Star Traders RPG - (by Trese Brothers) - Universal App

[nightc1]

I guess it doesn't hurt to try this for free... but I'd rather have a free version to try and a paid version that has all the content in it since I don't buy IAP.

It's my understanding that on the Android Marketplace, due to the rampant piracy, that in order to make money you gotta put everything good behind IAP. In the AppStore market there are a lot of people willing to pay for stuff if it's good and they have some way to demo the game. Experience on Android doesn't equal AppStore experience. Yes this game is in a niche but there are so many millions of gamers that even a niche done well could do well. I think the hardest thing is just making people aware of your game existing... but IAP alone can cut out a significant portion of the market for any game.

I love turn based games... I love space operas. The pictures in the appstore don't look like a space opera at all. If I didn't see this thread here... I'd never know this game existed.

Best of luck to you. I'll still try the free portion of the game. It's just a shame that is as far as my time will go with this game since I have a few other big space operas to play through.

[undeadcow]

I'd be curious to hear your impressions, nightc1. Star Traders RPG strikes me more as a science fiction economics/combat sim than a space opera (space opera is such a vague term anyway).

Originally Posted by nightc1

I guess it doesn't hurt to try this for free... but I'd rather have a free version to try and a paid version that has all the content in it since I don't buy IAP. ... but IAP alone can cut out a significant portion of the market for any game.

It is a shame if this is the impression of the App Store community. There are a lot of sham free-to-play rip-offs that exploit in-app purchases by locking things behind expensive consumable item paywalls but Star Trader RPG is not one of them. This game has a one time unlock fee of $1.99 to enlarge the playing area and add content that is fair and not exploitative of users.

[gosenbach]

Undeadcow: Thanks for pointing me to this game, love it. I saw the hyperlinked tag in your signature on another forum section..

Since you have played this a bunch. does it really play much different as the other available classes?

[undeadcow]

Originally Posted by gosenbach

...Since you have played this a bunch. does it really play much different as the other available classes?

I think the biggest advantage to unlocking the Elite IAP is the larger map size, this is much more satisfying than the free version. I haven't noticed a lot of variety across classes but some of the impact is subtle. There are different market prices and combat encounter rates. One of the good things about Star Traders RPG is the amount of detail in how universe location effects those things depending on what class are in but that can appear slight but because this is such a detail oriented game it is important.

Let us know how you find Star Traders RPG.

[nightc1]

Originally Posted by undeadcow

I'd be curious to hear your impressions, nightc1. Star Traders RPG strikes me more as a science fiction economics/combat sim than a space opera (space opera is such a vague term anyway).

Played about 15 min or so of the game. Correction more like 5 min of the game and 10 min reading. I haven't encountered any battles yet (only completed 2 missions) but I lost a bunch of crew trying to explore the wilderness on a planet. I can see this being a pretty deep game. It may be playable on it's own without the IAP. Having less content for me is not a negative given the flood of games I have to play.

Originally Posted by undeadcow

It is a shame if this is the impression of the App Store community. There are a lot of sham free-to-play rip-offs that exploit in-app purchases by locking things behind expensive consumable item paywalls but Star Trader RPG is not one of them. This game has a one time unlock fee of $1.99 to enlarge the playing area and add content that is fair and not exploitative of users.

Oh yeah, I wasn't trying to imply this was a sham... I just have a no IAP stance. It would take some miracle like Sega porting Shenmue and selling it for free with IAP to unlock the rest of the game for me to cave in... beyond that I can't think of anything. I've not been scammed or anything like that, I can see that stuff a mile a way (especially consumable IAP ). But I just am old school and it was hard enough going digital and only getting a file to backup to itunes... it's another to buy content that maybe one day won't be available because a company flopped and they pulled the app from the appstore (and I'm not even entertaining the thought that Apple could go under or anything). If I can't back it up to my PC... it really isn't worth me purchasing.

[Ayjona]

Originally Posted by nightc1

I just have a no IAP stance.

IAP is just a content delivery method. We do developers a great disservice when we decry all IAP as evil. Selling an expansion through IAP (like how Fishlab sold the expansion for Galaxy on Fire 2) is not only completely unrelated to selling in-game currency and paying to remove paywalls, but is actually a great service to the player (as the alternative would be to have the customer download a separate app, which would also require a custom cloud sync solution if there are characters to be transferred).

The IAP of Star Traders RPG is much like that. Nothing that unbalances gameplay, but simply an App Store version of one of the oldest commercial software traditions in history: shareware. Try, and pay to unlock the full game.

There is no doubt that the vast majority of IAP are used for nefarious purposes. But it would be a shame if this trend invalidated a mechanism that can be a boon to players and developers alike.

[nightc1]

Originally Posted by Ayjona

IAP is just a content delivery method. We do developers a great disservice when we decry all IAP as evil.

I'm not calling it evil at all... It's just if I can't backup the purchased content to iTunes on my PC then it seems like a waste to me since I'm not keeping games on my 16gb iPhone 4S forever.

You bring up a good point with galaxy on fire 2. I actually bought both the HD and regular versions of that game to get one of the IAP only parts for free. If devs create alternate ways to get content updates then I'm cool with that. If this dev released a non-IAP paid version of this game... I'd consider buying it. It's not like it would be that different code wise to have two versions. Many devs in the point & click market do that.

[Ayjona]

Originally Posted by nightc1

I'm not calling it evil at all... It's just if I can't backup the purchased content to iTunes on my PC then it seems like a waste to me since I'm not keeping games on my 16gb iPhone 4S forever.

Good point. Luckily, it is fairly easy to implement a restore purchases feature/save IAP purchases in the cloud, so that IAP once bought can never truly be lost. (Unfortunately, this does not go for consumables bought as IAP. But fortunately, many of us couldn't care less for those )

Originally Posted by nightc1

You bring up a good point with galaxy on fire 2. I actually bought both the da and regular versions of that game to get one of the IAP only parts for free. If devs create alternate ways to get content updates then I'm cool with that. If this dev released a non-IAP paid version of this game... I'd consider buying it. It's not like it would be that different code wise to have two versions. Many devs in the point & click market do that.

I can't really see any tangible difference between a light version with a full unlock and a version that is full from the outset (provided there are mechanisms in place to allow IAP restoration in the unlock edition), but yeah, if there is a sizeable demand for it, perhaps most devs should consider that, just because of the stigma attached to IAP. I wonder, though, if there are not other less desireable effects to splitting the game into two different apps...

[Daxmort]

I'm hoping I won't get attacked for this, but could I ask a Fallen a quick off-topic question?

I got a Kindle Fire HD for Christmas, on which I was looking for some more in-depth games; I came across Star Traders and Cyber Knights, the latter of which I picked up immediately, the former that I picked up soon after. I'm just wondering if you plan on continuing to release updates to Cyber Knights too, and also hopefully not jumping ship to the iOS store if it takes off?

Just saying that as one of the first (good) indie-games I picked up for my new tablet, it'd be a huge loss to see you guys leave development of the Kindle/Google Play/Android stores to just work for the iOS platform.

Otherwise, keep up the good work! I hope you guys get the exposure you deserve, the games are awesome.

[undeadcow]

Cyber Knights looks promising; I wouldn't worry about these developers going iOS exclusive given the lukewarm reception they appear to have received here. Any chance for a Cyber Knights iOS edition?