AGS needs to learn a lesson that every child learns about shared goal-posts

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When playing a game, you don’t continuously rewrite the rules if you want people to keep playing with you.

Children learning to play games for the first time love doing this.

Tag? Everything is base, especially when you catch them, and so on.

Before long you just lose interest in playing along, until they learn the importance of shared goal-posts.

AGS keeps moving the goal-posts. Players keep leaving.

There’s a reason games take care in their patches. Sure changes are needed, but changes also shake the meta up and create the appearance of things being broken, until enough time passes to allow things to settle.

The types of changes AGS have made have a track record of repeatedly shocking the playerbase.

The 1.1 pvp balancing was basically a whole new game. 1.2’s pvp changes will do this again.

But the watermark rework actually takes stuff away from players that they invested hundreds of hours in. Sure they can still sell GS 600 items (which fewer people will buy), sure they can now make more intentional items, which is cool. And sure, they can still use them too, just not at full value, which is the point of the GS 600 to begin with.

They don’t see how this is going to shock their playerbase?

I don’t see why they just wouldn’t shift the ballpark to give everyone 600 GS and create a new 700 GS system for people to grind. Or something like this that creates something new for players to grind instead of taking something they already had away and making players quit.

Players like new content. Players like grinding for new content.

Players don’t like stuff taken away when it was already given to them.

This is basic.

12 Likes
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That is a lot of words

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Imagine reading

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Want me to bastardize?

AGS gave you a Toy Truck, you had fun. They took it away and gave you a Toy Car, you still had fun but it felt weird. Now they are taking your Toy Car and giving you a shovel. You are confuse and don’t really want to interact with them anymore.

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imagine sarcasm

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i r not confuse

that is just a lot of words

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[Edited] I feel bad for the CMs and mods sometimes. They are not responsible for the game’s state, and have to deal with all the criticism. Some vitriolic, some constructive like this post. All of it perhaps taking a toll. [/Edited]

AGS have to answer to someone, first name Mike. I think that it would be silly to assume an entire game studio are so socially inept.

What I do believe is some out-of-touch corporate bureaucrat is that socially inept, and has single-handedly driven this property into the dirt.

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Wow can’t imagine you read the patch notes.

the tldr is the first sentence btw:

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oh i read the patch notes. always good stuff

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Hmmm

noun: vitriol: cruel and bitter criticism.

Not sure how that applies to what I wrote. While it might not seem like it, this is intended as constructive feedback.

Yeah Mike is probably responsible for a lot of the pacing and release decisions.

A lot of it comes from how they probably had to hire a lot of new devs that didn’t have experience with the code base and broke things.

But none of my post is about the causes, it’s about the effects.

AGS is continuing to communicate to us to expect big shocking changes, so they may not fully comprehend what this does to their playerbase.

It isn’t something successful games I’ve played have done, but hey what do I know!?

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Well written post, I agree with all of it including the implementation of the new watermark system impacting GS for gear over 600.

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I do apologize.

Your post is not baseless criticism. It’s apparent you have something deeper to say about conduct between game developer and consumer, than a lot of troll posts on these forums do. I do not believe what you’ve said is vitriolic and will edit my post to reflect that.

I agree with what you’ve said by the way. A certain level of conduct between consumer and producer is crucial to a long-lasting relationship. Things one might even assume should not have to be taught, nor brought up!

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Thank you.

I don’t feel like a new GS cap above 600 is easily accomplished, or the obvious solution. It’d probably be non-trivial and take a lot of effort. But that effort would likely be well received.

When it comes down to it we’re discussing psychological causes and effects. So there is likely some creative way for them to appear like they’re giving more than they’re taking away.

In this case, they put a hell of a lot of effort to create a lot more creative mechanisms for us, and those took a lot of work. Unfortunately a lot of that good will is neutralized by that content increasing the work players have to do across the board, for gear that can be bought right now for 10g and fully utilized.

I do feel they are listening, and given the amount of pressure they are probably going to be chatting about potential fixes for this situation, so we’ll see what manifests.

I just hope they learn the lesson about trying to preserve some of the goal-posts and elements of stability in their future changes, as that will help retain the player base.

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I think this has already been in the works which is why I suggested it on a few of my previous posts. Just implement the new expertise system and leave off the gear score nerf for now and have it impact the gear over 600 down the road when that patch goes in.

Players can still work towards that higher watermark for drops using the gypsum options but no one will be penalized on gear that they already placed time, effort and gold into crafting or purchasing.

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Yep, this makes a lot more sense to me, and is simple and elegant.

A new GS cap is best paired with a new territory to explore, which is obviously in the works but not ready yet.

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He was pretty clear. A lot of the posts contain vitriol, but some, like yours, are constructive.

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(Thanks for clarifying. Also, he edited it following my reply. ;p)

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