2016 Year in Review (Discussion)

Yeah, some really big mistakes were made during last year. Hopefully the game gets back to a more balanced state this year, and that some of the most idiotic things get redesigned.

On 2016-12-30 at 3:47 AM, SuDoKu said:

The destroyers were the biggest mistakes of gameplay perspective.

Destroyers themselves I’d say would be more neutral, it was how they handled them that made the difference. Had they handled things differently, destroyers could have had more of a positive effect, or at least remained neutral. Instead, since they just kept stubbornly insisting they’re going to “balance” them/the game around the existence of destroyers, so everyone had to deal with them, whether you wanted to, or not, destroyers were a big negative for a lot of people, and many quit over them. Even ones on your side can end up screwing you over if they keep dropping those gravitational anomalies in range of your ship, even when it would be of no real benefit to do so, especially when trying to line up a sniper type shot since they pull you around too.

‘2016 In Review’… here’s a list of all of “the most helpful” ones of 2016 on Steam, up until the very first positive review appears. It’s at the very bottom of the image, although written by someone who’s played the game for 10 hours in total since August.

 

Spoiler

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In short, gameplay-wise, they focus on:

  • destroyers,

  • grind,

  • getting owned all the time by ships that are several ranks higher (“mixed tiers”),

  • pay2win:

  - destroyers again,

  - premium ships (I would’ve laughed, but then I noticed that certain DLC ships like Sawtooth, Cutter, Mauler, Phoenix etc. got buffed like hell… and then I saw AdamWest’s video on buying the     Thar’Ga or whatever it’s called, and then the things this ship is capable of… seriously?),

  - the fresher reviews also mention the new OP craft ships,

  - exclusive, non-standard weapons you can apparently buy with GS only,

  • bad monetisation (high costs, lottery bundles, things you can’t buy at a fixed rate),

  • balance issues (MM mostly, and again: destroyers, p2w, mixed tiers; OP this, OP that),

  • too many currencies,

  • declining English-speaking playerbase,

  • quite a few of them still mention lack of squads, I’m listing this here as a reminder of how much that decision has cost SC,

  • deteriorating experience over the years - this is something you should really pay attention to; it’s not ‘I got bored with the game, so I quit’. It’s ‘The game got worse and I’ve lost patience’. That’s my case, too.

 

Plus ‘various communication issues’, mostly describing all those months spent on ‘testing things’, ignoring suggestions/desires of players and such. Some really bad PR in general.

 

I mean, I realise that most of those reviews were written by nubs who don’t always understand how things work or how they’re supposed to work, and I wouldn’t put my signature under all of it — I don’t even play anymore, so I can’t relate to everything — but an entire page of thumbs down sure means something. I still lurk the forums in the hopes that the game will get better… Well, since I stopped playing some time in March, it hasn’t. And this most recent alien update shows that it still keeps going in that same awful direction.

 

I hope that the next big patch will address at least some of those problems. I’ll be there to check it out. My expectations aren’t very high at this point, to be honest, but fingers crossed.

 

Steam… where the discussions are all about the struggle with questions like is it P2W and why can’t i login into the game yet everyone is entitled to pro knowledge when writing a review…

Why Destroyers Such Vigilant is not available now? 450k survival Points is crazy i always hunt destroyers and whenever i go to PvP there is someone with vigilant and beat me in a blink thats unfair which some ships are dedicated and we have no choice to retaliate 

Can someone tell me whats going on?