Yeah well thanks for another reply of admitting you broke your own game and giving a super vague reply on exactly whats being done to fix it.
Here is CreatureTech's outline of what's being done - https://www.reddit.com/r/dauntless/comments/lb93ga/state_of_dauntless_3_aethersparks_and_phx/
When will this update come out?
This Thursday, February 4th.
Glad to see the game is moving in the right direction, I have a lot of hope for the future!
Us too!! Thank you!
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.
We are actually revisting the idea of the roadmap and are looking into how to make it better for everyone <3 We are thinking of creating a more-frequently-updated roadmap (maybe with more nuanced updates?) + these state of Dauntless threads in order to keep the community in the loop around how we are thinking and what we are focused on. Expect more info on that in the coming few weeks!
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.
Yeah - you'll be able to take on as many as you want very soon. One at a time isn't working.
Some will be timed if they're connected to events and such, though. Saint's Bond is coming up for example, and there are some rumours that must be completed during the event.
Slightly off topic but anyone else think the pike's charging move should be able to interrupt? Can't tell you how many times I've charged at a charging embermane😅also, agree with the points made as a pike main👌
We've been discussing this as well.
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
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.
That's exacty what we are going for! And I am glad you are lookin cool in your cosmetics ;)
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.
Yeah - as we get Event Passes off the ground and figure out where they sit cost wise and timing wise, you'll start to see more returns of past content. There is always the vault as well, but that has some issues to iron out for sure (hard to know what's coming, what could come, or what was in there before)
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
Thank you for sticking with us! We are glad to be on this road with you, too <3
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!!
We know it comes only because people care. Thank you, though :)
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?
Awesome! Thanks for sharing. Yeah, guilds are a pretty untapped area right now for making cool new things to do in the game. I think there's a lot of opportunity once we're able to turn our attention that way.
Read moreFinally 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......
Honestly both of those things are important to us. Not just how many players are playing, but who are they? How much do they play? What are they feeling when they play? What are they saying to other players? What are our advocates and veteran community members saying on Reddit and other social media for new players to see?
That's just baaaaarely scratching the surface of all the things we look at for making any kind of decision - commerce or design or content or whatever.
One thing that is not part of that decision making process: Garena.
Read moreDang. 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 comp...
Thanks for writing this up and posting :)
Glad to hear some of your concerns are being addressed with the new updates. As for bugs -- that is top of mind for sure. In fact, in preparing for 1.5.3 (Thursday) and 1.5.4 (a couple weeks later) we pulled together Bug Fixing Sprint where everyone across the studio paused development on new stuff and just tackled bugs for a chunk of time. Of course, we haven't squashed them all, but over the next couple patches you should see some of those in game.
Please keep posting here or reporting with the in-game bug feature if you see any other creepy crawlies.
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.
We're definitely sticking with the Reforge model as the primary source of progression (getting Aetherhearts), but we want to give players a bit more flexibility. We have the prestige icons and reforge nodes to encourage players to still reforge even if we offer another path to get Aetherhearts, and if that runs dry for a lot of players, we can always add more rewards to keep that loop healthy.
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Also I would LOVE a Hades crossover.
One day.
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I know things like "skippable quest" can be a tidy way to categorize things. But I'd encourage you to look at rumours more like "paid cosmetics you can get for free by doing a quest"
They are intended to give more players a chance to earn items that otherwise would have been a style bundle in the store. You won't see skips on regular quests or content that actually progresses you through the game.
Read moreThis 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 o...
With the new drop rates in 1.5.3, players should have way more flexibility in their activities. Most players should have no problem getting enough to Reforge, and that's without island hopping and still spending a bunch of time in Escalation. We are changing the design around sparks from a gate model to a reward model where you generally receive what you need, but if you get a bunch of extra ones, you'll have another reward to purchase with your spare sparks (coming soon).
Read moreI 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.
...
Thanks for the feedback! We'll keep thinking about bounty tokens and evaluating the new model. The new 4 per day model is still relatively new since Reforged, so we still want to gather more data and feedback to ensure it's hitting our goals. We want bounty tokens to be really meaningful tokens that drive interesting activity for the player, and the old model, at least for most players, just led to them being stockpiled for a long time and most players not using the vast majority of them. We're not opposed to modifying the system in the future, but no immediate plans for it.
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)
This is something worth talking about, for sure.
Read moreGoing 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 timegat...
These are some good bullets. Yep - every player should be able to reach the same power level. Always. Forever. And we definitely want to find a balance where the cosmetics in the Elite Hunt Pass are exciting and the Free Track has something to offer as well. It's one we'll probably always be working to get just right.
Very good point on social spending. I LOVE buying boosters for my escalation teams. We are definitely exploring more of that. What kinds of things would you be excited to purchase for your friends/other players?
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