An open letter to Fen Research/Andrew Gower

[Arboknokia]

Dear Andrew Gower/Fen Research

I’m writing this with a mix of frustration and concern, but also because I still believe there’s potential buried underneath what Brighter Shores is today. The truth is, though, that as it stands, the game is not sustainable. The foundation is weak — from core gameplay systems to design philosophy — and unless the game is restructured from the ground up, no amount of added content or new hires will change the outcome. The assets can stay, but the systems, mechanics, and direction all need to be rebuilt.

Combat is one of the most glaring issues. Right now it feels like a coin toss — entirely dependent on stats and RNG, with little to no meaningful interaction. Removing episodic combat didn’t fix anything at the core level. It was just months of development spent adjusting the presentation, not the problem. If Brighter Shores ever wants to be seen as a real MMO, let alone a compelling one, combat needs to be the top priority — not shelved indefinitely.

Itemization is equally shallow. Nearly every drop is just a resized or recolored version of something else. There’s no identity, no sense of discovery or excitement. It comes across as corner-cutting — not from lack of talent, but from a lack of intent. Variety and detail are sacrificed in favor of asset efficiency, and players feel it.

Skills have no meaningful integration. You train for the sake of raising a number, but there’s no tangible purpose or synergy — nothing that ties back into the economy or the world around you. And speaking of economy: there isn’t one. Trading doesn’t exist. Vendors sell everything. There’s no reason to gather, no reason to craft beyond personal satisfaction, and no way for a player-driven world to form.

That absence of interconnection is what truly separates Brighter Shores from RuneScape — and this is what’s so difficult to come to terms with. It’s hard to understand how a studio that helped define RuneScape's success can’t (or won’t) acknowledge that Brighter Shores is missing the very foundation that made RuneScape work. RuneScape thrives because its systems — skills, combat, economy, player interaction — are woven together in meaningful ways. Everything feeds into everything else. In Brighter Shores, nothing really connects.

The chat system actively discourages interaction. Simple words are censored, messages are blocked, and socializing is awkward. This isn't an MMO in practice — it’s a single-player game where other people happen to exist in the same space. There’s no incentive to engage with anyone. No shared goals. No feeling of a living world.

And all of this is made worse by how Brighter Shores continues to add content to an unstable base. This is not building — this is stacking. And eventually, it's going to collapse. More quests, more events, more systems won't help if they’re being tacked onto a fundamentally flawed core. That’s how you end up with a convoluted, bloated game that’s impossible to fix later.

It’s not just about the features. It’s about the approach. The reality is that Brighter Shores still feels like a tech demo for the FenForge engine — something that exists to show what’s possible, not something that’s designed to be playable long-term. And while the art direction and potential are there, the direction is missing. There's no roadmap. No transparency. No clear vision. Just a vague promise that things are "in progress," while the player count steadily drops and frustration grows.

Even the reasoning around delays — like the Online Safety Act — feels mismanaged. That should never have taken development time away from actual features. It should have been handled by an external hire. Instead, it's used as justification for months of silence and lack of progress. That kind of excuse doesn’t inspire confidence — it chips away at it.

The anonymous high scores, hidden player info, the lack of name visibility — these features do nothing but isolate players in a genre that depends on social connection. RuneScape doesn’t need this level of detachment, and neither does Brighter Shores. You can’t call it an MMORPG if the very systems that make MMOs work — identity, economy, communication — are either broken or missing.

And then there’s the attitude. The recent emotionally charged tweets, statements made on livestreams admitting that player feedback is being ignored — it’s not just disappointing, it’s damaging. A game cannot survive when the team behind it seems unwilling to listen, reflect, or adapt. This isn’t about a vendetta — this is about trust. And right now, that trust is breaking.

The current direction is not sustainable. More content won’t fix it. More staff won’t fix it. The game needs to go offline, be rebuilt from the ground up using the assets you already have, and come back with a clear, meaningful identity. One where combat works. Where systems connect. Where community matters. Where being an MMO actually means something.

Brighter Shores is at a crossroads. The question now is whether FenResearch is willing to do what’s necessary — not just what’s easy — to save it. If not, it’ll continue to fade until all that’s left is an empty shell with a good engine and nothing left to offer.

Sincerely,

Playerbase

[Fogmoz]

Uhh hate to say it but this looks like you’re just trying to farm points. Nothing in this is new. It reminds me of that one user who kept posting chat gpt slop.

Signing it as ‘playerbase’ gave me a chuckle though, so thanks for that I guess.

[Amor fati]

Were cooked chat

[Greb]

If you were really upset you could have printed out 100,000 of these as flyers and then chartered a plane / helicopter tour above Cambridge before dumping them out all at once somewhere over Fen HQ.

That'll show 'em. Go down in history and then they'll immortalise you as a low level boss new players get to beat up in the Hopeport sparring room, lol.

[Omega Haxors]

I lost what little faith I had in the game when I wrote out a constructive comment and poured my heart out into it, and they unceremoniously deleted it. I didn't break any rules, they just didn't like what I had to say so made it go away. They genuinely don't give a rats ass about us and it shows. Seems they'd much rather be surrounded by yes-men than have a successful product, and that's their prerogative, but i'm not going to be a part of that.

Between the developers, the cults, and the censorship, there's such a huge chilling effect that makes people afraid to speak their mind so good luck trying to make any meaningful connections here. It's all just shallow "what can you do for me" relationships or people love-bombing you so they can get you to join their cult, and turn nasty on you when you say no.

Overall it's not 'over' but there's going to have to be a LOT of maturing on ALL fronts before this game is in an even remotely playable state. Give them two or three years to figure it out.

[Nico Yazawa]

Originally posted by Omega Haxors:

I lost what little faith I had in the game when I wrote out a constructive comment and poured my heart out into it, and they unceremoniously deleted it. I didn't break any rules, they just didn't like what I had to say so made it go away. They genuinely don't give a rats ass about us and it shows. Seems they'd much rather be surrounded by yes-men than have a successful product, and that's their prerogative, but i'm not going to be a part of that.

Between the developers, the cults, and the censorship, there's such a huge chilling effect that makes people afraid to speak their mind so good luck trying to make any meaningful connections here. It's all just shallow "what can you do for me" relationships or people love-bombing you so they can get you to join their cult, and turn nasty on you when you say no.

Overall it's not 'over' but there's going to have to be a LOT of maturing on ALL fronts before this game is in an even remotely playable state. Give them two or three years to figure it out.

And yet you're still in game, with a total level higher than 95% of the playerbase.

[EuroCrossNA]

Originally posted by Omega Haxors:

I lost what little faith I had in the game when I wrote out a constructive comment and poured my heart out into it, and they unceremoniously deleted it. I didn't break any rules, they just didn't like what I had to say so made it go away. They genuinely don't give a rats ass about us and it shows. Seems they'd much rather be surrounded by yes-men than have a successful product, and that's their prerogative, but i'm not going to be a part of that.

Between the developers, the cults, and the censorship, there's such a huge chilling effect that makes people afraid to speak their mind so good luck trying to make any meaningful connections here. It's all just shallow "what can you do for me" relationships or people love-bombing you so they can get you to join their cult, and turn nasty on you when you say no.

Overall it's not 'over' but there's going to have to be a LOT of maturing on ALL fronts before this game is in an even remotely playable state. Give them two or three years to figure it out.

LOL. Have you seen the discussions?? A majority of it is literally suggestions, criticism, and comments on what could be changed, and most of it is negative. I do feel like a lot of it is trolls tho. To say that they are censoring steam discussions is just plain ignorant. Fen doesn't even put any time into moderating it. It is a few volunteers and valve employees that mod reported comments.

BTW I think I saw your comment that got deleted. It definitely was not a constructive comment and was just hurling insults at the devs and player base. I can see why it got deleted.

[GafferGragz]

Meh! AI generated crap.

[GafferGragz]

The first blunder was to have F2P bc that enables all trolls and grifters to take control of forums and take the content down. Inn this market of plenty, one need to be bold. Not that the mechanics of the game would have been better.
The grinding format today need to be supported of other content and diversity of tasks and places to do said tasks and grinding.
The most limiting shackle is the 'enemy' you need to fight to the end. its no progression with varying scenery and progressive enemies, just a 'ring' of progression you have to do again and again. Where is the dungeons? Its a trail of a magic menace going through the chapters, there should have been a dungeon around a chapter boss. Where is the boss loot.
The map consist of 'cells' of areas but with a choked connectivity between, This is to slow down your gathering etc, why is this needed? with 500 lvls and an xp rate that falls exponential a freedom of how and where to go through the map would be so stress releasing.

To myself, the two skills I enjoyed blissfully is where you find and collect ingredients for potions and cooking and bone crafting, bc this brings you all over the place.
One thing I said early on was that the game need to implement a Slayer type of activity. I think that now also but stronger.
No bank system?? Why? There is a storage system etc but to see what you have you need to travel a lot,
The drop off 'sever lids' are nice, same with the quartermaster magic wardrobe.
The afk xp and resource gathering system is the best feature of the whole game,

All things considered, even if i'm a hardcore skiller (RS lvl 99 all skills) this is a game not fitting and for me. All the activities (except two) are too choked. I feel cackled and not free to wonder.

I give thanks to the community that actually engaged productively in the early access (EA is a company, stupid) I did enjoy to see a few that did grow by the interactions.

GafferGragz

[Blessed™]

hawnestly i think they stopped reading the steam forums so i hope you sent them an email.

[XJ9]

This post is just hind sight 50/50.

You can go back on my history of comments on this discussions, and since the day it was announced, I've said episodic combat isn't the core issue of the game, and that they need to add specials and a higher intensity of combat.

So many people got what they wanted, never came back or simply moved onto the next thing.

[BluZzz]

I feel the same about the multiplayer thing. I never feel so alone in a multiplayer, full of ghost that almost never reply back. I can not tell if someone it's a player, NPC, afk player, a bot?
Or its multiplayer or its not. But this hybrid that have the worst of every choice its not fun and feels wrong

[Omega Haxors]

Why bother putting effort into typing a response if some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥'s just going to delete it? They won't do anything about outright abusive behavior but will delete/block/censor random stuff for literally no reason. It's completely absurd. This isn't a left vs right issue, nobody likes their freedom of speech being stifled, and unlike me whose response to injustice is to shout louder, most are just going to meekly go quiet and leave for greener pastures.

[Nico Yazawa]

Originally posted by Omega Haxors:

Why bother putting effort into typing a response if some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥'s just going to delete it? They won't do anything about outright abusive behavior but will delete/block/censor random stuff for literally no reason. It's completely absurd. This isn't a left vs right issue, nobody likes their freedom of speech being stifled, and unlike me whose response to injustice is to shout louder, most are just going to meekly go quiet and leave for greener pastures.

"Nobody likes their freedom of speech being stifled"

So why do you report people?

[EuroCrossNA]

Originally posted by Omega Haxors:

Why bother putting effort into typing a response if some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥'s just going to delete it? They won't do anything about outright abusive behavior but will delete/block/censor random stuff for literally no reason. It's completely absurd. This isn't a left vs right issue, nobody likes their freedom of speech being stifled, and unlike me whose response to injustice is to shout louder, most are just going to meekly go quiet and leave for greener pastures.

I think you need to take a break from the internet and the game bud. No one is trying to censor you.

[m3lt0n]

I agree with the original post. Well said!

This game is suffering from Early Release kickback. Where they thought it was a good idea to let people in, but in reality they were so far from having a good product that now Early Access is going to be the death of it.

People bringing up F2P vs. P2P is annoying. Look how many F2P games are incredibly successful, and paying doesn't make you special.