Would accepting defeat be the better choice right now for the game long term?

[Farligbonde]

So, the game is in an interesting state. I choose to say interesting because i know SV has a new policy where you have to choose your words carefully.


So this thread is mainly pointed at SV and staff. Hopefully Robmo decides to show this to the rest of the team so they can have an internal meeting, because lets be real.
I'm not trying to rant and say that SV sucks and their staff is bad, but the decision making so far made by SV is often to little to late and at this point it feels like they are putting more and more band-aid on a wound that has already bleed through and the person they tried to rescue has almost lost all their blood and is just about dead.

So my suggestion for SV and it's board( that i dont even know if they are doing anything actively ) is to accept and confess to themselfs and the community, investors that this didn't go according to plan, a written letter by CEO and the Board apologizing to community and investors and confessing that they did wrong and what changes that is made behind the scenes to the company structure and development team, so this wont happen again would greatly improve relationship between SV and whats left of the community and investors.

Even though changes has been made, it's not enough and far from enough to be frankly for what you expect from a publicly traded company and rather big company Star Vault has become .
Mr CEO himself needs to understand that they are not tinkering in a garage anymore. SV has to start taking responsibility for their actions and start planning things way better than they have done now, start having plan B's and take their time with their products.

If there is not enough money to make a big mmo as this, take resonable decision and make a smaller game to aquire funds to expand your team and hire staff to make it work better in the future.

The above is acutally what i believe would be the best thing to do now aswell.
Mo2 should be put back in beta again and put on life support and SV should make another game to aquire the funds to get this baby where it deserves to be in the future.
Because lets be honest again, either SV plan will work( which previous plans has not done) and they will be able to start subs before the year has ended, or the money is up and they have to either start begging for more money from investors or fire people from the team they have built up now.

A better gamble would honestly be to put majority of the devs on another title, perferebly mainstream mobile game to get funds to actually have a better chance to make mo2 to the game it deserves to be in the future.


So what does the community think?
Would be fun to hear your thoughts.

 

[Rogu3Fiv3]

Its not going to happen though. SV is just going to drag this game through the mud, all the way until its dead.

 

[Farligbonde]

Its not going to happen though. SV is just going to drag this game through the mud, all the way until its dead.

Well i hope you are wrong there.

 

[Pocketss]

It’s like nobody has google or the internetz. Has no one heard of MO1? This is playing out EXACTLY like that did. Shouldn’t be a surprise, they are porting over that broken content, and slapping it onto store bought assets.

It just boggles my mind. Do you think because they added a 2 the team all of a sudden learned to make a good game.

 

[Pocketss]

Well i hope you are wrong there.

Happened with MO1

 

[Rogu3Fiv3]

It’s like nobody has google or the internetz. Has no one heard of MO1? This is playing out EXACTLY like that did. Shouldn’t be a surprise, they are porting over that broken content, and slapping it onto store bought assets.

It just boggles my mind. Do you think because they added a 2 the team all of a sudden learned to make a good game.

I played MO1. I am very aware of the accuracy of your statement. I was just hopeful with MO2, I really was. And SV doesnt want to hear the criticism. They dont want to hear "You let me down." They know, that a minimum they can make another MO1, and thats good enough to put gas in Henriks car.

 

[manure]

So my suggestion for SV and it's board( that i dont even know if they are doing anything actively ) is to accept and confess to themselfs and the community, investors that this didn't go according to plan, a written letter by CEO and the Board apologizing to community and investors and confessing that they did wrong and what changes that is made behind the scenes to the company structure and development team, so this wont happen again would greatly improve relationship between SV and whats left of the community and investors.

I disagree. Why do you think this didnt go according to plan ? The game was a success in the beginning of this year.
Everything was cool, players were happy and hopeful...

All they had to do was to keep releasing INTERESTING content (Especially SIege and Thieving Systems).

The big problem was that they started to deliver worthless content, that nobody was interested on... and worse than that, they started to OVER PROTECT players... The final blow was to add one trillion ultra strong guards everywhere, including in the wilderness.

This has been happening since the times of Ultima Online.... The game starts marvellous, then they begin protecting players against "griefers".. and BOOM, you have a destroyed monotonous game.

It is SO EASY to fix all this and bring back tons of players to this game... but its SO EASY that makes me pissed the fact that they dont realize :

Let the players play the game. STOP OVER PROTECTING.
Erase 2/3 of the current guards and do not allow ANY guard outside town limits.

If they do it, in ONE WEEK you will have all the thousands of players we lost back to the game, and even more.
100% granted.

 

[Jackdstripper]

SV doesn't read these forums, sorry to destroy your hopes and dreams.

Henrik has never cared what anyone thinks. Not you, not me, not anyone that played this game. He just does what he likes.you have the choice to stay and play his game, or leave. These forums are just for nubes to find information and for vets to bitch out other vets.

 

[Farligbonde]

I disagree. Why do you think this didnt go according to plan ? The game was a success in the beginning of this year.
Everything was cool, players were happy and hopeful...

All they had to do was to keep releasing INTERESTING content (Especially SIege and Thieving Systems).

The big problem was that they started to deliver worthless content, that nobody was interested on... and worse than that, they started to OVER PROTECT players... The final blow was to add one trillion ultra strong guards everywhere, including in the wilderness.

This has been happening since the times of Ultima Online.... The game starts marvellous, then they begin protecting players against "griefers".. and BOOM, you have a destroyed monotonous game.

It is SO EASY to fix all this and bring back tons of players to this game... but its SO EASY that makes me pissed the fact that they dont realize :

Let the players play the game. STOP OVER PROTECTING.
Erase 2/3 of the current guards and do not allow ANY guard outside town limits.

If they do it, in ONE WEEK you will have all the thousands of players we lost back to the game, and even more.
100% granted.

Dude you are seriously delusional if you think 90 % of the players left due to the guards.
I'm not saying that no one left cuz of it, im saying that its one of many puddles that led up to it.
Problem is that there are more severe factors that made players leave, manily Queues, Bugs, the 1 server idea , system that were not finished.
There is always something with this game each patch.

 

[Pocketss]

I disagree. Why do you think this didnt go according to plan ? The game was a success in the beginning of this year.
Everything was cool, players were happy and hopeful...

All they had to do was to keep releasing INTERESTING content (Especially SIege and Thieving Systems).

The big problem was that they started to deliver worthless content, that nobody was interested on... and worse than that, they started to OVER PROTECT players... The final blow was to add one trillion ultra strong guards everywhere, including in the wilderness.

This has been happening since the times of Ultima Online.... The game starts marvellous, then they begin protecting players against "griefers".. and BOOM, you have a destroyed monotonous game.

It is SO EASY to fix all this and bring back tons of players to this game... but its SO EASY that makes me pissed the fact that they dont realize :

Let the players play the game. STOP OVER PROTECTING.
Erase 2/3 of the current guards and do not allow ANY guard outside town limits.

If they do it, in ONE WEEK you will have all the thousands of players we lost back to the game, and even more.
100% granted.

I keep seeing you say this same stuff about guards. More people quit this game. And MO1 due to broken mechanics, placeholders, bugs, exploits and dupes. Far more than what you are talking about. Let’s be real.

 

[grendel]

Only peasants admit defeat.

 

[Albanjo Dravae]

Agreed, the best possible thing SV could do as a company, if we are even dicussing that. Is to aknowledge their problematics making a public statement and explain what they did, are doing and will do regarding these problematics.
That would be the professional way to go, to actually care for their community enough to give explanations on whats going on right now.

I've read a thread that Robmo made a while back, basically apologizing in the name of SV for doing so shitty content and saying they hired a QA i think which should be handling a lot of internal organization problematics.

If they actually went a little more transparent with the stuff they are doing people wouldn't be in the dark, whats happening right now is the expectations vs reality thing.
Henrique talks a lot in streams, people gets hyped, they expect complete working not placeholder features yet we get placeholder features and incomplete systems that don't work. So all the people that was hyped didn't see that quality content released and end up quitting after they realize content is bad.

They added trinckets not casually, its the opium for the masses. Its supposed to be a grindy ass gold sink feature, that instead of being a deep system that involves a bunch of playfields in a balanced way it turns out to be another incomplete placeholder timesink piece of content, such as the bounties. But these are development placeholders, minor dumb grindy shit to make time for investing into whatever patch they will bring next, which will be placeholder.

For example last necro stream, people got hyped. Hyped over really shitty necromancy skills that haven't even been shown in a pve or pvp context or environment. Why would you do an entire stream about that, gather some info, get a community manager working with a production designer and plan what you will be showing to the community and how, and show its reality.

Everything is just very poorly made, theres no professionals involved in any area its just like amateur hour.

 

[Pirsss]

The main reason must be serverproblems when +1800 was playing, this game needs ppl to be fun.
All the streamers loved the idea of the game but u need it to run smooth with greater numbers for sucess

 

[Valoran]

Even though changes has been made, it's not enough ...

How do you know this if we haven't seen the fruits of these changes yet?

As Henrik and Robmo have said, essentially the entire team has moved over to a new workflow which includes the QA process.

The next patch will show if we're in a better state now than we were before.

Also have you seen the announcement SV put out yesterday that they will be dedicating substantial time to fixing bugs and polishing the game after the Necromancy patch, to fix all the major issues people are having?

That's not a band-aid that's a greater heal.

 

[Farligbonde]

How do you know this if we haven't seen the fruits of these changes yet?

As Henrik and Robmo have said, essentially the entire team has moved over to a new workflow which includes the QA process.

The next patch will show if we're in a better state now than we were before.

Also have you seen the announcement SV put out yesterday that they will be dedicating substantial time to fixing bugs and polishing the game after the Necromancy patch, to fix all the major issues people are having?

That's not a band-aid that's a greater heal.

Yeah, but its not only the QA area that is lacking, game design, community wise, social medias etc...

These polish changes we dont even know how long it will go on, according to that statement they said project polish is a part of the new roadmap, so does that mean half a new roadmap which is a month? Or is it until the Game is fixed.

Also, if you have seen the current work SV has done fixing stuff it has taken 6 months and game is still not in a stable state, thinking that they will fix the game and releasing TC this year in a functioning state is very naive.

 

[Albanjo Dravae]

Also have you seen the announcement SV put out yesterday that they will be dedicating substantial time to fixing bugs and polishing the game after the Necromancy patch, to fix all the major issues people are having?

That's not a band-aid that's a greater heal.

We should measure with results.

 

[Valoran]

Also, if you have seen the current work SV has done fixing stuff it has taken 6 months and game is still not in a stable state, thinking that they will fix the game and releasing TC this year in a functioning state is very naive.

They haven't been dedicating time to fixing things for 6 months, they have been dealing with server optimisation and creating new content for the current roadmap about to end.

If the developers are allowed to focus completely on bug fixing and polish I have no doubt we will see great results in a short period of time.

That means the art team can focus on polishing things as well, working on the new points of interest and redoing some of the less aesthetically pleasing areas of Myrland, bringing everything up to a good standard.

This opportunity to go back and fix things is extremely rare in game development, as most companies get stuck thinking that if they don't always work on new content they'll die, but it's a trap because if you fix the game then more new players will stick around and there's hardly a shortage of people trying the game.

If the core game is fixed, they can then focus on adding new content without worrying about dedicating dev time each sprint to fixing annoying legacy bugs because there hopefully won't be any. That means more time to focus on making the current patch good, which means less bugs being introduced to the live game.

It's a win-win, except for the impatient people who would rather the game stay broken if it means they get their favourite content sooner.

It's the only choice for the game's health long term and I'm over the moon that they're actually doing it.

 

[Valoran]

We should measure with results.

That's exactly my point, we have to wait and see what happens.

 

[manure]

Dude you are seriously delusional if you think 90 % of the players left due to the guards.
I'm not saying that no one left cuz of it, im saying that its one of many puddles that led up to it.
Problem is that there are more severe factors that made players leave, manily Queues, Bugs, the 1 server idea , system that were not finished.
There is always something with this game each patch.

90% quit because of the lack of excitement. What delivers excitement are conflicts between real players.
Good x Bad.

If the bad side cant act, because there are guards everywhere preventing them to act, theres no player conflicts. Therefore, no excitement.
This leads to mass quitting.

Im not delusional.

I keep seeing you say this same stuff about guards. More people quit this game. And MO1 due to broken mechanics, placeholders, bugs, exploits and dupes. Far more than what you are talking about. Let’s be real.

If the game was cool and exciting, I am sure people would play it even with all of its bugs, exploits and broken mechanics.
A thrilling game holds players, despite problems with graphics, bugs and exploits, that can be fixed with hotfixes.

Great Gameplay is what we need to focus.
Guards destroy the gameplay. Im sorry to keep repeating it, but its true.

 

[Rogu3Fiv3]