Dear Intrepid, you are unnecessarily killing a lot of people's desire to test the game for you.

The start of phase 2 has been badly handled I think. It's like you forgot the perspective of your testing base.

My assumption is that you want to keep a lot of testers happily engaged and testing in the future as well, and that this isn't some social experiment in misery. In order for that to happen, the fun has to outweigh the suck at least a little. For the EU base, you really missed the mark. I don't know how bad it is on the NA servers.

1. End of phase 1
The drop off in the amount of active players you saw near the end of phase 1 wasn't people generally losing interest in testing the game. It was primarily because of the incoming wipe. Instead of playing, they spent time planning where to go and what to do in phase 2. Many big PvP guilds were going to Lotharia and more casual PvX guilds were going on other servers etc. Less than 24 hours before phase 2, all those plans were completely disrupted by the announcement that EU only got one server (and NA one or two). That alone caused disappointment and a loss of people's desire to test the game for you.

2. Content drought
It's blindingly obvious that the current content in the game cannot support this number of players on one server, even without the bugs causing mobs not to respawn. This was obvious during phase 1. Sure, the servers might be close to be able to handling the number of people, and you definitely need to test that and iron out those bugs. But you are shooting yourselves in the foot by making that the default and only option for the testing base.

Once both the desert and the tropics are fully populated with content and nodes, will there be enough content for this many people. Right now that is clearly not the case

Punish us on PTR. We like that. Take the regular PROD servers down for a week and mash us all into one big family on one server to really stress everything server related. That's fine too. But creating only one testing environment you have to have known wasn't ready content-wise as the only testing option, is not. You are killing the desire for people to test for you.

3. People are much less likely to write /bug reports
The scarcity of mobs and resources cause people to feel a sense of urgency in what they are doing. We have 2+ full groups of people contesting spots that can only really support 3-4 players. The sense of urgency and competition doesn't give people any incentive to stop and type /bug. It's rather the opposite. You have access to the numbers, but I bet the avg. number of bug reports per player has gone down a lot in phase 2 compared to previous phases, and it's not because the game is now bug free at all. Especially during prime time. People are just too busy contesting the poor mobs and resources. You are killing the desire/time for people to report bugs.

I don't want this to be a wall of text, so I'll end it here. Please Intrepid, take this feedback, and the feedback from many similar posts, to heart. I want to test, my friends want to test, people are happy to test, but not at any level of suck if the fun doesn't match. I am guessing we'll see a fairly large drop in testers in the next few days/weeks, and it'll largely be because of this, not because the game as it is right now can't also be fun with the right amount of testers per server.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Otr

So you say scarcity works as intended?

Regarding player count drop, what do you say? Will they come back later?

brita

I've dropped the game for the time being. The massive contesting for resources, mobs or other stuff is draining, especially with people flagging to kill others who "crowd" their spots.

Nerror

Otr wrote: »

So you say scarcity works as intended?

Regarding player count drop, what do you say? Will they come back later?

If the intent is to drive people away with scarcity, sure. If the intent is to test a nice balance of scarcity that keep people engaged, then no.

And yes, players will probably come back if Intrepid doesn't continue or repeat the same mistake.

Otr

Nerror wrote: »

Otr wrote: »

So you say scarcity works as intended?

Regarding player count drop, what do you say? Will they come back later?

If the intent is to drive people away with scarcity, sure. If the intent is to test a nice balance of scarcity that keep people engaged, then no.

And yes, players will probably come back if Intrepid doesn't continue or repeat the same mistake.

Steven said he and devs play along the players on the server.
I hope they don't cheat and grind with them to feel the consequence of their balancing.

lukedawuke

"wahhh i wanna play like its a full release, how dare you test and work on your servers instead of catering to our wishes to grind and farm like everythings working aaarrghh"

Laetitian

Yeah, sorry, but I feel like luke calls it as it is. I'm sure you have good intentions, and you might want to counter something like: "But testers won't be there to test if you don't let them have fun by competing in a rewarding, fair environment," but I think you overestimate the density of players Intrepid needs to show up several hours a day.

If you log on and it's too full to do what you wanted to do - have a backup plan. Play another game. Or watch a stream of someone else playing. Try again another time.
If your guild disapproves of that and demands regular scheduled activities, remind them you're testing an alpha and suggest other guild activities.

Quality over quantity.
Play the game when it's enjoyable. Do something else when it's not.

The way I see it, that addresses at least point 2&3 from your list. Not sure about the server realm capacity thing.

nanfoodle

I get testing the servers capabilities. Problem is there is not enough content for fhe number of players as well. It's not fun fighting over spawns. Servers are too packed

bloodprophet

brita wrote: »

I've dropped the game for the time being. The massive contesting for resources, mobs or other stuff is draining, especially with people flagging to kill others who "crowd" their spots.

This is the intended design. Stated from the very start.
Scarcity and meaningful conflict.

bloodprophet

nanfoodle wrote: »

I get testing the servers capabilities. Problem is there is not enough content for fhe number of players as well. It's not fun fighting over spawns. Servers are too packed

Early access not quite what you expected?

Nerror

lukedawuke wrote: »

"wahhh i wanna play like its a full release, how dare you test and work on your servers instead of catering to our wishes to grind and farm like everythings working aaarrghh"

Yeah, no, horrible take on this.

My point is they are losing testers who actually want to test the game and provide feedback. Feedback I am giving them here btw. There is a balance to this. The start of Phase 1 had a fairly decent balance of players vs. amount of content to be tested. Things were crowded and contested, but not overly so like now.

Laetitian wrote: »

but I think you overestimate the density of players Intrepid needs to show up several hours a day.

So you are saying Intrepid shouldn't have sold all those alpha keys? Because they don't need the amount of testers they have? That's an odd statement I think. They clearly want a lot of players to stress the servers and that is also needed. We had two days before phase 2 started. Let's get more of those and really cram people in there, like I suggested in the OP. Just don't make that the only option is my point, because testing the actual content suffers for it.

Otr wrote: »

Steven said he and devs play along the players on the server.
I hope they don't cheat and grind with them to feel the consequence of their balancing.

I hope they play on the EU server then.

bloodprophet wrote: »

brita wrote: »

I've dropped the game for the time being. The massive contesting for resources, mobs or other stuff is draining, especially with people flagging to kill others who "crowd" their spots.

This is the intended design. Stated from the very start.
Scarcity and meaningful conflict.

Not to this extent. It cannot be intended for the game to be like it currently is on the EU server. Which is the point of this thread.

Azherae

Nerror wrote: »

bloodprophet wrote: »

brita wrote: »

I've dropped the game for the time being. The massive contesting for resources, mobs or other stuff is draining, especially with people flagging to kill others who "crowd" their spots.

This is the intended design. Stated from the very start.
Scarcity and meaningful conflict.

Not to this extent. It cannot be intended for the game to be like it currently is on the EU server. Which is the point of this thread.

To put another perspective on this that might matter to someone at Intrepid, my group contests this last statement of yours, Nerror ('despite' my efforts).

Most of them think that this is exactly what the game is intended to be like and has been all along and some people (mostly me, within the group) have just been fooling themselves the entire time about the goals of this studio.

If you start by trying to hold the perspective that bloodprophet does, can you say there's anything in the design that actually indicates otherwise?

nanfoodle

bloodprophet wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

I get testing the servers capabilities. Problem is there is not enough content for fhe number of players as well. It's not fun fighting over spawns. Servers are too packed

Early access not quite what you expected?

It's what I expected. I have tested Alphas before. I'm expressing what I'm not enjoying. Over populated camps everywhere. People so frustrated everyone is trying to steal mobs. Can't even carve out a camp. Some exp spots where so full you could not get the server to render everyone there.

I know as the nodes progress new content is added. If we gonna have servers that are 10k (currently 5k phase 2 was about 3k) IMO make the nodes default to have more low level spawns and camps. Over just vast empty spaces.

bloodprophet

nanfoodle wrote: »

bloodprophet wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

I get testing the servers capabilities. Problem is there is not enough content for fhe number of players as well. It's not fun fighting over spawns. Servers are too packed

Early access not quite what you expected?

It's what I expected. I have tested Alphas before. I'm expressing what I'm not enjoying. Over populated camps everywhere. People so frustrated everyone is trying to steal mobs. Can't even carve out a camp. Se exp spots where so full you could not get the server to render everyone there.

I know as the nodes progress new content is added. If we gonna have servers that are 10k (currently 5k) IMO make the nodes default to have more low level spawns and camps. Over just vast empty spaces.

Agreed they need more stuff but that will come as they progress forward.

Over populated camps and scarce resources leads to "meaningful" conflict. That is part of the game and intended. Right from the very first Kickstarter video they were clear on this. It is one of the main pillars.

Do they need to finish what they started and fill the world in. YES. Yes they do.

However it is still part of the overall design.
Then players have choices to make.
If your group or you as a solo have others move in you get to choose:
Move
Work around them
Fight it out

These choices are yours to make.

Otr

Until October it was fun to discuss how the game will work in theory based on wiki and Q&A interviews.
Now that the game is live, things are different.
Features are missing. balancing is a continuous process, developers are in vacation, mistakes happen or even fundamental concepts might prove to not work as intended due to players behaving differently than predicted.
And we don't have the statistics IS gathered.
Somebody (Pirate Software?) asked a few weeks ago if Steven will provide player count.
Steven said yes, he will in December.
Well, we got something but not a curve, to see how many were at peak and how player count dropped over time.
We also don't know how many are buying the wave 2 packages.

But it can also be that experiments are being done to see how players react, e.g. if EU gets 1 server instead of 2.
Experiments can be a mistake too and can have consequences.

bloodprophet

Otr wrote: »

Until October it was fun to discuss how the game will work in theory based on wiki and Q&A interviews.
Now that the game is live, things are different.
Features are missing. balancing is a continuous process, developers are in vacation, mistakes happen or even fundamental concepts might prove to not work as intended due to players behaving differently than predicted.
And we don't have the statistics IS gathered.
Somebody (Pirate Software?) asked a few weeks ago if Steven will provide player count.
Steven said yes, he will in December.
Well, we got something but not a curve, to see how many were at peak and how player count dropped over time.
We also don't know how many are buying the wave 2 packages.

But it can also be that experiments are being done to see how players react, e.g. if EU gets 1 server instead of 2.
Experiments can be a mistake too and can have consequences.

Valtec style experiments.

I like it😈

Otr

bloodprophet wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

I get testing the servers capabilities. Problem is there is not enough content for fhe number of players as well. It's not fun fighting over spawns. Servers are too packed

Early access not quite what you expected?

Imagine the rating if this would be in Early Access on Steam.

bloodprophet

Otr wrote: »

bloodprophet wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

I get testing the servers capabilities. Problem is there is not enough content for fhe number of players as well. It's not fun fighting over spawns. Servers are too packed

Early access not quite what you expected?

Imagine the rating if this would be in Early Access on Steam.

Lol, that would be amazing the QQ's there would be epic.

Nerror

Azherae wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

bloodprophet wrote: »

brita wrote: »

I've dropped the game for the time being. The massive contesting for resources, mobs or other stuff is draining, especially with people flagging to kill others who "crowd" their spots.

This is the intended design. Stated from the very start.
Scarcity and meaningful conflict.

Not to this extent. It cannot be intended for the game to be like it currently is on the EU server. Which is the point of this thread.

To put another perspective on this that might matter to someone at Intrepid, my group contests this last statement of yours, Nerror ('despite' my efforts).

Most of them think that this is exactly what the game is intended to be like and has been all along and some people (mostly me, within the group) have just been fooling themselves the entire time about the goals of this studio.

If you start by trying to hold the perspective that bloodprophet does, can you say there's anything in the design that actually indicates otherwise?

Yes, easily. Let me illustrate.

We know that the target concurrent userbase for the entire realm is 8-10k players. This is on the entire map below, with all the content in the game, including social orgs and religions and more dungeons and POIs and a huge ocean.

We only have the riverlands with actual content, but there are some spread out spawns in the desert around the nodes and the lvl 9ish scorpions and beetles throughout. As is evident from the lack of node levels in the desert, not a whole lotta xp is gained there compared to the Riverlands.

So 10k users for the entire map, both continents, and we have 5k users for the Riverlands plus a bit of desert. The math doesn't math. It cannot be Intrepid's intended design. 5K concurrent users should be for the entire western continent including the islands and all the planned content. That is the design we're given by Intrepid.

Edit: Just eyeballing the landmass, with 10k concurrent users for the entire map spread out on land, the Riverlands should hold around 700 concurrent users. Give or take a hundred.

Voeltz

Its stunning to me the lack of progress. They still don't even have low level quests working in the starter zone...That means they havent even touched the rest of the world. The available zone looks completely empty every time I watch a stream. Phase 2 just started and it looks identical to the last phase. What is there to do besides grind the same mobs for 40 hours straight? What's new that you guys are supposed to be testing that you haven't for the past 2 months? 1 max lvl dungeon and a new race? I would be pissed if I bought into that, but I knew better.

Lucascp92

I have a serious question: What are we supposed to be testing?

Child Item