Server Health is a Game Design Issue

[admin]

1 minute ago, Fastidius said:

so the stuff that you made was specced up and discussed with us and the flaws were completly unexpected?

 

We assumed it is a purpose of the early access - to test things openly with the community. We know now (the axiom) that once game is launched and is good it should ONLY add new features, tuning tuning and tuning of tuning loses players. Thats why UGCW did not change much since release - only new battles were added and severe flaws fixed. Our new games will launch to EA in a ready state with a purpose to fix bugs (not with a purpose to find best gameplay). But its impossible to undone and unsee it in NA. 

[Hawkwood]

2 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Sure sounds like your blaming the community here, either we push new players away or we steer the game development in directions you don't want to take.  This is unfortunate.

Frankly I don't think the game is done just yet, but perhaps you do.  

Merge the servers.  Ease up on the ship grind.  Bring back lord protector with a few twists and people will return.  

Merge the servers merge the servers merge the servers....

Dude you are seriously annoying.

 

[admin]

2 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Sure sounds like your blaming the community here, either we push new players away or we steer the game development in directions you don't want to take.  This is unfortunate.

Frankly I don't think the game is done just yet, but perhaps you do.  

 

We do insist that community can do a bit more in terms of explaining to players on what we are doing and why. All the changes we did had the goal to make the game better (not to destroy it). Too many changes and too drastic changes is a reason for negativity. 

NA open world will do fine. Its just the vision of harsh vast world is extremely hard to do. 

[Fastidius]

4 hours ago, admin said:

First
your calculation is a little incorrect. Weekly average users are around 10k Monthly average users are around 20k which means 20% retained (80% moved on). These figures are completely normal for the industry (unless your game is a mass superhit). If your game is niche 20% retention is great. By your logic civilization 2 sucks because its retention is below 1% which is not true. It was great when it had launched, then players moved on. Retention is the game's problem indeed but our numbers are no different from the industry levels. Only 50% of players reached the 3rd boss in Dark souls 3. Only 30% of players finished GTA 5 story line. There is nothing bad with players moving on to other game as you cannot read the same book over and over again.

Second. 
We never blamed the community for game's faults. Community is awesome.  You misread our statement. 
We wanted to point to the community the following.  Game has to bring new  users. And this is where community can make a difference and actually help.
This post had a simple question - should i get NA. 100% of initial answers were NO.   http://steamcommunity.com/app/311310/discussions/1/1471967615873119233/
If community really does not want new users to buy the game (because it is truly bad) - why does community is then upset about falling online and lack of fast progress? 
You know its early access - you know we try things and sometimes break things - we have to figure out the working balanced game and we need time for that.

If no-one respond to NO to questions "should i get this" giving another opinion or ignore such responses whatsoever new players won't come in. Everyone will just think - bad game - don't buy.

Point 1....actually they were some of the most pirated games of their time so actually theres a hell of a lot more of them than that but steam is a bad measure for that..also your talking about offline games.......it took how long for Everquest to lose those numbers? thats about what i would compare you to with at the moment.

point 2....prior to the wipe i would have said yes. after the wipe i say no because it is a stickingly bad grindfest that is unbalanced and unforgiving to newbies.

 

[admin]

2 minutes ago, Rickard said:

I don't want to let you feel bad or something but most reviews on steam are written by people that see that the game has massive potential and not by people that are mad because they got banned, also you do have to admit that your dev team has made some mistakes in developing this game which many players have pointed out to the dev team ,those mistakes are mainly responsible for the bad reviews.

That is true. But you can't make an omelet by not breaking eggs (making mistakes). We learnt a lot in the process. Which is why we are not upset at all. Our comments above only focus on one thing. NA uses open development and player opinions matter and can affect development to the point that community can stop the development completely. 

 

[Skully]

4 minutes ago, admin said:

We do insist that community can do a bit more in terms of explaining to players on what we are doing and why.

The insight is often not there or plainly wrong. Why, for example, has smuggling been made impossible by not allowing contracts in enemy ports?

[admin]

2 minutes ago, Skully said:

The insight is often not there or plainly wrong. Why, for example, has smuggling been made impossible by not allowing contracts in enemy ports?

because we wanted to make port capture more meaningful. catering to the RVR crowd who asked us to do whatever it takes to make rvr more meaningful 

In fact EVERY decision or design change can be explained by logic - the result of course could be different. Atomic bomb was not created immediately and it had some failed experiments in the process. 

[Fastidius]

8 minutes ago, admin said:

We assumed it is a purpose of the early access - to test things openly with the community. We know now (the axiom) that once game is launched and is good it should ONLY add new features, tuning tuning and tuning of tuning loses players. Thats why UGCW did not change much since release - only new battles were added and severe flaws fixed. Our new games will launch to EA in a ready state with a purpose to fix bugs (not with a purpose to find best gameplay). But its impossible to undone and unsee it in NA. 

OK then your methodology is incorrect.  You have a Dev server, and alpha server and a early access server.    The devs screw things up on the dev server till they get something they think works then they put it on the alpha server and ask a series of people to test something....ie if you doing clan stuff you turn off RVR on the main server for a  day or 2 or a week and ask large clans to join the test server , redeem the crap out of them and tell the the mechanics you want tested.....they test and feedback..you adjust what they say...once they think its ready you roll it to the early access server and you have a heap of champins on your side in global talking about it and how they tested it.

 

at the moment you half ass something the release it piss everyone else off and they say it was someones idea and it didn't work.

[Fastidius]

3 minutes ago, admin said:

That is true. But you can't make an omelet by not breaking eggs (making mistakes). We learnt a lot in the process. Which is why we are not upset at all. Our comments above only focus on one thing. NA uses open development and player opinions matter and can affect development to the point that community can stop the development completely. 

 

it isn't open development it is semi open else we would be able to jump on the test server and figure it out,....not live on a test server

 

[admin]

Just now, Fastidius said:

OK then your methodology is incorrect.  You have a Dev server, and alpha server and a early access server.    The devs screw things up on the dev server till they get something they think works then they put it on the alpha server and ask a series of people to test something....

pre-wipe (24 may) testing shown good retention numbers and players were ok with the proposed changes (which later made many live server players unhappy)

[Christendom]

1 minute ago, admin said:

because we wanted to make port capture more meaningful. catering to the RVR crowd who asked us to do whatever it takes to make rvr more meaningful 

If anything RVR needs to be less important.  Since I stopped doing it the game has been 20x more enjoyable.  

[Skully]

6 minutes ago, admin said:

because we wanted to make port capture more meaningful. catering to the RVR crowd who asked us to do whatever it takes to make rvr more meaningful 

It removed a valid tactic for the casual player and backlashed horribly with a lot of hard core players going for alts to bypass it.

In my opinion RvR only becomes meaningful if there is a win condition at the end. As in any competition, beat the other teams.

[admin]

2 minutes ago, Rickard said:

because ?? you don't like RVR?? you don't have to participate you know... 

he meant that RVR player numbers are limited. But they affect EVERYONE's gameplay. By focusing on rvr players we might have ruined many things for an average joe. 

[Fastidius]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

because we wanted to make port capture more meaningful. catering to the RVR crowd who asked us to do whatever it takes to make rvr more meaningful 

well firstly you do that by removing Port production and make it completely player based.....that way the players need to fulfil the contracts...and you can limit the number of buildings in a place and put the building plots on a rent/bidding system...

ie 20 buildings only per ports and your clan has to bid on them..or a place in a protectorate of the port...

 

again all these things were suggested i put to you went the easiest route because you were not interested in it.......like how we got a new damage system and leaks sink ship rather that what people thought was important.

You can blame the community or not blame them or whatever you think you are doing but you have to understand the way you are dealing with feedback is pretty bad.  Be it lack of understanding or vision i don't know but I know that after 2000 hours in the game on steam and running large clans on multiple servers and nations......you ain't got a clue and we get ignored for so long that when anything we did suggest gets put in its already had other issues around it ....

I put to you that you created a system where you were not testing or that you were testing with people who didn't actually understand the WHOLE game.

 

 

[IndianaGeoff]

On 8/14/2017 at 8:00 AM, Teutonic said:

5. Crafting - The decision to make players ONLY gain experience for crafting ships may be logically sound, but in a game it's Extremely depressing. You go to a player and tell them the only way to get a higher crafting level is to craft ships. Go ahead, I've done it and they get irritated, not necessarily at me, but at the fact that they could craft thousands of carriages or planks or frames and they get absolutely nothing for it. On top of the fact that when it comes to a clan and efficiency, it's more efficient to have higher level players craft ships, so why would you encourage those with lower levels to craft when you already have the crafters. This needs to be addressed.

 

Is there any difference between getting exp for crafting components and making endless cutters that you break apart?  The old system worked.  You could get exp on components, but you had to craft ships to level up at a reasonable speed.  With money making nerfed, that was a big enough nerf to crafting.  I mean these devs need to look more than one move ahead.  They make 3 or 4 changes that are all negative to a component and then blow up the entire system.

[Hodo]

13 minutes ago, admin said:

We assumed it is a purpose of the early access - to test things openly with the community. We know now (the axiom) that once game is launched and is good it should ONLY add new features, tuning tuning and tuning of tuning loses players. Thats why UGCW did not change much since release - only new battles were added and severe flaws fixed. Our new games will launch to EA in a ready state with a purpose to fix bugs (not with a purpose to find best gameplay). But its impossible to undone and unsee it in NA. 

UCGW and NA are like comparing a bicycle to a horse.  Different animals.  

UCGW is a strategy game and not an MMO with less twitch elements than NA.

 

If we had UCGWs ground combat as a boarding and portbattle mechanic I would say sure the two have  something in common.

 

I of lately have been finding it EXTREMELY difficult to want to login due to the sudden plummet and lack of real direction.  RVR is a joke, PVP is only so much fun and you need people for that.   And honestly there is no point in logging in and going out sink one or two people then go home.   Not like I made a dent in any war effort.   Fighting the pirates lately is like swatting at gnats.  

That brings me to my next point and problem.

Pirates, you have ignored that faction for over a year.  Giving some minor things to them but still leaving them as a nation because somewhere in some book (wikipage) you saw the pirates had a "nation" for 7 years.   Well if that is the case why doesnt the Portuguese, Italians, Freed Slaves, Native Americans, or any other short lived republic have a faction in this game?

Pirates should NOT be a nation, and shouldnt be a starting choice.

 

[Fastidius]

17 minutes ago, admin said:

pre-wipe (24 may) testing shown good retention numbers and players were ok with the proposed changes (which later made many live server players unhappy)

guess what....the players you tested with were not the players you want to test with....the 4000 that left between april and november were but you don't know how to send out emails to people.  

Edited August 15, 2017 by Fastidius

[jodgi]

13 minutes ago, Christendom said:

If anything RVR needs to be less important.  Since I stopped doing it the game has been 20x more enjoyable.

Heh, I discovered that in different game thirteen years ago. People's mileage vary so wildly it's not even funny.

[IndianaGeoff]

23 hours ago, Helbent said:

While I agree we don't have enough players currently to fill the servers, saying we wouldn't recommend the game to someone because of that is self-defeating. No way to fill the servers without getting people in.

That said, I agree in its current state the game has a terrible new player experience. The learning curve is very steep, and if a new player doesn't get hooked up with some people in nation that can help them get on their feet then they likely won't stick around long. I would say that as many issues as there are with the late game which causes many of the complaints on steam the new player experience needs to be the top priority for the devs to fix. I would guess 95% of the people who bought the game during the summer sale quit before they got to rank 3, and never experienced most of the issues the vets complain about on a daily basis. Fixing the late game may help with the bleed of vet players (and may even bring vet players back), but it won't fix the stability issues of the game if new players aren't sticking around. Every game goes through population ups and downs, the ability to bring in new players (and keep at least some of them) is what determines if a game survives.

In my experience, getting hooked in does not matter these days.  About the time you get in a suprise you cannot get grey ships and good PVP players will sink the ships you had made faster than you can earn the funds to stay in them.  So you either spend 5 hours grinding for gold for each hour in a fighting ship or you stay in the little gray ships and maybe grind 3 to 1.  And if you do stay on that bubble what can you do with groups?  Sail with other guys who get all the kills.  Your not getting in a port battle.  You can sail your new, just bought ship 1 and half hours to an enemy hot spot... maybe with a bud and then be sunk before the night is out for a 1.5 hour sail back in a cutter to grind a new ship.

(From a New US player perspective.)

[Fastidius]

12 minutes ago, admin said:

pre-wipe (24 may) testing shown good retention numbers and players were ok with the proposed changes (which later made many live server players unhappy)

guess what....the players you tested with were not the players you want to test with....the 4000 that left between april and november were but you don't know how to send out emails to people or do steam news so thats on you too.

[jodgi]

2 minutes ago, Fastidius said:

guess what....the players you tested with were not the players you want to test with

Ye, ye, blame it on me, why don't ya!

How can it ever be different? You test with those that show up.

[Fastidius]

2 minutes ago, jodgi said:

Ye, ye, blame it on me, why don't ya!

How can it ever be different? You test with those that show up.

The ones that left are the ones you want back...the ones that stayed are the least likely to put up a fight to possible stimulus.

If you were enjoying the game before the patch and seems to think the patch was a good thing then your still happy now ......

I however came back hoping for a  lot of good things...found some but found some bad and the main ones which is why we left was RVR and end game being broken...and guess what..still is.

 

 

Edited August 15, 2017 by Fastidius

[Christendom]

12 minutes ago, Rickard said:

because ?? you don't like RVR?? you don't have to participate you know... 

You of all people should know how many battles I've been in.  I enjoy doing RVR, but the time commitment is not worth the payoff.  

Sail an hour or 2, grind random AI fleets for 3 hours, sail back another hour.  Fight an empty PB the next day and receive marks.  Boring.  

[Anolytic]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

he meant that RVR player numbers are limited. But they affect EVERYONE's gameplay. By focusing on rvr players we might have ruined many things for an average joe. 

As an RvR-player I have to agree completely. The mechanics implemented to make RvR more important, more involving, more imperative, at the request of RvR-players - myself included - negatively affected gameplay for the average player without having the desired effect, nor proportionally improving gameplay for RvR-players who asked for it. With your clan wars idea you have the opportunity to make port ownership changes by conquest mostly irrelevant to new players, PvE-ers, Traders and OW-PvPers. That is what I was most excited about, and I was disappointed when it seemed you moved away from this in favour of safe-zones but still having regions in the center of the map change hands. RvR-players cannot recruit or involve new players in our playstyle if what we do negatively affects the base population of the game. The game tried to do it by force, by making RvR so important that everyone would have to join in and help their nation. All this really did was increase the stakes and the pitfalls, and drive away players.

Make RvR an end-game path you can be a part of by choosing by your own volition to join a war company with all the positives and the negatives only really affecting you if you have taken that choice. I'm not saying make it rank restricted. You can make that choice (and un-make it) starting from lowest rank all the way up to highest rank, but you make the choice yourself, knowing the consequences that come along with the excitement and beauty of port battles.

[jodgi]

3 minutes ago, Fastidius said:

The ones that left are the ones you want back...

Sure, but...

3 minutes ago, Fastidius said:

the ones that stayed are the least likely to put up a fight to possible stimulus.

Are you telling me to ramp it up?! 

Also, not entirely sure I get what you mean...