Robocraft is a F2P team based multiplayer game built in Unity - and we’re proud to have a lively and fast growing community of “robocrafters” who have helped us shape it into what it is so far.
Why not give it a try yourself? Become part of the community, jam with us, and help shape the next phase of development.
We are Freejam, a small group of 5 devs based in Portsmouth, UK. Together we have a combined 51 years dev experience working on console titles for major publishers and like many other small indies we quit all that to try to do our own thing, and we got lucky.
About Us
We had our big game idea and we pitched it. We managed to convince an investor to back us with a small amount of funding and so our new startup Freejam was born.
We wanted to build our game a different way; to iterate, experiment, release updates fast, to change game mechanics that don’t work, to collaborate with the games users, to let them help us shape it, evolve it, just like a piece of improv jazz music at a jam session.
The result of this journey so far is currently at alpha and available to play, so why not give Robocraft a try and tell us what you think?
This looks like a metric ton of fun and a time guzzler!
Flying vehicles seem to have the advantage tactically, what prevents all players from armouring a flying fortress as the general vehicle?
It's easy to ground them when you shoot their hover blades, but you have a point there. I think it would be great to make prism blocks heavier, so the gorund vehicles could get tougher, leaving flying vehicles more fragile.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't players simply surround their hover blades with armored blocks, making it nigh-impossible to shoot them down that way?
Yep, its a good way to armor up, some of the flyers are damm good players and designers, its not just about shooting its how you build your tank or plane or balloon.
Its very addictive, the pay to win feel is there, as you can max out the blocks and build the most bad *** bot out there, however it would cost alot and farming is very fast, if you max out your bot, theres also matchmaking balances were it may be you vs a whole team of lvl 3-8 bots and they can still beat you, its a fun game but im wary about micro transactions damaging endgame for newcommers.
the game is in continue evolution and rebalancing. We surely aim to keep it fair for both paying and not paying users; this is also helped by the design of the game itself, since the concept of winning is not absolute. This means that although it is true that you can progress faster if you pay, it just means that you are going to fight sooner more experienced users.
Initially, I would agree for two reasons: tech points, which are needed to access anything more than Level 1 tech, cannot be bought, only accelerated in terms of the player's post-match acquisition of them via premium subscriptions, and CPU points, which limits how much stuff you can use to build a robot (on a per-robot basis) and is only increased once a higher tier is reached; combined, this means players willing to pay will still have to wait like everyone else to actually build their dream robots.
However, with the introduction of armor, I disagree. Long story short, I think armor has unintentionally tipped Robocraft towards pay-to-win thanks to reducing the amount of RP and TP non high-tier players - especially low-tier players - can earn without resorting to the 50% boost gained via a premium subscription due to the high-tier players decking their robots in multi-layer heavy armor and high-to-max tier weapons. However, if I may, I'd like to elaborate.
If you're a low-tier player with weak weapons and you go up against a team of heavily-armed and multi-layered, heavily-armored robots - this combo seems preferred by high-tier players - they'll tear through your bot's armor easily and quickly destroy your pilot. Furthermore, this requires low-level players to focus fire to actually do damage to high-tier opponents - which is problematic since said high-tier players focus their fire on the weakest robots first. Since, in my experience, this tends to be the norm, low-tier players tend to die quicker than mid or high-tier players against other high-tier players regardless of skill, preventing them from earning much-needed RP and TP.
For someone unwilling to pay, the above situation may prove disconcerting to the point of leaving. However, for someone willing to pay, they can merely purchase a subscription - which, at $22.50-worth of GC for a three-month subscription (assuming a one-day membership requires only $0.25-worth of GC), is quite cheap - and get 50% more RP and TP for the subscription's duration. Thus, even when they end up dying quickly, they'll still get a nice amount of TP and RP. As they start rising the ranks, gain access to better parts - most importantly armor - and gain CPU points from rising the tiers, they'll start surviving longer and actually start improving their skills, meaning they'll make more kills. This can be further accelerated by purchasing and using GC to buy parts without needing to wait for enough RP. All this, in my opinion, leads to non-paying player being out-classed and out-gunned by paying players and being stuck as cannon-fodder for high-tier players until they acquire enough RP and TP to survive and compete.
Expack - your analysis is good and thankyou for your feedback, One thing Robocraft needs to do is grow its player base, which is one of the reasons we are now on indieDB, we realise that there is minimum amount of people required to have balanced matches ie rounds with 30 robots all within 2-3 tiers of each other. once we have reached this value hopefully you will not see so many occasions where large robots beat up small ones :)
Good to hear. :)
I think one of the ways which the problem could be alleviated short-term is including a deathmatch mode where between 2-8 players (I'm not sure how well 9+ players would balance out), each on their own 'team', battles to see who remains standing. I think this may end up being a popular mode since many people who play CTF matches tend to treat it like a team deathmatch mode anyways - until, of course, the enemy reminds them what mode they're actually playing by starting to capture their base. In this way, you could have a mode which actually allows for small player numbers and much easier match-balancing until a larger player base is established.
I really appreciate how you and your fellow jammer team are using a Scrum-like development method one might use at a game jam - it potentially allows for faster bugfixing, adaptation to unintended issues, and iteration on gameplay modes and mechanics. It also has the potential for a smaller, more loyal fanbase who vocalize their thoughts, opinions, and feedback to you more easily since they feel more confident their ideas will be heard and acted upon. (I'm not saying this isn't the case now; I'm just saying I believe your development method will make this fact more evident to players than might be typical since you and your jammer team can act upon ideas deemed "good" quicker.) In fact, it's for this reason that I struggle to recommend Steam Greenlight for Robocraft since I imagine it'll be quite hard to jam with thousands of players simultaneously....
Also, beyond the issue I brought up above, the game thus far is very well balanced - even with subscriptions and purchasing parts using real money - because of how progress is tied to actually playing the game through TP and tier-based CPU points.
Thanks to you and your jammer team for making such an awesome game, and I hope to be able to continue to jam with you to make Robocraft as good as it can be!
Expack - We have a similar view to you on Steam, although it would be a lovely platform to launch Robocraft from I don't think we are done tweaking and evolving the game enough yet. There are so many cool things we want to add to the game before we can call ourselves in beta - plasma cannons with a parabolic trajectory, rail guns, monster truck wheels, tank tracks, wings, bombs, robot limbs, new planets with varying atmospheric conditions... And the list goes on and on.
In Robocraft I am called FatDigester, look out for me ingame and introduce yourself, we can talk tactics or I can blast you to bits, lol......
We should first distinguish between hovering and flying, as the former uses hover blades and has a limited lift height off the ground while the latter uses thrusters which can fly effortlessly into the sky at any altitude - A lot of the flyers are already seasoned players, so they have had plenty of time to practice their skills hence why they seem powerful. In reality it is really hard to build a flying robot that can withstand more than a few hit before spiralling out of the sky into the clutches of your enemies. Hovering robots are much more stable and simpler to construct, but because of their height above ground it actually make them more vulnerable as all 6 sides of their robot make a nice target for enemies where a tank does not expose its underbelly.
In terms of flyers, I would agree - those things to tend to be physically fragile. However, in terms of hovering robots being weaker than tanks, I disagree due to practical experience - the better higher-tier hover robots I've seen not only have thick layers of heavy armor encompassing the entire vehicle - including their hover blades - they also tend to have, at minimum, 8 of the highest-tier weapons available. As such, even though they have 6 degrees of vulnerability, they're just as hard to take down as tanks.
//Expact
Let me second what Ric said about your great feedback, I think a lot of it is very valid.
We are concerned ourselves about ensuring that we do not cross the line from Free-to-play to Pay-to-win. We are an honest developer and with the complexity and free-form nature of Robocraft it is a very difficult balancing act.
The introduction of armor has changed the game in a big way. We are keeping a close eye on it and already have plans to ensure that new players cannot just use their wallet to advance to the highest levels too quickly.
One of the main ways we plan to do that is to change the way CPU works so that players have to advance the size of the Robot more slowly and incrementally over time. CPU will be something you upgrade separately for Chassis, Movement, Hardware and Special cube types using TP. The result of this will be that a wallet warrior can buy more powerful cubes, but cannot buy so many of them without first playing the game and battling through the lower Tiers like everyone else. It is the combination of high quantity with high power of cubes that creates the most powerful Robots in game, and the new CPU upgrade system will limit the quantity.
We are also planning on changing the way TP is awarded and how the Tech Tree is represented. These changes are designed to prevent the user unlocking all the cubes in the game overnight so the progress through the tech tree is more steady. This is our way of limiting the rate at which the paying user accelerates themselves to the end game.
Maaaaaaannnnnn...YEaaaaaahhhhhh... I was totally bored of AAA games, this game is the most addictive indie game I have ever played. Yesterday I played nearly 6+ hours. Also it is NOT pay to win totally. Because of matchmaking balances. I love it. I have not paid anything, I can still get full of fun from this AWESOME!!! game. Thank you DEV guys :D
Expack, my name is GrandFirestorm (on the robocraft forums) and ShadowHawk (in game). I believe you should create an account on the robocraft forums, so you may better communicate your ideas and points with not only the devs, but as well as the bigger, senior players. Just type in robocraft on Google or Bing and click the first result.
Игра просто суперская! Затягивает советую скачать)))
The game is awesome! Tightens advise to downoload)))
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