devs thinks "players mostly love/like schematics"

[πｮmrυﾔ]

yesterday i was on lo discord and devs writing/reply time to time for comments which written by their player base.They clearly statement that schematic system is ok and will go like this with little tweaks . when we ask and criticize it then their response is harsh.

I guess they dont like when you criticizing this new schematic system.Responses we got are weird ,like "how did you decide that players doesnt like it mostly ?" I can say that they dont wanna see negative comments about it if they dont like it (about this schematic system ,i am not talking generally) and when i gave referances like discord gaming communitys ,clans , reddit ,other gaming forum platforms or steam forums ,they ignore) .

So as i said we dont have any calculation system about who doesnt like or like but you can make polls and see yourself.Also at least we can calculate general player base is decrasing again and in little future it will return where it was...

i guess ppl who dont like new system partly or fully (myself "partly") need to write official forums and discord so they couldnt ignore.

english is not my main language so i am sorry for grammer mistakes

[Zothen]

They seem to live in their very own bubble. So doubt anything will change it.

[chadzTheDonkey]

This is incorrect. Here is what I actually said:

there's a bunch of people that hate the schematics. there's a bunch of people that like the schematics. and there's a whole bunch of people inbetween. no point jumping to conclusions based on individual opinions. we're aware of the complaints, we're monitoring what's happening, and once the level of discussion has normalized, we'll take steps to improve it

[Summanus]

Originally posted by chadzTheDonkey:

This is incorrect. Here is what I actually said:

there's a bunch of people that hate the schematics. there's a bunch of people that like the schematics. and there's a whole bunch of people inbetween. no point jumping to conclusions based on individual opinions. we're aware of the complaints, we're monitoring what's happening, and once the level of discussion has normalized, we'll take steps to improve it

When Season 5 began and before the free weekend you had concurrent player count peaks on Steam of about 4400, which rose to over 6000 during the free weekend, and now has fallen by well over 50% along with the Steam review score which has also fallen dramatically. Many of those negative reviews pointed to the insane new grind and the RNG schematics scheme as one of the major reasons for their downvote (along with the general new direction of the game away from nomadic towards tower defense). I'd say thats a little more than "a bunch of people" - its over half your potential audience. It concerns me that you don't seem to fully appreciate the impact this new direction is having on dividing your potential playerbase. And you had plenty of warning about it before you implemented the changes.

I thought the goal of this revamp was to try to get back to levels like the 2020 release player count peaks of 33,000 - not to just have yet another season where it hangs at about 2500 for a short time and then inevitably starts to plummet again. You are never going to achieve that by knowingly alienating half your playerbase. If an idea has only a 50% approval rating amongst your customers, its generally a good idea not to implement it.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I have mixed feelings on schematics. Recently, my group had what I think is a bit of ideal gameplay for schematics: we were out of spinners, figured out Nurr Raiders drop spinners, and went on a winding journey on a ballista Tobaggon to farm the little bastards. The kills felt rewarding, since we got items we definitely needed, and we had and achieved a specific objective that was not just 'get more wood'. And that was great and all, schematics legitimately added to the game there. A lot of schematics make raiding a camp a much more rewarding experience than just getting more rupu vine. Like I'm happy every time I loot a walker climber, and I always need more Rawbone Mauls and Heavy Axes.

But our more typical experience with schematics is as an unending flood of inventory spam, stuff you do not want or need in endless variety. Even if you decide to stop using loot all and manually pick up all your loot to avoid most schematics you are still stuck doing inventory shuffling - loot objects simply automatically populate into your inventory anyway from urns,totems, etc. 99% of the time schematics range between annoyance to work. One of our (small) group who didn't buy in after the free trial cited schematics as being 'way too fiddly' as a big factor in not continuing to play.

That flood of schematics turns into a tsunami when you hit up quality maps... most objects there are common (for some reason?) and so you have literally double the amount of schematics potentially flooding your inventory. Literally cannot handle all the loot, and managing it is time consuming.

The schematic bag is in a weird place too. Sure, it helps a bit, but it is *always* overwhelmed by how many schematics you pick up. And the icons on the schematics are zoomed out to an impractical degree just so it can fit enough of them to be useful. Gotta squint to even know what you have! Which is probably 200 Sharp Ammos you didn't want in the first place.

There's also some minor critique with drop balance of schematics. Like the hard part of getting a medium walker is the legs/wings, which is weird and totally opaque to players building them for the first time. (Even if you fix the tooltips, 90% of people are only going to figure this out when their built Stiletto says 'Needs a medium leg blueprint...). On the other end of things, Way way way too many rigs drop compared to how many are needed, leading theoretically valuable loot to be more trash. Stuff like that. Those are fixable balance issues rather than design issues though.

Let me put it another way. Despite that you can churn schematics into flots at the trade station, people are constantly just throwing schematics away. The inconvenience and annoyance is bad enough that we constantly just throw away free money!

Shrines did not help the parts of schematics that are frustrating and detract from the game, at least not for me. Leaving aside that they actually *increased* grind and disfavor solo players, they did nothing to control inventory spam. I'll note I've repeatedly seen people give advice in map chat to do things like not make any rawbone axes at all in canyon until you get to 10 - people are literally just still using stone axes despite having the schematic.

To be a little constructive after that negativity:

I would make 'baseline' stuff not use schematics at all or greatly expand the use of multipurpose blueprints. Schematics should focus on stuff that's *rewarding*, not necessary. Weapons, walkers, walker parts, advanced economy stuff. This can even be stratified within tech tiers. For example, imagine bone tools and rawbone handaxes did not have schematics, but chitin tools/heavy rawbone axe kept them. Fiddling with balance slightly, you could have a progression scheme like this:

Primitive Axe (Baseline): Axe 2
Stone Hatchet (Schematic): Axe 3 (Drops only in Cradle, cheaper than Rawbone)
Rawbone Handaxe (Baseline): Axe 3
Heavy Rawbone Handaxe (Schematic): Axe 4, Redwood Chop (Drops only in Canyon)
Clay-tier Axe (Baseline): Axe 4
Etc.

Thus, even previous tier schematic drops can remain valuable, since they use lower tier resources and are cheaper. They will eventually run out even if you have a surplus though since they don't drop on the current map, and won't be as good weapons as higher tech axes. This reduces the number of schematics directly, and as long as the 'bonus' schematic drop rate is throttled adequately (i.e. Heavy rawbone is in a fine place) they remain rewarding rather than the new standard.

[Malekith]

Originally posted by antlucasexe:

Originally posted by chadzTheDonkey:

This is incorrect. Here is what I actually said:

When Season 5 began and before the free weekend you had concurrent player count peaks on Steam of about 4400, which rose to over 6000 during the free weekend, and now has fallen by well over 50% along with the Steam review score which has also fallen dramatically. Many of those negative reviews pointed to the insane new grind and the RNG schematics scheme as one of the major reasons for their downvote (along with the general new direction of the game away from nomadic towards tower defense). I'd say thats a little more than "a bunch of people" - its over half your potential audience. It concerns me that you don't seem to fully appreciate the impact this new direction is having on dividing your potential playerbase. And you had plenty of warning about it before you implemented the changes.

I thought the goal of this revamp was to try to get back to levels like the 2020 release player count peaks of 33,000 - not to just have yet another season where it hangs at about 2500 for a short time and then inevitably starts to plummet again. You are never going to achieve that by knowingly alienating half your playerbase. If an idea has only a 50% approval rating amongst your customers, its generally a good idea not to implement it.

This ^

I backed this game on release in the hope of PvE servers, PvE content and for the nomadic walker life.

It took 2.5 years to implement official PvE servers from my understanding and what you define as PvE content is increasing the grind on the PvE content that I was already doing in Season 1. I haven't had this game installed on my PC in over a year, what reason is there for me to install the game as a PvE player when the token PvE content there is now was made specifically to punish PvP players for Zerging. When you now have to focus on building bases rather than travelling the world... I can build bases on Ark or any other survival game. What exactly is selling the point of this game?

The selling points of this game have been removed and what little remains, other games like Ark do it far better and have their own unique selling points.

['norabseven]

Originally posted by chadzTheDonkey:

This is incorrect. Here is what I actually said:

there's a bunch of people that hate the schematics. there's a bunch of people that like the schematics. and there's a whole bunch of people inbetween. no point jumping to conclusions based on individual opinions. we're aware of the complaints, we're monitoring what's happening, and once the level of discussion has normalized, we'll take steps to improve it

I LOVE the fact that out of all the forums posts and threads recently you've decided to comment on to talk to your player base this is the one you chose.

That tells me all I need to know about the direction of the game and the amount care that you devs have for your player base.

Instead of commenting or engaging on posts that have quality feedback or opinions that would be beneficial to have some dev response too, you've broken the silence for this, nice.

Just so my post is actually on topic though... The schematics suck big time, you've added RNG to an already grindy system. With the shrines you've basically went back to the fragment/tablet system but now it's super RNG so people don't like that.

Make schematics just blank paper that work with all crafting where more complicated ones (tablet size ones) need more paper and higher level enemies drop more paper so killing larger things is beneficial. But you can unlock them to require no paper if you gather and use enough at a shrine, meaning that this one drop can unlock and be used with everything, just take out this stupid pointless RNG drop part of the schematic and it will be 100x better immediately.

This doesn't include that resource grind sucks, not having a open-build walker sucks, not being able to lobby your walker sucks, no mobile bases suck... All the changes other than including PvE maps and more enemies suck, like big time.

[Alice]

I've been playing since season 4 and only played PvE, pretty much. Using private servers before it was officially available. I would sneak onto PvP tiles for materials and upgrades but they were mostly depopulated so the risk was low. But even then, I was prepared for the consequences of being on a PvP server.

Anyway, being mostly a PvE player before it was even officially implemented, my opinion is basically that all these supposedly pro-PvE changes are not good. It's just saddling the solos, noobs and PvE players with way more time consuming and unnecessary grind. Especially the schematics. It's a whole 'nother massive amount of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you have to make room for and it doesn't feel like you accomplish anything since you will have to keep grinding them eternally. So it feels like there's no progress. There's just constant maintenance, busywork and time sink.

And the whole official reasoning for this is made moot by the fact that this only puts a burden on small groups and solos. Large, organized clans are not affected by these changes.

When you say, "We're making these changes to help PvE and solos" but the changes only make it more of a grind for that exact group, then wtf are you doing?

I do like the official implementation of PvE, the fact that you can return to cradle after leaving and have a "safespace" or whatever. That's definitely something I'd consider a positive from this update. I also like a lot of the QoL changes and things like that. Just tightening up the game from being kind of a clunky mess.

Lastly, I'd like to say, removing base-packing? From the couple of walkers that had it? Seriously WTF? How TF does this even remotely benefit solos/PvE/small groups? It's another one of those things that is officially stated to try to limit "zergs" but in reality doesn't affect them at all, and only hurts the smalltime players it's supposedly trying to help. We're supposed to be nomads... If a nomad can't pack up their home and move, they aren't really a nomad, are they?

I'm really glad you guys are still working on the game but this direction feels like mostly the opposite of the people it's trying to help. I am still playing and having a good time and seeing how it goes. I'm not some 14 year old who's going to abandon the game after 1 patch they don't like.

Have a nice day.

[Good Old Gamer]

Originally posted by n3mrut:

yesterday i was on lo discord and devs writing/reply time to time for comments which written by their player base.They clearly statement that schematic system is ok and will go like this with little tweaks . when we ask and criticize it then their response is harsh.

I guess they dont like when you criticizing this new schematic system.Responses we got are weird ,like "how did you decide that players doesnt like it mostly ?" I can say that they dont wanna see negative comments about it if they dont like it (about this schematic system ,i am not talking generally) and when i gave referances like discord gaming communitys ,clans , reddit ,other gaming forum platforms or steam forums ,they ignore) .

So as i said we dont have any calculation system about who doesnt like or like but you can make polls and see yourself.Also at least we can calculate general player base is decrasing again and in little future it will return where it was...

i guess ppl who dont like new system partly or fully (myself "partly") need to write official forums and discord so they couldnt ignore.

english is not my main language so i am sorry for grammer mistakes

Because they either beleive their own lies so well that they are ignoring the issue and don't care, or they are dellusional and beleive their own lies so they don't care!

They will never change it now - especially concerning the **OHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LOVING THE NEW DIRECTION!!!** when less than 20% actually do... SOURCE??? NUMBER OF COMMENTS AND RESPONSES WHICH ARE AGAINST THE NEW SYSTEM!!!

[Malekith]

Originally posted by Alice:

I've been playing since season 4 and only played PvE, pretty much. Using private servers before it was officially available. I would sneak onto PvP tiles for materials and upgrades but they were mostly depopulated so the risk was low. But even then, I was prepared for the consequences of being on a PvP server.

Anyway, being mostly a PvE player before it was even officially implemented, my opinion is basically that all these supposedly pro-PvE changes are not good. It's just saddling the solos, noobs and PvE players with way more time consuming and unnecessary grind. Especially the schematics. It's a whole 'nother massive amount of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you have to make room for and it doesn't feel like you accomplish anything since you will have to keep grinding them eternally. So it feels like there's no progress. There's just constant maintenance, busywork and time sink.

And the whole official reasoning for this is made moot by the fact that this only puts a burden on small groups and solos. Large, organized clans are not affected by these changes.

When you say, "We're making these changes to help PvE and solos" but the changes only make it more of a grind for that exact group, then wtf are you doing?

I do like the official implementation of PvE, the fact that you can return to cradle after leaving and have a "safespace" or whatever. That's definitely something I'd consider a positive from this update. I also like a lot of the QoL changes and things like that. Just tightening up the game from being kind of a clunky mess.

Lastly, I'd like to say, removing base-packing? From the couple of walkers that had it? Seriously WTF? How TF does this even remotely benefit solos/PvE/small groups? It's another one of those things that is officially stated to try to limit "zergs" but in reality doesn't affect them at all, and only hurts the smalltime players it's supposedly trying to help. We're supposed to be nomads... If a nomad can't pack up their home and move, they aren't really a nomad, are they?

I'm really glad you guys are still working on the game but this direction feels like mostly the opposite of the people it's trying to help. I am still playing and having a good time and seeing how it goes. I'm not some 14 year old who's going to abandon the game after 1 patch they don't like.

Have a nice day.

I don't understand why it took them 2.5 years to implement PvE maps into the game. I don't understand why they haven't just separated PvP and PvE completely to be frank. Let PvPers have their own server, let PvErs have their own servers. Instead they keep trying to force PvErs into PvP and they keep blaming people PvPing/Zergings for the reasons as to why this game is failing. Even now, their plan is to have PvP maps have the best resources...so what exactly is the plan for PvE really?

[Zothen]

Originally posted by Malekith:

I don't understand why it took them 2.5 years to implement PvE maps into the game. I don't understand why they haven't just separated PvP and PvE completely to be frank.

Probably their background? They came from modding hard-core pvp stuff in Warband. PvE content is probably not their interest and definatly not their expertise.

And btw, there is NO new PvE stuff. They just cranked up the grind dials. Thats not pve content.

[Malekith]

Originally posted by Zothen:

Originally posted by Malekith:

I don't understand why it took them 2.5 years to implement PvE maps into the game. I don't understand why they haven't just separated PvP and PvE completely to be frank.

Probably their background? They came from modding hard-core pvp stuff in Warband. PvE content is probably not their interest and definatly not their expertise.

And btw, there is NO new PvE stuff. They just cranked up the grind dials. Thats not pve content.

If they don't want to change, then they can watch their game like a slow motion car crash. They've managed to chase away the PvPers that they so focused on and clearly can't develop PvE content.

[Whiplash711]

Originally posted by chadzTheDonkey:

This is incorrect. Here is what I actually said:

there's a bunch of people that hate the schematics. there's a bunch of people that like the schematics. and there's a whole bunch of people inbetween. no point jumping to conclusions based on individual opinions. we're aware of the complaints, we're monitoring what's happening, and once the level of discussion has normalized, we'll take steps to improve it

Keep doing it as you are as you are doing great. With the option for community servers these people have choices. Right in your Discord I found options of servers running a mix of S5 and S4. Options are great but people have to look around or they find nothing.

Do not allow the disrespect and hate in the Discord General channel get to you guys. Many that are not being rude and disrespect are loving your game. You can not reason with those that only want their way.

[Whiplash711]

Originally posted by Malekith:

Originally posted by Zothen:

Probably their background? They came from modding hard-core pvp stuff in Warband. PvE content is probably not their interest and definatly not their expertise.

And btw, there is NO new PvE stuff. They just cranked up the grind dials. Thats not pve content.

If they don't want to change, then they can watch their game like a slow motion car crash. They've managed to chase away the PvPers that they so focused on and clearly can't develop PvE content.

This is the first update of PVE content. How can you make a judgement based on this other than it being uneducated? Give the devs some time to DEVELOP the game!!!

[Malekith]

Originally posted by Whiplash711:

Originally posted by Malekith:

If they don't want to change, then they can watch their game like a slow motion car crash. They've managed to chase away the PvPers that they so focused on and clearly can't develop PvE content.

This is the first update of PVE content. How can you make a judgement based on this other than it being uneducated? Give the devs some time to DEVELOP the game!!!

I've given them 2.5 years to develop this game... Literally been waiting since the first few weeks the game was released for them to do PvE servers and PvE content. What they claim to offer now is not PvE content and they are still pushing PvEers into PvP due to the maps system. I was killing Rupus for tablets back in season 1...now their definition of PvE content is killing Rupus for Schematics 2.5 years later. What's changed other than increasing the grind and removing what little concept of a story there was?

[Whiplash711]

Originally posted by Malekith:

Originally posted by Whiplash711:

This is the first update of PVE content. How can you make a judgement based on this other than it being uneducated? Give the devs some time to DEVELOP the game!!!

I've given them 2.5 years to develop this game... Literally been waiting since the first few weeks the game was released for them to do PvE servers and PvE content. What they claim to offer now is not PvE content and they are still pushing PvEers into PvP due to the maps system. I was killing Rupus for tablets back in season 1...now their definition of PvE content is killing Rupus for Schematics 2.5 years later. What's changed other than increasing the grind and removing what little concept of a story there was?

In the start this was a PVP game with signs of PVE. Now they are seeing that is not the way to go. In time they will perfect things. You should keep in mind that 2 1/2 years is nothing when you are developing a game. This game in fact is still in Pre Alpha look top right of your screen.
They get enough toxic behavior from PVPers, those people do not know any better would seem. Give them time and have patience. The best games out there took a long time. All EA games come to EA in different stages of development.