Hi Red Barrels, here's a Step-By-Step on how to save your game

[Burgers_And_Beer]

EDIT:
Looks like they actually added matchmaking for trials now, which is awesom.
The only thing that's missing now is an actual lobby browser - which would make it even easier for players to find a game.


IMPORTANT:
There's a very short conclusion that summarizes the steps at the very end of this post. That is basically all you need to read, the rest of this post just goes a lot more into detail as to why I think these points are so important to get right.

Also, I'm sorry this post may be a bit chaotic at times, but I am just casually trying to tell you my thoughts on the current state of the game with as many details as possible. If this was my job, I'd approach it in a much more structured way, by writing down a lot of bullet points before making this post - but as it stands, I was just casually trying to insert my thoughts into this post every now and then when they came to me, so I kept expanding on this post, which may have caused some repetitions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Introduction: About me & why I'm writing this
2. Why?: Why does the game need to be saved?
3. The Steps - Detailed: Detailed description of what has to change
4. Debunking: Dismantling matchmaking arguments from your last announcement
5. The Steps - Conclusion: Short summary of the crucial steps

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Introduction: About me & why I'm writing this
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am writing this in an attempt to actually reach out to the team behind this game because you've seriously got something special on your hands with the gameplay - but you're killing it by not focusing on what's important with a coop live service game. If you keep doing what you are currently doing, people will only return for a few days every time a new trial gets added - but they will not stay because there's nothing to actually keep them there.

I am a developer myself and have been a huge fan of coop live service games, so I'm not just randomly making any of these points up - I believe I have a very clear idea of what should be changed and how exactly it should be changed. Also I wanna preface this by saying that I have seen all of these issues on launch day. I'm only coming forward to say something now, because it's been a while and I am still getting the impression that you genuinely do not understand where your priorities should be.

The gameplay is great - but the systems around your game are making it literally impossible to even play your game properly. Also there's nothing to keep players in the long-term.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Why?: Why does the game need to be saved?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The player numbers are actually not the indicator, even though that would be the most obvious aspect. I believe the player numbers don't say that much about the current state of the game - they'll go up again, I'm sure, once an update is released. However, there's other big problems this game is currently facing.

As it currently stands, I strongly believe that the game is going to chase off potential customers because of certain design choices that aren't meant to be a part of a live service coop game. Some fundamental systems have to be changed to prevent this from happening. Fixing these systems should be the main priority to prevent people from discarding the game. First impressions seriously matter, some people will not give the game a 2nd chance later on and instead just instantly refund the game.

One of the biggest issues I believe is the way the trial progression works, you are currently putting a lot of new players in a spot, where they have to wait for a VERY long time to find players to play with and they have to potentially play something they don't want to play. It is not suited for a live service coop game. People are required to complete all basic trials, to be allowed to play the endgame content (where the majority of the community is at). You have to try to keep the player base together at all costs. Perhaps Program X shouldn't be locked behind such a specific requirement - but rather something more general, like account level progression. This way, you can still make players play the easier missions first to get into the game, but they get to choose which ones and how often. This way, they have a way bigger chance of actually finding players to play with. I understand your intention, that players should be required to play every trial on an easier difficulty first, to prove that they are capable of handling the endgame content - but no other live service coop game does this because of the very reasons that I just mentioned. They understand that one way or another you need to give people almost instantly the opportunity to play whatever they want - because otherwise you are starting to split the community apart. Also, some people are fast learners - so an artificial learning curve like this could turn away new players simply because it is too easy for them and they want to get challenged right away. I know a few players who actually felt this way and just wanted to get to Program X but they couldn't push themselves to do the basic trials anymore, since it just wasn't that fun - it was too easy and felt too much like a chore.

Sorry I went on a bit of a tangent here - but this issue right here I think is one of the biggest because it seriously shows that there's some design choices here, which are fundamentally not suited for live service coop (which is why you never see these kinds of design choices in most other successful live service coop games).

All of this being said, there are some other fundamental aspects that need to be fixed about the game, which I'll get into further down below.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. The Steps - Detailed: Detailed description of what has to change
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Matchmaking / Lobbies / Finding a Group:
You can NOT force people to play trials they do not want to play. It doesn't matter if you make a "suggestion" system where people vote on a trial - The person who votes for something different, will most likely leave again. It would be recreating the exact same problem your current matchmaking has. Almost every 4 player coop game uses a simple lobby system where you can choose to host a specific mission, with people being able to search for lobbies which have this mission hosted. Why would your game be the odd one out? Literally just copy these systems from games which have already done it better and aren't criticized for their lobby systems like yours. Stop wasting resources on systems that you randomly came up with. The only reason your matchmaking system is perceived as slow despite your stats saying it's fast - is because people constantly leave over and over again as soon as they realise they are about to play a trial they didn't want to play in the first place. You have to eliminate this issue of constant leaving and rejoining - That's the main issue. Last time I tried playing this game, I had to watch like 50 people leave before I even got 2 people who wanted to play the same trial.

*Efficient Matchmaking / Being able to join Trials in Progress (IMPORTANT!)
Let people join mid-trial. This way you are not only respecting the players time, because you aren't forcing them to wait 15+ minutes in the lobby just to play a 5-10 minute long trial - But you are also making the timeframe for when players can join way bigger, so you have to worry about your "pools" less. Normally when you are waiting for players, they might eventually leave if you do not immediatley start the trial - so if you give them the ability to join mid-game, this problem disappears. And PLEASE do not even try to come up with arguments against this such as "the reward would be unbalanced" or "we want you to complete it from start to finish for immersion or whatever". Reward balancing can easily be achieved by making each task reward a set amount of xp, so if you join mid-trial you will also only get a part of the reward. The whole "immersion" thing doesn't even count if you think about it logically: If someone REALLY cares to see the beginning of a trial, then they will almost certainly just host the lobby themselves, to make sure that they see it from the beginning. You don't have to think FOR them. Let people play the way they want to play. Give them MORE options, not less! So many live service coop games with mission-styled gameplay just like yours are letting people join mid-game for these very reasons, so yes - there is no logical reason yours wouldn't be able to do it.

*Rank-based Matchmaking in a Casual Co-op Game (Why?):
This game doesn't really scream e-sports or competetive. So what happens when you match people based on their level in a game like this? You are alienating a part of your player base. If there are casual players who like to take it slow, be immersed and take in the environment.. you just "banned" these people from playing your game for being a high level. At a higher level, most of the time you will run into people rushing through the game, refusing to communicate since the objective is already clear to them. They will also often see everyone who doesn't instantly run to the objective as a burden. You should never force people to play with a very specific, hardcore group of players in a coop game - I have never really seen a co-opgame do this. Especially one that is known to attract players who like to take it slow to take in the environment, lore and atmosphere. Also: What if I wanted to let my family members try out the game on my account? They are forced to play with these super experienced players, they'll be left behind and seen as a burden. Why are you forcing me to play with a specific playstyle of players just because I played your game a bunch?

*Upgrades / Loadout / The Lack of Replayability:
Permanent upgrades are a waste of resources & developement time. They make the game easier. You get them once and that's it. How exactly does that keep players at bay to keep coming back to your game? It really doesn't. That's why live service co-op games like this usually don't have a SINGLE permanent upgrade - Instead they usually exclusively have systems such as your "amps" but WAYYYYY more to give players a lot of options for replayability. You need more systems like this to give players the ability to create their own unique playstyles. Rigs are a good start. Perhaps you could add "modifier" slots to these rigs, to further give people the ability to bring out their playstyle? There's many things you can do but right now Outlast Trials is severely lacking in this department.

*Trial Progression / Checklist Progression / Splitting the Community apart, again:
This is one of the big flaws this game has. As cool as it is thematically to complete trials in a checklist, like it's a psychological program you are going through - you ARE splitting your playerbase, again. You are literally forcing players to play through low level missions to unlock the bigger ones, where a majority of your playerbase is at. Usually live service co-op games such as these would never force you to play specific missions to unlock others but rather tie this sort of unlock progression to the player level, to indirectly force players to start with the easy ones. Because while yes, they are still "forced" to play the lower level ones that way - They can still progress past them, without having to complete them, since you can give them a partial reward even if they lose, which would be enough to unlock the next trial despite failure. Honestly though? I think in this game you shouldn't even be doing that - You should instead just give people access to ALL trials. There is honestly no reason to force people to play them in an order or anything like that. It just forcefully splits the community apart, slows down progression to the point that some people quit over it - especially if they can't find players for it - it's impractical in every regard. Just remove this "feature". There's nothing this adds to the game other than an "artificial" learning curve because let's face it: If someone is inexperienced, they can choose on their own, to play on a lower difficulty. You don't have to FORCE them to do that. If you seriously still persist on doing this, you should at the very least add an incentive for higher level players to go back to the easier missions, so the lower level players have a higher chance of finding players to play with. Daily challenges are one of the many solutions for this - I personally think these kinds of systems are predatory though, because they force people to play something they don't even want to really play by creating an addiction to a grind. To be fair though, that's kind of what you need with these kinds of games to keep an active playerbase - UNLESS you have very good replayability & customization to add to your gameplay, to keep people playing and trying out new, unique playstyles.

*Endgame Content:
Not really a priority at the beginning - But this needs to be built in eventually. You need some super challenging end game challenges for the most active players. Constantly prestiging is too linear, players will get a burnout from that and just stop doing it. By this I don't mean "add new trials, specifically for those players" but rather give them a huge set of endgame challenges, which require them to go back to earlier trials and do very specific things in them such as completing them without being spotted or injured or doing something x amount of times - Whatever, just give your most active players something to constantly grind for. Also these challenges obviously need to give these players some cosmetics or titles or whatever to keep them engaged.

*Community Engagement:
There's a clear lack of community engagement - This is plain and simple. You need to interact with your community a lot more frequently and keep them up to date on what your plans & visions for the game are. Also, if you do not agree with their criticisms, be vocal about it! So far I am getting the impression, you guys are afraid of getting backlash, since you might disagree with a lot the community is saying, so you rather stay silent. This is NOT the right choice for a live service game. If you are afraid of your community getting mad at you, that means you are afraid of finding out how to make your game better - When your community gets mad at you for your opinion or vision, it is because they are passionate about the game, not because they hate you - I'm sure you know this - But you need to confront it head on and not just give them radio silence. Listen to your community, tell them when you disagree or agree with them, and take what they say into consideration with your visions.

*THE BIG ISSUE - Team Structure / Researching & Learning / Bad Management:
Okay, this is the big one. I have seen so many projects like these fail because the team refused to learn from previous games, in the same genre, which already did certain systems wayyy better. Instead of investing resources into reinventing the wheel with many aspects, you seriously need to look at how some successful live service coop games have built their systems. That being said, as harsh as this sounds, I seriously doubt that you are giving everyone on your team a voice. There are some issues in this game, such as the matchmaking, where I seriously think any good developer would have instantly recognized the problems it has. Example: I asked a few programmer friends (who btw. don't even play video games) if they understand, why the matchmaking in this game is not working. They all instantly realised, yes of course, the problem is that people will keep leaving and joining because they are unable to actually queue up for what they want to play. Now I ask you: How is it possible, that people who don't even play video games, are able to recognie these issues instantly? It's simple! They are programmers. Programmers think a bit differently. They are capable of strucutral, analytical thinking and so they have no issues recognizing these problems and how to solve them. That is also why I seriously doubt that everyone on your team gets to voice their opinion on certain systems. I know I'm speculating here but I seriously get the impression that the programmers on your team would have seen the problems with this kind of matchmaking. This leads me to believe that they either do not care - or you don't want to know their opinion and just tell them to "just do it". This can be blamed on a bad team strcture or bad management. Either way, this has to change - and I seriously doubt it is going to change - So I see this as the biggest issue.

*Your Current Fate:
Okay, what's going to happen to this game if you keep going like you're going right now? I can tell you. The player numbers are going to keep sitting at a relatively low count, they might even decrease a bit over time - However: Every time you update the game with a new trial, players will come back for a few days. Heck, maybe even a few weeks! But then they'll all be gone again. Is that really what you want out of a live service coop game? Nope, not really. You want to keep players at bay. Don't you want them to eventually maybe invest some money into your game for DLC or cosmetics? Where else are you gonna get the money to keep it alive? So if you don't want the player graph to look like a bunch of mountains going up and down every few months, then you seriously need to fix the systems around the game (mainly matchmaking) and inside the game (mainly replayability).

I'm sure I forgot some points but these are the main ones where I know for a fact, if these issues were all fixed, I and a lot of my friends would be playing this game a lot more actively.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Debunking: Dismantling matchmaking arguments from your last announcement
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm gonna sound harsh here but the arguments from your latest announcement about matchmaking are actual nonsense. Why does every live service coop game do it differently compared to yours? Why do you have to be the odd one out? There's seriously no reason. Either the person who came up with what you've written about matchmaking in your latest announcement doesn't know what they're doing or it was just quickly written up in a rush for some reason. Either way I refuse to believe a group of logically thinking people could come up with this because none of it makes any sense. Least of all people who could come up with something like this are actual developers. I strongly believe a developer would see why none of this makes any sense almost INSTANTLY.

"We're not planning any major backend changes right now regarding this, but we're improving how Trials are selected to involve the group instead of just the leader (via suggestions or other ways we are currently exploring)
This grouping/voting/suggestion system you are talking about here... Do you seriously not see how this is going to cause the exact same issue your current matchmaking system has? If people vote for a trial or if you suggest me a trial, that I do not want to play - then I will leave! It doesn't matter if they won the vote. I want to play, what I want to play. This isn't rocket science. Whoever came up with this just genuinely should stop - Because this is doing more damage to the game than good, since it's wasting resources for no reason. Please just implement a normal lobby system just like in any other coop game?

"Matchmaking per Trial would divide players among many pools (25+)."
1. 25+ pools is NOTHING. Games like Payday have 80+ unique missions with 7+ difficulties and various other modifiers, so the pool of that game would be ATLEAST 600+ possible combinations - Yet I always find people to play with. Sure, sometimes I might have to wait a little bit - but when they join, they stay, because they actually found the lobby they WANT to be in.
2. You are currently dividing them in even more pools by throwing them in lobbies they don't want to be in, so they have to leave again - this artificially creates more pools, so you are actually doing the opposite of what you want to do.

"Players don't evenly play all Trials; some are more popular due to player progression."
1. Yes, this is true! This is a fundamental design flaw of how level progression works in your game. Having to play specific trials to unlock others, might seem cool because it fits thematically into the game - but it unnecessarily splits up the playerbase. That's why you will rarely find other live service coop games do this. Because they realise that you have to keep your content dynamic - What if at one point there's no of new players coming to the game anymore? Every new customer would be chased away from your game, because they can't find any players to play the easy missions with, which you are forcing them to play!
2. Also your argument is implying that you want to force people to play certain trials. Please tell me you realise why this is SO wrong? You can not expect to keep a playerbase at bay while forcing them to play missions they don't even want to play. Sure, you can do this with hardcore players for example by tying challenges or dailies into this sort of philosophy - but a part of the casual players will just stop playing your game.

"This approach significantly increases matchmaking queue times."
This just proves that you don't even understand your own server stats or don't track them correctly. Yes, your actual queue times are fast - but you have to ask yourself how much time actually passes before a player gets into a trial.. The answer is: WAY MORE than your queue time. Because for a player to get into a trial, they have to sit through MULTIPLE queues. Why? Because when I create a lobby for a trial, almost every single person who joins my lobby, instantly leaves again as soon as they realise that they just joined a lobby for a trial that they don't even want to play. I thought this was super obvious but somehow after so many months you still don't get this when people talked about this issue at launch?

"Players might not find matches for certain Trials, leading to frustration."
1. Again, you are not seeing that this is exactly what your current matchmaking system does because it literally throws people into random lobbies, so they have to rejoin over and over again to find the right one. Don't you think that's a little more frustrating than just being unable to find anyone who's hosting a specific trial? You've basically ensured that your matchmaking is ALWAYS frustrating - and not only when trying to queue up for unpopular trials.
2. Again, you are also somewhat implying that you think you can steer which trials people want to play. You can't! If people don't want to play trials, they don't want to play them. You have to design your game around this. If other coop games like left 4 dead or Payday forced me to play specific missions that I don't want to play.. I literally would not play those games. There's nothing to keep me playing if I can't even choose to enjoy the content that I actually enjoy.
2.

"This approach could potentially harm the game experience."
This is not even an argument. I'm speculating here but I think with this point it becomes very obvious that whoever was in charge of creating this list, just didn't feel like it or was genuinely just trying to make up stuff to get the task done. This argument is nothing. It just verbatim says "oh it's bad because it's bad". Please tell me you see how wrong that is?

All these points prove that you either do not understand your own game, server stats, the community or even how an argument works - This is nonsense! Like actual nonsense. Seriously, please actually invest the time into researching the most basic stuff? Don't destroy your game over refusing to get the basics right. It's so sad to see so much potential go to waste.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. The Steps - Conclusion: Short summary of the crucial steps
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Stop reinventing the wheel. Learn from other live service coop games and stop wasting resources on the most basic things such as arbitrary, outdated matchmaking systems. Let players host the trial they want to play and give players the ability to join mid-trial. This respects players time the most (because you aren't forcing them to play arm wrestling in a lobby while having to wait for more players) and minimizes the ACTUAL queue times, since it eliminates needless leaving and rejoining until you get lucky.

2. Focus on replayability by coming up with systems that give people the impression they can come up with their own, unique playstyles through loadout customization.

3. Actually get involved with your community's feedback way more actively. Get community managers to collect valuable feedback and deliver it to the team.

4. Add actual endgame content (for example challenges that are tied to trials) to grind for to keep the hardcore players at bay

5. Once all that is done - Literally just keep adding more trials over time and your playerbase will actually stay with the game inbetween the additions of new trials because you've ensured that the basic stuff works and replayability + endgame content is keeping players entertained

[Two IQ Champion]

{|Octavian|} a écrit :

I like your username

Thanks {|Octavian|}

[{|Octavian|}]

Two IQ Champion a écrit :

Outlast trials needs something desperately. Me and all my friends really got hooked during the beta last year. When the early access came out we all played it, out of everyone in my friend group i played it the most.

All that being said i question if this is their first time ever releasing a early access game. Because they don't seem to have a clue. When the game first launched it was massive, and even for a couple weeks it kept its huge playerbase. It baffles me that they didn't capitalize on the success.

You shouldn't release an early access game and then do nothing for months on end while barely communicating with their playerbase. I think they should have put out content slowly, even if it was small stuff. As of right now i see no reason to play and no reason to come back until they finally update the game.

This is their first time doing a online coop game, they admit themselves. So having issues like this is pretty much guaranteed but (judging by the recent news post) they seem ignorant with their philosophy about how players should make groups. Thinking "it'll work, just give it time!! You'll see!" behavior. I think if we raise these concerns enough, they'll reconsider their chosen choice about it and take our word on how it should be reworked.

The survey has character limits, and the amount of issues present in the game goes beyond what can be said in the survey, so we have to use steam forums(in which they also use). Taking into account what they said in their behind the scenes outlast trials videos, they didnt hire motion capture actors+editors as they believed they can do it themselves(which granted, they did a fine damn job). Basically cutting corners when it comes to hiring, they NEED to know that to take care of a game of this scale, they'll need MORE hands in the dev team. They are capable of increasing their size by now and it'll benefit them more. There's a difference between knowing your capabilities and being ignorant on hiring more workers on things you may need help in. It'll also speed up the time it takes to ship out more huge quality updates.

Cause at this rate, they arent gonna have this game fully launch out of EA by 2024 with a major content update every 6 months.