Matchmaking isn't the only huge problem. I'm done.

[Maximemoring]

I'm the average player, here for some fun, not taking it too seriously but not goofing around at the cost of other's progress. But there are 2 huge issues with this game that really make the overall experience simply unfun overall. Smurfs and individual player server lag.

I'm a plat 1-2, I feel like I'm pretty good at defense and passing and forecheck. But smurfs are ever present, at all times of the day, with any level of team. People who are obviously playing at the highest level are in 80% of games, and it's simple a roll of the dice whether games are unfair, because the ranking system just CANNOT overcome the simple action of creating an alt, and losing a few games here and there. It is such a huge problem, that even games with mostly gold-ranked players have half the players be obvious Plat 3/Champ level smurfs.

It is everywhere, inevitable, and goes unpunished. I can tell because I report smurfs all the time, even the most obvious ones don't get banned. We can tell because when a ban happens based on a report, it literally tells you. I get these messages on a random day I report griefers or toxicity, but NEVER for smurfing.

There's also, pointing at my previous "fix the matchmaking" post, often a huge average rank disparity between the two teams. We're talking often something like a Gold 3, Plat 1 and Plat 2 going against a party of two Plat 3's and a Plat 1 smurf.

Oh yeah, these two problems combine, how about that!? (canned laughter)

Dev, I can tell you don't reply in here, and that's one of many symptoms of an obvious huge problem with this game. You're not improving the average player's experience at the cost of long-term growth. This makes money from high-payers who have sunk thousands of hours into your game through multiple accounts getting cosmetics, the game is barely actually updated with generalized content. The currency is incredibly slow to get, and things are hugely expensive.

It's seemingly become a cash grab, and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the russian roulette we roll everytime we join a match that is supposed to work at 40 ping, and supposed to be rank-balanced, and not often obviously skewed to one side.

If you're going to tell me you don't have the manpower to ban smurfs, find a f-cking solution, IP ban, MAC-address ban, scan hardware with DXDIAG and have your DB build common cheater/smurf profiles that flags players for someone to check on and ban if it's found to be ban-evasion. I don't know man, do SOMETHING.

Because there are multiple reasons why your game isn't succeeding.
And it's not bad luck, or because your game is niche.
Your game isn't fun for average players for long.

[Erveon]

This post is pretty confusing. If you look at this forum and in our Discord, you'll see we engage with anyone that starts a mature discussion that could help improve the game.

I'm not sure how you could see the game as a cash grab when the currency you earn in-game only serves to purchase cosmetics, which is already more generous than most other games, and the game itself is completely free to play.

We put out monthly updates to improve the user experience, fix bugs, and add feature requests. The game has been actively developed for the last 5 years, so naturally patches earlier on will have been bigger than current patches since most features people want are simply already in the game.

To give you the recap of how we've responded to the concerns you have in the past:

- Latency: We admit this is the biggest pain point in the game, there are several technical and gameplay related things that prevent this from being as good as other games. We've worked with industry veterans to improve this but none can permanently fix it because the gameplay is just too fast-paced with the physics to make that work for any game.

- Smurfs: Only a small subsection of accounts are smurfs, sometimes people are just good players that are still climbing the ranks. When you do encounter a smurf, there isn't a one size fits all solution to it. Banning them will hurt innocent people (siblings or roommates playing, for example) and a VPN will easily get around that too. Much much larger games than us haven't "fixed" this either.

Again, we're always open to discussing these things and if good suggestions are given we'll happily experiment with them. Nobody cares more about the game than we do.

[Maximemoring]

Don't kid yourself. It's not more generous than most games. This is as an indie game too, you're not supposed to look at corporation to support your greed. You guys fail to be community focused, rewarding newcomers and keeping things fair, even if you're trying.

A discord server is not where the average player goes looking for ways around the issues this game has or especially to go invest time and energy to "give good suggestions". Already, if you can't see at least a good suggestion in even the least constructive criticism, you're failing as a developer, as a project manager and as a community manager.

Only a small subsection of players are also pro players, but they are almost, if not, the biggest pain in everyone's ass (other than other pros prehaps? You know, the ones speaking loudly in your Discord), both in-game, and in chat. It doesn't take a large portion to riddle an almost-dead game with them. (where I'd hazard a guess >90% of total accounts are not active anymore)

VPNs can't get around hardware checks, and MAC-address changing a whole system is annoying. So is playing games like these in VMs. (and you can still profile those, like so many games have who insta-bans VMs) Yes, other games have figured out multiple ways to stop this. Most of them just don't because they are corporations and smurfs are paying clients, and development time for such things is "unnecessarily expensive" in the short term.

Going around debunking everyone's posts and reviews about everything but the most obvious, and especially, undeniable issues is not open discussion.

[Maximemoring]

Also, I feel like it goes without saying, but if you don't want to (or can't afford to) develop solutions to ever-present issues with free-to-play, competitive, online service games.

Don't make a free-to-play, competitive, online service game. Make it paid, make it hosted by players (P2P and/or dedicated) and lobby-based casual with customizable game-modes/rules, or make it co-op with a campaign. Jesus. Look at TF2, or actual NHL games.

[Erveon]

Woah, okay. I'm sorry you see it that way. We do our best and care for the game and its community but you're entitled to your own opinion.

[clenchandtwist]

breh theres like 200 people on at best. ur gonna end up with rele good or rele bad players. its that or never find a match. more ppl dont play cause existing player pool is toxic

[bqvh]

Originally posted by clenchandtwist:

breh theres like 200 people on at best. ur gonna end up with rele good or rele bad players. its that or never find a match. more ppl dont play cause existing player pool is toxic

That's not true, in a day there's like 600 people in queue on NAE,NAC,NAW also like 100/200 in the best. if someone making smurf accounts. it's not staff problem, but people like me don't want also play vs pro players. But i need to because i have the legend rank. I'm playing this game like in a day for 600minutes on Saturday 1k minutes. But still, The developers trying to make this game best for all players.