Mobile App Critique | Lords Mobile by IGG

Image courtesy of lordsmobile.igg.com

Mobile apps are everywhere! The use of mobile apps is so widespread and popular that developers can create an app for nearly any niche, and someone somewhere will use it. There are apps for cooking, tracking workouts, tracking your kids, entertaining your kids, entertaining you, accessing bank accounts, listening to music, watching movies and TV shows, engaging on social media, shopping, and, of course, playing games. Still, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all of the things you can do with mobile apps. For this blog post, we will focus on video game mobile apps, specifically Lords Mobile, a game developed by developer IGG. 

I have been playing Lords Mobile for several forgotten years, and I have been unsuccessful at giving it up many times. As the name implies, Lords Mobile, henceforth Lords, is a game that was limited to playing on a mobile device, either a mobile phone or tablet, when it was initially released in February 2016. However, as of June 2019, the game was released on desktop-compatible platforms like Steam.

A Tower Defense Game

A general overview of Lords is that it is a tower defense game. If you are familiar with this style of gaming, less needs to be said; for anyone else, let me explain. A tower defense game is a strategy game where the player has the role of either offense, defense, or both simultaneously. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.

Image courtesy of lordsmobile.igg.com

Offensively, the goal is to attack a territory using weapons of destruction (catapults, bombs, arrows, soldiers/troops). In defense, the goal is to defend a territory from said weapons of destruction. When a player has to perform these operations in tandem, it can start to get a little hairy as the methods to defend often contrast the methods to attack. In some more basic tower defense games, you will only be tasked with doing one or the other, offense or defense.

Image captured from gameplay. Displays the multiple different worlds that players may inhabit.

The World of Lords Mobile

Image courtesy of lordsmobile.igg.com

In Lords, the player is placed in a world and provided a castle for which they are the overseer, ruler, and protector. All players start at Level 1, and progress as they learn the many mechanics of the game. The general mechanic overview is collecting experience (XP) to increase the player level, training troops, building traps, shielding your turf, harvesting/gathering resources, fighting monsters for treasures, acquiring/training heroes and familiars (monsters you can train), completing quests, constructing buildings, increasing intel through research, and warring with other players. Each mechanic is taught and practiced as the player progresses through the game and lends itself to improving the player’s overall skill.

Players can equip clothing/gear items to increase their stats. These stats are grouped by categories like resource production speeds, training speed, troop power, total army power, enemy debuffs (power-downs), travel speeds, monster hunting boosts, and others. There are many different gear sets that the player can acquire to affect these stats, and strategy plays a big part in equipping the items.

Image captured from gameplay. Shows the player's hero and equipment interface.

Image captured from gameplay. Shows a snippet of player stats; the right column shows the boosts provided by the player's lead hero.

Proper gear can be the difference between a player having strong defense/offense or watching the bulk of their troops disappear into the infirmary. Lords also implemented many timesaving mechanics, like Quickswap which allows the player to save gear sets and change gear quickly. This comes in handy when players are wearing farming gear tailored for gathering but need to make a quick switch into defensive gear if another player launches an attack.

The game’s fighting mechanics are brutal and unforgiving if players do not have the proper defense in place when trouble comes knocking. It is possible to not only lose a larger number of troops, some of which they may never get back without long periods of retraining, but players also have a chance to lose their hero. Heroes, or leaders, provide additional stat boosts for a player's turf. If a hero is captured, their benefits are also taken away, at least temporarily. Once the hero is released or killed, they are returned to the player’s possession where they can wait for them to revive on their own or use a magic item to instantly revive their leader. There are also shields of differing time durations that the player can acquire which shields their castle for x amount of time. Shields make castles impenetrable, meaning that a castle cannot fall under attack while the player is away from the game.

Image captured from gameplay. Shows the world's base, which often comes under siege during wartime.

Another mechanic in the game is the ability to join guilds and fight other guilds. Though each castle is itself an independent kingdom, the ability to form guilds allows players to join guilds and increase the power of their kingdom through alliances. Often guilds will rally for the right to run the entire kingdom. Like a game of Capture the Flag, the center of the kingdom, or Base, is the flag waiting to be captured. Once a timer starts, guilds will try to be the last one in possession of the base when the timer runs out. This prompts many guilds to war with one another even outside of this wartime as the competition can become very aggressive. Once a guild has withstood all attacks and attempts to rip the base from its grasp, it alone will run the kingdom until the following wartime.

Image courtesy of lordsmobile.igg.com

Final Thoughts and Critiques

To critique the game, it has become very convoluted. There are so many mechanics that you nearly have to make a list to accomplish your daily tasks. The game is also touted as a free-to-play, or F2P, but anyone who chooses this method will take 10x as long to level up as someone who pays to play. The game seems to drag out many of the tasks the player has to do to push them towards paying for shortcuts. I cannot say that this is unethical, but it is annoying. Do not get me wrong, I completely understand this as being the ideal method from a business perspective. However, I feel that taking this approach would be better received if the game offered the players a longer trial period before ramping up the difficulty and time length of progression.

Some other changes would improve the player experience. This would include decreasing the number of features and mechanics that only serve to increase playtime with little added fulfillment. There is a lot to do in this game, and not all of it adds to the enjoyment. It would also be nice if they could provide better free gear for F2P players. The top-tier items would remain for pay-to-play, P2P, players that want to save time acquiring items through longer means. However, implementing gear quests for F2P players that cannot afford to pay for the premium stuff would not only add an element of fairness to the game but also increase play hours. Lastly, players should have more time to become accustomed to playing the game. Providing them with a free shield that would last until they reached a certain level or army size while allowing them a risk-free method to practice their defensive and offensive skills would make players less hesitant to engage in the sport of war.

References:

1. Lords Mobile game website: lordsmobile.igg.com