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Just as with the other one it ends up reaching a point where either I accept it as a chore or pay to cover my relaxation (neither is desirable).So, ironically, I can see the flaws with it that Mesmer mentioned earlier. It doesn't fit very well into anyone who has a busy lifestyle and who then doesn't want to spend much on a game.The core issue is that games like this require consistent effort and dedication from the player. This, of course, is by design and makes it a very stimulating pastime, except that when you factor in how many hours are in every day, how much energy you have and the emotions of real life vs even the game (yes, it gets emotionally intense, it's a social clan game with drama and rivalries) it amounts to a grind, where the grit required is something that acts against the pleasure from the game. There is no pleasure from spending money on a game in itself, the pleasure if from the progress but if you constantly feel like the progress is requiring you to either work your ass off in the game or in real life to pay, it amounts to the game not being a game, it's a chore. Thus defeating the reason you played the game in the first place (to have fun as you let off steam from your chores).I do see the appeal of these games and could even see ways each could be refined and/or improved but ultimately it doesn't matter how you design a real-time strategy game that is based around clans and building, either it becomes a chore or it becomes a bore... I know it rhymes but that is indicative of the irony of it all.Eventually, of course, it becomes both but at that stage you feel so invested into it all that you don't want to quit and let all your time, effort and actual money go to waste.This doesn't make me at all say that I see particularly how this type of game is worse than any particular game franchise that is pay-to-play, since this is actually free to pay and all payments are your choice but I do see the problem with the structure of it, you end up trapped and don't know a way out. It may take your phone breaking (but then you have emulator, however it will still factor in) or something along those lines for you to start to see the issue.I happen to be someone who both can get 'addicted' to these games and yet can remain resolute with how much I spend etc (I guess it's upbringing that plays into this though, since I was always raised to understand what any cost really means and stuff) so I don't personally notice the 'predatory' aspect of these games as too brutal or harsh and don't see these companies as particularly immoral, compared to any sort of 'pay us to get pleasure' service. However, I can somewhat see the issue given the social elements of the game (you're in a clan etc) and how it keeps you stuck, afraid to wither away and lose all your progress. It doesn't matter how mentally disciplined you are, the quitting feels horrible at worst or dull/numbing at best. I would say that one thing that could improve these game types is if there were 'levels' and I don't mean newer servers because that's already there and is fair enough. There could be 'levels' to the servers and you move up or slide down the servers based on your progress, this would be far, far fairer and superior even helping you with matchmaking for the clan wars. The reason they don't do this, which is justifiable, is that this would also force you out of your clan and make you stuck in a whole new server, interacting with all new poeple who are just as powerful or even slightly more powerful than yourself.
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In my opinion these 2 games are phenomenal in their own ways and in fact have many similarities to one another.
It is also interesting because the 'ability to thrive with not spending hundreds and instead spending time' applies to both.
I have been spending a huge chunk of all spare time in my life the past few weeks on these types of mobile games, in fact one of the motives to do so as that I found an app that pays you to play games it recommends and it happened to recommend clan war games to me, getting me into RoK, to raise funds for my Mafia City gaming and that made me appreciate RoK.
In case you think I'd love all games of this type and this is just a cringey post, let me elaborate on two fundamental reasons why these two thwart other games:
1) The proportionality of 'have to pay' in both is significantly minimised by different variations of safety net for players. Mafia City is objectively the best game of all clan war games I have ever come across in terms of the raw actual safety that it gives a player. It doesn't matter what the hell the powerful players do to you, you can cope because of safe and protected resources as well as a wounded capacity that increases almost exponentially (and when it its maximum is lower than what you have and need, you should be powerful and aware of enough to last/thrive, if not that's your own fault to be frank). With RoK the safety net isn't as much a net as a bouncy castle. Everything about the game is much more about bursts of doing things, you gather in bursts, fight in bursts, rebuild troops after losing them in bursts, etc. If you master the ways to balance out each and properly stratify your time and effort, as well as choosing a city that suits a more survivalist type of statistics build, you will go very far in the game no matter how hard you get hit. It comes down to intelligence, awareness and ability. You can't properly survive big and bad hits in RoK if you're an unaware and low-ability player, unless you want to spend alot. This is why I actually like Mafia City even though RoK would be the easier one for me to stay loyal to for a variety of reasons (since I didn't have it already installed, the other app that pays you to play it gets credit for making me install the game and I get a very fast rate of rewards for playing it).
2) The sheer effort into the artwork and events hosted is phenomenal! In games like Clash of Clans, State of Survival (though that's not necessarily clan war it kind of fits the genre due to many resource-management and troop management similarities), King of Avalon and such variations of clan war games, you often find yourself in a very generic type of pattern after a while. I just named three extremely high grossing games, two of which are often ranked above Mafia City but I don't agree with this ranking at all. These games are stale. In fact, King of Avalon practically stole its entire artwork and stuff from GoT, it probably paid them royalty. Mafia City and RoK if anything stole from each other and improved. They host events in servers that massively benefit you as a free or cheap playing player. The artwork put into both games is simply so high effort and amazing, I don't know what else to say. RoK definitely has superior audio though but I think the production team of Mafia City don't know much English and struggle to sufficiently word things grammatically correct in English so even though the vocals are good acting in tone, a lot of what they say in the catch-phrases or plots for the cut scenes don't entirely make sense.
These two factors may seem small but imagine that these games are things where you spend your life playing it passionately. They are practically a fusion of MMORPG and action fused into one game format. It is just so ridiculously fun to play.
I would say that RoK will end up superior to Mafia City in raw grossing, consistently due to the fact that it markets smarter (it literally pays some streamers to dedicate to it, even making YT vids with tips and tricks, whereas Mafia City relies on content creators genuinely liking it, not that the RoK ones don't like RoK) and it's more kid friendly by a mile. I would say Mafia City is a solid 15+ game, it's actually rated 17+. There's genuine violence and raunchy artwork and scenes in it, the only child-friendly aspect of it is just how 'loser-proof' the mechanics of resources and wounded capacity are. RoK is very careful to have its animations and speech of characters be very sterile and friendly, despite 'wars' happening within the game.
Another thing I really appreciate in RoK is that it actually went through the effort of accurately depicting certain warlords of the past including my favorite Sun Tzu. On the other hand, Mafia City very accurately depicts certain aspects of mafia life and its mentality and makes you experience first-hand how psychologically it is to be part of the Mafia, I feel. I also think that the mechanics of migration in Mafia City are much fairer than in RoK. RoK anyone can migrate to a very new server... Imagine the kind of stomping going on for newer players... That said, as a newer player you get an immunity shield for many real life days there, whereas in Mafia City said truce/shield doesn't last as long.
Price-wise, you can't truly thrive in either game if you never want to pay money and that may disgust people who want games where only pure ability determines the winner. I would say that ability turns your five dollars into what a less able and dedicated players turns their $40 into (literally 1:8 ratio I would say is accurate) and that this is fair enough in my eyes.
The only issue with these games is they're so addictive because you can't stop playing them just 'like that', you need to constantly be active or your alliance/clan kicks you out and you wither away real quick and even MC's better safeguards against how much you wither won't matter because you'll be so behind the curve of progress of players within your city ('city' is a very different word in RoK, City in RoK is Turf in MC and City in MC is Kingdom in RoK).
There is one thing that's absolutely fantastic by RoK that MC really should take note of. Everything about the game guides a brand new player a little better on what to do and when. MC tries this and does a decent job of it but starts really suddenly throwing you in the deep end in terms of what to do. In MC you need to create new email addresses to make farm accounts (accounts that are never trying to 'win' they build weaker troops and solely use their levelling etc to gather resources faster, in MC it is common practise for these accounts to be attacked by the main account, willingly let it attack them without troops being on their turf whereas in RoK it's more common to have them join the alliance/clan of the main account and send resources, the cause of this is twofold and is correct for both game formats in terms of being superior to the other as a normal practise in resource-efficiency of transfer.
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