My game sucked. Is it any better? Thread

Hi guys

It's about a fantasy rpg browser game (free2play), we've had the problem that many users left after 0 to few minutes, being frustrated for the most different reasons. Without loosing too many words I would appreciate some comments about:

• If it sucks, why so?
• What would you improve?

Play the game here
I don't want to push you to play the game for long, play as long as you like, and if you stop early please let me know why.

Thanks in advance for your hints!
Kind regards
Roman

I'll try it later today but I'll get back to you.
What is your goal of the game?
What makes your game special?

Thanks Fully-Metal.

• The goal of the game is lore wise to explore the continent Kargonar and defend the city of Kar'Goth from Morroc's horde and other evil. And gameplay wise it's to establish a full Cohort (your hero + 5 companions), reach lvl 50 with all of them and to defeat bosses together with other players. Further to build up and improve your village.
• The game is a bright fantasy RPG that pulls in elements from tactics games, sim games and unit collection games. Your main goal is working on your village and your group of fighters - your hero and the units you raised

Take your time, there's no hurry I'm just looking for some feedback from players who dislike the game and/or leave quickly. I hope to find some here!

No ways I followed the link and it so happens that i was tracking your game (I even commented in the past). You have a well established game and thought through and I checked your page to see extensive updates as well From my gameplay that I just tried I have observed and will provide my opinion of what I thought. Firstly the game is good, but I think there is some ways to improve the gameplay and get a better attention span/ following out of your gamers.

Small fixes or tweaks- Okay character choice I found that the Knights stars add up to 8* and the other classes add up to 7* (is knight OP above the other classes or is he easier class to begin with?). Also please speed up text somehow.
visuals/interface- The help tool being the blue orb was cool I thought (reminded me of zelda :p, the colors I do find a bit dull in the game (Try adding some more vibrant colors if possible), the character seems to have a laggy effect when moving or the screen can't keep up with him (probably the biggest hinderance because it takes the audiences eyes off you game and isn't appealing to any gamer). I do like the fact you can zoom in and out however
Sound-music went well with the game and found it appealing and great.
Gameplay-I never had a problem finding what to do next the orb was informative and the story is also very deep. Fighting and battling can definitly be improved beyond (attack/defend). I didn't make it far enough but what is the object of building your village?
Overall-try and speed up the gameplay and polish up the visuals a bit
Understand i'm only critizing parts of your game to hopefully help improve your gameplay (it takes tons of work to make a game, and putting your game out there is also awesome best of luck

Played and immediately found a problem. The start of the game is really boring. Obviously its storyline stuff but I just feel like immediately I was bored. Most games start with a high octane scene and then transission into more slow paced stuff later.

You're right, I understand. We've already started development on a new action realtime battle system. Maybe having an early fight in the dream sequence already would freshen up the game feeling. Thanks for the honest feedback!

@Fully-Metal

Thanks A LOT for your elaborate feedback. I'm ofc glad that you like the game overall, and I do see that there still are a lot of things we have to improve.
I've never noticed the stars count of the knight ^^ gj!
Hmm you can toggle the player camera on/off on the top right of the screen. Does it run more fluently then?
The village provides with its buildings many new features, and there has to be an accommodation for every unit levied. That's the most important stuff, the rest you'll experience later on

Thanks, luck is indeed part of what we need! ^^
Kind regards,
Roman

PS: Patiently waiting for Nr. 570 ^^

Glad I could help a bit. I'll try the camera setting. If you ever need help again just shout ^^ btw good game mechanic with adding more party members

In my opinion you should make some effort on the onboarding process. This is the main problem: we start to play and we don't know a thing, we have nothing to get us into the game's world. If the onboarding process takes too long, people need too much motivation to play your game, and they wont have all this motivation at the very beggining. I think you just need something to catch and engage people in these first minutes, then, the game can get deeper and deeper.

yeah the way italo puts it is good. The beginning of a games priority is to be fun and engaging off the bat, and later add the nitty gritty that makes them dive deeper into its awesome story (games definitly not lacking in story and other mechanics you implemented.

Did you try OpenID?

That way I don't have to login.

I think its pretty good, and has lots of potential. one of the big issues i encountered was the conversation window. its at the bottom of the screen, so when someones talking its hard to tell who it is. Also, it launches you into an in-depth storyline right away. it should teach you how to play first, then focus on the storlyine. one other thing you might reconsider is the background. the town in the background is confusing at first because people might think thats the actual map that you walk around in. its a bit distracting. backgrounds arent supposed to be so interesting that you notice them first haha.

besides that, it looks and feels pretty good. Anyways, i hope this was helpful.

-Roochie

Some of the alternative logins (Facebook, Google+, OpenID, Chrome) will definitely be implemented some day, but currently improving the game quality is of greater importance.

Thanks for the feedback! Several people already pointed out that the beginning is lenghty and boring. We hope to improve that by improving the battlesystem, adding an early battle and a short intro video/animation, but plans are really rough and focus is more on the battle system right now.
Maybe I'll revive this thread in about 1.5 to 2 months, I hope we'll have something to tell by then

I didn't expect the background to be distracting since it's so highly transparent. If I'd blur it a bit, maybe that would help..?

Hey, think you'll enjoy this video: Penny-arcade.com

It's about the importance of the first 5 minutes of a game!

I may have found a possible reason for people who sign up and leave the game almost immediately. I registered, chose my class thing and then this shows up:

exactly as it is, I didn't change anything, that menu at the top really is cut off. So I decided to try Firefox, I was using chrome, and the exact same thing happened.

Oh wow diegofloor thanks for the feedback, I didn't know such things happen!
I hope to be able to reproduce the bug!
Hmm you've just logged in and that's it, right? very strange... Do you know how strong your internet connection is? (e.g. in MBits) and how long you waited for the page to load (or did you instantly leave after seeing this)?
And: Is it still the case, that it won't load?

Thanks many times for the feedback!

Edited by: CohortsOfKargonar

I wanted to close your game immediately. Similar to the picture above but at first I got text that said "Click Here". I clicked it and it moved. I clicked it again and it turned into the character. I saw like 5 isometric tiles and then the next thing i know I'm in that other sequence or with the faerie or angel or whatever. I agree the speech right away is annoying, and at the point where she tells me to move to the stairs I assume I am free to do so. Wrong! She is still talking, I have to click on the text box again. I finally walk to the stairs and the next map loads showing 3-4 isometric tiles and then suddenly the map loads on top of it. This is a weird way to load maps. This may annoy users and gives the impression of a "glitchy" game.

You should preload your assets and complete tilesets before present the scene to the player.