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Comment by znt | Hacker News Reader

I just checked the game out, it looks fun. You're saying the user earns points and stuff, but there's so little feedback about the point and xp gains. Maybe you should add little glowy point popups for that.

Go check http://www.realmofthemadgod.com/ . It is a real time Flash MMO and it does a very good job at displaying user progress.

Also if you want to go "gray" you can code some AI which mimics basic user actions at low frequency and display a higher online user count.

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Thanks for the feedback. The link I posted here is actually the lite version of the game: No login, no history of points earned, etc. Adhoc type, to lower the barrier to entry. Once you finish the lite game, you're shown the link to the main game. The rationale being, if the player finished atleast one lite game, he/she will like the main game.

The main game shows points, has badges, levels, more super pixels and lots more.

The problem with AI is, this is a real-time strategy game and we being a two member team, it's going to take us a long time to come up with anything that's good enough to come anywhere close to a real person. And if we have dumb bots playing, new players might mis-construe it as a single-player game with terrible AI!

You are preventing the users from making emotional investment in your game by witholding progess feedback. I don't think it is a good idea. Just display big flashy numbers when a user places a square on a tile.

And if you really really want decent AI then maybe you should hire some people, teenagers, kids to play it for a while.

Point taken about "preventing the users from making emotional investment in your game by witholding progess feedback".

We do have the points 'on demand' inside the stats tab at the bottom of the screen (more due to technical issues with synchronizing points in real-time). We'll work on putting it up prominently on the front screen. Thanks!

Btw, now that you've seen the game, don't you think it will be real fun having like 10 people play per team? Trust me, the game dynamics change so much!

It would definitely be more fun with more people. Maybe you can display a graph which shows user activity on a time scale. So when a user visits and doesn't see any other players he can check the graph and decide to come back during a more populated time period.

Btw, have you submitted this game to Reddit yet? Other gaming communities (Penny-Arcade forums, Newgrounds etc) would help with initial traction.

The graph idea sounds interesting. I'll look into how to implement it best.

Yeah, already experimented with Reddit. The problem was people came in sporadically. So none of them had the fill experience. Will try the other gaming communities you mentioned.

What/Where is his/her game?

Hi, the link is http://pixza.com/lite

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