devtrackers.gg
Just want to say that I feel the time spent working on it could have been spent much better.
External link →Just want to say that I feel the time spent working on it could have been spent much better.
External link →This is the consequence of not listening to the community. I don't think I've ever seen someone suggest a free, lesser version of the game for PVP only. Very curious about the thought process here.
A live service game needs content updates to stay fresh, and Temtem has the perfect foundation for that in the form of new monsters, new missions, new regions, new dojos.
The community has always been clear on this.
But of course none of this is getting addressed as the devs are too busy with stuff no one asked or cares about.
We've talked about this several times but let's try again.
We had the opportunity to add "new monsters, new missions, new regions, and new dojos" during the Early Access and saw how it affected the player base and it's not sustainable. We spent over 9 months creating a new island with a bunch of Tems and content for a few hours and sure, it attracted a part of the community to come back to the game and discover this new content, but only for so long. Most returning users consumed this content in a matter of a few days and left the game again until more content was added. So we spent 9 months of work for a bump of users during a week.
Temtem already is felt like a grindy game for a part of the community, so even changing the way how you explore a new island or get the new Tems to be more time-consuming and expand this week of bumped player base would be seen as a huge problem. Basically the foundation of the game is not built to support that.
Then there's the economics. 9 months of the full team working on that content costs us a lot of money and (based on the data during the EA days) we simply don't get back that with the bump of activity that content generates. We could pack a couple of updates and create DLCs for sale, but there are some problems related to that too. We don't know how good or bad it would sell, the reception would be terrible probably and it would also separate the userbase for some of the together activities like PvP or Lairs.
That's why we're trying different things that help Temtem in the long run and are more cost-efficient. Showdown was cheap to build because it uses the same foundation as Temtem and required few devs during a few weeks to be built. The PvP community in Temtem is relatively large compared to the total userbase and something like Showdown has been proposed multiple times (maybe you aren't interested in PvP and that's why you haven't seen those requests) as it would help with a couple of issues. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked as expected, but I can assure you if the time spent on Showdown was spent on creating new Tems, we would have gotten something like 0.2 new Tems with the same time effort.
The community has always been clear on this.
We've also been clear about what Temtem is and isn't ever since the first day it was public (during its Kickstarter). This is from 2018.
When you think about an MMO or MMORPG you probably think of enormous games like World of Warcraft or TERA, in which you have an endless array of possibilities (raids, guild wars, infinite quests, enormous dungeons, a never-ending realm…) but our vision for Temtem is a lot smaller than that.
The core idea behind Temtem is to build a classic adventure game with a focus on the story campaign, but with online elements added around it (seeing other people online, interacting with them to battle, trade, or just to talk and share experiences).
And we delivered that and so much more, you get a lot of content and a lot of hours for the buck in Temtem and we've been adding new non-planned stuff into the game constantly for years.
TLDR it's complicated, doing games and meeting expectations is hard ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Unfortunately, it hasn't worked as expected, but I can assure you if the time spent on Showdown was spent on creating new Tems, we would have gotten something like 0.2 new Tems with the same time effort.
How was it unexpected? You genuinely expected people to play a PVP ranked-only version of a dying game, with in-game turn timers, no lube and having to memorize ~80 Tems to even hope to understand whats going on. Have you ever played a card or a MOBA game? I literally knew that thing was dead the second i read about it.
We've also been clear about what Temtem is and isn't ever since the first day it was public (during its Kickstarter). This is from 2018.
I don't disagree with most things but this actually pisses me off. You can't play the "it has a smaller scope than other MMO's and we have said it" card while the store page where you actually sell your product says nothing about it. In fact, it is only spammed with "Temtem is a massively multiplayer creature-collection adventure". It is misleading or false advertising at best.
And we delivered that and so much more, you get a lot of content and a lot of hours for the buck in Temtem and we've been adding new non-planned stuff into the game constantly for years.
What is this non-planned content you speak of? Because as far as i know the game released, I'm still missing content that was promised in 2020 and there has been nearly 0 content updates for the last year (challenge modes). The rest are nothingburgers (beauty shop, "events", shop, battle pass..) that only add content to your wallets, not the game.
TLDR it's complicated, doing games and meeting expectations is hard ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's only complicated when the game and the expectations you sell are dishonest. You are selling a MMO game and customers find out it means "people walking around in my single-player game". You are selling the expectation of an MMO with literally no multiplayer content.
What is this non-planned content you speak of?
From the top of my mind, a non-exhaustive list.
The two paragraphs quoted seem to be contradictory and easily part of the problem on the incorrection perception by players.
An MMO - hell, even just a multiplayer live service game like Call of Duty - is built in a way to keep players repeatedly grinding content (including pvp) for extraneous goodies such as player levels, cosmetics, or loot to replay the content at higher difficulties. This is NOT the type of game focused on story.
And then your second paragraph says the game is a "classic adventure focused on a campaign". Well, that's a traditional, single-player (or coop) game as far as i can tell. These games, like most games that existed before online connectivity, are finite experiences. They have a beginning, middle, and end. The player plays through it, usually once, enjoys it, puts it down, and moves on to the next game.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Is Sony complaining that people only played through God of War 2018 once and moved on? Hell no. Because it's a self-contained, single-player, classic adventure game focused on a campaign. Does Naughty Dog complain people only see the end of Uncharted once? Nope. Because this is the expected lifecycle of story-based games.
Not every game is meant to be played repeatedly forever.
I personally do not play MMO, live-service, and multiplayer games (for the most part), because I like new experiences. I came back to temtem to play the randomlocke mode with a friend and we currently made it all the way to the 6th gym. but, mind you, this is an alternate version of the story mode that has an expected ending, that we will put the game down again once we've reached it.
I would love to know what is so wrong with the normal lifecycle of a single-player game = creating the Temtem you have now, with the campaign that took me 80 hours to complete (not insignifcant mind you! 80 is a lot!), getting the million+ sales from the people that wanted a new pokemon campaign, and proceeding to working on Temtem 2 (or some other new game) like this was a classic single-player game?
Ultimately, I really wish I understood WHY the need to try to make this a Path of Exile "game that people play forever" game. It worked great as a sp game (thumbs up! I really enjoyed playing through the campaign!), and the push for mp really confuses me. (There's a wonderful GDC panel you can find on youtube that has a PoE dev talking about how to make a game that lasts forever; great watch if you're interested.)
safe mountainous sloppy middle direction air truck cagey books plucky
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
This is exactly what i mean when i claim you are being intentionally dishonest and try to gaslight people. You know full well most of these features were planned as early as the game was sold on EA, it even had your own roadmap on the store page.
Planned:
Tamer's Paradise with five PVE activities
Kudos system (Achievements)
In-game tournaments
Cross-progression
Nuzlocke
The trade house
Quest diary
Unplanned:
Fishing
Randomlocke/Speedrun
Lairs
~25 Tems (I highly doubt this is true, but i will let it slide because i don't want to check the numbers)
Showdown
Sponsored official tournaments. I honestly don't know how you consider this content when it only affects 0.01% of the player-base but w/e.
How is selling me things twice (events are just renamed battlepasses) or fixing your shit content? For instance, trade house UX is utter shit, if you fix it i will be glad but it is still not content, you should have made it properly in the first place. This is just not content:
Redeem codes
"Seasonal events".
QoL changes/bugfix
Why do you count future content as existing content? I literally can't play it, haven't seen nor have a launch date to it. How is it relevant?
Alt to lumas
New challenge mode
nutty reach ripe offend wild jobless smile dull imagine squealing
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
On the rare chance you see this, Yaw, I am a Temtem player who really loves the game and play it weekly.
What the game desperately needs is better gameplay loops, and a revision of the entire reward system. I won't spend too much time on this, but Freetem is absurdly boring. Dojo Rematches can get stale, but are fine as it is. It is absurd that Fishing the 5/5 doesn't guarantee an ETC. Tamer Activities are fun, but the reward ratio is waaaaaay off.
All in all, I feel that the gameplay loops and reward ratios make the game be way to grindy for players who want to invest in other stuff that isn't Showdown. And you all knew this, so I don't know why it is such a surprise that by making the game progression so grindy you dont make it NEARLY rewarding enough for casuals to stick to it. As it stands, it will only be welcoming to hardcore players (such as me). And I am sorry but this is really easy to grasp, and it's at the root at the issue why the playerbase is the number it is.
It's not the lack of new Temtems, nor of new regions; it's just that the gameplay loops/activities postgame are way to grindy for casual players, so there is no reason for them to stay. They are casual, they won't stick to PvP. I bet that a huge chunk of Pokemon playerbase never touched PvP outside of an accident, and while that aspect of Temtem is absurdly fun and good, you all need to focus on the casual side of the game, without too much worry about how we hardcore will feel because we would LOVE for Temtem to have a larger playerbase.
Thanks for your comment!
And yeah, I agree, PvE is not in the best form right now. There are some things coming in 1.5, a rework for Freetem (although it will always be "boring" due to the nature of it) and some improvements for Lairs too. I also want to take a look at the rewards but is always complicated to find a good spot, at least for us.