After playing the game for a week or so, I must say the novelty has more or less worn off. Since I introduced it on my blog, then it is also my duty to let everyone know how I felt about the game itself. I reiterate: the game is addictive as one tries to up one’s stats to get ahead of the game. And this is when I discover one thing I disliked – i.e. the avenue to donate real money for points.

Points is sort of a second currency in the game (other than the ‘game money’ you earn) for many things – from getting yourself out of jail, to regenerating your activity points – such as energy, brave(ry) and will, to upping your stats – such as strength, agility, guard, labour and IQ, changing it for ‘game money’, buying stuff which you shouldn’t be able to get in an early stage of the game, and even getting NPCs – called Mahchais (henchmen / slaves) – which you can control (a donor’s feature). In short, points is a even more desired commodity in the game than ‘game money’ or items, since you can get almost anything as long as you have enough points!

In other words, the game can easily degenerate into nothing more than something whereby you use you real money to get as far ahead as you can afford. In fact, you can be very powerful in the game by means of a ‘money race’, which is exactly the same reason why I stopped playing Magic: The Gathering Collectible Card Game back around 1997 as a lot of rich kids were able to get a lot of power cards – with one guy boasting he spent $2000 on card purchases over a weekend.

In short, when one can play a game by using lots of real money to get ahead, then it really defeats the purpose of playing it. I would agree that money can be used to get some in-game advantage – like having a more advanced UI (user interface), in-game money getting higher interest etc, but nothing that would unbalance the game so much in the favor of one player. To allow a player to get far ahead using money is about as good as using a memory-editor to hack the money or stats. In my opinion, it takes the joy out of the game completely. What advantage is there to explore the features of the other aspects of the game at all?

But of course, it makes business sense completely to encourage buying one’s way to get ahead. The more people do that, the more profitable for those who runs the game. The case is stronger not to put into kuwakchai any form of game balance – the second thing I want to talk about.

Game Balance

Ideally, a game must be balanced so it remains playable, or so it encourages a n00b (newbie) to enter the game, especially complete n00bs who do not have friends already playing the game, or players who wants to do everything on their own. In this case, a complete n00b – say level 3 – will stand no chance when say, a level 48 player comes whacking him simply for the fact he has been capable of beating another level 3 in the level 48 player’s gang. He also stands no chance whatsoever if a higher level comes beating him up or to mug him of his ‘game money’. On top of that, a new player with help from those which have already gotten far, far ahead in the game, will rise tremendously fast. That is my case as I had help from another player – in a few days I was a level 10 punching way above my weight and beating most of those players of the same level.

This is good as one would want to encourage people bringing in their friends. However for those who brings in their friends and can’t help as much, they would find a lot of frustrated and angry friends who repeatedly get gang-banged and beaten up to the point the game becomes unplayable because they are spending most of the time in the game in hospital. At which time, I would say it’s better to quit – something I am contemplating for myself now after experiencing it in the game.

Anyway, maybe I am being too hard on the game because it is still in beta. In fact, I noticed I can beat up someone in another city without the need to be physically there which means some of the features are not yet working. Whatever the case maybe, I still believe strongly that game balance in the form of n00b protection or handicaps should be implemented to prevent players from getting far too ahead.

For example, a n00b who just joined maybe able to get in-game goodies from his friends who are higher level, but these items should not be usable until they have a certain skill level. That is to say, if given a shotgun, the n00b would miss most of the time because his skills aren’t there yet. On top of which, there should be a cap for the stats like strength, agility and guard. In other words, a level 1 player may have a total of 10000 points of stats which can be spread in different categories, but he can’t just keep buying points until he has strength that defeats all other player’s guard and agility. Is it not ridiculous if a level 1 player is capable of beating someone of level 20 simply because he spent USD100 on the game?

Also, there should be an increased difficulty in promoting to the next higher level. That is to say if 1000 experience points is needed from level one to level 2, then from level 2 to level 3 it should take 2000 experience points instead. It simply reduces the rate of a n00b with help from becoming level 15 overnight.

Next, handicap should be implemented against players of high level from taking it out on players of lower level. At this point of time level 15 player stands no chance completely against that of a level 40 in this game. He has almost no avenue of getting even, and there seems to be no mechanism at all in the game for ‘chance wins’. At least in Tribal Wars, if a player with 300 villages attacks a player with only 30, he suffers a massive handicap in morale. The big player thus suffer an handicap which increase the survivability of the smaller player, allowing him to call for help or reinforcing himself from fellow tribe members. There is no handicap for a smaller player to attack big players in Tribal Wars, however.

Finally, n00b protection. n00bs should be protected from all forms of attack until level 5 or maybe for 10 days in the game. That way the losers who didn’t train their characters well can’t just go whine to their big brother players to come and take revenge on another player who simply played better.

Desired Features

Cities – Make this feature work as soon as possible. It is ridiculous if someone in PeeJay is beating me up in Muar – several hundred kilometers away without him even being there. Allow players who own cars to drive them instead of forcing them to take the bus too, but maybe implement certain random events when they drive – like traffic fines or mishaps – so their game money can be depleted.

NPCs – Currently there is only one NPC feature. The usage of the ‘Mahchai’ to beat up high level players when one can’t beat them on their own. This is nice as it actually introduce some balance to the game, and it deducts from one’s daily number of attacks which is good as it prevents certain players from getting more attacks than the rest. Unfortunately, it is only available to donors.
I would personally like to see this being made available also to players who plays it free and an expanded usage of NPCs, maybe even the hiring NPC Assassins against higher level players.

Limit the number of attack and refills – In real life, you have 24 hours and I have 24 hours. Which means it shouldn’t be possible for one guy to be able to beat up more people simply because you have a higher level. And to allow someone to refill his number of attacks – even when they must be used by midnight – means the cost for high level players to bully low level ones is almost negligible. I won’t go so far to call for a penalty in experience gain when a high level player beats up a low level one, but well, the attacks must worth differently to players of different levels so they wouldn’t misuse them.

Read yet another review of the game.