Lets talk about this mobile app

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Dru.
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2015 3:32 am

Lets talk about this mobile app

Post by Dru. »

Hello everyone, My name is Dru. and I used to be (still am on the forums?) a moderator for the game a while back. I also made tutorial videos on youtube to help players better understand the game. Recently I decided to checkout the mobile app because it was always my biggest "WE NEED THIS" item.

TL;DR it is unusable and makes this game seem like a horrible dumpster fire... but the game is not that at all. What happened? Why is this alpha app live?
2/5 overall


[tr][td]Devices Used:[/td][td]iPad - iOS[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]Pixel 2 - Android[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td][/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Goals:[/td][td]Start in a new world[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]Restart in an old world[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td][/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Time spent in each:[/td][td]2 hours (New)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]5 hours (Old)[/td][/tr][/table]

Most of what I am about to say is present in both iOS and Android but I will try to detail each respectively. And I did not look at any reviews or playthroughs of the app, I simply downloaded and began. (like I assume most of the new players will do) Even writing this has been difficult because the game has crashed many times in the process and keep in mind I have not installed the PC version, I am jumping straight in from years on non play to the mobile game.

Loading times are noticeable right off the bat. Each device was hooked into WiFi (work: 400mbs and home: 200mbps) and still took more than 3 minutes to get past just the splash screen. Once logged in it takes another minute or two to load the map. Overall, my whole experience has been buggy with connection issues. For roughly 30 minutes yesterday it did not update that my parish was free of disease despite me changing the view multiple times in an attempt to reload it.

Additionally, I seem to be kicked out every 15 minutes or so and I have to kill the app just for anything to load back up. It is not my connection, I have done this on two separate WiFi connections for the majority of testing but switching to Mobile data (no WiFi) did not fix this problem.

Interface (Overall) :lol:
  • The interface is clunky at best. If you try to click an icon (menu, store, cards, etc..) there is a chance you will click underneath that because of the gaps between the icons. (Has happened about 25% of the time for me in world view and village view) Fix: Adding a layer underneath the buttons that players cannot click through.
  • Building a castle structure is 1000% frustrating and unless I am missing something you can only use the on screen buttons to place walls (no more holding down and drawing) My question to that is why? Why take away that capability? It is possible in mobile games as many others use this functionality. Yes I know you can drag the edges but it only makes a square, you cannot draw individual lines without clicking place and reclicking the wall.
  • Apparently the button with the timer on the castle structure means "Delete all structure".. at least there is a warning message but it should be labeled. But that can be said for the presets menu as well. Once you have a preset there are just buttons without labels. My favorite are the clouds, one means overwriting the preset with the one of your current castle, yet the other means deploy... these should really be labeled. Honestly this is where I ended testing the structure and simply enclosed the keep and moved on. I cannot imagine anyone building an actual keep as it would take forever.
  • User Profiles are confusing because they do not fit the norm for other mobile games nor do they fit the norm for SHK. I have to click their shield to see their real profile? 100% honest it took me a good 15 minutes to figure that one out. Is it in the tutorial? I remember pop ups explaining other things but not on the user profile.
  • Trading is very well integrated, my only pet peeve is how different it looks on the world map as opposed to in the parish.
  • Parish interface: What is going on here? Why do I have all of these buttons if most of them you need to be steward to do anything with? No Parish chat? I influenced the vote on an older world but after 2 app reboots it finally allowed me to do some things with the parish. I immediately found out that as a sheriff you cannot vote in the county. Overall it is a decent adaptation, but I do not understand the steward mail button for those other than the parish steward sending a message to all.
  • Speaking of chat, I cannot find the in game chat system. Am I missing the button?
  • Your developer dropped this But seriously where are the back buttons? I know clicking off the focused element will bring me back but there should be a button saying that at the very least.
  • For items in the menu that take you to the browser there should be an icon signifying that. I was getting to know the application and constantly being directed to my browser. Which would not be that big of a pain but half of the time the game freezes when I come back (Android/iOS)
  • I will end this section on a good note, the design is very crisp and clean. Very well done but... the varied designs (between similar pages) makes me wonder what happened? It seems like production was stopped to bring in a new developer and he forgot to style it like the old guy.
Attacking
  • I have only attacked a few bandit camps and wolf lairs since I installed the game but wow is it a change. I do not understand how to aim catapults. As an already PC player this would be an instant uninstall because that would be useless to me. (Double clicking, two finger tapping, pinching, zooming... none of it worked to allow me to aim them.)
  • Recruiting troops again is a chore when the existing system is already sufficient. Three buttons consisting of 1,5,MAX YOU CAN BUY is very odd.Fix:That last button should not be the max I can buy but a custom amount. When I click it, it would be nice to put in a custom number. Or hey, how about a slider? Take the captains tactics one, it does not belong.
  • Captain tactics should not be a slider as no other attack tactic is (ransack, pillage, etc).
  • Speaking of sliders, if I have multiple villages it only centers on the village when selected through the slider (not the arrows)
  • Reports, there is no replay button? My only options are to close out of the report, reopen it and watch it again. Unless of course I wanted to watch it on everyplay. Additionally, if I have a lot of reports and click to view one (just view, not even view battle) and click the X it automatically takes me right to the top of my reporting. Which is not the end of the world but it is annoying.
Bugs:
  • I cannot open mail at all, it gives me a null pointer exception for every single game world but on iOS the game crashes; android gives me the error message. I had to install the game on my PC just to answer mail. Yes, a support ticket was filed yesterday
  • Every now and again the game will freeze (even the animations for mail, reports etc) and I will have to manually close the application, reopen and hope that it can connect to a world. It seems like more than half of the time I am closing the application 3 times before it finally gets past the splash screen.
  • The freezing above happens when toggling between world and village views. Castle/parish views seem to work just fine.
  • Cards... I played advanced logistics. Sent an army. Recalled the army. Played an expert logistics. Sent an army and no card was played. I had to recall my army and play the expert logistics again for it to work. It seems to do this for every "one time" card, requiring some time inbetween cards being played. Again, this is not valid functionality.
  • Am I supposed to be notified when I am under attack? Notifications on, application running in the background(not closed) yet I have had a scout out on me for nearly 30 minutes and no notification. It is still blinking when I open the game as well.
Overall, my issue with the application are the inconsistencies. The whole application and functionality leaves me wanting for more. If I was an absolute new player this game would seem very cluttered and bloated. Not to mention with these amount of bugs it should have never left alpha stage. Who are your testers? Because this level of quality is not what I expected from Firefly. In the end, this is just my opinion on the matter, but it does not change the fact that you get better mobile functionality with the teamviewer app connected to your computer at home. for real
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MjKit
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2017 8:46 pm

Re: Lets talk about this mobile app

Post by MjKit »

dunno what game are you played, on my phone (xperia x on android 7.1.1) it works good, certainly the game loading is slow but it takes 45-50 seconds not 3 minutes, i have a 4mbs wifi or 4G :lol:
never seen crash or something similar, i can leave the game open even for 1 hour and it still work, or i can swap to browser, chat, album, something else, reopen the game and it still work fine
mail works, bugged but works
other bugs you mentioned never seen, but i don't know the issue about cards, never tested like this

anyway i'm 100% agree with the rest of things
User avatar
Dru.
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2015 3:32 am

Re: Lets talk about this mobile app

Post by Dru. »

MjKit wrote:dunno what game are you played, on my phone (xperia x on android 7.1.1) it works good, certainly the game loading is slow but it takes 45-50 seconds not 3 minutes, i have a 4mbs wifi or 4G :lol:
never seen crash or something similar, i can leave the game open even for 1 hour and it still work, or i can swap to browser, chat, album, something else, reopen the game and it still work fine
mail works, bugged but works
other bugs you mentioned never seen, but i don't know the issue about cards, never tested like this

anyway i'm 100% agree with the rest of things
I do not understand the crashing either. Reinstalling did not seem to work and it did not care about what kind of connection I was on. No other mobile game does this to me and most use AWS (if I recall correctly FF does too). Without the crashing and connection issues I am certain that my experience would not be as harsh. Having it happen on two completely different devices is what prompted me to write the review instead of just chalking it up to my device not liking the game.
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Valhallas
Posts: 122
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2014 5:00 am

Re: Lets talk about this mobile app

Post by Valhallas »

Dru. wrote:
MjKit wrote:dunno what game are you played, on my phone (xperia x on android 7.1.1) it works good, certainly the game loading is slow but it takes 45-50 seconds not 3 minutes, i have a 4mbs wifi or 4G :lol:
never seen crash or something similar, i can leave the game open even for 1 hour and it still work, or i can swap to browser, chat, album, something else, reopen the game and it still work fine
mail works, bugged but works
other bugs you mentioned never seen, but i don't know the issue about cards, never tested like this

anyway i'm 100% agree with the rest of things
I do not understand the crashing either. Reinstalling did not seem to work and it did not care about what kind of connection I was on. No other mobile game does this to me and most use AWS (if I recall correctly FF does too). Without the crashing and connection issues I am certain that my experience would not be as harsh. Having it happen on two completely different devices is what prompted me to write the review instead of just chalking it up to my device not liking the game.


After reading all that I must say it feels like u just don't have the basic understandings of a video game.
I have never encountered any of those obviously over exaggerated issues u named off.

Aiming catapults is easy and u can control the size of the buttons plus is never selects something else unless u have bad eye and finger coordination, building a castle was easy and if it really took u 15 minutes to figure out most thing so that take average players 20seconds to figure out then maybe playing a simple game like Farmville would be best?


The chat system on app makes sense because nobody ever uses it on Pc anyways and plus why would u overcrowd the interface with an extra chat screen that is useless anyways,


I dunno I must rate ur review a solid - 5/10 just because u went above and beyond exaggerating and stating false issues that I've never even heard of or had anybody complain lol

Most common issues are if u mail one person then mail a different person, the mail will go to first person unless u restart client, another issue is the fact that scout reports and even in ur own castle view u cannot fully see all the troops that are actually there. And another issue we just encountered is the fact u cannot influence county votes with monks in era 2 when u are supposed to be able to.

But aside from all that the fact they made this game possible on mobile and able to play pc world's while on mobile as well has made this game 1000000000% better and more fun + accessible.
MjKit
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2017 8:46 pm

Re: Lets talk about this mobile app

Post by MjKit »

yeah i forgot the catapults issue, they are very easy to use, just select them, then move the green circle on your target
i started a thread if you want to read it in this section about gaming interface most of things

about the crashes, try to deactive antivirus or something similar if you have
User avatar
Dru.
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2015 3:32 am

Re: Lets talk about this mobile app

Post by Dru. »

Valhallas wrote:After reading all that I must say it feels like u just don't have the basic understandings of a video game.
I have never encountered any of those obviously over exaggerated issues u named off.

Aiming catapults is easy and u can control the size of the buttons plus is never selects something else unless u have bad eye and finger coordination, building a castle was easy and if it really took u 15 minutes to figure out most thing so that take average players 20seconds to figure out then maybe playing a simple game like Farmville would be best?

The chat system on app makes sense because nobody ever uses it on Pc anyways and plus why would u overcrowd the interface with an extra chat screen that is useless anyways,

I dunno I must rate ur review a solid - 5/10 just because u went above and beyond exaggerating and stating false issues that I've never even heard of or had anybody complain lol

Most common issues are if u mail one person then mail a different person, the mail will go to first person unless u restart client, another issue is the fact that scout reports and even in ur own castle view u cannot fully see all the troops that are actually there. And another issue we just encountered is the fact u cannot influence county votes with monks in era 2 when u are supposed to be able to.

But aside from all that the fact they made this game possible on mobile and able to play pc world's while on mobile as well has made this game 1000000000% better and more fun + accessible.
Thank you for the honesty.

I can see that a lot of my post was more comparing how the game functions on mobile compared to the original PC. I have a very good understanding of video game mechanics but the comparison did jade quite a few aspects. It is funny, after reading your post I opened the game back up and messed with catapults again. Sure enough you tap and hold in on the circles (when they are selected) and you can aim them. Which is a bit different than the PC game (what I was used to) I do feel like i did not give enough time for certain aspects of the game simply because they were different. Which is not fair to the game itself.

The interface is scaleable and that is great, but with it on any setting there are still times where you click underneath the button by pure chance. This was a minor issue i encountered while playing the game on the app. If it can happen to one person it can happen to others, and given it was an easy fix I figured I would mention it.

As for the chat, i can tell you that it is widely used by new players. As a former moderator I was always posted up in the chat and when a new world opens there are tons of people having trouble understanding the game. Having that built into the app can help players beyond that initial peace period.

Also know, no problem I have stated is false. I may have not given some aspects of the game a proper chance but 100% I am facing these issues that make the app unplayable beyond checking up on your villages. Which is what players have been asking for for years, but it is not presented that way.

The error you mention about mail for example I was not able to do because mail is inaccessible on both devices for me.

And again, in my post the big issues i have are with the crashes and performance issues on both devices. I can say without a doubt that with those issues not prominent in my testing this review would have been different.

I fully respect the criticism because you make very valid points. I did not make my perspective clear until you made it clear to me what i did. So thank you.
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Valhallas
Posts: 122
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2014 5:00 am

Re: Lets talk about this mobile app

Post by Valhallas »

Dru. wrote:
Valhallas wrote:After reading all that I must say it feels like u just don't have the basic understandings of a video game.
I have never encountered any of those obviously over exaggerated issues u named off.

Aiming catapults is easy and u can control the size of the buttons plus is never selects something else unless u have bad eye and finger coordination, building a castle was easy and if it really took u 15 minutes to figure out most thing so that take average players 20seconds to figure out then maybe playing a simple game like Farmville would be best?

The chat system on app makes sense because nobody ever uses it on Pc anyways and plus why would u overcrowd the interface with an extra chat screen that is useless anyways,

I dunno I must rate ur review a solid - 5/10 just because u went above and beyond exaggerating and stating false issues that I've never even heard of or had anybody complain lol

Most common issues are if u mail one person then mail a different person, the mail will go to first person unless u restart client, another issue is the fact that scout reports and even in ur own castle view u cannot fully see all the troops that are actually there. And another issue we just encountered is the fact u cannot influence county votes with monks in era 2 when u are supposed to be able to.

But aside from all that the fact they made this game possible on mobile and able to play pc world's while on mobile as well has made this game 1000000000% better and more fun + accessible.
Thank you for the honesty.

I can see that a lot of my post was more comparing how the game functions on mobile compared to the original PC. I have a very good understanding of video game mechanics but the comparison did jade quite a few aspects. It is funny, after reading your post I opened the game back up and messed with catapults again. Sure enough you tap and hold in on the circles (when they are selected) and you can aim them. Which is a bit different than the PC game (what I was used to) I do feel like i did not give enough time for certain aspects of the game simply because they were different. Which is not fair to the game itself.

The interface is scaleable and that is great, but with it on any setting there are still times where you click underneath the button by pure chance. This was a minor issue i encountered while playing the game on the app. If it can happen to one person it can happen to others, and given it was an easy fix I figured I would mention it.

As for the chat, i can tell you that it is widely used by new players. As a former moderator I was always posted up in the chat and when a new world opens there are tons of people having trouble understanding the game. Having that built into the app can help players beyond that initial peace period.

Also know, no problem I have stated is false. I may have not given some aspects of the game a proper chance but 100% I am facing these issues that make the app unplayable beyond checking up on your villages. Which is what players have been asking for for years, but it is not presented that way.

The error you mention about mail for example I was not able to do because mail is inaccessible on both devices for me.

And again, in my post the big issues i have are with the crashes and performance issues on both devices. I can say without a doubt that with those issues not prominent in my testing this review would have been different.

I fully respect the criticism because you make very valid points. I did not make my perspective clear until you made it clear to me what i did. So thank you.

No Problem!! Just think if u give it more of a chance u will begin to enjoy it, I find when u set presets for attacking wolves and such it's much easier to launch and quicker cause it's at ur fingertips.

Also I forgot to mention! In castle view it took me a bit to figure it out but if u click on walls example, u can hold and drag ur finger to build a bigger part of it rather than just one block at a time,

Something I thought sucked but then they actually fixed in most recent update was this: u placed a great tower down, u had to go back into defences menu and select it again to build next one, but they added in the same feature as Pc where u build one and the next one will instantly be selected for u to easily place down.

I find timing attacks to be a but harder on mobile as there's sometimes a one or two second lag after u press launch but with practice get used to it.

But yeah the main main issue that really bothers me is if u scout a castle, on Pc u would see every single unit present in that scout report, but on mobile u only see few of the troops, so u never really know how many defenders there are exactly. It happens even when u look in ur own castle view, u may have 400 archers up but on ur screen it will only look like 100 or so.

Other than those small things it runs pretty great for me and being able to be on the go and check in on my game And Interdict if necessary is awesome

As for the chat function I must admit, if it was implemented and supported I think everybody would use it because at this point everybody has been using other apps to chat like Discord or Teamspeak or Line.

And it would just be easier if there was a chat function for World chat, Faction chat, House chat.. Even having County chat and such like they did on pc but I think mobile would maybe use this feature way more than pc users.

Just probably tough to implement it without overcrowding the interface.


If u ever pop up on mobile realm 2 and decide to give it a go u should spawn in Egypt and I'll help u grow and get established so u can fully see every feature and how fun it is as well as check out the other bugs and what not.

Cheers!
Wolfmasterking1
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:52 pm

Lets talk about this mobile app help plz

Post by Wolfmasterking1 »

How do you change your Lords name in the mobile app for iOS
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Lord Friendly
Posts: 849
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 10:18 am

Re: Lets talk about this mobile app

Post by Lord Friendly »

After clicking on Confirm you will see another popup screen allowing you to choose a player name.
Wolfmasterking1
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:52 pm

Re: Lets talk about this mobile app

Post by Wolfmasterking1 »

It dosnt appear to allow me to change it
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