Glitches/Pets and Images/ PlayMage Marketing/Game Desig

Glitches/Pets and Images/ PlayMage Marketing/Game Desig

Postby Zycroft » Mon Nov 04, 2013 2:54 pm

Greetings fellow Dragon Tearlings,

Long time forum reader and game player who has lurked in the shadows and now rears his head to make some comments/suggestions because they were starting to affect my reality.

There are a few of my ideas/comments/suggestions and certainly in different avenues of thoughts so I can gladly start several discussions posts if need be but let's give a go here to start things off...

What's on the menu for today:

1. Glitch
2. Images/Graphics
3. Strategic Marketing for Playmage


1. I play Dragon Tear on both my iPhone and iPad, and a particular glitch has arisen involving the iPad lock-screen, but only on my iPad not the iPhone so far.
I see some great potentiality for manipulation to an unfair advantage if this proves not an anomaly so I figured I should at least come out of the shadows to identify this glitch.
I have seen some players utilizing the strategy of having one of those fire snakes/cobras with incredible defense and intellect stats so that as you whittle down the snake you burn yourself to death hitting its fiery shield. By the grace of something evil I accidentally stumbled upon how to beat a particular snake that previously I never could.

Later on in the course of a battle when the snake had entered rage mode, with its fiery shield up and I knew my pets would just kill themselves like always. Sometimes when you are playing and watching a battle or not touching the screen for a while your iPad/iPhone can enter sleep mode and go to the "lock screen." The first time it happened by accident, and right as my pet was about to attack the snake's fire shield the screen went black. I hit the power button and then slid my finger across the "lock" and Shazaaam my pet had hit the snake's shield causing the snake minor damage, but My Pet took No Damage. I have since been able to get this glitch anomaly to reoccur numerous times allowing in specific situations for me to at least avoid doing damage to and/or killing myself.


2. I love the imagery and the pets are well crafted. Butterfly parrots surprised me a little... but hey. Taking the imagery to the next level I appreciated the artistic insight to have the pets of the game in background scenes or loading scenes because it makes the game more genuine. Sometimes the artistic dichotomies are subtle, but they are there and in my opinion it is those details that make a game high-quality.

To cut to the chase with what I'm getting at, well the first time I ever loaded this game I noticed the loading scene with the little house and the telescope sticking out. There is butterfly-parrot flying by and the turtle with headphones is visible on the flag. And of course there is then the object of my inquiry and dissatisfaction:

Super awesome epic fiery lion running across the loading screen --- My first thought as I began to play the game?------ I want one of those fire-lion things.

Many many hours later I have come into capturing a blue fire kitten, upon which I see that the third evolution (I presupposed was the Lion) looks almost the same as the first evolution Kitten!?
So I wait and yea I get the whole fire "lynx" thing, working our way up to lion and it sounds better than fire "bobcat."

This was right around the time that new graphics were released in an update and I was surprised to now see that my opponent's fire lynx or whatever they were had multiple heads!? Maybe cool I thought, but seemed like a glitch. Then I finally get to evolve my Lynx and I get a Cerberus. There's just too many things wrong with this and I don't mean to be so critical because I don't want to cast too much of a shadow over what could have just been some guy's crazy idea at work some day "Hey let's have a three headed Fire-Lion!!"

But seriously. Cerberus is a three-headed DOG from Greek Mythology. If anything let's cancel the Lynx, keep the two-headed beast called cerberus or whatever for symbolism of second-tier second evolution pet, but then for the love of Dragon Tear can we please just make the Fire Lion epic already as the designer of the loading screen had already envisioned!!?

Bottom line: If there is going to be that incredibly enticing awesome picture of a fiery lion running across the loading screen image, than I say we had better be able to catch and fight with that creature or what's the point of even having it there?

The Fire Lion should not be just a scaled up image of the kitten version for that matter. Can we just see the same pet from the loading screen?
And no offense but let's not give the Lion a guitar or a microphoney stage gimmick.


3. I've said a lot already and rather than go far down the road of the mathematical systems your game uses to generate "random" rarities items pets and all that jazz, because they appear to be much more statistically patterned than randomized... I just want to propose a final HOORAH to this hopefully insightful discussion post.


For the sake of people like Coolguykev or Poop or Infernal or Asterus or dare I name names because I can't remember to name them all, but the whole notion of "What Keeps You Coming Back"has been discussed and thought about a few times.

I am not going to try to tell Playmage how to run their business, as much as we all think of this as just a game, but I am a super big fan of win-win situations and I would like to propose a situation to be food for thought.

People download this game and play it quickly and easily and they get caught up in grinding for the rare stuff that becomes necessary to vie for any kind of competitive achievement (arena rankings or dragons).

Having players like CoolguyKev or Infernal unfortunately skews the profitability for Playmage, because these elite players get gems repeatedly instead of having to spend cold hard cash for them. Its possible this could lead to more people spending more gems to try to keep up with the repeat weekly winners and such, but ultimately what the game needs is a way to wipe the slate clean.

Arena does this on a weekly basis, and I propose that the whole game does this bi-annually or annually. Let's say once a year PlayMage adds 3 new pets their respective 3-tier evolutions. But, and more importantly, PlayMage changes out the powers and special abilities. So Kongs and Parrots won't always have the same attractive advantage, but more so that players are forced into a leveled playing field. Statistical analysis of your gem spending ($ earning) over the course of dragon tear I presume shows that people compete more intensely when the playing field is most level. So if people have to vie for new pets with new weird abilities you wont have a swamp of purple's and absurdedly high-leveled pets and dragons to suck up all the gems you feel like giving out for free. Also I am not going to go into it in too much more detail because I think someone would pay for all the strategic insight I have, or I am just boring and you want this post to end, but I think that strategic gem offerings in game would encourage spending. Say you figure out what situations people are most pressured to buy even the smallest amount, and then you offer a two-for one or 50% off gems to suit their exact needs in that moment. Giving away many gems to entice the buying of any gems cannot be a detriment because the entire system if rankings and competition resets.

Obviously there are always going to be naggers telling Galileo that he was wrong because most people don't like change until they try it out for a while. I already foresee the real fans of this game likely clinging to their purple pet friends and gems with screams of heresy and that the game shouldn't be changed so dramatically if not at least for an awesome firey lion that totally should be in the next update.

But then I ask you true veterans what keeps you coming back?... because I think you need something... and its not more gems or levels. If you worry that leaving this game forever would mean those 40 hours you grinded for my pretty purple pet would be 40 hours of your one life that you wasted, well then, vote for change and make things more interesting or you can just keep doing the same thing over and over and over, grinding and grinding like most people did with their teeth when Galileo challenged their thoughts about Life and Change. Dragon Tear is not at the center of the Universe! Earth IS!



And back into the shadows from whenceforth he came. That's right. I just came.
Zycroft
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Nov 04, 2013 1:49 pm

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