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Let's Talk
that1guy
Posts: 374
Kabam, I think it's time we had a discussion with the state of the game. Hopefully, a constructive one. Here's a long post, so bare with me here.
When I first started playing this game back in beta, I could already see the potential of how far this game can grow. The combat is fun yet simple enough for anyone to pick up, a nice 3D battle arena, and great graphics to boot. To put things into perspective of just how much I got involved into this game, granted I came from beta, I put enough time and effort into becoming the leader of a top ten alliance with decent bots to back it up. I spend, but only when I feel the purchase is justified. Lately, I don't think any purchases are justified with how the game is turning out. With shoddy coding causing problems/bugs and the frustration that lag creates, and questionable key decisions from Kabam, it's becoming harder and harder to justify any purchase with this game.
First let's talk about the performance issues. This is the one thing I often see people complaining about, and they have every reason to. From all levels of the game, when a player feels cheated or robbed from losing a bot to a fight or a combo, this has to be one of the most extremely frustrating experience in any game. This issue definitely hurts in high levels, either ranging from AM, expert spot light missions, and even Rulers of Kaon. One second you're pulling a good combo chain, and dodging attacks, but the game stutters for a moment and you take a Special 2 in the face while you've been trying your best to bait it. Thus, from a players perspective, every new patch hurts the performance of the game, and it makes us wonder does the coding ever get tested thoroughly? When new patches are released, it would also appear that new bugs are released even if old ones are patched. Hell, there are bugs that still remain in the game despite Kabam promising to fix them time and time again (ex, purchasing multiple items at the same time, nope you gotta do it one at a time). This to me, is the most glaring issue facing the game. A player won't be invested into a game if doesn't run properly, and after quite some time since the game's official release Kabam seems to continue to set this on low priority. This needs to be addressed, as players, we've had too many key promises not delivered, and this should not be one of them. A performance focused patch would do wonders.
Second, development/gameplay changes. Oh man, I could go on about this. To keep it short, there are some decisions that are made leaving myself scratching my head. For example, the Arena changes. I understand Kabam wanted to introduce new rewards to people on a daily basis, but Kabam seemed to forget that people have lives, and aside from all the raids, missions, and Alliance missions people run, the arena grind just takes its toll on people. The reason why people are so burnt out from arena is not the amount of rounds they play, but the fact that their rewards entirely depends on how much time they must devote to it to ensure they fall within their desired bracket. People want milestones back because it gave them a guarantee that even if they didn't shoot for the highest, they still got rewarded with something. Aside from arena, the Alliance mission changes are proving to be very frustrating. I understand that you cannot keep everyone happy due to players situated across all timezones, and that's fine; however, extending the AM to weekends where people just want some days off is just too much. Now some may say this is a matter of opinion and true, it is; however the time and effort required on a higher AM level to finish the damn thing on a day where it's my day that I want to myself and not worry about anything else is an annoyance that I'd rather avoid. This doesn't apply to me, but many others I have spoken to. The old system was fine, everyone was used to it, so why fix what aint broke? Maybe a good discussion can come out of this, people can talk about what they'd like out of AM times, and Kabam can share some data to shed some truth.
Regarding AM...can we talk about the rewards? For all the gold costs required to even run a high difficulty level, players often scratch their head whats the point of even reaching ranks between 25-11, or even 10-5 when all the rewards are the same? Unless you are reaching rank 3-1 or going for bragging rights, you're better off playing for lower ranks, as: 1) less gold required to run it, 2) less challenge for same rewards (granted, not same milestones hit) since you will attain the same rank rewards as those in your brackets. So please consider a solid progression system added for the rewards, as it would mean attaining a higher rank would actually bring value. Moreover, AM is suppose to be the competitive aspect of the game, so give it a little love.
I could touch about gold costs and rewards, but I think that's been done to death.
Last thing I want to touch on is the communication between Kabam and the community. I understand Mike is the goto guy if we need something communicated to the dev team, but honestly, as a member of the community I feel like certain complaints, ideas, or concerns are not necessarily acknowledged. I understand due to sheer scale of chatter incoming from the community may overwhelm Mike, thus I'd like to compare Kabam here to Riot Games. Though I understand they work on completely different platforms and scale; however, Riot games usually has their own developers interact with the community frequently and this helps establish a solid link between the community and the devs to reassure them that there is a channel in which a dev can explain a certain nuance, issue, ideas that are currently in the game. Though it's just an idea, I honestly feel this would certainly help Kabam clear communications issues better, and get direct feedback from players as opposed to poor Mike being overwhelmed with comments coming from all sides, ranging from good or bad. All I'm saying is, please consider other options aside from Mike to establish a clear communication and vision for this game between us and you.
Anyway, what are your thoughts?
When I first started playing this game back in beta, I could already see the potential of how far this game can grow. The combat is fun yet simple enough for anyone to pick up, a nice 3D battle arena, and great graphics to boot. To put things into perspective of just how much I got involved into this game, granted I came from beta, I put enough time and effort into becoming the leader of a top ten alliance with decent bots to back it up. I spend, but only when I feel the purchase is justified. Lately, I don't think any purchases are justified with how the game is turning out. With shoddy coding causing problems/bugs and the frustration that lag creates, and questionable key decisions from Kabam, it's becoming harder and harder to justify any purchase with this game.
First let's talk about the performance issues. This is the one thing I often see people complaining about, and they have every reason to. From all levels of the game, when a player feels cheated or robbed from losing a bot to a fight or a combo, this has to be one of the most extremely frustrating experience in any game. This issue definitely hurts in high levels, either ranging from AM, expert spot light missions, and even Rulers of Kaon. One second you're pulling a good combo chain, and dodging attacks, but the game stutters for a moment and you take a Special 2 in the face while you've been trying your best to bait it. Thus, from a players perspective, every new patch hurts the performance of the game, and it makes us wonder does the coding ever get tested thoroughly? When new patches are released, it would also appear that new bugs are released even if old ones are patched. Hell, there are bugs that still remain in the game despite Kabam promising to fix them time and time again (ex, purchasing multiple items at the same time, nope you gotta do it one at a time). This to me, is the most glaring issue facing the game. A player won't be invested into a game if doesn't run properly, and after quite some time since the game's official release Kabam seems to continue to set this on low priority. This needs to be addressed, as players, we've had too many key promises not delivered, and this should not be one of them. A performance focused patch would do wonders.
Second, development/gameplay changes. Oh man, I could go on about this. To keep it short, there are some decisions that are made leaving myself scratching my head. For example, the Arena changes. I understand Kabam wanted to introduce new rewards to people on a daily basis, but Kabam seemed to forget that people have lives, and aside from all the raids, missions, and Alliance missions people run, the arena grind just takes its toll on people. The reason why people are so burnt out from arena is not the amount of rounds they play, but the fact that their rewards entirely depends on how much time they must devote to it to ensure they fall within their desired bracket. People want milestones back because it gave them a guarantee that even if they didn't shoot for the highest, they still got rewarded with something. Aside from arena, the Alliance mission changes are proving to be very frustrating. I understand that you cannot keep everyone happy due to players situated across all timezones, and that's fine; however, extending the AM to weekends where people just want some days off is just too much. Now some may say this is a matter of opinion and true, it is; however the time and effort required on a higher AM level to finish the damn thing on a day where it's my day that I want to myself and not worry about anything else is an annoyance that I'd rather avoid. This doesn't apply to me, but many others I have spoken to. The old system was fine, everyone was used to it, so why fix what aint broke? Maybe a good discussion can come out of this, people can talk about what they'd like out of AM times, and Kabam can share some data to shed some truth.
Regarding AM...can we talk about the rewards? For all the gold costs required to even run a high difficulty level, players often scratch their head whats the point of even reaching ranks between 25-11, or even 10-5 when all the rewards are the same? Unless you are reaching rank 3-1 or going for bragging rights, you're better off playing for lower ranks, as: 1) less gold required to run it, 2) less challenge for same rewards (granted, not same milestones hit) since you will attain the same rank rewards as those in your brackets. So please consider a solid progression system added for the rewards, as it would mean attaining a higher rank would actually bring value. Moreover, AM is suppose to be the competitive aspect of the game, so give it a little love.
I could touch about gold costs and rewards, but I think that's been done to death.
Last thing I want to touch on is the communication between Kabam and the community. I understand Mike is the goto guy if we need something communicated to the dev team, but honestly, as a member of the community I feel like certain complaints, ideas, or concerns are not necessarily acknowledged. I understand due to sheer scale of chatter incoming from the community may overwhelm Mike, thus I'd like to compare Kabam here to Riot Games. Though I understand they work on completely different platforms and scale; however, Riot games usually has their own developers interact with the community frequently and this helps establish a solid link between the community and the devs to reassure them that there is a channel in which a dev can explain a certain nuance, issue, ideas that are currently in the game. Though it's just an idea, I honestly feel this would certainly help Kabam clear communications issues better, and get direct feedback from players as opposed to poor Mike being overwhelmed with comments coming from all sides, ranging from good or bad. All I'm saying is, please consider other options aside from Mike to establish a clear communication and vision for this game between us and you.
Anyway, what are your thoughts?
Tagged:
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Comments
Thanks for taking the time to write it up so nicely.
I hope @Kabam Miike takes reads it and acts on the suggestions as they are spot on.
Well, seeing how they have been silent since this thread has been opened, I'm starting to think otherwise...
..?
It’s too easy to rant, whine, and complain, especially on the internet. Your attitude has clearly made all the difference. Thanks again.
@RoyFocker , I understand what you mean. There have been several instances where I wanted to ditch the game, but at the end of it all I realized I kept coming back to this game because of how fun it can be at times. I can only hope the game takes a better direction and gets the love it deserves from both the devs and the community when does take a better turn.
@Manthro One can hope
Again, I appreciate all the comments. Would really love Kabam to at least participate here, and share their thoughts. @Kabam Miike ?
The reason why Im so salty is because I love/loved this game. It has the best gameplay of all F2P games at the moment imo. Skill can take you far in this game. Me and this game could have been so happy together. But the game's management team have a different thing in mind. It took me quite a while to completely let go of this game because I was hoping the decisions and changes it was taking would go the other way around. That didn't happen. And so I had to vote with my wallet and spend my gaming time to other games with a better F2P model. I come back here in the forums from time to time to check how its doing. And everytime I do, I feel glad that I already quit.
@Hired_Goon My post wasn't intended to harrass anyone but I can understand why you would feel like that. If you really are enjoying the game though, you shouldn't let other players' saltiness affect you hahaha. Keep calm and play on.
Feedback is always important, but when it's constructive and concise like this, it's even more valuable. The forums are intended for community discussion between players, but we do read what's posted here and take it to heart; rest assured your voices are being heard. That said, well done @that1guy on a well-constructed post that helps us see what the community is thinking in a productive way.
Do you guys think there will be a chance for Kabam to create posts regarding state of the game, or even quick videos what coming features or other things on the horizon could be? I figure community interaction is the lifeblood that helps the community going, and even grow further. Those are just some quick ideas.
As for Arena I agree for Crystal bounty please bring back milestones rewards. T3B and T2A arena should have milestones to them also. All 3 Arenas are important for a player's progression hence Kabam shouldn't be stingy on this.
As for bot chips arena.. 2 weeks stretch of it really? what happened to the non featured bot arena? No longer there? I miss that arena a lot where we fight in it to get a chance at 4* bot shards.. or the non featured bot itself?
AM - just remove the gold cost please (or halve it.. this helps a lot since we're always short on gold).. you will take away many players' frustration on it.
Next, reduce the rewards for top 10 alliances... distribute it out more evenly to bottom rank alliances such as those in the top 50 alliances. The rewards are so skewed highly to those top 10 (more so towards the top 5) it's insanely unbalance. Those alliances at the top will get so much materials (at the end of AM rankings) while we are the lower end rankings will not get them at all? T3B and T2A are important now so why not distribute it out more evenly?
Raids is now perfect with that 24 hours limited item sales.. you done well Kabam so for this u deserve many many *claps claps claps*.. Raiding has now become an important progression system in the game so this is highly appreciated. (Raid arena next probably?)
As for developers comments on the forums well yeah more evenly distributed comments from other devs/moderators showing that they care, help, and knows about the game will please the players. Just saying "we'll relay this to the dev team".. does it sound like u know at all or care? You could at least empathize with the players - agree or disagree with them and end it with "but for sure we'll bring this up to the devs". Sounds more real isn't it? That's why @Kabam Miike does well here.. is because he shows a degree of knowledge about the game and sounds real.
That's all from my end in relating with @that1guy 's post.
There are countless examples where an idea has been raised by 1-2 ppl in these forums, and suddenly appears in the next major update.
I think the team do a fantastic job listening, and I also think it’s so obvious how well they listen that it’s actually a major feature of the game - the players have shaped the development of this game to a huge degree over the past 6-8 months. It’s remarkable.
Of course there are some things that continue to be issues, but I take Oabam at their word that these are things they work on, but are genuinely hard to resolve in any sort of complete sense. It really is difficult to eliminate any errors from major projects. Even a book is usuallygonna have typos when it goes to press, and readers think “ jeez, didn’t anyone proof read this?” Was f course they did, but identifying every error in thousands of lines is exhausting. And when versions keep changing it becomes even trickier. Users have to have a little empathy for creators when it comes to perfection.
That doesn’t mean accept shoddy standards, it just means accept that things are made by people, and people are just human
Anyway, I have my own criticisms every now and then, but mostly I reckon the game’s awesome, as I’m sure most ppl here do. My biggest regular complaint is usually about excessively steep price gradients, but I honestly can’t fault community feedback. I think it’s a major strength of the game, not a weakness at all
so far no issues for me.. much faster load times and those graphical bugs that I posted in this thread:
https://forums.transformersforgedtofight.com/discussion/2582/bugs-on-ios11-iphone-8#latest
they are pretty minor to me imo..
Reinstalling the game doesn’t help? Like uninstall then reinstall it?
Are you still getting these? This should have been taken care of with the last update (4.0) not even counting the 4.0.1 update that came out today...