devtrackers.gg
Ghost town... no exaggeration.
So here are my constructive suggestions for Epic:
1) IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T "FIX" IT!
- Why did the recent "meta change" enrage the player base? Mainly because there was nothing wrong with the meta we had. The vast majority of players were happily playing a game with a healthy mix of tower defense and run and gun peacefully co-existing. If you weren't hip to the meta not being broke before, surely the avalanche of flames from the player base on this sub tipped you off right?
- Don't waste a single second of time "fixing"(nerfing) things players actually like, such as Frost Ice Queen's ability or blizzard blitzen's 6th perk, until this game is free of bugs that HARM PLAYERS. Literally zero players would rank these inconsequential nerfs as more important than server stability, inventory wipes, etc... When players enjoy a particular event or game mode, for god's sake, DO NOT take that as a sign that it needs to be fixed/adjusted/nerfed, or anything of the sort! It's a sign that players are enjoying that part of the game, and/or feel the reward is appropriate. Remember when people played wargames? "Fixed"!
2) IF IT IS BROKE, DO FIX IT!!!!
- How long was it before you even acknowledged the recent stability issues that made the missions literally unplayable? How long after it got so bad that people reported complete inventory wipes? A freaking week. A week full of community posts warning players not to play your game, and literally begging you to take down the servers. When did you FINALLY acknowledge it? About one split nano-second after David Dean made a video of his account getting wiped, and you got dragged, kicking and screaming, into admitting it, and even then; not on Trello. PRIORITIZE GAME STABILITY OVER EVERYTHING ELSE.
- What are you doing about the steady stream of complaints about the reward adjustment system? I just read another new, well-thought out manifesto critiquing how reward adjustment punishes the innocent and forces players to compete for score just prior to posting this (there have been many). I'm glad you finally took AFKing seriously, kick for idle is good stuff, but you know whats not good? It's not good when players feel like they can't get rewards in public matches without being in a DPS race, coating the world with traps, and/or blocking teddies with walls. Countless memes have been posted to this sub showing the new "PvP STW Meta" you created with this flawed system. This issues MAGNIFIES the ghost town problem because the players that do stick around don't Queue public, making it seem even deader than it is (and its really, really dead).
3) COMMUNICATE IN A WAY THAT AT LEAST SEEMS LIKE YOU GIVE A SH*T!
- PATCH NOTES! Real games that players give a crap about need patch notes! I mean seriously, WTF are you even thinking? I'd like to pretend like this isn't insulting to your player base, but IT IS! I'd also like to think some of these problems are unintentional on your part, but this is intentional! It not even possible to imagine the meeting where someone says, "I think players will really appreciate us NOT telling them what's going on with the game". You did this on purpose. Fix it!
- The one thing you DO tell us is what's new in the store/quests, and you can't even be bothered to get simple info correct, like the names of abilities? Like Wukong apparently granting a team perk called mantis leap, which is actually a ninja class perk. Like how is that one too hard to get right?
- Don't put out MISINFORMATION! I'm not saying this one is intentional, but it's harmful nonetheless. Just for one example, at a time when so many people dislike reward adjustment, it's hard to read a post from /u/magyst assuring us that players' scores are not compared to each other for reward adjustment, and not feel soured on the game, knowing that is incorrect information. Literally EVERY player that runs mission in public lobbies is testing this in real time, in every mission, and it's obvious to us all that it DOES work that way. The multitude of players coating the world with traps, or the multitudes of constructors NOT running constructors... Guess what? They are not crazy. They are not wrong. We've all run stalls where everyone's score is low... NP; rewards given. We've all run and gunned missions where everyone's score is high... NP; rewards given. And by now, we probably have all been in missions where the spawn is literally coated with traps by one guy and... NOT gotten alert rewards.
THAT'S IT! FOLLOW THESE THREE SIMPLE RULES TO REPOPULATE THE GHOST TOWN PLEASE.
TO RECAP: 1) fix what's broke, 2) don't "fix" what's not, and 3) communicate as if you care.
THE END.
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