Last devlog I said that will watch metrics and if FTB will not start showing signs that it can succeed I will drop working on the game. Well, it was obviously a lie I told myself. Always had problems finishing projects and moving on.
But the real news is that there are good signs from FTB, and critical issues that were addressed that definitely did not help the game with the descovery. Let's begin, this time we have a lot to cover.
The Core Strike Promise
Remember Core Strike update? The one where I realized that FTB has no goal and changed it by adding leaderboards? One promise was there that did not happen - making interesting, smart bots to play against. I realized that it is a real challenge and if people hardly understand how to play, bots are a lost cause.
But it does not change the fact that the bots were boring to play against. There was a small number of them (13), and they had only 2 abilities - the default attack and engage. Engage ability is the critical one, as the bots trained to move around the map using this one, and removing it equals to throwing their training into trash. But the attack ability kind of useless and can be replaced with other abilities.
So the change done to bots - now every time a bot(now called minion) dies there is a random time of waiting before he spawns in the next location. He gets random name, random skin, and random ability for the slot instead of attack. Worked hard to give as many options as possible to bots of abilities. Now they have different looks, personalities, fun to play against, unpredictable. It's the best thing could do as middle ground between the human immitating bots promise and making the best possible out of the current situation.
I made 20 bots in the arena, but then a guy in my discord said that it's an amazing change, but should increase the number of bots from 20 to 25. So increased to 30. More won't as will cook your devices. Tested. To make bots distributed more or less evenly across the map changed some areas a bit and added more factory points(spawn points for the minions). Also added the bots positions to the minimap so you can easier track and hunt them.
This resulted a lot more bots, more fun bots, unpredictable and really entertaining. But as there are a lot of bots now had to make some nerfs. Bastion and Harvest evos now have just 50% effectiveness against bots - to make it still fun to fight them at late game stages and not boring because you are strong enough, now the bots still can get you if you are not careful enough.
Bugfixes & Optimizations
Updated packages which helped reduce bugs and issues. Various startup stuff like infinite loading stuck issues etc. Adding the many bots allowed to detect and fix ultra rare bug causing players to be in the same room but not seeing each other. Never could replicate it and now succeeded and fixed.
As you know one device managing the bots and the game. If this device is bad, old phone everyone in the room suffers. Therefore added logic in addition to selecting the best ping player to manage the room to consider the FPS of the player. Meaning if the device slow, lagging doing heavy tasks the job is transferred to another player and the older-device guy will have the game run faster, and everyone else will have less lags.
And of course, balancing, mostly of runes. Made great changes - nerfing rock rune so he is killable, and making mechanic less useless in the early game and tracker a bit more strong. The goal is to have all runes & upgrades balanced and this patch got closer to that. Also nerfed harvest, bastion evos in general - because they are passives. Bastion simply reduces damage - so it makes sense if no brain evo a bit worse than, let's say Plating evo where you need skill to dodge damage for 0.5 seconds during fight.
Menus
Changed the premium and non premium experience a bit. First, I removed watching ads for chests entirely. Sorry it ever existed. The previous FTB Premium xp gain speed now applies to both premium and FTB standard, but FTB Standard players receive only 35% of this amount without the ad, and 65% with watching an ad(previouly was 50%-50%). I like this change as gives option for players to get a lot of xp, removing chest ads as dumb idea, and still keeps the large difference of XP gain between standard and premium.
But as FTB Premium now gets no more XP than standard players for gameplay, simply more Standard version XP is locked behind watch ad option, to compensate the lost FTB Premium condition we have a new one - FTB Premium gets a Grand Patron skin, that is acquirable only via FTB Premium. It is the skin with FTB cosplay and "I love FTB" head. Previously the name of the skin was Social, and people gained it only after having 3 friends, or inviting friend to game(conditions changed over time). Now this skin simply granted to the supporters of FTB by getting Premium and no other way to get it, which fits better in my opinion.
Also improved the after game menu of 'watch ad to get more xp'. Realized that people do not get what XP gives you - no one knew that more XP means you get chest faster. So I made it clear, and made cool visuals like to explain what XP actually gives you, how many XP left to next chest, what is the next chest etc. Looks like significantly increased watching this specific ad - previously most ads were to change nickname and now most are to get the bonus XP.
Now regarding the daily leaderboard. It is indeed a successfull addition - people compete each other and I saw people literally try to earn first place by overstepping each other by 10 points each time. As we are more players now, the rewards should be more appropriate. First place will receive King's Bounty chest now and not just treasure chest. Yes you heard right - the one chest that gives you everything epic or legendary. And of course rewards in lower tiers also increased significantly with this change. Also, added that everyone who earned more than 10 points and eligible for rewards will get 5 coins, and not just the top 10. This encourages to play a bit each day in general even if you don't compete to the top 10, and rewards gameplay.
Also changed the leaderboard conditions a bit - now you will get points by playing any classic game mode, not just hitting the play button. And of course - the prizes window. Previously it was boring, pretty dumb window where I just told you here is your price GTFO. Earning a prize after giving a lot of your time on competing with others should be satisfying and feel good - so made the reward received menu look a lot better with various cool features, sounds and fresh look.
And the last great point. You know what's the point in games like Temple Run, Crossy Road etc? if you said beat your highest score then you are correct. For these types of players who try to beat their best added on the play menu your best score ever in a match - consisting of minions and players won. This will allow people to try to beat their best and keeping track of it.
Also, added more quests. Play for 10 minutes, defeat specific stickmen minions, reach the top of the duel arena(to encourage try other game modes too). More variety and more fun.
The Arena
Except of the bots in the core strike update, adding more factories, more transition points between areas and tracking bots on the minimap, more excited additions incoming. First realized that a lot of UI elements not necessarily good and may be confusing. For example we had kills count item on top, when you can just view it in scoreboard. So got rid of many of those elements. Element indicating this game counts for leaderboard points, element showing kills number. Reduced minimap size significantly. Now the game looks more clean, less confusing and only what's necessary.
Critical change is when you now enter a game via the 'play' button the game is invisible by default. It means the game is private and other FTB players can't join you without you inviting them. Why is that? isn't the game name is FTB: Online Stickman Arena? well - yes. But if previously the focus of FTB was online play as bots were boring, now with the new bots it's very fun to play also solo. Now imagine just 1 another player enters the game - and all the 30 bots are lagging because someone else manages them and not you, and the game does not feel the same anymore.
To be honest, FTB online system was built in a way that's great for card games, turn based games. Not fighting, shooting games where lag significantly reduces experience. While I added many systems that try to reduce broken experience from network issues, it is never perfect. So it's better to be solo in a room enjoying hitting 30 bots and not being with someone else causing entire game to lag. The public menu, of course, still allows to create, browse and enter public games(here's the online part kept). But the standard experience from the Play button now not fighting some other players, but fighting bots without lags and potentially inviting specific people you want to join you like friends, and then having lags more bearable when playing with the people you want. So went from full online to hybrid between online and offline approach(still online, just private game by default).
The really great addition and the star of FTB 3.8 is in game challenges. Imagine people enter, play for a bit while waiting for a doctor or something and exit the game. Maybe wait for the 4 minutes for the game to end to appear on the daily leaderboard. I wanted to add a mechanism encouraging engaging in longer, fun game sessions. Considering that moved from full online-public to more online-private can add in game tasks, PvE stuff to have fun by yourself. And those are challenges.
First 4 minutes of classic game there is no challenge, and you just play for fun. At the end of the first classic match an easy challenge is randomly selected. Collect orbs, eliminate bots, have 3 Evos etc. And you get 3 FTBs coins as a reward for completing it. Yes you heard me right - it's the first and only system ever in the history of the game allowing you to farm non stop FTBs coins. As long as you have the skill to take them of course. If you completed the easy challenge you will get standard challenge next game with 5 FTBs as reward, and if finished it too hard challenge gives 7 FTBs! So when you succeed challenge difficulty in the next game moves up, and if fail moves down. And for real - it's very fun! it adds sub tasks that you can ignore or do for more rewards and adding another way to play FTB. Challenges also work in offline mode.
Okay so infinite way to farm coins. What's the catch? that the challenges difficulty is no joke. Easy challenge is something that everyone who tries to complete it and have basic FTB experience should succeed. Standard is something that I, the developer, usually complete successfully but sometimes can fail. Hard challenge though is really hard. It's something that possible to complete, but usually requires luck, doing stuff to maximize your luck(getting specific Evos for example), and perfect stickman execution. For example collect 200 orbs - the game is 4 minutes! meaning you need to collect almost 1 XP orb every second! and dying once, misusing ability or failing in small tasks causes you often to not succeed doing it. On failure you will not receive the coins and next round will get standard challenge back.
Of course added a way for me to monitor what percent of people complete challenges via analytics, so can balance too easy or hard challenges over time. Why challenges appear only from the second classic round of 4 minutes? some reasons. First to not allow you cheating by quitting entering game to get specific challenge. Second, I don't want to show challenges for people who did not get how to play FTB. If someone survived first 4 minutes of game time more confident he got something or ready to continue, and then show challenges.
Third - goal is to increase engagement and encourage long play sessions via fun, rewarding optional in game tasks. If you just entered to play FTB likely it's because you have free minutes to spare and play so have fun - but challenges give incentive to go for long gaming sessions as you need to wait 4 minutes to just get them, then complete easy chalenge for 3 coins, then standard for 5 coins and only then you get access to the high rewarding 7 coins challenge, which you are unlikely to complete anyway. But it gives you, as the name suggests, a challenge. Play with yourself, master your movement, stick, and potentially you can earn infinite rewards while mastering your gameplay! I'm happy with this system, and even more with the fact that the rewards you get are directly attached to your skill in the game and the time you are ready to spend playing.
And of course tadadam - refactored the waiting room. Previously it was large, low quality map. Now I can't say that it's high quality place, but significantly smaller. I left the fun parts of the waiting room map only. The issue with the previous map was that it was too large, so people did not notice when someone else joined their room and game is ready to start - they just did whatever they do far far from each other. As the new map really small people will notice when someone joins their room and will be able to start the game (or feel bad for the stick bragging them via emotes to start the game arleady - no escape from that). Anyway RIP old waiting room map, that was almost unchanged since release for around 6 years and the first map to ever exist in For The Battle.
FTB in the Stores
I said that there were signals that the game could succeed, right, and positive points. Let's expand on them here.
First I changed the icon again. Realized that in the previous icon it was hard to see the head of the stick because of contrast issues with the devil skin. So changed background, look of sticks to make more appealing. Again - icon is among the most important assets for promotion of the game.
Next localization. Heil AI, nowadays possible to relatively easy translate store, in app products descriptions to many languages. While you are right that AI generated descriptions may look worse than english, and I, personally, prefer english over hardly understood language, Google & Apple index keywords. I want my game to be searchable via Turkish, Russian, French etc keywords. It significantly improves discoverability of the game. Also, if someone speaks only this language and not english, he will be able to understand the store descriptions which is good and maybe will install. Just added first line that the in game menus are english only to meet people's expectations. FTB, in my opinion sits in the middle ground of whether critical to translate in game texts or not. On one hand I have many icons, images, and you can understand that it's skins, it's ability etc, but stuff like challenges, runes you want to read what they are. Still, currently as you know there are a lot to do and unfortunately translating in game strings will take time and don't think will provide value worth the effort, for now.
Another crucial point that I missed is pricing. I decided a month ago, as no one buys in app products anyway, to reduce FTB Premium price to around 0.3 USD. Then someone bought it! It's the first real in app purchase ever in FTB. I looked around and realized one important point I missed - for me, the prices of in app products were fine. Pouch of coins for 2 USD and cart for 6 USD? great prices. But then I looked that a play points coupon gives me 2$ worth of value while a coupon for the same amount of play points may give only 0.05$ in some countries! I forgot to account for the purchasing power. So I sat on my butt for a long time seeing GDP of literally every country and purchasing power and how many they spend on games, and changed the price of coins products. Pouch of coins price will be ranging from 0.3 USD to 3.5 USD depends on country, purchasing power and the analysis I made.
I have new business model with IAP. Previously FTB Premium was the most expensive product, but now stuff changed. Now FTB Premium will be kept at a very low price for all countries, and the same price of around 0.3 USD, but coin packs prices change depending on country. The reason? because if you buy 0.3 USD FTB Premium it is more than I will ever earn on you via ads, considering I have only optional one's. Also FTB Premium is the way I mean the game to be played - everything unlocked, no ads, no locked features etc. Therefore I think it's completely legit price to make you get the intended game, if it was not free to play. Coins packs on the other hand boost your progress - they allow you to "cheat' and get a skin you like, ability or rune not with the flow of the game, but right now. Therefore charging price specific per counrty legit here imo, and hopefull will provide revenue & support to the project over time if you want a specific item, to do a chest opening or any other reason. Also psychologically if people buy something they are more likely to make another purchase so good keeping FTB Premium cheap.
Also realized that while I localized also the main game title, popular games like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush etc do not localize their title. Why? Branding. Gain customers trust. To assert dominance with brand, specific title in all locations. For that reason will keep the game name FTB: Online Stickman Arena the same everywhere and lozalize only other descriptions and products.
Fixed bug in FTB causing external purchases to not work. Now, you can buy FTB Premium or coins outside of the game, let's say on the main store page of FTB, and will get it once you log in. This allowed me to enable the merchandizing options and allow the Play/App stores to promote products outside of the app.
Learned to use the stores event systems. For example created special event for the FTB Premium discounts, the launch of the new bots. Gives additional promotion.
And crucial part - I changed screenshots and increased conversion rate of my store page from 15% to 25%+. Previously I had a trailer and 8 screenshots with texts. But then I realized that games like Zooba, Kingshot do not even put a trailer, and sometimes even descriptions on screenshots? I saw statistics and only around 20% of people view the trailer, less than that read long description. But the most important parts - icon, title, subtitle and screenshots are those that usually drive conversion. My trailer, maybe from 3-4 months ago, game significantly changed during this time and more beautiful so don't want to put. Kingshot had 5-6 screenshots only, not the max 8 that allowed by the stores. I realized that more is not necessarily better.
The goal of screenshots is to market to people that game is worth their time, and they should install it. Having confusing, low quality screenshots harms this task. Some bad screenshots may even cause people to not install the game if they look bad. Therefore I changed the screenshots. Realized that I don't need to say stuff like combat easy movement hard, 16 players etc - the most important message about what's the game is in the title - Online Stickman Arena. Do I want people to know something else about the game? no! as it's not that important. Therefore focused on crafting just 6 screenshots, of gameplay, of jumping with sticks, of showing different places in the arena, abiltiies, emotes. The most high quality pure gameplay screenshots I could think of. Keep it simple. And indeed - from 15% to 25%+ jumped conversion rate significantly increasing the number of people I get from Google Ads.
Reviews & Google Ads
Don't remember if I addressed this point in the previous devlogs, but I had issues with reviews. I have logic in the game to ask for in app review at appropriate time. The problem was that despite hundreds of people triggering this no one actually left a rating. Average number of people leaving rating should not be so low according to general apps statistics. Initially there was some sort of Google's bug causing in app reviews on android to never work, but the problem persisted even after it was fixed.
For a long time, I had a window asking players whether they want to leave a review. A lot of them clicked yes, but still no reviews were shown on the stores. Apparently later I read that it's bad practice - Google says to not show any window asking whether want to leave review before showing the in app review window. While I did not do something illegal like redirecting to different places people depending on whether they satisfied or not, by trying to respect user choices and their time I guess the game was flagged for some time. Therefore maybe people clicked on 'rate' but they did not actually get in app review window as google hid it, or simply their rating was ignored.
Now it's around 2 months after I removed the pre in app review window entirely and now everything is according to the policy, seems like the ratings started to come back. I spend around 3 USD daily on ads, and in the last 2 weeks 5 times 5 star ratings! the disappointment that i have been flagged and that everything I do is in vain starts to dissapear, seems like some hidden penalty or something starts to be lifted.
Also, with the localizations and pricing tried to move Google Ads campaign from just english speaking people in europe to all world, all languages. It resulted significantly cheaper acquisition costs and metrics, another huge jump for the game.
Conclusions
You may remember from previous devlog that I put numbers, minimum and target numbers for analytics I should meet otherwise the game in bad state and should leave it be. I'm excited to announce that these changes in this devlog seem to increase these numbers for the good. Some of them were in critical range and my guess that it's one of the reasons why there was low organic traffic. Now when moved to offline-private mode, fixed issues, reviews coming, more store conversions, the new bots and engagement system. Those numbers move out of the 'your app is bad' range into more 'organic traffic possible' range. Therefore need more time to monitor the changes, and the challenges system is not even live in the store yet! only in 1-2 days.
To the fans in our discord who threw ability ideas that I liked and want to implement - I really would like to get to it, but as you see, there is critical work to do in many other fields. I would really like to just keep adding abilties, Evos to the game and make it more and more cool. Game modes and anything, and I promise to do it once I get to working on them. But I realize that no one cares whether I have backup system, chat, friends etc. If the game, store, purchases, the basic systems bad it does not matter. Therefore need to focus on improvements, as solo person, where they make the most impact.
Also learned that I'm a liar and actively working on the game. Last devlog said that 'there is nothing more to do'. Sure, nothing to do - read this document again as a punishment. Anyway this month excited with the new changes, and seems like they caused some kind of spark of hope as there were significant improvements in many areas, and maybe, just maybe, FTB will move to the organic traffic point, or generate enough in app purchases so I can optimize ads for this event. Soon. Thanks for reading!
Also, now it's officialy a year since the devlogs section appeared, and almost a year since the idea of the FTB Reboot! (and in general a big refactor to this website). Really makes it easier to see the entire journey over the year and the game is unrecognizable from what it was year ago. Hell year ago from the moment I almost launched it on Steam before pivoting to mobile.
