Originally posted by Paradox_Wolf

Thanks dad.

Originally posted by theallseeingpotato

I appreciate your continued work in improving this game. I was not the biggest fan of Reforged initially, but it is growing on me.

Super hyped for Frost Escalation though!!!

Originally posted by GhostlyTuna

Why not just remove aethersparks as they will be plentiful? What is there to be gained for having ANOTHER currency that isn't really a bottleneck?

Originally posted by ScreamcatConoisseur

So, most of this I agree with, however that last one contradicts a previous set of platinum purchases.

For "Context and communication make the value of each offer immediately clear", I feel like this should have also applied to the previous (and possibly current) Rumor quests, the ones for those helmet transmogs. It was not made clear that you would not be able to skip the final step with platinum, nor was it made clear that the price for skipping each step would increase dramatically. There was no communication at all with any step, it was just tacked on, and players had to hope and pray that they would be able to finish the frankly ludicrous requests at the end of the chain, or their platinum was basically wasted.

Will you be doing platinum skip paths for quests again, and if so, will you be more transparent about pricing increases and unskippable steps, or will you just flat out remove platinum for skipping parts of quests?

Originally posted by Vattyvape69

Wow, a company that actually listens to their player base and responds to feedback quickly and precisely, although the road has been a bit bumpy lately you have earned back my respect PHX Labs :)

Originally posted by DemolizerTNT

" We’re also considering allowing players to use aethersparks to purchase aetherhearts without having to reforge " - Reforging cost 100 aethersparks to make 1 AeterHeart - in my opinion, to "craft" it, you would need to use around 150-200 (at least more, because it's faster way and u don't really lose anything)

PS: I'm happy that you try doing anything to make us (Slayers) enjoy game more - Keep It Up!!

Clear Skies !

Originally posted by NatzeBlack

Thank you for your effort, I am consciously buying platinum in Dauntless to support you, Dauntless can still get very big! that you get more Sparks was a must because it was an artificial content brake and this is not a fulfilling game. This decision was correct and I am looking forward to more updates like Exotics and revised weapons :) keep it up!

Originally posted by Dauntless-stye

sounds nice a bit worried about aether hearts and powersurging as a thing if they could skip the reforge part and just buy the aether hearts

Originally posted by kezda

This was a very thoughtful and respectful response to the aetherspark situation. Thank you for being transparent, I’m confident in your ability to achieve your monetization goals and will continue to spend money on platinum for things that add value to my experience.

You’ve made an excellent game, I’d love to see it continue to improve and become as big as I know it can.

Originally posted by Radazuken

This kind of transparancy helps people a lot more than you might think - which is also better late than never .

Originally posted by AnimeOppaiiXD

I like this 👍 as both a free to play and pay to play depending on what is it, I like that there will be clear options to grind out what we want, as I find grinding things out give more satisfaction than buying it

Originally posted by Oinegue696

Finally you seem, as a studio, to start seeing reason again. But something tells me this communication derive more from a loss of ingame playerbase than from the massive backlash you received in reddit, but either way it's reassuring that you guys don't want for Dauntless the same destiny Wildstar devs wanted for their game: squeeze the fanbase wallets until the game finally died.

I wonder if Garena is happy for how the new monetization (that I firmly believed THEY wanted it to become what it became recently) turned out to be, lmao.

I have one simple suggestion for the monetization in your game: improve your art design and focus on making good trasmogs, instead of blending gameplay with monetization. People will gladly pay for badass cosmetics while playing a game which updates to the gameplay are completely unlinked from monetization, hence resulting in a fun game.

Because let's be clear, only the chinese gamers (no racism intended) like pay to win games... But most western people totally despise those kind of games and just want to have FUN.

Cheers

Originally posted by ItsPas04

Thanks for listening to and considering all of our thoughts, developers. There will be people unhappy with any change because we all have different opinions and trying to find the best solution, where most of the requests are fulfilled is always a stressful and uneasy labor. As I said before, thank you for working this hard and looking after this sometimes demanding community (me included). Stay safe and happy hunting!

Originally posted by KazuOkumura

My post has nothing to do with monetization. Now that you (hopefully) read this I wanted to bring in the problem of ''flashbangs'' effects.

they are cool design game wise, but horrible for people with Epilepsy. The Rezakiri Flashbang effect makes want my eyes to melt off because I have epilepsy. So hopefully you keep this in mind in future with Radiant esc and maybe a setting that people with epilepsy can toggle on.

Thank you for keeping making the game better and listening us.

Originally posted by Meirnon

This was to avoid the problem of one endgame activity that players would grind endlessly, and ensure that players are experiencing all Dauntless has to offer.

Sparks are only offered in usable amounts through events. This necessarily funnels players into a single activity - and not just all the varieties of that single activity, but even a single mode of play in that single activity ("do events").

The practical effect of Aethersparks is to force an island's player population to converge to an activity, and by effect, to lock player's progression to their participation in that activity. Events necessarily are both artificially social through this mechanism, and devalue significantly time spent in other activities.

It also encourages play-behavior antithetical to the intended play experience of Reforged through "verthopping". The system actively encourages playing in ways completely counter to the goals stated in the introduction of Hunting Grounds and Reforged. You could even go so far as to say that it bars reasonable progression to anyone who plays the "intended" way and only offers a reasonable resources-per-hour rate to people who partake in those behaviors. I can't see how this is, in any way, anything other than a failure of design.

I hope this is just a first step in an active goal-oriented approach to rethinking player engagement and these systems.

Originally posted by not1ulookin4

This change will surely help all players. I am an endgame player but i cant really imagine getting there with current way of grinding the way up. So this will be a huge impact for new players.

Also i have a question; the platinum we can gain from purchased Hunt Passes, are you planning on giving less platinum from HP than its price? For example, HP for me costs 950 platinum, however i get the 950 back. When i first heard of that i was really happy that i have basically guaranteed next HP. Are you considering changing that since you talked about gaining more revenue to keep the content coming?

Originally posted by Shehriazad

Going to be super honest now: As someone who has spent a fair bit of money on this game, almost the entirety of 2020 I felt like you guys were trying very hard to alienate the free players.

I really hope your pay2skip and 4pillars approach is done carefully and most importantly: RESPECTS EVERY PLAYERS' TIME.I don't want to play a Dauntless that is played by only a few hundred whales and free players just leaving.

Spam stuff into the cash shop as much as you want, but a few things NEED to be clear for me:

- Respect freeloaders and let them eventually reach the same power celing even if it is more "work".

- Stop reducing free huntpasses more every season. They barely have anything left in it for the free track and quite frankly that's not very encouraging.

- Never fully timegate a free player with only a cash payment being the way out. Even if a roadblock appears somewhere, there need to be other things that can be done to pass this timegate without feeling left out.

- Improve customization options. While I was fine with them during early beta...they just don't do it anymore for a current year game, and sticking with your limited colouring options is one of its ugly symptoms. Yes going back to rework classic assets to fit an expanded system is work...but it has to be done before you guys eventually a critical point where catching up isn't possible anymore.

- Social spending should be a thing. The boosters for escalation are one such example. I want more of that. It feels good to spend your platinum for "the greater good".

Originally posted by GreatMadWombat

Would it be possible to add them as a drop for the final bosses of escalations? So if you need to reforge/do quests, it'll obviously be faster to do the island experience, but if you only really like escalations, and like grinding those bosses, you'll still get some sparks, so there isn't an additional "you have to do islands BEFORE you can reforge" bottleneck as well?

Just have them basically be the replacement space for arcstones(but with reforge-y stuff added on)

Originally posted by -Frostbriar-

I love where you're going, as it was starting to look a bit dicey with the MTX. Especially the introduction of paying real money to shortcut quests...

If you really mean :

"What this doesn’t mean: This doesn't mean grind options will be so unreasonable they might as well not exist. And it doesn’t mean the best way to become powerful will be to spend platinum. "

And:

" What this doesn’t mean: This doesn’t mean spending players will tower over non-spending players when it comes to Slayer power. This is something we’ve always wanted to avoid, "

Then can we please get an alternative to the current, punishing, system of bounty tokens being tied to the daily login? As the experience rewards from the bounty tokens catapult Slayer progress, and with the new system of reforging gear then you're penalised for not taking advantage of that, but gimping your team if you rock up to Escalations with low levelled weapons.

I get that you want your metrics to look great, but for those of us that cannot log in every day who relied on the stockpiling for the weekends when we could jump on for 6 hours to progress the season pass, the new system is absolutely awful.

Maybe a compromise? So have the original 2 tokens a day just accrue every day, irrespective of login, and then give a bonus 2 (to match the current 4 per day) in the daily core? That way people who log in every day are rewarded, but those who can't aren't crippled by it.

I have no problems buying Plat, and have bought enough in the past :) But the current system seems to punish people who cannot log in every day, and incentivise spending real money on tokens just to maintain any noticeable or rewarding progression.

Originally posted by Meirnon

This was to avoid the problem of one endgame activity that players would grind endlessly, and ensure that players are experiencing all Dauntless has to offer.

Sparks are only offered in usable amounts through events. This necessarily funnels players into a single activity - and not just all the varieties of that single activity, but even a single mode of play in that single activity ("do events").

The practical effect of Aethersparks is to force an island's player population to converge to an activity, and by effect, to lock player's progression to their participation in that activity. Events necessarily are both artificially social through this mechanism, and devalue significantly time spent in other activities.

It also encourages play-behavior antithetical to the intended play experience of Reforged through "verthopping". The system actively encourages playing in ways completely counter to the goals stated in the introduction of Hunting Grounds and Reforged. You could even go so far as to say that it bars reasonable progression to anyone who plays the "intended" way and only offers a reasonable resources-per-hour rate to people who partake in those behaviors. I can't see how this is, in any way, anything other than a failure of design.

I hope this is just a first step in an active goal-oriented approach to rethinking player engagement and these systems.

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Originally posted by SunnyBloop

This is great to hear!

I was one of the many that vehemently opposed the recent decision to make Aethersparks less common, and advocated for Aethersparks to be removed from the store entirely - Seeing this is a huge step forward, as monetising progression materials should simply not exist, regardless of how "easy" it is to acquire said material. (I had the same issue with Ace Chips back when the Middleman released.)

With Aetherhearts potentially moving away from Reforging, can we get some form of incentive to Reforge? I want to mention that I COMPLETELY applaud this idea, as upgrading gear should never involve losing power, and Reforging should always exist outside of progression as a means to create a gameplay loop with enough incentives to actually commit to Reforging. Something a kin to a Prestige system, with cosmetic MTXs or cool rewards that are worth having to repeatedly Reforge for, alongside the minimal stat bonuses we already recieve.

Originally posted by Bok408

Dang. I was one of those complaining about aethersparks and the slowly increasing pay to progress options. As I’ve played a lot of reforged, I have discovered a lot of other faults/unintentionally bad design choices. But you are working on fixing on your mistakes. Solo queues are coming back, and I hate to say this, but it was necessary. I enjoyed spending time with randoms before reforged, and going solo once I felt like it. The now forced matchmaking made both me, my friends and several other players I’ve listened to more toxic than I’ve ever seen before. Lvl 22 rezakiri spawns, but you know other players on the current island will just die and drag everyone else down? Don’t even bother with it. Once they see you are doing fine yourself, they will come to get a piece of the cake, 99% of the time die faster than other players can revive them (and I’ve seen this happen too, loads of times). Thanks to private instances, the toxicity will decrease drastically. Now, the only real complaint I have left is the current pile of bugs the game seems to have. I get it, all games have bugs, but Reforged brought so many new (and also some old) bugs to the table I’ve actually thought about what other game to move over to if everything stays as bad as it currently is.

But to finish with the most important thing that I have to say regardless, thank you so much for putting all this work and effort into creating the game. Not just creating new content, but are willing to try and experiment, as well as listen to feedback from the players. Very few companies/developers do what you are doing. So thank you for everything you’ve done till now, and thank you for everything you will do in the future.

Originally posted by Oinegue696

Finally you seem, as a studio, to start seeing reason again. But something tells me this communication derive more from a loss of ingame playerbase than from the massive backlash you received in reddit, but either way it's reassuring that you guys don't want for Dauntless the same destiny Wildstar devs wanted for their game: squeeze the fanbase wallets until the game finally died.

I wonder if Garena is happy for how the new monetization (that I firmly believed THEY wanted it to become what it became recently) turned out to be, lmao.

I have one simple suggestion for the monetization in your game: improve your art design and focus on making good trasmogs, instead of blending gameplay with monetization. People will gladly pay for badass cosmetics while playing a game which updates to the gameplay are completely unlinked from monetization, hence resulting in a fun game.

Because let's be clear, only the chinese gamers (no racism intended) like pay to win games... But most western people totally despise those kind of games and just want to have FUN.

Cheers

Originally posted by -SpaceShorts-

I would spend platinum to raise my guild's member cap beyond 100. I would also be willing to spend platinum on guild features such as a social island where every guild member can meet up (no player caps in instance, or make island size tied to roster size). Guild halls on the islands would be really cool too, but those should probably be grindable to upgrade. So different sizes of islands could be the monetization to support server costs of keeping the instances up and running, and the guild hall could be what keeps players engaged in gameplay. I just really want a guild update, and I've got money to spend. Plus, a nice guild-related social update would breathe a lot of life back into the game for me and a lot of my friends. After all, if you're bored of slaying behemoths, there's literally nothing else to do in the game, so people just leave to play something else. A place for skyfishing perhaps?

Originally posted by UmbraFox53

The "feedback" on the Reddit has been excruciating these last few weeks, I hope it hasn't taken a mental toll on anyone in the office. I hope everyone is doing well; keep up the good work!!

Originally posted by Frop0n

As a beta player, dauntless has slowly started to burn out on me but seeing the devs team slowly start to show and explain the path the game is going towards hypes me up a bit again.

glad to go down the dauntless road with yall <3

Originally posted by blandstreetbod

Personally speaking, I would love to see more permanent cosmetic items. I've bought pretty much every cosmetic that I like (from the ones I can get) but there's older desirable items that seem to be gated off for now, like the Blaze Hawk gear.

I get that it's nice to show people how OG you are by what gear you have but for newer players it feels like options are quite limited in contrast to the plethora of options there have been historically.

Perhaps there could be gear which is unique to a season but then is remodelled slightly and added to the store permanently? That way older players could still show their longevity through the original items but newer players have more options in the form of the tweaked items. The viable part is that if these are only minor tweaks to the overall model then it's not an expensive job for PHXL in terms of resources.

Originally posted by Killing_Laugh

I enjoy your team talking about monetization. I think a lot of players look past the fact that it's a free to play game, it's up to the player if they wana spend platinum. But it is not pay to win.

I'm one of the schmucks that spend a lot of money on platinum cause I like to buy anything new. And that's my choice. But does it mean I'm better than someone who hasn't spent anything? No. I just like to think I look cooler lol

Originally posted by Pseudolatry

As someone who has struggled a fair bit with the final step of each of the rumours, one thing that would make a huge difference is being able to pick up all the rumours simultaneously, even if we can only fulfill them consecutively.

At the moment, some of us stress about finishing one rumour before the end of the hunt pass, so we can collect the next one from Ozz, so the whole "You can take your time about it" doesn't ring true.

I feel you want the content to last longer, but rumours last less time and are less enjoyable if players feel they must rush to complete them.

Originally posted by elanti2000

Shouldn't this type of communication come in the roadmaps?

I believe roadmaps are kind of losing their purpose of being with the slow updates and 80% being things that are not longer coming and 20% things that we already now are on their way like huntpasses and another elemental escalation.

Posts like this focused on one topic probably make more sense than the current roadmaps.

Originally posted by JekNex

Glad to see the game is moving in the right direction, I have a lot of hope for the future!

Originally posted by Zoochiini

When will this update come out?

Originally posted by Agares4u

Alright so thanks for the little behind the scenes! Only thing im kinda missing are the already existing exotics being available again. Is there any information when they will come back?

Originally posted by Poetics17

I’ve just wanted to say - I read this forum because I enjoy the game, but it is relentlessly negative at times.

I have played more than I ever have since Reforged, and I have really enjoyed the current gameplay loop.

I understand that you all work very hard, and I appreciate the effort that you put in. For what it’s worth - I think Dauntless is far and away the best free-to-play game on the market. And it occupies a great niche for people like me who are generally busy. I can still progress and participate in end game without sacrificing too much of my valuable free time.

Thanks for being open and honest with us. And keep up the good work!

Originally posted by PixPenguin

Since in this post there was talk of being able to purchase things with aether sparks, I thought it would be interesting if bounty tokens could be purchased with aether sparks! Here’s why:

Playing with bounties is just more fun When I’m grinding reforges without bounties it feels like I’m just doing the same thing. However bounties are a great way to add little rewards here and there, add extra challenges, and spice things up

Bounty tokens speed up the reforging process significantly Completing a 10-50 escalation run at around level 15 will give about 140xp per behemoth (all of these numbers are rough estimates) which means killing all 7 behemoths gets you 980 xp. If you can complete 4 bronze bounties in 1 run, you will get an additional 800xp per run. This is not a super common occurrence, but if you get a bit lucky it does happen. This means that bounties can be about 40% of all xp you gain, which means that they are vital to grinding reforges quickly

You get aerher sparks from grinding, and you need bounty tokens for grinding What I mean by this is that players who play consistently and will go through bounty tokens quickly are also the players who will have excess aether sparks. Casual players that just play a little each day won’t be in need of bounty tokens as much because they aren’t grinding as mu can and so the 4 bounty tokens are enough for them. This will make bounty tokens somewhat similar to tonics in that they are something that you can grind for that will help make end game players more efficient, but aren’t necessary for casual players

Let me know if you agree or what your thoughts on this system is!

Originally posted by _RitZ_

If I can add to op's feedback, as an open beta player I also amassed a large amount of tokens and took some days to use them up before a new HP came. Since you already have a system to expire the free bounty tokens, I don't really see the issue if people didn't use them.

I have long realised that I can't view Dauntless as a main daily game because I'll consume new stuff in at most 2 weeks. After that my guild will naturally be barren and I don't want to play daily anyway. This new 4 daily tokens doesn't motivate me to login just to get the tokens and log out immediately. Especially since a few months where am forced to pass through a VPN just to be able to login at all. It only demotivates me that am losing on tokens.

I think the proposed 2 accumulating and 2 daily login is a fair compromise. Nothing changes for your daily players while leaving flexibility for players like us to plan when to play.

Originally posted by Eonwulf

Getting enough while you level depends entirely on how you play. Leveling exclusively in the hunting grounds from 1 to 20, I went from 2 sparks to 30 sparks. I still need 70 more sparks which means I have to island hop to find at least 24 events, and not have terrible players cause the event to fail.

Just because the data y'all collected might work for most players, it doesn't work for all players. So you are gating progression for a portion of your player base just because they don't play the same way the majority does. Aethersparks have no business gating progression. It's just bad game design. You already have to spend time leveling up, and then you have to spend time wasting exp to collect a pointless currency in order for the level up to go through.