I've never played Words With Friends before so don't really know what I'm talking about but hypothetically there are tons of quality word formation games (like Wooords, Quarrel Deluxe, etc). Provided there is reasonable computer AI single player mode seems feasible.
Games like words with friends just seem MADE for multiplayer, despite the fact its just scrabble. The game is meant to be played in short bursts, so that you play the game in between things... you take a turn, wait a few hours till next player takes their turn and so on and so forth. Games can take days...
From a boardgame app, I'd most certainly expect AI opponents to play against... Pity, seems I'll skip this one.
Yeah I'm really disappointed with no single player. Tilt to Live is one of my favorites and this game made me super excited but alas I'm not much of an online gamer.
Initially I was saddened by the lack of a single-player mode, but I'm starting to think there may be an advantage to not having one. For many iOS games, the multiplayer community dies out very quickly, especially if it's not a casual game like WWF. By only offering the multiplayer mode, they may be able to extend the lifetime of the Outwitters online community. I just hope they have come up with an easy to understand tutorial for people just getting the game, as being thrown immediately into a multiplayer match is not very newbie-friendly.
Picure this: If you've ever played Disc Drivin', try to imagine it with single player. You can't. That's just like this game. You can't really make a single player either because it would be very hard to make the AI for Outwitters. You are able to spawn more characters for your team if you have enough "points", and being able to determine whether or not to spawn more characters is a hard decision to make. Also, making characters that are stronger also cost more points. That would be hard for the One Man Left Studio to make the AI make their own decisions and choose which characters to send into battle. I shouldn't be revealing more than I have already said.
It would hardly be unique in being difficult to create an AI for. Even if a skirmish AI isn't possible, even a set of set scenarios would be better than nothing.
Let's just say it doesn't fit. It would be boring after about a few levels of the single player. I will definitely suggest it to them or at the least, AI opponents.
roadmap? Now that the call for beta testers is a week old and we haven't heard anything since, I was wondering when you will start accepting beta requests assuming that you haven't already. As you might have already guessed, I sent you a beta request the minute I came across your call a week ago and am very eager to help you tune Outwitters for prime time. No round based iOS game has grabbed me thus far and I have a suspicion that Outwitters may finally hook me. I do have to add though, that I have not tried them all for different reasons.
http://toucharcade.com/2012/03/05/gdc-2012-were-sold-on-one-man-lefts-outwitters/ Outwitters at GDC. Screenshot is from an old version though :/
This sounds great. Hero Academy is in this space but they really screwed up the community aspect of it, with no player rating or matching of any sort. If you can get that part right, that will be a huge win. It has to be not fiercely competitive (Elo ratings are only interesting to the top three people on the list), but it has to have a way of putting players together with appropriate opponents.
We already are and continue to do so on a weekly basis so if you haven't been picked yet just hang tight. We're still at GDC so a new batch of testers won't be added until next week.
Commencing to hang tight. From the previous version of the GDC-preview article, I glanced the following piece: I am very concerned about providing additional armies via IAP as this is bound to produce balance issues down the road. Seeing as this statement is nowhere to be found in the current version of the article, this may have been an unfounded point to begin with. Would you care to elaborate on this?
It seems pretty pessimistic to think that new armies will create balance issues. I haven't generally seen this as a problem with similar games in the past. There's little incentive for developers to turn off their new adopters by giving them armies that are weaker than what people can pay for.
I am looking at this from a rather general point of view. Let me explain. In order for the IAP team to make any sense (i. e. there is an incentive to buy except aesthetics) there need to be differences to existing teams. These differences, no matter how you balance them will give the IAP team advantages over some teams and disadvantages over other teams. One way to alleviate this (in my opinion) is to let all participants in a game only choose from teams that are available to all, therefore the possibilities are even. Example: Player 1 has purchased IAP Teams 1 and 3 Player 2 has purchased IAP Teams 1 and 2. In a game between player 1 and player 2, they can choose any free team or IAP team 1. IAP team 2 and 3 are unavailable because the opposing player does not have access to it respectively. Alternatively, I would agree to a system where anyone can unlock any team given enough time or skill and IAP is just the shortcut. Although I have to admit to not knowing the developers point of view on that model.
