Hey everyone! You probably already know this but Pocket Heroes is out all over the world and thousands of people are playing it! It’s been a crazy couple days and I wanted to let everyone know how things were going and also offer a few tips for everyone with the game.
Thank You!
First of all I just want to thank everyone who has picked up Pocket Heroes, a double Thank You to everyone who has invited their friends to play along, and whatever the biggest possible kind of Thank You is to everyone who has said great things about us online or in an App Store Review.
It’s been great to hear about so many people having a great time with the game and really loving the old-school Role Playing style that we were going for. So, once again, Thank You so much!
What’s next?
While we’ve received a lot of great feedback we’ve also heard from people who aren’t enjoying the game because they are having trouble finding people to play the game with. I know a lot of people think that our decision to leave out random match making was a bad one, but we were really afraid that it could create even more situations where people would get into a random game and then never be able to move because the other characters weren’t really interested in playing. However, we’ve heard your thoughts on the matter and we’re now working to get a random match-making solution in place very quickly. We’re working through the weekend to get an immediate fix in for random games and then we’re going to follow that up with a more robust character driven system that I think will add a lot to the game even for players that have no interest in creating a random party. I’ll have more to say about that after we get this first update out but rest assured that we’re working on it and we’ll have a solution for you soon.
We’ve also been getting bug reports from some of you, and I really appreciate the time and effort you’re putting into letting us know when things aren’t working. We were obviously never able to beta test with thousands of players and there are a lot of things that have come up which we never experienced in our testing. I’m cataloging all of these requests and we’re going to get fixes in for as many of them as we can in this first update, and then we’ll follow that up with more updates as quickly as possible.
Nasty Bug Warning!!
There is one particularly nasty bug that I want to let you all know about so that you can hopefully avoid it. I’ve had a few people tell me that upon returning to a game they are presented with a ‘The Party has Perished’ popup when there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the party to be dead. On this popup the only option is to hit ‘Restart’ and, if this happens to you, I highly advise that you DO NOT hit restart. If you were in combat, and you see a replay where the monsters killed the last player in the party then, obviously, your party really did perish and you can safely hit restart to jump back to the last campsite you had visited. However, if this appears out of the blue it appears to be a network error and hitting restart will likely take your party back to the very first level!
If you do run into this bug, try the following. Instead of hitting restart, tap on the menu button in the upper left and tap either back or resync. Because we believe that this is a network issue I believe that re-syncing with the server will fix it and allow you to continue playing the game. If you do run into this bug please let me know! If you try the resync solution please let me know if it worked for you or not. This is definitely something that we are working to fix but it is probably going to require an update through the app store and I don’t want anyone to lose their quest progress in the mean time.
Gameplay Tips!
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s share some tips with everyone! Some of these are ‘gameplay tips’ and some of these are helpful advice to solve some problems you may be having. Again, we’re working to fix these issues and to better explain the game but I wanted to go ahead and share this info with those of you who are playing right now.
- The email field on the register page doesn’t like capital letters in your email address. If you’re having trouble getting it to recognize your email make sure you’re using all lowercase letters.
- Also, there is currently no password confirmation field on the register screen ( we’re going to rework this whole screen to make this more clear ), the last field is for your username.
- To use some of the abilities like Pray, Horn Blast, Camo, etc. you need to target your own character. To do this, double-tap on your character and it will place you in the ‘target square’ in the lower right. Then you can choose the ability you want to use and perform it on yourself. This is also how you heal yourself with an ability.
- Equipping Rings and Amulets is different from other equipment. When you hit equip on these items you need to choose from one of the two bottom equipment slots ( which are highlighted in yellow ).
That is all the tips I can think of off the top of my head. I’ll continue to add to this list as more come to me and if you think of anything that wasn’t obvious at first let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to the main list as well.
Again, thanks to everyone for supporting Pocket Heroes. We’re going to continue to work on the game so we can make it the best co-op RPG out there.
28 Comments
Can someone tell me how to abandon a game? We needed to start over a couple times because we chose the wrong classes, but those games will forever be on our list now.
Right now you can’t delete a game but we’re adding it soon in an update. I know it’s annoying to have those extra games sitting there but you’ll be able to get rid of them soon.
I really appreciate the amount of work you guys put into this. I won’t lie, I was expecting there to be bugs with the initial release, but I had me and my wife pick it up anyway to both show our support, and because I knew you cared enough to work around the clock making fixes. Lots of luck with the release! The game is great!
Hmm, also some issues:
- both of us receive from 4-6 push notifications when it is our turn. We’re only playing the one game with the two of us.
- I can confirm that resyncing will correct ‘the party has perished’ issues. Both times for us it was after one of us had finished a level, the other would see that screen.
Those are the two that came up this morning.
Brian
The “game music” toggle switch does not turn off the game music. I’ve tried restarting the app, logging out and reinstalling the app with no results.
The game is awesome really really like it! some feed back from my part is I wish when you were picking your abilities it showed you the range of the attack and a little ,ore info on the ability. For instance can niht shade be applied to the bow. Also why dose it target the Mob vs the character.
Thanks for the great game my friend and I are having a blast!
Hi there,
i’ve noticed some strange problem with account login.
This is it: i registered my pocket heroes account with an email account, but my gamecenter email is different, so when my friend send me request by gamecenter i can’t see them. More over the game is awesome, i’m enjoying a rpg on iOS like never before. Thank you guys!
I have had some problems with getting a game started – sometimes when a player joins he is prompted to take his turn immediately, even if it is not his turn in the sequence. When the other players have completed their turns, he is never prompted for his turn. Haven’t had a chance to investigate further as my party lost interest after a couple false-starts
When you start a game we send out the invite immediately so that all the players can go and create their characters and get the game going. It should still send you another push notification when you turn begins, but if you’re saying it doesn’t I’ll take another look.
If your party has lost interest I suggest checking out the party builder thread on Touch Arcade – http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=144228
We’re going to add in more robust party building features to the game in an update but for right now that is probably the best place to get a party started.
Some people are having problems with Game Center not properly attaching to their account. We’re going to have a remedy for this in the first update but for now you may need to stick to invites by email address. Sorry for the trouble!
Unfortunately this is a bug that people are experiencing. We’ve got a fix for this coming in the first update. Thanks!
Push notification number problems should be fixed in the first update.
Thank you for confirming the re-sync solution! I’ve really been stressing out about this bug and haven’t been able to re-create it myself. Knowing that the re-sync will fix it helps me to narrow down what the cause is.
Thanks again!
Okay so I’ve been seeing some bugs.
1) After monsters went, I hit refresh and then the monsters never took a turn.
2) Bouncing back and forth between my iphone and ipad — I’m seeing different life totals.
3) If you’re at an accept quest point on one device and then you go to another device (iphone/ipad) when you go back to the one that was say at the tavern. Hitting refresh/resync won’t catch you up. You have to hit accept quest and then it will catch you up.
4) Ran into the NASTY bug, had not been at your site, now back at level one again (very annoying).
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It’s also very annoying when it’s your turn that you can accidently move to a location that you don’t want to. I wish you supported a more of a Hero Academy style, “try X, Y or Z” and then lock in your turn. At least when it comes to movement phase. I can understand combat with RNG factors you’d want locked in. Currently I realize that I can go back to the main menu and then go back into the game to *reset* my movement, but that’s annoying.
Really most of my movement miss haps have occurred due to wanting to look up information like, “whats the stats of X monster” — “How much life does my friend have?” So maybe just having a button some place which will cancel your movement selection and just put you into, *Info mode* would be a solution.
Anyway love the concept of the game (wish it had random maps/dungeons). Of course wish it had way less bugs and better supported bouncing back and forth between multiple devices.
Also having more info on heroes prior to making a game (being able to look at all the abilities, etc — would be nice).
Hey guys, another bug iv found is when a player is stacked with a monster I cant target the monster. Iv also noticed this happens when a mob is stacked on the corpse of another mob. Also, is the pally buff that gives STR supposed to do dmg as well? Also how dose poison weapon work?
Id also like to see some sort of buff and debuff on player and monster, it would help to know what abilities you need to reapply.
Besides that loving this game!
I have also had to exit to the main menu then rejoin to correct ‘the party has preished’ issue. This happened yesterday. Additionally:
- I was put through a wall by the manticore’s lash yesterday. No way to correct this, after my next turn, we received ‘the party has perished’ notification. (which was ok, since I couldn’t do anything and my partner was dying)
- I was able to resync out of almost all the damage that the wyrm dealt with lash (which was a relief, as each hit was dealing roughly 43 damage)
Is there a different medium you prefer to receive bug reports in? I don’t mind putting them in comments, but I’m sure you’ve got some other process in place.
Brian
Sorry, another issue I noticed a couple days ago:
- My lvl 9 paladin has protect twice in his action option list, which is forcing the next action (confess) partially off screen. This issue is further complicated when equipping a staff that provides the ‘Zap’ action.
Brian
First off, the game is awesome! My cousin and I are having a blast with it!
A bug I have noticed is that occasionally a monster will end up on the same tile as your character and you cannot select your character to move – you can only select the enemy. Unfortunately my friend could not target the enemy either and since ranged attacks did not work (I was playing a priestess in that game) I had to melee the enemy down.
Just a couple of suggestions – it would be nice if it was easier to trade between players and also if players could trade with each other in town – so we could pool our money together if there was an item that one player found really useful. And this is a big feature obviously but it would be cool if there were towns to walk around in free of the turn based component where you could check out different shops and maybe talk to people etc. That may not be your vision for the game but I thought it might be cool and thought I’d mention it.
Looking forward to the next update!
-Marco
Hello. I really enjoy this game but the bugs affecting me are starting to get bad.
1. I can not deal the final damage to a monster. I can hit them, they go down, but if my blow was to kill them, the game crashes out.
2. I have twice become imbedded inside a monster that was dead – this means I cannot move. When like this, my companions cannot attack the monster, just me. This is an issue when compounded with issue 1, above, resulting in my inability to move anywhere.
3. The game crashes whenever I attempt to invite other players; I can join (or be invited to) games, but I cannot begin them.
I would love to hear if these are bugs that will be fixed – I’ve already seen people I have intro’d to this game stop playing due to the bugs and I really want to make a go of it!
Thanks
Also, we need to be able to delete games – my games list is clogged up with test games and games that had issues around starting – it compounds the problem when trying to get skeptical buddies to try again after a false start as they may be joining the wrong game…
Just encountered some sort of bug, we passed the 4th level about to go into the spider cave, and it started both of us on the first level again
Hey guys,
Hoping you can help me. I have joined the TA thread and bought the game but I cannot invite anyone for a Friend Request in Game Center.
Each time I enter a nickname it says it can’t verify it. Please check and try again and – of course – I don’t have anyone’s email address to try it that way.
Right now I have owned the game since launch and played precisely ZERO games so far. It seems like GC is only inviting people on my phone’s contact list, none of whom like playing games on their iPhone. :-S
Maybe it’s something really noobish, but what am I doing wrong??? ;_;
Many thanks in advance for your help with this. Can’t wait to try Pocket Heroes out! You can probably sense I am getting desperate!
Thanks again! Hope to hear back soon.
Al,
It’s likely that your Game Center account has failed to attach your Pocket Heroes account. You should see a list of all your Game Center friends on that screen and if you’re not it’s probably because Game Center isn’t connected.
The best way to fix that right now is to make sure you’re logged in to Game Center ( tap the Game Center icon and make sure you don’t need to log in) then open Pocket Heroes and hit logout on the main menu. Now hit Play, and then instead of logging in hit Sign up. Put in the same information that you entered the first time ( same username, password, and email address ) and it should connect your Game Center correctly.
Then you should be able to see your friends in the Game Center invite screen and start a game with them.
We’ve submitted our first update to the App Store and it should be out soon, in that version there will be a way to check if your Game Center is connected in the settings screen of the game.
If this doesn’t fix your problem please let me know!
HiroProtagonist,
Sorry that you’ve been having trouble with the game. Could you let me know what device and iOS version you are using to play? The crashing on invite is something that we have only heard happening with iOS 4.0 devices but all the devices but we haven’t been able to re-create it yet.
The other issues that you’re experiencing should be corrected in our first update, which has been submitted to Apple and is in review. Hopefully it will be out in the next couple days and you’ll have a better experience with the new version.
Thanks!
Thanks for the quick reply. My issue is actually with game Center. I can’t invite anyone unless I have their email. I don’t know anyone personally who has the game, so I’d like to be able to invite people to be GC friends, only nicknames don’t work and people don’t share their email so readily.
If you can help I would be so grateful. I desperately want to play your awesome game!!!
Thanks again for the help.
Hey, me again!
Just realised I had my GC in Sandbox mode off the back of an app I published a while back. Doh!
Anyhow, it’s fine now. Sorry for gumming up your blog. Now to try and get some new friend and play Pocket Heroes at last!!
Thanks for the reply – I’m using a 4.0 iPhone.
Look forward to the update.
Though, at the moment all I get when I try to play the game is a straight black screen of death. I can hear music playing but the game is not working at all, visually.
Readmore – I made an IAP, but never received the gold. I posted a couple of days ago under a different topic on here, but haven’t received any response. I’m really hoping you can fix this, I wanted to give you a chance before going to iTunes for a refund. It would be nice if you had a link to send you an email for problems like this. The email is where you can reach me, and it’s also the ond used for my account. Thanks!
Shawn,
Sorry for the delay in response. I’ll email you at the email address you used here on your comment. If that’s not a good way to get ahold of you please let me know.