We're not doing a Diablo loot system (Which is what Zenonia and so on use) for this game. It'll be more like what we did for Mage Gauntlet, where the loot isn't randomly generated. We're mostly doing this because our loot will actually attempt to be different from each other in gameplay, in many cases changing each character's abilities, rather than an endless treadmill of tiny stat upgrades. Though we'll probably have to do a Diablo-loot-system some day, because it's such a great psychological hook. It really speaks to the same parts of your brain that are involved in gambling. Even if you look at the system and they're really all just, you know, tiny stat upgrades. Almost all characters retain the "random, one-use inventory" thing from Mage Gauntlet. Many characters have a mix of that mechanic and reusable abilities you can select that use mana or other item drops to replenish. I don't think I'll guess at a release date until it's like a month away from coming out.
This is sounding fantastic! Gunners with twin stick shooter type controls? Dungeons levelling up each time you beat 'em? YES PLEASE
Really excited for this. Rocketcat are easily my favorite developers, and Mage Gauntlet is my game of the year.
The gamer in me is super excited to see this on the horizon! Mage Gauntlet has been my go to title since it was released! Love it! And Kepa was so responsive to even the smallest problem I might have had (that stuck in the wall thing for instance!) that I look forward to this game even more! The moderator part of me needs to remind everyone: Read this section of the rules: I don't think there is a person on these forums that would NOT want to beta test a Rocketcat Game, so it probably goes without saying Kepa has a big pool to choose from. Let's just keep to the rules. I just had to delete a couple posts, I don't want to have to do anything harsher k?
I think we're mostly going to be using local testers and other game developers from now on, besides any beta testers we already have. Just leads to way more usable feedback. In any case, I don't think we'll be doing a huge call for beta testers or anything.
First of all, I'd like to say thank you for Mage Gauntlet. It's one the best games i've played in awhile. And that's saying a lot considering its an iOs game. Thrilled to hear a spin-off is in the works. But I'm really hoping that the game's feeling doesn't change too much. It sounds awesome that your improving the loot and leveling of the game BUT i hope is still a great fast-paced action-adventure. I love the idea of a fully fledged dungeon crawler, but the truth is, to me the MAIN appeal is it's a GREAT reminiscence of awesome oldies like Castlevania SotN and the Original Ninja Gaidens with a touch of flavour and storytelling of Zeldas and Secret Mana. It's great that you guys are experimenting the concept with s spin-off, but I hope when MG2 comes it stays the same MG, but even better. Looking forward to see how this game develops
first off i have yet to finish mage gauntlet but i will do so in time, the system is phenominal and i really enjoy the uniqueness of the game. adding more characters in time will really help and although i've never really played random generated dungeons this is a definite game i will play. please i beg of you don't make the game (pay to have fun) type deal because it will take away from the company as a whole as gamevil's zenonia 2 did.
Let me just say.... I'd kill for some multiplayer capabilities over wifi/bluetooth/or even internet. The biggest thing I've been looking for in games is multiplayer capabilities. I really enjoyed Mage Gauntlet... Imagine that dungeons leveled up a few times, but that the highest level-up or two of the dungeon could only be beaten co-operatively. That would be really fun! Probably just a far fetched fantasy....
MG2 will still be story based, but with less of it shoved right at you. We're going to try to make it so the basic story is really easy to understand, with lots of extra story if you want to find it (books, and towns with characters to talk to). I consider the MG story a bit too wordy, especially in that first chapter... We're thinking that there will be a character list, and to the left of that list an icon that shows today's free character. You can play as the free character without restrictions (no energy restrictions, no Gameloft keys, no enforced waiting, no paywalls). The next day, the free character changes to a new character. To play the previous character, you either have to unlock it with gems or wait until the "free hero" rotates to that character again. As we add characters, we'll probably either bump it up to two free characters per day or have special days where multiple characters are free. Anyway, that's what we're thinking so far. It's a system we absolutely did not completely steal from League of Legends. I think an important part of making a free game is letting the player unlock everything 100%, without ever paying a cent, as long as they're patient. Temple Run does this, Tiny Tower does this, Team Fortress 2 does this (well, TF2 really makes you work for it but the idea's there). Our get-you-to-pay idea is simply that were will be a lot of classes, so it's easy to unlock one but gets kind of daunting to unlock them all, especially if we keep adding characters. That said, I think we'll have a single item you can't unlock just by playing. It will be called the "Rocketcat Party Room", it will cost 20 bucks, and it will just be a room that always spawns on the first floor containing Gnomey, who points at you and screams. I am serious about this. We'll do a multiplayer game eventually, but honestly it's far off. PC porting is a higher priority, but after that we'll probably do a multiplayer game. There's a lot of added hassle with multiplayer, and I'm not even sure if it leads to more sales on iOS. Though it definitely leads to more sales on PC, hence PC porting being a higher priority before we tackle multiplayer. Anyway, I hope that explains our thoughts on multiplayer. SOME DAY, but it has to be done in a way that justifies the extra work.
Sorta. No "lifetime unlock" for all future characters, the only things we'll sell as IAP is that party room and different "gem packs". To give an idea on cost, I'm thinking the 20 buck gem pack will cover instantly buying all characters we put in the game on release, plus all characters we put in the game for the next few updates. We may also have a bank that lets you convert gems to coins, which we absolutely did not steal from Tiny Tower. But we're trying to keep the amount of IAP down to like one buyable currency. It seems like the sleaziest F2P games have multiple currencies. I don't have a lot to do today, so I'll be around a lot for questions.
how many characters do you think will be avaliable after all the updates, and what kind of characters are you planning on giving in the updates, or a hint at the very least. game looks great and i love the art style
As this will be a game with leaderboards, how do you folk plan to fight the classic ability to simply BUY your ranking (i.e. will one be able to spend buckets of cash to get all of the extra lives they're willing to pay for?)?
Ones I want to add in updates: Gnomey (Legend of Zelda parody): Though we're thinking first day buyers will get this both free and like a month or two earlier than anyone else. A dual-wield berserker class, an evasive unarmed monk class, and an attack-pet class, rounding out the D+D class tropes. A hunger-based monstrous character, and a shapeshifter character. With the 6 official classes on release, that adds up to 12, total. Could do more if the game is really popular, on request. I think we've covered most of the traditional RPG classes, though.
You'll simply get a lot of coins/gems naturally by playing, and we'll design and pace the game around the assumption that the player is using the free-character-system and never actually buying gems. Also, gems and coins are only used to buy things between games, no Zenonia style "do you want to spend a dollar to ressurect?" because that's crap. We'll have consumable money-sinks, but they'll be limited on both their power and how long they take to acquire.
so what exactly happens when you die? You're given a chance to play the dungeon again for free with the unlocked class of the day or do you have to wait x amount of time?
"Free Class of the Day" means you can play as much as you want for that day. So if you die, you hit "retry" and play again. If you unlock a class, what you're really getting is the choice to play that specific class any time (Edit: or rather, any day) you want. We officially will not care at all if someone just plays whatever class is free that day and 100%'s the game that way, because we don't want to have a "pay wall" of any sort.
So let me get this straight, this is an endless randomly generated rogue-like game, with different classes that level up and can obtain loot? Does the loot level up? do you unlock abilities you can upgrade? Is Gnomey freakin awesomesauce as usual?!?
gnomeys pretty cool Loot's like Mage Gauntlet, except now chests mostly contain stashes of gold coins. You can use coins to both unlock loot right away (as opposed to having to find it) or to level up loot you've already unlocked. We're putting more of a focus this time on loot giving you different abilities, like a sword that changes what your charge-up attack is or armor that changes what your side ability is. Also, some classes will have multiple abilities they can swap between, in either the pause menu or a quickswap using a simple gesture. More info is sprinkled on the facebook page previews about the different classes, or conveniently in the first post of this thread. Edit: Actually it looks like more info isn't there, because Facebook ate my post where I talked about how loot worked. The Rogue section (not posted in the first post yet) briefly talks about what her loot does, though.
