Ola stickmen. Or just me cause I really doubt someone is reading the devlogs. Let's talk about what hapened last month with the game and the Core Strike initiative. This will be a long one.
Three core parts - features, changes based on data and bugfixes.
I made a post on reddits /rDestroyMyGame. It's a place where people, very gently, point out all the bad points about games. It is used to get required feedback to improve the game with stuff I did not see. And trust me the post went kind of viral in terms of throw everythning bad with the game. But if you take a look at what most people say - you can infer critical points for improvement.
Among them are eye pain, contrast issues, background looks like AI(which it is), controller too default and too big, inconsistent fonts. All those points are you know, may be pretty obvious to most people, but apparently not to me.
Controller changed. Now the default one is grey and smaller, so you won't look at it all the time but mostly at the game. Significant changes to the UI, like making buttons larger, change background of main lobby and colors of texts, added shadows where needed etc.
Added post processing. Moved to better render pipeline in Unity. Now all the scene is a bit darker so you can more easily see the characters, and darkness changes with time of day. Like at day it's 90% brightness, at evening 80% and night 70%, so you really get the feel of time changing which is cool. Also added during night vignette effect, so it feels like the things far from you darker which contributes to the night feeling.
Post processing add small anti aliasing to smooth lines did a great job. Apparenty, it's a common sense to everyone except me that straight lines cause eye focus, so blurring the background and less critical elements will cause less eye pain and more focus on the game (and hide the fact that backgrounds made by AI).
So yes, it was worth the post on /rDestroyMyGame. Definitely.
Another irrelevant point is nailing compliance. As you probably don't know, the regulation stuff is pretty intense. I literally read very boring legal documents for around a week. Now FTB has an age gate, if you are in europe we show the consent window, and if in USA show opt out button. If in age gate you selected that you are a kid no data collection happens. We tweak ads settings to show stuff relevant to your age. And if you are an adult and opted in we show personalized ads, which increase ad revenue by a lot. Like a lot is by x10 times at least.
This allowed to open the game in Google Play also to ages below 13. Now FTB is available for ages 5-13 too, which is cool additional audience. Of course made changes to protect these audience types - from hidden socials, heavily moderated chat, no option to enter info anywhere and not showing in game friend recommendation menu after death. This is another important update that happened this month. Also nailed the terms of service, privacy policy stuff on the website. Yeah was boring but necessary.
As I said in the previous devlog, we started collecting analytics from players. What time played, what rewards gained from chests etc. So apparently, someone found a way to exploit some points in the game to quickly level up and gain rewards. I fixed it obviously so sharing here.
The other, solo method, is that in Battle Royale game modes, as lava moves and bots die in factory points all spawn in the spawn point not covered in lava eventually. Strong enough stick can more easily farm those 13 bots and also, gain huge amounts of XP, this time solo and with only one phone.
You know, I knew about these issues beforehand, just did not expect the game to be so important to someone to abuse them. That's really cool! Those who found it and abused those points - Congrats! you earned the rewards and chests and skins and everything. But of course to not break the game economy had to nerf these points.
When player spawns he is level 1. He has no value. This way cannot just spawn die non stop because to gain value, player must gather value - xp orbs, eliminate other bots or players(non level 1 players) etc. As those level 1 players that just spawned give less xp than small xp collectible, it's not worth doing the trick and better just to play.
More points that were fixed are - we observed that like 80% of XP source people got is from missions, only 20% from gameplay. The issue is that the missions are currently in an awful state, where they just refresh non stop, completed automatically(you don't need to click claim) and pretty banal. I plan a relatively big refactor to missions soon, but while it did not happen nerfed the XP gain from them by twice. This way now around 56%-60% of xp gain is from missions which is bearable. Want people to get rewarded in a balanced way from completing objectives and just having fun playing.
Another point is the 'please review us' window that pops up, usually, after 20 minutes of playing in the arena. Statistics show that huge amount, like 80%-90% clicked on sure in please review us button. It was pretty sus, considering that very small number of those actually left the reviews. The issue was that to protect against impulse clicks, I hid the buttons 'no thanks' and 'never' and show them only after 3 seconds to force people read the dialog. Most people just clicked sure probably. That's poor experience. Now made the 'no thanks' and 'never' buttons seen, and after 1 second the no thanks becomes clickable and 'never' after another second. It's important to show that there is option for 'no'. The 1-2 seconds timeout remains(not 3) to protect against impulse clicks without reading, but now statistics show more normal numbers as people do see the fact that there are negative buttons as they are not hidden, just unclickable for a short time.
Hohohohohoho. It was an interesting one. Like one month ago the crash and ANR rate were jeeez - very bad. According to Google bad ANR is considered above 0.47%. Mine was 6%-7%. Crashes were below threshold which is around 1% but still pretty close to that - around 0.9%. There were, apparetly, two very critical bugs that were fixed and helped reduce the levels back to normal, and even great. First - game activity issue. Google provides something called GameActivity which improves games window stuff. In Unity the game engine uses by default older version with known ANR bugs. Replacing it to a new one fixed the issue and reduced the high percents to normal - around 0.5% which is above but still close to being below the bad threshold.
But when I tried to connect to the asian server, where I have around 300ms ping (in EU I have around 80ms), then the game began to crash and have ANRs that even crashe the Unity game engine not just the device. It was hard to debug as even Unity crashes but eventually found the issue. The symptons were that if entering game and have high ping, on leaving room game gets ANR, or if you are in high ping server and someone joins you, you get ANR and game stuck. Had to enable ALL servers for a day or two to minimize chances of others getting this bug(though it was in production for a long time already).
The issue was a script that manages who should control the game. In FTB, the bots and events management is done via server and kind of peer to peer solution. So one player is chosen to manage bots and game events. All players collect sample of pings - like over 20 seconds collect pings to the server and eventually, after 20-30 seconds, player with best ping is selected to manage the game. This is done to ensure great experience for everyone.
But, there was a thing called emergency transfer. If the current master client ping - the chosen player to manage everything, is very bad - above 200ms in a short window - 3 seconds, than he tries to perform an emergency transfer of the master client role to someone else. As I had a bug there, that I forgot to sleep after each attempt, it caused the game to get ANR and very poor experience.
Also added Unity ads in addition to Google ads as provider, option to watch long ad to test skin or rune, better language in describing what is FTB premium window, various optimizations, improve buttons and new text there and there (now the buy FTBs button is glowing).
After all this, I kind of had a feeling that FTB is ready. I did not have other features to add in mind. Thought everything is kind of ready. But if I think game ready and cool, why statistics are debatable? why many people delete the game after a short time? why statistics are bad?
I'm a believer in improving based on feedback and data. There is a reason why people leave the game - boring gameplay, bad graphics, music, not good economy or other reasons. How do I find these reasons? The issue is that asking friends or family is not enough - hell even players may not know what they actually need sometimes. But mine best shot is asking the players. So thought about adding some window, where will be able to gather feedback of what people like/don't like. And need to plan correctly to get data from players - like yes or not questions and then text box to expand on it? Don't know. And of course offer great reward for this info - like maybe 100 FTBs? and the provide feedback window will be shown and easily asccessible only to real players - those who spend solid amount of time in the game and whose opinion I truly value, not random who just installed the game and wants to get coins.
What about getting services of playtesting of others? this may be better option than Fiverr, but they are pretty expensive, and my game as you know requires a lot of online players to be fun. Also, often people don't know what they need by themselves.
So decided you know, why don't I sit the f down on my a, open my phone and download games most close to the style of FTB and just fcking play them? and that's what I did.
The closest matches are agar.io and Smash Karts from my scouting. There is a lot to learn from them, but let's sum up the important stuff.
Main Takeaways from agar.io:
- Their pricing a lot higher than mine. Should I consider increasing too?
- They use bots and modify experience by spawning stronger bots so you always have fun.
- Customization. Changing nickname, cool bubbles, identify with some country it creates identity and enhances gameplay.
- You have a goal. Being the first on the leaderboard. The difficuly adjusted so it's always interesting for you to play.
- Bots vital for having fun when no players.
The system of kicking to main menu on lose and showing interstitials won't work on FTB as you will, usually, die pretty fast. Also I really try to avoid required ads.
Main Takeaways from Smash Karts:
- Have incentive to be first on leaderboard.
- Good feeling when winning bad when losing as need to wait.
- Short matches create bursts of try to be the best.
- Integrated missions inside game make no need to return to lobby.
- It's ok to join later to game and offer to watch ad.
- Bots vital for having fun when no players.
Let's now talk about FTB. Let's start with that the missions are pretty dumb currently and need a rework. Now regarding gameplay. You enter normal game. It is endless fighting. Usually there are no players. There is no leaderboard, no real goal. There is no sense of commitment like in Smash Karts for 3 minutes as the room is endless. There is no pain to death, as you can die and spawn non stop easily - in Smash Karts you wait 8 seconds and gather less score because of it. You are or bored, or become too strong that bots are too easy. When players do join the game, they often don't fight - as there is no reason to fight! it's an endless map where anyone can get into and exit freely. While it creates situations where people talk with emotes or chat instead of fighting, there is NO GOAL. How I did not notice this earlier!
We play games why? to spend time, to have fun, to get a sense of challenge and overcome that challenge and have a great feeling. I now see that in FTB everything is ready except for the most important part! the fun, the reason to play!
In app purchases, ads, skins, emotes, customization, accounts, age gate, game modes, players, chat, friends. Everything is ready as I thought before - except when you compare it to Smash Karts or agar.io, not in terms of monetization and subscriptions, but in terms of pure value, pure fun, then FTB has none currently.
This understanding I came to yesterday gave me a sense of hope - I do believe that FTB can be very fun, addictive, and compete with other great games. I do remember the amount of fun had playing it with family, friends. I'm not ready to give up on it yet. This understanding gave me hope because - everything around is ready - the only thing that left is to create a goal, a reason to play, a feeling of challenge and competitiveness, the sense of commitment, the bad feeling of losing or dying and the great feeling of climbing the leaderboard of eliminating others. Considering that all those are missing and some people STILL PLAY FTB, I found the golden mine. How, the heck, did I, miss this crucial part! and realized just by playing other games!
I turned on FTB, entered a game, and played imagining a new vision. Imagine we have a 5 minute time for games. We have a scoreboard, and reason to fight each other, stronger sticks give more score. You get 8-10 seconds cooldown on death which creates sense of losing. You feel good outplaying others, you rush to get highest score, there is a reason to play. And, the crucial part - there are bots smart and good enough to immitate humans, that use various abilities and hunt you. Their difficulty(level) scales with average of players in game to offer a challenge. They will use all perks of normal players - skins, runes, various abilities and be smart and strong. As in Smash Karts - they will fill the room and offer a real challenge, and once real player joins simply replace one of them with the new player. Imagine 18 players or such bots + 13 of the current dumb bots to farm XP, all this in short window 3-5 minutes to quickly get highest score. It was wonderful, this game will be perfect. I imagined playing like it's the case, and no joke, I think that FTB will go viral once will do it. I never said it before, and now I'm saying. It's the missing part of the puzzle!
But the points of missions, ads etc are less critical - the missing part of the puzzle is the reason to play, the goal, the short matches, the leaderboards and the human immitating bots that offer a challenge. It will be the focus, and the challenge for me for the next at least month. That's the vision, and I'm going for it.
Today, after running cheap Google Ads for FTB for a while, came the metrics that also confirm yesterdays suspicion. Daily active users and DAU/MAU and retention indeed show that these metrics at boundaries of bad app. I have currently no reason to play FTB, only everything around is ready, and still app is considered almost 'OK' by Google! I truly think that those changes will make FTB perfect, and viral eventually.
The code name for this huge critical update is 'Core Strike'. As part of Core Strike will improve format of game, at least normal, with time per round and goals, reason to fight for. Will create great bots. Will refactor the in game missions. Will review the watch ad & xp gain plan for the new system. Review the monetization system again maybe there are points to improve. Gather feedback system. See where can add customization, progression as very important - maybe allow change nickname again. Tutorial analysis - currently I show in FTB first time big grey window with text, maybe just do as Smash Karts? an image with controls and players will figure the rest. Improve exit experience from all game modes. Improve virality factor - maybe allow share viral clips and record stuff. New animations and improved spawn points.
I'm very excited and scared a bit - as there are challenges that may fail to do, like the smart human immitating bots. But mostly excited. A new era for FTB is coming - and who knew all you had to do is get out of the coding for a moment and just play other games!
When you understand that the product is the issue is a great feeling because you can improve, and understand the hope is not lost yet. I know that the product can be great, from experience, and now I also know what have to do to reach there.
Code Core Strike has began. One crucial goal, for a new, better era in For The Battle. See you next devlog!
