Strategy MMO made with HTML5

[mansim]

Keeping development of this game and reached version 0.7. 

 

This is about Chess reality, where Chess is a huge army and can build towers, walls, upgrade or destroy them. This is a Map-Builder MMO where every new player spreads the whole map.

Looking for feedback of the current development version.

 

 

 

Game video: 

 

 

You can try out this game on ArmyGrid (development server)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RNull]

@mansim Hey. So I just checked your game and while I didn't analyze it in depth I can tell you that it has quite a big problem. I didn't understand anything. You should understand that when a user doesn't understand a game, most likely he/she will just leave it rather than try to get information. The "tutorial" in the beginning looked promising but still left me with absolutely no clue on what was going on after it stopped showing pop ups.

I did like the battle animations however when the battle ended the interface just got stuck. I needed to close it manually and there was no clue that I should have so I was waiting for 2 minutes to happen something. I understood that in order to create a field there is a timer right? I just moved too fast to create another field just to find that the previous one was not created ( Due to the timer not being finished ). I had no clue that would happen and took me literally 1 minute to figure it out ( which is a lot ! )

What I mentioned was just the UX side of things. On the UI side, the graphics aren't very inviting. the maps don't blend well with one another, it has quite a rough feeling.

Probably you have done a very complex game however, I don't think you will gain any users if you don't do major changes. Don't get me wrong I am not trying to discourage you, I am just trying to provide a constructive feedback which hopefully, you will use to improve your game!

Cheers!

 

[mansim]

Hi. Thanks for this very useful feedback! 

I plan to open alpha only in 6 months, so i will change a lot. And this game final release date is in 2.5 year. Now there are no graphics, only placeholders, they are not nice. I will buy graphics. 

I know that this game is difficult to understand. So i have implemented tutorial, but seems it doesnt help a lot. I need to find out how to make it clearer. Maybe better graphics helps with understanding.

When battle is finished, player needs to close it manually now. I didnt think it can be a problem. Gonna fix it with improving tutorial. Same with moving when the figure is under construction, needs to implement confirmation box.

Your feedback really helps me understanding what i have to fix, because these fixes are the easiest ones and gives most influence

 

 

[RNull]

18 hours ago, mansim said:

Hi. Thanks for this very useful feedback! 

I plan to open alpha only in 6 months, so i will change a lot. And this game final release date is in 2.5 year. Now there are no graphics, only placeholders, they are not nice. I will buy graphics. 

I know that this game is difficult to understand. So i have implemented tutorial, but seems it doesnt help a lot. I need to find out how to make it clearer. Maybe better graphics helps with understanding.

When battle is finished, player needs to close it manually now. I didnt think it can be a problem. Gonna fix it with improving tutorial. Same with moving when the figure is under construction, needs to implement confirmation box.

Your feedback really helps me understanding what i have to fix, because these fixes are the easiest ones and gives most influence

 

 

Wow, you have quite a long-term plan there . 2.5 years is quite a lot. Are you sure you want such a long time-span ? I would suggest releasing a version with a minimal number of features but it should be a solid version and then add from there. It may be likely that what you have thought isn't something players enjoy so you may pivot during the way. I would focus really on defining a M.V. P ( Minimal viable product ) and then add or remove features later.

Also another thing which caught my eye was the definition of M.M.O. M.M.O literally means scalable multiplayer game. So you are already thinking about scaling in a big number of servers world-wide to handle thousands of users right?  

[mansim]

Yes, i will do exactly this MVP with alpha version in 6 months. I mean, final release with everything polished and perfect will be in 2.5 year. I plan to have monetization already in alpha version and look for players, maybe start some kickstarter before launching this alpha.

I have fixed these things you said, should work after hard-refresh with ctrl+F5 in-game.

This game is MMO and has unlimited map size, which increases with every player. Now i have a demo server which is weak and can hold like 10-20 active users. I will rent a good server in 3-4 months where i can hold like 200 active users (at once), or totally like 10k registrations on one server. 

[RNull]

2 minutes ago, mansim said:

Yes, i will do exactly this MVP with alpha version in 6 months. I mean, final release with everything polished and perfect will be in 2.5 year. I plan to have monetization already in alpha version and look for players, maybe start some kickstarter before launching this alpha.

I have fixed these things you said, should work after hard-refresh with ctrl+F5 in-game.

This game is MMO and has unlimited map size, which increases with every player. Now i have a demo server which is weak and can hold like 10-20 active users. I will rent a good server in 3-4 months where i can hold like 200 active users (at once), or totally like 10k registrations on one server. 

My idea of MVP is a little different. Basically you choose the basic features you want in your game. Define some alphas and betas for that release and there you have your full release. During the way you add or remove features based on user feedback.  I for example am developing a MORPG ( I have taken off the massive here, not my aim in the first release ) for which I have huge features planned. However I am developing the basics which would make my game marketable and am releasing it. I may not add another feature to the game, or I may add features I hadn't thought of, however I do not hold dear to my initial thought features. Whatever I develop after the first release is an extension to the game.  However I think it's just a matter of perception

I will give your game another try and hopefully be helpful with some other feedback

 

[Antriel]

Just keep in mind that scaling by throwing better hardware at the problem isn't really scaling, and has its limits while being lot more costly than actual scaling (i.e. spreading the load on multiple boxes). Properly scaling multiplayer games is pretty big and complicated topic (and usually includes things like low latency fault tolerance and moving players between machines).

[RNull]

24 minutes ago, Antriel said:

Just keep in mind that scaling by throwing better hardware at the problem isn't really scaling, and has its limits while being lot more costly than actual scaling (i.e. spreading the load on multiple boxes). Properly scaling multiplayer games is pretty big and complicated topic (and usually includes things like low latency fault tolerance and moving players between machines).

Agreed. You need to have already thought out your server-side architecture the right way for it to be scalable. However I presume you have already thought how to do it .

[mansim]

Yep, i know how to work with architecture in server-side games and how to make it scalable. I am a backend browser developer. 

 

[RNull]

4 hours ago, mansim said:

Yep, i know how to work with architecture in server-side games and how to make it scalable. I am a backend browser developer. 

 

I am sure that the complexity will surprise you. Multiplayer servers are a hard task even for professionals, let alone scalable MMO's which are an order of magnitude more complex. How long have you been working on this?

Btw I gave another try to your game. I figured out how to build a wall and a tower ( you need to work on that, I don't think this is the best way UX wise ). I also understood that npc soldiers came to attack me. I didn't understand the purpose of the game and after 5 minutes I became bored so I left. You being a backend developer makes sense why the game lacks so much in UI and UX. You need to work most on the things you lack so to compensate for the rest. Probably I will give it another try later on and provide more feedback for you to use.

[mansim]

Thanks man, your feedback is very valuable compared to all others i had

I think i have a clear vision how to build scalable server for MMO. But yea, i am bad with graphics, UI, UX  The last 2.5 years i worked only with programming, preparing it for scaling, and this month i am starting little on design.