Game Digest #2: Knighthood
When we talk about King, most people, including me, will first think about Match-3 Puzzle games like Candy Crush Saga. It’s to our surprise that King developed a turn-based RPG game which is not in their DNA. But as an old fan of Candy Crush since the early Facebook time (when it was a web-based game), I downloaded it to try. Though I have moved on to play new games, I still come back and check-in on my knight character every now and then. My favorite aspect of the game is its art style -- polygon cartoon and bright color tones, which is also the main reason I still keep it on my phone.
Deconstruction of the game
The core mechanics in the game is to battle with enemies and upgrade your character & heroes. And a lot of the gameplay is similar to what we see in other turn-based RPG games.
First we can breakdown the game according to our MDA model (Mechanics - Dynamics - Aesthetics).
Mechanics:
The basic mechanics are very similar to most RPG games:
PvE: Using stamina to battle with enemies and play hunts to get materials and experience points;
PvP mode: Battle with other players in the battleground
Level up weapons/ gears with experience points;
Open Chests for new weapons/ heroes and coins;
Collect new heroes and level them up;
Explore new parts of the map.
There are some advanced mechanics more specific to this game:
In each turn, players have four actions with three choices for each action: attack with a weapon, punch or use special skills from heroes.
All weapons, gear and heros have their own properties and rarity.
There are five job types of heroes: Rogues, Warriors, Mages, Alchemists, and Hunters. Each hero also has another property type as one of below : Militia, Golem, Beast, Goblin, Cult, Outlaw.
Heroes can be leveled up by gaining Heroes XP (coming from favor, hero scrolls or battle).
Pick up two heroes for each battle dependent on the type of enemies.
Guild: Players can join a guild and fight with the guild boss.
Roaming Monsters: Appear on the maps occasionally for a short amount of time, will give bonus reward to players if winning with achieving all of fighting objectives
Dynamics:
First I want to specify that when we talk about dynamics, it’s more about the systems developers build in the game using the mechanics.
Battle system: Before each battle, players need to pick a weapon and heroes depending on the enemies type (recommended are the ones which are identical to the enemy to maximize damage, like Militia strong vs Militia). If players use the matching set of gear in the battle, they will receive bonus damage +20% etc.
Weapon/ Gear upgrade system: The rarity and rank will decide the maximum level for the weapon/ equipement can upgrade. For rarity: there are common, rare, epic, legendary and unique. There are 5 ranks for each of rarity. Players can transmute unwanted items into rarer gear using the Dwarven foundry. Charms can be added to the weapons and gear to enhance effects in battle. In order to keep upgrading rank and levels, players usually need to purchase some special materials or win from other micro-systems.This makes up the majority of the game ecosystem. So we will elaborate on it later.
Quest system: there are two types of tasks, one is a daily task and the other one is a side story task. The function of daily tasks is more for engagement and making sure each player engages with every micro-system in the game and spends longer time in the game. Players will receive a bonus award if they finish all daily tasks. On the other hand, side story tasks guide players to explore more parts of the map and challenges for a higher level.
Versus Arena: This is the only look-like PvP battle ground where players can fight with other real players. The reason I say it’s only a look-like is that it still feels like PvE except they use the other players name and characters as the enemy rather than an AI. But since it’s a turn-based battle and there is no real-time matching experience, it’s using data to battle rather than strategy
Shrine of heroes: This is the place that can help level up heroes faster, each with specific requirements on the heroes type and rank. Also it’s only available during limited times in a day, so the player needs to choose which heroes to pick carefully depending on what type of enemies you have on the map now.
Monster Cave: There are two monster caves you can enter per day with different difficulty levels for you to conquer. And players can use the rewards to exchange for some materials that are required to upgrade the rank of weapons.
Guild Coliseum: Players can build or join a guild as they want. It is the only place that socializers can join and chat with other players (the local chat is not available yet). Guild bosses can only be activated by the leader of the guild. Members in the guild can fight against the boss together. If the boss is defeated within a limited time, everyone who participated will get rewards. The rewards can only be used in the guild shop to exchange items for upgrades.The guild quests can also be activated once a player joins a guild.
Aesthetics:
In other words, what is the design goal of the game designer?
Let the player explore and get lost in the fantasy world, feel accomplished through defeating monsters, level up all weapons/ gear to legendary, collect all heroes, join a guild to feel belonging by beating a boss together, or all of the above? According to Bartle taxonomy of players types: there are four types of players - achievers, explorers, socializers and killers. I drew the graph below to illustrated how much fun different type of players getting from the fun ( area in four quadrants = fun).
For achievers, this game is essentially designed to their needs. There are several types of system upgrades, for weapons and gear. There are 54 heroes in total to collect and upgrade. I have played for over a month now and only collected half of them. I definitely have a long way to go as the developers regularly add more content.
For explorers like me, the game is fun in the beginning. Because there are a lot of systems to explore and maps to unlock. But after a while, especially after I figured out how it works, I found out a lot of them are repetitive. Needing to go through each battle in order to unlock more parts of the map becomes quite repetitive. You know that you are going to win for sure if you have a higher level than the enemies, and if not, you’ll need to keep going on hunt until you hit a higher level.
For socializers, I would say this game definitely puts efforts to make socializers feel welcomed. But it is far from enough if there is no in-game chat platform to chat with friends privately or world chat.
For killers, it’s better for them to play Call of Duty or PubG instead. How could a game without a real-time battle system attract killers to play?
Economy in the game:
The most essential currency in the game is gems and this can be used to buy any materials in the game. It’s also the only IAP item in the game as well. The ways to get gems are quite limited: only by finishing daily tasks or watching some videos, but only for a limited amount of time.
Gold is the second currency in the game and could be used in the shops to buy weapons, armories or limited amounts of materials. Gold could be exchanged by gems but not the other way. Gold can also be gained through battles and hunts. It’s easier to get coins by just playing more.
There are different types of materials in the game that are used to update the weapon/ gear. These materials can either be acquired through battle/ hunts or buying from shops. It’s worth mentioning that except for the normal shops that can be traded by gems and gold, there are also guild shops, arena shops and monster cave shops which are traded using their own micro-system currencies that only can be acquired in those micro-systems ( guild, arena, and monster cave).
Like most F2P games, the use of stamina in the game is to control pacing of the game play. If players want to explore more parts of the maps, they need to beat these enemies and keep upgrading themselves. In order to continue upgrading and battle new enemies, players will exhaust more stamina as the game progresses. When they run out of stamina, they will need to wait for a certain amount of time or use gems to refresh. That’s where they have to pay if they don’t want to wait, as gems are limited.
Players can also choose to open chests in order to get some rarer gear, weapons or heroes. The chests can be purchased by gems/ gold. Some of the chests will be rewarded daily or after some battles. Since it's random loot and you probably don’t get what you want for the most of time, I don’t see many people willing to open it, except for the free ones.
Where does the game break?
In general, it’s a great game and I did enjoy playing it in the beginning. But after I figured out the patterns in the game, I started to lose interest in playing it. I also noticed certain things broken in design, as listed below.
There is NO real PvP experience. At least not as it is branded in the game intro. For killers-type players who are looking for a real PvP experience, they will end up being disappointed. My advice is to have some real-time team matching in the battle arena. It can still use some AI bots to use other players’ data to battle, but at least it will simulate a more true PvP experience. Also for players who have been defeated, they will receive a notice when they are back in the game and have a chance to fight back.
There are too many micro-systems in the game and micro-currencies that can only be traded in those specific micro-systems. It’s good to have some meta-games so it will keep people from getting bored. But when there are too many micro-currencies in the game, players will get confused easily. Or there could be a mechanism for them to be mutually transformed.
What’s the point of auto-mode? The auto mode in each battle only uses attack as actions, no punch or special skills will be used. This could be improved by implementing stronger algorithms like combining attacks with punches and skills.
For a turn-based RPG game, the story line is a bit weak. Of course it’s not fair to compare a mobile game to PC games like Final Fantasy or Divinity, but neither the story nor character building aspects are compelling enough. It lacks a core narrative expected by core players; but for casual game players, they can still play it in the same way as Candy Crush.
More social systems in the game. Like I mentioned earlier, the only social function it has is to chat in the guild. It will be great to add more local chat functions. Something more advanced could be like opening a trading platform in game for players to exchange stuff to add more ways to interact with people.
Everything is based on numbers. What do you mean? -- Is it not supposed to be based on numbers with all these damage and defense? What I want to say here is that strategy doesn’t really matter when you play your turn. If your level is lower than enemies (it will auto-compare your total armor with your enemies prior to the battle). No matter how hard you play with different strategies, you will always lose. Some fun in the game will be lost especially for explorers who want to try out different combos. Because it doesn’t make a difference if your total armor is lower, then you should just go on hunts and upgrade your armor before you get a chance to defeat them.
[The end]
What my knight looks like now:
