Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes from EA-owned studio Capital Games, released late last year, quickly proved to be one of the most profitable games for smartphones. In the US Galaxy of Heroes was in the top 10 on the number of downloads at online stores and in the top 6 at the box. After some time, a little bit forgotten about the film, and the number of downloads has decreased. But the game has maintained a place in the top 20 on the offering of her income. What he tells us one thing: the players continue to play in the Galaxy of Heroes. The game has potential, it can still stay in place. Especially when you consider that EA for many years will hold the license for Star Wars in their hands.
In recent years, the development of licensed games became very popular. And these games are popular with users. But Star wars projects have reached is not very much, despite the popularity of the universe. Star Wars Uprising by Kabam, Star Wars Commander from Disney and Star Wars: Force Collection from Konami were not so bad, and yet do not bring tangible profits for developers. But they were not so lucky as lucky Galaxy of Heroes – the game was released at the same time as the new part of the saga
EA did what could not be done Kabam, Disney and Konami.. She created a free-to-play-the game that could live for many years. They were able to organize a great, high-quality main game loop. To this was added a deep strategic component, interesting battles, constantly evolving gameplay. Galaxy of Heroes – quality, complex and deep game, and it is a long hold at players
key cycle
Galaxy of Heroes -. A turn-based RPG with a small addition of elements of collectible card games. She reminds Summoner’s War, Heroes Charge and other RPG for mobile phones. Players are prepared for the battle and their rewards. Awards are different, but their main purpose, regardless of the type – allow players to improve characters. The more characters, the more diverse the user fights openly. As this battle becomes more interesting and more complicated
First, each player has only two characters:. Chewbacca and Jedi. They fight in the very first battle. The reward for completing levels provide loans and training droids. They help to improve and Chewbacca Jedi raise their level and as a result runs more complex battles. At first, the game seems to be fast and dynamic: the user constantly pass levels and improves the members of his team. But, of course, the game limits you to: energy system does not allow to fight endlessly
Such a system, and the main loop is used everywhere.. Passage levels brings rewards, they are spent on improvements, and energy restricts the player. After the cycle makes several revolutions, the pace slowed down a bit, and the game becomes more difficult.
The game begins to exert a certain pressure, forcing open the new heroes. At first, you have several characters to the bright side (Jedi, Chewbacca, and so on), but to extend the mission for the dark side, you must open the corresponding characters. Gradually, the levels of the light side become too complex, forcing players to collect “evil” characters.
To get a new hero, you need to collect special pieces. Each character to match his own pieces. It is necessary to collect a decent amount only to open a character, and the player has a lot of time to pass certain levels. But there is another way: buy a data card, each of which contains fragments of a random character
But just a good basic cycle is not enough.. That game has managed to survive for many years, developers must add the game more features to make it complex and interesting. EA has coped with the task. Developers have created a deep combat system, the game is constantly evolving. But let’s understand in more detail.
Battle
The central part of Galaxy of Heroes gameplay is combat. At the core of the combat system is based on the standard for the RPG turn-based battles between the two teams, as in Final Fantasy (and hundreds of other similar games). Player collects the team fights with opponents and optimizes its own strategy, so that the team could fight better and longer.
The combat system and management
The combat system is a standard turn-based battles between the teams. Each team is up to six different characters. The aim, of course, is to destroy all enemies before they manage to destroy your team. A character dies when his health level drops to zero.
Each character has its own speed indicator (blue scale, located directly under the health scale), which determines the order of the hero action on the field. The faster the character, the faster filled with blue scale, and the more it can act in battle.
In most fights the player must go through three “waves” of opponents. In the latest “wave” is usually a boss. Voltage gradually increases, the player is required to make informed strategic decisions that the characters could live as long as possible. Each battle lasts about 2-3 minutes, depending on the level of complexity
Simple operation:. Each move a certain character is selected. The user then selects one of the enemy will attack and how the ability to use.
Compared to other mobile games of the same genre, Galaxy of Heroes requires a player to make more decisions. Now most mobile RPG become easier, but Galaxy of Heroes goes the other way. Modern RPG often realize completely automatic fights with minimal interaction from the player.
Just compare the battle in Galaxy of Heroes and Heroes Charge, and you’ll see the difference immediately. The characters of Heroes Charge function automatically: attack and take damage. A player may only occasionally use special abilities to help your characters to win.
But the Galaxy of Heroes requires the player a greater involvement. He must constantly make strategic decisions. Every few seconds he decides who attacks the character and what capacity it uses. As a result, every battle seems interesting, strategic, the player feels that his decision to mean something. But this can only work if the game has depth, if the strategy has some meaning. EA has tried to achieve this goal by making interesting characters abilities
The strategic ability
The depth of the game, you can understand just by looking at how diverse are the ability of the characters:.
each character in the game has its own purpose. For example, Kyle Wren specializes in dealing damage, and Jedi Consul – in the treatment of allies. The player has to figure out how to use the abilities of different characters well. For example, you need to choose a character to attack. You can try to kill the healer, so he can not cure his team, or to kill a strong character that the next move be sure to kill the character in your team. This is not always an easy choice.
As in other RPG, in the Galaxy of Heroes each character can attack the enemy in different ways. Each character has its own set of abilities. The higher the level, the greater the variety of skills he can apply, and therefore the more difficult to make strategic decisions.
During the battle, the character can use your basic attack an unlimited number of times. But each has a special ability timer. Using the ability to prohibit the character to use it again for a certain number of moves. The player has to decide when to use their abilities. Use healing ability now, and try to survive the next attack? Apply power, inflicting damage to multiple enemies in this turn, or during the battle with the boss? Of strategy games is just visible at moments when a player makes a choice
In general, the ability of diverse and interesting, and the player must try to use them in the best way:.
For example, at the Admiral Ackbar It has the ability to «It’s a Trap!». But this ability should be applied only when the team is on the characters for a number of negative effects. Therefore Admiral copes well with situations where the opposing team puts a lot of negative effects, but otherwise it’s pretty weak ability. As in Hearthstone, the player must make the most of their abilities and try to minimize the enemy’s efforts.
In addition, the ability of some work better on certain characters. For example, some ability to act only on the Jedi, while others do more damage to the droid. As a result, not only have to think in battle, but also on those which characters to use.
The battles are constantly becoming more complex, players have to improve their characters, to cope with new levels. By this, in fact, reduced the game
Team Selection:. Different types of characters and synergy
In the Galaxy of Heroes player controls more than one character (as in Diablo or Dungeon Hunter) and detachment five characters (plus one more additional character can borrow someone from friends). The developers wanted to make the player improve and open up as many characters you can.
As a result, even fun to engage in strategy is fighting. Not so easy to decide who to take with him to a certain battle, you can not just collect five of their strongest characters and go through everything. Which characters work best together? What are the weaknesses of my opponents have? What can I oppose his strongest characters? Is there enough in my team of healers to deal with the damage that will cause my opponents? Do I have enough tanks, can “absorb” a damage to the opposing team? If developers have not come up with a system with five different characters and a complex and profound battles, then such a strategy, the level would have been unattainable.
The choice would not have been interesting if the player did not think what could have been a perfect team. The characters are of different types and different interact with each other. For example, there are the Jedi characters, droids, and People. And for each type, there are abilities, aimed it at him, in a positive or negative sense. The player will have to look for the best combination. Just like in the Contest of Champions. He had to find a delicate balance both between the number of attacks characters, Healers, Tanks and heroes Support, as well as between the Jedi, droids, humans, and so on.
In addition, the player certainly want to pick a team that the best way work against the enemy team. For example, if the enemy team has a strong Jedi Healer, player chose against it other strong Jedi – Count Dooku. But just Count Dooku is not enough, it has to be a certain level to defeat the Jedi.
As you can see, though EA and able to realize the classic PRG-mechanics, and the development team has found a way to make the player is constantly open and improve the different characters .
the fighting – not the most interesting part of the game
Despite the fact that the game has enough depth and strategy, fighting quickly cease to be complicated. Therefore interesting RPG-System quickly become boring. In general, it is inevitable, and the players did not expect anything else. Nothing unusual for a game relying on the constant repetitive actions. Players know that they will have to participate in thousands of battles in order to achieve its goal.
If you compare the combat system Galaxy of Heroes and Heroes Charge, I prefer the latter, just because of the fact that it automatically. My opinion is subjective, but at least the Galaxy of Heroes seems to be more strategic and deeper than the Heroes Charge, the depth quickly become boring. The player will be more interesting if he will have during the battle to focus on something exciting: exclusively on the use of special abilities. Heroes Charge is this from the players and require them to not have to decide every move.
But, regardless of the combat system, and Heroes Charge, and Galaxy of Heroes fighting after hundreds of battle just stale. And both games developers have found a way to monetize the boredom player.
In the Galaxy of Heroes there is a currency, called Sim Ticket. With it, players can automatically pass those fights that seem to him too simple. Get Ticket easily and players quickly become accustomed to automatic victory at previous levels, and quietly earn their resources. However, even the automatic passage of levels of spending energy player, and besides, no end to pass the same level is not possible: every time you need to wait for some time. Therefore, if a player wants to endlessly pass a certain level, sooner or later he will have to invest some money in the game. A good way to monetize.
In addition, Ticket can only be used at levels passed by three stars. The player gets three stars, if you pass the level without losing a single soldier is not his team. Therefore, the automatic passage seems to be something well deserved. You have earned the ability to automatically pass the level, because for you it no longer provides the difficulties.
It’s nice. During the game, I can decide what levels to pass on what to spend the tickets, where to me to make the necessary items. It’s nice to be able automatic transmission, which is not felt as a fraud or a dishonest way to quickly run through the game. I can quickly gain the materials and resources to improve the character and fight only when I need to. As a result, every fight that I have to go in person, seems interesting and worthwhile.
The graphics and sound
The graphics in this game made quite sparingly. I’m not trying to offend anyone, of course, EA’s need to run a lot of work. Developers need to smodelirot, animate and proteksturirovat as many characters in “Star Wars,” and to make them so that they looked good on the smartphone screen. If you look at the Contest of Champions, each character looks unique in terms of models and animations. But in the Galaxy of Heroes save on everything, on what only can be.
It is easy to see that all the Jedi in the game move and attack the same way. Many of the characters in battle are similar to each other. Pretty clever, but very noticeable.
Please note that Darth Vader is clearly saved. The models small polygons that strengthen even more the feeling that the game is done with minimal cost.
But the work at height with audio. Turn up the volume, and you will soon engulf nostalgia. The main topics of musical saga playing in the background, laser swords, striking enemies emit sounds familiar. And on some level, you can hear the sound of the Death Star. EA developers really tried with the help of sound to convey the atmosphere of the universe
So:. First battle in the game seems interesting, but quickly become boring. Fighting game system is completely innovative. It is similar to the system in any other turn-based RPG.
But in an RPG is very easy to realize convenient for developers free-to-play-system, so do not blame EA. Initially, RPG can be quite simple, but over time, developers will make it harder and deeper.
But the most important thing is that from the RPG player can expect a large number of indicators of characters that can be improved. Battles become more complex, and they do not pass without strong characters. The player has no choice, and this lack of choice monetized without any problems.
metagame
Let’s look at the game out of battles. EA has created a system that can hold the attention of players for years to come. There are two reasons:
- First, the player has a fairly large selection. He can pass different levels and gradually improve their characters.
- Second, the character system is designed for a long game. In order to completely improve one character to the maximum, you need a few months to work up a sweat. But to collect the full command of the strongest heroes will take years.
Different types of battles
In any game it is important to gradually increase the complexity, so that users can easily get started. Galaxy of Heroes gradually opens up various game modes and tests, each of which gives players a special unique rewards. In total there are six game modes:
1. Campaign of Light and Darkness
Campaigns – the main component of the game. In them, the player fights against computer opponents, becoming harder and harder. Levels light side can be held only for the heroes of Light, and the levels of the dark side – only the Dark Heroes.
At first, the campaign to pass the levels easy, but it does not last long. Winning the battle rewards the player currencies (about them later), but more important is that for them the user gets a random items of equipment for the characters. With each level can drop a special item for any particular character.
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