Instant healing exploit and other complaints

[Doidld Tyatsmir]

I'd like to preface this by saying that none of this is said out of spite or maliciousness. I'm bitter, yes, but only because there's no nice way to put things.

There's been quite a lot of serious game-breaking bugs left in the game that Landfall has failed to address until forced to. The current most used one is the instant healing exploit which allows for, you guessed it, instant use of bandages and medkits. I personally do not know how to use it, but it's been extensively discussed in various TABG centric discord servers. There's even a recent video from a very well known user, who shall not be named, where he uses the exploit in the video itself.
Last time someone posted a video where they showed how to do the item duplication glitch they got banned. This is an understandable move on Landfall's part, considering the motivation of the exposure, but there's a rabbit hole that goes a bit deeper. The devs knew this problem was in the game for a very long time, even since OG TABG back in 2018. It's even worse that the more recent versions of TABG created new problems that the devs ALSO knew about and then didn't even bother to patch out until after the glitch was exposed. The healing bug, which has apparently also existed just as long (if not longer), is known to the devs. It is constantly abused by all levels of play that know about it. I don't want someone to have to publicly post the bug for everyone to see to get it fixed, because the game will be even more unplayable than it has previously.
This glitch in particular is abused in conjunction with other incredibly questionable balance changes (like making the Jarl Axe a one shot or giving the blunderbuss essentially no damage drop-off) to the point where players can effectively become invincible unless hit with another one-shot weapon. The only other one shot weapons? Skill guns like crossbows and flintlocks/muskets. If a glitch is being abused in the game to the point where it's indistinguishable from hacking, why aren't abusers banned in the same way hackers are supposed to be?
The longer Landfall ignores or sweeps things under the rug, the more likely we'll get a repeat of the duplication bug fiasco. Every time something like this happens, the devs become even more distant and unresponsive to the dedicated members of the community and get burned out. Don't try and put the cat back in the bag and punish anyone who happened to see it jump out. Fix your game already, it's been three and a half years. The loyal and dedicated playerbase that's kept this alive don't deserve to be neglected in this way, and it's shameful.

To wrap it up, I'll say this. I could go into the desync, the server issues, the brain rotting and pointless controversy that got the devs to ban white hats from the game, but I won't. I'm not a networking expert, so all I can say is get better servers. There'd be too much to read and I frankly don't have the patience to go that far but it deserves addressing. This is more about how Landfall as a studio handles their community in relation to these things. It's unprofessional and it erodes trust in completely irreparable ways, so it falls to Landfall to get that through their heads and change things. The reason the community is often so abrasive and bitter is because we're frankly treated badly and left with a broken product with no recourse or a single dev who will actually discuss things with us.

PS Please nerf the Jarl Axe and Blunderbuss I beg of you just listen to people who have played the game for more than two hours

PSS Don't ask me to join the discord or email you, because there's never any response or actual changes made. I tried that already.

[EDIT] PSSS PLEASE FIX HEALTH DESYNC TOO THIS IS AN ABYSMAL PROBLEM TO HAVE AND ONLY GETS WORSE WITH EVERY UPDATE

[Doidld Tyatsmir]

Originally posted by Botten Hanna:

Hi! Thank you, we appreciate honest feedback like this even if it doesn’t make us out to be the best devs.

The devs are aware of the exploits, I can even say that there have been attempts at fixing them but we haven’t found a solution yet.

TABG has mostly been a side project - and not worked on at all in 2019 when we were focusing on TABS. Initially it was never meant to be updated at all or go free to play.

It remained a side project up until right before the free to play launch where all the devs spent their time on the content needed for that launch. And currently there are only 1-2 people are working on the game.

This isn’t me trying to excuse these bugs but just providing some context as to why they haven’t been fixed.

Hopefully now with the reporting system we can also ban some users that repeatedly use exploits that make the game worse for others. It’s currently only collecting reports until the anti-cheat team can give us access to act on them.

Lastly, I’m sorry you don’t feel like your complains have been heard. We do read everything that get sent to us and save threads about bugs so that we can look into them. It’s on me that we haven’t communicated this better to you.

I genuinely appreciate your response, Hana. If it's not too much, while I have your attention, I'd like to address some general problems I think could be worked on mostly in relation to the community.

A lot of us, especially us long-time players, strongly feel like there is a severe lack of transparency when it comes to reasons behind changes (balance, bugs, etc) or lack thereof. I won't bore you with a laundry list of specifics, but Deception and Brawl not being re-released are two I feel obligated to bring up just as examples. It's fairly well established that these are complete or at least near-completed game modes, but have been pushed aside or outright shut down when asked about. Even then, we get no explanation as to why, which makes things worse. A big frustration is that, when we get updates, the momentum is not capitalized on, and the spikes in player numbers fall very quickly. We understand you guys work on other games and projects all the time, but there just isn't ANY communication with the community at large in the interim. There is really a lot of wasted potential to keep good relations and smooth over the current bitterness just by letting us know what's up.

As a bit of a tangent, I know a lot of us old and new players would love to see those two game modes (Brawl and Deception) come back, and would absolutely bring in a new group that would likely stay just for Brawl. I'm no game dev, but as a known and active community member, I can say the majority of people would be happy if that's the only change you all ever made to the game for the rest of time.

In the end, I'll keep it as honest as I have thus far. TABG has slowly been moving in a better direction, but a good game with poor dev-to-community/community-to-dev relations can only go so far. There is a lot that can be done, and nobody thinks the game can be perfected overnight. However, we would all greatly appreciate it if the devs listened to community input, especially from more seasoned players, and took it seriously. TABG is a joke game with a lot of potential to be something way more than that, and I think you guys can achieve it if you really wanted to.

Sorry, this response ended up being longer than intended, but I think it did need to be put out there. Consider it part 2 of the original post, I guess? Anyways, I sincerely thank you again for responding. I honestly didn't think any of you would, but it's appreciated.

[Doidld Tyatsmir]

Originally posted by Nathrakh:

Thanks for replying to threads Hanna!
Most of us understand that TABG is a small project and lots of issues come from the small scope of the game, not devs being bad devs.
I'm hoping Landfall is open to the possibility of expanding on TABG more in the long term or even hiring more devs for it. The game may not be very polished but it's a REALLY good foundation and has loads of potential to blow up / become way better. I describe it as feeling like an alpha still, but an alpha for a game that could be incredibly good when finished.

I agree on this. There's tons of potential, especially outside of the battle royale mode, but the game is absolutely in an alpha state, maybe beta at best. The full release doesn't feel meaningfully different from the betas that came before it besides now being monetized. Would love to see the game get the attention it deserves.

[Botten Hanna]

Originally posted by PAID SMUCKERS REPRESENTATIVE:

Originally posted by Botten Hanna:

Hi! Thank you, we appreciate honest feedback like this even if it doesn’t make us out to be the best devs.

The devs are aware of the exploits, I can even say that there have been attempts at fixing them but we haven’t found a solution yet.

TABG has mostly been a side project - and not worked on at all in 2019 when we were focusing on TABS. Initially it was never meant to be updated at all or go free to play.

It remained a side project up until right before the free to play launch where all the devs spent their time on the content needed for that launch. And currently there are only 1-2 people are working on the game.

This isn’t me trying to excuse these bugs but just providing some context as to why they haven’t been fixed.

Hopefully now with the reporting system we can also ban some users that repeatedly use exploits that make the game worse for others. It’s currently only collecting reports until the anti-cheat team can give us access to act on them.

Lastly, I’m sorry you don’t feel like your complains have been heard. We do read everything that get sent to us and save threads about bugs so that we can look into them. It’s on me that we haven’t communicated this better to you.

I genuinely appreciate your response, Hana. If it's not too much, while I have your attention, I'd like to address some general problems I think could be worked on mostly in relation to the community.

A lot of us, especially us long-time players, strongly feel like there is a severe lack of transparency when it comes to reasons behind changes (balance, bugs, etc) or lack thereof. I won't bore you with a laundry list of specifics, but Deception and Brawl not being re-released are two I feel obligated to bring up just as examples. It's fairly well established that these are complete or at least near-completed game modes, but have been pushed aside or outright shut down when asked about. Even then, we get no explanation as to why, which makes things worse. A big frustration is that, when we get updates, the momentum is not capitalized on, and the spikes in player numbers fall very quickly. We understand you guys work on other games and projects all the time, but there just isn't ANY communication with the community at large in the interim. There is really a lot of wasted potential to keep good relations and smooth over the current bitterness just by letting us know what's up.

As a bit of a tangent, I know a lot of us old and new players would love to see those two game modes (Brawl and Deception) come back, and would absolutely bring in a new group that would likely stay just for Brawl. I'm no game dev, but as a known and active community member, I can say the majority of people would be happy if that's the only change you all ever made to the game for the rest of time.

In the end, I'll keep it as honest as I have thus far. TABG has slowly been moving in a better direction, but a good game with poor dev-to-community/community-to-dev relations can only go so far. There is a lot that can be done, and nobody thinks the game can be perfected overnight. However, we would all greatly appreciate it if the devs listened to community input, especially from more seasoned players, and took it seriously. TABG is a joke game with a lot of potential to be something way more than that, and I think you guys can achieve it if you really wanted to.

Sorry, this response ended up being longer than intended, but I think it did need to be put out there. Consider it part 2 of the original post, I guess? Anyways, I sincerely thank you again for responding. I honestly didn't think any of you would, but it's appreciated.

Hi!

So I’m sorry that you feel there has been a lack of transparency, let me try to address the different points.

Brawl mode: Was nearly finished before we revamped the entire game for free to play. The decision was made to put it on hold until we knew how the free to play launch went - if enough players were populating the normal game mode we wanted to finish Brawl and put it in the game. Unfortunately there aren’t enough players. I think I have put this in one of the announcements (currently on mobile otherwise I would try and find it).

Deception: Was never anything we promised would be released, it was a test to see if we could make a deception game - using TABG to test it. In the end it wasn’t as fun of an experience to play as we wanted it to be and with the F2P launch coming closer it was scrapped. This has been discussed on the Discord but not in an announcement since it was never officially announced or tested.

Balance: The new balance changes were made (from what I know) with input from the community - looking at threads and discussing it with long time players on the discord and in chat groups. If you saw the patch notes each balance change was listed, explaining each one would be excessive.

Momentum: the TABG team is currently 1-3 people, once an update is done they have to be firefighters and fixing bugs - when the last update was out they were finally able to take their first time off this year. They have been working on TABG non stop for the past couple of months.

With the relaunch our plan was to up that momentum with launching the shop and battlepass + updates. We had another studio lined up to work on the shop and battlepass + some content. But two weeks before launch we looked at their work and weren’t satisfied - it wasn’t good enough so we had to redo it all ourselves. This kind of stumped our momentum as the core team that was supposed to work on updates and fun things now were stuck with UI and building the shop.
This us also why things like the weapons skins are unlikely to be added to the game - it was part of the other studios work.

As for the lack of communication on these issues - I apologize. It has been hard to talk about things like the other studio getting dropped because they really are a great bunch - and we wouldn’t want to send any bad PR/hate their way.


We want the game to be great, we just lack the numbers in our team and hiring has so far not panned out and isn’t something we’re likely to try again.

Also once again - not excusing any bad experience you have had here - just providing context and explanations :)