New Multiplayer Rope Racing game for mobile - Rope Clash

[TheKomodo]

So, you can pay to increase your rank? That's most definitely p2w lol.

[j0e]

So, you can pay to increase your rank? That's most definitely p2w lol.

No, you can't. But you can massively upgrade your rope by buying gems. That just robs you of the experience in my opinion. You can't upgrade beyond what you earn in a short time by roping. A noob wouldn't be ready for the upgraded speed all at once. I'm actually hoping I don't max out my stats too quickly. You should just try the damn game, don't be stubborn! This is the wrong time for a soap box IMO.

Gotta say, I hope they release new maps frequently, and don't make all of them paid items. I'd support a feature that lets you make and share your own maps - lots of phones/tablets have styluses now so it'd be pretty easy.

[Kradie]

But you can massively upgrade your rope by buying gems

Dude? That's what we're talking about. Microtransaction! Pay for advantage. No matter how you twist and fine tune it, it is the same.

Who is this ''MesibaGames'' anyway? Obviously he is trying to cash in on us ropers, disrespectful 2 posts and advertising game? Hah, no way I am buying into this.

[j0e]

But you can massively upgrade your rope by buying gems

Dude? That's what we're talking about. Microtransaction! Pay for advantage. No matter how you twist and fine tune it, it is the same.

Who is this ''MesibaGames'' anyway? Obviously he is trying to cash in on us ropers, disrespectful 2 posts and advertising game? Hah, no way I am buying into this.

It's free, dude. Nobody was disrespectful. So what if the guy wants to make some money off of it? He probably lost a lot of potential wages all the time he was developing it while not working at a regular job. He has brought us (essentially) real-time roping to our phones - he deserves our money. If this game blows up maybe it'll even rekindle some interest in WA.

[TheKomodo]

Nah, I enjoy getting a game and actually have a full game.

"you can massively upgrade your rope by buying gems", i've already explained why I don't like this, I won't do it again.

I understand why you would think that, many people throw this word around willy nilly without actually using it properly, I would be guilty of being stubborn if I didn't know what I was talking about, or if I was outright just telling lies, refusing to adapt because i'm scared of change, or have some unjustifiable reason to avoid this game, but there is truth to what i've said and there is nothing stubborn about that whatsoever.

The problem is, most people won't even think about it however, at first glance, you have a nice little tribute to Worms Roping, I watch the video, yeah it looks alright... But then you have a leaderboard, this introduces the competitive aspect, and we all know what humans are like when it comes to this, everybody wants to be the best... So in order to have their name at the top etc they are gonna spend their money to get the fastest, strongest, best rope ASAP, so they can have a little bit of glory and feel like they achieved something "Look at me, i'm #1!"... That is the trap, that is the psychological manipulation I f@#!ing hate, and I hate it SO much because life is not fair, people from all over the world, they are different, some born rich, some born poor, it's not equal...

Roping has been around for over 20 years,  I personally see it as an insult to roping.

And furthermore, if you actually research how to make games, even more so, how to make money from games, you will start finding out how all games apply these bullshit techniques simply because people are f@#!ing dumb and can't help themselves fall to these techniques, they are easily addicted.

And generally in life, I don't like when smart people, take advantage of dumb people.


OMG j0e, "he deserves our money", jesus f@#!ing christ... Have some dignity...

By the way, it wouldn't surprise me if the author of this game, didn't even realize it, they just added microtransactions because it's the current trend, and has no f@#!ing idea about the psychological manipulation involved, but, he might lol.

This is why you have so many trash f@#!ing games, and why games don't last very long, instead of making a game addictive because it's unique, original and simply fun(you pay for the game, and that's it), they make it fun and addictive with things like the skinner box technique, microtransactions, making it "free" but pay2win so they con people out of money, etc...

It's actually sad more people don't fight against this type of thing


But unfortunately most of the human race are like "OOOOH LOOK AT THE SHINY SHINY!!!!"

Kinda why I have enjoyed Worms Armageddon for 20 years in about a month or so now and still continue to enjoy it, once you buy the game you have access to everything, no bullshit.

[j0e]

You can't see the overall leaderboards. Just the people you're racing against in any given race, which are matched to your skill level/rank.

I've wanted to rope on my phone for years. I've wanted real-time rope racing for even longer. This guy finally made it happen. You can't claim upper hand in "knowing what you're talking about" without even trying the game. I know all about the sins of microtransactions. So far this game has incorporated them elegantly..

[TheKomodo]

I know what i'm talking about when it comes to the psychological techniques used in gaming, and why they are a problem.

I am however, going by ear when it comes to the actual game, and how things are implemented, relying on feedback from you guys who are playing it, I was actually going to try the game but the mere fact it has microtransactions of any kind, immediately put me off.

What exactly do you mean by overall leaderboards? The fastest time for a map of all ranks? Because even if you can only see the leaderboards for people in YOUR rank, it's still a leaderboard, and still has the competitive aspect i'm talking about, and it's pretty safe to say the higher rank you are, will be conceived as "harder" or "more skilled" so therefor more rewarding to be leader of the higher ranks, making spending money to get a better rope/rank even more ridiculous.

If I am wrong, then please correct me with evidence, and i'll apologize.

[j0e]

You can't even see the overall best time for your rank. You get randomly chosen opponents within your rank, and you see the best time out of those runs. I'd say it's designed not to be hyper-competitive and discouraging. Every run you ever do on a map is saved as a ghost race for others to race against, so it's not like you're always going against the best possible runs. I hope all these pro-ropers testing it aren't permanently polluting the ghostbank data for legitimate noobs in the future, however..

Anyway I'd rather not crap up this thread with explanations you can see for yourself. And I don't want my own review to become so entrenched and comically positive that any actual critiques I make become irrelevant.

The game can be improved, yes, but it's not evil or something we should take a stand against. You'd probably be one of the people best suited to give feedback, due to your Worms experience and rare ability (in this community) to speak English. This game is still in beta - this is our chance to make sure it doesn't suck. For once we're interacting with the actual game author and not some clueless asshole PR associate. That's really all we ever wanted from Team 17.

[TheKomodo]

That's a really good reply there.

So there aren't really any leaderboards then? Being competitive is good actually, I thought with what people had said so far, you could just buy your way to higher ranks and/or better rope physics, and that would really suck.

@MesibaGames - I apologize if this seems like a personal attack on you, your work looks good, I just hate microtransactions so please don't take it personally.

I am tempted to play the game to try it out and see how everything works, but honestly, the thought of "upgrading" rope physics and spending money that way puts me off.

Progressing through ranks like divisions sounds great to me, the better you do/faster you get, the better opponents you get and work your way up to the top division or whatever, that sounds fantastic! (But only if done without money), I guess it would be done by winning points based on your position in the race, or losing points for coming in lower positions.

Ideally, would be great to see this game get rid of the "progressive rope physics" and "coins" etc, and focus on the pure rope racing against other players ghosts.

Either set the rope physics to one static kind, or, have like different sets of rope physics, you could call them something like"Noob, Roper, Pro-Roper" or something, and each mode has ranks or divisions you climb up, easy being the slowest, so easier to control, roper being a bit faster, and pro-roper being the fastest. In this case i'd be more than happy to have to progress my way from noob to pro-roper because there is a sense of achievement made by yourself, but buying your way to the top - f@#! that.

I think it's very important to have a leaderboard/ranking system, look what happened to WA after Ranks went down, if it wasn't for players taking it upon themselves to make online leagues, I doubt WA would have survived as long as it has.

And maybe even have things like, the top players in each rank/division get special colours, or skins, or something I dunno, just an extra incentive, like back in the day we had flaming HP bars n stuff for highly skilled players who achieved stuff.

I can't deny, the gameplay itself looks awesome, and yeah i'll admit i'm scared to play it cuz it has microtransactions, i'd rather just pay like £10 or £20 for the game, and have full access like Worms Armageddon.

But unfortunately, I won't play it while it has in-game purchases the way people have said, not that it matters i'm sure there are more than enough people happy to play a "free" game they end up spending money on.


Edit - Question to the game author - How do the player ghosts work in terms of game memory? I imagine more people play, more ghosts will be there, and it will take up more memory, is this saved on the phone, or does the game relay back to a server somewhere?

[Sensei]

Who cares about microtransactions haha. Everyone here will lose max 20 mins per day to play this.
It have ropes and good physics, great to kill some free time and nothing more, nothing less. It's a mobile game lol.

Cut the moral crap and don't lose sleep over something even developer doesn't give shit about. If someone gets hooked and pay for it, that's cool. But majority will just enjoy and silently grind cause they don't care.

If you don't wanna play it, no need to write essays about it.

[MesibaGames]

Hi guys and thanks for all the feedback
About the pay to win discussion, Comparing to other mobile game with this system, I believe this game is a lot more skill based.
P2W has become a standard way to monetize in the mobile game industry, That's just the way it is. I'm just trying to get paid for the work I did.
I'm not here to defend this mechanism, if you won't play the game because it has microtransactions, I respect your decision.
I would rather the discussion will be about cool new ideas/changes to the game

add a button to force the camera to always focus on the player (just like CTRL+Home in WA)

Right now the camera tries to predict your direction and shows you a little bit more of where your'e headed, When the camera focuses on the player its hard to see whats coming since the screen is really small, I made it so the camera zooms out but didn't want it to go too much because the players get really tiny

if you land on the ground, add a crosshair that can be aimed with the d-pad which will show where you will fire the rope

I'm adding a Trajectory for the rope next version, I think this will help people who didn't played worms understand the mechanics better, not only on the ground

-add an indication of what place you're currently in (1st, 2nd etc)

Cool idea! should be a challenge to implement but I'm adding this to the list

-(just wondering) - how do you currently earn the purple gems other than by buying them? they're insanely valuable compared to the coins. I assume we only start with 200 gems for testing purposes - this is enough to buy all the rope upgrades right off the bat probably.  Would be nice to get a free gem when you come in first, or something.

Right now there's no way to earn gems without buying them, in my vision there will be events where the prizes will be gems


About the match making - The game will try and match you with players on a similar level, right now the player base is too small to test it

[Senator]

Could you add the option to swap the controls the other way around? So far I didn't enjoy roping much and I wonder if swapping the controls helps. Roping with thumbstick sucks in general but that's the way to go in mobile games I guess.

As for different ropes, I would rather see them implemented as turbo boosts that you collect along the way, for example.
edit: maps would need to be longer then, though.

[j0e]

I used to write pages and pages of stuff bashing worms clanwars/wmd without ever trying it once. I still do, sometimes, too. Really makes me wonder how often I completely missed the mark with my ranting, lol. The coins/progression system (based on what I've seen) are good the way they are.

However can we discuss the following picture? How does this feature work? It's not very clear but appears to be pay to win. (This screen is separate from the normal upgrade screens). I'd be very against boosting people's stats beyond what can be achieved by normal progression. That would indeed make Komo right. It should give no benefit to a player who already has max stats. Maybe that's how it already is, which is fine - I'd suggest making it more clear though.

If that boost does give special powers beyond max stats, please change that or at least keep leaderboards hidden and don't match non-boosted players against boosted ones.

And I'll be looking forward to discussing other aspects of the game too. I suspect everything is ok - one extra rank doesn't matter as long as it doesn't go beyond the regular max rank.

[TheKomodo]

Yeah, f@#! this game, dude only cares about money.

People that support this shit. *facepalm*

OHHH! LOOK AT THE SHINY SHINY!!!!!

[Kradie]

Hi guys and thanks for all the feedback
About the pay to win discussion, Comparing to other mobile game with this system, I believe this game is a lot more skill based.
P2W has become a standard way to monetize in the mobile game industry, That's just the way it is. I'm just trying to get paid for the work I did.
I'm not here to defend this mechanism, if you won't play the game because it has microtransactions, I respect your decision.
I would rather the discussion will be about cool new ideas/changes to the game

Hah! Right on, there's no way you come out as a victim of this. There's millions of people that have fallen victim to these type of shady monetization like the one in your game. There are other ways of getting income instead of feeding on the weak.

What's more disturbing, you openly justified & admitted that it is ok to take advantage of people in this business practice. Yet, you hide behind your little game, so you can harvest sympathy, & support from experienced players. Yet, it saddens me that such players supports such ideology.

Why on earth are people so blind and willingly go along with such nonsense? There are more honorable developers here on TUS & WA than this.

Imagine if Team17 released this, and a PR guy came to talk about it. I guess It wouldn't be well received, and I suspect that many of the arguments made by me here would be more thought of.
Or even worse, if he succeeds with his game, and Team17 hires him, then all future Worm tittles would be full of monetization. *Shudders*.
Then again, one could argue that Team17 was already worse *facepalm*.