What happened to this game?

[loslonios]

Always had this game in my mind but never bought it, now looking at steam charts it always had 500-2k players at the same time but now its kinda in life-support, why?

[psychological]

what happened to your purchase?

[Ost]

no frequent updates = dead game. you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that.

[n0mad]

pubstomping

[𝓇𝒾𝓃𝒶𝒶𝒶𝒶𝒶]

Sweaty hands killed off what little remained of the community, it's a real shame because it used to be fun.

[Slim Dusty]

Game can be hard so casual scrubs did what casual scrubs do move on to the next shiny game that grabs there attention and holds there hands to make them feel good.

[Bob]

No game lasts forever, and it has been around for almost 6 years now.

The most dedicated players will remain longer, and they completely crush newer players to the point of most newcomers not seeing the point of climbing a mountain to have fun. Same thing happens with every game in time.

[Ohana]

Originally posted by Bob:

No game lasts forever, and it has been around for almost 6 years now.

The most dedicated players will remain longer, and they completely crush newer players to the point of most newcomers not seeing the point of climbing a mountain to have fun. Same thing happens with every game in time.

Thanks Shemp and Nemesis!!

[cheavyIZspy]

Originally posted by Bob:

No game lasts forever, and it has been around for almost 6 years now.

The most dedicated players will remain longer, and they completely crush newer players to the point of most newcomers not seeing the point of climbing a mountain to have fun. Same thing happens with every game in time.

Don't even be born, it's all rigged and you ain't climbing it.

Am not even joking tbh. N'or am I too serious tbh.

[Sharkbait]

A lot of various thing combined might have lead to the player base to shrink. It's also pretty old and content, while fun, it's not much compared to other games with more and longer lasting progression. Not to mention the skill gap between the old and new players which can make it hard for new players to break into unless they have the mindset and endurance to get through the hump.

[Skine]

It really needs to become like perma 5$ or 10$, 20 is just to high with most that buy it will get stomped then refund more then likely

[Mang]

Originally posted by Donald J. Putin:

Originally posted by Bob:

No game lasts forever, and it has been around for almost 6 years now.

The most dedicated players will remain longer, and they completely crush newer players to the point of most newcomers not seeing the point of climbing a mountain to have fun. Same thing happens with every game in time.

Thanks Shemp and Nemesis!!

Those two don't play that much anymore to be fair. Shemp is in Doom Eternal mode now and Nemesis hasn't played since earlier this year I think

[Krono]

Originally posted by Mang:

Those two don't play that much anymore to be fair. Shemp is in Doom Eternal mode now and Nemesis hasn't played since earlier this year I think :lunar2020thinkingtiger:

Frankly we need the good sharks to bully people more so new shark players don't whine about divers so much

[Zecilus]

Game is 6 years old. Ain't nobody's hands sweating when they pub stomp people. That's the end result of people who played this game since its release vs. people who just bought the game.

Time tends to do that. You know.. that whole practice and experience bit?

Use a little common sense.

I've never played CS GO in my life but I know simply based on how long the game has been out vs. how new I'd be for that game that I'm going to get stomped on a lot. It's called having realistic expectations. Even with newer titles like R6 Siege I know the game has been out "long enough" that a newbie like me expects to get stomped.

If you want to be hand held in this game (or any of the other games I mentioned for that matter) and you waited 6 years to buy it then skip the title. If you're expecting to actually put the effort into learning the mechanics of the game, then welcome.

[Zutgorak]

The question "what happened to this game?" is not a small one
and I will give you a somewhat subjective answer from me and it
will contain some or a lot of things you might have heard before.

1: Weakness due to old age.
The game is running on an older engine and is not precisely optimized
as noted with how it runs, even on newer machines. Combine that with
the fact that there is not much in the way of content. The only shifting
content are the players you face and their skills, and not even that
is very changing these days due to declining playerbase.

2: Skillgaps
This game has a very high skill requirement, one that very often
is not translated from other FPS games, wich of course, is not
something that newer players understand, hence the constant hackusations
that comes thrown at a better player. Now, I personally take something
calling me a hacker as a badge of honor. I did good.

3: Toxic players.
Now, with this, I dont mean the type that some consider toxic,
the ones that can play around you in circles because cthulhu knows
there are some really good players in this game, and trust me,
they have heard more than once that "they are toxic AF" because
they are outplaying the opposition by far.
Add to that the few that are being extremely derogatory with their
namecalling, using sexual or racial expletives in the absurd amounts
well, you get the picture. After a few thousand games, you just
sigh and think "oh well.. its one of THOSE guys" but, it gets old
real fast.

4: Bugs
Digital Confectioners made a great game. No doubt about that
but due to how its coded, and with what resources, new bugs are
introduced, while others are being removed. A good example was
one I reported myself earlier, where scrollbars stopped working
with the arrival of an event. It took a good while to fix that.
Now. I dont claim to know the the inner code of a game, but
fixing a scrollbar doesn't sound like it should take a few months,
especially when the scrollbar in question is in the crafting system
that keeps no few of us "older" players around.
Add to this, gameplay bugs that are increasing over time such as netcode
going all wonky (vacu-mouth, point blank misses etc etc) and you
start getting people who get fed up and leave.


5: Item Content.
Events come and go, some brings new items but very much these days,
these "new" items are just a rework or in some cases, just a re-insert
of older stuff that already exists in the game. Case in point is the
starship DPV, the JET tiger (wich is really interresting when you have
both versions, just different rarity).
And to add to that, there is a reluctance to add playercreated content,
some wich is very nice and completed.
If I understand this correctly, I may be wrong here so please correct
me if I am, but I guess that part of it is a fear of getting flak from the
community. How about "you can't please everybody all the time". I am not
saying "Make a Sony Online Entertainment does SWG" (if you dont know
that piece of scandal gaming history, google it, im too lazy to give that
story) but when being offered items that at least some people like, to implement
into the game, for free no less, why not take a look at said items and see
if they are up to par. Set a few "standards" for esthetics and functionality
and test the items against them. If it works and its free, chuck it in there.
Have someone make a form where the contributor submit to relinquish their intellectual
property so it IS free, without any risk of getting into the whole
intellectual property swamp that can be.

=============================================================================

Now, we are entering total hypothetical and assumation terrritory here
so you dont need to read this if you dont want to start thinking.

It is my suspicion that Digital Confectioners, like many other studios do,
is using their game as a passive income. Nothing wrong about that, but at
some point, it needs to get more active to survive. I suspect that the
Last Tide debacle sort of scared them from a lot of things, by all rights it
should. However, this game is so unique in its gameplay and set up so not
many games even get close, so it is worth the work. Or, if its not worth
the work, becase we know DC is a smaller studio with limited resources why not
try the "no risk approach" Some of the playerbase recieved kind of an odd
question from me recently, and the question was thus:

If there was a way to prepay Digital Confectioners, such as kickstart or
similar, to start making "Depth 2" without promise of completion, just
a money back guarantee if it never came to fruition, would you fork out the
money?

I still havent got "No" as an answer to this question. Now, making a game isnt
cheap, no matter what shortcuts you take, especially not if you want a game
with good graphics, smooth feel etc etc etc .. list goes on but what about
doing some creative rehashing again? Use assets from Last Tide that are
available, plonk in the gameplay from Depth (no clue how the engines differ sadly)
take a drunken night to figure out a few new weapons to add aswell as maps, then throw
it at the wall and see if it sticks? All dependant on that monetary goal that
DC would have to set as they are the only ones to know what budget it would need.
And also of course, added a bit of that budget to take care of unforeseen
expenses or hires. Id gladly fork up 50 bucks as a pledge for that and I am fairly
sure that more people would.

I am not saying this is THE way to go, I am stating that it is ONE way to go
that might work. It also might not but id gladly theorize in absurdum on how
to overcome the obstacles.


Peace out, mahdoods

[Bacon]

Originally posted by twitch.tv/zutgorak:

If there was a way to prepay Digital Confectioners, such as kickstart or
similar, to start making "Depth 2" without promise of completion, just
a money back guarantee if it never came to fruition, would you fork out the
money?

I still havent got "No" as an answer to this question. Now, making a game isnt
cheap, no matter what shortcuts you take, especially not if you want a game
with good graphics, smooth feel etc etc etc .. list goes on but what about
doing some creative rehashing again? Use assets from Last Tide that are
available, plonk in the gameplay from Depth (no clue how the engines differ sadly)
take a drunken night to figure out a few new weapons to add aswell as maps, then throw
it at the wall and see if it sticks? All dependant on that monetary goal that
DC would have to set as they are the only ones to know what budget it would need.
And also of course, added a bit of that budget to take care of unforeseen
expenses or hires. Id gladly fork up 50 bucks as a pledge for that and I am fairly
sure that more people would.

We all were scammed with Last Tide, why would you misplace faith in DC by adding "a money back guarantee" to unfairly load your question?

Need to look at it like this:

1. Company makes game that is different than what is available, Depth.
2. Makes a spiritual spin off that spreads like wildfire in beta.
3. Lets buzz die down without adding voice(The real nail in the coffin for Last Tide was not being able to communicate at all with randos on your own team! But hey Discord is good enough right guys??? And who needs BR I want to hunt!!!)and therefore the game as well.
4. Depth players who were tricked into buying Last Tide were never given more than a small discount and skin. Deserved full refunds from DC who betrayed them.
5. DC decides to recycle LT content into depth(sign that LT is dead in the water and DC is trying to salvage what it can), hell they even recycle Depth content in Depth for the past few events by only changing item rarity instead of making a new item.
6. Can't fix bugs, old bugs, very very old bugs. Hey don't worry just come look at this tidal skin we are releasing as bathyl rarity this time!!!

They can not properly implement a create/maintain/extend cycle and this is what hurts because they created a good game, extend some features, but never maintained a clean functioning game so it never became one.

So that is why you must add "a money back guarantee" to your post because you know DC is untrustable either due to pure incompetence or malice.