So with the brand new release of destroyers, most everyone is very hyped, and more players are coming back to Star Conflict. Lots of money is also being made by the devs with all the destroyers being built, I am sure. And that is awesome! If the devs come up with a good design that everyone likes, they deserve a reward. But having what is arguably a good addition to star conflict will not fix the dirt hole Star Conflict is entrenched in.
What is wrong with Star Conflict? Well for starters, the Russian bias is extremely awful. I have started playing again for about 2 weeks in a row, and have gotten back into competitive game modes such as dreadnoughts, leagues, and tourneys. All these game modes are extremely fun, when not facing Russian based teams. “Well you just need to get gud”. Here is the thing, how are you supposed to “Get gud” when you get disconnected at least once every round? How are you supposed to combat against players who have almost half a second longer to react than you do? How do you fly a ship that doesn’t go where you tell it to? The answer is you can’t. And I’m not saying that servers need to be overhauled so that ping to Russia is just as good as Russian players get (I know that won’t happen, even though i’m sure improvements could be made without too much expenditure). EVERY SINGLE TIME my squad has qued up for a competitive game mode, WITH SERVER REGION SET TO EU or US, we always face Russian squads on Russian servers. Even during US prime time in regular pvp, if there is a member of SRS, Nova, DESU, or any other notorious Russian corp we will fight on Russian server regardless of the fact that the rest of the people are not Russian players. The Russian players also seem to know we struggle on their servers because they all decide to bring interceptors with high speed and turn rate, making them near impossible to hit.
This Russian bias is not even the full scope of the problem with this game either. The devs of Star Conflict have some serious management issues. I’m not just saying this out of the blue either. I’m basing all this off of experiences from players and testers. Even some of the non RU testers, no offence, seem to be yes-men or have only their personal interests in mind when they provide feedback. That is why some classes and ships are significantly better than others in PVP (posi LRFS, gauss sparks, ect)
What interaction is there between the devs and the members of their game? I can’t remember the last time I even saw the devs in the game playing their game. Another note to add is, it seems like the developers are solely after money at this point, introducing destroyers to get money and not put any effort into fixing some of the serious problems. It seems like they are only relying on new flashy content being pushed out with little care, and relying on the visual appeal that their designers have striven hard to work on.
Also, there is little to no advertisement for SC here in the US, and I’m sure most of the EU is the same. There are plenty of players on the US and EU side of the game that have made videos promoting SC, stream it, and even organize events for the game. Why isn’t this being utilized to bring in the vast market of gamers into SC?
The non Russian forum (this one) is also pretty much dead. I haven’t seen any real activity, or variety in members, in awhile. Why is this? A good bit of it is due to the fact that most players have just given up on trying to communicate with the devs. Even if the devs were to take the opinion of its non Russian player base seriously (or even slightly at all), the feedback given has to be relayed to the by the middlemen (forum mods or whatever). The forum moderators, in the past, have been pretty subpar into dealing with this forum’s members.
I’m just telling it how I see it with this post. This post probably won’t have any effect, but its worth trying one last time at least right?
Note: I probably won’t be actively following this post as I have more important college things to do. Hopefully the message will make it to the devs.