Saga could learn alot from Free Apple Ipod games

So I tried the Silverlode Ipod free game, "Saga Catapult". - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/saga-catapult/id319957016?mt=8

It kinda lead me down the road, that Saga the MMORTS should learn lessons from the Ipod market successes:

1. Give away ALOT for free, to get the players addicted.
2. MICRO-TRANACTIONS are key. Get them buying
3. Make sure you have a BIG playerbase of free players. Without them, you can buildup enough player mass.
4. Get the economy solid so the players are creating addiction.

Saga right now makes it too hard for the free player.

I think Silverlode should 10X the gold drops. Let the players build up giant armies of bought units.

Also 2X or 5X the experience gains. Why should it take a month to level 1-35 when in reality, most players when they cap out, buy a NEW ARMY to rollup.

Just my 2 cents.

Fixing the inbalance between attacking and defending.

The problem in tournaments is that the attacker is at a disadvantage.

You don't control a respawn point, so if the defender beats you, you basically are in big trouble.

My suggestions is to have a neutral keep in the middle of the board that an attacker can capture to provide a respawn point.

This would help tournament games become more fun, as currently there is alot of running away instead of attacking.

Saga wants your card ideas for main armies

Saga wants CARD IDEAS again for when the undead army releases.

It looks like each normal army will get 4 troops. Help them fix the tournament scene by putting in more good pvp troops.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=21544022054&topic=5906

They are taking feedback in this facebook dicussion thread.

Sure wish they would leave the free tourneys in game...

Wouldn't it be nice if Silverlode would leave free tourneys in for awhile, or possibly offer them once a week? Paid tourneys M-Sa free on Sundays?

Discussions on Tourneyments:

So there has been a heated discussion since Slava released the prize chart for Tourneyments.

They are giving 4 for winning 3 for 2nd place 2 for 3rd and 4th places.

My thought is that is too few prices for an 12$ entry for even a small eight person tourney.

Here is the math:

• 8 people buy 3 boosters and 2$ in tickets = $96
• 4+3+2+2 = 11 boosters = $33 in prizes?
• Top winner is 4 boosters who wins $16 for his $12 entry fee.
  

And for those that say that you can sell the cards. Fine. Tell me how many boosters are worth MORE then $3.

To demonstrate this, I just bought 4 boosters, here is EACH of them:

Human Javelineers
$0.03
Human Light Cavalry
$0.05
Human Spearmen
$0.03
Elven Archers
$0.15
Elven Warriors
$0.90
Wood Spriggans
$0.05
Rage
$0.75
Giant Bowmen
$0.90
Human Light Lancers
$0.25

Sub-Total: $3.11



Ballista
$0.45
Human Javelineers
$0.03
Human Mercenaries
$0.04
Human Pikemen
$0.03
Elven Archers
$0.15
Elven Druids
$0.50
Elven Sabretooth Riders
$0.35
Dark Elf Bowmen
$1.75
Holy Light
$0.40

Sub-Total: $3.67




Human Javelineers
$0.03
Human Light Cavalry
$0.05
Human Swordmaidens
$0.16
Make Haste
$0.10
Elven Saboteurs
$0.15
Green Dragon
$3.50
Wood Spriggans
$0.05
Ogre Halberdiers
$0.40

Sub-Total: $4.44



Elven Saboteurs
$0.15
Wood Spriggans
$0.05
Orc Infantry
$0.04
Take No Prisoners
$0.75
Human Heavy Infantry
$0.03
Human Pikemen
$0.03
Human Spearmen
$0.03
Elven Druids
$0.50
Dwarven Mechanists
$0.25
Giant Bowmen
$0.90

Sub-Total: $2.73

TOTALS:

Pack 1 Retail Value: $3.11
Pack 2 Retail Value: $3.67
Pack 3 Retail Value: $4.44
Pack 4 Retail Value: $2.73
---------------------------
Total - $13.95 (retail value)

I spend $2.95 X 4 packs = $11.80

Assuming Sagaunits give me 85% of the card value, I can sell them to him for $11.85

5 cent profit!




Here is the rest of the discussion from the forums. I will address only on writer:
https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=38427

• He is making the mistake assuming that I am complaining about prizes do to my income.
  http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/deck-profiling-nature-ccie-part-1.html
  There is my army. Don't make that assumption. I can and HAVE bought frankly any army I want. My income isn't the issue.



• And don't let your experience working at "the card shop" apply here. This is a game with 100 times the number of players that your card shop can draw. The model is more scaling.



• Also MTGO don't work comparing it to Saga. In MTGO you cap at FOUR OF THE SAME CARDS per deck. Saga it maxs at 25. Much HARDER to collect armies then a 60 card Magic Deck.

I am championing for the person who ISN'T like me, and can't afford to throw hundreds of dollars at a hobby.

I will restate my position again, and if anyone want to "fan boy" how smart Silverlode is, and their ideas HAVE to be perfect on the first go, fine. I'm trying to help Silverlode not attack them.

My position is:

1. If you give more boosters as prizes, you add supply to the market of free cards.
   
2. Free cards leads to more supply at the card vendors, (http://sagaunits.com/) thus LOWERING the pricing of expensive army builder cards. Have you not noticed that Saga Units can't seem to keep certain cards in stock right now? Dark Elf Bowman? Grythons, Eagles etc.


3. That's due to the the fact that we DON'T buy boosters right now. Most people find it hella easier to buy from Saga Units, and the supply of free boosters is going down.
   http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/wwwsagaunitcom-and-why-we-buy-card-from.html We need the tourneyment scene to be WILDLY successful to bring the overall cost of the game down. If the game were cheaper their would be more people playing and more cards circulating in the market.


4. If you run the guild list into excel, there are about 3000 players of saga right now, that are in guilds. This is pretty much a 90% list of all saga players. http://www.playsaga.com/guilds.php If Saga had 200,000 players there would be 1000 times more cards circulating.


5. I've brought over two players with me so far from other games. You know the first thing that they run into for trouble? Collecting a large enough army to play without investing $100 in the game day one.

We need the prices of cards to go down. Tourneyments are how that worked in MTGO. You could draft and get great cards and lose. You could draft for rares and popular cards, and don't even worry about winning. The players that won would try for infinite and dump great numbers of cards on the market to buy more event tickets to tourney all day long.

All I want is more boosters for prizes, to increase the card supply, and to help keep the prices low enough for new players to be able to buy a decent army.

Having Heavy Cav (a common) at $6 a full unit is not helpful for new players: http://www.sagaunits.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_6&products_id=122

What Items to KEEP for your armies?

So after going through alot of quests, you are bound to run into alot of exra weapons/armor in your nation bank.

You can sell everything extra, but are their anything that as a mid-level player that you need to KEEP for later??

For Defending your Territories:

If you are looking to defend your territories, you will need to be able to deal with this unit:



The reason most people use heavy cav for assault is that they are basically immune to tower and keep archer defence due to their passive DR bonus. This above is a level 6 heavy cav with midlevel gear. 42 DR puts him at over 50DR vs archers, and decent hps means he won't be in any trouble. You want troops to harass him.


Anti-Kiting gear:



If you notice above his speed is 11-12 or so. Base 10, but with 8% on two items he moves around 11-12.

You need items on your defenders to be able to chase him around. Anything that can move your speed up high enough so he can't kite you with heavy cav. Make him have to kite you around with other faster units. No reason to make it easy for him.

Also speed items allow your newly spawned defenders to close range with the attackers troops, and cause them to interrupt building captures. A light cav unit works well to interrupt caps. 20+ speed, it rushes to attack anyone nearby, breaking caps.

Thus Suggestion 1: Keep your Speed Items for your slower troop.





Second item I tend to keep is my upper level MORALE based items. As Undead is coming, they have alot of morale debuffing (so I've heard). These items may not help, but I sure don't want to cry that I dumped alot of Intimidation items if they become important.

Suggestion 2: Keep items for your frontline troops that boost morale


Next is ranged units. I personally LOVE my ranged units to break if attacked by melee. Let them run away, they might live longer.

And the Terror suffix is amazing. Massive damage.




Suggestion 3: Keep your Terror ranged weapons as breaking is less important on archers.

World Nation Icon Screen?

One thing I was thinking about was the one of the things I miss in Saga vs other games is the ability to see the other cities people have build. At first I didn't realize why this was important, then I remember how much time I would spend looking at the Shadowbane map to determine which cities I wanted to attack :)





Here is a link of what it looked like in Shadowbane:

You could pull up the map and if you moused over a nation it would show you the Nation and the Faction. They would also show the flag icon for the nation based on the level of the city at different sizes. So as you can see from above, the bigger cities icons were the highest level.

This was pretty nice, it made deciding who to fight very fun.

I don't like to bother developers with pie in the sky suggestions, I often believe they are so busy that it is often a burden, but after figuring out what I was missing in Saga, I did figure it meritted a Blog post.