PlayMesh Game Design Open Thread

[PwnLaw]

Being able to abandon individual cities would be a great addition. I recently took over a small cluster of cities (2x30k, 3x15k, 2x8k) from a friend. A few days later a guild attacked and conquered the 5 good ones and ballistaed the other 2. They are too far from my main to be of any use to me, not to mention the guild just attacks and kills troops/buildings at their leisure. Sure I could fortify with thousands of troops from my other cities, but I'd rather just abandon them and get my 2 scholars back.

We've thought about the value of being able to demolish cities. It introduces some interesting strategy elements and also some potential exploits. I'd say it's under consideration, but unlikely to make it to development while we're working on the new slate of features.

[PwnLaw]

This is probably asking too much, but I think the option of playing valor offline would be good.
This would just be to build your cities, when you have wifi again it would update your point.
Also to build troops and then update your troop count when you have wifi.
This would benefit a lot of people that aren't in a wifi zone for any period of time.

Unfortunately, there's no way to make a multiplayer game like this work offline. It creates too many anamolies and possibilities for exploit. I'm glad you want to play Valor regardless of internet access though -- warms our little game designer hearts.

[PwnLaw]

Can guilds be made bigger. E.g.100 players?

We've tested a variety of guild sizes and we've noticed pretty dramatic decreases in the quality of the game as the guild size went up. To be honest with you, I was rather disappointed by this discovery. I really like the larger guilds. We'll still throw in occasional large guild worlds, but it's more to have a bit of diversity here and there rather than us believing it's the best standard setting for Valor worlds.

[PwnLaw]

I think that the management strategy for many cities should be a top priority. Currently auroras blessing has many errors, and many players do not want to purchase it regardless.

A new format, such as maybe being able to checkbox each city then mass recruit/scholarship using this feature would be a better format to consider

Thanks for the note Browniees. The first step toward better city management is currently under development. The things you've mentioned are actually already spec'd, but they'll need to wait for a subsequent phase. I think your complaint is justified and it's something we discuss with a fair amount of reguarity internally.

[awsomator]

ok thanks.

[Wildmanweber]

After playing Valor for about a month now, I would make a few comparisons to the desktop MMO game I've played for close to 3 years (Evony).

I love to ease of play here. It is simple to maintain troops, and the battle strategy is straightforward in as realistic a manner as I could ask for. The sheer number of cities to manage is a bit of a task, and I can see that being the biggest challenge as the game progresses.

The MAIN complaint I have is that the communication process between players in this game is poor.

I am accustomed to getting to know my comrades in arms much better than what happens here and my enemies as well. You need to improve to interplayer messaging by a long ways in my opinion to really make this ga,e take off.

[PwnLaw]

After playing Valor for about a month now, I would make a few comparisons to the desktop MMO game I've played for close to 3 years (Evony).

I love to ease of play here. It is simple to maintain troops, and the battle strategy is straightforward in as realistic a manner as I could ask for. The sheer number of cities to manage is a bit of a task, and I can see that being the biggest challenge as the game progresses.

The MAIN complaint I have is that the communication process between players in this game is poor.

I am accustomed to getting to know my comrades in arms much better than what happens here and my enemies as well. You need to improve to interplayer messaging by a long ways in my opinion to really make this ga,e take off.

Thanks for the note Wildman. Any suggestions? We've considered a number of things, but we've gotten the sense people prefer to use external messaging applications (which makes me sad). Communication is pretty tough given the nature of the game (people moving in and out of the application rather than sticking around for prolonged periods).

[Dvorak]

One reason that i have been given as to why a secondary app is used, is that one user can stay on a specific chatroom and on a specific valor age and just flip between. No further navigation is required. When worlds ct like w29, this becomes key.

[Sharoman]

Having having a set schedule/calendar for future worlds and game updates.

That can be a good idea for competition as well.
If we could know in advanced when a competition is scheduled to begin we can prepare for it.
also, i would like it better if we had a number of competitions going on simuntanisly, but we'll be able to qeue for just 1 (but im sure that wont go well with the top players of each world).

[MasterMEEDO]

As for a better communication tool in-game, I would suggest something more sophisticated with more customization. I suggestd this a while back, not even sure where exactly, but the idea of more detailed profiles. You know, how you click on someone's profile and you see their cities, scores, medals and so on. A bit more work on this to allow profile pictures, options to add as a friend, invite to chat, and so on, will bring the game to the next level in the social arena. With that, you can upgrade the current chat system into something that can allow you to create chat rooms, add players to chat 1:1, and so on. With this, larger guilds that are active and planning large-scale wars, like my own, will stop using external chat messengers like Kakao Talk.

Another thing, and sorry for bringing up two points in one post, but I posted this under the Idea/Suggestions sub-forum. Landscape mode. I really think this would be a giant improvement to the overall gameplay experience as well as the UI, which you guys are currently prioritizing anyway hand-in-hand with City Management. Thanks for your time.