Everything that is wrong with Last Oasis. An open letter to the devs

[Schmuserkadse]

Dear Donkey Crew,
I am a huge fan of your survival game “Last Oasis”. I started playing this game when it first
released with some real life friends of mine. We ventured in a small group of 5-7 people into the desert, where we wanted to explore the world, unlock new wisdoms, trade and mainly to fight and conquer whole oasis. Sadly we had to realize very early on, that this does not reflect the reality in LO. I gathered some points, problems and ideas in the hope, that you will find the time to read, reflect and discuss about. First lets start with the positive developments that LO took especially in Season 2:

1.
The Trading system is very well implemented and gives Solos and smaller groups a chance to gather gear and tablets without having to risk it all. Tablets are just so much easier to acquire for smaller groups and so me and my friends worked together to gather enough tablets to acquire the wingsuit with no problems.

2.
The regular content updates deliver interesting changes and additions to the game(poaching hut, firebombs, new walkers etc.). We are always happy to see new content hitting the servers so that we as a smaller group have more possibilities to stand against the big zergs.

3.
The fighting system is very well polished for a survival came of this calibre. It depends mainly on skill and not on the equipment and gives a high skill ceiling for players that dare to explore. Unfortunately most of these mechanics and many more are flawed, which I will explore now furthermore: Firstly lets take a look at the Player numbers of Last Oasis. Before Season 2 hit the servers the average player base was about 400 players strong. Now that Season 2 is here we can see that around 6000 people started playing but today we are at around 3000 players, with a tendency to sink. Furthermore we can see that the diversity continues to perish and more and more players start to join one of the about 5 big clans on the EU Server, which dominate the world map.

So we have to ask ourselves why the game looses its players (Or rather lost its players) and why the diversity of clans still decreases. The current player base claims, that this solely lies in the endgame content and bugs. But the game is now mainly played by the players that are in big zerg clans, which achieved the endgame content (Schmetterling-walker, Iron weapons, proxy-walker and clan wars) in a mere week. As an example I want to illustrate this on the first day of season 2, where the first flaw of the trading system showed its face. After around 12 hours the first proxys were created, because 20 tablets and 100k flots for the license are not even a small challenge for a clan with 50 people in it(which btw is a lot more but I will explore that problem later). If you calculate what every member has to deliver to the clan for the license you get to around 4000 flots for every member. That's 1 hard quest or 2 medium quests per person. The next problem lies in the auctions. The acquirement of flots is no problem for bigger clan which also shows in the auctions. If a tablet strongbox is sold for 70k on the third day of the wipe, there has to be a problem. Now you could certainly see the failure in the trading system, but that would just be superficial, the real problem lies deeper within the core design decisions of the game. But that will be explored later on. The next problem lies within the Fighting System. As I mentioned before: I really love the fighting system and think that it relies heavily on skill to overcome an enemy. But the problem is, that the fair 1v1 2v2 3v3 fight never really occurs. It always is a numbers game. Who brings more guys with more swords to a fight. It doesn't matter if no one can fight but if I bring 30 people and you only bring 10 I win. That's not fair and not fun and just brings more frustration into the game. These situation never should occur. This perpetual motion of unfairness drives the players away from the game. If you would take a look at the EU server you would see a lot of blue oasis. Around 10-15. I want to explain this problem on the multi zerg clan Uganda, but it can be found in many other clans. You could think it is a coincidence that many clans chose the colour of blue. But it is not. One big clan controls all of these oasis. How can that be? How can 50 people fight against so many others and still dominate the oasis and successfully hold all of them? They can't. Because they are not only 50 People they are around 300. Divided into more than one clan to surpass the hard clan cap of 50. The introduction of the hard clan cap has changed nothing. It hasn't addressed the zerg problem, because as you can see: We still have them. The big clans have just structured themselves into many 50 man clans to dominate the world map. Another game mechanic that does not work in any intended way is the proxy walker. This walker should be used as a mobile base for the governing clan. There should be fights around the proxy walker and it should be able to be attacked. The sad reality looks a little bit different. First of all are the proxy walkers built without their legs. Why? Because that would take up to much space. Because every proxy walker is built in into a multi layered stone base. Meaning that anyone that wants to try to destroy it has to first surpass the stone base and then can attack the proxy walker. The sad reality is that the clan that builds the proxy first wins and the other has a hard time to clear the proxy from the oasis. Oasis are very seldom exchanged between clans, which I believe drivesout a chance for a dynamic gameplay.

What problem do I want to point out with all of this? Last Oasis attracts the wrong player base and subsidizes them. At the moment the player base consists of mostly huge gaming Community guilds, which consists of more than a 100 members or even 500 members. These people do not belong into a survival sandbox pvp game, because they destroy the joy and motivation for every other player that does not belong to them. It is no wonder that from the 30000 people that started playing this game at the beginning 99.99% left. Although the game has had a surge of players in recent days, we have to wonder how long it will take until everyone leaves again out of frustration. The game is in a devil's cycle: There are solos, small groups and big zergs. The solos are at the bottom of the food chain, because they have no number advantage in fights. The smaller groups can't do anything about the big zergs and thats why they only attack the solos and duos. That leads to the perishing of these people out of frustration, or they join into one of the big zerg clans. Now that the small groups have no one to fight against, they get owned by the zergs and the same fate as the one with the solos now lies within them. Our group which counts itself as one of the small group clans has now come to the point where we have to decide if we want to continue playing the game, or if we want to join one of the big zergs.

Another problem also lies within this theme. Because solos and smaller groups have to ask
themselves very quickly: “What now?” A big part of the content is locked for these people. Big walkers make no sense, because that only paints a bigger target on your back for the big clans. The proxy is not worth for 90% of the players, because there is no chance to destroy one or to beat a bigger clan to the race towards a freshly spawned oasis. And if they get to build their proxy it will be destroyed shortly after by a big zerg alliance of 300 people. And thats only 2 of the countless parts of the game that is just not achievable for these kinds of players. The solution for all these problems is very simple. We need rules that limit players. For this only take a look at other big titles in the genre like Ark, Rust or Conan Exiles. In these titles the players have the choice between PvP Servers, PvE Servers or community Servers. There also are clear restriction for a clan cap and bulding limits. On community servers there are even harsher rule, so that everyone can have fun playing the game. For example there are servers in Rust where you can only be solo,duo or trio in your group. And in conan exiles the Clan cap lies at 8. Last Oasis gives you no choice in that regard. You have to be in a big zerg clan if you want to experience the game fully and if you want to have any fun playing(If you can even call it fun playing in an anonymous mass). Thats why the game has to implement some kind of building restrictions and lower clan caps.

So in my opinion and in the opinion of many other players the implementation of a lower clan cap would be the only solution for the problems the game is having right now. A clan cap, that would be bigger than 10 would lead to the continuation of the many problems that are already existent and would frustrate the players furthermore and would drive them to quit once again. If this clan cap would be implemented the big zergs would certainly leave the game and the big fights would be missing from the game. To circumvent this problem one could think about implementing a diplomacy system between the clans. There could be for example peace deals, alliances, trade deals and decelerations of war. Why a diplomacy system would be better than a big amalgamation of players in many big clans would be individuality and diversity. No one can say that he would enjoy to play with 50 people in one discord channel while being in a fight or while farming. Furthermore no one can say that he has 49 other people with whom he would consider himself friends and that also play LO. Every small group would be playing inside their friend group and could coordinate themselves with other small groups to achieve greater goals, without disappearing in a big zerg clan. The only right decision would be to limit the clan cap to 10 and to set a limit to allied clans to 5. So that you would be in an alliance with max 50 people. And one also had to get rid of the big zerg clans.

The consequences of this implementation would look like the following:
At the beginning a huge chunk of the current player base(nearly all zerg clans) would leave the game. For them a huge amount of solos, duos, trios and smaller groups would join the game and would come back to the game. In this way you could have a more consistent player base and could attract more people, as you can see by the success of the earlier mentioned games in the genre. Next the interactions between players would increase drasticly, because there would be much more to do, because there are now more clans that you can go to war with, form alliances or trade with. Also there would be a lot more diversity on the world map. It should be a challenge for a clan to hold one, max two oasis. The oasis could be exchanged multiple times weekly and the game would gain a lot of dynamic which it lacks at the moment. Also because of that the governing group of an oasis would be incentivised more to protect their farmers and settler, because the value of resources would increase drasticly now that you don't have a hoard of 100 farmers.

It also would be nearly impossible for a clan to achieve a monopoly on something like tablets, where they would be able to sell them below 5k, just because they camp a big fabricator 24/7. The Trade would be incentivised and more players would be able to bid on auctions with a realistic chance of winning.The endgame wouldn't be achieved in a week like it is now and a big walker like a domus would now have a bigger meaning.

There still would be big clan wars, if not as big as before, but with more coordination.
The mentioned “Risk and Reward” principle would also get a whole new meaning with these changes for the game. All these aspects are just some of the benefits the game would receive by reducing the clan cap and there are many more to count. We are whole heartedly convinced that a majority of players would love these changes and that the only people against it would be a minority in the zergs with very loud voices that would certainly be against the reducing of the clan cap.

We love this game. We love the atmosphere and the idea behind Last Oasis and we want the game to be a successful game. We only wish the best for Last Oasis and want to have fun playing. We are very worried about the current and the future state of the game, why we took a long time to type this message. We hope that we could reach someone and that this message could be a food for thought. We would be delighted to get an answer from you donkey crew and we want to help to steer the game in a right direction in which it has a future for more players that could have fun playing this
game.

[Dreckiger Dan]

i do totally agree with all points. just add hard cap of 10 to remove most of LO problems

[TrueJacob]

wow this is a bold move.
but I suggest more: implement a "skill cap", that every player can only learn a limited amount of fragments and tablets. give us the means to reset single points of the tech tree (similar to the wanderers potion) and you really get an economy running, bc not every player can craft and build everything, hell, even if all 10 members of one clan specialize, they should not be able to craft and build everything.
force the clans to interact, to trade, to fight over resources and crafted goods...

[Barry Soetoro]

Fun fact, from all survival titles mentioned above, LO is the only one having such punishing combat while outnumbered. 1v2, 1v3 nearly impossible to win these fights, due to simplistic combat that is based on sparring. Which gives you an idea for who game was made from get go.
Any solo/duo who are playing the game are PVE mode automatically, cuz the impact they are capable to inflict vs clans is literally 0.

That said, you are totally right that small groups are here just for big clan delight.
But the idea of limiting clan to 10 won't work and it has been discussed many times, they need to achieve condition so that small group aren't useless even against zerg, that skill cap is a thing and being in huge group has not only advantages but also disadvantages, both direct and indirect.

[Bodygank]

Originally posted by Barry Soetoro:

LO is the only one having such punishing combat while outnumbered. 1v2, 1v3 nearly impossible to win these fights,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqf419CME0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdyHpQldLa4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TKdKdKs2gw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjG_jDib--E

[Zothen]

Originally posted by Schmuserkadse:

What problem do I want to point out with all of this? Last Oasis attracts the wrong player base and subsidizes them. At the moment the player base consists of mostly huge gaming Community guilds, which consists of more than a 100 members or even 500 members. These people do not belong into a survival sandbox pvp game, because they destroy the joy and motivation for every other player that does not belong to them.

Youre wrong. LO was/is specifically geared towards large-scale groups. (if it can work or not is a different question). The solo c rap and small groups, that demand their own favorite dish delievered, are those that are wrong in this game.

Wont even start to debuke the other false assumptions about the game.
("uhuh-clan cap didnt work, lets make an even smaller clan cap....." *facepalm*)

Also - no dev reading here anyway.

[Barry Soetoro]

Originally posted by Bodygank (6thAB-S):

Originally posted by Barry Soetoro:

LO is the only one having such punishing combat while outnumbered. 1v2, 1v3 nearly impossible to win these fights,

1

You kill 2, they res, you kill 3, they res. Oh, whats happening with your hp? thats right it about to reach ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 0, and once you die and res you gonna get farmed.
Combat is slow paced, and that is why even if you "win" couple of little mid-fights, at the end they're gonna get objective without any issue.

In other titles when win these little fights you're always building up an advantage, loot from corpses are a thing and kits they're spawning with are limited unlike in LO(most resources are nothing in this game), every minute is on the line and you can break enemy base, stop them from spawning, etc.

[Invisible]

Originally posted by Barry Soetoro:

Fun fact, from all survival titles mentioned above, LO is the only one having such punishing combat while outnumbered. 1v2, 1v3 nearly impossible to win these fights, due to simplistic combat that is based on sparring. Which gives you an idea for who game was made from get go.
Any solo/duo who are playing the game are PVE mode automatically, cuz the impact they are capable to inflict vs clans is literally 0.

That said, you are totally right that small groups are here just for big clan delight.
But the idea of limiting clan to 10 won't work and it has been discussed many times, they need to achieve condition so that small group aren't useless even against zerg, that skill cap is a thing and being in huge group has not only advantages but also disadvantages, both direct and indirect.

lol it's quite the opposite.

[Schmuserkadse]

Originally posted by Zothen:

Originally posted by Schmuserkadse:

What problem do I want to point out with all of this? Last Oasis attracts the wrong player base and subsidizes them. At the moment the player base consists of mostly huge gaming Community guilds, which consists of more than a 100 members or even 500 members. These people do not belong into a survival sandbox pvp game, because they destroy the joy and motivation for every other player that does not belong to them.

Youre wrong. LO was/is specifically geared towards large-scale groups. (if it can work or not is a different question). The solo c rap and small groups, that demand their own favorite dish delievered, are those that are wrong in this game.

Wont even start to debuke the other false assumptions about the game.
("uhuh-clan cap didnt work, lets make an even smaller clan cap....." *facepalm*)

Also - no dev reading here anyway.

Explain further or do not bother to type at all