Created some Canadian account and started playing around. First impression is very good. Although I have currently not yet the slightest idea how it all works exactly and mostly am still pressing random buttons, it all seems well thought out.
The theme song is also amazing, you guys should seriously release that somehow, I can keep listening to that in the background for ages!
Some points I noticed after playing some rounds (I’m on an iPod Touch)
Sometimes it’s a little big laggy
On the iPod the screen is way smaller then on an iPad, and therefore it would be nice if it would be possible to zoom out a bit more, so you can have a ‘real overview’.
Great job guys, can’t wait to beat the crap out of you all when I’ve developed some secret tactics!
Okay! I’ve just made myself a Canadian account just for Rad Soldiers!
So far so good.
I’m starting the tutorial bit and noticed that the textures on a Retina displayed iPad are a little bad.
Font issues with the speech bubbles. Letters like ‘f’ are being cut at the top on the top line of dialogue. As a graphic designer it pains me to see this.
Okay, am I missing something?! To play in multiplayer you have your ‘Commander’, your ‘Hipster’ and whichever ‘bonus unit’ you choose-that’s it?! To play with any more than 3 troops I have to venture into the in-app purchases…where they want over $5 PER UNIT!? $20 per ‘bundle’?! Don’t get me wrong, I belive in supporting the developers-I have bought everything for Hero Academy,Summoner Wars and Card Kombat-but that pricing is crazy and it seems to be unplayable without spending a fair bit of cash.
Yeah the Price Tags are currently Way above the “usual” Price Tag on the iTunes Store you are seeing in that Genre. I still hope that they cut it down to 1/5 of the current One.
You choose which currency to pay with when you purchase any item from the shop that lists both gold and bux as the selling price. Thus, you can potentially buy all units and weapons in the game without ever spending a real-world dollar.
290000 or 50 RAD Bux (Which would be translate to 27.000 RAD Bux if we would use Gold)
So we could either buy that 50 Rad which would be around $4.99 or play around 58.Rounds of the Single Player Challenge Campaign (500 Gold Coins per Round on Easy)
This doesn`t sound like a lot if you remember that those Rounds take between 10-15.Minutes if you know what you do so to gain Tim Taschman you have to play around nine Hours.
Let`s take a look at the most expensive One:
580000 or 100 RAD Bux (Which would be translate to around 54.000 Gold Coins if we would change Gold into Rad Bux)
So either you go and buy the $9.99 Rad Bux on the Store or play around eighteen Hour straight through to gain enough Gold Coins to be able to buy it.
As already mentioned RAD Soldiers isnt cheap since most of the other Games do sell you for like 5 ~ 10 Bucks all Units while RAD Soldier sells you for the same among only one Unit and we havent even yet bought any better Gun or something else on the Store.
Lets hope that the RAD Soldiers wont get soon either flooded with rich Kids or Hackers that will gain a huge Advance by just using the best Gear in the Game.
Final Conclusion:
If you like the Genre you will love RAD Soldier and it will literally keep you busy for hundreds of Hours till you will own everything in the Game.
While this is said I really would hope that the Game will get sooner or later a Story DLC.
Good analysis. It does seem that multiplayer might be a better source of revenue, however, especially seeing as challenges cannot be replayed for more cash. Intense multiplayer games might cut those nine hours down to far more acceptable amounts of time.
But as you say, since I like the genre and the game, I like the fact that I’ll have stuff to work towards forevah and evah.
I wrote this post over at our common ancestral forum home, TouchArcade, and it might apply to the discussion:
Yep. Though just how inordinate those inordinate long amounts of time might amount to remains to be seen. It doesn’t seem like it will be so hard to reach the higher levels of power, so just like in other potentially well-designed freemium games, IAP seems to be more a matter of purchasing your way into faster access to a greater variety, not ensured victory.
(There are a few games that have managed to walk this tightrope, from Tribes: Ascend, Bloodline Champions and AirMech for the PC to some iOS TCGs, such as Urban Rivals, AC:R and possibly Shadow Era. Even cute little harmless Battle Nations actually stands as a testament to a freemium scheme that still allows non-paying players to rather quickly hit the cap, and gain access to enough of the good stuff to make PvP an even playing field.)
For the rest, playing with a group of friends who all agree to either purchase the same amount of bux, or none at all (this is how me and my async pals do it, and thus, the existence of IAP/bux will never, ever bother us) is probably the best way to have fun with RAD Soldiers, or any competitive freemium game that allows for faster progression (or even actual absolute competitive advantages, the greatest sin of freemium online games) through IAP.
I imagine doing random games as a casual free player might mean you sometimes end up against opponents who have bought their way into considerable material superiority, which might = auto-loss and far less fun. Though I’ve also noticed in the few freemium iOS games I’ve participated in that there is a redeeming quality to the natural human propensity for free stuff, and that is that the number of non-paying players usually outweights the IAPers by scores. So my guess is that going up against the highly IAP-buffed in RAD Soldiers is going to be a less common occurrence (though certainly potentially common enough to be irksome).
However, the fact that there is a customizable squad point limit for matches (units have a point value based on their equipment), and that you are auto-matched against opponents with similar amounts of unit points, can probably help limit the injustice of IAPing quite a bit, and help keep the IAPers away from non-paying players. It might even remove the issue altogether. Decking out units with stronger weapons, regardless of whether acquired through bux or gold, will raise their point values. So, for an IAP-free experience, always limit the squad point value to one that matches the units you want to field, and there CANNOT be much, if any, in the way of IAP-instigated imbalance, no matter how many bux your opponent has spent to unlock better weapons or to progress more quickly.[/QUOTE]
One thing I wanted to say that wasn’t gameplay orientated is that the UI is remarkably unintuitive. It was more counter productive in my eyes. It didn’t seem clean to go from one part of the game to another. KISS is important yet I think it’s being completely ignored just to have colourful buttons everywhere.
The ‘Tap to Start’ s unnecessary glam used for consoles.
A little on the gameplay;
I’d like if it remembered by screen tilt from previous games. infact, I like having it zoomed out as far as possible to see as much of the field as possible but having to readjust every game felt cumbersome. Truthfully I like playing from as much of a birds-eye-view as possible. Yes, I can understand there are pretty animations… With low resolution textures zooming as far as possible out was the best method to reduce the effect.
Bug I found;
Playing the first task/objective game ( sorry, I played quite late last night ) the AI got stuck on turn 3. I know it’s not an exact bug I can describe, It happened, I crashed the app to restart it again.
Great analysis Sanuku and really drives home my point. I love to grind out unlockables but 9 hours per character is waaaay to much. Now after playing multiplayer there does seem to be a faster climb in gold so those numbers might be a bit high.
Here’s the thing-I firmly belive in supporting game developers, especially those who allow to me to test/play their games for free. Unfortunately in this case, my$5-$10 will only get me a soldier and a gun!? Now having said that, having played the multiplayer, the 3 on 3 is actually not too bad at all and 1 more troop is probably all you need, so from that standpoint, I can have a ‘full’ gaming experience for $10. The million dollar question is how long till you NEED more upgrades, and NEED to invest $15-$30 to be competitive online?
Having said all THAT, great game, great visuals, great theme and most of all-the Macguffin Device FTW!
And last but not least, thanks for the pre-release in Canada eh!
That’s shoddy design. A F2P needs to start with the impression that everything is easily achievable only to make things harder once you invested yourself enough into it to justify investing money in it.
I believe people can see really fast that the no-buy play takes long.
Its not like “lets fool people because this is what we do”. I dont believe SD mission is compatible with that. Not obstant all the faults, they dont try to fool us, they love what they do.
So, now that I’ve stuck with it for a week, I thought I’d throw in two more cents. First off, I’m in! This is a solid game with a nice blend between Hero Academy and Great Little Wargame. The muliplayer’s turns are long enough that each turn I get a decent amount of gameplay, which imo is crucial to asynch-multi. On top of that it seems to have a nice balance of ‘casually shooting your friends’ and strategy. Hero Academy is hugely satisfying but can be exhausting with all the ‘math’ that is involved. RAD just feels like the actiony-er version(?)
Anyway, on to my gripe about the costs involved. I still maintain that the pricing is waaaaay too high, but I will admit that after a week, beating the easy challenges and a game of multiplayer, all I need to do is thrown in $10(which imo is a worthy price for this game)and I can now afford 3 more soldiers, which rounds out my team of 6 for multi. That still leaves the medium and hard challenges plus a bunch of multi to pay for a gun or two. However, I think there is a huge missed opportunity with the different ‘costumes’. This is where F2P can nickel and dime you…charge me a buck for a new uniform and I’m in-at the current cost there is now way at all I’d pay just for a cosmetic change. Ditto with the boosts…charge me a buck to have a gold boost and I’d probably consider it but again-priced out of consideration.
All-in-all a great addition to the ios’ asynch-multi landscape. I enjoy the gameplay and I’ve started to feel that drive for ‘just one more game’.
[QUOTE=Donnovan;403455]I believe people can see really fast that the no-buy play takes long.
Its not like “lets fool people because this is what we do”. I dont believe SD mission is compatible with that. Not obstant all the faults, they dont try to fool us, they love what they do.[/QUOTE]
Sure but the more you get people invested into the actual game the more prepared they are to spend money on it. The bar needs to be as low as possible at first.
It pays to have a look at World of Tanks, that game really knows how to suck you in. You can play it for a month or so without thinking you’ll ever need to pay anything, then you reach a point where you realise that just spending a bit of money will get you really far, so you try it once and before you know it your trying out all kinds of new fancy paid-for camouflage designs on all the tanks you gathered just to feel unique.
And what WoT does also really well is that it’s quite generous with in-game currency through special events. This means that you’ll see more often people walking around with special stuff which makes it more acceptable to join in on the fun, nobody can tell if a fanatical high-school kid with loads of time won it through a contest or a someone who can afford to spent money on time-expensive activities paid for it.
Handing out competition rewards like that goes a long way in lowering the taboo on paying for in-game content.
