked this, and although the market for this style of difficulty may be tiny, it does exist.

The key to testing hard vs. unfair is feedback. Watch people play your game, see which parts provide difficulty, and try to figure out where people are getting annoyed and where people are having fun. Test with everyone: children, grandparents, serious gamers, people who barely touch games. Take notes, see where they get stuck and where they get annoyed, and ask yourself if the challenge is providing a positive gameplay experience or is just obtuse.

This is exactly what we did with Cosmic Logic. I did the bulk of the initial testing myself: I've run through the game so many times I'm thoroughly sick of playing it. The advantage of this was that I could see which levels are tricky: if I'm unable to complete a level first time, then it'll likely be frustrating for a casual gamer.
Can a Challenge Be Easy and Hard at the Same Time?

This might seem like a stupid question, but easy-hard challenges have been used in gaming for some time.

The principle revolves around what the player perceives as the challenge. Winning a boss fight is hard; winning a boss fight without getting hit is harder. Some players will happily self-impose these sorts of additional rules upon themselves, but a better way to approach it is a rudimentary reward system—giving the player additional points for completing challenges with restrictions.

When you complete a level of Angry Birds, you get one to three stars to indicate how well you did. Hitman players get graded A+ to F. In Lego Marvel, collecting a certain number of studs awards the player with "True Believer" status. Getting a high score doesn't really mean anything, but it gives players an additional goal to aim for.

For Cosmic Logic, the level difficulty was designed backwards. Each level was created to have a very specific solution in mind. Once these solutions had been established (i.e. complete a level in three shots), we would then make it easier (but you have five shots to do it).

Players who could complete each level with the “true” solution would earn a gold star, and completing each level with a gold star unlocks a “bonus” ending. The gold stars and bonus ending don't really change the way the game is played, but they ensure that players have something to aim for beyond simply crashing through levels.
What Happens If I Fail a Challenge?

With any challenge comes the possibility of failure. It's important that we make the separation between failing the player and punishing the player, however. As we said earlier, challenges are only fun while a player hasn't "solved" them. If we make a player go back to the very start of the game every time they die, then it's very likely they'll get bored of seeing the first level very quickly.

In a skill-based game (such as a platformer or first-person shooter), there is some leeway in making the player repeat content, as the longer they play the game, the better they get at it (hopefully). With a puzzle game, this leeway doesn't exist, meaning puzzles are often very binary: either a player can solve it, or they can't. If they can solve it, then great—unless they die and have to solve it again. If they are unable to solve it, then the player becomes stuck.

There are several ways to avoid this problem. The first option, used by games like flow free, is simply to make all levels open to the player at the start of the game. In flow free, every level is unlocked. Players can choose which puzzles to solve at their leisure, and can entirely skip the first half of the game if they so desire. Flow free has so many levels that skipping a few doesn't really affect the game, but for a more "story-driven" game (such as Mario), allowing a player to skip right to the last level might not be an option.




Another possibility is allowing a player to skip levels. Some puzzle games allow a player to skip a certain amount of levels: a player might have three free passes at the start of the game, which means that particularly hard levels can be avoided. This can be partially replicated in other games, by giving the player branching paths, optional fights, or even warp pipes to allow them to skip content.

In Cosmic Logic, we took a third approach: making each level incredibly easy. As we mentioned above, we had an idea of how each level was to be completed, and we simply allowed the player additional shots for them to complete it. We wanted to avoid a level skip mechanic, for there is a gradual learning curve—something you used on level 11 might be necessary to complete level 25. We wanted players to grasp the fundamental concepts of how to play the game, so we simply gave them the leeway to be really bad at it.
Does the Game Get Harder as the Skill of the Player Increases?

This is a problem that simple games can face. If you're playing something like Space Invaders, then once a player has cleared a few waves, they have essentially "mastered" the game, and it will no longer provide a challenge.

Most games use a difficulty curve system, which is what we did with Cosmic Logic. As the game progresses, the player learns more ways to clear tables, and new challenges are provided to ensure they are constantly challenged. Nearly all games with a level system use this mechanic.

However, not all games use level systems. For "endless" games, having the difficulty increase as the player continues is one option: but if the player has to play through "easy" content to get to the fun part, then the game might just be boring.

This was one of the major flaws of Starbyte, another game I worked on some time ago. In retrospect, allowing the player to select a difficulty level would have been smart, but at the time we decided that simply increasing the game's difficulty as the player progressed would be enough. In practice, it meant that the game got too hard too quickly for novice players, and was too easy for too long for advanced players.




A game doesn't necessarily have to be harder to be fun, though: allowing the player to skip through easy levels, or even offering a "turbo" button, allowing the player to play at double speed and thereby cruising through the simple challenges, are simple but effective ways of keeping your more skilled players engaged.
Bringing It Together

Not all of these techniques are applicable for all games, but they're worth thinking about. A good general rule of thumb for providing a challenge is: "Is this something the player can be realistically expected to do, or are they going to fail?"

There's nothing wrong with failure, but players don't want to feel cheated out of victory. If a player says, "Well, I should have jumped earlier, that was my fault," then you've provided a good challenge. If a player says, "There was literally no way for me to avoid that," then you're punishing the player for no reason. Most of these design techniques are applicable to all games, as no player likes unfair gameplay.

And remember: although we like to talk about a casual/hardcore divide in gaming, this divide is somewhat arbitrary. With careful planning, there's no reason a good game can't be enjoyed by everyone—and if a four-year-old child can enjoy Grand Theft Auto, what else can we achieve?



 

DeletedUser

Guest
I went to go do a bit of reading.

The above article shed some light on game development.

There seems to be a balanced approach, which this development team, lacks in all sincerity.

There also seems to be a basic shortcut unrealistic approach, which this team seem to be fond off. Minimum effort and dazzle with graphics and little rewards to fool the players.

It seems that it is also would appear to take some comments of players on board. Justifiably, it is impossible to keep everyone happy and to dance to every request.
Is there a difference in, as many people in forum or game point out, making the reward system a bit more practical and realistic? Make it feel that the player has actually obtained something of value. So great. A candy horse is a minimum gift as it will accommodate one upgrade on a factory to produce perhaps a max of 5 more items. What a great reward system.

Once again. Buy some diamonds. For the whole of, depending on currency 20, you receive a total of 200 ribbons. It does give you 4 chances. 200 imaginary ribbons for 20 Euro. 320 culture and 240 population does sound much, but in the bigger picture it is not even a drop in the ocean.
Once again not really a motivator for me to run to go spend 20 Euro.

This game could definitely do with improvement. Doing a few clicks to make most of the same unrealistic boring choices where most of the time you are losing more than gaining in a quest, scout, tournament.

To make a game balanced and more enjoyable for all participants seems to require a bit more effort. One that the development team seems to fall short on fulfilling.

The game has been running for a while. Bandwidth costs money. The recent advertising must cost money. Make an effort to motivate people with proper rewards to part with their hard earned money.

Make an effort to take on board a majority of "unfair", which I translate as lazy, shortcut development, to make the game more fair/realistic and enjoyable for all level of players.
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
― Barack Obama
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Perhaps it is time to ask for a change or new blood in the development team. Perhaps that will bring the a fresh perspective to make realistic and suitable changes to the game that is required.
 

m4rt1n

Adept
@Kailuin I do suggest that you find another game, not in a nasty or sarcastic way but in a friendly way. Elvenar is obviously not the game for you.

We are all different and as such no single game can 100% cater for every player, however every post I see you make is a dislike on everything this game offers, or a sourced lecture on your opinion of how a game should be.

Study game design and tech and create your own "perfect" game and invite the masses to play it is my only suggestion here. :)

Please don't attack a development team that obviously work to the game owners restrictions to earn a living, and give us this great game. Make your own game if you could do so much better, or just find another game that suits you better.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
With all due respect. Having limited thinking is not something that interest me.

Should the game have perhaps different levels to cater for different people and their requirements, it would cater for a wider audience.
The game is basic in construction and not that greatly developed. Criticism is part of life and part of developing the game.

You complain about the game being catered for other people, but then demand that the game be catered for your need. What a lack of clear thinking.

My suggestion would be that the game cater for different people. Therefore different levels. If there are people who, have a life, but would like to play the game for fun, then create a level for them. Not a blanked change that all who play the game has to be subjected to. People would then be able to choose what level they want to play the game at.

Should you provide different levels for different people who want to play the game, it would also open it for a wider audience. Therefore it could just benefit the developers.
This would require more work. But as they generate the game with a few clicks, it is not impossible. Only should the software be restricted, could it prove a challenge.

I find it amusing that people can become so personally grieved because someone has a different opinion or have a critical opinion about something as simple as a game.

To enlighten you a bit.

Researchers at Leeds University, led by Prof Jens Krause, performed a series of experiments where volunteers were told to randomly walk around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions on where to walk. The scientists discovered that people end up blindly following one or two people who appear to know where they’re going. The published results showed that it only takes 5% of what the scientists called “informed individuals” to influence the direction of a crowd of around 200 people. The remaining 95% follow without even realizing it.

“There are strong parallels with animal grouping behavior,” says Prof Krause, who reported his study with John Dyer in the Animal Behavior Journal. “We’ve all been in situations where we get swept along by the crowd but what’s interesting about this research is that our participants ended up making a consensus decision despite the fact that they weren’t allowed to talk or gesture to one another… In most cases the participants didn’t realize they were being led by others.”

Now, this isn’t really anything new, especially if you have an interest in human psychology or social dynamics. But for those of you that wasn’t aware of this before, let me ask you this question. Isn’t human behavior worrying?

In our society, we value the gifted individuals that strive for something greater. We all love an inspiring story of a man who made it against all odds and did something extraordinary. Yes, we get spurred in the moment to take action too, thinking ” I want to do that too”. But how many of us actually keep going after the initial months of no results and constant feedback from others saying we made the wrong choice?

Or how many people get tricked into a cult or business because of group pressure and manufactured positivity to influence you to take the plunge?

If we human beings were such an intelligent independent being we would see through all the scams and use our common sense, right?

Sadly, we are not as intelligent and independent as we would like to think we are. Yes we have potential and there’s the few anomalies. However, the majority of us are like sheeps and act according to our herd. This is the reality of our society. From uptown classy people to the downtown hipsters. They are basically the same. A herd. They are fundamentally no different, and if anyone argues that there are differences, then they are merely quibbling over semantics.
 

m4rt1n

Adept
Ok, so my thinking is limited, I do apologise for that.

Now just find another game, this one is not for you, with the greatest respect. :)
 

DeletedUser

Guest
The game is not all bad. The graphics is nicely done. A good concept for a game.
 

DeletedUser219

Guest
Responding to your first post, @Kailuin : Making a fantasy game realistic is a contradiction in and of itself. Elvenar does a pretty good job of mirroring the difficulty and complexity of managing a city to a fantasy world. It is free-to-play, so some encouragement to spend money on the game is necessary and expected, or they could not continue to offer the game. If you don't like the offers, don't follow them up. If you don't think the offers should be made, stay away from 'free' games. The cost and benefit of offers are unlikely to be swayed by Forum comments, but by the player response when the offer is made. If the response is not up to expectation, the offer will not be repeated. if it is, it will be. Simple Economics.

Aristotle did not say that, although it is often attributed to him.

(skipping a mass of unoriginal drivel)

Obama is not the first Democratic President to try to get citizens off their corpulent fundaments. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country" (JFK, 1961 It may not be exact, I didn't look it up).

Now to your first response to M4rt1n:

Your first line contradicts the evidence of what you have said in this thread, and others.

The game has levels. They are not delineated, nor is there a milepost to say you have moved from one to another. They are all there, all the time. If you actually spend some time playing this game, you should start discovering them.

Yes, human behaviour is worrying, that's why I play games, and rarely get involved in "social interaction" on the Internet. The things that worry me in regard to this game is how a person can (a) play this game for 2 weeks, and still only be in Chapter II, and (b) Come into the Forum, without bothering to read the rules*, and demonstrate his ignorance.

*Making multiple posts in a thread without response is not just poor Internet etiquette, it is against the rules of this Forum.

To any others who are reading, Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) and a good New Year. I think I am done feeding this Troll.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Perhaps you should stick to less social interaction. It does suit you better.

You have right. I have not read the rules whatever they may be. My sincere apologies.

Not ignorance. Just a lack of interest, as with pointless opinions.
 

AstralSoul

Illusionist
Responding to your first post, @Kailuin : Making a fantasy game realistic is a contradiction in and of itself. Elvenar does a pretty good job of mirroring the difficulty and complexity of managing a city to a fantasy world. It is free-to-play, so some encouragement to spend money on the game is necessary and expected, or they could not continue to offer the game. If you don't like the offers, don't follow them up. If you don't think the offers should be made, stay away from 'free' games. The cost and benefit of offers are unlikely to be swayed by Forum comments, but by the player response when the offer is made. If the response is not up to expectation, the offer will not be repeated. if it is, it will be. Simple Economics.

Aristotle did not say that, although it is often attributed to him.

(skipping a mass of unoriginal drivel)

Obama is not the first Democratic President to try to get citizens off their corpulent fundaments. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country" (JFK, 1961 It may not be exact, I didn't look it up).

Now to your first response to M4rt1n:

Your first line contradicts the evidence of what you have said in this thread, and others.

The game has levels. They are not delineated, nor is there a milepost to say you have moved from one to another. They are all there, all the time. If you actually spend some time playing this game, you should start discovering them.

Yes, human behaviour is worrying, that's why I play games, and rarely get involved in "social interaction" on the Internet. The things that worry me in regard to this game is how a person can (a) play this game for 2 weeks, and still only be in Chapter II, and (b) Come into the Forum, without bothering to read the rules*, and demonstrate his ignorance.

*Making multiple posts in a thread without response is not just poor Internet etiquette, it is against the rules of this Forum.

To any others who are reading, Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) and a good New Year. I think I am done feeding this Troll.

Exactly, I am tired of saying that... "Instead of criticism, thanks the people that buys diamonds so the game keeps running."

And there are levels indeed, in fact, I am about to end fairies, but I will stay here until Spring's event. Why? Because I do not want to change levels yet, and I am not referring to chapters (I am sure @Horanda knows). I want to get all my AW (including fairies), to level 6 first, I will have a super solid foundation (got all stuff maxed.) I am aware that starting orcs, they ask for orcs to "almost" login haha, and that is an expense that stays, not chapter exclusive. There you have your level.

Then, in Wooden Elves arives their mana, and decay, something I imagine more or less what it is, but definitely, an added challenge. And those sentient T6 goods that all I know is my boosted is GUM, seems like another level. On top of that, each chapter on their on is a micro-city that you get to build alongside with yours, influence your tech tree, so it is sort of "levels" too.

But yeah, if someones does not like non-sense, play civilization or more human-war-empire game, where you do not move movies, don't have unicorns, and neither weird looking but cool animated buildings.
 
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