I was thinking, since we get periodic "Dev Notes" from the company as to what they are working on etc., it might be nice to offer a summarized version of what the player experience was like during the preceding week. This is not a simple grievance post or list of evils, as it were, but a single thread to describe our experience as players over the last week. My sincerest hope is that this will give the company some good feedback to use in enhancing the player experience and making this a fun game to continue playing.
As a team leader, I spend allot of energy encouraging my teammates to "press on" and do my best to keep them motivated toward our team goals. Doing this, I get allot of feedback from the players on our team, and am also in communication with many other team leaders. So, I think I have a fairly decent perspective on how the mid-level players are feeling about what is going on in the game. With all the complaining that happens, especially here on the forum, there are many things about this game that we all enjoy, or we wouldn't be here at all.
-Raid Boss:
Raid Boss ended this week. The difficulty was increased over the last iteration, but many teams overcame and were able to finish the event. I only know of a few teams that had finished previous iterations who were unable to finish this event. The issue this time seemed to be a slight "folder famine". I know of many teams that struggled to get enough folders for the event, as well as one team that abandoned finishing masters simply because they couldn't gather enough folders in time.
-LTQs/FLTQs:
1. My team is about burned out on these things. The players want to succeed in the game, and now with the newer Equipment aspect of the game, they all realize that skipping opportunities to pick up equipment pieces will mean quickly falling behind too far to remain competetive. My team has had 2 accts quit the game entirely simply because of discouragement over not having been able to finish the first couple LTQs, which had a devastating affect on them in WD. Knowing that recovering would be impossible without going back in time to finish those LTQ events, discouragement took over, and they left.
2. The rest of the team that wishes to continue trying to compete in this game presses on through these LTQs, but it's really a sense of "duty", in a way, that drives them on, again knowing that they'll fall behind and become ineffective if they don't constantly hit NPC targets. That said, it's become NOT enjoyable, and is only a means to an end. Everyone on my team agrees that the game would be allot more fun if we only had 1 of these events per week, maximum, instead of three per week, and at least 24 hours between to regenerate energy.
3. The energy requirements for LTQs has become so inflated that it is another big point of discouragement for people. It makes total sense that a little gold might be required for a player without energy regen bonuses to finish prestige, but it doesn't make any sense that a player with +40 energy regen can't finish masters without spending $100. It's way too much, and if it cost $20 to finish instead of $100, I'm pretty certain that many, many more people would pony up the spot of cash and finish the missions.
24-hour Frontline:
About half of my team really likes this event, 1/4 of the team hates it, and the other 1/4 of the team is indifferent. The 25hr iteration is fun for those who can get on. We did experience several problems with lag during the event, especially in the early hours and final moments of the event. In the final 30min of the event, we added up the total number of deploys that were used by our team, and only about 1/2 of the proper points were credited. We also noticed that our opponents in that final FL battle weren't credited with many points at the end, either, so I'm sure there's something wrong here.
Crates:
What can I say about the crates events? Some people love them, and some people hate them. Personally, I don't like gambling aspects in a war game of this type, since it's pure chance. There's no strategy or tactic to be applied, so it's just, "put in the gold, hit the button, and see". That's great for slot machines, not so great for war, and especially when the only way to get the strongest pieces of equipment for your soldier are hidden inside a slot machine.
Other Issues:
-We continue to struggle with display issues;
-"Ghost" targets appearing on NPC maps
-PvP Raid and Attack results re-appearing after hitting NPC targets
-Fights won/lost appearing reversed, and crediting reversed, in the profile screen
-Collection icons still not appearing over buildings ready to collect
-Raided icons still not appearing over buildings that have been raided
-Our own buildings still sometimes appearing on NPC maps
-Still no way to see our own equipment defense stats
-Still no way to see quantities of our own equipment pieces in our inventories
Gold Sales:
40%-off sales are great! I think you've seen an increase in overall revenue by offering gold at a greater discount. I hope you'll consider also making some of the events a little less expensive to complete. I believe if you do, you'll see an even greater increase in revenue. There's a great many people out there who will spend $20 to finish something, but won't spend anything at all if finishing the thing will cost $100.
All in all, it's still a fun game with a great teamwork element that keeps us coming back and continuing to play. The continuing bugs since the last updates, and the overwhelming number of back to back inflated, "must finish to remain competitive" events, however, are burning people out, and I'm afraid that if it isn't paced back to something that can co-exist with a person's normal life, we'll have a very hard time keeping players on our teams motivated.
I hope this gives the company a sense of where the players are at overall, and that it's not viewed as just another gripe session. Like I said, truth be told, we enjoy the game, or we wouldn't even be here giving feedback at all, positive or negative.
