It has been a struggle to find a mobile game that really grabs me and strokes my gaming addiction like PK once did. Since getting the axe, I've seldom even logged in to PK, let alone played. Even similar games that are in active development don't give the feels I'm looking for. Of course, I'm still playing numerous games, but they're just all part of the rotation.
Except for RPGs, I don't generally play more than one title of a genre or style. I tried as many popular titles as I could within each genre before settling on one (or zero) of each. The mobile shortlist is very short: Greed for Glory, Honorbound, and Warspear Online. The last is slow going, as I'm yet to reach the "good part" of the game beyond the monotonous single-player collection quests. Honorbound is a "card battle" game, which drew me in with the art style, but runs a bit slow and buggy.
As for GfG, I've no idea how many of this type of game there are, but new ones show up every time I look. It was very fun through the lower levels of play; the progression was noticeable, and the PvP was rather balanced. At this point, logging in almost feels like obligation, as I've invested so much time into my build and community and don't want to leave it behind. However, I'm not really enjoying the gameplay anymore. It's very buggy, and more so with every update. The PvP is unsatisfying and a mess. And, above all else, the prevalence of "pay to win" nags me to quit every day.
I'd love to talk about my issues on a community forum like PK has, but there isn't one. I'd love to read into the numbers surrounding gameplay, but the wiki barely qualifies as existing. Just as well, I'd love to report problems to the devs, but Uservoice doesn't function for me (and many others I've asked) in-game. Though the problems are numerous, the disparity between their severity and my interest in playing leaves me unmotivated to seek the other avenues of support. I just figure I'm not the only one having the problems and wait for other players to say something. I'll just have my own rants here.
I would have to guess that Uservoice has a fantastic management side such that developers would choose to use it for in-game support. The user side is atrocious. Though I'm not able to submit new posts, as I mentioned, I am at least able to open the pages of the app. That is, until it crashes the game, as it reliably does just by having it open for about a minute. I can't figure how posts are sorted, and there is no option to sort them otherwise. Everything is in one long string of posts with no organization. The only hope is to try starting a new post and use that as a sort of search function (which is also missing). As if to add a little insult, this is labelled the "forum" in game. Not even close.
War has become an irritating back and forth between the top upgraded one or two players of the opposing kingdoms (or otherwise a complete mismatch and one side gets rolled). Since reaching high level play, the difference in strength between capped troops and capped defenses is quite obvious. You don't even need a very good arrangement of towers, just max them out (by paying to win) and stuff them all together and people will be lucky to get even one star. The last update was supposed to specifically close this gap by making big troops bigger, but it also came with additional levels to defenses, so nothing changed.
Regular multiplayer is pretty much a trend economy. It's rare to see strategic attacks with the goal of getting stars, even from other high level players. It's all about the money: what's the easiest way to steal resources? The answer changes with each update. Once it was griffins and phantoms; knock out the archer towers and you've got free reign. Then halflings got big, and you could drop 240 of them for all the money. Then people figured out vampires and used them almost the same way. Now, dragons got the same boost halflings did and an eight dragon army is the way to go. No thought, no strategy, just buy upgrades and drop them on the field. In pretty much all cases, the goal is to trade one worthless resource (glory) for the only one people want. Which brings me to my final point...
The name of the game is a lie. Every time an update was meant to increase the desire to up your glory score, players just found other ways to keep the status quo. If your upgrades aren't maxed out, glory doesn't matter, as the resources it can buy with spending it are more valuable then what can be earned by keeping it. For some, dropping glory isn't just a side effect or payment system; many have incentive to drop. In war, the strongest players are generally at the top of the rosters. However, a weaker player with a higher score (probably from everyone else dropping for resources) has direct incentive to explicitly drop glory for roster position. The only players with a proper greed for glory are the capped ones trying to hold the top ranks they've always had.
And with all this, I continue playing. I'm desperately hoping the "big kingdom update" this month brings major overhauls to the game. This hope is pretty much all that's keeping me playing right now. I can keep up with my new friends through third party apps, which I'm forced to do anyway given the lack of proper in-game messaging (wow, this list is long). Ultimately, I have to assume the other games like this one have many of the same issues, else people would flock from one to the other (or maybe they are, I don't know). They all felt the same to me when I tried them initially; I stuck with GfG mostly because it's another PerBlue product, so I gave it the best chance. There is clearly a huge attraction to the genre bringing in profit. We'll see in a month whether it can earn any more from me.
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