I put this together and it seems to have been overlooked in the other massive feedback thread. I'd just like to give some pointers as someone who has played a lot of mobile games. I'd love to see what others think or can add to this.
Just to give some examples of other iDevice games that utilize both regular weapon attacks and skills/spells.
They all have regular weapon attacks as the primary damage dealer. You only really use your skills if you're in a pinch (ie. Bosses, swarms of enemies surrounding you). All of these games limit the players to about 3 active skills. Some have passive skills as well.
PL has always been very different from these other games, in that it has 12 active skills and they're meant to be used all the time, not just in a pinch. Bc if you just use your weapons, you won't get very far.*
This has kept PL unique from other games. But if this has to change with things like GCD, then other changes must be strongly considered to balance it out. If you want active spells to take the backseat (for lag or whatever other reasons), give us passive skills and stronger weapons to make up for it. Or whatever other ways you can come up with.*
Anyway, here are some screenshots of other games:
Dungeon Hunter 2:*
You get a number of passive/active skills to choose from (by the end of the game you have a total of 8 active and 8 passive skills to put points into), but only three actives can be on the screen at once. So you must choose wisely. But again, active skills are used mostly for bosses. The passive skills help you with the rest of the mobs.
Braveheart:
Again, three skills with longish cooldowns. You rely primarily on your attacks and other bonuses/perks.
Solomon's Boneyard:
You get mainly two skills -- one that activates with the attack button (shoots from your wand), and the other is activated by tapping a button. You can get other skills, but you have to sacrifice the strength of other skills to make room for variety. The secondary skills is mainly for strong aoe attacks when you get surrounded, or teleportation, healing circle, etc. The secondary skills usually require a lot of mana and have long cooldowns. Again, not meant to be used on a constant basis. You focus mostly on the primary skill.
And of course I didn't forget Dungeon Defenders:
You have one primary attack button that does not use mana. Then you have two skills/spells that do require mana, and the catch is that they use an increasing amount of mana the longer they're activated. So again, you can't really use them all the time. You must be selective. (I'm ignoring the whole tower defense part here, bc it's not really related.)
And even Infinity Blade makes use of special attacks and magic spells. But they have HUGE cooldowns. They're meant to save you in a pinch. If you really need them in order to win, you have to bide your time until they're ready.*
Didn't mean for this to be so long. My main point is that PL chose its identity a year ago. Players got addicted to it for what it was. Lots of skills/spells and button mashing. But since then, it seems to be having an identity crisis every few months. Choose how you'd like this game to be played, and then stick to it. But if you really absolutely MUST go through this identity change, then look at other games for inspiration on how to make up for what you're taking away.*And I mean mobile touchscreen games. Because you can't really compare this to pc or console games.
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