Hero Academy by Robot Entertainment - Free (Worldwide Release)

[ArtNJ]

The Hero Academy League is now open, see post above, and filling up VERY fast. 43 of the 50 initial slots were taken (in less than 24 hours).

We do hope to open more slots after we see how it goes.

[Cydoval]

I'm looking for good active challengers battle me at cydoval

[ProfitOfDoom]

In my opinion, this game would really benefit from fixed game times with chess style move timers per player.
This is how things are done with Ascension which is a great implentation of async multiplayer. This way you can choose to find a game, or create a game of fixed length (10mins to 7 days) and then you can play a quick game with someone, or make a game that lasts all week depending how much time you have to play.

Sometimes, I just want to play a short flowing game of Hero Academy, but almost always, I am waiting hours for moves to be made and i'm struggling to really get in to it (and no way to practice with AI).

Also, is there a way to tell if your opponent is live and watching the game? Would be good to see the opponents status like in Ascension (fanboy much? ) this way you can estimate if your opponent will move soon or not for a while

Liking the game a lot so far and apologies if these are repeat points from someone's earlier post.

[grenadedodger]

Ascension was exactly the same when it first came out, it was only after a lot of negative reviews regarding the game abandonment issues did they implement the timer, so hopefully Robot will take note and put it in it's next update (along with dwarves!).

[DaviddesJ]

Definitely it would be good to support faster games and slower ones. Although I think you also need some reputation system, otherwise people might sign up for fast games and just move slow anyway, and what are you going to do?

[ArtNJ]

We just did our first expansion of the Hero Academy League, and are up to 80 members. Nearly 40 games have already been played, and TA's Juuicetin leads the rating list.

If you requested an invite on robotentertainmentfans.com you should already be in. If not, go to that website, click Hero Academy on the left, click League, and you will either be let in or added to our wait list.

[ProfitOfDoom]

Originally Posted by DaviddesJ

Definitely it would be good to support faster games and slower ones. Although I think you also need some reputation system, otherwise people might sign up for fast games and just move slow anyway, and what are you going to do?

If you don't complete your moves in the alloted time, you forfeit the game and the opponent takes it as a win regardless of the score of the game in progress.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally Posted by ProfitOfDoom

If you don't complete your moves in the alloted time, you forfeit the game and the opponent takes it as a win regardless of the score of the game in progress.

Fine, but if there's no tracking of wins and losses, no effect as to whether you win or you lose, then why would anyone care?

[ProfitOfDoom]

Originally Posted by DaviddesJ

Fine, but if there's no tracking of wins and losses, no effect as to whether you win or you lose, then why would anyone care?

True.

I suppose the main aim of the time limit is so you can choose to play a short game if you wish, and have some kind of guarantee that you are playing with someone else with the same intention. Got 30 mins spare? Sign up for a 30 min game with someone and play the whole thing in that time.

Before this can work though, you really need to be able to stay watching the game while your opponent moves, rather than going back to the games menu and then waiting for a notification.

[grenadedodger]

I hope they implement both to be honest. In fact I'm somewhat surprised it wasn't there to begin with, especially with a game that has no single player at all.

Got high hopes for this game, I think that the community features in it will be as important as the teams in the future, things like guilds, elo rankings, tournaments, stat tracking etc will be essential to long term replayability. Of course new content is always nice as well (minus the quite frankly ridiculous pricing model they currently have, though that may be a hope too far).