Pocket Legends Summary / Review

[arazmas]

After playing 3 characters over level 30+, I think I'm ready to give up on the game and call it quits because it's getting rather pointless and repetitive with no obvious objective to the game. I have to admit, I have been impressed with the graphics especially on an iPhone/iTouch, and even played on the iPad this is still a very nice game. Overall the experience has been very close to what an MMORPG is like, but in reality the game is nothing more than a 1-5 players hack and slash game with small RPG elements that is played on a handheld device. Before you nay-sayers start bickering about this and the name calling and telling me not to play it if i don't like it, this post is not meant to be a whinning post or to complain or threaten to change the game or I quit kinda thing. I'm merely providing an honest feedback to the developers for their reference in the future develop of this game, or future games to come that hopefully will be nothing but better than PL.

PROS to the game:

1. The graphics is awesome, really. It puts the game over the competition and the overall look/feel is quite original.
2. Controls is easy to learn, and simple enough to be operated on the iPad/iPod/iPhone devices.
3. Thumbs up for the in game help system that's easy to access, making it great for new players to figure out what's going on.

CONS to the game:

1. The skill tree is far too simple. It's technically not even a tree, and by level 35 you have almost too many skill points to allocate to the useful ones already and the players face no real choice on how to customize their character. Certain skills are simply... excuse me, but useless.
2. The skills are not designed to scale well to expansion. Originally when the level cap was set to.. 20? 25? The number of skill points may make some sense, and some of the stats on the skills work well. But then once you lift to level cap to 35, the numbers don't scale well anymore... like instead of certain skill does 30 to 80 dmg from skill lvl 1-5, the damage should scale to the character stats or level instead of having a fixed number so that the skill will continue to grow along with the character.
3. Objective and Depth: The game is not story driven, and not objective driven - making it nothing more than hack and slash, level and collect items game. Endlessly lifting the level cap would continue to maintain some of your loyal customers, but eventually they'll get tired and the number of high level players will taper off over time. In a real RPG, players should be given an important element - CHOICE. Whether it's how they want to customize their character, or how they want to approach a quest, or what path they'd like to take, how they want to allocate their stats, or what they want to do beside hacking and slashing. In PL, there is essentially nothing there but to continue what you do as level one, find/make a game and hack&slash again.
4. Bugs: The game is plagued with undisclosed bugs that are not attended to enough. Props to the devs for patching and updating the game impressively often, but then again there apparently hasn't been enough testings done prior to release, and sometimes I wonder if the devs actually play the game to even figure out what's going on? Like I remember the cauldrons in this recent pack were lagging crazy on release due to the particle effects, sure it's patched later... and then there's the single digit damage bug on the crocs, and I can again point out another where there are certain regular mobs in game that take longer to kill than the bosses. I'm hoping they're not by design, and I'll be happier if you tell me it's a bug, 'cause if it is by design then the game is more messed up than I thought.
5. Ill-adviced sudden changes: This ain't very common, but the recent change to the drops and suddenly slashing the sell price of our entire inventory to 50% cannot be worse of a sudden change to the game. Right we get more drops, and we may get better loot (or maybe not even?), but we're stuck with more junk to sell and more trash loot to annoy us... and I seriously don't see a point of it at all if regular mobs don't seem to have a chance to drop any forms of rare loot at all if you increase the total number of drops.
6. Class imbalance: How easy is it that mages die... their magic skills don't scale with their level/stats, and when they do unleash their AOE magic they'll inevitably die and they don't have in their repertoire to save themselves. I cannot believe how horribly they'll be owned when PVP is released prematurely before this is addressed. Mana shield? Yea that lasts a messy 8 seconds?
7. Pathing... need I say more? I continue to get stuck at the ice spikes around the corner... the enemies are way smarter with pathing than my character that would only travel in a straight line.
8. Dungeon design is simplistic, and not challenging at all. The stages look different, but plays almost exactly the same. -more in this area next
9. Content/Stages: As of right now, any player as long as they purchased the content, can enter any stage at will. All stages within the same campaign shares almost exactly the same difficulty and mobs appear to have the same level. So what's the big deal about any bosses, or the big boss at the final stage when you can pretty much access him every time, and every boss within the same campaign shares the same random loot table? Shouldn't a certain boss contain a certain loot table so that players who want certain loot would have the incentive to continue to play that stage? And maybe instead of allowing players to choose any stage at will, maybe the stages should be linear one way or another so that you have to play through the stages to access the final stage of a campaign, and the final boss is guaranteed to drop at least 1 to 2 pink at least to give players an incentive to play it through?
10. Lack of variety in power-ups. As of right now all the equipment has a neglectable + on str/dex/int that does exactly: NOTHING. The only real stats are the dmg / speed on weapons, and the H/S or M/S, to hit % is kinda silly and then the only remaining is crit %. We need a LOT more variety in power-ups... seriously, how about +30 to +50 health? how about health/mana leech? how about elemental effects like 1% chance of slowing down enemy on ice or DOT (damage over time) poison? or +1% chance of root on nature based weapons? + walk speed?
11. Sorry I just kind of have to say this game... elemental based anything does nothing. Maybe you could consider making certain mobs invulnerable or highly resist on certain elemental based weapons, then give us a quick toggle on gear sets to give them game much more depth and playability?
12. Consumable Items: There are 2 in the game... health and mana potion. You can chuck as many and as quickly as the game would take. Again, no depth at all... there should be different level of potions, and they should have cool down timers to make the game challenging. How about a rez item so that we can all rez just give it a very high price tag and a long cool down?

Overall, again this game has great potentials, and I must congratulate the devs for doing a great job. It's very unfortunate but undeniable that their success is being plagued by the lack of planning and testing. I wholeheartedly wish that they'll find the right path to continue to improve the game and eventually make this a much bigger success than it is. One last thing, believe me, player housing and pvp isn't what the game need the most right now...

[Sicarii]

I don't agree with all of your cons, arazmas, but I agree with enough of them to concur that your post has merit. However, I also think that the majority of your major complaints are addressed in the development list the devs have posted.

I'll be honest, PL has long struck me much more as an open beta than a complete game. I get the feel that this game initially had a later release date when it was set to release for the iphone only, but when spacetime decided they wanted to get in on the debut of the iPad, they bumped that release way up. The result was that they put together a game that has the essentially skeleton of the product they intend to release, but not be the finished product. It has the gameplay style, skill development, items, engine, etc... and then they can add the flesh to it over the next few months until they finally arrive at the completed product they had initially envisioned. In addition, this route allows for the game development to take place with feedback from a community of gamers, they are already making money, they get to jump in on the ground floor of the iPad market, and they can explode their game with virtually no competition. All of these made for a solid business reason to release the game prematurely.

Of course, that leaves us with the initial "wow, this is awesome!" that eventually turns into "is this all there is?" I truly believe, however, that the advent of PvP, quests, guilds, world map, and pets will change this completely... we just have to be patient to see what the game they intended becomes.

I do, nevertheless, very strongly agree that the classes need to be reworked from a skills/stats perspective in regards to the increasing level cap. I have a suspicion that the devs have an idea of a final level cap in mind that they had planned from the beginning; but even at the 35 cap, skills and stats are already becoming redundant and pointless.

That said, the devs continue to surprise me with what they pull off. I am excited to see how they address this.

[Furrawn]

I agree also. In order to be more challenged and to practice, I've been playing in small groups or even alone... There isn't continuity across the campaigns and lvls for numbers of players and how loot is distributed, skills don't grow w character, there's almost no opportunity for individuality... Mages are too weak. The blessing of might is basically useless... There's a lag sometimes. Sometimes characters like Frogmar kill 5 lvl 35 players instantly which is crazy...

But, I think it's a great game w a lot of potential. I think those of us here now will see the game continue to mature & develop as time goes by. The developers must work around the clock based on the update frequency. I think as long as they listen to feedback from everyone rather than just an elite few, the game will become a much-beloved place to play... I'm hopeful...

[arazmas]

yea, the overall gameplay has been a blast, and then it quickly got old, very old, very quickly. Too bad... I don't think I'll use the rest of my plat invested unless they suddenly realize they're heading towards the wrong directions. Good luck folks

[King Richie]

your expectations are far to high for a mobile mmo

[bopart]

Wow so much cons...

[Justg]

High expectations and valid points, thanks for the feedback!

[arazmas]

I honestly don't expect them all to be addressed at launch - as I still remember what EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, etc were like at launch. Obviously this is a handheld game and no there is no way this will square off against those big boys. However, take it as a compliment - you guys made something right to begin with and thus the expectations. With a little better planning and with more experience fine tuning the game, you guys will definitely find a bigger success than you expected. Good luck Space Time Studios. =)

[Obliteration]

your expectations are far to high for a mobile mmo

Stop putting limits on ****. Spacetime has well exceeded any expectations. And with future updates lots of his cons are going to be adressed.

[KingFu]

Can I have your items pleas if you quit?

[SlipperyJim]

Can I have your items pleas if you quit?

Gets right to the point. "I'm sorry you're leaving. Can I have your stuff?"

[ratava]

Perspective: An MMO on a mobile that fairly solidly emulates all the main features you could be paying much more for, being exclusive on a PC, is an amazing achievement already! Awesome picking up my iPhone for a quick hack'n'slash - Gauntlet style! MMO features take a little getting to grips with, and the fun of levelling, loot drops and learning about pulling aggro etc are a lot of fun more so in a small group that works cooperatively ie texting to stick together or checking for items etc boosts the dungeon crawling fun.

arasmas

In a real RPG, players should be given an important element - CHOICE. Whether it's how they want to customize their character, or how they want to approach a quest, or what path they'd like to take, how they want to allocate their stats, or what they want to do beside hacking and slashing.

The above (STORY) could really help PL however: Our animal heroes help each other and the elf queen defeat all these different threats and maybe when PVP comes along they turn on each other for some narrative backed reason?

Open world pvp/pve would be unbelievable aside also. Hmm, how far's too far?!! : )

But the list of fixes/updates already are brilliant and the community growth are the roots to a successful future (revenue/support). It's a very fair business model: Play a lot of content for free and if you decide you care/want to invest your time/future attention some more, then pay for the extras freely, that support the support!

EG PvP should open a whole new ball-game of playability and longevity - Next!

[ratava]

Dungeon design is simplistic, and not challenging at all. The stages look different, but plays almost exactly the same. -more in this area next... any player as long as they purchased the content, can enter any stage at will... And maybe instead of allowing players to choose any stage at will, maybe the stages should be linear one way or another so that you have to play through the stages to access the final stage of a campaign

1. CHOICE - again, maybe for free content the above is ok, just picking up a game to have a blast and hopefully a new map. But maybe locking maps until some completion is a strong incentive to see new tez at higher level dungeons. Some restrictions actually make the illusion of choice feel more real.

2. Dungeon Design - Some environmental triggers (traps, switches) that keep you looking/thinking or catch the unwary are always beneficial. Or a design that funnels half the group one way and the other half another another way due to a closing door and depend on both surviving is always a strong staple in films!

[Spineharvestr]

I enjoy this game 100%. The current setup works perfect for me as I work 7 days a week and do not have time to log onto a real mmorpg and deal with cooldowns and chain quests. PL provides me with a mobile solution to maintain an enjoyable mmo experience. They have such a limited framework to work within and for them to be constantly updating and adding new elements such as pvp, secure trade, guilds, new town is an amazing feat. Maybe they will even add mounts or rideable pets with a stable in town or in guild houses, an auction house or mailbox system, a pub with a few mini competetive games.*

I applaud the devotion of the devs and plan on supporting them at every turn, support that includes being patient and not bailing just because they didn't do this or do that, they made the game and are improving it as fast as they can. The Ipad was just released and these guys have been clearly working ot to make this an enjoyable experience for as many people as they possibly can but I suppose you can't please them all..

Keep up the great work guys and I look forward to recieving my PL emblem on the ridable croc you will be sending me in the new mailbox system you include in a future update.*

Much love!

Thank you and goodnight!

[Gouki]

I have to say that this post is exactly true. The future of this game hangs on the changes spoken of. There was nothing hostile in how it was addressed and further I believe given some or all of these changes this player would have no hesitations or hangups of returning, in fact I am sure this person is dying to be proven wrong. The game needs more depth, this is an argument I too and many others have addressed.

Now, the game is very new and great promises have been given about future growth. Really at this point Spacetime should be jumping for joy at this kind of criticism. That so many people would make so many helpful comments just states that "we are dying of thirst here and are willing to drink sand". This is the very best sand that we have ever seen on our mobile devises, EVER! If this were just another 30 min app from the app store you would never have gotten such great feedback from this player and so many others. You have done something really unique and good here, now make it great! If you do this we will stick around forever and pay whatever to lap up the awesomeness you have began to bring us.