Kingdom of ROBLOXia is a project that my friend has been working on for over a year. It’s a social game designed to stand out from all the current popular ones with its locked perspectives on maps, quests, and usage of universes. It is currently not fairing too well at all despite heavy advertising on release.
I have recently started actively working on the project again, and I am looking for opinions/critique on the place in order to hopefully find out what is holding back the game from the community. Below are brief descriptions of a few aspects of the game.
All of the accessible universe instances of KoR are labeled on the map. With 50-player servers, all parts of the kingdom will feel like an actual city. (if there are people actually playing the game)
Quests are scattered throughout KoR. Some introduce users to certain aspects of the game, while others are just for fun.
[size=6]PINS[/size]
“Pins” are awarded via quests or bought through shops. “Magic Pins” are special types of Pins that, when used, cause an effect to be overlaid on your character. Some pins are rare (distributed through various, one-time events) and can be collected via trading with others. All pins can be shown off on a user’s KoR profile.
There is a special type of Pin that exists in the game called a “Hat Pin”. These Pins are randomly awarded when playing the 2D minigames in the “Arcade” area of KoR. When used, these pins award random “rare” hats for the player to wear in KoR. There is a quest in the “Arcade” area that awards a free hat pin for players to try out.
Rooms allow users to make their custom “houses” and invite other players to socialize in them. A user can theme their room in numerous ways, such as making a dance club, restaurant, or making their own minigame. Popular rooms are listed on the “Rooms” section of the map.
I did not see a way to skip the tutorial, I hate tutorials and just want to play games, I can usually figure them out without needing a tutorial
I found it annoying that the green dot doesn’t show up behind items, and allow you to click to move behind something, yet the game allows you to walk behind items if it’s in the middle of your path
*I noticed I was hovering around the screen a lot looking for clickable items, if you could put up a billboard gui to show items that are clickable that would be nice
*On the tutorials page, it was not obvious that I had completed the first tutorial, if you could have a checkmark next to it, or remove completed from the list/move it to a new tab, that would be nice
*On the maps screen, the entire circle should be clickable, not just the label
*The to do list showed up every time I moved to a new area, I found this annoying
*When you hover on a spot that sends you to a new area, it should tell you the name of the area in a hover text, I got confused on the litter quest on where to walk to, and it was practically guess work
*On the fishing game, you had to click at the top to take the fish in, well, my mouse was constantly going out of the frame, you need to the lock mouse type in the UIS, and use the delta for mouse movement, so that your mouse never ‘leaves’ the frame
*The hat spin felt rigged, it slowed down too early, and kept the slow speed too long without changing speed xD
*The use button on the hat pin also didn’t go away, and it wouldn’t let me use it
*I could click through GUIs to move my character, this caused unintentional movement
*Games closed when you lost, re-opening a game was annoying
*I bought a sofa but could not sit on it, I want a refund! D:
*I could not exit my room through the door
*I was told there were quests in the magic shop, couldn’t find any
*Got stuck in a doorway in nathan’s room
Wow, I honestly wasn’t expecting something as thorough as that in terms of feedback. We’ll get to work on any of the issues you’re experiencing. You’ve helped a lot. Thank you so much!
Hopefully there’s more feedback to come from the experiences of others.
I could do some more testing if you’ve ironed out the things I’ve mentioned, I didn’t really finish, ran out of time, and I figured my list was large enough for the moment.
I think the main issue it’s not popular is because it’s supposed to be like a chat game like club penguin almost right?
But you’re pushing people immediantly away and out of that midset of a chat/hangout game.
[ol]
[li]You’re forced to do a tutorial, this was already mentioned but will turn away people. Make it optional and not the first screen you see. Instead have it off to the side and be like “want to check out the tutorial?” or just leave it it your quests un-touched.[/li]
[li]Restricted camera angle. I get it that that’s the theme, but for the average roblox player they want to play roblox, not a birds eye view game. You can keep the birds eye view but at least give us some control like zooming and slight movement. i.e. It’s a cool world, let me look at it! [/li]
[li] Why universes? People lose friends immediantly that way. The people they are trying to adventure with! All the maps are so incredibly small that universes really makes little no sense, simply teleporting them to a different part of the map would be A LOT more fun and convenient. [/li]
[li] The lack of movement controls: I don’t want a point in click adventure game, why can’t I use my normal keyboard controls?[/li]
[li] Everything this game does is really REALLY cool, but you’re forcing it too far away from ROBLOX. A well made hangout chat and adventure place is what is needed on the front page, but it just has too many changes that the average noob wouldn’t understand. [/li]
[li] [/li]
[quote] I think the main issue it’s not popular is because it’s supposed to be like a chat game like club penguin almost right?
But you’re pushing people immediantly away and out of that midset of a chat/hangout game.
[ol]
[li]You’re forced to do a tutorial, this was already mentioned but will turn away people. Make it optional and not the first screen you see. Instead have it off to the side and be like “want to check out the tutorial?” or just leave it it your quests un-touched.[/li]
[li]Restricted camera angle. I get it that that’s the theme, but for the average roblox player they want to play roblox, not a birds eye view game. You can keep the birds eye view but at least give us some control like zooming and slight movement. i.e. It’s a cool world, let me look at it! [/li]
[li] Why universes? People lose friends immediantly that way. The people they are trying to adventure with! All the maps are so incredibly small that universes really makes little no sense, simply teleporting them to a different part of the map would be A LOT more fun and convenient. [/li]
[li] The lack of movement controls: I don’t want a point in click adventure game, why can’t I use my normal keyboard controls?[/li]
[li] Everything this game does is really REALLY cool, but you’re forcing it too far away from ROBLOX. A well made hangout chat and adventure place is what is needed on the front page, but it just has too many changes that the average noob wouldn’t understand. [/li]
[li] [/li]
[/ol] [/quote]
We’ll make the tutorial optional in a future update. We just got too many complaints of not knowing what to do.
The restricted camera angle will not be changed. This isn’t really a limitation or anything, but it is a stylistic choice. In some places of the game, there are paths that do change the camera angle to show another part of the map. Allowing people to move their cameras around would show them a totally empty game that only has parts placed where you’re supposed to be looking. This allows us to be detailed without risking performance, as we don’t have to build what isn’t seen. Also, we have a formula in place for aspect ratios. Allowing people to zoom in and out might affect how the map is perceived and cause some issues. Personally, I think it’d ruin the immersion, as some things look better from further away.
Honestly, I think we’re doing universes right. We have an in-game friends list that allows you to follow your friends with no effort at all. Also, we definitely don’t want to put everything in the game into one place, as it would force us to choose between quality and performance. Moving forward, we’ll try our hardest to make better use of the changeable camera paths to allow for less map loading.
We definitely can experiment to see how we can make movement keys work. We have controller and mobile support, so I don’t see why not.
I understand we’re making this different from the typically expected ROBLOX games. This is something we wanted to do in the first place. I don’t believe it will hurt us at all if we find how to do it right. This is why I’m asking for feedback. Every little bit we can do to make the game better for everyone, we’ll jump at the opportunity.
When doing the tutorial, I want to know that I did something right and then get some kind of reward for it.
Even just a sound and gui pop/animation when a mission is completed would work.
[quote] The guis feel quite crowded, bright, and in-your-face.
I didn’t finish the tutorial as it wasn’t very engaging/interesting.
Other than that it’s quite unique and I feel like it’s going in the right direction. [/quote]
Any suggestions you can give me on how to fix that for you?[/quote]
The Gui jiggle when you won something was the only one that was really that irritable to me, but I wrote that one off on me being an older person than the target audience, kids like bright in your face stuff it seems.
When doing the tutorial, I want to know that I did something right and then get some kind of reward for it.
Even just a sound and gui pop/animation when a mission is completed would work. [/quote]
Yeah, we can work on the GUIs. The reason they are the way they are now is because we tried mimicking UI design from an old game called Virtual Magic Kingdom.
What you said about the sounds and animations for knowing something is done should already be implemented in some sort of to-do list for questing. I’m not sure it’s done yet, but I did get a chance to test it out when xSIXx ran a little test. I think it’s along the lines of what you’re talking about.
