Feedback to planed Update of 04.08.2020

[Fission]

is it possible to get even worse? This update is unnecessary.

Hello Pilot,

The update is necesary in terms of balancing and long-term plan of the game. Of course nerfing an specific something will be seen normally as bad in general, but there are multiple reasons and thoughts why a nerf/balancing occur, we dont try to do updates to just damage the game. And if you can give us a constructive feedback about which points you see wrong, we will gladly read and discuss about it with the team so we could work in improving those aspects.

 

[dijar]

Hello Pilot,

The update is necesary in terms of balancing and long-term plan of the game. Of course nerfing an specific something will be seen normally as bad in general, but there are multiple reasons and thoughts why a nerf/balancing occur, we dont try to do updates to just damage the game. And if you can give us a constructive feedback about which points you see wrong, we will gladly read and discuss about it with the team so we could work in improving those aspects.

No, this update is not necessary. I dont see this as a nerf, a nerf would be something like reducing ships or items stats, or increasing the difficulty of the game which would be fine with me because i trust you would do it out of necessity, but this update directly affects our gameplay in a way that pressures us to spend more money. For instance I always play with membership because im very used to it and cant play the game without it, so by increasing the price of ms im being forced to spend more money if i want to keep playing the game. I feel like we are being punished for not spending enough money after the energy update.

For players who dont have ms, who dont spend money in this game, this update affects them a lot more, with all the increase in energy costs, energy consumption and the decrease in energy collecting efficiency it makes the game a lot more uncomfortable to play than it was before the energy update. So this upcoming update targets them, especially after getting slightly used to this more comfortable gameplay, not to mention there have been a lot of returning players with the June 30 update who got interested in playing this game again.

I get that were a small community and we need to pay in order to keep this game alive, but you need to invest in other strategies of generating revenue as well, dont hurt our gameplay. Please reconsider this update and dont bring it to live servers.

Thank you.

 

[Rajaa]

I'm disappointed as well, because of reducing both collection speed and E ball values. About 3x cap reduced to 2x, that's fine.
However as well, Membership cost increased while 50% membership reduced to 30% one, and 75% to 50%, forces us to buy 100% to have more normal experience. Otherwise 50% new membership would work same as old 75% which isn't difference. I'd rather not buy membership more if that's the case thanks.

 

[Fission]

Hello Pilots,

You will see that the ratio of collecting energy is still bit higher than how it was before the update in 30 of June.

 

[Poland]

Video connecting feedback from community on the forums and my own opinion about the case:

 

[KingSub]

Devs? You did a great Job with given us 3x energy cap and higher energy cells. Its good for pilots in higher System without membership.. Good start to buy something.

Drones flatrate sounds nice, but thats comes good for lazy players.

The bad job you did is raisen up the cryo ammount. Everyone know can instantly buy a high class parsec ship and their are not really good in sirius and tau ceti. Except in mizar -draconis. Armor works great. Years ago we have to farm weeks and before sirius release months. it would have been enough to significantly increase cryo drop rate + maybe 10-20% extra.


So, you change membership thats fine. But why raisen up gold price for less % Energy consumption? We know, you dont work for free in our lovely game. BUT We don't need this update, i can agree with the others.

We need armor adjustments for Parsec Class, Daily Misson, Daily rewards. Random Sale Promotion... There is so much that would make pg great.

 

[Fission]

We need armor adjustments for Parsec Class, Daily Misson, Daily rewards. Random Sale Promotion... There is so much that would make pg great.

Hello Pilot,

Following your comments and feedback here, i wanted to give you a bit more of context of why maybe those could not be as great as they are seen in paper.

Parsec Class ships are already the most used class, they are not as hard to obtain as before (due to the increase on cryonite obtained) and players already are using them due to the fact of their skills or the extra armor that they have compared to other normal class ships. If those become ever more overpowered, its very likely that any other ship that is not a parsec class will become useless or outdated, while we try to make as most ships as possible viable in the game.

Daily mission is a point that has been discussed by the community for long, and even tho it could be a nice addition, if you look at long-term, it should not give much effect, since normally in many other games those type of mission ends being boring, or repetitive for the player base, since its normally a list of set possible missions or objectives to do, that at the end will not be interesting unless the rewards they do are completely amazing (which then could reduce the average game play in other aspects due to the difference between those).

Regarding daily rewards, its a point that devs commented some times, its seen in many games, and its true that normally gives the player a reason to log in (if the rewards are good enough) but if the content of the game doesnt give you anything itself, you will just log-in and log-off without doing anything much. Still that's something that could be a little nice addition, but aat the end it would not be a game changer or something so important.

Regarding random sales promotions... That's kind of already there for example with the one that gives you extra cryo when buying gold, but that also have a downside, if there are random regular sales, that could make the players not pay and just wait for those till they get this extra bonus (as it happened with happy hours, that forced players to actually wait till those promotions in order to buy gold).

We appreciate a lot all the ideas that player give us, and even more if those are done in a constructive way, but behind all ideas there is also a counterside that needs to be studied.

Thank you a lot @KingSub

Fission

 

[hektor.barbossa]

Leave the old ones members,add new ones.
Let players have the choice of which they want to buy.

 

[STAIN]

Well im only observing this game right now for few years to check what is new here and most of this update is logical to keep the game afloat and balanced... To sum up everything in the latest energy updates we could say that the devs successfully added variation in the size of energy balls and increased your energy cap by multiplying it by 2. Everything else the previous update added is gonna be negated by the new update. But there is one thing that doesnt change for example the energy consumption of your items. I am a person that never bought membership to play and after recent increases to prices you are actually not encouraging me to do so. But at the current state of the game you need to understand that having x3 energy cap and not "nerfing" other things like HJ's etc you are just making the most bought item (and the most useful one if not the only one for players) from the shop basically not worth buying anymore. I saw people talking about balancing parsecs here and there.. or saying that everyone has a parsec nowdays so lets boost cryo droprate etc.. that won't happen... Why? Because everyone who grinded that cryo for these ships is gonna complain and its simply unfair for them. They have these ships because the game development is slow and they have time to obtain them and at the end when you look at the normal ships they are used only to rush through system (just like before sirius) and to get better one in the future like parsec for example so the new players (if they exist) are like "Everyone has a parsec thats unfair" but take into consideration the time played of the accounts. As far as balancing goes i still see large cooldown/damage issue on aggrobomb while compared to orbital strike for example... Yes it's a tank item so cooldown is fine but i want to actually have the damage output that i expect such a long cd item to have or i want the item to have the ability to make mantis attack the tank ship (cuz its a tank? logical?). Well we can talk a lot about taunt / aim scrambler (which was nerfed to the ground) / protector (again) / stuns vs armor / aggrobeacons but thats not the point... don't expect balance anytime soon i am still waiting for it to happen. But there is one thing that actually scares me the speed of making updates that don't benefit players only devs and the speed of making updates that make the game more enjoyable like the cq one for example. Game is not losing players trust me because you can see the same amount of people login everyday (that spent some money in the game) because they are just basically refusing to leave their accounts that they worked hard for (yes this game is sort of work too cuz its grindy) so the devs would have to make game breaking "update" to change that. This is one of the updates that hits paying players (i would say 65% of the community) so thats why you can see the negative comments everywhere right now. Overall balancing update... nothing to see here... nothing to be sad about. Maybe only maybe we will see something that lasts longer than 1 month and lets hope its a good one cuz none of my buddies is online anymore after decryption system got implemented to slow players progression even more.

Peace. STAIN

 

[prozeus]

no matter how you see it. 75% more consumption in drones with 2 attributes is an exaggeration.

 

[Sar97]

Nice update you got there, guys. Making an already tedious process even more annoying, by making it more difficult to get e for your ship the only thing you guys will achieve is to reduce the playerbase. Increasing the amount of energy necessary to get your drones going is only going to cause non-paying players to get bored of the game once they realize theyll have to spend half of their playtime looking for e fields, Bravo for shooting yourselves in the foot

 

[Vesperion]

Parsec Class ships are already the most used class, they are not as hard to obtain as before (due to the increase on cryonite obtained) and players already are using them due to the fact of their skills or the extra armor that they have compared to other normal class ships. If those become ever more overpowered, its very likely that any other ship that is not a parsec class will become useless or outdated, while we try to make as most ships as possible viable in the game.

What basicly is already showing in TC considering of how few actuall TC Ships i see flying around at that point. Most Pilots who are in TC have farmed at least 1 Parsec+ and due most of the TC ships have (bluntly said) Crap combinations or the Items are basicly bad in their effectiveness the "most used TC ship" is the Thunder and in very rare cases the Hawk.

Hump is not really liked due it´s an "forced purchase" to continue the story and then either sell it afterwards or never touch it again or even bother upgrading it. Wolf has no real advantage and the Allies cover is missleading its name and from what i have read the few wolf users are disapointed in it. Frog is somewhat okish while bob and kodi did receive a negative hit as well from those who tested it cus for one the scope is "useless" in PvE Situations and the DDroid seems to have an insanly low dmg reflection in compare to the "AI version". Panther is relative good but if you have access to the Slate you can skip it as well.

In the end the most used ships in TC atm are Chrom, Slate, Hunter, Para and Disru and then followed by Storm and Hawk. So this makes already 6 of 8 TC ships "obsolete" just because the items are "bad" in their effect.

Daily mission is a point that has been discussed by the community for long, and even tho it could be a nice addition, if you look at long-term, it should not give much effect, since normally in many other games those type of mission ends being boring, or repetitive for the player base, since its normally a list of set possible missions or objectives to do, that at the end will not be interesting unless the rewards they do are completely amazing (which then could reduce the average game play in other aspects due to the difference between those).

Then i just ask myself why Split does not remove the Missions in Siri from R1-4 cus to some degree they are like "daily" missions that have a list of possible missions or objectives that end up being boring and repetitive and end up of not be interesting... Find the mistake please...

To be honest i would rather prefer to do a set of daily missions that give rewards based of the Pilot level then log into the game and directly know that i will farm for cryos due i have nothing else to do...

Regarding daily rewards, its a point that devs commented some times, its seen in many games, and its true that normally gives the player a reason to log in (if the rewards are good enough) but if the content of the game doesnt give you anything itself, you will just log-in and log-off without doing anything much. Still that's something that could be a little nice addition, but aat the end it would not be a game changer or something so important.

This can easily being solved by binding the daily(weekly/monthly) reward to the daily missions. In order to receive th daily reward you have to finish the daily set of missions so that the pilot has to actually "play the game" then just to login collect and leave again.

Regarding random sales promotions... That's kind of already there for example with the one that gives you extra cryo when buying gold, but that also have a downside, if there are random regular sales, that could make the players not pay and just wait for those till they get this extra bonus (as it happened with happy hours, that forced players to actually wait till those promotions in order to buy gold).

I agree here that the rndm sales promos did lead to the situation that pilots asked in chat when the next HappyHour would occur cus they waited then with purchasing gold until they did show up so the change of making the HappyHour a perma thing was a good move. On the other hand we have this insanly rare rndm sale where purchasing gold rewards us with cryo but considering on how rarely it shows up i never wait for that to occur and simply purchase gold at the end/begining of the month when i received my salary.

 

[TarryBark]

First you give the player with one hand improvements that improve the gameplay and now you take away the improvements with both hands and make it worse.

If I translated the protocol correctly, the time to collect energy and the hyper jump costs for probes were reduced a bit. The energy limit has been reduced. This is ok, since player seem to still have twice as much as before the June update.

On the other hand, the energy costs for resurrection are rising high. Hyperjumps to planets become more expensive. Energy cells are getting smaller and drones that have more than one effect now consume many times more energy and the energy requirement of a drone is also increased.

The consequence is that I can spend even more time collecting energy.
At the same time new memberships and more energy in Energy Booster are advertised. What do I get if I can collect bullets just a little bit faster, but there is less in them? That's a zero round...

Is this the thanks for the fact that over the years memberships have been bought with real money and much has been spent on other boosters? I have supported the game. In between I buy gold for smaller boosters and memberships. These extreme changes have nothing to do with the balance. This update is at the expense of the non premium players. (Overshot! This time the wrong way round!) I cannot support such a development with a clear conscience anymore, so I will use my remaining credit and stop payments.

I hope and wish that people will think about this update thoroughly.
I had gained a lot of hope with the June Update. I am disappointed. If the energy gathering becomes too frustrating and it gets too much, I will stop playing. I don't want to go through that at Tau Ceti. I want to have fun with a game and not frustration.

 

[Whatever.]

sadly the only way for them to notice that we dont like this update at all is to react with "dislike" to the post, so go do it now with this link (since it removed the ability to react, but you still can with inspect element)

https://forum.pirategalaxy.com/posts/189153/react?reaction_id=6

id=6 is "dislike" and id=9 is "disagree"

 

[KingSub]

First you give the player with one hand improvements that improve the gameplay and now you take away the improvements with both hands and make it worse.

If I translated the protocol correctly, the time to collect energy and the hyper jump costs for probes were reduced a bit. The energy limit has been reduced. This is ok, since player seem to still have twice as much as before the June update.

On the other hand, the energy costs for resurrection are rising high. Hyperjumps to planets become more expensive. Energy cells are getting smaller and drones that have more than one effect now consume many times more energy and the energy requirement of a drone is also increased.

The consequence is that I can spend even more time collecting energy.
At the same time new memberships and more energy in Energy Booster are advertised. What do I get if I can collect bullets just a little bit faster, but there is less in them? That's a zero round...

Is this the thanks for the fact that over the years memberships have been bought with real money and much has been spent on other boosters? I have supported the game. In between I buy gold for smaller boosters and memberships. These extreme changes have nothing to do with the balance. This update is at the expense of the non premium players. (Overshot! This time the wrong way round!) I cannot support such a development with a clear conscience anymore, so I will use my remaining credit and stop payments.

I hope and wish that people will think about this update thoroughly.
I had gained a lot of hope with the June Update. I am disappointed. If the energy gathering becomes too frustrating and it gets too much, I will stop playing. I don't want to go through that at Tau Ceti. I want to have fun with a game and not frustration.

i can understand that. I have also bought gold to buy boosters in recent years to support the devs. It's really sad that splittscreen is going this way. I will not continue to play like you and I will not buy gold. Their should at least leave the old membership. You know why? Its our gold/money we should decide which booster/memberships we buy.

 

[Whatever.]

Ok, I can give some feedback on what to possibly modify to make this better and devs you discuss it with your team on HQ.

And yes, I know the devs are actual people and need the money to maintain the servers and the game alive, and also for their personal lives and family, but this is not the way in my opinion, there are better ways with better incentives for people to hapily give you money. I really want this game to come back alive like the old days but with this update you are slowly burying it even deeper than before.

The RSS Stuff its pretty good actually, because many people dont even visit this forum, I myself just lurk here. so getting direct up-to-date relevant news in-game is a great way to keep the player informed of everything.

Reduced the overall energy cap by a third. This means that the cap is still double its size compared to before the June 30 update.

I would say keep the 3x the energy cap, dont reduce it.
why? because with the new mat cost and the new drone e consumption mechanic that will drain the energy REAL FAST for non-memb players, this will just destroy any motivation of keep playing when you costantly have to "i have to find an e field now and stare at it for 5 minutes to be full again and get drained again in 2 minutes", High energy consumption ships like the punisher and paragneiss drain AN INSANE ammount of energy which you will spend more time refilling than actually playing the game, this is a game about shooting stuff and doing missions, exploring planets etc, NOT an energy orb collection simulator.

Orb collection speed has been slightly reduced as well.
Reduced the average size of Energy orbs on planet surfaces.

Just why? dont you want us to play your game the way it is? instead you want us to camp an energy field.

Exploration probe jump Energy costs have been reduced.

This is great, specially for new players opening new planets.

Hyperjump Energy costs have been increased.

Why? you are reducing the energy cap AND also increasing the hyperjump cost, this doesnt fit, if you want to encourage people traveling other systems, for example a noob needs help in vega and you are all the way in sirius, you gonna arrive to vega with literally no energy to help the poor guy from too many hyperjumps. you should either keep the 3x cap or reduce the hyperjump cost with the new 2x cap

Now into the memberships, which is imo the most messed up thing here:

Enhanced Membership – 4,900 Gold
30% less Energy needed for
Every Item you use
Hyperjumps, Ship Repairs

Why was this lowered from 50% to 30% and raised in price doesnt make sense to me, its a scam, if 50% before was almost nothing imagine this.
Revert to 50%, add it to drones too and keep the price as 4.900 gold to justify the increase.

Elite Membership – 10,500 Gold
50% less Energy needed for
All your Drones
Every Item you use
Hyperjumps, Ship Repairs

same thing here, except it has the drones reduced consumption, BUT it was lowered from 75% to 50%, do the same as above and put it back to 75%, and keep the price as 10.500.

Ultimate Membership – 19,700 Gold (1 month)
100% Energy flatrate for
All your Drones
Every Item you use
Hyperjumps, Ship Repairs

Now this isnt a bad price to be honest, considering that currently on the shop you can get a gold pack exactly for 20k gold, this falls exactly for this membership, and also you get 300g left over for an energy pack, buuut i think you guys should add the 33% mat reduction like the supernova but reduce it to 30%, why 33? its an odd number, yes you can mat 3 times and you end up with 1% of the total energy for.. i dont know, repair after mat lol, assuming you dont use energy at all between pods.

Supernova Membership – 26,800 Gold (1 month)
100% Energy flatrate for
All your Drones
Every Item you use
Hyperjumps, Ship Repairs
33% less Energy needed for
Instant Materialization

Now this is the big one, and I know exactly how to make it very worth it to buy.

You know there's the anniversary drone that raises your e-cap by 25% right? put it in there, Done! Now its worth to buy it. and also reduce the 33% to 30%, thats enough to justify the massive price increase from Ultimate to supernova.

Yes i know the anniversary drone is meant to be something special but, are we really gonna wait for literally another 10 years to get this again? isnt this literally the perfect opportunity to being able to buy one? you havent done something like this since the PLUS Drone and that was YEARS ago.

Im not good at this kind of stuff, "balancing" etc but there's a few suggestions on what i would like to see.

I wish you guys could discuss this even further with your team at HQ and also the community to make this fair for both sides, the small bunch of people that still play this game really want this game to come back alive incluiding me, im very certain the new e update of 30th june made people come back to play as well as made the game more enjoyable to play.

Also buff cryo drop rates.

 

[hektor.barbossa]

If this update comes in the form it is now, it is a sign that they have the opinion of players somewhere and you can safely stop writing anything on the forum and say goodbye to the game - forever,because next updates will be only worse.

 

[Armageddon]

This update is a mistake and a shot in the foot.

I will never buy gold again these prices are for masochists.

Do it separately, not everyone wants to pay that much for membership onlz becouse have now drone refill.

I am very disappointed ...

Regarding random sales promotions... That's kind of already there for example with the one that gives you extra cryo when buying gold, but that also have a downside, if there are random regular sales, that could make the players not pay and just wait for those till they get this extra bonus (as it happened with happy hours, that forced players to actually wait till those promotions in order to buy gold).

It doesn't get clearer than this. The update is to pad the pockets of the SS.
They should instead do marketing or creating content that will get people feeling generous with their money.
The simple fact is, many and most will not spend money on games. Especially recurring. Maybe a one time purchase....

Game is not losing players trust me because you can see the same amount of people login everyday (that spent some money in the game) because they are just basically refusing to leave their accounts that they worked hard for (yes this game is sort of work too cuz its grindy) so the devs would have to make game breaking "update" to change that. This is one of the updates that hits paying players (i would say 65% of the community) so thats why you can see the negative comments everywhere right now. Overall balancing update... nothing to see here... nothing to be sad about. Maybe only maybe we will see something that lasts longer than 1 month and lets hope its a good one cuz none of my buddies is online anymore after decryption system got implemented to slow players progression even more.

Agree, the game is such a grind there's a sunk cost fallacy about the time already invested in the game.
I myself am back because of the past time and money investment. The more I play and pay, the more trouble it is to leave.

 

[Fission]

Hello Pilots,

Seems there is a misunderstanding about the hyperjump increase cost. The hyperjump costs are just gonna be equal to how they were before the energy update.

 

[Vesperion]

Seeing how the current discusion is going i would even suggest an delay of the planed event an rethink the whole thing again before actually make it worse for the Devs...

Thing is in it´s core you did give the players the opertunity to play the game much more relaxed with the E-Update in June so that even the non Ult Members can play longer outside of the E-Field then inside of it after basicly every 3 mins of intense farming.

Now you basicly "revert" this Update just with the difference that Pilots will have (in theory) 2x of the old E-Cap but again just 1 remat available if not using the E-Drone. Even i did still continue to buy the Ult Mem with the June Update cus i already did spend plenty of time in the E-Fields if the drones (aka beasts) got hungry again and had to be fueled again and no BPs for converting are droping.

I nor try to defend or to hate the update i more try to look from the perspective of a Pilot who doesn´t has the luxury to purchase the Ult Membership and seeing that now another Membership is coming that allows me to remat myself 3x instead of 1x it really looks like a step into the wrong direction.

If you really did "overshot" it with the E-Update i must say the following: "You did still not focus on the main Issue that is the E-Collection part at the end".
1. The time for collecting E has increased from ~4 to ~6 seconds/cell with everything combined (collection time + CD).
2. Going into a lower system for a higher level Pilot is inefficent cus Cells do not scale with the Pilots lvl cus they are bound to the planets what then results in spending even more time in E-Fields and collecting BPs to convert what in combination with events in lower systems is the most impractical thing.
3. In addition to 2nd this doesn´t really encourage to help Pilots in lower system cus they spend way more time in the E-Fields to fuel up if they either did pod 1x or used up way more E then the lower lvl Pilot.

I can live with an reduced E-Cap if Split thinks that the 3x Cap was a bit to much BUT then show that you care about the Playerbase and change things to the following:
1. Remating costs 30% of the Cap that allows us at least 3 remats before going into the E-Field again (depending on if an membership is involved)
2. Scale the value of Cells around the Pilot lvl and not the System/Planet they are located.
3. Keep the Enhanced and the Elite Membership as we know them in their E-reduction but add the reduced drone costs as well (to justify the price increase)
4. Don´t implement the Supernova Booster cus it´s the Booster that currently is the "rotten apple" that generates so much hate due of the planed E changes
5. Keep the E-consumption of Drones as they are now even for the "Duo-drones" or are there now future plans to implement drones with 3 effects+ with even higher consumption rates then knowing that Memberships should reduce the consumption rate for drones?