User:Piotrus/Review

I was going to post it at Google Play for a review, but apparently there's a size limit. Here it is:

This is a long and detailed review with notes to devs at the end. TL;DR summary: a good game with great potential, a bit similar to EVE Online MMORPG, but resource intensive and crippled by an idiotic online only requirement. Nonetheless quite playable as it is, give it a try.

Cons: -2 star.
 * 1) ) Online requirement. Why? This is an idiotic design feature. The game won't start if not online; while it will then play (for a while) the loot tables seem to check if you are online and if not will roll empty cans. I have not tested story progress offline but in either case not being able to start or farm offline is annoying: no game for you on the airplane, for example, and if you cannot tether/get reliable wifi, just forget about it :( This is IDIOTIC, didn't the devs hear the hate for the new SimCity always online issue? And I can't even recall another non-multiplayer Android game with such a feature.
 * 2) ) The game is the second most resource intensive games I've seen on my device; only ME3: Infiltrator was worse. It has one of the longest loading times (often - several minutes), and after a while it lags into unplayability requiring restarts and memory refreshes. Any serious multitasking (going to another program) will cause the game to lag and/or restart, too. Those are the two major faults that make me deduct two stars from the review. Everything else is minor by comparison.
 * 3) ) No easy way to restart game or have multiple accounts.
 * 4) ) No way to go back to prior sector for farming or simply to show a friend how the story progresses
 * 5) ) if u do minimum farming the game is relatively short (45 missions), however weekly events and dev's promises to add more missions mostly nullify this.

Pros +3 stars
 * 1) ) Honorverse setting - add a star if you are a fan; if you are not download officially free ebooks
 * 2) ) Good graphics
 * 3) ) Good user interface
 * 4) ) Good design for touchscreen devices
 * 5) ) Addictive farming
 * 6) ) Free
 * 7) ) No need to pay to finish - but be a good gamer and buy something, devs have to eat too.

Notes for devs
 * 1) ) Nothing in this tells u about book/comic/movie tie in. Sell your franchise better. Offer some freebi for likes on Facebook, downoading free ebook that Baen makes available anyway, reading a comic sample, watching movie trailer,...
 * 2) ) Marketpkace sucks. I bought 5k points for 5$. First, I'll note that there are good Android games with no in-app purchaes that cost less. Second, all I could buy for it is a random rare component that the odds are good will suck. I won't pay the outrageous price - 20$ - for enough points to get a legendary component that may also suck. Compare this to buying MtG cards - your rare cargo pods equals two magic boosteers - and their content is resellable unlike ToH components! With farming, nobody would spend points buying plasma or metal. Warp charges, perhaps. All of those can also be generated by components. Speeding up training/upgrade is not something I cared to do yet, I have time, I'll wait. My suggestion is to drop prices significantly, it's not like u have a limited supply. I might spend $5 or $10 to equip my ship with high end components, I certainly wont do it for $1,000+ which your current prices require if I wanted good odds to draw the best legendary components... No, I am not saying in-app purchases in general suck, I am just saying that (like many other games) you are offering products that are either of little value or overprices (or both).
 * 3) ) You know what I'd gladly pay for? Longer game. Add more story, and I'd gladly pay $5 for a pack of 50 more missions every month or so.
 * 4) ) Use marketplace to sell extra character slots (so you can play more than one concurrent game); paint schemes for your ship; brainstorm a little for other ideas.
 * 5) ) You could improve your pod sales if your components were tradable/resellable to other players. You were clearly inspired by EVE Online, implement the market which makes that game work. You could also charge commissions on sales, or for access to that market.
 * 6) ) Multiplayer. 'nuff said. (But eliminate lags first or you'll drawn in hate).
 * 7) ) Allow replaying past live events. Not for free, this is one of those things you should be selling in the marketplace. You've already coded them, so what do you have to lose here?
 * 8) ) Your tutorial doesn't explain all, expand it. It should be replayable. Also your FAQ is poor. Do the smart thing and officially endorse the ToH wikia (http://the-secret-fleet.wikia.com/). Your main ToH website already endorses the Honorverse wikia. If your options menu in game would allow one to launch the ToH wikia in a browser, you'd add a great help section for free instantly.
 * 9) ) Voice acting. I know it costs. It is also very cool. Slot it in for a roadmap.
 * 10) ) Non-linear story progression; or at least allow players to chose the order they do various missions in.
 * 11) ) Revamp useless components. I'd assume you'd collect stats on which components players use; check what else is crappy (most damage prevention stuff, probably). For starters - anything related to fires is a joke. Make them more dangerous; how about fires make you lose plasma/metal, and temporarily damage components (don't make people furious by permanently destroying them; how about uninstalling them and giving them a cooldown of 24h before they can be installed again). As things stand, engineering department ability sucks. Nobody would ever level it up, repair costs are dirt cheap. Change it. How about adding warp points or speeding their generation up?
 * 12) ) Did I say that it often lags on my device. Further optimization to decrease resource need and speed the game up would be nice.
 * 13) ) In-universe things you have not implemented but should be possible. A) Different missile ranges B) More pronounced varying missile speed 3) Double broadsides achieved through rolling 4) Chase combat (using forward/aft launchers) 5) Energy weapons 6) Fighting with multiple opponents at the SAME time. Yeah, I know those won't be easy. Just add them to the roadmap. Oh, and make roadmap publicly available... it's not like you have to hold to it. It would be cool to know what's coming, though.