Worries about Game design (King of Thieves)
I used to work on a mobile game with identical concept. It's called King of Thieves.
And it works better in all aspects, unfortunately. Let me explain.
In KoT you have stronger motivation to RAID dungeons, cause:
a) Your reward could vary in a very broad range. And you can see your potential reward in advance.
b) You actually STEALING form other players. So they losing some stuff depending on how successfully you rided their dungeons. It's a real pleasure - to make conceited dungeon owner suffer.
You have stonger motivation to BUILD a great dungeon, cause:
The only way to go up through the Leagues - is to expose part of you treasure (gems) for a while (1-8 hours). Gems are upgraded (merged) this way.
And here comes a great Trade off:
The higher value of the exposed gems - the higer will be an upgrade (merge) bonus. So, dungeon owner can choose a comfortable level of risk for his current dungeon. Play small if he's not confident in his defence and play Big if his defence is really ruthless.
There is also a great Balancing features:
You can REVENGE and get your tresures back if you raid offender's dungeon successefuly. And you can help your frends to return their stolen treasures (asynchronous).
That's altogether gives a really good social dynamics.
Also, they ended up adding a HEALTH mechanic, cause it makes everything feel smoother and easier to balance.
So, I highly suggest devs to play KoT and steal as much ideas as possible.
Here is the deconstruction of early KoT design: https://mobilefreetoplay.com/deconstructing-king-of-thieves/
Comments
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I will say the thing I like the most about this MYM way of handling being raided is that there is no punishment for losing. People don’t steal your resources. You won’t have To feel like you need to focus on killing more then being able to be creative and such cause your focus is not to get punished for someone beating your raid.
that's why I like that one can do the normal active or overdrive.
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Yeah, I feel that losing genmat, or any resources, upon being raided successfully, will just promote more killboxes and an Arc Barrier/Phoenix meta.
Overdrive already exists to provide this if you want to opt in to it. Most don't, because it's not worth it.
KoT looks neat though, might check it out.
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- Mobile games
- Mobile trash
- Cheap mobile trash
- Cheap mobile trash using guerilla marketing <- We are here
Generally, I think that mobile developers should be kept away from regular human beings, and propositions like yours are the exact reason, why.
What exactly do you call "really good social dynamics" - using a bunch of typical free-to-play psychological manipulations, like FOMO syndrome, anxiety, random (unpromised) reinforcement and social pressure?
Let me just bring some quotations from the article you promoting -
... I’m convinced ZeptoLab benefits more from this system than the player experience. Not an easy choice I’m sure as a designer, but these sacrifices are sometimes necessary in a free to play game.
... During this time the gems in this fusing ritual are open for stealing by other players. This is the most anxiety-inducing timer in the game. A gem will be stolen unless they keep the game open or have amazing defences. I spent about two hours on a weekend keeping the game open while watching movies because I was too afraid to close the app and lose my gems.
... It also creates an obvious high conversion item for monetization
... Asking players for help to retrieve lost gems creates social pressure.
Why should Meet Your Maker devs implement cancerous free-to-play tricks in the non-FTP game? Just to make players feel bad and anxious? One of the best and most unique things about Meet Your Maker is the friendly and positive social dynamics, emerging from the fact that no one loses anything, and players can allow to themselves be cooperative partners in adventure, like DM and players in DnD games.
In short, Meet Your Maker is NOT some mobile trash. It's a normal game, people pay for it, and they deserve to enjoy the game they bought and to have an experience of a normal, player-friendly game, with no toxic retaining mechanisms like free-to-play titles use.
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Yes, same. If they were going to do that, we'll be seeing infinite killboxes stacked on killbox outposts. No, thanks.
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Lmao this comment is brutal but factual.
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Game sounds like trash. Take your social marketing and get lost.
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Very good system.
Sadly most people on MYM are casuals who do not wanna learn new mechanics or Git Gud.
Instead, this game works on a blocking system that allows casuals to remove hard lvls that way.
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I'm not saying that it's crucial to let players steal resources or genMat from each other, i just want to have way stronger motivation to raid tough bases. I don't want to spend 40+ minutes to raid tough base for the same reward that I can get from easy base.
Maybe the option to P00 in the corner will be enough :)
Problem of Killboxes could be solved by introducing something like "density points" that you spend when placing traps too close.
And there a lot things that could help balance stealing. For example - the more you dying during raid - the less treasures you steal. And it could be some specific fame points that are not affecting main game progress.
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Ya I just mention that part as something not to do. As for your other points they may have some worth to it if they are more suited to fit the game. I was just stating no on the stealing and how that shouldn’t be implemented as a style of it is already well done in the game. All other things you mentioned could work out if adjusted to better work for this game
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