Subject: That is, unfortunately, how most mobile games work.
Author:
Posted on: 2018-04-25 20:40:00 UTC
Micro-transactions are now pretty much a requirement for a mobile game. Either to boost your stats, or to advance story quicker. The "Fantastic Beasts" game had that, the Avengers Academy had that, and now Hogwarts Mystery has it, too. Can't say I'm happy with that.
This game is not augmented reality like we thought—it's a self-contained adventure game!
I downloaded it this morning and while I'm still early in the game, it's pretty cute. The graphics are lovely, the character creation is actually pretty customizable (we have actual black skin colors instead of 'dark tan'!), and so far the tutorial bot BFF is actually pretty sweet and adorable.
And there seems to be some sort of mystery afoot, as stated in the title! Your older brother was expelled from Hogwarts and has been missing ever since—he was going in search of the fabled "Cursed Vaults". Which sounds a bit like the Chamber of Secrets, but I'm still early in the game, so this might actually be decent.
The gameplay is simple enough to figure out, the characters are cute, and like I said—the graphics are lovely. And a helpful hint if you decide to pick it up: If you see house-elves in the corridors, tap them! They give you goodies. :D
https://i.imgur.com/MTvh62V.png
https://i.imgur.com/PBVIT2n.png
https://i.imgur.com/JruoXS2.png
(Also, for some reason, the < img src="URL”/ > cuts off anything else I attempt to post below it now, so if anyone knows how to put images directly in Board posts I'd appreciate knowing that.)
You can watch starting from first year here.
For those of you who don't have the time or money to spare on this badly designed game, but who want to have a good laugh at the story.
This is a free to play game. Ostensibly.
In the game, you have a resource called energy, and in order to complete quests, you have to tap around the game world and complete various actions, which require energy to do. You're very generously given one free energy every three and a half minutes—otherwise, you have to buy more with in-app purchases.
In order to advance the storyline, you also have the option of purchasing in-game gemstones to unlock the story quests; otherwise you'll get waiting times of an hour, three hours, and possibly even longer in later parts of the game.
To say I'm supremely disappointed by this is putting it mildly. You already have in-game currency to purchase to customize your character! Blocking off the story until you either pony up the cash or wait for hours to advance?
Boo. Major boo. I'm going to keep playing because I want to know what else happens in here, but I absolutely refuse to cave and buy permission to play through the story right away.
I, too, have been sticking it out because I want to know what happens, but I am annoyed at the energy system.
Maybe if they had a better balance - where, say, paying means you can progress faster by doing less of the many repetitive tasks, but you can still have things to do without spending real-world money, I think I'd be less frustrated.
*mild spoilers?*
Another thought that the game seems, thus far, to be copying a lot of bits from the original books - characters that are suspiciously similar to Malfoy and Neville (if less fleshed-out) and a whispered voice only you can hear that is very reminiscent of the Chamber of Secrets.
That right there is every single interactive story app on the App store. Except maybe a few that I could've missed.
But nonetheless. Episode. Choices. All the chat story apps. They all do that. It's terrible, it's sneaky, it's unjust, but it's common. That's how they make money - instead of being honest and making you pay up front, they just make it free so you'll be fooled and then mooch you of your cash to make the game playable.
What a shame - Hogwarts Mystery looked so good and so restrictive of wish fulfillment (the only possible wish fulfillment being choice of house) that I originally kind of liked it.
-Twistey
First of all, it's great to meet a fellow resident of Fallen London!
I agree that I find this mechanic to be a lot more tolerable there than in other places, but I'm not entirely sure why. I was wondering if you could share what you think makes Fallen London stand out in that regard.
I think a big part of it is that FL simply has among the best writing of any game that uses this system. Seriously, hats off to the FBG writing crew, they've been consistently amazing. Nevermind that they keep bringing in top-notch freelancers like Emily Short (award-winning IF writer) to round things off.
Another part of it is that FL's gameplay is really passive. You play for a few minutes every few hours or so in a side tab, and that works very well. If you really want more, you can buy Fate, or sign up as an Exceptional Friend—Which actually gives you content, not just more actions.
The other thing is, that action system is there to gate content, but in FL, it's not just a moneymaking thing: it's an integeral part of how the game works. If I had to guess, FBG probably makes most of their money on bought stories or Exceptional Friendships, where the primary benefit is content, not more actions. No, FBG has the action cap in place to keep you from burning through all their content at once, and to give themselves time to expand the game: otherwise, they'd have to try and write as fast as you can read, or you'd lose interest.
Finally, it's pretty generous with actions. Sure, you only get 20, but 20 actions get you pretty far. By the time you've burnt through your actions in FL, you always feel like you've made a good amount of progress on whatever you're doing.
Hope that works.
(Also, I'm Autistic_Ace over there. Want to add me?)
because Harry Potter is a series world-famous specifically for its writing, and is an already established franchise with a well-developed world that people are already interested in exploring.
Whereas Fallen London had to actively introduce new people to this world, draw them in, et al.
It just goes to show how mishandled this particular Harry Potter game was, doesn't it? It seems they tried forcing the Harry Potter concept into a vaguely themed mobile game, arbitrarily abandoning its interesting writing or worldbuilding or so on, all ignoring the fact that you can have that kind of stuff in this kind of game.
It's a bit of a dream, but picture, if you will, a Fallen London style Harry Potter game, written by Rowling and, I dunno, some assistants who write much like her. Where it does the same stuff as Fallen London - allows the player to be immersed into this fun, interesting world but instead, of course, into the world of Harry Potter.
That all makes a lot of sense.
I think the balance of actions to gameplay and the quality of writing (so you do actually feel like it’s worth waiting for) is what does it for me. It feels a bit like reading a magazine of good stories published in serial (albeit more complex and personally customized).
...this is making me pretty interested in it. I'll go check it out again, this time with a deeper scan.
-Twistey
Does it at least let the timer tick down without the game being open? If so, you could treat it as a 'one quest per day' thing, where you start the countdown the evening before and then pick it up once it's unlocked.
One mark of how good a mobile game is, is how successfully it balances gameplay without paying, and the incentive to pay. One that I've had on my phone for a while, Star Trek: Timelines, is very stingy with its currency; it almost never gives out the best of the in-game currencies (which you can use to buy powerful ships and characters), and only trickles in the one needed for performing actions.
The saving graces in that game are that you don't actually need the stuff you can buy (I mean, I'd love to have access to a third shuttle, but two works just fine)... and that whenever they have connection issues, they apologise by giving out a thousand action currencies at a time. ^_^ It makes it pretty hard to run out unless you really try. It's impossible to ride that to a position high on the scoreboards in the various events (I tried once, burnt through over 2000 action points and didn't crack the top 10,000), but it's perfectly fine for just playing the game.
Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like this one has anything similar, and the result is what you say - frustration for free players, which is more likely to make them abandon the game than pay for it. Hopefully they get that balance sorted out soon.
hS
Which is quite nice—means I can wander off for an hour and a half to let my energy recharge fully.
You can earn the in-game currencies by playing, though it's rather slow—I'm hoarding gemstones at every opportunity so I can buy a cool looking robe, but other than that, the only thing the currency is good for is speeding up energy regeneration and unlocking quests sooner.
Honestly, if it was anything other than Harry Potter, though, I'd have abandoned it out of sheer frustration, but dammit I want to know what happens, so I'm sticking it out.
Micro-transactions are now pretty much a requirement for a mobile game. Either to boost your stats, or to advance story quicker. The "Fantastic Beasts" game had that, the Avengers Academy had that, and now Hogwarts Mystery has it, too. Can't say I'm happy with that.
[Tests] Yeah, the curly quotes after your URL aren't reading as a close-quote. You'll need to replace them with a copy of the opening quote (which is non-curly). It should also work with single-quotes, I think. (I'm guessing you put the post together in a word processor with smart quotes switched on?)
hS
I might have to check this out. Running around exploring a nicely rendered Hogwarts? Yes please!
Re. the image thing, it looks like you've got a curly quote paired with a straight quote, which would break it if that's what you were using. Stick to straight quotes for code.
~Neshomeh
And I really do recommend the game! It's cute. :D
