Empire of the Eclipse - An online strategy game of epic proportions.

Discussion in 'Upcoming iOS Games' started by LeeDot, Dec 16, 2010.

  1. Wilbair

    Wilbair Well-Known Member

    Aug 13, 2009
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    $1.99 /mo sounds reasonable for an game like this.

    And i dont bother to pay every month a small amout of money for an epic MMO game that isnt full of extra IAP that give people advantages:)
     
  2. glennarbor

    glennarbor Member

    Feb 24, 2010
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    sounds fair to me, I can fall over and make $1.99. Hopefully the app itself is also $1.99 to download (includes first month), if it's free it will surely suffer the fate of children downloading it for free then leaving flaming one star tantrum reviews when they find out otherwise. If it's $1.99 they won't even download it to begin with and thus can't leave a review.
     
  3. sapphire_neo

    sapphire_neo Well-Known Member

    Jan 20, 2011
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    A few questions to temper my hype,

    1. Does this require iOS5?

    2. Is it universal? (retina was mentioned in the title post, and a vague mention of universal)

    3. Will there be any consumable iAP content? (at launch or in the future)
     
  4. LeeDot

    LeeDot Well-Known Member

    Apr 22, 2010
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    Glen - It's a free download so you're right we may get some flaming because people didn't read the description. Since our game is account based it's very portable so we didn't want to charge someone to download the game just because they're putting it on a new device.

    We'll see though if it's a huge problem we'll look into addressing it in a future update.

    Sapphire - No, Empire requires iOS 4.0 and higher. This is due to the subscription system. The game runs really well even on 2nd gen devices so long as they have 4.0

    - We have have plans for an iPad native client. It will be a separate download but it will be free. Since the game is account based and using our own servers you'll be able to pick up and play your game from any device that has the game installed on it.

    - We have no plans for IAP consumable content. In the future we may offer something so that people can run their own private game which may require a separate IAP purchase.
     
  5. sapphire_neo

    sapphire_neo Well-Known Member

    Jan 20, 2011
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    I hope the iPad client will follow the main release soon, looking forward to playing the game.
     
  6. fatecreatr

    fatecreatr Member
    Patreon Bronze

    Mar 1, 2012
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  7. nosoup4crr

    nosoup4crr Well-Known Member

    Apr 29, 2011
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    The game looks interesting -- like some merger between starcraft and kingdom conquest. I have a few questions, if you don't mind answering:

    1) In regard to development, is this game being treated more as an ever-developing project where new content will be regularly added? Or is it more on the side of a finished project that will be slowly tweaked to perfection?

    2) Are there rewards? Is it simply a matter of moving up on a rankings list, gaining advantages in future games, or something more abstract?

    3) If games take days/weeks, is there any concern about what effect the absentee player will have on results -- whether that allows for his neighbors to settle his "starting area" or go to war with someone who will be using default space battle rules?

    4) How large are the games? How many players are in them? Can you play more than one at a time? If you die early on in one game, will there be other opportunities to play immediately?
     
  8. LeeDot

    LeeDot Well-Known Member

    Apr 22, 2010
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    fatecreatr - Yes, it's similar to OGame but with no purchasing of dark matter and a more graphical interface, though honestly the first time I'd heard of OGame was when someone told us our game was kind of like OGame.

    nosoup -

    1 - We see the game as a living document that will grow and change over it's life. We've put a lot of work into ensuring that we have a fun, stable, and balanced release but we're sure it'll change over time and we already have a long list of additions we'd like to make from supporting additional clients (ipad native, android, etc..) to new in game technologies and win conditions. Recently one of our testers posted this comment in a discussion on our forums and it's the kind of experience we'd like to keep delivering even after launch -
    "At times it has felt like we had personally ordered a dev team to create a game just for us the way we wanted it."

    2 - Right now it's just rankings though we do have plans for additional rewards down the road. We'll go into more detail about those later but we'll be avoiding giving players any sort of power bonuses for winning since that would unbalance the game over all.

    3 - I'm not sure I entirely understand the question but yes, if a player goes absentee they'll probably have their territory taken over. (though the game does have customizable options for sending you push notifications when various things happen.) The pacing / design of the game has been designed so that people can put in 15min to an hour a day and remain competitive. Some strategies are more time consuming than others so it depends somewhat on how you approach the game as well.

    4 - Games can vary in size from 2500 sectors to 90,000 sectors.* In terms of players the size of the games can range from around 10 players to 1500. We have room to increase the max size quite a bit higher than that but we thought 1500 would be a good starting cap.

    Yes, you can play in multiple games at the same time.

    If you're eliminated from a game you can sign up for another game immediately but it can take up to 24 hours for that game to begin since the galaxy isn't created until the server is full or 24 hours have passed. There are also tutorial servers where you can't be eliminated and there are no wind conditions that can be joined at any time.


    * A solar system takes up one sector. The fastest base level ship takes 2.4 minutes to travel across one sector.
     
  9. nosoup4crr

    nosoup4crr Well-Known Member

    Apr 29, 2011
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    good info. thanks for the timely reply.
     
  10. Wilbair

    Wilbair Well-Known Member

    Aug 13, 2009
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    After seeing some of the tutorial videos, I just want to play the game. Hopefully it wouldnt take long for Apple to aprove.

    In the mean time I had a question about the ranking system.
    How will that work? Do you gett point for the place you ended in a game, our will only the number 1-10 gett points. Our is there some kind of average score calculated over all youre games? How about playing multiple games at once will they all count for youre ranking?
     
  11. LeeDot

    LeeDot Well-Known Member

    Apr 22, 2010
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    Wilbair -

    You receive points for a variety of things in a game which are all added up to give a final score for that game. A player's global ranking score is then the average of their last seven games so long time players don't have an inherent advantage over new players beyond the experience and skill earned through playing the game.

    As for what contributes to a players score per game the following items are what contributes to a player's score. There are several things that award points to players aside from winning so even players who don't win a match can do things to improve their rank.

    · 1 point for every 1k worth of objects created or destroyed. (RO Value is multiplied by 25 for this count)

    o Self destructing objects do not award points.

    · 10k points for collapsing a star.

    · 10k points for destroying a planet.

    · 1 point for every sector explored.

    · (1k * # of players) points for winning a game.

    · ( 500 * # of players ) points for being the first rank player of a specialty type per game.

    · (100 * # of players) points for being in the top 10 ranked players of a game.

    · 1 point for every 2k of resources accumulated but unused at the end of a game. (RO Value is multiplied by 25 for this count)

    I should note that the scoring system won't be displayed in the release client but the scoring is still being recorded on the servers. Since scores aren't added to the global rank until after a game is complete it seemed like something that would be acceptable to include as part of our first update. (which will be out before the first game is complete.)
     
  12. KushyKush

    KushyKush Well-Known Member

    Aug 10, 2010
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    Glad to hear this will be released (relatively) soon. Any ETA on that?
     
  13. Tommet

    Tommet Well-Known Member

    Apr 5, 2011
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    Looks amazing, but no offline single player...

    No buy. :(
     
  14. LeeDot

    LeeDot Well-Known Member

    Apr 22, 2010
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    Kush - Just waiting on approval from Apple, we'll let you know once it's been approved.

    Tommet - Thanks for the praise. We know there's a lot of folks that prefer single player but we're a small team and adding a single player component would have added a massive amount of work to an already ambitious project. Ultimately our passion is with making multi-player games so we decided to stay focused on doing that well. You're probably familiar with these already but in terms of single player 4x games both Ascendancy and Starbase Orion are good choices.
     
  15. glennarbor

    glennarbor Member

    Feb 24, 2010
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    If you want single player get Starbase Orion, i'm looking forward to the multiplayer aspect of EotE
     
  16. VaporKnight

    VaporKnight Member

    May 18, 2010
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    Computer Engineer
    Canada
    Ending a game

    How does a game end exactly?

    I presume if there is only 1 player left standing that would be one condition, but if you can win through other means than there must be some kind of trigger that ends a game or is it a static time limit on each game?

    Looking forward to it!

    -VK
     
  17. admo

    admo Active Member

    Apr 6, 2010
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    I think from what I read, the games ends depennding what specialty you pick at the beginning. So, if you pick trader, you need to get a lot of money, a warlord needs to kill all or a number of homeworlds I think, and a researcher needs to build teh ascension device. So, whatever player hits their goal first, wins. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
     
  18. DaGreen1

    DaGreen1 Well-Known Member

    Mar 9, 2012
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    A monthly fee? That sounds a bit much. Are you going to bill from appstore? like, if someone prefers to pay through the gift card, are you going to bill that way through the credit?
     
  19. LeeDot

    LeeDot Well-Known Member

    Apr 22, 2010
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    Hi everyone,

    I'm very sad to say that our Empire of the Eclipse has been rejected by Apple. Specifically we've been told that their subscription system is not intended for use by apps that are not periodicals.

    As you'll hopefully understand this leaves us in quite a bind as our entire business model is centered around Empire being a subscription based game. We've submitted an appeal to Apple and in the meantime we're working on hashing out some alternatives approaches. Our focus remains to provide everyone with a truly competitive online experience and whatever solution we come up with will be made with that in mind.

    Realistically we're probably looking at a month or more to retool the game, test out the new changes, and then resubmit to Apple.

    Thank you for your patience and if you have suggestions on how you think we should go about monetizing the game we're happy to listen. Keep in mind though that as an online game we have ongoing costs that make a free or single purchase option unsustainable for us.
     
  20. LeeDot

    LeeDot Well-Known Member

    Apr 22, 2010
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    Vapor - Admo is correct, your win condition is determined by your specialty. Traders need to collect large amounts of ore, Warlords need to destroy a certain number of planets, and Researchers need to collapse a number of stars so they can build the Ascension device.
     

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