Hello everyone! I've just recently published Star Bar to the Arcade and I am looking for some feedback. Please go check it out and let me know what you think! Just search for "Star Bar" in the Arcade.
I've made some major changes so I'm looking for feedback on the latest version:
Versions 1.3 & 1.4:
- Bars that are more heavily trafficked now become dirtier more quickly
- Rescaled the way employees become disgruntled over time
- Perdition Turrets no longer cause splash damage to neutral units (customers)
- Customer appearance patterns have changed
- Customers now move at random speeds
- Day counter has been added
- New "Cash Out" ability allows converting vespene into minerals
- Increased Perdition Turret range from 4 to 6
- Reduced Perdition Turret base damage from 16 to 12
- Longbolt Missile Turret now deals +6 damage against massive units
- Added new ability to cause "blackouts" for opponents
- Bars can now be upgraded with various Improvements
- Added Perks for high-level Improvements
- Prices on supplies now fluctuate from time to time
- Random events now increase with frequency as the game goes on
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Thanks for the feedback. I may have to work on a more elucidating video over the next week or so. This one was more to give a taste of the general gameplay and UI. It's tough finding the right balance between keeping it short and interesting while also giving an adequate description of the game, as you indicated. Your commentary will certainly come in handy :)
Here are some minor things that I think need fixing.
Vespene selling tooltip says -90 minerals.
It would be nice knowing what the arriving stock would be added to. I often forget what's coming and over buy beyond my storage capacity. Maybe add a different coloured but extended bar?
Apparently I could have an ally and us 2 just playing the map. Not sure if that's intended and when I tried hiring the secret employee to attack my ally, nothing seems to happen.
Maybe rating should go beyond 200.
I'll have to think about the Cash Out tooltip. It says -90 because that's what it costs... it subtracts 3 vespene and adds 90 minerals. I might be able to hide the cost display and show something a bit more intuitive.
As for the cargo trucks, I agree that it can sometimes be frustrating to not know what the truck is carrying. Fixing this should be easy enough.
The game should work fine regardless of the number of players. You may have encountered a glitch. You can send me the replay if you like and I can look it over. It's hard to know for sure... it could be possible that your friend fired or killed the employee immediately. Did any other abilities seem to glitch out?
I didn't want rating to go too high to prevent one player from gaining too much of an edge at any point. Capping it at 200 means that there's always an opportunity to come back, whereas a player with 900 rating could charge max markup for several days and rake in cash, further cementing his lead. Besides, with the rating too high, customers would eventually come in too quickly for supplies to keep up, causing frustrating gameplay experiences. That being said, all things are subject to balance of course, so the 200 cap may fluctuate somewhat in the future.
Just watched the replay. As far as I could tell, everything worked fine. The Zerg came and only attacked your opponent... in fact, it was these constant attacks that finished him off at the end. A lot of his civilians also died at the end so maybe that's when you noticed the attacks stopped.
I see your points regarding the rating and it makes sense. However, the rating is not supposed to be the primary game decider. I think the current setup more closely mimics how bars operate in the real world - that is, the rating (or public perception) can rise or fall in a relatively short period of time and is not the biggest factor in determining success or failure. Just as a real bar's reputation may stagnate over time if it doesn't advertise or produce satisfied customers, such is the case in Star Bar - though on a much smaller time scale, of course. That's the philosophy behind the status quo, at any rate.
The strategy is basically to keep your bar afloat while knocking your opponent off-balance enough to make them lose the game. I have more upgrades planned in the next update to increase the amount of customization you can do to your bar, so that should definitely mix things up a bit. You can somewhat specialize your stock by buying up a particular quality (low, medium, or high) and advertising to the corresponding class, even if you still need a small amount of the other food and booze types to keep your rating up - but again, this also mimics most bars today who have low shelf, mid shelf, and top shelf selections to both food and alcohol products.
The Secret Agent ability basically "hires" a new employee for the target player that, while he remains alive and/or in the employ of your target, will cause a zerg attack wave to spawn every day and attack only your target's bar. Based on my observation of the replay, that's what happened. Now, whether I actually do a good job of communicating that effect during the game may be the real issue, and is something I will definitely be looking at over the next few patches.
It seems like there is quite a bit that isn't being properly communicated to players, and this is (understandably) causing misconceptions and frustration. Advertising, for example, causes the target customer type to appear more frequently relative to the other customer types. For instance, advertising to Upper Class will shift the spawn ratio of the types of customers toward those who prefer high quality goods. Without advertising, the ratio is something like 50% lower class, 35% middle class, and 15% upper class. After advertising to Upper Class, this ratio will shift to something closer to 25%/15%/60%. So in order to keep your stocks up, you'll need to buy more High Quality goods than the other types. The best way to take advantage of this is to stock up on a certain type of good when the price is low and change your advertising so that you target that type.
The fact that you're allied with all players doesn't really have a practical impact on the way the game plays out - or at least, it isn't supposed to. In the next patch I plan to make players enemies since that will send a more clear message about the objective of the game - which is to drive the other players out of business.
Again, I must thank you for the very thorough feedback you've provided. It seems my biggest goals right now are to add more variety and better communication/feedback to the player. Stay tuned over the next few weeks because Star Bar will not be short on updates ;)
Why is this not uploaded to EU? Also, I had to quit the tutorial early as a bug made it completely unreadable. Screenshot attached. Once I got into a game though, I thought it was pretty fun.
Why is this not uploaded to EU? Also, I had to quit the tutorial early as a bug made it completely unreadable. Screenshot attached. Once I got into a game though, I thought it was pretty fun.
I don't have an EU account. Unless Blizzard changed the way publishing works and I'm simply not aware of it. When I published Xeno Crisis to EU, I had to get a friend who lives in Europe to lend me his account.
I'm not sure what you mean regarding the tutorial. Are you saying the white text is too difficult to read or did the tutorial simply stop working?
I don't have an EU account. Unless Blizzard changed the way publishing works and I'm simply not aware of it. When I published Xeno Crisis to EU, I had to get a friend who lives in Europe to lend me his account.
When publishing a map using the editor, you can check and uncheck, which servers you want your map published on. You can switch the region you want to play on at the log-in screen of Starcraft II.
@ScorpSCII: Go
I'm not sure what you mean regarding the tutorial. Are you saying the white text is too difficult to read or did the tutorial simply stop working?
Adding a transparent background to the text field would greatly add to the readability, although I was mostly refering to the fact that all text outputs were printed twice. Take another look at the screenshot.
I would also like to add that I think you should add more strategic depth by adding new options (I only had two variations of staff to choose from, for example). I did enjoy playing Star Bar, but I can imagine it will change quickly after some replays, unless you allow for games to be more varied.
Hello everyone! I've just recently published Star Bar to the Arcade and I am looking for some feedback. Please go check it out and let me know what you think! Just search for "Star Bar" in the Arcade.
The official page on battle.net is: Star Bar
SC2Mapster project page: SC2Mapster Star Bar
I'm entering this map in Blizzard's Rock The Cabinet contest so your feedback will help give me a fighting chance!
I've made some major changes so I'm looking for feedback on the latest version:
Versions 1.3 & 1.4:
- Bars that are more heavily trafficked now become dirtier more quickly
- Rescaled the way employees become disgruntled over time
- Perdition Turrets no longer cause splash damage to neutral units (customers)
- Customer appearance patterns have changed
- Customers now move at random speeds
- Day counter has been added
- New "Cash Out" ability allows converting vespene into minerals
- Increased Perdition Turret range from 4 to 6
- Reduced Perdition Turret base damage from 16 to 12
- Longbolt Missile Turret now deals +6 damage against massive units
- Added new ability to cause "blackouts" for opponents
- Bars can now be upgraded with various Improvements
- Added Perks for high-level Improvements
- Prices on supplies now fluctuate from time to time
- Random events now increase with frequency as the game goes on
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
@BasharTeg: Go
I didn't notice this... This sounds fun I'll have to try it and it sounds pretty unique.
@JacktheArcher: Go
Yes, please do! I'd like to have a video of it up soon... I just haven't been happy enough with previous versions to make a recording.
I just released the trailer for this game, so feedback on that would also be cool.
@Trieva: Go
Thanks for the feedback. I may have to work on a more elucidating video over the next week or so. This one was more to give a taste of the general gameplay and UI. It's tough finding the right balance between keeping it short and interesting while also giving an adequate description of the game, as you indicated. Your commentary will certainly come in handy :)
I'll have to think about the Cash Out tooltip. It says -90 because that's what it costs... it subtracts 3 vespene and adds 90 minerals. I might be able to hide the cost display and show something a bit more intuitive.
As for the cargo trucks, I agree that it can sometimes be frustrating to not know what the truck is carrying. Fixing this should be easy enough.
The game should work fine regardless of the number of players. You may have encountered a glitch. You can send me the replay if you like and I can look it over. It's hard to know for sure... it could be possible that your friend fired or killed the employee immediately. Did any other abilities seem to glitch out?
I didn't want rating to go too high to prevent one player from gaining too much of an edge at any point. Capping it at 200 means that there's always an opportunity to come back, whereas a player with 900 rating could charge max markup for several days and rake in cash, further cementing his lead. Besides, with the rating too high, customers would eventually come in too quickly for supplies to keep up, causing frustrating gameplay experiences. That being said, all things are subject to balance of course, so the 200 cap may fluctuate somewhat in the future.
@Trieva: Go
Just watched the replay. As far as I could tell, everything worked fine. The Zerg came and only attacked your opponent... in fact, it was these constant attacks that finished him off at the end. A lot of his civilians also died at the end so maybe that's when you noticed the attacks stopped.
I see your points regarding the rating and it makes sense. However, the rating is not supposed to be the primary game decider. I think the current setup more closely mimics how bars operate in the real world - that is, the rating (or public perception) can rise or fall in a relatively short period of time and is not the biggest factor in determining success or failure. Just as a real bar's reputation may stagnate over time if it doesn't advertise or produce satisfied customers, such is the case in Star Bar - though on a much smaller time scale, of course. That's the philosophy behind the status quo, at any rate.
The strategy is basically to keep your bar afloat while knocking your opponent off-balance enough to make them lose the game. I have more upgrades planned in the next update to increase the amount of customization you can do to your bar, so that should definitely mix things up a bit. You can somewhat specialize your stock by buying up a particular quality (low, medium, or high) and advertising to the corresponding class, even if you still need a small amount of the other food and booze types to keep your rating up - but again, this also mimics most bars today who have low shelf, mid shelf, and top shelf selections to both food and alcohol products.
The Secret Agent ability basically "hires" a new employee for the target player that, while he remains alive and/or in the employ of your target, will cause a zerg attack wave to spawn every day and attack only your target's bar. Based on my observation of the replay, that's what happened. Now, whether I actually do a good job of communicating that effect during the game may be the real issue, and is something I will definitely be looking at over the next few patches.
It seems like there is quite a bit that isn't being properly communicated to players, and this is (understandably) causing misconceptions and frustration. Advertising, for example, causes the target customer type to appear more frequently relative to the other customer types. For instance, advertising to Upper Class will shift the spawn ratio of the types of customers toward those who prefer high quality goods. Without advertising, the ratio is something like 50% lower class, 35% middle class, and 15% upper class. After advertising to Upper Class, this ratio will shift to something closer to 25%/15%/60%. So in order to keep your stocks up, you'll need to buy more High Quality goods than the other types. The best way to take advantage of this is to stock up on a certain type of good when the price is low and change your advertising so that you target that type.
The fact that you're allied with all players doesn't really have a practical impact on the way the game plays out - or at least, it isn't supposed to. In the next patch I plan to make players enemies since that will send a more clear message about the objective of the game - which is to drive the other players out of business.
Again, I must thank you for the very thorough feedback you've provided. It seems my biggest goals right now are to add more variety and better communication/feedback to the player. Stay tuned over the next few weeks because Star Bar will not be short on updates ;)
Why is this not uploaded to EU? Also, I had to quit the tutorial early as a bug made it completely unreadable. Screenshot attached. Once I got into a game though, I thought it was pretty fun.
I don't have an EU account. Unless Blizzard changed the way publishing works and I'm simply not aware of it. When I published Xeno Crisis to EU, I had to get a friend who lives in Europe to lend me his account.
I'm not sure what you mean regarding the tutorial. Are you saying the white text is too difficult to read or did the tutorial simply stop working?
When publishing a map using the editor, you can check and uncheck, which servers you want your map published on. You can switch the region you want to play on at the log-in screen of Starcraft II.
Adding a transparent background to the text field would greatly add to the readability, although I was mostly refering to the fact that all text outputs were printed twice. Take another look at the screenshot.
I would also like to add that I think you should add more strategic depth by adding new options (I only had two variations of staff to choose from, for example). I did enjoy playing Star Bar, but I can imagine it will change quickly after some replays, unless you allow for games to be more varied.
I hope I could help.
Version 1.5 is here!
Version 1.5
Star Bar: Now available in Europe!
Version 1.6