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Post by credeiki on Dec 15, 2011 15:42:39 GMT -5
Right, my problem is that I don't frequent gaming fora either, so it's unclear what the most appealing way of advertising this is. Do you make some sort of disclaimer about the clunky interface and lack of graphics, or do you let people figure that out by themselves? Do you emphasize that we're evil warlocks killing each other in hell, or just sell it as a strategy game and don't really talk about the excellent setting?
I guess I'll write up a blurb this weekend and post it here for critique.
Studying the forums is what made me decide that I needed to start working on this project...and which made me decide that the goal is to program a functional and semi-competent ai, not a tactical genius.
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Post by succat on Dec 15, 2011 18:47:24 GMT -5
I can only repeat what I've already said - I sincerely think that discussing (promotion of) different games in separate threads leads to a more structured discussion. And I sincerely think that making mountains out of molehills in separate threads would also lead to a more structured discussion... but anyway... Credeiki, I have found that recruiting absolutely HAS to be an ongoing activity... unless maybe you pay for advertising, but I have never paid for advertising so I don't know. If promoting Warlocks is anything like promoting the-game-that-shall-not-be-named-on-this-thread, I would say to set goals, like, say: Post in 3 forums every evening (or something that works with your schedule). Also, I would try wording your descriptions differently to see what works and what doesn't. I wouldn't necessarily say anything like, 'the game has a clunky interface', but I would rather shine light on everything that makes the game great and makes you want to play it. You could mention that it has a cool retro look to it, or that it has a fun melee feature that makes it exciting to play with friends, etc. Definitely post links and images to Warlocks in your posts and also try as best as possible to describe the game action in a nut shell without going over people's heads. Also, I've noticed on rare occasions that when I tried recruiting people from a completely different type of forum, I have, very rarely, gotten a curious person to come over and see what all the hype was about. It's kind of a shot in the dark sometimes... just like when you're trying to shoot Bio off of the spires in the middle of the night after a bottle of vodka
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loyus
Ronin Warlock
Posts: 20
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Post by loyus on Dec 18, 2011 16:37:50 GMT -5
When I was active I promoted the game on a couple of gaming forums and I tried to get some friends to play it, but it never really lasted.
RavenBlack did an awesome job with Warlocks when he made it a true web game, I would have never discovered it otherwise. But time has passed and the game didn't evolve for too much time.
The core concept is the same one as Waving Hands and Firetop Mountain, it is excellent and still has a great future. But Warlocks is now a too stark incarnation of it for the year 2012.
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Post by credeiki on Dec 18, 2011 18:43:00 GMT -5
"The game didn't evolve for too much time"--do you mean the gameplay or the website?
If the website--Not everyone requires graphics to enjoy games: as I mentioned, there are still many fans of "roguelike" games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike). I don't really think you would get many more players if you included an explosion graphic every time someone cast fireball.
I'm curious--how is warlocks too stark? Do you just mean in terms of layout? Yeah, the blue and black is kind of jarring and outdated, but also kind of pleasing after a while. (Of course, this is from someone who chooses the 'old-school terminal' theme for her gmail...)
As for gameplay: if you're a player just joining, you presumably don't care if dominant strategies haven't evolved for a while, because it takes a lot of gaming and reading to even figure out what the dominant strategies might be.
I tried posting a recruitment ad at the tail of the erstwhile warlocks thread on xkcd, but since I created an account just to post that one ad, it looks like it didn't pass through moderator approval. Possibly someone who is already a member might want to revive that thread? OurJake?
Also, Loyus, consider briefly becoming active again; since you're one of the first people I played, I'm interested in seeing how we match up now that I'm not as terrible.
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utis
Ronin Warlock
longing to see were it but the smoke leaping up from his land
Posts: 29
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Post by utis on Dec 19, 2011 17:37:08 GMT -5
I don't think that advertising, active recruitement, graphics or a more appealing website or a new game engine are the most relevant issues.
When I first read the original Weaving Hands rules, several years ago. I thought "Oooh that sounds interesting." I checked out the ancient Spellcast implementation. It didn't have an AI, and besides that I couldn't fathom any strategies for this game, it just seemed confusing.
A couple of years later I thought about it again, googled, found Firetop Mountain and Ravenblack. But again: I found it confusing and there was no AI with which I could fool around. Just going into some match with some established player? Without even knowing whether this is a game that I'd like? That rather feels like a) an intrusion into an established (and small) community and b) like a commitment that I would have to make before I could even find out whether this is a game for me. So I went away, again.
Yet another couple of years later, it came to my attention again, while I was reading about some other web game. I thought "Well, that Weaving Hands game really sounded interesting. Maybe I should give it serious consideration?"
Fortunately, this time I happened upon Slartuckers Refuge. I read articles on strategy and tactics by Taliesin and Slartucker and I thought: "..., this is deep, this is intriguing, I definitely WANT to play this." I asked in this forum about how to start. I got friendly response and happily made a fool of myself in some VFs. In some of these I got some friendly advice. It dawned on me how I should think -- not to be good (I'm still terrible), but so that I know what I'm doing and get an idea why I lost and what I should do next time and, in short, how to experience this game as a challenge and not as an overwhelming confusion.
What I'm trying to say with this sappy little story is: this game has two problems. Problem 1 is to get interested people into actually trying this game. As things stand, you have to be either extremely dedicated or internet-asocial. The latter type of people are the ones who accept a challenge, do one or two turns, lose interest and never come back again.
Granted, optical appeal (whether with graphics or just by getting a more appealing web-design) would help. But the actual appeal of this game lies not in any graphics it could have. I seriously do not think that this is really important. Once you get the basics, the optics don't matter much anymore.
The other problem is setting people on track, in other words: enabling them to cope with the confusion and help them make meaningful experiences with the game. Slartucker's Refuge is sweet in implicitly promising a interesting, challenging and rewarding game ONCE you get beyond the initial confusion, it does not in itself help much with it.
I don't believe that it's necessary to actually restrict the list of spells on the side of the engine. Many spells are rarely used anyways, the spells cast most often are just a few. I believe it would be enough to just *recommend* a restricted spell list for absolute beginners and tell them to use only these until they get the hang of it.
I do believe that there's a potentially large use-base for this game. Look at how many people are interested in challenging board games (the ones that outside Europe are called "Eurogames"), like Dominion, Agricola, Puerto Rico, Carcassone. Even in the age of video games like Skyrim (or whatever it is called, I lack the harddware to even think about it) or Infinity Blade, the market for these is obviously large enough even on a platform like the Ipad. Take the group of people interested in games like Puerto Rico, abstract the ones for whom the emphasis in "board game" lies on "board", abstract from the remaining group the ones that wouldn't get over the lack of graphics, and you still have a group large enough to make this game an absolute hit. I don't think it would actually need much advertising, word-of-mouth could get more than enough people, provided, we'd find a way to deal with those problems.
I shouldn't actually talk about this yet. But since it came up: I was meaning to suggest that the active players volunteer to offer open challenges for absolute beginners, with a set match description that should be copied and pasted, so that at all times there is at least one such challenge open. The idea is not so much to provide "tutorial games", but to stand in for a lacking AI. The experienced player would be free to do whatever he or she wants (with the possible exception of turn 1 ParaFoD, the matches should last a couple of turns.)
The match description should also link to an introductory text -- preferably on a site like strategywiki.org --, with a restricted spell list and a couple of tips (the ones on Ravenblack are too general and, if my memory serves, strategically outdated).
As it happens, I actually wrote the draft to such a text and sent it to salvor today for review/comments/possible co-authorship. I'd rather not say much more until I hear back from him.
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utis
Ronin Warlock
longing to see were it but the smoke leaping up from his land
Posts: 29
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Post by utis on Dec 19, 2011 18:45:39 GMT -5
Clearly I'm at a high point of enthusiasm for this game--winter break project is to try to recreate the game in python so that in the future I can play with the thought of writing an ai. If you're doing it in Python, don't forget to drop it on Sourceforge or another open source hosting site. I don't see myself writing much code in the near future, but I have to admit, as soon as I logged in again today after a pause, I was already toying with the idea again. At the very least I'd be curious to read somebody else's code as a substitute. (Though, I hope you're not going to hardcode the rules.
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