It brings money to management and jewelopers. And the majority of players that had spent a lot of time in the game, turned it into their daily habit and play a random mooks who try to overcome overwhelming odds (represented by whales) and sometimes treat themselves to a small gift or two. I dug a bit and found out that these games often get most of their income from a small number of "whales" - rich pops who can afford to pay aforementioned thousands of dollars for ingame benefits to feel themselves victors even while they "rest". All of that is sometimes justified by liberal comparisons to a time spent in cinemas and a cost of tickets. One of the players I spoke to had literally said "I spent here a thousand days and at least as many dollars". People play these games for years and keep paying. So, say, if you'd spent several weeks doing an event and then had some family business and missed your session, you either miss out on your goal (and weeks of your efforts!) or spend, say, meagre 2 to 5 bucks to get a chance to get your treasured picture of a building or a new avatar.Īnd it works. And the balance is made in a way that pushes you to pay a little bit of money to get the main seasonal prize (or log in every 8 hours to optimally milk the event). But you have a chance to get "more than your money worth".Īnd the third catch is that the most powerful ingame assets are available only during seasonal events, so you get a "seasonal sale urgency feeling". So you can't get a predefined result with your payment.
The second is that resources that you've bought are first have to be passed through casino-like mechanics: there're ingame analogs to wheel of fortune, shell game and other lotteries. The first one is that you need to spend a lot of money to propel yourself to about a month forward - like hundreds to thousands of dollars. Second option is to spend real money buying ingame resources to boost yourself. And many players don't even try to do it, because it's possible to spend research moneyz on random stuff to kinda turn your city into a functional clone of a lvl 20 twink in WoW. And you'd need to spend at least 10 months to rush through the tech tree because local research points trickle very slowly. To play optimally you have to log in at least once a day or better every 8 hours or so. All player actions ingame are limited by real-time cooldowns. If player wants to develop fast or try and reach the top of the ladder, he has two options.įirst option is to spend a humongous time in the game at predefined intervals. It has a hex-based combat, resource trading system, daily quests and seasonal events - basically, typical stuff from WoW and other MMOG integrated into a kinda strategic city-builder engine.īut at the core of it all it's a casino in disguise. The premise is you guide a city through the ages and fight and trade for it to prosper. It's a very curious thing from a game-design point of view.Īt a first glance it presents itself as a kinda clone of Civ but on a single city scope (it even has a tech-tree with a design resembling civs 5 and 6). Now it's aimed at mobile audience with main target platform being notepads and smartphones. Last year I got interested in an online eurofarm called Forge of Empires.
0 kommentar(er)
