It’s not optimistic. It’s being rational. Ranting (alone) will not help. Bug reporting and suggestions will (you can rant at the same time).
That is, if you want the game to improve, if you’re all ‘it’s dead already, fatshark cant do nothing aaaah the end is neaaaaar’, this is absolutely not helping at all.
I’m nether optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the game. I’m following how it goes and what dev are doing to adress the issues that do exist.
It’s been 2 years that I hear people says the game is dying. It’s sure a slow boromir-like death at this point.
Noooo, rational here would be something like "Well this is already over… " based on all the numbers and past behavior.
Well the issue is as also others pointed out, that the stuff reported is not getting fixed in many cases and community is not being heard, important stuff is not getting done. Communication is kinda dead again. Great we got info on versus… no… screw versus. Tell us why the game is broken and versus is a priority.
It kinda is, if you look at the numbers, unfortunately.
I really do want to see this turned around, but they need to wake up. And with the bug reports it’s like… lets take the W94 example, how many times was it posted during the past months ? I saw it at least 3 times. And the issue is prolly still in the game and will be till the end of season.
That is just unacceptable. Jesus… remove the W94 if you can’t fix it or something… ughr. How can someone keep the broken weave that blocks the progress there without fix or temp removal or just any solution to it.
Those kind of things need a change on side of FS, not on side of ppl being ultra nice and acting like everything is amazing.
They just can’t work on frickin Versus, when game is broken like this for such a long time on multiple “levels” pun not intended . It’s not just the W94.
I know grind is not best cocept, but carrot on stick must be maintained in evry game, otherwise people lose reason to play.
Carrot on stick is what drives people to go to mission
Example: If you know that there is 0.01% chance for ultra rare cosmetic to drop during mission, you will have more will to play than if you know there is 0% chance. right ?
Thank you for allowing us to! Wouldn’t know what to do otherwise. I don’t really keep track of everyone around, but you can be led to think that some people here are salty - they are not (not me at least). They are just past the phase when you actively report stuff and believe it will be fixed, suggest stuff and hope it will be heard. It won’t be and it is nobody’s fault - It just doesn’t work like that. Devs choose focus groups so they can manage their feedback in a structured and useful manner.
You can get some statistically relevant gist from the forums, but you need to know how to mine for this kind of data and you need to pay someone who can do it for you. But the forums here are used mostly for venting and getting to know other players.
Funny thing is that the amount of players are still generally around the same even before Winds of Magic got released. So WoM hoping to increase the community completely failed in that regard.
Also I reported a bug quite awhile ago concerning the lack of a Map Editor and that still hasn’t been fixed. Very disappointing.
Oh and lack of information like how opening high tier chests can be heavily impacted by a character’s level. How weapons cannot have both racial properties which can lead to a waste of resources.
edit: Also Deep Rock Galactic is pretty awesome. Deep Dives are far better implemented then Weaves and that is like only part 1 of end game content.
This is a very egocentric view of the matter. (I don’t mean it is bad - it is natural). But here is another POV:
I don’t have all reds, I don’t have all achievements, I don’t have all the cosmetics. I think most hero frames look ugly, so I don’t care about them too. I do not open chests I get. I know that there is a 80% chance that I will go to QP and my team will fail stupidly one way or the other, I also know that there is a 40% chance that I can help that team not lose that match alone through my skill and knowledge of the game’s inner workings. The only thing I play for is to get that second percentage up.
Very rarely now I can get to a premade team and go and fail Cata FoW 7 times in a row. That is awesome too, but it is not the main pastime in VT2 for me statistically. Not now when most of my permanent play buddies have given up on the game.
so there you have another point of view just to dilute this universal view. I play for skill, bugs do not allow me to, therefore I want them fixed. I also know I’m far from being alone.
Herein lies a lot of the cause for threads like this, and as @Froh pointed out, it’s not actually dead - yet.
But neither is it growing and gaining a steady increase in player-base outside of the spikes caused by… you guessed it… new maps/DLC.
So attracting people works by putting out new content. KEEPING them works by having a solid base game that steadily improves. We’re getting the former a fair bit, but the latter is severely lacking. The base game is hap-hazard yet the new content keeps coming and we’re in a spiral of;
New players come after sale/DLC/new announcement. (YAY!)
New players see the base game is buggy and dislike the RNG/Crafting/Deeds/Difficulty Curve/Poor Balance/Weak Tutorial/No Dedicated Servers etc and leave. (Boo!)
patch/DLC alenates the core players and some of them leave. It’s like having blood loss only with player count. You can keep slapping medical supplies over it but the cause of the bleeding is still there.
My idea to have a beta branch that is always on for people to join and give feedback is the most valid way of getting the best of both worlds. If an announcement was made here that there would be a BETA branch testing lots of changes with experienced players nudging the Dev’s into the right direction as far as the community was concerned might help balance and bugs. Having fairly consistent releases of CONTENT is still going to happen and be viable, but the beta branch would mold the DLC/Map/Patch so it receives a better reception.
Problem is, what I’m describing is how many many Early Access games work, and it’d be like FS admitting their game is still in EA…2 years after release.
Sorry, but no. If you think that then your reason for playing the game is misguided.
When I fire up this game I’m not hoping to open lots of chests in hope that I’ll get something shiny. Even when I didn’t have as many Veteran items this wasn’t the case.
I continue to play the game because it is FUN and the gameplay loop is extremely entertaining to me. Everything else is just gravy.
So if you seriously think that every single game, including this one, needs some sort of Skinner box loot mechanic to keep brainless fools playing then I don’t even know what to say.
This is a very good summary of what they should have been focusing on.
But instead they focused on something nobody asked for, to make a few maps and skins cant be that time consuming, there should be like 1 new map per month or max 2…
Also there are tons of skins already in the game files…
To not use this in like 2 years time, the incompetence in this company is mind blowing.
Making such a good game and then have a useless management, sad.
I have not read the single most important thing that makes people leave: a lack of people to play with, playing weaves as a random quickplayer is simply impossible, deeds are impossible, twitch is arduous, cataclysm can take a long time. The fewer people, the faster people leave.
Good point, there should be some kind of rank system, that measure how good you play, to much random noobs try to play cata and it makes the experiences very frustrating for good players = good player leave = more noobs than good players = bad loop
First of all carrot on stick not necessary means loot(cosmetic), for some people carrot on stick is loot, for some people carrot on stick is their name on ladderboard, for some people carrot on stick is 1000 completed deed, for some people its challange mode, it wary from person to person, its important to provide carrot on stick to all type of people… thats how things are, and currently trigger to most people are cosmetics, if your carrot on stick is only to see Victory screen, I respect that, but I also tell you that you are rare amongst player.
Also:
If you provide players with overwhelming amount of cosmetic its not good, in that case loot is worthless, specialy if you disperse loot for stuff which not involve skill.
If you provide no loot for player efford thats not good too, because then players feels they doing games only for “self satisfaction” , Geting legend chest for cata mission is just wrong, right will be to get special cata chest with % chance to get exculusive cata only cosmetics there.
I think one reason for this, is that old players are doing pre-mades.
I think it’s like, you have core of old players and those are on discords and mostly know each other and then you have new guys. Those old guys will do the weaves in pre-mades. And then the new guys will try QP weaves, which will be even more of a nightmare then in pre-made, they see the grind, bugs, diff spikes and leave. And in week or two you have kinda nobody doing QP weaves.
All in all, the main problem is ofc the small playerbase.
I am just waiting for the Emporium. Likely others are too. I am looking forward to slaughtering hordes of vermin, laying low the throngs of chaos and smiting the herds of beastmen, denying the inevitable, spitting in the face of entropy, all for the sake of getting shillings and buying hats!
In all honesty, it’s more complicated than that. @Argonaut14 already said some things, but there are several mechanics that affect retaining a playerbase. First off, the amount of players will inevitably decline, unless very, very actively maintained - and after a while, even then. Its rate of decline can be affected, though.
First, new content will bring returning players who liked the game before but got bored. They come back at least until they’ve seen the new content, and most will leave soon afterwards.
Second, promoting the game through sales, free weekends and such will bring in completely new players. Some part of them will remain players for a long time, but not all. Both of these points will bring in spikes in player activity, but only a small part will remain.
Third, fixing bugs and tweaking balance, making the game and its mechanics generally better, and keeping the game fresh through events and adding smaller things like quests and/or cosmetics, will help retain players, from both the aforementioned groups and the ones who keep playing throughout it all. Bugs frustrate people; balance problems reduce the effective variation in game; unsatisfying mechanics get annoying fast. All of these make it more likely that people will leave the game. Without player retention, all you see will be spikes whenever a promotion or new DLC happens, and drop to the regular numbers a couple of weeks after.
So all three are needed to keep the playerbase high (and with good timing and management, even increase it long-term). The promotions are less work for the devs, but still need to be arranged. The other two (new significant content and improving existing things) both take a lot of time from the devs, and need to be balanced so that players’ interest is kept.
I think that the current problems with the playerbase are exactly in the player retention parts. We do see significant spikes in player amounts when the DLCs came out, but hardly any change in the next months. People have come back to see what the new content is like, but haven’t remained afterwards as it’s still been a lot of the same, and no improvement has been seen in the issues that drove them away (whatever they were). Especially seeing old bugs return, and the crafting system and Deeds being as annoying as ever, will stop returning players from staying in the game. Even completely new players will notice these after a while.
Of course, things seem even worse in-game due to certain decisions made with WoM splitting the playerbase (and yes, the old players keeping to their prearranged groups more than public games).
As to the original topic, grinding for stuff is effective incentive to keep players in for a relatively small part of the players. I can’t say how small exactly, but judging by the amount of people complaining about different kinds of grind (be it for levels, Challenges or Veteran items) and those defending it, the dislike for it is way greater. To be honest, the term “grind” already pretty much indicates a boring, repetitive task that for whatever reason needs to be done. Yes, collecting things is nice for a significant part of the players, but hiding those collectibles behind repetitive tasks (like winning a hundred maps with a Career, for every Career, or the Weaves) isn’t fun.
To be fair, in my other posts I detail exactly that. I was just saying that bringing back players is not with bug fixes ‘alone’. (Answering to someone that posted a topic named ‘Do not add new content, fix bugs’)
I also explained than new content composed of maps only will probably not retain players as it is something that can be completed fast. But that game needs some kind of end mode (that weaves failed to deliver).
I never ever said that devs should not fix bugs.
I said that fixing bugs is important but that is the content that make people ‘come back’
Retaining people is with more updates that there currently is (until seasons), whether thoses update do add content, balance and fix bugs. But fixing bugs alone won’t retain anyone.
It was the context of the quote.
For a further suggestion about adding ‘long term goal’ while disguising grind as something more interesting to do, here’s this topic (on rewards and long time quests) : Long term goals : Unlocking gameplay content by playing the game (legendary quests ?)
Which is ether a totally bad idea or a good one that no one cares. Can’t really know atm
That would be me, I guess. I still haven’t read a single argument against my POV. Fixing bugs now is a strategic move that allows for releasing future new content more solidly and easily for the Devs.
Well it’s you and I still said to you that fixing bugs and adding content are both necessary and that stopping one to do the other is a bad idea (and not a realistic one development wise). With numbers that proves it. (Won’t repeat myself, all was already said)
. It’s not just the W94.