My thoughts so far

I am really enjoying the game so far after about 2 hours of playtime, but I have noticed a few minor things that are confusing and don't seem to work the way I think they should.

1) Clicking on your villagers is difficult. Either the click boxes for the buildings are too large, or the people are too small, but I frequently end up bringing up a building info box instead of the villager I'm trying to click. I think right now you have to click on the little cartoon bubble over the villagers head to get the interaction and clicking on their body or their name box does nothing (or more likely brings up a building info box)

2) Archers/scouts and other people seem to be one single use items. I can see how you mean for the game to be played, but it is not explained, and it doesn't fit in story wise. I thought the game was broken because after I bought a scout and an archer and used them, they weren't there the next combat. I deduced that they are meant to be consumable items because they are so inexpensive, but I didn't like that story-wise. If you have a scout, why can't he help out every time? He knows how to be a scout. Is he just not willing to help defend the tower? To make this work game play wise, I would suggest you put some sort of description of how the scout will only be able to be used in one combat. Perhaps you can make them work better in the story by making the scout be 2 purchases, once to train a scout which would be a one time cost and then buy scout gear or arrows for the archer as a one time consumable item which would work the way the scout/archer is currently working.

It also is confusing because the scouts are purchased right at the same place as the farmers/lumberjack people who seem to be permanent boosts. I think the effect of the farmer is to reduce the production time for each food item by 1 second. Maybe I am wrong and I just haven't been using the farmer at all. It's hard to see what they do or how they are effecting the game. I would suggest after you purchase a farmer that the farm screen show that a farmer is working there and what that means.

3) Spell descriptions says that they are usable every 20 combats. I thought that a combat was an entire encounter, so the spells sounded like something you very rarely use. I used it once and it recharged after 20 rune matches. That is a very different thing. I think you should word the description differently so it is clear that the spells are meant to be used regularly.

4) And a typo/bug - the cost to make a dagger has conflicting prices. The box on the right says it takes 2 wood, when you click on it, it says it costs 1 wood. I think it actually only costs 1 wood.

Thanks for the fun game! I'm looking forward to playing some more.

On 4, can verify, except this appears to be true for all items purchased at the blacksmith, not just the dagger. Some have a larger wood discount than others, like the Multiplier having 75% off the price of lumber.

I agree with OP with most these problems, It took me a long while to realize how the
Lumberjacks, Farmers, ect, worked.

I don't really have a problem with a targeting of the thought bubbles, although I do see how that
could be annoying to some players.

My main issues right now is Boss battles, I've struggled with a only a couple, but the Elemental Lord is by far the hardest, dare I say he's impossible for me to beat. Maybe I'm just not playing the board
right or something, I'm lucky if I even get him down 9%! It's just so hard to get hits on him with the
layout of the field.

Another issue I've been having is no matches to be made, too many times I've been on the last round of a map, I've no runes up,(Or gear) and there's only 2 dudes left and there aren't any matches left to be made! of course the freakin' frozen blocks don't help me there either.

PS: One last thing I remembered, I'm not a fan of people in town that appear to be a woman sometimes use a man's voice, maybe I'm just seeing wrong.

TLDR: Elemental Lord is a jerk.

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Originally Posted by TaloX

TLDR: Elemental Lord is a jerk.

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This. All of my this.

As for your issue with the last round of the map and one or two foes left, yeah, I've run into that too. Out of moves, spells, items, and people to defend me, have to sit there and watch the guy chip away slowly at my health or surrender to end it.

I'm attempting to get as much stuff researched and built as I can to see if a literal item spam will win it. If we need to spam items to win, though... that's a lot of resources that should be going to expansion.

1) I would like it to be easier to click the bubbles, maybe also be able to click on the characters. Also, I really like how it looks when their names pop-up when you hover over them.

2) Label the category as "Mercenaries" for story purposes?

3) Mine says matches and had no problems, but if it's a problem could say rune matches, or make it more clear in the beginning how the term match is being used (For example: after creating the academy an optional spell tutorial pops-up where you research, equip and make matches to use a spell and get an achievement).

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When choosing how many units to harvest, I'd appreciate a ++ or max icon (or set previous amount of units as default)

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Originally Posted by lazybum

1) Clicking on your villagers is difficult.

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Click on their thought bubbles. We can look into doing something about when they go behind buildings, but that might just be one of your citizens trying to avoid your spying eyes. Those are the tin foil hat guys trying to have some privacy from the snooping government. :)

TIP: Press "Z" to toggle ZOOMED IN MODE. You can then mouse around to move around the city and follow your peasants. It might help you click on them more easily. We should add that to the OPTIONS/KEYBINDINGS area to help you learn about that feature.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

2) Archers/scouts and other people seem to be one single use items. I can see how you mean for the game to be played, but it is not explained, and it doesn't fit in story wise.

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We could add something to the troop descriptions like:

NOTE: Troops are hired for a single battle. Each troop can only be deployed once.

I disagree that it doesn't fit story wise. Workers are recruited to the city and once there they get hired by the foundry, lumber mill, farm, academy, or armory. At that point the ruler is no longer involved. Soldiers are another story. They are conscripted for a single tour of duty and either die or serve out their term in the defense of a tower.

Someone may wonder why we ever hesitate to put detailed explanations of how things work everywhere possible. The reason is because every extra piece of text you add to the game increases the odds of a player ignoring or not reading something else. This is an example of the expression "PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD." We have to be very careful and selective about what text information we put in the game. At a certain point people have a "TL;DR" reaction and ignore everything.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

3) Spell descriptions says that they are usable every 20 combats.

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Can you screenshot that? We actually ran a full text search on the entire game code and could not find any example of the word "combat" being used with any spell description anywhere.

As far as we can tell, it ALWAYS says matches.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

4) And a typo/bug - the cost to make a dagger has conflicting prices. The box on the right says it takes 2 wood, when you click on it, it says it costs 1 wood. I think it actually only costs 1 wood.

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We made some tweaks to the costs near the end and it looks like somehow the display isn't pulling from the real costs.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

Thanks for the fun game! I'm looking forward to playing some more.

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You are welcome! Thanks for backing us and I hope you're having fun!

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Originally Posted by TaloX

My main issues right now is Boss battles, I've struggled with a only a couple, but the Elemental Lord is by far the hardest, dare I say he's impossible for me to beat. Maybe I'm just not playing the board right or something

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by TaloX

Another issue I've been having is no matches to be made, too many times I've been on the last round of a map, I've no runes up,(Or gear) and there's only 2 dudes left and there aren't any matches left to be made! of course the freakin' frozen blocks don't help me there either.

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1) Are you playing on EASY?

2) The elemental lord is hard, but hard is good. We want the game - especially the boss battles - to be challenging. You will often need to make some really good gear, spell, and troop decisions to beat the bosses. And the strategies are not at all the same. They are very different depending on the boss and the level.

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Originally Posted by circuit

When choosing how many units to harvest, I'd appreciate a ++ or max icon (or set previous amount of units as default)

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Shift-click the (+) for max.

Some player should add that to the wiki:

http://towerofelements.gamepedia.com/ToE2

Maybe a tips and tricks section?

We'd love for the player run wiki to start getting built on (although Curse needs to update the name :) ).

I've played some more and here are my updated thoughts.

1) I can't find where I read the spells being reset after X combats was. Perhaps I just misread it, or maybe I had read too many tennis reports recently and thought match was the word for an entire event.

2) Many costs are messed up in the town center.

3) Troops are kind of lame. Several times when I used the rock roller guy, he would drop a rock on an empty row with no monsters when the only remaining monster is one minion beating on my walls at the very bottom row.

4) Lumber (and minerals as well, but mainly lumber) is killing me. I have 20 of all resource gatherer speeder uppers and it's just miserable. To upgrade the lumber mill from level 3 to level 4 requires 1000 wood. The lumber yard makes 60 wood every 800 time units. 800 time units x 17 collections = waaaaay too much waiting. And that is if I don't spend any wood on any other buildings. It's a big turn off. I can't even alt tab away to the internet and do something else while I wait for the lumber to gather because the clock stops if you do that. I have a LOT of gold. I would love to buy a trading post where I can swap gold for lumber. As I note on point #7 below, I'm stuck. I can't do anything to progress the game except upgrade the town and that takes forever.

5) Because lumber and minerals are my limiting factor, I don't ever use blacksmith items. If I am going to have to wait forever to build a lumber mill, I'm not going to wait even longer because I am using wood and rocks making disposable weapons. Perhaps the higher level items are very useful. The dagger I started with wasn't very helpful, so I have categorized them as wasteful uses of lumber right now.

6) Some board layouts are really hard. I am thinking about level 16, specifically the bottom row. Sometimes I just get a spawn pattern where they have a lot of monsters on the very bottom row. That is very hard to deal with, especially since the main spell I had at that point to deal with multiple monsters and bad rune layouts was the ignite spell. Ignite is especially not good on that layout because the ignite shape will only do one point of damage on the bottom or top row. If I could target the bottom row and do 3 points of damage there, it would help.

7) This is the biggest issue - Boss battles are very discouraging. I have been going through the levels more slowly, replaying each level until I getting a gold banner for each one. I think this means that I have built up my town by more than most other people would have by this level. I just hit the level 25 boss. That is messed up. I started the fight and saw the layout and the boss position and how each minion takes multiple hits to kill. I immediately knew I was going to lose and it wasn't going to be a fun time doing it. I guess what I need to do is level up my spells, but considering point #3 above, that is just a long boring time to do. I feel that I can't improve my situation by actually playing the game. If I go and do more levels or reclear past levels all I can get are resources (gold) that won't help me in the big lame boss fight. If I had bought this game after release and this was the finished situation, I probably would stop playing at this point.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

It's a big turn off. I can't even alt tab away to the internet and do something else while I wait for the lumber to gather because the clock stops if you do that.

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Go into windowed mode and you can tab away and the clock keeps ticking. I've spoken to our programmers about figuring out a way to keep the clock going even when you tab out in full screen mode. There is a technical issue with Unity that resulted in this difference.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

I have a LOT of gold. I would love to buy a trading post where I can swap gold for lumber. As I note on point #7 below, I'm stuck. I can't do anything to progress the game except upgrade the town and that takes forever.

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You aren't supposed to have tier 5 buildings by the time you beat the game. You should still have things to upgrade while working on the Infinity Tower.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

6) Some board layouts are really hard.

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7) This is the biggest issue - Boss battles are very discouraging.

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What difficulty are you playing on?

I keep asking people this and nobody answers me. :)

I'm playing on the Normal difficulty setting.

I agree with lazybum's points #3 and #4. I've maxed out the lumberjacks and smelter-helpers and it still takes forever to produce enough wood and ore to upgrade something. I hesitate to buy anything from the blacksmith because it takes precious wood and ore. So my strategy is to go for new magic spells. But I have long since won the gold flag on every level, up to but not including the boss battle at level 15 (I think), just grinding for triads while I wait for ore and wood to cycle. The food production rate is tolerable and I have gotten to 500 population so I can hire spell researchers.

On a related note, I feel the cost of lumberjacks and smelter-helpers is way too high for a 1% decrease in production time--it's almost not noticeable. I would like to see that doubled to 2% and keep the max at 20 each.

I like all the different tower layouts, Each presents a different challenge and needs a good strategy to effectively use it to defend the tower. They can be frustrating, but that breeds innovation :)

lazybum, your point #6: You can set the horizontal part of the ignite on the bottom row and get three points of damage. The bottom tip of the cross will just not be used.

I am playing on normal difficulty.

I was thinking about possible solutions to the problems I see now.

The problems
No one is currently enjoying the way lumber and minerals are currently collected.
Few players are using combat items made from the blacksmith so a big part of the game design is unused.
You don't want players to have level 5 buildings when they are on encounter 20-30.
Boss fights are hard to tune for difficulty because players can have a wide range of spells and combat items depending on building upgrades.

My suggestion has 2 parts
1) - get rid of the timers on the lumber mill and foundry. Instead, you collect one batch of each resource for each combat you complete. This way players spend their time playing the game instead of staring at a countdown clock. Now, how do you prevent players from farming level 1 combats and building each building up to level 5 too early in the game? That's part 2.
2) You make each building upgrade blocked until you clear a certain level. You can either show it specifically on the upgrade screen where you tell players that building level 2 is locked until the clear level 10 or perhaps one ingredient for town center level 2 is dropped by the level 10 boss. This way players won't stockpile lumber for lumber mill level 4 and instead they would use it on the game play parts they currently aren't doing, like combat items from the blacksmith. This also would help you tune the difficulty level on each boss because you would know exactly what spells and combat items each player will have access to.

I'm really good at match 3's. I got up to level 37 easily but then I got totally stuck. Even with the "destroy half ice blocks" and the druid etc I can't win the level. I saw someone on here saying it was "all about gear" but I've got such an extreme case of wood and ore shortage I don't want to sacrifice the preciousness of them for gear. Also it seems bad that the only way to win those levels might be to not make matches (as I seem to get to the point where I can't make any more matches by the second wave). It takes ages to learn any new spells (about an hour I think I calculated it to be), so I've got all this gold and nothing to do with it. (Maybe you should be able to spend goal to speed up resources?).

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Originally Posted by summersheep

I'm really good at match 3's. I got up to level 37 easily but then I got totally stuck. Even with the "destroy half ice blocks" and the druid etc I can't win the level.

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I think level 37 and 38 are much too hard. The two narrow columns that are only 2 spots wide combined with freezing runes is too nasty of a combination. We are going to rework that board shape.

Every play through I have done I get massively stuck on those levels as well.

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Originally Posted by summersheep

I'm really good at match 3's. I got up to level 37 easily but then I got totally stuck. Even with the "destroy half ice blocks" and the druid etc I can't win the level.

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It's doable. I BARELY managed to pull it off with a Mega Stoner + Druid combo, every fire spell, the row clear, and the column clear. I ran out of matches with exactly 2 enemies left on the last wave, though. Mega Stoner cleared out 1, the Bone Sword I had saved up from I don't know when killed the other. That's about the only time ever gear has helped me.

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Originally Posted by summersheep

(Maybe you should be able to spend goal to speed up resources?).

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In my thread, Aristotle mentioned they're working on a trade market where you can purchase resources with your triads.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

No one is currently enjoying the way lumber and minerals are currently collected.

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No one?

• Over 200 people are currently playing
  
  
• Of those 200, perhaps 10 are posting here currently.
  
  
• Of those posting, only a few have expressed problems with resources. And those are only people who are playing the game in a specific way: what I call the "blast through the game" method (which is a perfectly legit way to play, but it is only one way).

So be careful with sweeping generalizations :).

People who like queuing up their city while they are working and doing other stuff love the way it works. They can build up massive amounts of resources while only checking on the game for a few minutes here and there. And then later when they have a lot of time, they can go crush a bunch of battles.

The asynchronous gameplay element is actually a lot of fun. Remembering to check on your buildings throughout the day adds a whole extra layer of depth to the game.

I probably check on my city 10 or 15 times throughout the day, and then actually play battles at night. Some people play at various times throughout the day, but between play sessions check on their city a few times to build up resources.

That's why I call "asynchronous gameplay." A lot of people do that, and for them the resource situation is fine.

I think a trade/market will help the people who play the "power grinding" way.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

1) - get rid of the timers on the lumber mill and foundry.

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Instead, you collect one batch of each resource for each combat you complete.

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You make each building upgrade blocked until you clear a certain level.

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First, that is a completely different game that we didn't set out to make.

Second, that doesn't sound fun to me at all. That is a completely, 100% linear game where nothing matters but grinding the battles.

1) There is no choice in how you want to build your city.

2) There is no reason, fun, and excitement for checking on my city 10 times throughout the day to make sure I have all my buildings working.

For the few people having trouble, I would suggest:

1) Start a new city on EASY.

2) Check on your city throughout the day (in windowed mode!) to queue up your buildings and gather more resources.

3) Wait for us to add the MARKET/Trade system so you can use all your triads on bolstering your resources. I think that will be a significant change.

I guess I assume that most people are like me and they either go to school or an office where they can't check on their city during the day. Checking in 10 times a day isn't possible for me (and I would assume a significant portion of players).

Perhaps the trade system will solve the problems of the players who can't interact all day long. I hope it does.

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Originally Posted by lazybum

I guess I assume that most people are like me and they either go to school or an office where they can't check on their city during the day. Checking in 10 times a day isn't possible for me (and I would assume a significant portion of players).

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I check on mine when I wake up, and then again before I leave home for work. Then when I get home I check it again. Then we make dinner. When dinner is ready I check it again. We have dinner and relax a bit. Then I check it again and go put kids to bed. Then after that I might sit down and play. I get 5 resource queue-ups just checking on it these few times at home and the play "for real" at night.

At work, I check it throughout the day and build up massive resources. But that's my "work city" on my work PC.

I just worked it out, it's going to take about 2 hours for me to get enough wood to up grade the lumbar a level. Why would I want to "play" a game when it just requires me to have a window open in the background while I'm doing other things. I don't really count that as game play. Also, if you want a realistic generalisation, no one is on here saying what an amazing thing you've created where you have to wait hours for resources to be able to upgrade the stations the resources come from to be able to get more resources. Maybe if you got more resources by playing older levels it would be more fun, seeing as the game play is really in the conquests.

Okay, now I understand your thought process behind your game design. That makes me feel a little better about it. And yeah, it probably is a good idea to build your resources throughout the day. But my machine has a small problem with running several memory intensive processes at once, so if I want to play another game, I unfortunately kinda have to close down the game, which means my buildings aren't working. Can't build 'em up throughout the day either, because I have class from 9 AM to 5 PM 6 days out of the week, and playing games during class hurts my grade.

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Originally Posted by summersheep

I just worked it out, it's going to take about 2 hours for me to get enough wood to up grade the lumbar a level. Why would I want to "play" a game when it just requires me to have a window open in the background while I'm doing other things.

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Because it is fun? It is called asynchronous gameplay and it is actually very popular. It isn't everyone's thing, which is fine. We are trying to support a variety of ways to play the game.

As I've posted a few times, I think the Market will help out people who play the "grindy" way where they just blast through the battles. They can take all those triad coins they earn and spend them on resources.

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Originally Posted by summersheep

Also, if you want a realistic generalisation, no one is on here saying what an amazing thing you've created where you have to wait hours for resources to be able to upgrade the stations the resources come from to be able to get more resources.

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Forum feedback right now represents less than 5% of the playing population. We've received tons of feedback by other means from people who don't have the same problems with resources you are having. This is largely because they are playing in a different way.

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Originally Posted by summersheep

Maybe if you got more resources by playing older levels it would be more fun, seeing as the game play is really in the conquests.

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The Market will be the closest thing to this without trivializing the city development part of the game.

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Originally Posted by sonikku2008

Okay, now I understand your thought process behind your game design. That makes me feel a little better about it. And yeah, it probably is a good idea to build your resources throughout the day.

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Even if you only get a few extra "cycles" at various times, it makes a pretty big difference.

We are trying to support two very different styles of play. My names for them:

1) Asynchronous: People who like to "check in" with their game numerous times throughout the day, do a few things, and then come back later. They play the game in shorter amounts of time: 15-30 minutes at a time or less.

2) Grinders: People who sit down to play for a few hours and want to blast their way through the game.

Play style #1 is having absolutely no problems. The pacing of the game and resource gathering are fine for them.

Play style #2 is experiencing a massive exceess of money (triads) and to a lesser extent food. We need to do something here. The current plan is the Market.

Thoughts?

Hmm... when I have a chance, I think I'll start a new city and play the game the asynchronous way, and see how much fun I have with that.

Unfortunately, it looks like this game isn't really viable for speedrunning, unlike DoE which you can beat rather quickly once you know what equipment works best for you and you memorize the recipes for them. At least, not on Hard. Easy might be viable for it as things stand now, but only if the timer on those frozen runes is a lot slower for levels 37 and 38 on Easy. XD

summersheep: Calm down, please. Vent your frustration by yelling at your computer screen like I do, not by typing furiously on these forums. While I do agree with a couple of your points, I also agree that this game was created with different intentions than how we play it. But this is one of few companies I've run across that do try to listen to feedback from those who play it in a different manner and try to accomodate that way of playing without messing up the intended way of playing. Please be patient with them. :3

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Originally Posted by sonikku2008

Unfortunately, it looks like this game isn't really viable for speedrunning, unlike DoE which you can beat rather quickly once you know what equipment works best for you and you memorize the recipes for them.

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Agreed. Unlike DoE, this game was not designed with speed running in mind.

The competitive challenge part of this game is going to be how long can you survive the Infinity Tower. That is going to take a lot of skill, strategy, and preparation. I am looking forward to people's feedback on how to make the Infinity Tower something to seriously brag about. And then I can't wait to see how far people can get.

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Originally Posted by sonikku2008

But this is one of few companies I've run across that do try to listen to feedback from those who play it in a different manner and try to accomodate that way of playing without messing up the intended way of playing. Please be patient with them. :3

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Thanks Sonikku. That is much appreciated. :)

We don't "fire and forget" with our games. We release them to a small group - like our backers - first and start gathering feedback. We are very thoughtful about how we analyze that feedback, after which we take steps to try and make the game as awesome as possible.

We also try very hard to give people different ways to play our games and still have a lot of fun. I think we've shown a pretty solid track record in that area, going all the way back to our first game: Threshold.

I am confident we will be able to make this game fun for both the asynchronous and the grinder type players.

Caveat: I have yet to actually download and play Reignmaker, due to a thing called PEP 463 that's been taking up most of my time lately (there've been, I kid you not, five hundred emails in the space of a week). But I will get to it at some point, probably soon.

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Originally Posted by Aristotle

Even if you only get a few extra "cycles" at various times, it makes a pretty big difference.

We are trying to support two very different styles of play. My names for them:

1) Asynchronous: People who like to "check in" with their game numerous times throughout the day, do a few things, and then come back later. They play the game in shorter amounts of time: 15-30 minutes at a time or less.

2) Grinders: People who sit down to play for a few hours and want to blast their way through the game.

Play style #1 is having absolutely no problems. The pacing of the game and resource gathering are fine for them.

Play style #2 is experiencing a massive exceess of money (triads) and to a lesser extent food. We need to do something here. The current plan is the Market.

Thoughts?

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Let's say I play by the asynchronous style. If I fire up the game at, say, 7AM, and play for 15 minutes, then shut it down (because memory's costly stuff), and then come back again at 7PM and play for 45 minutes, am I better off than just firing it up once per day and playing for an hour? I do hope this won't be one of those "win by permanently allocating RAM to the game" things, because those get tiresome really REALLY fast.

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Originally Posted by Aristotle

I think level 37 and 38 are much too hard. The two narrow columns that are only 2 spots wide combined with freezing runes is too nasty of a combination. We are going to rework that board shape.

Every play through I have done I get massively stuck on those levels as well.

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When you have some spare time to try for yourself, would you mind giving level 25 on Hard mode a second look? I feel like it might be a bit too hard. It might just be my skills, but I can barely scratch him, let alone beat him, let alone gold flag him.

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Originally Posted by Aristotle

Agreed. Unlike DoE, this game was not designed with speed running in mind.

The competitive challenge part of this game is going to be how long can you survive the Infinity Tower. That is going to take a lot of skill, strategy, and preparation. I am looking forward to people's feedback on how to make the Infinity Tower something to seriously brag about. And then I can't wait to see how far people can get.

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You are a horrible and evil person. It took me hours to beat the first real boss, the giant porcupine!

So far I am enjoying the game and without restating some of the issues brought up about people who like to grind (me) I did have a few more thoughts:

1) Interaction with townspeople:

Is there a way to make it easier to interact with your population? Or to know who you have in your city? Right now it appears that you have to hit the thought bubble precisely and quickly or you miss the interaction.

I was distracted at work and forgot what my other two feedback items were.

But I am enjoying the game!

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Originally Posted by Jyn

When you have some spare time to try for yourself, would you mind giving level 25 on Hard mode a second look? I feel like it might be a bit too hard. It might just be my skills, but I can barely scratch him, let alone beat him, let alone gold flag him.

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Hard should be extremely hard. You should have to be an absolute match-3 pro to beat hard.

Hard should be excruciatingly challenging such that you claw and scratch your way through each level and boss.

Otherwise there's nothing for people who are really, really good at match-3.

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Originally Posted by Rosuav

Caveat: I have yet to actually download and play Reignmaker, due to a thing called PEP 463 that's been taking up most of my time lately (there've been, I kid you not, five hundred emails in the space of a week). But I will get to it at some point, probably soon.

Let's say I play by the asynchronous style. If I fire up the game at, say, 7AM, and play for 15 minutes, then shut it down (because memory's costly stuff), and then come back again at 7PM and play for 45 minutes, am I better off than just firing it up once per day and playing for an hour? I do hope this won't be one of those "win by permanently allocating RAM to the game" things, because those get tiresome really REALLY fast.

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Well, I've started playing now. Turns out it is a "win by permanently allocating RAM to the game". That's sad. Any chance it can be set up so that timers get cut down if you leave the program shut down for a while? Even if it's like a quarter the amount of time, it'd be something (that is, leaving the program running would have the timer expire in 1 minute, so terminating and starting it up 2 minutes later will show the timer halved). It'd mean there's value in repeatedly coming back, as opposed to trying to allocate a huge block of time to running a RAM and CPU hungry program.

I'm compiling a separate email on suggestions/typos etc, but wanted to weigh in on the resources thing.

I 100% do not like the timer method. This is not a mobile game, and that design reeks of F2P mobile designs. This is a PC game -- leaving it running in the background while you "do other things" is not really a valid scenario for PC gamers. Mobile? Sure. PC? No. What other PC games do you play where you have to do this? Most people have jobs and can't access their gaming PC easily throughout the day to re-up the timers. This isn't a hugely extensive sim game where things are happening when you're not actively doing anything -- there's just timers that you wait to tick down and start over again. That's not enjoyable -- that's busywork.

I understand the Market is a potential solution to this. I'm currently on level 15 or so and have more triads than I know what to do with, but the lack of resources and the speed that they get gathered is dragging me down. I'm also not upgrading my blacksmith or buying anything because it takes away from my small amount precious resources.

Similar to a previous post, I was thinking that making the resource gathering be based on battles makes much more sense. The level of the building could be the "base" value, which goes up as you level up the building. Each "tier" of levels would have a multiplier to that base value, to prevent blasting through level 1 over and over again for easy resources. First tier would be 1x, second tier 1.3x (or whatever), etc. Keep the resource "spoils of war" that you get when you first beat a level, and I think that gives people good incentive to keep playing the game. The villagers could add to the multiplier (0.2x for each one or something). I think people are going to grind even in the current setup, but it's almost pointless because you aren't getting resources, you're just basically wasting time waiting for timers. This would at least give you incentive to play the harder levels rather than just snoozing through easy ones over and over, or walking away from the game waiting for timers.

I realize this is late in the game and probably won't change, but I wanted to get my 2 cents in regardless. I'm enjoying it quite a lot otherwise. (=

A couple of different points

1) I can't figure out what upgrading the blacksmith does. I upgraded the blacksmith to level 2 and checked costs before and after. I couldn't see any differences. I don't have many items researched, but it appears as if I should be able to make all of the items once they are unlocked via research. I know that something is wrong with costs displaying correctly, so perhaps that explains my confusion.

2) I think I understand why the asynchronous gameplay doesn't sit so well with me. It's an oatmeal raisin cookie. Oatmeal raisin cookies can be tasty, and I like Oatmeal raisin cookies. However, most people would be unpleasantly surprised if you bit into one after buying a chocolate chip cookie. I went back to the kickstarter web page and it does not mention an idle game style of play. It describes the game as match 3 with tower defense and real time strategy. My suggestions haven't exactly been accepted with open arms, so consider this a theory you can feel free to believe in or not. When you open this game up to the public at large, if you change your game description to include the idle style game play you will have less people upset when they discover it. You have mentioned that you are in contact with many players that have been enjoying that part of the game, so perhaps you would find a whole new untapped market.

@lazybum's #2 point: Or Kongregate's idle game market. *shot*

Anyway, some news. I beat levels 37 and 38 -- which I've dubbed my own personal hell, since I portray myself as half fox, half ice dragon -- after getting Archie. Problem: It wasn't just Archie that won it for me. I had to make use of something I don't think was ever intended: Pause Buffer.

What do I mean by this? Well... next time you go into a battle, deploy a stoner or an arch druid. Pause the game next time you hear one of those stones drop or spot a sheep walk by and watch as the attacks keep moving, damaging enemies as normal and, if they died, triggering their death animations which play out.

Below is a list of what I believe is paused and what isn't.

Paused:

Freeze/Block timers
All enemies
Access to the board.
Your attacks from clearing runes.
Your troops.

Not paused:

Cascades. (Your chain continues while paused, which "buffers" your attack, sending everything off when you unpause.)
Stones dropped by (Mega) Stoners. (Must have hit the battlefield.)
Exploding sheep spawned by Archie.
Arrows fired by any archer.
Gold/Chest/Scroll timers (can be clicked on as well).

The items above that are not paused can be used greatly to your advantage, making the impossible slightly easier. Plus you don't have to pay a single resource to use it. *shot*

I'm fairly certain the above is not intended whatsoever, but this was the only way I could beat those levels to see the rest of the game in its current state. I also believe it was not intended, based on what you yourself have said earlier in this thread, Aristotle, that you would have even one level 5 building at this point in the game. So I'm glad these two levels are being reworked to be a little less difficult. I'll see about giving you feedback on the rest of the game while I'm past that, at least.

Edit: Holy heck in a handbasket. If you guys thought Elemental Lord was hard, just watch how much damage the Cubicle is capable of pounding you with in ONE attack. Also, apparently he won't die if you pause buffer him a lot. Don't know if it's because I'm pause buffering or if it's because of a glitch not related to it because I can't beat it legit.

Edit 2: Beat it legit, no pausing once. Still not dying despite having 0 health, despite hearing the death sound.

I've given the game a bit of a play now, and have a few comments.

1) Can we get hover help reminding us what the resources are, please? I know it seems obvious, but I like to confirm sometimes that I'm not going off trying to get more X when I have heaps of X, and it's Y that I need. (If it bugs people, it could be configurable in the options. But it's nice to get the official names for resources.)

2) First casualty of the "gotta keep the program running" problem is the BGM. It's not terrible but there's no way I'm leaving that playing all day.

3) Most of the time, I'd rather get the maximum from a resource building. Defaulting to that would be more useful than defaulting to 1, plus it'd make it obvious what you've gained by upgrading ("this one goes to eleven!").

Fortunately I can, currently, afford to allocate this an entire CPU core and a few gobs of memory, but this isn't going to become one of my permanent games at this rate.

New build available, when you tab off, the BGM appears to cease. That solves your second point, Rosuav.

Speaking of, the new build fixed half of my Cubicle problem. The enemy dies appropriately now, but... I have a clear screen and yet the game still thinks there are mobs available, the blue bar is not 100% full. I can idle all day on this tower, nothing else will attack me. So unless we got birdies flying offscreen trying to attack me in a lane I cannot reach (and yes, I do see the cubicle hitting me out of bounds of my tower's reach), then I dunno what the problem here is, but until this is 100% fixed, I cannot continue the game beyond 40.

I have a lot of detailed answers to all the great feedback. But it is already 2:30am and I've been working since 9am. I am beat.

Short version:

Where did I ever say you have to play asynchronously? You don't. That is *ONE* way to play and make progress.

You can also play the grindy way - especially if you are really good at match3. And the grindy way will get better once we add the market.

We want to support both styles of play, and support a hybrid of both as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sonikku2008

New build available, when you tab off, the BGM appears to cease. That solves your second point, Rosuav.

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Oh, that'd be an improvement. Game BGM generally falls into one of a few categories with me:

1) So annoying that I turn it off straight away
2) Mildly annoying, but kept on because I like the SFX and the game doesn't have separate Mute buttons for the two types of sound (thanks Frogdice for separating it all out in Reign!)
3) Reasonably alright, but gets turned off once I've played the game for an hour or two and it's getting repetitive
4) Really awesome and stays on whenever I play the game.

Currently, ReignMaker is in category 3. There aren't actually all that many category 4 games... and there have been just four in my entire gaming history where the music is so awesome that I play it when I'm not even playing the game (Starwish, Streets of SimCity, American McGee's Alice, and Alice: Madness Returns). Maybe I'm a bit harsh on video game music. :)

By the way, it took me quite a while to figure out the quest mechanic - I nearly submitted a bug report saying that achievements weren't working properly, hadn't noticed that achievements are in the top middle of the screen and these were on the top left. Possibly means I clicked through something too fast. I'm still not sure what the reward is, though - I hear Dal's (??) voice saying "Awesome!" and I think maybe there are more triads waiting for me? Went looking for docs but didn't find any.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rosuav

By the way, it took me quite a while to figure out the quest mechanic

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The second battlefield tutorial screen explains what quests are and how they work. This is displayed the second time you enter battle:

http://i.imgur.com/ueW1HBO.jpg

I think a lot of the confusion/lack of information on quests could be solved if the quest description included the triad reward. e.g. "Make five Void rune matches in a row. (50 triads)"

Even though that screen explains the quest mechanic, the reward is never shown anywhere. Am I getting 1 triad for wasting a dummy, or 500? Is it the same reward for the "use 5 dummies" quest? Do the quests scale with the battle level? etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aristotle

The second battlefield tutorial screen explains what quests are and how they work. This is displayed the second time you enter battle:

(chomped for brevity)

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Huh, weird. I'm sure I would remember having seen that. Either I clicked through it real fast, or I broke something somehow. Unfortunately I have no idea how I went about breaking it, so I'll have to create another profile some time and see if I can duplicate the phenomenon.

I realized that all of my comments on gameplay have given a one sided view of what I think of the game. Let me correct that. I am enjoying the game a lot. I like almost all of the parts of it. I enjoy the match 3 gameplay. The number of different symbols feels just about perfect. I enjoy the interaction between the game board and the spells. The sounds are well done and I like both the sound effects and the background music. I like how the army people (healer/scout/etc.) work and how they all have different roles (even though the rock roller guy is an idiot. He clearly would be sent back to basic training). I enjoy building up my town center and accessing new powers and items. It's a fun dynamic. I think the blacksmith items are another source of interesting gameplay and I hope to get more involved with them once I finish doing the other required upgrades.

My favorite game board so far was, I think, level 31. It was the board with the big square layout with all of the middle of the map locked down with chains. I felt it was really fun to work hard on unlocking the chains while trying to defend the tower at the same time. I think level 36 will play similarly to this once I have some powers to deal with the rapid freezing.

As far as game play balancing goes, I consider the elementalist too hard and the bouncy boss (level 30 I think) was too easy.

One more complication with the asynchronous gameplay is when you run into one of your gear check levels. I don't know for certain, but I believe that the elementalist boss and level 37 and 38 were designed to be gear checks. I don't think they are meant to be beatable unless you have certain spells or army guys. I tried level 37 with just a normal druid and not having level 4 spells. I couldn't keep the board unfrozen. I believe you have designed it for players to have the level 4 unfreeze spell and/or the high level druid. That's fine, but when I realized that I needed those spells/items I realized that I needed to collect a lot more lumber and then wait a long time for the spell to research. The spell research timers are very very long. I didn't put a stopwatch on it, but the basic result was that once I saw that timer I realized that I was not going to be able to play any more last night and I needed to keep my computer on all night so the spell would finish researching.

One more game play comment/question - On level 37 there are little glowy outlined squares. I have no idea what those squares are supposed to mean. I think that later on those squares become frozen, but I don't know what the initial glowy outline means. Am I supposed to know what that means? Was it explained somewhere and I missed it? Is it cureable?

Similar to the comment above where a player asked for help reminders about resources, I think it would be helpful to have some sort of pop up/reminder/help system to tell me what effect is on the game board. What I mean is, I don't know if the runes with chains on them are locked or frozen or corrupted or some other sort of bad effect that I am confusing with the other effects. The main reason why this is important is when I have to research a cure type spell, I really hope that I am picking the right one because if I picked incorrectly then I will have to spend another night waiting for the spell research for the correct spell type. Perhaps you could put on the spell research description a picture of the corrupted/locked/frozen rune that the spell is meant to cure. Is there a cure spell that corrects whatever the glowy outline effect is I mentioned in the previous paragraph?

Anyway, I am enjoying the game and I look forward to its continued refinement.

Oh, and in regards to the previous comment about the quests - I like the idea of putting the reward for the quest right in the description. It also would be an interesting idea if you could win items like lumber or minerals as a quest reward. For those of us stuck on resources and are looking for a reason to play old levels again, going back and replaying levels while focusing on quests would be a fun dynamic.

@lazybum:

When talking to support about the Cubicle bug, I received an e-mail back stating that that rapid freezing happening on levels 37 and 38 was a bug. They should be more manageable in updated builds. 36 may have been afflicted by the same bug, but unlike 37 and 38, that level is beatable in the state it was in. I did it first try.

Also, the glowing spaces on the board empower any rune that stops in that square. That rune remains empowered, and when used in a match, it will deal double damage to whoever it hits.

I completely agree about the spell research timers being huge. I can live with the Market for resources, but unless there's some way to use the Market to shorten the spell research time (and item research time), that's going to be the next big roadblock. (And paying for decreased time really rubs me the wrong way, but if it's the only alternative, I'll live with it.) e.g. You can temporarily hire scholars from another city to speed up your current research time (instant 100 second reduction per "unit" purchased).

Perhaps just the spell and item research could somehow be tied to beating levels as well or instead of the above idea. For example, each level you beat takes 50 seconds off of the timers, with a multiplier for each "tier" of 5 levels. (And maybe the first time you beat a level there is an additional multiplier increase.) This would allow people to play through the game in longer sessions without having to wait around.

I understand that the "idle while timers count down" is a valid playstyle that you wish to keep, and that's fine, but there should be an alternative for someone who has 2 hours to sit down and play, and doesn't want to twiddle their thumbs for half of that time or hit a wall because the next spell timer is too long for their play session.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lazybum

but the basic result was that once I saw that timer I realized that I was not going to be able to play any more last night and I needed to keep my computer on all night so the spell would finish researching.

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We really need to get away from this in my opinion. This isn't a valid mechanic for a PC game. There's no reason I should have to a) calculate out a timer to see if it's "worth" playing for another 20 minutes or not, or b) have to leave my computer on so a clock can tick down.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ScrObot

I completely agree about the spell research timers being huge. I can live with the Market for resources, but unless there's some way to use the Market to shorten the spell research time (and item research time), that's going to be the next big roadblock. (And paying for decreased time really rubs me the wrong way, but if it's the only alternative, I'll live with it.) e.g. You can temporarily hire scholars from another city to speed up your current research time (instant 100 second reduction per "unit" purchased).

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Spell research is so unusual. Churning out materials, you need to do over and over and over. Spell research? Total of twenty spells in the entire game. Once you have it, that's it. I agree it seems a bit weird to permanently hire someone to speed up something that you're not doing most of the time. (My village has twenty lumberjacks and they're okay, though apparently that's the limit; I don't have any scholars or armsmasters. Even farmers and smelters aren't as important as lumberjacks - 5 and 4 respectively, though those will be increased when I have the resources to.)

So far, spell research time hasn't bothered me at all. I just fire-and-forget it. Oh hey, I got the resources to learn another spell. Okay, whatev's. Go ahead, do it. Oh right, that spell's done researching. Let's give it a try!

Well, tier 4 spells take 85.5 minutes each which is nearly 6 hours for all 4, and tier 5 spells are 228 minutes each, which is over 15 hours for all 4. I know these are the top tier ones, but over 20 REAL hours of research time (and only while the game is running, and you don't forget to queue another one up)... that hurts my head to think about. :)

I understand that having hard to reach things are good, especially with the end game mechanics, but time-locking these while having triad-based options for the other ones seems undesirable to me. :snail:

You guys have the best smiley selection.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ScrObot

Well, tier 4 spells take 85.5 minutes each which is nearly 6 hours for all 4, and tier 5 spells are 228 minutes each, which is over 15 hours for all 4. I know these are the top tier ones, but over 20 REAL hours of research time (and only while the game is running, and you don't forget to queue another one up)... that hurts my head to think about. :)

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That's a lot, yes, but firing them off and then ignoring them means they'll eventually happen. If it takes you a week of playing to get it done, so be it. Meanwhile, you probably spend at least that much time wood-gathering (which is like wool-gathering, only the epiphanies hurt more).

My thoughts so far? The interface and tutorials are clunky. Also I'd like some info about some things on mouseover. As far as combat, it seems like the winning strategy is to just make matches as close to the bottom of the screen as possible to maximize the chance of getting a streak going. The I think to addd another element of strategy is to have a spell that changes the direction from which the elements "fall". Instead of from top to bottom for instance you cast the spell and they start falling from the bottom up. This would solve the only problem I've had so far which is no matches possible on the last couple of rows..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sonikku2008

...I cannot continue the game beyond 40.

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I'm also stuck here. I've beaten the cube twice (and lost ~6 times) and it just sits there, I eventually have to surrender. Is this expected with the current build?

FYI current stats on Normal difficulty:
Level 4 buildings: Lumber Mill, Academy
Level 3: Foundry, Town Hall, Farm, Armory
Level 2: Granary
Level 1: Blacksmith
All workers purchased
1 tier 4 spell researched (haven't used yet)
267k triads, 1070 population
74 achievements
I pretty much never use gear

0.99.0 is no longer the current build. Go redownload the game from the e-mail you got when you bought it with the discount code, it should be updated to something a little more current.

Edit: Though even in the latest build (0.99.02_27_16) I just pulled, I still cannot complete the level.