I really hope devs will reconsider their no async stance. Game is superb, possibly the best solo boardgame on the App Store (together with Elder Sign: Omens for me)....and boys I tried to play multiplayer (which is fantastic) with friends....but it's just impossibile for me and I can't understand how people can do it. I was able to complete just one 2 players, no AI game, with house rules to speed up ending...lasted more than 2 hours. So we both had to be online, with no disconnections. Tried several other times...4 players is just impossibile (we gave up at the 4 hour mark)...and other times hiccups in network or urgent things made us give up. It's a pity, because the game is fantastic and while AI is good, it really SHINES when played against friends. I know there are a ton of interactions, especially with mages, and I perfectly know it's not funny to be notified for 30 seconds just to do nothing because you do not want to use any interrupt spell....but I would take that any day for the possibility of playing with my friends. We would end up playing 'almost' realtime anyway but with the convenience of being able to interrupt at any moment without screwing up the game for everyone else...be it for 5 minutes 'kids emergency' or for 1 day. I might add that the game, being able to see at a glance the situation plus you can see the cards of everyone, is perfect for async...you could pick up a month old game and be able to continue even without remembering the history of the game. I also dislike the fact I can have just one game per time. Many times I was in the middle of a (saved) game I couldn't continue because e my opponent was busy...and I couldn't start another one with a friend available...just because I would destroy the previous game. Do not get me wrong, I LOVE what devs made...it's brilliant, a perfect port, and they are really committed to support it with the wonderful expansions...I just think the lack of async (maybe because of the PC heritage...where async and notifications are not popular) is a big one on iPad, where the game is absolutely perfect. I do not think cross platform, which is surely appreciated, will get onboard many new players or radically augment the number of online games (and the number of expansion bought, I'm sure) . Async would, imho. I know for a fact I would play it A LOT MORE, and I know several friends who would do the same (they haven't bought the game yet because of async lack...yet we play daily TONS of async boardgames...from Carcassonne, to Battle of the Bulge, from Lost Cities to Ticket to Ride, etc...). Just my 2 cents....I see the potential hassles, but the gain would be a major one.
Hi (I'm one of the devs). You do raise some interesting points about asynch, but I'll just explain why we opted not to include it. We're well aware that games of Talisman can take quite a long time to play and it's because of this that we added lots of extra rules and options to speed things up. Bloodbath mode and rules such as 'Race to the Crown' dramatically shorten the game length. Luck also plays a part (as it does with all things Talisman!) and I've seen Dwarf players get to the Crown and win in just a few rounds! Because of the length, we really wanted to include an asynch mode, but the stop/start nature of the game really didn't seem to work with it in our opinion. The main problem is the spells and the reactionary nature of certain actions. We thought that a player would spend longer waiting for the game to load than they would actually playing their turn! This is the kind of scenario I imagined would ruin the experience... You get a notification that it's your turn. Load the game. You have a 'start of turn' spell, such as Acquisition. You see that another player has an object you want so you cast it and choose them as the target. In this scenario, if someone has Counterspell or is playing a character than can grab the spell being cast, your game would end there. A player who has Counterspell would get a notification, then load the game. They would then be shown the situation and have to decide whether or not they wanted to cast it. If not, they would have loaded the game just to do nothing and this would happen every time someone casts a spell. That doesn't sound like a very good gaming experience to me. There are lots of situations like this in a typical game and we've added lots of expansions and extra characters that increase the amount of inter-turn actions that could occur. I'd be surprised if someone would consider that to be a preferable experience to playing in real-time, and to be honest we've had no requests for it either since the game was released. The thought of asynch play really does appeal to us though and as I'm designing our future games I'm certainly keeping it in mind. The lack of players to play against has been a problem and that's why we're working on cross-platform multiplayer right now. Very soon we'll be updating all platforms to include it and then there will be lots more people to play against. I'm glad you're enjoying the game anyway and I hope this goes someway towards explaining why we haven't included asynch. Carl
Thank you for you answers. It's all fair and I knew about those problems too and imagined why in the end you choose so...I think there could be countermeasures to some extent (like...totally skip notifications for players without spells, or relevant ones...could be complicated but would do wonders in many situations....in my experience...both the real boardgame and the digital game...counterspells are not the vast majority of the game, on the contrary)...and personally I still think the (boring) situation you depicted would be better than no async at all. It's similar to what happens in Eclipse when you launch your missiles....or in Carcassonne when you move the Dragon. (still I play it daily). Ad even...usually async doesn't mean people play 1 turn everyday (could be with strangers...but I usually play with close friends as I think many do)....usually I play 1 hour straight....almost realtime (and notify my opponent if I have to quit for longer)....but I know I can quit anytime and continue later, in 1 day or 1 month. I know I can answer a phone call without fearing the game will drop for everyone, I can go to the bathroom, talk with wife, check mail... As it is now, it's just not possibile...and it's a bigger problem in Talisman because games are super long. Just my two cents...I hope all the best for you but personally I do not think cross platform will increase that much the number of players. I have friends with PCs...and we are waiting for the update to try to play someday...but it will be a coordinated and seldom affair, not a daily thing. And it's a pity, because your game and the digital implementation rocks. But hey...maybe it's just me...I do not know any number nor have the number of completed online games figure...I just know that out of 10 times I tried I was able to complete just 1 game and I won't try it again soon (sadly). Anyway, I do thank you!!! Keep up the good work and bring on the expansions!!!!
Oh I forgot something. I do not know if it's a technical reason on your servers, but I really do not understand the 'just one online game per time' limit. If I want to pause an online game I can....but while waiting for my opponent to be available again, I can't start new mp games with others without losing the previous one. This limits the number of online games even more. If not async, at least I would like multiple online games (not concurrent of course). But still the connivence of async is hard to beat.
I for one am of the opinion that adding async will solve the lack of players problem on the iOS platform. At its current state I will never play online because it's too stressful. My boardgaming friends are all from various time zones and given our busy schedules it's near impossible for us to arrange for a real-time play session. With async we can definitely finish a game, with real-time play + save game we will never manage to see it to the end. Just my two cents.
So I've had my eye on this for a number if months now and feel like right now cool be the perfect time to pounce on it for $.99. Only have one concern though. I read some of the reviews on the App Store and many of them are complaining about their IAP purchases being wiped clean and not coming back after restoring purchases. Anyone on here experience this or can the devs comment on this? Also just want to make sure this will run on the latest operating system.
I prefer async but don't think that it solves the lack of players. I think it actually had the opposite effect on some games...Galaxy Truckers and Eclipse are two examples...and I think it is because you have to wait a long time for your turn and when it does come you don't have a whole lot to do. Async really works well fro some games and does nothing for others. It all depends on the game design.
I'm lazy, so I apologize in advance if this was answered, but can you buy the season pass through steam and access it through the ios app?
The 'long wait between turns' isn't a inherent async problem. It's players problem. If people plays with random GC people it's a given (I never do). Even the fastest async games, like Lost Cities, suffer from this. If you play with friends it's almost a non issue. Forcing people realtime doesn't solve anything....If I could play realtime I would with async too....if I cant....I won't play at all. It maybe be just a problem of mine (I do not think so). If yes I really would like to know the number of daily completed online games compared to other games. And I would really know how the hell people can play it, especially with random people too found in a lobby, in a game you have no clue beforehand if it will last 1 or 6 hours. I play a ton of async games daily, all with known friends (scattered in every part of the world) and for some games we play almost realtime back and forth, completing daily games....async it's a just a huge convenience: we couldn't do any of that without it. The real 'requirement' for async IMHO is that you can see everything at a glance without having to enter too much menus or read a log before taking your turn to be effective....this is something that depends on gme mechanics (Talisman is perfect in this regard IMHO). Many async games I constantly play have some parts that suffer from the 'you do nothing or very little on your turn' but I still enjoy and play them. Let's take for example a much played game: Carcassonne. When the dragon is in play many times you just move it in a forced direction...game takes more to load than you to take the turn. Game is fantastic anyway and the majority of time my opponent answer the move almost immediately (not days after) so the flow of the game isn't broken. But I coudl do the same example with a ton of games. It maybe could be just me, but for me, SURELY, async would mean a ton of online play with Talisman, many other friends onboard, many mor expansions sold. I do not think I'm alone but ehy, it's not my game. Other two recent games suffering from lack of async are Witcher and BattleLore Command (where is planned). Another game potentially great that doesn't seem to have that much online games is Space Hulk (there is async but they forgot notifications due to the PC heritage, not even by mail like Siltherine does) so it's pretty useless on iPad. And I could go on and on. I do not like Galaxy Trucker but I could play the turn based variant with no problems at all and complete several games. Eclipse is too buggy to play IMHO (it's been a while) and the gameplay mechanics IMHo doesn't suit async play that much because you need to know the history of the game and if I recall well, they do not even show your opponent last move, ruining the experience. I could be wrong because I deleted the game long ago, but the problem was the implementation, not async inclusion.
Just do an async implementation similar to what is implemented in playdeck games. Playdeck added a time limit option for async games. Like 30 minutes timer (30 minutes per player). It guarantees less than an hour of playtime. I loved playing nightfall and ascension because of it.
I never said there was something wrong with async. I said async is not the cure all to make a game popular. I didn't mean that async was the cause of long waiting times between turns. I said that async games where you wait a long time (because of the players) and then have little to do are not suitable for async. That is an implementation problem...the same thing that you guys are saying...so we agree. But one thing. When i say not having a lot to do during your turn is bad, I mean during an especially long slow game (quick games in this caes are ok). But you may use PBEM chess as an example of an async game that is successful... you could end up waiting a long time, and then only move one piece during your turn. But chess is different because that move you make requires thought. How much thought you put in to it is up to you. But some games actually force you to effectively do noting when you turn finally comes up. Many times in Galaxy Trucker, when my turn rolled around, all I could do was watch what the other players did and then tap one button which was like a 'pass' or 'ok', and then my turn was over. Boring gameplay like that results from a bad implementation of async. And people will stop playing instead of flocking to the game.
Hi. This was a problem with Apple's servers that affected a very small number of people and for most it was a simple case of rebooting their device to fix it. Most people didn't have this problem. Unfortunately, people rarely go back to edit their reviews once their issue is solved. Today is the last day of the $.99 sale, so it's certainly worth a purchase!
I just posted a 5 star review to the AppStore with the bit of info about rebooting your device to restore purchases, hopefully it helps a bit.
Thanks very much for that! It's frustrating that we cannot respond to reviews, like we can with the Google Play Store, because often people misunderstand some of the game's mechanics and assume they're bugs. Much appreciated.
Might be kind of gimmicky but a shake your phone for dice rolls would be kind of cool. Leave an option to turn it on or off.
We had that for Talisman Prologue, and it was fun at first, but became quite annoying after a while. We could make it so that if you shake the device too much, all of the cards fall off the board
Please tell me (if you're able to) that the recent mega price drop (by App Store standards) isn't cause this platform's turning into a financial dead end, foreshadowing the cessation of dlc for the iPad version...
