What is the Best Scratch Off App to Win Real Money?
18 of the Best Game Apps to Win Real Money ($$$)
Lucktastic Review: Can You Actually Win Money?
Scratch Off Apps - Best Scratch Off Apps to Win Real Money
17 Best Game Apps to Win Money Today [2021 Update]
36 Best Apps That Can Make You Money Fast in 2021
37 Apps That Pay You Real Money Through PayPal 2021 [Full
Top 20+ Game Apps to Win Real Money & Prizes (2021)
Play 50+ Free Scratch Cards to Win Money Instantly
what scratch off app win real money
what scratch off app win real money - win
How we almost got acquired by Facebook and failed. Here's what I learned.
This is not a happy ending story.
The beginning
It all started back in 2014. I had a startup whose clients were advertisers. It was a platform for users to review video ads in exchange for online points that could be redeemed for money or coupons. Watch and ad; rate it; be rewarded. Simple. After 100 campaigns I kept hearing it would be wonderful to connect their offline ads (e.g. TV ads, billboards, magazines, etc) with our platform. Advertisers wanted real insights and analytics from their offline advertising investment. As dedicated founders we started working hard on this concept: “from offline to online with your phone”. Within 4 months we had our first version. I remember showing it to our friends and constantly hearing “Wow this is brilliant! It’s like Shazam but for videos”. I was ecstatic!
The investment
The revenue was coming in but it wasn’t recurrent. It was difficult to enter the yearly advertising budget. Advertisers assumed our platform as an experiment (mainly to get feedback) and not as a serious distribution channel — despite the fact we picked at 100,000 registered users. We needed investment to grow and build the new technology’s infrastructure. It wasn’t cheap to maintain a technology that recognized millions of videos within 4s. More on this latter. In 2015 we raised $0.5M from angels and led by a VC. This allowed us to grow our team to 7 members and accelerate product development. We were ready to storm the world!
The pivot
In retrospect, our product decisions after the investment killed our startup. We shifted our focus from the local videos ads review platform — where we had 100k users and 60 clients — to a global video recognition consumer product. We created an App — like Shazam — that recognized millions of videos. Our goal was to have advertisers make their offline assets interactive and invite their audience to download our App and use it to unlock “something”. The practical end was the same as the QR code. How cool is that? Scan a video and “magically” show related content on your screen? Exciting, right? Wrong. Very few people downloaded the App. It turns out the barrier of downloading the App was too much for the reward (whatever the brand wanted to offer). Don’t get me wrong, we did some cool campaigns with Kia, Unilever, or Volkswagen. But again these were one-shot campaigns. Basically an investment in innovation from the brands. After long days discussing our future, we thought of something. What if our technology was embedded in native apps like Snapchat, Facebook, IMDB, or even in the Operating Systems of mobile devices — Android and iOS? This would mean everyone could easily interact with their offline environment and get something in return. Brilliant!
Interactive The Walking Dead
This is now 2016 and we had a new strategy. White-label our technology and allow anyone to embed it in their platforms. We built SDKs for Web, Android and iOS and off we went searching for customers. One of our main goals was to have TV shows interactive. Allow viewers to point their phone to the TV and delight them with a new experience. In this quest, I scrapped all my network, cold reach on Linkedin, went to conferences, traveled between London, New York and San Francisco. I ended up talking to all major TV networks — Comcast, BBC, FOX, PRISA, Viacom, CNN — and closed a contract with FOX. This was a pilot experiment where FOX would use Portugal as an assessment market. It took us 9 months (!) to close the contract. Even so, we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The worst part was over, we could take our learnings from our local pilot and catapult it to the world. We will change how people consume TV and will take our place in the TV innovation history. We were ready to build a $1B company. After several negotiations with FOX we were able to add our technology to three shows: The Walking Dead, MacGyver and Prison Break. What a victory! All the major shows were interactive. FOX will advertise the shows are interactive, people will scan the TV and have an amazing, memorable experience. Win-win-win. When the first results started to come in… well let’s take a detour first and come back to the results later.
Entering Facebook
During 2016 I was mainly traveling demoing our technology to as many people as I could. Besides TV networks I’ve met with Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Verizon, Blippar and Facebook. Our goal was to integrate the technology in their existing apps and make their users interact with the world connecting the offline and the online seamlessly. The main feedback was something like: “amazing technology, great demo! But (there’s always a but) something like this isn’t on our product roadmap”. Except for Facebook… It was late 2016 and I’ve met with a Business Developer Director. Here’s how it went:
(After I’ve demoed the technology) Director: Wait, can I try it? Me: Sure, here’s my phone. (Director takes the phone and scans the video. The phone showed information about the actor from the exact second Director scanned. Director stays hesitant for a couple of seconds…). Director: I need this. Me: Uhh… Ok!(My mind was like: Errr, what, how, can I ask… Wait, what?) Director: Here’s the deal. We have a huge problem right now. We launched Facebook Watch recently and are having a lot of copyright infringements on the platform. We need to build something like YouTube’s ContentID.More info here. Me: Ok, we can definitely help. Director: I’ll put you in contact with the product team responsible for this and they’ll take it from there. We are evaluating acquisitions in this space to speed up our go-to-market.
After exiting the meeting I vividly remember the next five minutes. As I went through the lobby I decided to seat on a couch to recover from the excitement. There I was, all alone, in one of the most incredible buildings in Menlo Park after a meeting in one of the biggest tech companies in the world. I found myself looking at the ceiling and smiling for no apparent reason.
The M&A process
After the Facebook meeting, we discovered we had a potential new market to unveil: copyright infringements detection. Users uploaded copyrighted content with small changes (e.g. by tempering with the audio pitch, by slightly rotating the video and by changing the original video with many different techniques) to bypass Facebook’s algorithms. Because our technology was designed from scratch to recognize videos from low-resolution images, we were pretty effective in recognizing tempered videos. We recognized videos that were rotated, mirrored or cropped. Our algorithm didn’t use audio. We even recognized a bunch of different videos inside one. Here’s a demo with a) 10 trailers in the same video and b) a rotating video. We arrived in 2017 with our FOX partnership generating mediocre results. No relevant revenue was coming in and the user interaction data wasn’t exciting. We learned that people need a huge reward expectation to take the effort of scanning the TV. Without undisputed usage from viewers, FOX was gradually losing interest in pushing the technology and the opportunity faded during the rest of 2017. In February we started talking with the Facebook team. They wanted to test our technology at scale. We thought it was a fair request and agreed to be tested without any compensation. We signed NDA’s and were comfortable enough discussing the internals of how our technology works. After a couple of meetings to discuss the technology, Facebook started to test us with hundreds of hours at a scale we were never able to test before. It was scary as hell! We were all extremely nervous to see if the servers’ architecture wouldn’t crash. When the first results started to come in we were shocked… 95% accuracy and 0.13% false positives. This was incredible for us! This was paired with the audio industry leader: Shazam. My eyes started to tear up. We were tremendously proud and happy about this achievement. Facebook wasn’t…
Thanks for following up with us. It was a great experience working with your team and we think there is a great potential for your company and service. We want to provide an update about the evaluation result. From the result, overall we see a good coverage and recall, and your team solved the problems real fast. However, due to low precision and high false positive rate, we decided not to moving forward to the next stage of the evaluation. Thanks for your time and effort. I am sure our career will get crossed in the future
Caption: Facebook’s engineer email rejecting us Did you feel that punch in the stomach? I surely felt it. It was so unfair to have amazing results on our side and receive this email. When we asked about the differences — to understand what went wrong on our side — we got this:
Facebook has our own metrics and process to evaluate the product value of the algorithm. But due to the policy, we are not allowed to share with you. My colleague’s point is the final result. Look forward to getting chance to work with you guys in the future.
Caption: Facebook’s lead engineer email really rejecting us We felt kind of used and disrespected to be honest. Remember this was a two months process with several emails and calls between us. It was one of the most difficult moments of my professional life mainly because of the expectations I’ve built. We were devastated. I was immature enough and almost took it personally. At the end of the day, it was business as usual for a big company like Facebook — they ended up acquiring Source3 to help them solve the problem. For us, it was a Technical Knock Out. If someone from a big company is reading this and it sounds familiar, please take a moment to rethink the way you say no to a startup. Especially if you’ve been interacting daily or weekly for the past months. Invite them for a meeting or call and explain them the general decision process. It will take you half an hour and it will make a huge difference for the startup. Believe me on this… Unfortunately, after this, we weren’t having solid revenue from our FOX partnership. After discussing with our lead investor we decided to close our doors in an unfortunate ending to what could have been a tremendous success.
Lessons Learned
So many lessons learned! We could have done so much differently. It was a rollercoaster ride with so much emotional commitment. It’s a challenging exercise but I’ll try to generally sum up the main learnings from the whole journey. Here’s what I learned:
The line that defines success and failure is extremely thin.
If you are being evaluated (by customers, partners or possible acquirers) define success KPIs beforehand. That way everyone will have the same common ground.
Don’t put all your eggs (expectations) into one basket.
Stick to what is working, i.e., work on what people want and measure it with data; not words nor promises.
Be kind to everyone. If you feel disrespected or hurt, take a step back. Take some time to breathe and don’t reply right away. Time heals everything and gives your perspective.
Don’t take life too seriously. Be patient but persistent.
Despite all learnings, the cold reality is that this was a failed startup… but I’m trying it again. This time I’m doing things differently. Hope you guys had a good read and learned a thing or two :) Let me know if you have any questions. EDIT: I'm overwhelmed by your feedback, support and love. Thank you so much! I've been getting a lot of questions about my next step / startup. Follow me at Twitter as I continue to share my learnings and document my journey as a founder.
Autochess: Market Status and Design Analysis [effort post]
This article was written with thefeedback of ~300 highly engaged players from the different autochess reddit communities (TFT, DOTA Underlords, Chess Rush...), which participated in interviews and on a poll whose results are availablehere.They’re especially thanked by name at the end of the article. In January 2019, Drodo Studio’s Dota Auto Chess mod became insanely popular. Many companies (including household names like Valve, Riot, Ubisoft and Blizzard) rushed to release their own versions. It seemed like the beginning of something big like MOBA or Battle Royale. But it has been more than a year now and the hype seems to have vanished completely. As quickly as it rose, it went away… This is the first on a series of articles where we will analyze the autochess genre. Here we will be exploring the genre’s history, its current market situation and its audience. And also, what are the core design issues that autochess suffers and that no one has been able to solve yet. https://preview.redd.it/tc2c19k4ipg61.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=487539f51e104ee7d1aae1a6ded7447b1dee11ca It really helps me if you check this article (or similar content) at my blog https://jb-dev.net/
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
This wasn’t the first time that a mod got the spotlight and ended up becoming the foundation of a genre. It happened in several major, industry-defining cases before (some of which are Team Shooters, MOBAs, Battle Royale…). But on some of these cases events unfolded differently. So we identify 3 distinctive eras related to the evolution of the industry:
1st Era (2000s): Assimilation
The company whose original software had been modded (or had a close enough game, like Valve) moved quickly to absorb the successful mods and turn them into even more successful products. Since at that point creating a major game release was very complex (required an expensive development, publishing deals and an infrastructure to distribute the product), the deal was profitable for both sides. But it meant the dissolution of the identity of the original creator team, which became embedded in the bigger company culture. https://preview.redd.it/abyi6d2jipg61.png?width=461&format=png&auto=webp&s=d4171bf9344a162e695a75a91d18eec8206b9123
Team Fortress (1999) was originally a Quake mod. And Counter-Strike (2000) started out as a fan-made mod on the Half Life engine. Both games (and creators) were quickly absorbed by Valve.
2nd Era (2010s): Integration
By this time, the previous era model still was going on… but the gaming industry had significatively grown a lot and it was also possible for smaller or even new companies to lure the original developers, and use the mod as a proof for commercial success in order to secure funding and develop it as a full title. The main characteristic of this era is that the original developers were able to keep a bigger share of control and relevance, rather than being integrated as just another gear on a bigger machine, because the companies they joined built their own identity around that key product. This was the case of Riot Games: They were able to raise enough money for the creation of their company through family and angel investors, and then hire some of the original creators of DOTA, and then created League of Legends. https://preview.redd.it/vl6h2l7lipg61.png?width=763&format=png&auto=webp&s=414abb3da2b169966b7bf757a6116f86ef3748d2
Defense of the Ancients (DotA), the foundational title for the MOBA genre, appeared in 2003 as a fan-made custom scenario of Warcraft 3. Foreseeing commercial potential on a full game based on the concept, Riot games and Valve both battled for the Dota IP and the original developers, eventually releasing rival titles League of Legends and Dota2. Interestingly, Blizzard (owners of Warcraft 3) tried to replicate the success without the mod creators in Heroes of the Storm (2015), which hasn’t been as successful as the other two.
A similar case happened with battle royale, which also started in 2013 as a successful DayZ mod created by the modder nicknamed PlayerUnknown. Later, it was transformed into a full product through the acquisition of the developer by a korean company (which would later be renamed as the PUBG Corporation, again showing how the company grew around the game rather than assimilating it). This case hints what would later happen with Auto Chess, since Fortnite wasn’t involved in any way with the original creators. They just copied the concept. Fortnite was a product stuck in a kind of development hell (had been 6 years in the works). As the game was getting close to the release, the developers became impressed by PUBG’s success, so they created a quick Battle Royale spin-off which became insanely popular and eventually ate the rest of the game. https://preview.redd.it/zkdv4jjqipg61.png?width=808&format=png&auto=webp&s=0e7ad39e5db4d83b6b927587b59bf1c81fe0ef85
Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (2017), foundational title of the modern battle royale genre, is the successor of PlayerUnknown’s DayZ: Battle Royale, a popular mod for DayZ (which on itself is a mod of ArmA3, making it a mod of a mod lol). The success of PUBG inspired Fortnite (a title on the later stages of a troubled development at the time) to spin towards that genre, becoming PUBG‘s main competitor.
3rd Era (2020s): Fragmentation
In all the cases presented previously, the newborn genre ended up in the release of one or two titles which accumulated most of the business. But this hasn’t been the case here. In Autochess, the newborn genre has been quickly fragmented into a big list of competitors. Some are standalone games (like DOTA Underlords or Autochess: Origins), but there’s also several service-model games which released their autochess mode as well (like Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds or TeamFight Tactics, which at the end of the day is a side-game mode of League of Legends). This creates an interesting precedent, which I believe will define future cases where an innovative new game concept appears: The hot idea will be cloned very fast because today the main bottleneck in the industry is having an innovative design that generates player interest and engagement. By 2020, it’s way easier to create and distribute a game, there are way more developers hungry for a hit than ever before, and a lot of service-model games with short development cycles always looking for something juicy for their next update… so new ideas becoming red oceans fast will be the norm. For sure, this won’t affect the ability of small developers and modders to innovate, but it will affect their ability to leverage that to become successful on an independant level, before they get cloned. https://preview.redd.it/51jbq4jwipg61.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=fdfcfeb82e73b48210c4d93386438268d6dcbe3b
Dota Auto Chess, was a Dota 2 mod which obtained massive popularity. After a failed acquisition from Valve (owners of Dota), the mod developers (Drodo Studios) went to create the mobile standalone Auto Chess: Origins, while still maintaining the PC version linked to Valve. Meanwhile, Riot, Valve, Ubisoft and many other companies developed and released their own autobattlers at a record time, downgrading the genre creators to just another competitor.
On Autochess, the fragmentation and fast release pace came at the cost of innovation, though. These games feature few unique selling points compared to the original DOTA Autochess experience: TFT’s ‘anti-snowballing’character selection rounds, Underlord’s bosses and fast-track mode…. And ultimately, they haven’t fixed the core issues of the original game, which separates it from a true hyper-successful product like MOBA.
MARKET STATUS
Because of the rain of clones, it’s hard to map all the autochess games on the market. It doesn’t help that some of them are available in both PC and Mobile (playable in PC, Mac, Android and iOS), and also they’re exclusive to different PC stores (Dota Underlords is only on Steam, TFT is on Riot’s LoL launcher, and Autochess Origins is only at the Epic Store…). And if that wasn’t enough, the Auto Chess mod in DOTA2 is still very active and has no signs that it’s going to be dying soon. It’s still being regularly updated, and presumably still profitable: Some months ago they added a battle pass system, with its revenue shared between Valve and Drodo. https://preview.redd.it/8w2lrid0jpg61.png?width=854&format=png&auto=webp&s=3697396edd8af2dff3f8e25cb2dd3829635506d0 What’s interesting is that none of the contenders has been able to become massively successful in terms of monetization, at least not in terms comparable to even a second or third tier MOBA. And while there are definitively different tiers of following among these titles (led by Riot Games’ TeamFight Tactics), it seems that none of them has been able togather under its banner a significant amount of players, mobile downloads or Twitch Views… Sources: AppAnnie (mobile metrics), TwitchMetrics (twitch) So ultimately, we’re dividing the autochess market into 3 categories: Squires, Would-be Kings and Peasants.
Squires: Rather than standalone games, these are side-modes of already successful products. Under this category we would list the Battlegrounds mode in Hearthstone, or League of Legends’ TFT, and maybe even the original DOTA Autochess mod. While for sure they’ll have their own dedicated audience that only plays those modes, for most players it’s just a nice and fresh activity integrated within a broader game experience. The squires are the ones that have achieved the biggest success among the autochess genre because they don’t suffer as much backlash from the lack of gameplay depth inherent to the genre, which is harmful for the long term retention: Even if the mode eventually becomes a bit shallow, players have many other things to play, and thus are retained. As a consequence, these games can still monetize significatively by selling renewals of their Battle Passes every new season. Not enough to make them successful on the degree that was expected… but at least it’s something. Other than bringing an additional source of revenue, these modes were useful to their core games: They generated player interest by providing innovative gameplay. Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds was an amazing addition to the CCG genre, and made a lot of people come back to the game to discover the new mode and reengage.
SQUIRE: The gameplay of TeamFight Tactics (slow tempo, no team coordination, decreased attention requirement…) makes it a nicerelief modeto play between LOL matches, which is its purpose in the foreseeable future. If there ever was an intention to make it a standalone game, it vanished together with the player interest on autochess…
Would-be Kings: These are the other two top dogs of the category. They were supposed to rule… but that looking at the numbers they don’t really seem to have ever lifted off. Under this category we would list Auto Chess: Origins and DOTA Underlords. The problem is that their standalone approach means that they suffer the most of the design issues of the genre that we’ve presented in the last section of this article (i.e. flat complexity, lack of mastery depth, lack of progression and rotative meta…). That means that they lost a lot of population over time, and therefore their Battle Pass renewal isn’t as effective at generating revenue : (
DOTA Underlords is an extremely polished product in terms of graphics, character design and UX, and yet another proof that Valve devs really know how to do great games. Too bad they aren’t as good at releasing third installments.
Patricks, gamers looking for a competitive-but-idle experience that doesn’t require full attention and it’s easily reconcilable with their functional adult life.
Grizzlies, competitive players that struggle with fast paced games that demand a high actions per minute ratio and quick reflexes (like MOBAs or competitive shooters).
Warmasters, highly competitive players that enjoy more the area of strategy (setting up goals and planning how to achieve them) rather than tactics (skillful execution of actions and micromanagement).
What these profiles have in common, other than being hardcore gamers and having a big interest in competitive games, is the fact that they enjoy the lack of micromanagement, and the demand of reflexes and dexterity of autochess. This is quite interesting, considering that the genre foundation is so close to MOBAs, which are extremely demanding on those aspects. Overall it seems that they belong to audiences below the MOBA umbrella which are currently being alienated by the bulk of ‘younger and dexterity focused’ players. And when it comes to platforms, it seems that even though the barrier between the classic gaming platforms and mobile is progressively disappearing, the genre is still mainly focused on PC: Out of the ~300 players that answered, 50% said that they play exclusively on PC, 25% played primarily on Mobile, and the remaining 25% played in both. https://preview.redd.it/a25azxggjpg61.png?width=962&format=png&auto=webp&s=dc3677e4203abb44d5b60cc2b55e01f4fe839f74
Players said that they enjoy the focus of the game in planification, as opposed to the focus on execution and performance of MOBAs. And when asked about their main points of frustration, they pointed out 2 main topics: 1.- The strongluck factor that has a strong impact on making you win or lose regardless on how well you played. 2.- The fact that the game eventually becomes shallow and repetitive, fueled by the fact updates were unexciting and not rotating the meta.
Surprised by the fact that players mention randomness as a factor of both enjoyment and frustration? Don’t be! Competitive players tend to have a love-and-hate relationship with luck, because they tend to consider that external factors outside of skills (money spent, better draw…) stole their well deserved victory. And it’s even more frustrating in autochess, because there’s a strong snowball effect: Players that obtain a big advantage early on in the game become hard to catch later on. Which means that a few bad or good draws early on can decide the rest of the match. There hasn’t been a single feature more criticised in Magic: The Gathering than the randomness of drawing mana. And yet, luck it’s part of what makes MTG stand out compared to other CCGs: For experienced players, it introduces uncertainty and the need to take risks and gamble, like they’d do in poker. And for rookies, it allows beating someone that has better skills and has a better deck, if Lady Luck is on their side. Won’t happen often, but it will feel awesome when it does. Like a friend likes to say: The best feeling in MTG is to draw a mana when you really need it. And the worst? To draw it when you didn’t. This goes to say that in autochess, perhaps the power of luck needs to be reviewed, but it would be a bad decision to completely remove luck from the equation.
DESIGN CHALLENGES
In this awesome DoF article, Giovanni Ducati already pointed out the two main problems that the games in this genre need to solve to achieve real success: Bad long term retention and low monetization. To these issues we would add a third one, which is bad marketability: Contrary to their big brothers League of Legends and DOTA2, these games haven’t been able to achieve high organic downloads (at least not to be able to generate significant revenue through soft monetization mechanics). What’s even worse is that all these games, their themes and target audience are quite close to RPG and Strategy, which are genres with some of the highest CPIs on the market. So they need top-of-the-class retention and monetization to get a high enough LTV to scale up. But why do these games fail at keeping players entertained for a long time? And why don’t they monetize enough? Here’s what we think:
Flat Complexity & Progression
You have some games out there which have a strong entry barrier due to being quite complicated to grasp. But for those that can deal with the numbers and stats, the depth will keep them entertained for months and years. This is the case in most RPGs and 4X strategy games. And then you have hypercasual games, which are simple and plug and play. So they generate a great early engagement, but are too shallow to keep users hooked for a long time. As a genre, Autochess games are in the middle ground: they have a high entry barrier, but also lack the complexity to keep players engaged for a long time… As a general rule, games with long retention tend to follow Bushnell’s Law of being easy to learn and difficult to master. They achieve that by having what we call an unfoldingexperience: They appear simpler at the beginning (not necessarily easy), but require thousands of hours of practice to master. An example of this are games that level lock most of the game complexity, so the player understands and masters only a set starter mechanics. And then, progressively unlock new modes and demand more specialized builds and gameplay, repeating the cycle several times to keep the game always interesting while attempting to avoid being overwhelming. https://preview.redd.it/e9f8s8tkjpg61.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=825c85b7c479b3bf05fc43ac668cbd1eddf17c97
In World of Warcraft, character depth is huge. But this complexity is unfolded progressively, forcing the player to spend time mastering each skill and activity as they level up, before moving further.
Rocket League hides its complexity by matchmaking early players with others of a similar skill. This makes beginner playersviableeven if they grasp only the basic mechanics. But, as they climb further, they’ll face rivals that take those basic skills for granted and the player will need to master more challenging techniques to keep up.
League of Legends and Overwatch are actually a combination of both: The game first introduces the player to a small selection of heroes which progressively gets expanded, while at the same time having an insane mastery depth that requires a high APM and reflexes, team coordination and thousands of hours of practice. Contrary to any of those examples, Autochess games throw everything at you from the beginning: Character Skills, Synergies, Unit Upgrade, Gold Management, Items… It’s a lot to swallow. And there’s not even enough time to read what each thing does before the timer runs out. This creates a complex, overwhelming first impression that drives many players out. But that’s quantity, not depth. Once you’ve gone through that traumatic starting phase, you’ve grasped all the mechanics and you know which team builds are dominating on the meta, it’s just a matter of making it happen by taking the right decisions and adapting to a few key draws. Eventually, unless luck is really against you, your skills won’t be challenged and you won’t have new mechanics to master. At that point, winning will be based more on the knowledge of the content database and luck rather than your planning and strategic ability. And that’s boring. So ultimately, these games are hard to grasp for a newbie, but also lack the ability to keep players interested for a very long time since they eventually run out of new features and mechanics to discover and master.
The DAU that we would expect on a long term retention game: A decreasing trend of players until reaching a stagnation stage. At that point, a big update (or new season) is required to attract and reengage users back with new content. This is the model we would see on Fortnite or Hearthstone, but it’s not what we see in most autochesses.
On this topic, perhaps the one that has put the most effort is Riot’s TFT. Each season update, the game releases a new series of heroes, synergies, items and rebalances, as well as a big bunch of cosmetics. This generates a short lived boost on revenue (due primarily to players buying the pass) and downloads, but ultimately nothing that really moves the needle in a relevant way. ‘Why seasonal updates don’t work?‘, you may be asking. Part of the reason is that TFT, as well as every major contender do not include elements of content progression or collection. Instead, they all stick to the roguelike approach of the original mod: Players have access to the same set of units, and build their inventory exclusively during the match. While at first this seems a good idea, since it keeps the game fair in a similar way to MOBAs, it’s oblivious to the fact that new units do not offer the same amount of gameplay depth as in League of Legends. InLoL, a new unit means weeks or even months of practice until mastering timing, range and usage of the skills, how they interact with every other champion, etc… In comparison, in TFT the new content can be fully explored in just a bunch of matches, both because the new content doesn’t offer that much depth to start with and because it’s available from the moment the player gets the update. By lacking content progression and collection, autochesses miss the opportunity to create long term objectives after an update, more innovative mechanics and less repetitiveness. As a consequence, they have it really hard to hype players on updates.
Big ‘Snowball Effect’
In game design, thesnowball effectrefers to the situation where obtaining an advantage or dominance generates further conditions that almost invariably means winning the match. As you can guess, on competitive games this effect can generate a bad experience, especially when the divergence starts early on: The player that obtained the early advantage will keep on increasing the advantage and curbstomp the rest. For example, this can happen on a Civilization game if a player gets ahead of the rest acquiring key resource territories, and uses them to achieve a greater progress in tech and income at a faster pace than the rest. Or in League of Legends if a team scores a bunch of early kills and levels up, becoming more able at scoring even more kills… https://preview.redd.it/s07v5umtjpg61.png?width=620&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae14e6101c2c35da175150251bf592d0598fb76c
In this match of Age of Empires 2, the red player (Aztecs) managed to decimate the blue player (Turks) military units early on. Since without an army it was impossible for the blue player to secure enough resources to perform a comeback, for the next 2 hours the blue player was in a pointless, hopeless match. Kudos for not abandoning, though!
Autochess games have a huge snowball effect, due to the following reasons:
Resources lead to victories, victories lead to resources As you know, in autochess each player builds a team based on successive battles. Better battle performance will grant more gold, which is the resource used to buy units, perform shop rolls, etc… Similar to the cases we’ve already explained, this means that players that achieve early dominance will be able to to obtain more gold, use it to get better units and get more victories and gold, therefore increasing their team power faster than the rest. ‘But players can be lucky or unlucky, generating a factor that compensates for the advantage of having more resources early on‘, you may be considering. Unfortunately, this is a flawed logic, because of 2 main reasons: (1) Having more resources means more adaptability: The dominant players will be able to leverage on them to re-adapt their team, therefore outperforming the rest on a randomness-driven scenario. (2) Resources allow to buy more rolls, which diminishes the deviation generated by each individual roll.
TeamFight Tactics attempts to decrease the snowball effect by introducing Carousels: rounds where all players pick a character from a list, and where the players that are losing (i.e. have less health) get to choose first. While this decreases the issue, it doesn’t really solve it… It just makes that smart players aim to lose on purpose at the beginning so they can get the better pick and generate the snowball slightly later on.
Luck factor. The previous point goes into maintaining and increasing dominance once it has been achieved early on, but another source of frustration is that luck is a huge factor in achieving early dominance. This means that your strategic skills and smarts can be completely invalidated by a couple of bad rolls at the beginning of the match. And there’s nothing that competitive players hate more than having their match stolen by factors outside the pure clash of abilities.
As an antithesis, Poker also has resource management, and luck factor determines the victory (on a specific round). But unlike Autochess, resources can’t override luck, and early victories don’t affect the later chance of winning.
Excessive Match Length
Compared to PC, on mobile is much harder to keep the player focused for a long period of time on a single session. And having a very long minimum session kind of goes against the premise of being able to play anywhere which is a primary strength of mobile as a gaming platform. This is a problem for autochess games since a single match can last for 30-45 minutes of synchronous, nonstop gameplay. https://preview.redd.it/eh020bi1kpg61.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=5e98aefdec1c79141d7fe13d02acfadb13e789b7
The knockout mode in Dota Underlords aims to make the game more accessible by skipping the slow beginning of the match (you start with a pre-setup army), and by simplifying the health and fusion systems. This shortens the matches to ~15 minutes, which is still too long for mobile, but better than 30. The problem is that it also increases the snowball effect, since the match has less turns to allow comebacks, and makes any mistake (or a bad roll) way more punishing.
‘Isn’t the solution just make the match shorter?’, you’re probably wondering. Unfortunately, there are several reasons that make this more challenging to the core design than what it seems:
Because in autochess the player builds its team from scratch, at the beginning of each match there are several turns to setup team foundations. Removing these early decisions severely decreases the teambuilding possibilities, decreasing overall depth.
Also, eachsetup phasebetween clashes requires a minimum time to think and perform the actions. In the last turns of a match, the game can become quite demanding on thinking and input speed.
Matches require a minimum amount of turns to compensate the weight of a single lucky/unlucky roll over the chances to win. Because the possible units for teambuilding appear on random rolls, the less turns there are the more luck factor the game will suffer, and as a consequence the less important the player’s strategic skills will be.
And if there are few turns, there are also less chances for comebacks. Because it means that players will have less setup phases to adapt and catch a player that has obtained an early advantage.
Finally, since the match involves 8 players, it requires a minimum of turns so that they all can fight between each other… Nevertheless, I don’t consider this a critical issue because Dota has been able to change this specific point on the knockout mode without sacrificing too much in terms of depth.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The history of the autochessgenre serves as an example of the risks of design endogamy: The devsphere rushed to clone Auto Chess, and before a year all the major contenders were in the board. But that speed came at a cost: None of these projects has brought the concept much further than its original conception, and in doing so they haven’t solved any of the core issues. https://preview.redd.it/jptzdrj8kpg61.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f3fb34eb46b610e6ee355ba47782c804cb74186
The folks at Riot games developed the TeamFight Tactics in less than 5 months. This allowed them to release while the hype was still at its peak… but it also meant it added just a couple of improvements, and it’s otherwise very similar to the original Auto Chess mod.
After seeing all these projects fail to meet the big expectations that were placed on them, the question is if perhaps the best approach was to avoid rushing, and instead tackle the genre with a title that is not a clone, but rather a more groomed, accessible and innovative successor of the original idea. In our next article on this series will make an attempt to see how such a game could be, rethinking the spirit and fresh design ideas of autochess to solve the issues mentioned above. (May take a while though, I want to focus on smaller articles for a couple of months…) Meanwhile, if you want to read more about this genre, we suggest you these awesome articles from the folks at DoF: Why Auto-Chess can’t monetize – and how to fix that and How Riot can turn TFT into a billion dollar game
Special Thanks to…
These articles wouldn’t have been possible with the collaboration of ~300 members of the reddit communities of the different auto chess games who provided us with feedback and data. You folks have been incredible solving all our doubts. One thing that this genre has is some of the most awesome players around. So big kudos for Brxm1, Erfinder Steve, Xinth, Zofia the Fierce, STRK1911, LontongSinga22, bezacho, hete, NeroVingian, marling2305, NOVA9INE , asidcabeJ, Eidallor, Rhai, Lozarian, bwdm, Toxic, Ruala, Papa Shango, MrMkay, Dread0, L7, kilmerluiz, Amikals, Sworith, Tankull, B., hete, Bour, Denzel, DeCeddy, Diaa, hamoudaxp, Benjamin “ManiaK” Depinois, Katunopolis, DanTheMan, MikelKDAplayer, 0nid, Tobocto, Tiny Rick, phuwin, Alcibiades, triceps, d20diceman, shadebedlam, stinky binky, Tutu, Myuura, suds, Kapo, Hearthstoned, Engagex, Pietrovosky, Daydreamer, Doctor Heckle, Ignis, ShawnE, NastierNate, LeCJ, Nene Thomas, Chris, trinitus_minibus, Nah, Kaubenjunge1337, Mudhutter, Asurakap, Nicky V, shinsplintshurts, bobknows27, Willem (Larry David Official on Steam), Jonathan, Dinomit24, Monstertaco, GangGreen69, Veshral Amadeus Salieri (…lol!), Kuscomem, Cmacu, Pioplu, Dilemily, qulhuae, Ilmo, MarvMind, facu1ty, crayzieap, Saint Expedite, Lobbyse, Lukino , tomes, Blitzy24, Mcmooserton, magicmerl, i4got2putsumpantzon, radicalminusone, Pipoxo, Kharambit, Bricklebrah, Rbagderp, Merforga, Superzuhong, Mo2gon, MoS.Tetu, MeBigBwainy, Zokus, CoyoteSandstorm, Stehnis, Noctis, Fkdn, Ray, Fairs1912, Fairs1912, Krakowski, HolyKrapp, Damadud, Pentium, Mach, Mudak, CaptSteffo, jwsw1990, Omaivapanda, Inquisitor Binks, Jack, yggdranix, GoodLuckM8, Centy, Prabuddha (aka Walla), dtan, Philosokitteh, Doms, ZEDD, Calloween, Synsane, Kaluma, GordonTremeshko , Djouni, DOGE, haveitall, ANIM4SSO, Task Manager, Submersed, BAKE, Viniv, La Tortuga Zorroberto, BixLe, Rafabeen, Blzane, bdlck666, FatCockNinja86, R.U.Sty, Yopsif, blesk, Quaest0r, FanOfTaylor, StaunchDruid, Rushkoski and everyone else that took some minutes to help us out on the article.
How we almost got acquired by Facebook and failed. Here's what I learned.
This is not a happy ending story.
The beginning
It all started back in 2014. I had a startup whose clients were advertisers. It was a platform for users to review video ads in exchange for online points that could be redeemed for money or coupons. Watch and ad; rate it; be rewarded. Simple. After 100 campaigns I kept hearing it would be wonderful to connect their offline ads (e.g. TV ads, billboards, magazines, etc) with our platform. Advertisers wanted real insights and analytics from their offline advertising investment. As dedicated founders we started working hard on this concept: “from offline to online with your phone”. Within 4 months we had our first version. I remember showing it to our friends and constantly hearing “Wow this is brilliant! It’s like Shazam but for videos”. I was ecstatic!
The investment
The revenue was coming in but it wasn’t recurrent. It was difficult to enter the yearly advertising budget. Advertisers assumed our platform as an experiment (mainly to get feedback) and not as a serious distribution channel — despite the fact we picked at 100,000 registered users. We needed investment to grow and build the new technology’s infrastructure. It wasn’t cheap to maintain a technology that recognized millions of videos within 4s. More on this latter. In 2015 we raised $0.5M from angels and led by a VC. This allowed us to grow our team to 7 members and accelerate product development. We were ready to storm the world!
The pivot
In retrospect, our product decisions after the investment killed our startup. We shifted our focus from the local videos ads review platform — where we had 100k users and 60 clients — to a global video recognition consumer product. We created an App — like Shazam — that recognized millions of videos. Our goal was to have advertisers make their offline assets interactive and invite their audience to download our App and use it to unlock “something”. The practical end was the same as the QR code. How cool is that? Scan a video and “magically” show related content on your screen? Exciting, right? Wrong. Very few people downloaded the App. It turns out the barrier of downloading the App was too much for the reward (whatever the brand wanted to offer). Don’t get me wrong, we did some cool campaigns with Kia, Unilever, or Volkswagen. But again these were one-shot campaigns. Basically an investment in innovation from the brands. After long days discussing our future, we thought of something. What if our technology was embedded in native apps like Snapchat, Facebook, IMDB, or even in the Operating Systems of mobile devices — Android and iOS? This would mean everyone could easily interact with their offline environment and get something in return. Brilliant!
Interactive The Walking Dead
This is now 2016 and we had a new strategy. White-label our technology and allow anyone to embed it in their platforms. We built SDKs for Web, Android and iOS and off we went searching for customers. One of our main goals was to have TV shows interactive. Allow viewers to point their phone to the TV and delight them with a new experience. In this quest, I scrapped all my network, cold reach on Linkedin, went to conferences, traveled between London, New York and San Francisco. I ended up talking to all major TV networks — Comcast, BBC, FOX, PRISA, Viacom, CNN — and closed a contract with FOX. This was a pilot experiment where FOX would use Portugal as an assessment market. It took us 9 months (!) to close the contract. Even so, we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The worst part was over, we could take our learnings from our local pilot and catapult it to the world. We will change how people consume TV and will take our place in the TV innovation history. We were ready to build a $1B company. After several negotiations with FOX we were able to add our technology to three shows: The Walking Dead, MacGyver and Prison Break. What a victory! All the major shows were interactive. FOX will advertise the shows are interactive, people will scan the TV and have an amazing, memorable experience. Win-win-win. When the first results started to come in… well let’s take a detour first and come back to the results later.
Entering Facebook
During 2016 I was mainly traveling demoing our technology to as many people as I could. Besides TV networks I’ve met with Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Verizon, Blippar and Facebook. Our goal was to integrate the technology in their existing apps and make their users interact with the world connecting the offline and the online seamlessly. The main feedback was something like: “amazing technology, great demo! But (there’s always a but) something like this isn’t on our product roadmap”. Except for Facebook… It was late 2016 and I’ve met with a Business Developer Director. Here’s how it went:
(After I’ve demoed the technology) Director: Wait, can I try it? Me: Sure, here’s my phone. (Director takes the phone and scans the video. The phone showed information about the actor from the exact second Director scanned. Director stays hesitant for a couple of seconds…). Director: I need this. Me: Uhh… Ok!(My mind was like: Errr, what, how, can I ask… Wait, what?) Director: Here’s the deal. We have a huge problem right now. We launched Facebook Watch recently and are having a lot of copyright infringements on the platform. We need to build something like YouTube’s ContentID.More info here. Me: Ok, we can definitely help. Director: I’ll put you in contact with the product team responsible for this and they’ll take it from there. We are evaluating acquisitions in this space to speed up our go-to-market.
After exiting the meeting I vividly remember the next five minutes. As I went through the lobby I decided to seat on a couch to recover from the excitement. There I was, all alone, in one of the most incredible buildings in Menlo Park after a meeting in one of the biggest tech companies in the world. I found myself looking at the ceiling and smiling for no apparent reason.
The M&A process
After the Facebook meeting, we discovered we had a potential new market to unveil: copyright infringements detection. Users uploaded copyrighted content with small changes (e.g. by tempering with the audio pitch, by slightly rotating the video and by changing the original video with many different techniques) to bypass Facebook’s algorithms. Because our technology was designed from scratch to recognize videos from low-resolution images, we were pretty effective in recognizing tempered videos. We recognized videos that were rotated, mirrored or cropped. Our algorithm didn’t use audio. We even recognized a bunch of different videos inside one. Here’s a demo with a) 10 trailers in the same video and b) a rotating video. We arrived in 2017 with our FOX partnership generating mediocre results. No relevant revenue was coming in and the user interaction data wasn’t exciting. We learned that people need a huge reward expectation to take the effort of scanning the TV. Without undisputed usage from viewers, FOX was gradually losing interest in pushing the technology and the opportunity faded during the rest of 2017. In February we started talking with the Facebook team. They wanted to test our technology at scale. We thought it was a fair request and agreed to be tested without any compensation. We signed NDA’s and were comfortable enough discussing the internals of how our technology works. After a couple of meetings to discuss the technology, Facebook started to test us with hundreds of hours at a scale we were never able to test before. It was scary as hell! We were all extremely nervous to see if the servers’ architecture wouldn’t crash. When the first results started to come in we were shocked… 95% accuracy and 0.13% false positives. This was incredible for us! This was paired with the audio industry leader: Shazam. My eyes started to tear up. We were tremendously proud and happy about this achievement. Facebook wasn’t…
Thanks for following up with us. It was a great experience working with your team and we think there is a great potential for your company and service. We want to provide an update about the evaluation result. From the result, overall we see a good coverage and recall, and your team solved the problems real fast. However, due to low precision and high false positive rate, we decided not to moving forward to the next stage of the evaluation. Thanks for your time and effort. I am sure our career will get crossed in the future
Caption: Facebook’s engineer email rejecting us Did you feel that punch in the stomach? I surely felt it. It was so unfair to have amazing results on our side and receive this email. When we asked about the differences — to understand what went wrong on our side — we got this:
Facebook has our own metrics and process to evaluate the product value of the algorithm. But due to the policy, we are not allowed to share with you. My colleague’s point is the final result. Look forward to getting chance to work with you guys in the future.
Caption: Facebook’s lead engineer email really rejecting us We felt kind of used and disrespected to be honest. Remember this was a two months process with several emails and calls between us. It was one of the most difficult moments of my professional life mainly because of the expectations I’ve built. We were devastated. I was immature enough and almost took it personally. At the end of the day, it was business as usual for a big company like Facebook — they ended up acquiring Source3 to help them solve the problem. For us, it was a Technical Knock Out. If someone from a big company is reading this and it sounds familiar, please take a moment to rethink the way you say no to a startup. Especially if you’ve been interacting daily or weekly for the past months. Invite them for a meeting or call and explain them the general decision process. It will take you half an hour and it will make a huge difference for the startup. Believe me on this… Unfortunately, after this, we weren’t having solid revenue from our FOX partnership. After discussing with our lead investor we decided to close our doors in an unfortunate ending to what could have been a tremendous success.
Lessons Learned
So many lessons learned! We could have done so much differently. It was a rollercoaster ride with so much emotional commitment. It’s a challenging exercise but I’ll try to generally sum up the main learnings from the whole journey. Here’s what I learned:
The line that defines success and failure is extremely thin.
If you are being evaluated (by customers, partners or possible acquirers) define success KPIs beforehand. That way everyone will have the same common ground.
Don’t put all your eggs (expectations) into one basket.
Stick to what is working, i.e., work on what people want and measure it with data; not words nor promises.
Be kind to everyone. If you feel disrespected or hurt, take a step back. Take some time to breathe and don’t reply right away. Time heals everything and gives your perspective.
Don’t take life too seriously. Be patient but persistent.
Despite all learnings, the cold reality is that this was a failed startup… but I’m trying it again. This time I’m doing things differently. Follow me on Twitter as I continue to share my learnings and document my journey as a founder. Hope you guys had a good read and learned a thing or two :) Let me know if you have any questions.
How we almost got acquired by Facebook and failed. Here's what I learned.
This is not a happy ending story.
The beginning
It all started back in 2014. I had a startup whose clients were advertisers. It was a platform for users to review video ads in exchange for online points that could be redeemed for money or coupons. Watch and ad; rate it; be rewarded. Simple. After 100 campaigns I kept hearing it would be wonderful to connect their offline ads (e.g. TV ads, billboards, magazines, etc) with our platform. Advertisers wanted real insights and analytics from their offline advertising investment. As dedicated founders we started working hard on this concept: “from offline to online with your phone”. Within 4 months we had our first version. I remember showing it to our friends and constantly hearing “Wow this is brilliant! It’s like Shazam but for videos”. I was ecstatic!
The investment
The revenue was coming in but it wasn’t recurrent. It was difficult to enter the yearly advertising budget. Advertisers assumed our platform as an experiment (mainly to get feedback) and not as a serious distribution channel — despite the fact we picked at 100,000 registered users. We needed investment to grow and build the new technology’s infrastructure. It wasn’t cheap to maintain a technology that recognized millions of videos within 4s. More on this latter. In 2015 we raised $0.5M from angels and led by a VC. This allowed us to grow our team to 7 members and accelerate product development. We were ready to storm the world!
The pivot
In retrospect, our product decisions after the investment killed our startup. We shifted our focus from the local videos ads review platform — where we had 100k users and 60 clients — to a global video recognition consumer product. We created an App — like Shazam — that recognized millions of videos. Our goal was to have advertisers make their offline assets interactive and invite their audience to download our App and use it to unlock “something”. The practical end was the same as the QR code. How cool is that? Scan a video and “magically” show related content on your screen? Exciting, right? Wrong. Very few people downloaded the App. It turns out the barrier of downloading the App was too much for the reward (whatever the brand wanted to offer). Don’t get me wrong, we did some cool campaigns with Kia, Unilever, or Volkswagen. But again these were one-shot campaigns. Basically an investment in innovation from the brands. After long days discussing our future, we thought of something. What if our technology was embedded in native apps like Snapchat, Facebook, IMDB, or even in the Operating Systems of mobile devices — Android and iOS? This would mean everyone could easily interact with their offline environment and get something in return. Brilliant!
Interactive The Walking Dead
This is now 2016 and we had a new strategy. White-label our technology and allow anyone to embed it in their platforms. We built SDKs for Web, Android and iOS and off we went searching for customers. One of our main goals was to have TV shows interactive. Allow viewers to point their phone to the TV and delight them with a new experience. In this quest, I scrapped all my network, cold reach on Linkedin, went to conferences, traveled between London, New York and San Francisco. I ended up talking to all major TV networks — Comcast, BBC, FOX, PRISA, Viacom, CNN — and closed a contract with FOX. This was a pilot experiment where FOX would use Portugal as an assessment market. It took us 9 months (!) to close the contract. Even so, we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The worst part was over, we could take our learnings from our local pilot and catapult it to the world. We will change how people consume TV and will take our place in the TV innovation history. We were ready to build a $1B company. After several negotiations with FOX we were able to add our technology to three shows: The Walking Dead, MacGyver and Prison Break. What a victory! All the major shows were interactive. FOX will advertise the shows are interactive, people will scan the TV and have an amazing, memorable experience. Win-win-win. When the first results started to come in… well let’s take a detour first and come back to the results later.
Entering Facebook
During 2016 I was mainly traveling demoing our technology to as many people as I could. Besides TV networks I’ve met with Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Verizon, Blippar and Facebook. Our goal was to integrate the technology in their existing apps and make their users interact with the world connecting the offline and the online seamlessly. The main feedback was something like: “amazing technology, great demo! But (there’s always a but) something like this isn’t on our product roadmap”. Except for Facebook… It was late 2016 and I’ve met with a Business Developer Director. Here’s how it went:
(After I’ve demoed the technology) Director: Wait, can I try it? Me: Sure, here’s my phone. (Director takes the phone and scans the video. The phone showed information about the actor from the exact second Director scanned. Director stays hesitant for a couple of seconds…). Director: I need this. Me: Uhh… Ok!(My mind was like: Errr, what, how, can I ask… Wait, what?) Director: Here’s the deal. We have a huge problem right now. We launched Facebook Watch recently and are having a lot of copyright infringements on the platform. We need to build something like YouTube’s ContentID.More info here. Me: Ok, we can definitely help. Director: I’ll put you in contact with the product team responsible for this and they’ll take it from there. We are evaluating acquisitions in this space to speed up our go-to-market.
After exiting the meeting I vividly remember the next five minutes. As I went through the lobby I decided to seat on a couch to recover from the excitement. There I was, all alone, in one of the most incredible buildings in Menlo Park after a meeting in one of the biggest tech companies in the world. I found myself looking at the ceiling and smiling for no apparent reason.
The M&A process
After the Facebook meeting, we discovered we had a potential new market to unveil: copyright infringements detection. Users uploaded copyrighted content with small changes (e.g. by tempering with the audio pitch, by slightly rotating the video and by changing the original video with many different techniques) to bypass Facebook’s algorithms. Because our technology was designed from scratch to recognize videos from low-resolution images, we were pretty effective in recognizing tempered videos. We recognized videos that were rotated, mirrored or cropped. Our algorithm didn’t use audio. We even recognized a bunch of different videos inside one. Here’s a demo with a) 10 trailers in the same video and b) a rotating video. We arrived in 2017 with our FOX partnership generating mediocre results. No relevant revenue was coming in and the user interaction data wasn’t exciting. We learned that people need a huge reward expectation to take the effort of scanning the TV. Without undisputed usage from viewers, FOX was gradually losing interest in pushing the technology and the opportunity faded during the rest of 2017. In February we started talking with the Facebook team. They wanted to test our technology at scale. We thought it was a fair request and agreed to be tested without any compensation. We signed NDA’s and were comfortable enough discussing the internals of how our technology works. After a couple of meetings to discuss the technology, Facebook started to test us with hundreds of hours at a scale we were never able to test before. It was scary as hell! We were all extremely nervous to see if the servers’ architecture wouldn’t crash. When the first results started to come in we were shocked… 95% accuracy and 0.13% false positives. This was incredible for us! This was paired with the audio industry leader: Shazam. My eyes started to tear up. We were tremendously proud and happy about this achievement. Facebook wasn’t…
Thanks for following up with us. It was a great experience working with your team and we think there is a great potential for your company and service. We want to provide an update about the evaluation result. From the result, overall we see a good coverage and recall, and your team solved the problems real fast. However, due to low precision and high false positive rate, we decided not to moving forward to the next stage of the evaluation. Thanks for your time and effort. I am sure our career will get crossed in the future
Caption: Facebook’s engineer email rejecting us Did you feel that punch in the stomach? I surely felt it. It was so unfair to have amazing results on our side and receive this email. When we asked about the differences — to understand what went wrong on our side — we got this:
Facebook has our own metrics and process to evaluate the product value of the algorithm. But due to the policy, we are not allowed to share with you. My colleague’s point is the final result. Look forward to getting chance to work with you guys in the future.
Caption: Facebook’s lead engineer email really rejecting us We felt kind of used and disrespected to be honest. Remember this was a two months process with several emails and calls between us. It was one of the most difficult moments of my professional life mainly because of the expectations I’ve built. We were devastated. I was immature enough and almost took it personally. At the end of the day, it was business as usual for a big company like Facebook — they ended up acquiring Source3 to help them solve the problem. For us, it was a Technical Knock Out. If someone from a big company is reading this and it sounds familiar, please take a moment to rethink the way you say no to a startup. Especially if you’ve been interacting daily or weekly for the past months. Invite them for a meeting or call and explain them the general decision process. It will take you half an hour and it will make a huge difference for the startup. Believe me on this… Unfortunately, after this, we weren’t having solid revenue from our FOX partnership. After discussing with our lead investor we decided to close our doors in an unfortunate ending to what could have been a tremendous success.
Lessons Learned
So many lessons learned! We could have done so much differently. It was a rollercoaster ride with so much emotional commitment. It’s a challenging exercise but I’ll try to generally sum up the main learnings from the whole journey. Here’s what I learned:
The line that defines success and failure is extremely thin.
If you are being evaluated (by customers, partners or possible acquirers) define success KPIs beforehand. That way everyone will have the same common ground.
Don’t put all your eggs (expectations) into one basket.
Stick to what is working, i.e., work on what people want and measure it with data; not words nor promises.
Be kind to everyone. If you feel disrespected or hurt, take a step back. Take some time to breathe and don’t reply right away. Time heals everything and gives your perspective.
Don’t take life too seriously. Be patient but persistent.
Despite all learnings, the cold reality is that this was a failed startup… but I’m trying it again. This time I’m doing things differently. Follow me on Twitter as I continue to share my learnings and document my journey as a founder. Hope you guys had a good read and learned a thing or two :) Let me know if you have any questions.
How we almost got acquired by Facebook and failed. Here's what I learned.
This is not a happy ending story.
The beginning
It all started back in 2014. I had a startup whose clients were advertisers. It was a platform for users to review video ads in exchange for online points that could be redeemed for money or coupons. Watch and ad; rate it; be rewarded. Simple. After 100 campaigns I kept hearing it would be wonderful to connect their offline ads (e.g. TV ads, billboards, magazines, etc) with our platform. Advertisers wanted real insights and analytics from their offline advertising investment. As dedicated founders we started working hard on this concept: “from offline to online with your phone”. Within 4 months we had our first version. I remember showing it to our friends and constantly hearing “Wow this is brilliant! It’s like Shazam but for videos”. I was ecstatic!
The investment
The revenue was coming in but it wasn’t recurrent. It was difficult to enter the yearly advertising budget. Advertisers assumed our platform as an experiment (mainly to get feedback) and not as a serious distribution channel — despite the fact we picked at 100,000 registered users. We needed investment to grow and build the new technology’s infrastructure. It wasn’t cheap to maintain a technology that recognized millions of videos within 4s. More on this latter. In 2015 we raised $0.5M from angels and led by a VC. This allowed us to grow our team to 7 members and accelerate product development. We were ready to storm the world!
The pivot
In retrospect, our product decisions after the investment killed our startup. We shifted our focus from the local videos ads review platform — where we had 100k users and 60 clients — to a global video recognition consumer product. We created an App — like Shazam — that recognized millions of videos. Our goal was to have advertisers make their offline assets interactive and invite their audience to download our App and use it to unlock “something”. The practical end was the same as the QR code. How cool is that? Scan a video and “magically” show related content on your screen? Exciting, right? Wrong. Very few people downloaded the App. It turns out the barrier of downloading the App was too much for the reward (whatever the brand wanted to offer). Don’t get me wrong, we did some cool campaigns with Kia, Unilever, or Volkswagen. But again these were one-shot campaigns. Basically an investment in innovation from the brands. After long days discussing our future, we thought of something. What if our technology was embedded in native apps like Snapchat, Facebook, IMDB, or even in the Operating Systems of mobile devices — Android and iOS? This would mean everyone could easily interact with their offline environment and get something in return. Brilliant!
Interactive The Walking Dead
This is now 2016 and we had a new strategy. White-label our technology and allow anyone to embed it in their platforms. We built SDKs for Web, Android and iOS and off we went searching for customers. One of our main goals was to have TV shows interactive. Allow viewers to point their phone to the TV and delight them with a new experience. In this quest, I scrapped all my network, cold reach on Linkedin, went to conferences, traveled between London, New York and San Francisco. I ended up talking to all major TV networks — Comcast, BBC, FOX, PRISA, Viacom, CNN — and closed a contract with FOX. This was a pilot experiment where FOX would use Portugal as an assessment market. It took us 9 months (!) to close the contract. Even so, we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The worst part was over, we could take our learnings from our local pilot and catapult it to the world. We will change how people consume TV and will take our place in the TV innovation history. We were ready to build a $1B company. After several negotiations with FOX we were able to add our technology to three shows: The Walking Dead, MacGyver and Prison Break. What a victory! All the major shows were interactive. FOX will advertise the shows are interactive, people will scan the TV and have an amazing, memorable experience. Win-win-win. When the first results started to come in… well let’s take a detour first and come back to the results later.
Entering Facebook
During 2016 I was mainly traveling demoing our technology to as many people as I could. Besides TV networks I’ve met with Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Verizon, Blippar and Facebook. Our goal was to integrate the technology in their existing apps and make their users interact with the world connecting the offline and the online seamlessly. The main feedback was something like: “amazing technology, great demo! But (there’s always a but) something like this isn’t on our product roadmap”. Except for Facebook… It was late 2016 and I’ve met with a Business Developer Director. Here’s how it went:
(After I’ve demoed the technology) Director: Wait, can I try it? Me: Sure, here’s my phone. (Director takes the phone and scans the video. The phone showed information about the actor from the exact second Director scanned. Director stays hesitant for a couple of seconds…). Director: I need this. Me: Uhh… Ok!(My mind was like: Errr, what, how, can I ask… Wait, what?) Director: Here’s the deal. We have a huge problem right now. We launched Facebook Watch recently and are having a lot of copyright infringements on the platform. We need to build something like YouTube’s ContentID.More info here. Me: Ok, we can definitely help. Director: I’ll put you in contact with the product team responsible for this and they’ll take it from there. We are evaluating acquisitions in this space to speed up our go-to-market.
After exiting the meeting I vividly remember the next five minutes. As I went through the lobby I decided to seat on a couch to recover from the excitement. There I was, all alone, in one of the most incredible buildings in Menlo Park after a meeting in one of the biggest tech companies in the world. I found myself looking at the ceiling and smiling for no apparent reason.
The M&A process
After the Facebook meeting, we discovered we had a potential new market to unveil: copyright infringements detection. Users uploaded copyrighted content with small changes (e.g. by tempering with the audio pitch, by slightly rotating the video and by changing the original video with many different techniques) to bypass Facebook’s algorithms. Because our technology was designed from scratch to recognize videos from low-resolution images, we were pretty effective in recognizing tempered videos. We recognized videos that were rotated, mirrored or cropped. Our algorithm didn’t use audio. We even recognized a bunch of different videos inside one. Here’s a demo with a) 10 trailers in the same video and b) a rotating video. We arrived in 2017 with our FOX partnership generating mediocre results. No relevant revenue was coming in and the user interaction data wasn’t exciting. We learned that people need a huge reward expectation to take the effort of scanning the TV. Without undisputed usage from viewers, FOX was gradually losing interest in pushing the technology and the opportunity faded during the rest of 2017. In February we started talking with the Facebook team. They wanted to test our technology at scale. We thought it was a fair request and agreed to be tested without any compensation. We signed NDA’s and were comfortable enough discussing the internals of how our technology works. After a couple of meetings to discuss the technology, Facebook started to test us with hundreds of hours at a scale we were never able to test before. It was scary as hell! We were all extremely nervous to see if the servers’ architecture wouldn’t crash. When the first results started to come in we were shocked… 95% accuracy and 0.13% false positives. This was incredible for us! This was paired with the audio industry leader: Shazam. My eyes started to tear up. We were tremendously proud and happy about this achievement. Facebook wasn’t…
Thanks for following up with us. It was a great experience working with your team and we think there is a great potential for your company and service. We want to provide an update about the evaluation result. From the result, overall we see a good coverage and recall, and your team solved the problems real fast. However, due to low precision and high false positive rate, we decided not to moving forward to the next stage of the evaluation. Thanks for your time and effort. I am sure our career will get crossed in the future
Caption: Facebook’s engineer email rejecting us Did you feel that punch in the stomach? I surely felt it. It was so unfair to have amazing results on our side and receive this email. When we asked about the differences — to understand what went wrong on our side — we got this:
Facebook has our own metrics and process to evaluate the product value of the algorithm. But due to the policy, we are not allowed to share with you. My colleague’s point is the final result. Look forward to getting chance to work with you guys in the future.
Caption: Facebook’s lead engineer email really rejecting us We felt kind of used and disrespected to be honest. Remember this was a two months process with several emails and calls between us. It was one of the most difficult moments of my professional life mainly because of the expectations I’ve built. We were devastated. I was immature enough and almost took it personally. At the end of the day, it was business as usual for a big company like Facebook — they ended up acquiring Source3 to help them solve the problem. For us, it was a Technical Knock Out. If someone from a big company is reading this and it sounds familiar, please take a moment to rethink the way you say no to a startup. Especially if you’ve been interacting daily or weekly for the past months. Invite them for a meeting or call and explain them the general decision process. It will take you half an hour and it will make a huge difference for the startup. Believe me on this… Unfortunately, after this, we weren’t having solid revenue from our FOX partnership. After discussing with our lead investor we decided to close our doors in an unfortunate ending to what could have been a tremendous success.
Lessons Learned
So many lessons learned! We could have done so much differently. It was a rollercoaster ride with so much emotional commitment. It’s a challenging exercise but I’ll try to generally sum up the main learnings from the whole journey. Here’s what I learned:
The line that defines success and failure is extremely thin.
If you are being evaluated (by customers, partners or possible acquirers) define success KPIs beforehand. That way everyone will have the same common ground.
Don’t put all your eggs (expectations) into one basket.
Stick to what is working, i.e., work on what people want and measure it with data; not words nor promises.
Be kind to everyone. If you feel disrespected or hurt, take a step back. Take some time to breathe and don’t reply right away. Time heals everything and gives your perspective.
Don’t take life too seriously. Be patient but persistent.
Despite all learnings, the cold reality is that this was a failed startup… but I’m trying it again. This time I’m doing things differently. Follow me on Twitter as I continue to share my learnings and document my journey as a founder. Hope you guys had a good read and learned a thing or two :) Let me know if you have any questions.
Autochess: Market Status and Design Analysis [effort post]
It really helps me if you check the original article & more similar at https://jb-dev.net/ !!! https://preview.redd.it/336cy55x9pg61.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=c89b35c152f61892f277a28203e61f192a86d260 In January 2019, Drodo Studio’s Dota Auto Chess mod became insanely popular. Many companies (including household names like Valve, Riot, Ubisoft and Blizzard) rushed to release their own versions. It seemed like the beginning of something big like MOBA or Battle Royale. But it has been more than a year now and the hype seems to have vanished completely. As quickly as it rose, it went away… This is the first on a series of articles where we will analyze the autochess genre. Here we will be exploring the genre’s history, its current market situation and its audience. And also, what are the core design issues that autochess suffers and that no one has been able to solve yet. u/JB: For this article I’m teaming up with my mate Victor Freso, one of my most talented folks at Pixel Noire Games, who helped me review all the games. We also had feedback of ~300 highly engaged players from the different autochess reddit communities, which participated in an online poll whose results are availablehere.They’re especially thanked at the end of the article.
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
This wasn’t the first time that a mod got the spotlight and ended up becoming the foundation of a genre. It happened in several major, industry-defining cases before (some of which are Team Shooters, MOBAs, Battle Royale…). But on some of these cases events unfolded differently. So we identify 3 distinctive eras related to the evolution of the industry:
1st Era (2000s): Assimilation
The company whose original software had been modded (or had a close enough game, like Valve) moved quickly to absorb the successful mods and turn them into even more successful products. Since at that point creating a major game release was very complex (required an expensive development, publishing deals and an infrastructure to distribute the product), the deal was profitable for both sides. But it meant the dissolution of the identity of the original creator team, which became embedded in the bigger company culture. Team Fortress (1999) was originally a Quake mod. And Counter-Strike (2000) started out as a fan-made mod on the Half Life engine. Both games (and creators) were quickly absorbed by Valve. 2nd Era (2010s): Integration By this time, the previous era model still was going on… but the gaming industry had significatively grown a lot and it was also possible for smaller or even new companies to lure the original developers, and use the mod as a proof for commercial success in order to secure funding and develop it as a full title. The main characteristic of this era is that the original developers were able to keep a bigger share of control and relevance, rather than being integrated as just another gear on a bigger machine, because the companies they joined built their own identity around that key product. This was the case of Riot Games: They were able to raise enough money for the creation of their company through family and angel investors, and then hire some of the original creators of DOTA, and then created League of Legends. ![img](1vsle6y3apg61 " Defense of the Ancients (DotA), the foundational title for the MOBA genre, appeared in 2003 as a fan-made custom scenario of Warcraft 3. Foreseeing commercial potential on a full game based on the concept, Riot games and Valve both battled for the Dota IP and the original developers, eventually releasing rival titles League of Legends and Dota2. Interestingly, Blizzard (owners of Warcraft 3) tried to replicate the success without the mod creators in Heroes of the Storm (2015), which hasn’t been as successful as the other two. ") A similar case happened with battle royale, which also started in 2013 as a successful DayZ mod created by the modder nicknamed PlayerUnknown. Later, it was transformed into a full product through the acquisition of the developer by a korean company (which would later be renamed as the PUBG Corporation, again showing how the company grew around the game rather than assimilating it). Interestingly, this genre already hints what would happen with Auto Chess, since Fortnite wasn’t involved in any way with the original creators. They just copied the concept. Fortnite was a product stuck in a kind of development hell (had been 6 years in the works). As the game was getting close to the release, the developers became impressed by PUBG’s success, so they created a quick Battle Royale spin-off which became insanely popular and eventually ate the rest of the game. ![img](3b6l2rx6apg61 " Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (2017), foundational title of the modern battle royale genre, is the successor of PlayerUnknown’s DayZ: Battle Royale, a popular mod for DayZ (which on itself is a mod of ArmA3, making it a mod of a mod lol). The success of PUBG inspired Fortnite (a title on the later stages of a troubled development at the time) to spin towards that genre, becoming PUBG‘s main competitor. ")
3rd Era (2020s): Fragmentation
In all the cases presented previously, the newborn genre ended up in the release of one or two titles which accumulated most of the business. But this hasn’t been the case here. In Autochess, the newborn genre has been quickly fragmented into a big list of competitors. Some are standalone games (like DOTA Underlords or Autochess: Origins), but there’s also several service-model games which released their autochess mode as well (like Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds or TeamFight Tactics, which at the end of the day is a side-game mode of League of Legends). This creates an interesting precedent, which I believe will define future cases where an innovative new game concept appears: The hot idea will be cloned very fast because today the main bottleneck in the industry is having an innovative design that generates player interest and engagement. By 2020, it’s way easier to create and distribute a game, there are way more developers hungry for a hit than ever before, and a lot of service-model games with short development cycles always looking for something juicy for their next update… so new ideas becoming red oceans fast will be the norm. For sure, this won’t affect the ability of small developers and modders to innovate, but it will affect their ability to leverage that to become successful on an independant level, before they get cloned. Dota Auto Chess, was a Dota 2 mod which obtained massive popularity. After a failed acquisition from Valve (owners of Dota), the mod developers (Drodo Studios) went to create the mobile standalone Auto Chess: Origins, while still maintaining the PC version linked to Valve. Meanwhile, Riot, Valve, Ubisoft and many other companies developed and released their own autobattlers at a record time, downgrading the genre creators to just another competitor. And ultimately, they haven’t fixed the core issues of the original game, which separates it from a true hyper-successful product like MOBA.
MARKET STATUS
Because of the rain of clones, it’s hard to map all the autochess games on the market. It doesn’t help that some of them are available in both PC and Mobile (playable in PC, Mac, Android and iOS), and also they’re exclusive to different PC stores (Dota Underlords is only on Steam, TFT is on Riot’s LoL launcher, and Autochess Origins is only at the Epic Store…). And if that wasn’t enough, the Auto Chess mod in DOTA2 is still very active and has no signs that it’s going to be dying soon. It’s still being regularly updated, and presumably still profitable: Some months ago they added a battle pass system, with its revenue shared between Valve and Drodo. https://preview.redd.it/081hvwjdapg61.png?width=854&format=png&auto=webp&s=34af2ba4751130a95b422ca1b7fd8c346029ab74 What’s interesting is that none of the contenders has been able to become massively successful in terms of monetization, at least not in terms comparable to even a second or third tier MOBA. And while there are definitively different tiers of following among these titles (led by Riot Games’ TeamFight Tactics), it seems that none of them has been able togather under its banner a significant amount of players, mobile downloads or Twitch Views… Sources: AppAnnie (mobile metrics), TwitchMetrics (twitch) So ultimately, we’re dividing the autochess market into 3 categories: Squires, Would-be Kings and Peasants.
Squires: Rather than standalone games, these are side-modes of already successful products. Under this category we would list the Battlegrounds mode in Hearthstone, or League of Legends’ TFT, and maybe even the original DOTA Autochess mod. While for sure they’ll have their own dedicated audience that only plays those modes, for most players it’s just a nice and fresh activity integrated within a broader game experience. The squires are the ones that have achieved the biggest success among the autochess genre because they don’t suffer as much backlash from the lack of gameplay depth inherent to the genre, which is harmful for the long term retention: Even if the mode eventually becomes a bit shallow, players have many other things to play, and thus are retained. As a consequence, these games can still monetize significatively by selling renewals of their Battle Passes every new season. Not enough to make them successful on the degree that was expected… but at least it’s something. Other than bringing an additional source of revenue, these modes were useful to their core games: They generated player interest by providing innovative gameplay. Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds was an amazing addition to the CCG genre, and made a lot of people come back to the game to discover the new mode and reengage.
Would-be Kings: These are the other two top dogs of the category. They were supposed to rule… but that looking at the numbers they don’t really seem to have ever lifted off. Under this category we would list Auto Chess: Origins and DOTA Underlords. The problem is that their standalone approach means that they suffer the most of the design issues of the genre that we’ve presented in the last section of this article (i.e. flat complexity, lack of mastery depth, lack of progression and rotative meta…). That means that they lost a lot of population over time, and therefore their Battle Pass renewal isn’t as effective at generating revenue : (
Peasants: Here we would list the myriad of other autochess follower titles that entered the battlefield, each achieving a different degree of success. While some may actually be profitable, what we can be sure about is that none of them has reached any significant numbers or anything close to the reach that brought industry attention.
Patricks, gamers looking for a competitive-but-idle experience that doesn’t require full attention and it’s easily reconcilable with their functional adult life.
Grizzlies, competitive players that struggle with fast paced games that demand a high actions per minute ratio and quick reflexes (like MOBAs or competitive shooters).
Warmasters, highly competitive players that enjoy more the area of strategy (setting up goals and planning how to achieve them) rather than tactics (skillful execution of actions and micromanagement).
What these profiles have in common, other than being hardcore gamers and having a big interest in competitive games, is the fact that they enjoy the lack of micromanagement, and the demand of reflexes and dexterity of autochess. This is quite interesting, considering that the genre foundation is so close to MOBAs, which are extremely demanding on those aspects. Overall it seems that they belong to audiences below the MOBA umbrella which are currently being alienated by the bulk of ‘younger and dexterity focused’ players. And when it comes to platforms, it seems that even though the barrier between the classic gaming platforms and mobile is progressively disappearing, the genre is still mainly focused on PC: Out of the ~300 players that answered, 50% said that they play exclusively on PC, 25% played primarily on Mobile, and the remaining 25% played in both. https://preview.redd.it/1frwgvrtapg61.png?width=962&format=png&auto=webp&s=3602c6a760664333236a2fddbc189fbab3ee3fc1 Players said that they enjoy the focus of the game in planification, as opposed to the focus on execution and performance of MOBAs. And when asked about their main points of frustration, they pointed out 2 main topics: 1.- The strongluck factor that has a strong impact on making you win or lose regardless on how well you played. 2.- The fact that the game eventually becomes shallow and repetitive, fueled by the fact updates were unexciting and not rotating the meta. Surprised by the fact that players mention randomness as a factor of both enjoyment and frustration? Don’t be! Competitive players tend to have a love-and-hate relationship with luck, because they tend to consider that external factors outside of skills (money spent, better draw…) stole their well deserved victory. And it’s even more frustrating in autochess, because there’s a strong snowball effect: Players that obtain a big advantage early on in the game become hard to catch later on. Which means that a few bad or good draws early on can decide the rest of the match. There hasn’t been a single feature more criticised in Magic: The Gathering than the randomness of drawing mana. And yet, luck it’s part of what makes MTG stand out compared to other CCGs: For experienced players, it introduces uncertainty and the need to take risks and gamble, like they’d do in poker. And for rookies, it allows beating someone that has better skills and has a better deck, if Lady Luck is on their side. Won’t happen often, but it will feel awesome when it does. Like a friend likes to say: The best feeling in MTG is to draw a mana when you really need it. And the worst? To draw it when you didn’t. This goes to say that in autochess, perhaps the power of luck needs to be reviewed, but it would be a bad decision to completely remove luck from the equation.
DESIGN CHALLENGES
In this awesome DoF article, Giovanni Ducati already pointed out the two main problems that the games in this genre need to solve to achieve real success: Bad long term retention and low monetization. To these issues we would add a third one, which is bad marketability: Contrary to their big brothers League of Legends and DOTA2, these games haven’t been able to achieve high organic downloads (at least not to be able to generate significant revenue through soft monetization mechanics). What’s even worse is that all these games, their themes and target audience are quite close to RPG and Strategy, which are genres with some of the highest CPIs on the market. So they need top-of-the-class retention and monetization to get a high enough LTV to scale up. But why do these games fail at keeping players entertained for a long time? And why don’t they monetize enough? Here’s what we think:
Flat Complexity & Progression
You have some games out there which have a strong entry barrier due to being quite complicated to grasp. But for those that can deal with the numbers and stats, the depth will keep them entertained for months and years. This is the case in most RPGs and 4X strategy games. And then you have hypercasual games, which are simple and plug and play. So they generate a great early engagement, but are too shallow to keep users hooked for a long time. As a genre, Autochess games are in the middle ground: they have a high entry barrier, but also lack the complexity to keep players engaged for a long time… As a general rule, games with long retention tend to follow Bushnell’s Law of being easy to learn and difficult to master. They achieve that by having what we call an unfoldingexperience: They appear simpler at the beginning (not necessarily easy), but require thousands of hours of practice to master. An example of this are games that level lock most of the game complexity, so the player understands and masters only a set starter mechanics. And then, progressively unlock new modes and demand more specialized builds and gameplay, repeating the cycle several times to keep the game always interesting while attempting to avoid being overwhelming. In World of Warcraft, character depth is huge. But this complexity is unfolded progressively, forcing the player to spend time mastering each skill and activity as they level up, before moving further. Another approach to the same idea are competitive games focused on mechanical ability, dexterity or micromanagement. Like CS:GO or Rocket League. They may unlock all the mechanics from the beginning, but a newbie player will only be able to focus and manage some of them, and then progressively discover and master the rest in an organic way. Rocket League hides its complexity by matchmaking early players with others of a similar skill. This makes beginner players viable even if they grasp only the basic mechanics. But, as they climb further, they’ll face rivals that take those basic skills for granted and the player will need to master more challenging techniques to keep up. League of Legends and Overwatch are actually a combination of both: The game first introduces the player to a small selection of heroes which progressively gets expanded, while at the same time having an insane mastery depth that requires a high APM and reflexes, team coordination and thousands of hours of practice. Contrary to any of those examples, Autochess games throw everything at you from the beginning: Character Skills, Synergies, Unit Upgrade, Gold Management, Items… It’s a lot to swallow. And there’s not even enough time to read what each thing does before the timer runs out. This creates a complex, overwhelming first impression that drives many players out. But that’s quantity, not depth. Once you’ve gone through that traumatic starting phase, you’ve grasped all the mechanics and you know which team builds are dominating on the meta, it’s just a matter of making it happen by taking the right decisions and adapting to a few key draws. Eventually, unless luck is really against you, your skills won’t be challenged and you won’t have new mechanics to master. At that point, winning will be based more on the knowledge of the content database and luck rather than your planning and strategic ability. And that’s boring. So ultimately, these games are hard to grasp for a newbie, but also lack the ability to keep players interested for a very long time since they eventually run out of new features and mechanics to discover and master.
Unexciting Updates, Lack of Collection
On top of that, autochess games seem to have a hard time adding content which reawakens player interest and makes churned ones come back. The DAU trend that we expect on a long term retention game: A decreasing trend of players until reaching a stagnation stage. At that point, a big update (or new season) is required to attract and reengage users back with new content. This is the model we would see on Fortnite or Hearthstone, but it’s not what we see in most autochesses. On this topic, perhaps the one that has put the most effort is Riot’s TFT. Each season update, the game releases a new series of heroes, synergies, items and rebalances, as well as a big bunch of cosmetics. This generates a short lived boost on revenue (due primarily to players buying the pass) and downloads, but ultimately nothing that really moves the needle in a relevant way. ‘Why seasonal updates don’t work?‘, you may be asking. Part of the reason is that TFT, as well as every major contender do not include elements of content progression or collection. Instead, they all stick to the roguelike approach of the original mod: Players have access to the same set of units, and build their inventory exclusively during the match. While at first this seems a good idea, since it keeps the game fair in a similar way to MOBAs, it’s oblivious to the fact that new units do not offer the same amount of gameplay depth as in League of Legends. InLoL, a new unit means weeks or even months of practice until mastering timing, range and usage of the skills, how they interact with every other champion, etc… In comparison, in TFT the new content can be fully explored in just a bunch of matches, both because the new content doesn’t offer that much depth to start with and because it’s available from the moment the player gets the update. By lacking content progression and collection, autochesses miss the opportunity to create long term objectives after an update, more innovative mechanics and less repetitiveness. As a consequence, they have it really hard to hype players on updates.
Resources lead to victories, victories lead to resources As you know, in autochess each player builds a team based on successive battles. Better battle performance will grant more gold, which is the resource used to buy units, perform shop rolls, etc… Similar to the cases we’ve already explained, this means that players that achieve early dominance will be able to to obtain more gold, use it to get better units and get more victories and gold, therefore increasing their team power faster than the rest. ‘But players can be lucky or unlucky, generating a factor that compensates for the advantage of having more resources early on‘, you may be considering. Unfortunately, this is a flawed logic, because of 2 main reasons: (1) Having more resources means more adaptability: The dominant players will be able to leverage on them to re-adapt their team, therefore outperforming the rest on a randomness-driven scenario. (2) Resources allow to buy more rolls, which diminishes the deviation generated by each individual roll.
![img](4kbmxiqhbpg61 " TeamFight Tactics attempts to decrease the snowball effect by introducing Carousels: rounds where all players pick a character from a list, and where the players that are losing (i.e. have less health) get to choose first. While this decreases the issue, it doesn’t really solve it… It just makes that smart players aim to lose on purpose at the beginning so they can get the better pick and generate the snowball slightly later on. ")
Luck factor. The previous point goes into maintaining and increasing dominance once it has been achieved early on, but another source of frustration is that luck is a huge factor in achieving early dominance. This means that your strategic skills and smarts can be completely invalidated by a couple of bad rolls at the beginning of the match. And there’s nothing that competitive players hate more than having their match stolen by factors outside the pure clash of abilities.
As an antithesis, Poker also has resource management, and luck factor determines the victory (on a specific round). But unlike Autochess, resources can’t override luck, and early victories don’t affect the later chance of winning.
Excessive Match Length
Compared to PC, on mobile is much harder to keep the player focused for a long period of time on a single session. And having a very long minimum session kind of goes against the premise of being able to play anywhere which is a primary strength of mobile as a gaming platform. This is a problem for autochess games since a single match can last for 30-45 minutes of synchronous, nonstop gameplay. ![img](4ed79ecnbpg61 " The knockout mode in Dota Underlords aims to make the game more accessible by skipping the slow beginning of the match (you start with a pre-setup army), and by simplifying the health and fusion systems. This shortens the matches to ~15 minutes, which is still too long for mobile, but better than 30. The problem is that it also increases the snowball effect, since the match has less turns to allow comebacks, and makes any mistake (or a bad roll) way more punishing. ") ‘Isn’t the solution just make the match shorter?’, you’re probably wondering. Unfortunately, there are several reasons that make this more challenging to the core design than what it seems:
Because in autochess the player builds its team from scratch, at the beginning of each match there are several turns to setup team foundations. Removing these early decisions severely decreases the teambuilding possibilities, decreasing overall depth.
Also, eachsetup phasebetween clashes requires a minimum time to think and perform the actions. In the last turns of a match, the game can become quite demanding on thinking and input speed.
Matches require a minimum amount of turns to compensate the weight of a single lucky/unlucky roll over the chances to win. Because the possible units for teambuilding appear on random rolls, the less turns there are the more luck factor the game will suffer, and as a consequence the less important the player’s strategic skills will be.
And if there are few turns, there are also less chances for comebacks. Because it means that players will have less setup phases to adapt and catch a player that has obtained an early advantage.
Finally, since the match involves 8 players, it requires a minimum of turns so that they all can fight between each other… Nevertheless, I don’t consider this a critical issue because Dota has been able to change this specific point on the knockout mode without sacrificing too much in terms of depth.
Soft Approach to Monetization
PC/Console approach to free-to-play is generally soft (i.e. primarily based on cosmetics, avoid pay-to-win…), while mobile tends to be quite hardcore in comparison. The softness of PC monetization is even more core to companies such as Valve and especially Riot Games, to which the “no monetization bs” is part of the brand values. This would be very hard to change without harming their reputation. Same as in most autochess games, in TeamFight Tactics the players can only pay for different cosmetics and for a Battle Pass. Without the massively huge and engaged audience of League of Legends, this monetization approach isn’t able to generate meaningful revenue. This is not exclusively because we mobile-first devs are a ruthless wallstreet folk which will use every dirty trick in the book to get a bit extra money… but also because mobile games are locked in competition for paid installs. This requires us to get as much revenue as possible from users, as fast as possible, in order to reinvest into players to keep on growing or avoid withering. The business model of League of Legends or Fortnite is based on their extreme popularity: They already have massive amounts of highly engaged active users, so their strategy is to keep them playing and have a monetization system that, while doesn’t make as much money from the players as it could do on the short term, generates a decent amount of revenue over a longer period of time. Games that have thissoft f2papproach have it very hard to reach enough ARPPU to make paid users profitable, given the insanely high mobile CPIs. This may not be an issue to big IPs and games that are able to bring many organic players (Fortnite, League of Legends…), but it is a big issue for those that can’t attract such a big number of players due to their organic appeal. Due to its core characteristics (strategic, number-based, complex…), Autochess is unlikely to be a massive appeal product, and therefore won’t fit into thecosmeticsmodel. It’s a game that will have a smaller audience of highly engaged players, and therefore will require a more aggressive monetization to reach similar results.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The history of the autochessgenre serves as an example of the risks of design endogamy: The devsphere rushed to clone Auto Chess, and before a year all the major contenders were in the board. But that speed came at a cost: None of these projects has brought the concept much further than its original conception, and in doing so they haven’t solved any of the core issues. https://preview.redd.it/iw82bogsbpg61.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a197aa1fcb9ace73d6795103d20a4101ce7ddb5 The folks at Riot games developed the TeamFight Tactics in less than 5 months. This allowed them to release while the hype was still at its peak… but it also meant it added just a couple of improvements, and it’s otherwise very similar to the original Auto Chess mod. After seeing all these projects fail to meet the big expectations that were placed on them, the question is if perhaps the best approach was to avoid rushing, and instead tackle the genre with a title that is not a clone, but rather a more groomed, accessible and innovative successor of the original idea. In our next article on this series will make an attempt to see how such a game could be, rethinking the spirit and fresh design ideas of autochess to solve the issues mentioned above. (May take a while though, I want to focus on smaller articles for a couple of months…) Meanwhile, if you want to read more about this genre, we suggest you these awesome articles from the folks at DoF: Why Auto-Chess can’t monetize – and how to fix that and How Riot can turn TFT into a billion dollar game
Special Thanks to…
These articles wouldn’t have been possible with the collaboration of ~300 members of the reddit communities of the different auto chess games who provided us with feedback and data. You folks have been incredible solving all our doubts. One thing that this genre has is some of the most awesome players around. So big kudos for Brxm1, Erfinder Steve, Xinth, Zofia the Fierce, STRK1911, LontongSinga22, bezacho, hete, NeroVingian, marling2305, NOVA9INE , asidcabeJ, Eidallor, Rhai, Lozarian, bwdm, Toxic, Ruala, Papa Shango, MrMkay, Dread0, L7, kilmerluiz, Amikals, Sworith, Tankull, B., hete, Bour, Denzel, DeCeddy, Diaa, hamoudaxp, Benjamin “ManiaK” Depinois, Katunopolis, DanTheMan, MikelKDAplayer, 0nid, Tobocto, Tiny Rick, phuwin, Alcibiades, triceps, d20diceman, shadebedlam, stinky binky, Tutu, Myuura, suds, Kapo, Hearthstoned, Engagex, Pietrovosky, Daydreamer, Doctor Heckle, Ignis, ShawnE, NastierNate, LeCJ, Nene Thomas, Chris, trinitus_minibus, Nah, Kaubenjunge1337, Mudhutter, Asurakap, Nicky V, shinsplintshurts, bobknows27, Willem (Larry David Official on Steam), Jonathan, Dinomit24, Monstertaco, GangGreen69, Veshral Amadeus Salieri (…lol!), Kuscomem, Cmacu, Pioplu, Dilemily, qulhuae, Ilmo, MarvMind, facu1ty, crayzieap, Saint Expedite, Lobbyse, Lukino , tomes, Blitzy24, Mcmooserton, magicmerl, i4got2putsumpantzon, radicalminusone, Pipoxo, Kharambit, Bricklebrah, Rbagderp, Merforga, Superzuhong, Mo2gon, MoS.Tetu, MeBigBwainy, Zokus, CoyoteSandstorm, Stehnis, Noctis, Fkdn, Ray, Fairs1912, Fairs1912, Krakowski, HolyKrapp, Damadud, Pentium, Mach, Mudak, CaptSteffo, jwsw1990, Omaivapanda, Inquisitor Binks, Jack, yggdranix, GoodLuckM8, Centy, Prabuddha (aka Walla), dtan, Philosokitteh, Doms, ZEDD, Calloween, Synsane, Kaluma, GordonTremeshko , Djouni, DOGE, haveitall, ANIM4SSO, Task Manager, Submersed, BAKE, Viniv, La Tortuga Zorroberto, BixLe, Rafabeen, Blzane, bdlck666, FatCockNinja86, R.U.Sty, Yopsif, blesk, Quaest0r, FanOfTaylor, StaunchDruid, Rushkoski and everyone else that took some minutes to help us out on the article.
Crusader Kings 3 Patch 1.1 Notes: What They Actually Mean
Game Balance
Just because your dad is an asshole and called you a failure and cast you out of the family doesn't mean no one anywhere in the world will ever let you inherit anything. I mean, he was probably right about you but if you get on a boat to India they probably won't know or care yet.
If you spend hundreds of ducats of your own money building a fabulous new church, God's not gonna just be like "sure fine whatever I guess"
Lower-rank clan rulers won't get penalties for failing to have an entire harem anime going on.
If you are below the waifu quota for your rank, though, God is gonna be twice as mad about it. He tunes in to this show to ship you with various hotties and nothing on heaven or earth will save you if you fail to deliver.
Partition was all kinds of fucked up and would often explode from even momentary contact with certain other game mechanics. We're sorry. We're working on it.
Courtiers who you had an illicit love child with are less likely to dump the baby in your lap and disappear forever and not even pay child support.
Refusing a call to arms now does something, up from basically nothing.
It's now much harder to make literally everyone in the world love you just because you read a lot of books on rhetoric. Sorry political youtubers.
Characters should now experience a gradual decrease in fertility instead of knocking up all three concubines with quadruplets one day and suddenly having their balls turn to dust and blow away in the wind the next.
Greedy characters will no longer gain stress from giving away a city or temple, because as we all know, administering anything that isn't a castle gives poor feudal lords the hurty brain and it's just not practical to expect them to do it.
Heresies should no longer replace like 90% of all Catholic counties by two weeks in to every 867 game.
Inheritance succession can now go up to 6 generations upwards to find a distant relative rather than just 3 in case, say, you ended up getting the first 20 people in line for the throne killed because you keep forgetting to go click Forbid on the Knights screen.
It's now much harder to murder someone you're at war with and practically impossible to abduct them because they've seen the exploit videos, too, and they're not falling for that bullshit again.
Knights who are constantly swinging swords around and not getting killed will probably get better at it over time.
The Emperor of the HRE or any similarly impressive realm is probably not going to immediately prostrate himself and accept your weirdo naked incest religion even if you declared a holy war and are somewhat stronger than him.
You can no longer ask the Pope for money while at war with the Papacy. Just sack Rome and take it. Asking is for schmucks.
Tribal leaders who have massive armies that get paid in exposure will no longer have a harder time becoming famous for some reason.
That dumbass Radulf is now somewhat less likely to somehow get himself maimed multiple times in battles where you had a 3-to-1 numbers advantage.
Being in debt now does something, up from basically nothing.
Lustful characters will no longer lose stress every time they fail at No Nut November.
The Mongols are legit scary now and they heard you've been talkin' shit.
Weak realms are now much more likely to agree to subjugation by the Mongol Empire, unless you're the Shah of Khwarazm and have a nail in your brain or something.
Telling your failson to go shave his head and live in a dark building he's not allowed out of where he can only eat bread and sing hymns no longer gives you piety, because never having to see him again is its own reward.
That mission in KCD was pretty cool though, huh?
The AI is now reluctant to betroth boys to old women, even ones that have been described as total QILFs.
AI rulers should no longer recruit claimants to their court who are like, fifth in line for some desert village they've never heard of clear over on a different continent.
AI rulers who are bankrupt and facing rebellion should no longer froth at the mouth and scream from the parapets that they refuse to so much as discuss a white peace until you hit 350% warscore.
We've introduced a cap to living dynasty member Renown gain so you can't just rush all the perks by having 5000 stupid, ugly babies.
The Inbred trait is now less likely to be passed on as long as you don't take an already Inbred character and continue to inbreed them. We know you're gonna do it anyway, of course. You're all gross.
Successful Crusaders should no longer fold to a faction demand and convert to Islam 100% of the time.
Clan vassals who aren't allowed to bang at least one of your kids are going to be way more angry now, especially if they're powerful.
Partition succession should now look mostly at splitting up the total number of base level counties evenly, rather than saying Louis gets less land because he gets to keep the fancier hat, leaving him with like a third of the levies of each of his brothers to defend a realm that is now on the express train to disaster.
Björn Ironside has sat down with all of his vassals and explained to them that he probably can't protect them if they go conquer like, fucking Cyprus or something and they should prioritize grabbing counties that are at least within a few months' sailing distance of Scandinavia.
Said vassals should also concentrate on conquering counties in a single, contiguous geographic region now, instead of trying to, I don't fucking know, have at least one outpost in every de jure kingdom on the map? What exactly was your logic, there? It's not like you're grabbing centers of trade. This isn't EU4. Calm down and finish your Wales before you start trying to dominate North Africa.
When you win a Crusade, some of the Crusaders who came with you should stay around and help you man the fortifications instead of being like "gg c ya"
Wandering characters with absurd amounts of gold will now tend to spend it all on improving themselves booze and hookers so you can't invite them to dinner and then accuse them of witchcraft and seize all of their wealth.
AI spouses are finally getting over their netorare phase. Like, we get it but jeez. Find a new tag to follow.
The Alans in 867 have no longer somehow completely forgotten how to do horse archery.
The Pope will no longer let Catholics form the Empire of Germania. You'll have to create the HRE instead, unless you wanted to maybe Protest his authority.
Dynasty of Many Crowns now rewards you with something more than a shitty intramural soccer trophy that probably cost like $12
Peasant leaders may now pay their rabble in exposure.
You can no longer get the living legend achievement by simply starting a game as Haesteinn. It was simply OP to allow him to be as cool as we all know he was.
Characters whose religion involves reincarnation are less likely to reincarnate from a really shitty ancestor.
Alexandria is no longer a holy site for an East African religion practiced mainly by people who have never heard of Alexandria.
The AI will no longer go nuts writing long facebook posts about how all of your children are illegitimate that your dumbass vassals will read and believe in.
German vassals with Stammesherzogtum unlocked should now realize they can wield more power squeezing the desiccated corpse of the empire than they could claiming independence from it.
The Restore the HRE decision requirements are now Kinda Reasonable, down from Fucking Ludicrous.
You will now get ticking warscore against independence factions for holding any land in any of the rebel territories, not just the capital of the asshole who started it.
Brutally killed North Korea Mode. You're bad for using it and you should feel bad.
AI
The AI should no longer decide in the middle of a war that a boat trip would be fun when the wargoal is like a kilometer away by land.
Vassals of a cowardly liege will no longer pretend to be cowardly when he's in the room to make him feel better.
Allied AI ultra-doomstacks should no longer roll up like "hey wyd" and try to have a chat with you while you're doing a siege if it would cause both armies to lose thousands of hapless souls to disease and starvation.
Varangians have been reminded that they're river vikings and they should stop trying to appropriate ocean viking culture.
The AI should no longer nope out with their 4000 troops, leaving your 3000 to fight a 5000 stack and get half your court killed when it would have been an easy win if they could have pulled their pants up and stayed still.
AI characters are less likely to join a claimant faction for a one-eyed, one-legged 90-year-old with leprosy and brain cancer.
AI understands that "matrilineal" marriage doesn't actually mean anything if you're keeping it in the family like a proper Crusader Kings player.
Your freaking worthless father-in-law should no longer call you into three consecutive offensive wars for one shitty tribal county when you're trying to desperately defend against a full-scale invasion of bloodthirsty foreigners.
AI characters who aren't of the same religion as a holy order will no longer be chill just letting the Templars hang out in one of their cities sharpening their swords and singing songs about how all heathens must die.
Lower-tier Norse rulers will be less likely to decide it sounds fun to sail all the way to Sri Lanka or something to raid when there is plenty of pillage to be had nearby.
Allied AI armies now have object permanence and understand that just because we can't see the enemy right now doesn't mean you can safely fuck off across the kingdom to siege some worthless barony and leave the player's army alone to get rekt the next time the bad guys show up.
The AI has been reminded that this game doesn't have naval combat so you don't have to row full-speed away from an approaching enemy fleet. Poseidon will rise from the seas and make sure no one is allowed to hurt each other's boats or anyone on them.
A whole bunch of other AI changes that could be at least partly solved by adding an "allow attachment" button to player armies.
AI will no longer treat enemy armies marching through neutral territory as "out of bounds" and therefore completely unable to be attacked.
AI will no longer park its second army right next to a relatively even battle in progress and kick back like, "I think you guys got this handled."
Interface
The little suggestions widget thingy will now let you know when a vassal is mad because you're not his rightful liege, and his rightful liege is mad because you're giving immediacy to his vassal, and it would have been really nice if someone had brought this to my attention before you both went and joined the independence faction because it's extremely easy to fix.
Added explanation for the Unreformed Pagan Combat Bonus, which there's like a 60% chance you didn't even know existed until right this second.
Clicking a region in a cultural innovation tooltip now highlights it on the map, which I guess is okay but I'm still unsure why we don't have a regions mapmode.
You can no longer include an "OR ELSE!" clause in a vassal contract that is fair and both of you already agreed upon amicably.
Fixed the " has no reason to stay at court" message claiming the child is your stepbrother or sister rather than child. Although knowing you lot, it's very possible that they're both.
Fixed the Find Concubine window in some cases showing someone who is already your concubine. Listen, he just reinstalled the app as a joke. Why are you getting so upset about this?
The little icon that tells you how likely you are to win a battle should no longer be completely full of shit most of the time.
Fixed the game sometimes claiming a marriage has no chance of children despite both parties being fertile. Like, yes, she is way out of your league but I think her sense of duty is at least sufficient to lay back and think of the realm.
Victory screen for Crusades in which you didn't get any land should now tell you exactly how little your sacrifices mattered instead of simply saying it didn't.
Fixed unpause tooltip in single-player sometimes saying "Game is Paused by U̵͈̳̠̼͉̲͙̣̎̓̍̆͋͛̋͋͘͜͡N̸̨̲͈̗̱͎͂͋̿̿͒̕͢͜ͅK̨̛̙̙̮̻̯̫̙͒͗̀͘͜͞͞Ņ̹̗̗͙̳̫̈́̽̒̔̌͒͆́̕͞ͅO̷̡̧͙̖̮͉͂̈͒̾̓̇̈̚͘͡ͅŴ̸̡̢͓̜̠̫͙̙̩̀͆̋͊͗̐̉͡Ǹ̵̛̞̟̼̑͗͊̂̏͘̚͟͜"
Fixed you in some cases getting a "your child can marry" notification for someone you have no power to marry off, so you can call them and bug them about it repeatedly.
Hovering over options in the dropdowns in the Barber Shop will now show the resulting change on your character model so you don't have to spend twice as much time trying on hats as you do actually playing the game.
Made it clear in the Knight game concept that Knights represent both the character and their retinue of troops, even though everyone's head canon is going to say that they did personally cause 30 casualties because that's way more metal.
Made sure the friends panel can be expanded if at 8 or more, even though you will never have that many friends.
The "Pending Crusade Participation" alert now only shows up if the head of faith would actually be upset at you for not participating. You've disappointed him enough by now that he probably doesn't care.
The game will no longer claim that your guest's claim on a title that's already in your realm, or which has no holder, is useful
You now get a notification in the lower-right corner when a part of your realm gets sieged by someone you're hostile to, which is information that I guess your marshal didn't think you needed to have until just now.
Art
South Indian/Dravidian characters no longer look like they were dunked in flour.
Also added Slavic, East African, and Arctic visual ethnicities. Remember when we would charge actual money for this and half the time it looked like they escaped from a haunted wax museum? Rejoice that we now live in more enlightened times.
Improved teenager animations to not be neutral and really get across the VIOLENT STORM OF PAIN AND ANGER IN THEIR SOOOOOOOULS
Localization
Added an alternative text for holy war if one has the pluralist doctrine to explain that it's like, you know, just kind of a chill holy war, dude.
Added description for Parliament Special Building explaining that this one structure which grants some passive modifiers meant to represent an entire sea change in the understanding of the role of a monarch is hopefully just a placeholder for adding real council mechanics back in later.
Changed the "Consolamentum" tenet to "Ritual Suicide" for anyone but Catholics so non-Catholics don't have to go look up what the fuck that word even means.
Children who are believed to be the reincarnation of a really shitty ancestor will no longer act super stoked about it.
Fixed a scope mis-match in the lover reveal event which caused the event to describe people having affairs with themselves. We all do it but the entire court doesn't need to hear about it, okay?
Re-named the 'West African' culture group to 'Guinean' to get everyone speculating about if we might add the Kongo later.
Renamed the Wendish Empire to the Southern Baltic Empire, which is a monumentally less cool but I suppose more inclusive name.
Updated the tooltip for Divine Marriage to clarify how it works even though we thought the memes had explained this pretty well by now.
Game Content
Added a notification toast when your liege changes to inform you who your new liege is and why they became your new liege. Which, again, you'd think someone on your council would have thought to inform you about this rather important piece of information before now.
Databases
Broke up some of the ridiculous turbokingdoms at game start in freezing, pastoral Northern Scandinavia.
Made the Guiyi Curcuit an independent realm in 867 to help ease the pain of waiting for the inevitable China expansion.
Aquitaine is sexist and has been cancelled
We made up some extra Cumans specifically to prevent bordergore so don't say we never did anything for you.
Kashmiris no longer start with elephants because it's honestly not a great place to raise elephants.
Socotra is now part of the Duchy of Socotra. Aswan is still not in the Duchy of Aswan for some reason but we're getting around to it.
The Aghlabids are no longer independent in 867 because they weren't.
Volga Bulgaria is now feudal in 1066, because all the other steppe khanates had already labelled them as lame asses by then.
Bugfixes
You can no longer farm Devotion by telling your court architect to start building something that costs a bunch of piety and then kicking it over and telling him to go home on the second day.
You no longer have to change at least one thing when reforming a pagan faith to prove that you're hip and modern.
Fix unnecessarily handling controller input and rotating/zooming the camera, which is something 90% of you didn't know you could do until just now.
If your religion requires approval for divorce but has no religious head, guess what asshole, I'm the queen so I'm the one that gives approval. Now get out of my sight before I have to have you dragged out of it.
Fix war participant tooltip not listing the number of knights but just repeating the word knight
knight
knight
knight
knight
knight
knight
Fixed an issue where, as a prank, you would tell some rando that came along on the Crusade that they were getting the county of Jerusalem just so you could immediately laugh in their face and take it away.
Fixed excommunication being available for faiths with Communion but non-spiritual heads. Malcolm is just up there chugging the blood of Christ and scratching his ass but there's nothing we can legally do about it.
Listen closely. I know he's well-spoken but no matter what the prince tells you, word of his father's death and his ascension to the throne does not grant him a "Get Out of Jail Free Card," you oaf.
The Reclaim Britannia decision no longer changes effects based on dejure drift. It's a damn island and it all belongs rightfully to the Celts.
Children should no longer run away from home purely out of boredom.
A faction will no longer courteously greet you before calling you a tyrant. It's called sarcasm but you spend your days torturing small animals and banging your sisters so we probably shouldn't have expected you to get it.
It is no longer possible to farm guardianship events by repeatedly encouraging your child to engage in animal abuse. I can't believe we're actually having to patch this but I guess nothing should surprise me at this point.
"Know Thyself" will no longer result in you getting daily texts from the reaper telling you the number of days until the Big Day and how excited he is.
Added an alert for when you have no player heir to your titles but there's someone landed in your dynasty still alive somewhere because of a marriage you totally forgot about arranging like 200 years ago. So anyway I hope you like Siberia.
Made it easier to kill grandma.
Added triggers to notifications so that marshal vassals don't gain opinion of themselves when they do something good. That asshole is already full of himself enough as it is. Yeah, yeah, tell us about the Battle of Acre again. We're not tired of that story at all, you old fuck. Get back to work. I don't want to have to fight another populist rabble.
Babies will no longer be assigned commander traits through a yearly event. I know everyone wants to brag about how smart your kid is but I'll believe he can pull off a double envelopment when he stops shitting in his pants.
Blocked Vlach rulers from taking the Unite the Slavs and Unite the Southern Slavs decisions after realizing that our Somewhat More Arbitrary new way of doing non-linguistic culture groups has some drawbacks.
Blocked the seduction of characters who are imbeciles or incapable. Again, not necessarily surprised we had to do this. Just disappointed.
knight
Rad ass hats are now mandatory in the Byzantine Empire.
Characters who become wanderers are now less likely to just nope out of any relationships and vanish, leaving confused loved ones behind.
The Adamites have finally made a ruling on capes: Funny but no.
Children under 4 should no longer be lecturing their peers about theology.
You can't force someone in your prison to educate your shitty kids. Torture them. Maim them. Anything but that.
Children will no longer demand you hold a feast even though that seems like exactly the kind of thing your shitty, spoiled kids would do.
Courtiers of Theocracies and Mercenaries will no longer wear inappropriate clothes. We're trying to sell this as an honest operation, Helgi. Gods dammit take that ridiculous thing off.
Crusader Helmets will now always show up when appropriate, which is at all times.
Devouring people will now have a clearer impact on your stress level. I still have several questions.
Tribal MaA who are paid in exposure won't give you a discount on the amount of exposure based on traits you have that normally decrease upkeep.
You can now tell a vassal who is mad that you're "not their rightful king" to sit down and shut up because you're the damn EMPEROR.
Taking someone as a concubine against their will might upset their family. You know, just a little.
No longer possible to farm divorces for personal profit. sigh
Fixed an error which caused the event 'Differences in Faith' to trigger for counties of your own religion even though that's basically what was going on everywhere all the time.
Fixed an inverted value that caused children with a 'bad' education affinity to do better at their education than children with a 'good' affinity even though everyone who has ever been labeled "gifted" relates to that pretty hard. (Credit for this joke goes to Rowan)
Fixed being able to send multiple Blackmail interactions to the same character while waiting for their first response because you keep coming up with even more fucked up things to threaten them with and just can't wait to talk about it.
Fixed broken god reference in a death transition text.
Fixed embracing English culture sometimes converting landed spouses or family members without their consent, even though that would be pretty accurate to English history.
Fixed lowborns getting kinslayer traits when murdering other lowborns. The proper trait for this is "Class Traitor".
Fixed the kingdom of Pontus capital being set outside its de jure area. The capital is now set a-WAIT WHAT THE FUCK PONTUS IS IN THIS GAME??
Guardians will no longer keep teaching your kids after fleeing the realm. We just didn't have the technology for distance learning in 867.
Guests with claims on your vassal's vassal's titles will no longer show up at your court and then be like, "Oh... well this is awkward."
Head of Faith looks at incest as a divorce reason based on faith's doctrines, so you can be like Henry VIII but with your own siblings. Don't pretend like you weren't already thinking it.
Historical characters will no longer be their own parent. But we're sure you would be if we gave you that option.
If you promise a vassal to educate their child they will now be miffed if you try to return the child after it turns out that they suck and you don't want to deal with it.
You no longer get tyranny for putting someone in horny jail if the secret is known and adultery is criminal in your faith.
Many achievements are now possible, up from impossible.
It's now possible to negotiate an alliance even if your family is very inbred. So all of you can finally use the alliance mechanic now.
Secret lovers should no longer expose themselves at a feast by trying to copulate through the bars if one of them is in prison.
Lowborn bastards no longer try to belong to a House. They dun wan it.
Lowered the amount of gold the recipient needs to have to unlock the Demand Payment interaction. Apparently my landlord worked on this patch.
Married couples will no longer be exposed as if they have an affair if they're also lovers, as shocking and scandalous as it must be that a married couple in the middle ages more than tolerates each other.
People that are terrified of you are now more likely to agree to marriage, as long as they don't have to marry you. I'm more than willing to sacrifice one daughter if you leave me alone forever. She's not even smart.
People will no longer judge you harshly for breaking a betrothal to an Eunuch. Except, I guess, said Eunuch.
Pilgrimages no longer come with a bunch of hidden fees they didn't tell you about when you booked it.
If someone you really don't like recovers from illness or injury, instead of losing stress you might be like, "Ah, fuck..."
Rebuffing the advances of a romantic interest now correctly ends their scheme instead of forcing you to become soulmates anyway. I tried that dating strategy at one point and it definitely does not work.
Reforming to Feudalism no longer involves setting your entire seat of power and everything in it on fire.
Rum now no longer takes dynasty names, always retaining its title name regardless of the holder's culture, so you'll never be left wondering why is the Rum gone
Sick characters now dress the part. That gambeson is fuckin' sick bro!
Split the Take Vows decision into two, one for "I hope you bleed out on the uncaring sands of the Levant" and one for "I just want you to go lock yourself in a room with some manuscripts and never talk to me again."
Spread Assyrian culture a little. ASHUBANIPAL IS PLEASED.
Svend II of Denmark now spawns as either bisexual or heterosexual, and either way I'm into it.
The Mongol Empire will no longer destroy itself when winning a war, as happened historically.
The Pope can no longer publicly accept cannibalism.
Publicly.
The elope scheme will now run smoother than it did for those two Italian kids.
The game will no longer tell you to take more concubines when you've had enough, which makes it more polite than most dating apps.
Two players having a child together will no longer have a screaming competition about the name. At least, not in-game.
If a vassal refuses a title revocation, you can't pretend it was just a joke and avoid the tyranny hit.
Unlanded characters will no longer be able to drag prisoners around in a big cage on wheels.
The stupid little widget will no longer constantly remind you that you can declare war when you're in debt and literally can't.
You can no longer tell a pregnant admirer to get her prenatal ass out there and kill a wild animal for you. Unless that's acceptable in your culture.
Women in equal or female-dominated realms with concubinage will get the same penalties as men for not meeting their Himbo Quota.
You can no longer attempt to find dead people's secrets even though I think that's the plot of at least half of all thriller novels.
You can no longer lose a friend you didn't have. So if you're reading this: look on the bright side!
You can no longer owe a favor to yourself because of a necklace. I think that was also the plot of a movie though.
You can't just constantly fire your child's tutors, Karen.
You don't have to break up with your concubines before asking them to marry you. It would still be pretty funny though.
If your spouse leaves the realm because you're an asshole, you get to keep the kids because you have castles and armies and they don't so suck it.
If your spouse really sucks you will not be sad when they die.
You will no longer think less or more of yourself depending on how good you are at romancing someone else, which is highly unrealistic.
You will now be told why you can't debate people 24/7: Because it's fucking annoying. Log off. Go outside. Have a real life.
You will now only be notified of the establishment of Norman culture if you're in Europe. The Maharaja of Bengal doesn't know or care what you're talking about.
You'll no longer get events in third person about how virtuous you are. You'll have to keep doing that in the mirror every morning before you load your save.
You can no longer Promote Christian Settlements in Hungary if Hungary has been Christianized for over 100 years.
Made Aethelred I significantly more unlucky whilst Alfred is alive and heir so maybe the English at least have a fucking chance.
Spouses can no longer be both happy and unhappy with their spouse even though that pretty accurately describes every marriage ever.
A beacon of the faith who is discovered to have a bastard child will only lose one level of devotion instead of being immediately yeeted directly into the deepest circle of hell with no appeal.
Having concubines no longer protects you from becoming a concubine. I think this means you can have polycules now but I'd have to test it out.
Seduction compliments now only has two outcomes, good or bad, as is true historically.
• Over 30 different scratch off tickets • Real feel scratching effect • Huge Payouts • Win multiple times per ticket • Win up to 20x the prize. Ready to test your luck and win big? Disclaimer: This game is intended for an adult audience and does Not offer real money gambling or an opportunity to win real money or prizes. This free app offers the same daily scratch-off cards that you find at your local convenience store — but here you can play for free and win real money. I was hesitant at first but this gaming app has over 338,049+ positive reviews in the Google Play store. A free app gives you free digital scratch-off cards for a chance to win up to $2,500? It sounds too good to be true, so we decided to investigate and put together a Lucktastic review. 18 of the Best Game Apps to Win Real Money Lucktastic. Lucktastic is a virtual scratch-off ticket you can play every day. All you have to do is download the app and start scratching! And yes, you can win real money with Lucktastic. Your daily scratch-off tickets can even lead you to win huge cash prizes like $5,000, $10,000, or even more money! You can win real money while playing scratchies on your scratch off app. You can visit your Android and Apple store to download the software. Moreover, the downloaded system is convenient because you can scratch and win immediately without going to the store. Scratch off apps that win real money are created for entertainment and allow you to win some cash in between. So, the bottom line is that yes, you can make real money with scratch off apps and with online casinos offering scratch off tickets. If you don’t want to pay for tickets and don’t care about winning much money, go with a scratch off app from the app store. This app offers free scratch and win games that let you earn points or even real money. You can redeem tickets that you win for sweepstakes entries, magazine subscriptions, gift cards, and more. 33. Free Online Scratch Cards to Win Real Money in USA. We prepared a special list so you can find all the best online scratch cards to win real money online at US casinos.. All the sites we include Lucktastic (iOS) allows users to play with 100% free scratch cards to win loads of free money. Just pick your theme, swipe digital scratch-offs, and test your luck to earn real money daily. This gaming app is a free and fun way to win real cash and prizes and earn rewards. Even if you just login daily to collect the daily bonus, you can save up for an Amazon gift card in a few days. Are you addicted to scratch-off games? Lucktastic is a free game that can help you satisfy that desire and win money without actually buying physical tickets. Prizes can go up to $10,000, so you have a chance of making some real money. You can also redeem your winnings for gift cards and other prizes.
Lucky Day App Review - Win Real Money? - FREE LOTTERY ...
scratch and win app scratch and win paytm cash scratch and winscratch and win real money appscratch and win cashApp Link ( Download ) https://play.google.com... Scratch And Win Real Money App , Scratch And Win Paytm Cash।। PK Technical TechScratch and Win Real Cash App is created for user's entertainment purpose.Scra... 🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁मिलो कभी यहाँ भी⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️TELEGRAM ID -- https://t ... How To Scratch And Win Real Money App।। Scratch And Win Paytm Cash..Pk.technical.techYouTube StudioYouTube channel technologyI am dosto meri banai gai video ... hii friends please subscribe my channel।।hii friends I am the owner of this channel and in this video I'm talking about new earning app ।। telegram channel:-... #everythingonline #paypal #freeredeemcodeshi everyone today we are going to tell you scratch win app real or fake so watch this video and don't forget to sub... NOT SPONSORED, I try the Lucky Day app to give you all an honest review. Is a FREE LOTTERY app worth your time? Can you really WIN BIG? I hope this helps you... Download app: 👉 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.newearnstyle.scratchnspin Signup Coinbase here for FREE 520 Pesos or $10 usd: ... Scratch to Win Real Money🔰App Link :- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scratchhub.scratchwin👉Telegram Channel Link :- ...