epic duel vs others browser games (Full Version)

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dfo99 -> epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 4:35:49)

in you opnion, why epic duel even released officially in 2009, have less online players than less animated and recently released flash games from facebook, armor games and kongregate? also epic duel never was bigger than aqw. in a nutshell, what the others flash browser games has that epicduel does not? balance problems and bad releases (like omega) any game have.



Vextur -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 5:47:55)

1) Lack of advertisement
Facebook and other games that you've mentioned have something that ED doesn't, it's called advertising. When did you last time see ED ad other than on AE sites.
2)Too complicated for new players (this is why i personally don't play AQW)
When a new player does come and make his character, he doesn't know how to play/do missions etc. It was a mess before Tutorial that ED has now and better mission overview. If ED had these things from beginning, there would be much more players. However, beginner tutorial still doesn't explain how cores, upgrades, varium, or ed wiki work. (it took me years until i finally understood some aspects like stats, builds etc.) If you played during the 12th AE anniversary you could see new players asking for help which even caused ED devs to make tutorial DNs on how to do a simple mission. That says it all
3) It is a non-balanced BROWSER game
You clearly said "what's the difference between browser games" but you've mentioned other platforms too so im just gonna quote charfade here.

quote:

Something that also concerned us as in 2013 sales of mobile and tablet devices doubled. (...)yes the player base has lessened due to mobile and console sales taking off, there have been better days, but we are still standing strong.


So to sum it all up, ED before omega was non examined, non advertised browser game with P2W player base, and now it is still non examined but now it's also non balanced, not interesting, non playable on mobile phones and tablets and thats why it's losing veterans and non successfully trying to catch up with others
~Vextur



dfo99 -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 6:43:23)

When i created my account in 2010, i had no one knowledge of english (and still do not have much :/) but learn about ed was really easy. the lack of tutorial apparently was not a problem, especially because epic duel is a very simple game.

Be a browser game is not a downside, it allows the player play in any computer and show ed for the friends, but epic duel also have less online players than others browser only games, like runescape for example, which i quit due a extremly stupid update, unlike ed which i am considering quit permanetly because now for me is a bit boring and very annoying game due now i am talking more with the guys of friend list and clan and there is alot of texts blocked due inapropriate language but i have no idea of what is inapropriate in the text like "i put a new armor" and my friends are frequently muted, also i recently read the term and conditions and it says that they can delete my acc for any reason and i can't do nothing about.

Also the advertisment does not seems a problem because epic duel seems have thousands of accounts created or maybe millions, but the players quit more than in others games.



Lord Machaar -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 8:29:42)

I think @Vextur has layed down the most common reasons why.

Just to add up another important one.
AE stated many times, that their policy insists that number of their employees should be bases minimum (Couldn't find the link to this statement in their official website Artix.com, if you do know it pass it to me ;) ). Which means that AE will try to keep important members only. They gave many reasons why, some of them are:
- In 2011 they mentioned that, because of mobile phones and tablets, browser gaming changed for ever, sadly for worst, there was a mass migration of people from browser games to gaming apps (reasons are simple, the mobile phone is in the palm of your hand, goes with you whereever you go, easy to use, best example: candy crush for older people and Real racing 3 for younger audience).
- This mass migration caused many big browser gaming companies to fire a huge number of their employees, because they had no $$ pomping to pay their employees with, which is the pre-death of the company, later on, to operate the game, you still need all those employees. Which results in the closing of this company.

The reason why AE keeps their employees at base minimum is well understood, it's no wonder how this company managed to stay up all these years.
You now can even see browser gaming companies like AE are heading towards making mobile phone apps for all of their games. They made sure browser gaming is dead.

Sure AE managed to surpass the 2011 Crisis, but every decision has its pros and cons, sure they managed to stay operating, but because of the small amount of employees in-games other than AQW, especially ED, features are so rare, the things that player wish to play are always hard to make (program), and you can't make them without an important number of employees, sadly, there are only 3 members in ED team (Titan, NW and charfade). This also applies to other AE games in the exception of AQW which is the most favorite game of AE, they clearly care for it more than any other game. Number of employees is high which as you can see leads to a good number of updates that are rich in content = Maintaining a good number of players.

I frankly think that AE realised that the small number of employees leads to the same faith just in a slower rate, you will end up closing too if you can't generate a good number of updates , atleast in EDs case, and now they are heading forward to add up more members, Guest artists and writers but sadly you can't find guest developpers/programmer, because such positions requires a lot of skills, and not any developper/programmer can choose to be a guest without getting paid, ofcourse in-game currency isn't a valid one. Which results in the contentless updates we see now.



doomkiller98 -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 12:48:39)

This game needs to be able to be played (smoothly) on tablets and phones while also being able to DOWNLOAD it on PC and MAC. I do not care what you say, If I could download this game to take advantage of graphics and higher FPS (browsers cant handle high fps), I would download it in a heartbeat; others would too.



Ranloth -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 13:11:13)

Phones and tablets don't officially support Flash, which renders it pointless. Having a browser (Photon) that supports Flash doesn't cut; when Flash was supported on Android, it was an official app that worked across all the other apps, e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc. Nowadays, phones support HTML5 and even YouTube has made the move recently (from Flash to HTML5), when playing videos, which works in favour of iOS which has never supported Flash but through the Photon browser.
Re-coding the game into HTML5 would take years, literally. Downloadable client ends up being the same as HTML5. It was said once on Reddit, that it won't be happening for any of the current AE Games - both, HTML5 and downloadable client.

There's a reason why AQ3D is coded in Unity - it's multi-platform, and supported on pretty much every single device nowadays - PS3/PS4, Xbox One/360, WiiU, Android, iOS, etc. You can read more about it here.



Lord Machaar -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 17:37:09)

Well this is the problem here Ranloth, unlike AQ dragons which will be available on phones/tablets and also on web browser, casual AE games (ED, AQW, HS, etc...) are complex, so instead of making an app for each of these games which as you stated will take years (same reason, small number of employees), players can play them on their phones/tablets browser, sadly not all phones/tablets have this possibility as flash isn't supported officially in phones/tablets, I say officially because everything is possible now. But a formal way (Official support of flash on phones/tablets) will mean easy access for all players, not a group of them.
The company is clearly heading forward to make new games with the possibility to play them in your browser and on your phone/tablet, good intiative, we see AQ dragons now, and ofcourse AQ3D with unity, which pushes the team's limits even further. Sadly same problem holds them back, base minimum of employees.

Now the question that's hanging here, what are the plans for AE's browser games?
We all know that browser games era is almost over, evolve or die, hardcore logo of 21st century.
We don't know either what future brings, every day, new invetions, maybe you can turn 2D games into 3D ones? maybe you can play browser games on your phones, from your browsers phone, or maybe the company takes the intiative to make an app for their game. We really don't know, but what we do know is, 2D games will be from past. With all the crazy engines we see know, gaming actually reached an advanced stage, sadly browser games remained the same. Is it due to flash? lack of courage? hmm....



Ranloth -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 17:49:48)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Artix/comments/2eurno/epicduel_player_wrote_me_a_letter_my_response/ -- I'll just leave this link here, since it explains what you mention in a bit more detail.

Google "is Flash dead?" and have a read through some articles, which should also answer most of your questions (+ why the move to Unity and Mobile has occured).



Lord Machaar -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 18:08:40)

My question is directed to whoever is in head of AE's planning now (Artix maybe?), What are the plans for AE's browser games? Becuase frankly 300 - 100 players (ED, HS...) isn't a good thing really, I mean they stopped showing the number of players in some of their games, what does that mean?

I'm not talking here about ED only, I'm talking about the 6 games of the company, I understand the move to unity and mobile phones, read my post very well, I'm not questioning about this, I'm not saying why they moved to unity or phones, I'm questioning about the future plans of the company's browser games. Because at this rate, some of them won't make to 2016.



Ranloth -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 18:23:07)

http://www.artix.com/designNotes/post/26448/LIFES-BLOOD - perhaps this will be more fitting, in regards to the browser games;

quote:

People accuse AE of giving up on HeroSmash (and a few games in similar situations), but the truth of the matter is that the players left us no choice. We stuck around and tried to keep people interested in HeroSmash LONG after we reasonably should have but you can't keep that up forever.

All that said, the older and less popular games AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE (including, but not limited to, HeroSMash)! Artix has promised that the games would stay open for as long as possible and he means to keep that promise. Even if development has stopped on a game it will remain open until we can literally no longer afford to run the servers, even if it means keeping them going at a slight loss.


In other words, they will eventually die and follow the HeroSmash example. Unfortunately, it's inevitable and since you know why the move to Unity/Mobile was necessary, then... yeah. Hopefully, the games will be able to expand beyond HTML5 and Unity (mobile/browser), such as having their own downloadable client, etc. Time will tell, honestly - trends change a lot, such as the huge spike in mobile/tablet sales + mobile gaming hitting it off (in general).



Lord Machaar -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 18:42:31)

Exactlly, we don't know what future holds up for any of us, but one thing we know that everything evolves or die with time. I hope AE manages to evolve with time, it is really a unique gaming company that I frankly would like to see on other consoles, but I would like to see the very first thing that this company started with get some attention, AQW for example is still running with a good amount of players, finding out why might help other games.

http://www.artix.com/designNotes/post/26360/MONEY
also reading this post by Cysero shows the struggles that get into the way of expanding the game more. Money.
I would like to say this, I like how Cysero expresses his opinion.
Just to add up something to his post, out of the 2% of all players that actually pay for the game, satisfying the 98% will be a great deal also. I'm not saying this because I don't support the game, I do support the game, I have bought many packages, promo packs and mini packs, especially to get the loot that I can see the devs have invested sometime on. So before juding on this, I'm saying caring for the 98% is a pretty good deal too.



dfo99 -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 18:55:05)

the rivality with mobile games is not sufficient to justify the actual average online players from ed. myself for example was a console gamer and play ed on a desktop, now i use only the laptop, which not runs big games like bf4, CoD and others, but i don't want play games like league of legends (which sadly matt1000 is going for example), it means that maybe there is alot of people in same situation, but they go facebook games, armor games, kongregate, runescape or aqw etc instead ed. also ed have less players than others "dead" games like tibia, age of empires 2 and age of empires 3, which is a p2p (but there is a cracked version) game without any update since 06/09/10 but still have near same amount of players as ed.



Lord Machaar -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 19:10:37)

Believe me, it does more than justify why ED is running with a small amount of players.
These are not words of my own, there are words of gaming experts.
When numbers speak, logic conclude, speculations hide and shut up forever.

On top of this, @Vextur has stated another 3 reasons, which means 4 in total, and some other minor reasons. If I can sum up those reasons, it will go like this:

1- Zero Advertising (No money). http://www.artix.com/designNotes/post/26360/MONEY
2- Small amount of members (employees) due to the company's policy which leads to the following reasons why the game is running on a low number of players:
a- No in-game features which require a lot of work.
b- lack of balance.
c - lack of updates.
...
3- Lack of a long term vision and plans. Best example, ranks. The game is basically fighting to survive. What can I say to devs, consider each day as if it's the last day of your game, give it all you got. We all do so eventually in our lives, and we always hope for best no matter how bad we reach. When devs say X thing is hard to accomplish and to make, sadly all great things in life come after greater work, and you should remember that everyone in this word faces the same problem not just you, it's work hard, play hard.



doomkiller98 -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 19:23:32)

My point I was trying to make is that, if these games are to survive they are going to need to be upgraded somehow. Epicduel as a game itself (like league or smite) would be insanely awesome.



dfo99 -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 19:43:23)

despite the facebook games and runescape have some advertising and games like aoe2 and counter strike 1.6 is frequently mentioned as classic great games (free advertising), the games mentioned above have this 3 problems.

in some hypothesis where if some extreme famous people says that is a hardcore ed player, kongregate non mobile player and armor games non mobile player in some interview and the games suddently get 100.000 new players, even ignoring the server problems, is obvious that ed will be the game which hold less players after some months even epic duel being the most advanced game in graphics and content. the question is, why? if the answer is because epic duel is overhall a boring game, then there is nothing to do about.



Lord Machaar -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 20:31:28)

quote:

despite the facebook games and runescape have some advertising

Some advertising?
Facebook has 1 billion monthly visitors, can you understand how much big this number is?
1.000.000.000 person, Almost 15% of the worlds population visits facebook for god sake and you tell me it is some advertising?
The bigger number, the bigger the audience the more you pay.



dfo99 -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 21:30:15)

the facebook really was not a good example, but the others still values.



Qwerty Again -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/14/2015 21:55:36)

Epicduel is actually also quite boring in comparison to games like runescape and counter strike, epicduel has ads, I have actually seen them on website every now and than. I feel like epicduel offers very little incentive to stay, some games offer free daily rewards



Lord Machaar -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/15/2015 5:46:52)

I think we should agree upon something here:
Epicduel is a browser PVP game.
Counter strike is a 3D FPS (First person shooter) game.
There is clearly a huge diffference between the two, same for dota 2, LoL, WoW...etc..
even for runescape, even it's a browser game, it is a 3D game.
You can't compare a bicycle to a car. A cat to a lion.
When you watch the latest Metal Gear Solid 5 trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_UG7loIZgM , you understand how much gaming has advanced, or when you see Assassin's Creed unity's trailer, same thing. Sadly browser gaming remained the same, not really the same, but compared to console gaming or even PC games, you can reall spot the difference.
I hope everyone understands the difference between each and every game, because each one of them has that thing you wish to play, sometimes you know that thing and sometimes not.

Now frankly most people who play ED now, whether they don't have another console (Xbox, PS), or they play it in their spare time, or they are kids, or they were bored of playing in their consoles.
And this is the sad truth, Few hardcore players now are playing ED as their main game... e.g Comicalbiker, whether some chose to do so (The minority) or other that have to do so (The majority), once they find another better game to replace it with, they won't have a second thought about it.



Squrwogrona -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/15/2015 9:04:30)

When it still existed, I played Witcher Versus. Pretty much like ED (with the difference you entered all ur moves in a sequence, then clicked start). Tbh, there are zillions of browser games, so pretty much you pick up one or two and stay faithfull to them. Mine happened to be WV and ED.

I started playing in the early 90's on PC and in 2015 I still play on PC. Good thing with ED is, you can play it 10 mins or 24 hrs/day, depends on ur mood and thats why I am still playing it.

But please, do not compare ED and full blooded PC games, makes you look foolish.

I just stay with ED till it passes away. Mainly bcs I don't have time to spend on more than one browser game nowadays whilst occasionally playing RPG's, shooters or strategies, plus I am a working person.



The berserker killer -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/15/2015 13:09:17)

You guys do realize that none of these are the problem.....the game had content such as flags, different stats on weapons, different armor stats, and there were tons of players. You got rid of flags, tokens, put in 600+ hour cooldowns for war and only update your game every 4/5 weeks with content that has nothing to do with "EPICNESS" or "PVP". How do you not have kill streak cheevos in a pvp game? Factions but no faction alliances? No rewards for factions for winning dailys/doms? No coleader who can also kick players? Thank god the story line is in tact though. You devalue var in PVP yet beg for it in other features ( dont even get me started how one of the mods tweeted that finances lead to more frequent releases right AFTER gifting ended). You Nerf promos players bought with real life money. You Nerf gear that players bought with their hard earned credits. If something popular comes up you Nerf it which is why players dont feel safe releasing some of the builds they have. The games database isn't low cause of advertisement....nor is it low because your testers are inexperienced and cant make their own builds so they think that just cause somethings popular that its op. Its low because in a MMORPG you focus more on your storyline than PVP. This game was epic for older kids, all you guys are doing is simplifying it for 8-12 year olds to the point where there's nothing to do.

You misconstrue "balance" for "equality", "content" as weapons with all the same stats, you disrespect your players by saying one thing and then changing your minds. I mean its not hard to see what's going on. Titan did not want this. He wanted brawlers on this game, he wanted epic players to duke it out, he wanted massive numbers but somewhere along the line it has become more of a game about missions and story line as opposed to PVP. Majority of people dont watch hulk to see him fall in love, they want to see him smash. They don't watch Thor to see him walk, they want to see him use his thunder. It sucks you guys dont see this. You need more experienced testers, I mean damn ill even give you 5 builds right now that are OP if I were to release them to the general public. You think tlm was a mistake? I went tlm to abuse 2 turn poison with a sword and everyone follows. I'm not bragging, I could care less about that, but that was just a social experiment. And look what happens? Devs quick up and make it the focus of an entire update. What'd this prove? That your testers dont even know this game! Youre telling me that you guys dont recognize somethings overpowered until a player comes up with a build and abuses the game? Here ill give you a list of skills and names of the builds I have.

1) Blood mage fireball: 4 turn build, 45 second matches. Record: 95 wins in 90 minutes. P.S. Your fireball scaling is a tiny bit op.

2) Bloody merc: 5 turn build. 35-40 wins per hour. Blood Commanders scaling is overpowered.

3) Tech Mage Override: 5 turn build. 40 wins per hour. I can tank dex, simultaneously buff my tech, over dose on energy and have my lvl 3 plasma bolt doing more damage than a level 10 bunker? You might want to rescale technician.

4) Bounty Slayer: Lets think about this real quick. Tech increases smoke damage and bot, support increases emp and crit..... Need I say more? 32 wph was my max.

5) unblockable tech mage: Lets think about this... A class thats basically overpowered on energy and ranged attacks doesn't seem over powered to any of your testers? No ones found that build yet? Plasma, fire scythe, gun, aux, meteor strike? No one? A class where I can tank str, support and hp while maintaining insane defenses with a lvl 1 matrix and max technician? Anyway: 2nd best to bm fireball I did 42 an hour with this one.

The point im trying to make is that your staff is inexperienced and they don't even play this game as much as should be required if they basically get accesss to every weapon, unlimited retrains, and still couldn't figure this stuff out. And clearly they haven't figured it out or these skills would have been nerfed already.

Well thats all I have to say. This is meant to be strictly constructive. The games dying because of inexperienced and unqualified staff, meaningless updates, the miscomprehension of "balance" as "equality" and monthly releases.



Satafou -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/15/2015 13:27:46)

TBK has a few good points actually, things that didn't need removed got removed, things that should have been added within the past 5 years still haven't been added. You know the game goes down hill when the upcoming release is about bunnies... This game had and still has unbelievable potential, there is honestly so much things you could do to this game to make it an insanely competitive MMORPG, but even in the past 5 years they still can't even balance classes they've had years to do. So if they can't even do that in 5 odd years why would we even bother to compare ED to other browser games who would obviously of had something as essential as this fixed by now. However the biggest mistake this game does is that it priorities unimportant useless events instead of implementing things the community either needs or would enjoy. Why do we have some code gifting crap, for a rip-off varium price which only gives you some achievement that holds no sentimental value or meaning whatsoever, which has also been made into a all time and daily leader board, yet we don't have ally link 2vs2 which is 100% possible to implement using a similar system to the 2vs1 boss battles, which could have it's own leader board for daily and all time. The apparent excuse against this is that there's "overpowered combo's", yet everyone entering the mode would have their own "overpowered combo's". There's no actual valid excuse why something like an ally link 2vs2 battle mode hasn't even been attempted to be worked on, when it's not only possible but something that would attract many players and would be pretty dam successful. Why is it this game chooses to focus on useless content rather than content that could greatly improve the game's appeal and the game as a whole?



The berserker killer -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/15/2015 13:41:49)

^someone understands. I continue to hear things like "Cause that'd be too op" when features such as ally links are available to EVERYONE. Especially the discussions going on about ranks atm. You guys continue to say that the game isn't fair because of ranks but fun fact: You can get a higher rank too by simply playing the game. Its not like theres one person with a rank higher than everyone. Its not like buying varium lets you automaticLly rank up.



Lord Machaar -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/15/2015 14:28:50)

quote:

You guys do realize that none of these are the problem.


2- Small amount of members (employees) due to the company's policy which leads to the following reasons why the game is running on a low number of players:
a- No in-game features which require a lot of work.
b- lack of balance.
c - lack of updates.
...

The second reason I've mentioned pretty much is the most important reason. Having more individuals in the team means more attention that each and every thing in the game gets. We see now in ED team an artist doing a programmer's job, a programmer doing a story teller's job... etc...
When there are enough people to care only about for example, features, we will see a lot of features, a special developper for balance, we will see more balance updates.
I hope with the introduction of "Guest artists/writers", this problem will be reduced, but sadly we can't have guest programmer or developper because those are the people we need who take actions and make them in-game, anyone can tell a story, but only few can put it in a game.

quote:

The games database isn't low cause of advertisement....nor is it low because your testers are inexperienced.

quote:

You need more experienced testers.


Contradiction is so hard in this one but let me assure you this, the game has 1 tester or 2 that are active. Sadly these 2 testers aren't even playing the game.

---

When you suggest builds and their winning ratio, I advise you to try these builds with rank 1 character. Test them and conclude, I'm sure you will understand a very important here, ranking system is only making balance more secrewed up. When you agree with what Satafou says, you are actually contradicting with everything you just said about balance. He mentioned that ED had problems balancing the game for over 5 years. Bottom line, even before ranks were introduced the game wasn't balanced, adding up ranks to give advantage to a group of players only made it worse. And yes ranks are secrwing this game.



Ranloth -> RE: epic duel vs others browser games (3/15/2015 15:33:22)

Guest Teams, as any Volunteers, are designed to free up time from the main Devs so they focus on more important stuff. This isn't about ED, but in general - if a task is "small" enough to be handled by Volunteers, why not then? This gives you more time to focus on something that can only be done by yourself. In other words, we are trying to make the releases bigger where possible, without having too many no releases; look back on last year, between Easter and Rev's update; 1.5 months with no releases. Right now, we've managed to cut this down considerably - which I'm personally happy about, because no one likes huge delays and having nothing to do. I still play the game, so having something to do is always nice.

In regards to people doing a mix of jobs (as Machaar mentioned): before the Guest Teams, and after Cindy left, NW wrote vast majority of the Missions himself. He does the databasing of items now, which is really expected of a Dev Artist nowadays (even more so in much bigger companies) - I do believe Charfade knows how to, too. It saves time for the programmers (Titan and Rabble - yes, Rabble is around and he's a full-time Programmer/Dev), but also helps in the future, if they start working on different projects or work for a different company, etc.

For Testers, we are always looking. Whilst some may not have the in-game experience, it may be enough to test the actual releases; by that, I mean checking if everything works as it should. When it comes to balance changes, I can see why players think we need more Testers with some in-game experience.



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