According to Eugen, no new balance patch until late July/early August

[I WUB PUGS]

The thing i've noticed with gamers is not that they just want instant gratification, they want a plan and a roadmap for the future. They want to see the direction that the game is going and offer input. (this doesn't apply to actual trolls ofc)

Eugen doesn't do that so we have no idea what they have planned or what areas of the game they're looking at.

Eugen's response to the entire "player base dimishing" has been muted for the most part, and I see no tangible roadmap anywhere so all people can do is speculate, and when nothing is done they become frustrated.

A roadmap of what they plan to do would allieviate problems, we could see what's coming up on the horizon including the breaks that eugen have off and arent't working

Instead we have practically nothing.

Pretty good point.

I bought ArmA III in the Alpha phase of development and they had a roadmap from day 1 and they continued to add on to that roadmap but they still followed the original plan.

It may have been an incredibly slow process but it was methodical and the community was actively engaged. It isn't like Bohemia Interactive is some massive studio either. I don't even think they work with a publisher.

I mean, while they irritated a lot of modders early on with all the changes they kept rolling out, they still kept engaged with the community and spent a lot of effort working with them to make sure they stuck around. We're talking about a game that launched as early access damn near Pre-Alpha and has rolled through several iterations of functionality and greatly expanded its content over several years. And has managed to keep and grow its player-base.

The silence from Eugen is the worst part. They released those videos in conjunction with Paradox, but they kept up their same bullshit "soon" or "imminent" nonsense like it was endearing when really it's just annoying and unprofessional.

Great, you're working on stuff, why not give us an idea of the targets for these things. Where is the plan?

Thing is, I'm not even sure they have one. Many of the changes they tried to implement in the release were as a result of the VIP beta feedback. So they were underdeveloped and hurried. This is why the VIP beta should've probably been the primary testbed for ALL features in the game. They could have added like 200 keys a week or something to slowly grow the tester base while they added content.

Instead, the VIP was just there to hype the game and then the Open Beta was just a gimmick for pre-orders. The release was a disaster balance wise and for stability.

Just a total shitshow from the beginning. And you know, they actually had signs of it not being this way during the VIP and Open betas. I really felt like Eugen was working on being ultra-proactive and some of the early feedback and interactions supported that. Then they just sort of went quiet.

 

[iamthatiam]

The thing i've noticed with gamers is not that they just want instant gratification, they want a plan and a roadmap for the future. They want to see the direction that the game is going and offer input. (this doesn't apply to actual trolls ofc)

Eugen doesn't do that so we have no idea what they have planned or what areas of the game they're looking at.

Eugen's response to the entire "player base dimishing" has been muted for the most part, and I see no tangible roadmap anywhere so all people can do is speculate, and when nothing is done they become frustrated.

A roadmap of what they plan to do would allieviate problems, we could see what's coming up on the horizon including the breaks that eugen have off and arent't working

Instead we have practically nothing.

This is what Eugen wrote in reply to my FB post.
"Eugen Systems We are reading every single message in the forums, and, as written in the article, we are working on new updates for the game."

That's the extent of their communication. Last time they were "working on updates" for one of their games we they ended up giving us Act of Aggression Reboot Edition, which no one wanted. If they communicated with their community, even allowing us to vote on the future direction of their games, then they might end up making a game which a majority would enjoy.

 

[der_butschi]

no srsly.. statistics? U joking Eugen?

So... you'd rather have random balance changes?

 

[der_butschi]

If they communicated with their community, even allowing us to vote on the future direction of their games, then they might end up making a game which a majority would enjoy.

That's assuming, of course, that people on the forums are in any way representative of this majority, which, usually isn't the case.

 

[iamthatiam]

That's assuming, of course, that people on the forums are in any way representative of this majority, which, usually isn't the case.

They wouldn't have to be part of these forums. They could just post a link within the game itself.

 

[morpher]

That's assuming, of course, that people on the forums are in any way representative of this majority, which, usually isn't the case.

With the current player count of SD it is safe to assume that forum posters are a majority.

 

[iamthatiam]

With the current player count of SD it is safe to assume that forum posters are a majority.

Assetto Corsa is a great example of devs looking to create the game the players want.
http
://steamcommunity.com/games/assettocorsa/announcements/detail/1428055053659561921
That's the funny thing about computers and the internet; it's pretty easy to communicate with your intended audience.

 

[derkos80]

The thing i've noticed with gamers is not that they just want instant gratification, they want a plan and a roadmap for the future. They want to see the direction that the game is going and offer input. (this doesn't apply to actual trolls ofc)

Eugen doesn't do that so we have no idea what they have planned or what areas of the game they're looking at.

Eugen's response to the entire "player base dimishing" has been muted for the most part, and I see no tangible roadmap anywhere so all people can do is speculate, and when nothing is done they become frustrated.

A roadmap of what they plan to do would allieviate problems, we could see what's coming up on the horizon including the breaks that eugen have off and arent't working

Instead we have practically nothing.

Having a roadmap, would be nice. But publishing the plans often only leads to more negative feedback. There are always enough people, who will hate the planned changes. Especially in a game with so many different modes. And those people usually dominate the discussion.

 

[morpher]

But publishing the plans often only leads to more negative feedback.

Can it be worse than how it is now?

The current eugen master plan seems to be killing all their games one disconnect at a time.

 

[RoyalColor]

Gamers are sadly still thinking games are falling from heaven and developers are slaves of the community who dont need eat sleep or vaction and are willing to work 24/7 and have a IQ at least on Einstein level so they can fix any Problem in minutes. havent changed in the last 15 years and will not change in the future. Even Blizzard team members got pushed into burnout by the community. GAmers are hell when it comes to thsi in most part. Because for them its their holly medium not something human.

Not entirely, Already during closed beta number one issues pointed out were:

• No more lobby simulator,
• No more pub stomping
• Make "room" for new players for them to accustom with the game before they get a kick in the teeth from vets.

The above hasn't come from entitlement. It wasn't and still isn't asking for change in game design or extra features. And it's not asking for a rocket science, there are solutions present on the market rectifying the above since at least a decade. If Eugen couldn't come up with the in-house remedy, then they could hire someone, outsource or get offshore IT solution. There were options out there, and little has been done in that direction since March.

And here we get a new content. Funny thing is, no one actually asked for it. On the contrary, most folks around ask for limitations on content/features, not extensions.

I mean, how will a potential new map, a couple of new units or maybe a new division, change game's most urgent problem of player loss?

 

[naizarak]

thats directly a result of dump wargamers hanging around and having no Fun in nothing so they have to destroy anyone elses fun.

"dump wargamers" is the reason this game had a 90% pop drop in a month? nice delusion

 

[Gondie]

So... you'd rather have random balance changes?

What abput.. uhh.. comen sens? I know its rare with eugen, but hey.. lets hope.

There are also alot of rly good palyers. U can listen to them u know? It was not rly hard when the game launched to see from day 1 what was broken.. same with 'the duelist' patch..

And i dont need any statistics to fix bugged units or half the nonsens going on. Statistics are just a lame excuse for doing nothing and then pressing out an 'massiv ubdate' where they change a handfull of unit stats taht are not even relatet to the real problem.. yes im looking at u fucked up AT gun bullshit..

 

[xXSunSlayerXx]

Having a roadmap, would be nice. But publishing the plans often only leads to more negative feedback. There are always enough people, who will hate the planned changes. Especially in a game with so many different modes. And those people usually dominate the discussion.

But these are the same people who are posting "game is ded" threads right now. So it wouldn't really change anything regarding them, but all the reasonable players would at least have something to work with.

 

[I WUB PUGS]

Plenty of people that see the game as "ded" are not "wargamers" or at least anymore and have been here from day one rooting for the game.

It's really a tiny fraction of the posters here that just hate the game . Like I can count them on one hand. There's a lot of us that a just pissed the F off that this game has been such a shitshow of a release. Pointing out the clear trend in player numbers as being "ded" doesn't make some crass. It's just stating a fact.

 

[xXSunSlayerXx]

Plenty of people that see the game as "ded" are not "wargamers" or at least anymore and have been here from day one rooting for the game.

It's really a tiny fraction of the posters here that just hate the game . Like I can count them on one hand. There's a lot of us that a just pissed the F off that this game has been such a shitshow of a release. Pointing out the clear trend in player numbers as being "ded" doesn't make some crass. It's just stating a fact.

Yes, my point was more along the lines of "haters gonna hate, but everyone who really wants this game to become better would actually have something constructive to discuss".

 

[Hidden Gunman]

Well i am happy you can solve your customers problems in a few hours rather than a few weeks. It would be lovely if every problem in the world was that easy to solve.

If you think its so simple for Eugen to fix things then there would be thousands of military rts games springing up right now and all of them would be perfectly balanced and have full and active player bases.

You have to be realistic. It takes longer than a few hours to work on a patch. Thats not including whiteboarding and testing etc.

Out of interest what exactly is it that you want them to do? how would you bring the players in/keep them?

Hidden gunman i did actually mean thematic yes. But i think realistic still works. Its more realistic than arcade. Also not a guy but dont tell anyone i feel like an outsider here already

Sorry re gender comment, it was a generic reference.

Good lord is damage control really that hard.

Shift the damnable rocket artilley assets out of Phase A.
Shift the damnable gun AT plane assets out of Phase A.
Shift the damnable call-in artillery out of Phase A and the heavy-call ins out to Phase C.

Tumour removed, meta is less cancerous. Follow-up fine tuning can be implemented, but right now these are the worst offenders.

You left out 'balance tweaking' of Phase C. The current play model is counter-productive outside of low player number games...and regardless of what some people think, those larger modes are popular.

 

[derkos80]

But these are the same people who are posting "game is ded" threads right now. So it wouldn't really change anything regarding them, but all the reasonable players would at least have something to work with.

Also the reasonable players usaually want to have changes, which fit best to their playstyle (which is totally ok). But they cannot judge, how many other players do share the same wishes. And I doubt that forum community is representative. Usual result: If the devs will realy try to do, what the community proposes, you will get a jack-of-all-trades game, which nobody really likes. If they ignore some of the community, the people will complain, that the devs do not hear the voice of the community.
Of course, this is a general problem, which is also there at the moment. So maybe it would be worth for them to give it a try and publish a roadmap and discuss it with us. The only drawback would be, that this would be more work for Eugen. And I am not sure, if the effort will pay back.

Not entirely, Already during closed beta number one issues pointed out were:

• No more lobby simulator,
• No more pub stomping
• Make "room" for new players for them to accustom with the game before they get a kick in the teeth from vets.

Sounds good and easy and there are many threads about the matchmaker. But all of them ignore, that there are also people, who like the lobby. For these switching to "matchmaker only", will make the game much worse. E.g. I normally want to choose, on which map I will play. Or if I do not care about the map, then I want to choose my division depending on the map.
There are other people, which prefer even more customization, like different income, mods,..
And last but not least there is also 10vs10, which needs also a solution.

Don't get me wrong: I also do not like the team stacking and pub stomping. But I am just not sure, if the matchmaker is the best easy-bisy solution for the majority of the players.

 

[Claremont Waltz]

This is what Eugen wrote in reply to my FB post.
"Eugen Systems We are reading every single message in the forums, and, as written in the article, we are working on new updates for the game."

That's the extent of their communication. Last time they were "working on updates" for one of their games we they ended up giving us Act of Aggression Reboot Edition, which no one wanted. If they communicated with their community, even allowing us to vote on the future direction of their games, then they might end up making a game which a majority would enjoy.

I don't want to vote. I'm fine with Eugen making design decisions. But I want them to communicate their plans in a broad sense and float ideas to the community like PDS does using dev diaries, not this crap where they release a wiki entry in a division already in the game and call it a dev diary. They're not required to take feedback, but they should at least check it out, ask for clarification of interesting user ideas and most importantly re-evaluate areas where player feedback is both negative in near universal agreement. Maybe the player solution isn't the right one, but consensus that some feature or play style sucks ought to be a good reason to check if maybe it isn't working as intended or if a better way to do the same thing can be found.

 

[Yossarian23]

Yeah, it is amazing what prioritization and direction from higher-ups can do to maximize assets.



No, market saturation wouldn't allow that. The cream would still have to rise to the top. Eugen fugged up because they had a chance to really be the only new, modern and fresh take on WW2 RTS.






Eugen launched the game with poor matchmaking and a scatter brained solution to it. Probably should've rolled out forced 1v1 through 4v4 matchmaking as the default and only way to play multiplayer, then launched 10v10s. 10v10s are actually new to the series. They came in Airland Battle well after the game had been out. I wouldn't have even had ranked as an option until they sorted everything. Afterall, since they didn't sort it, ranked got gamed by a handful of people.

The biggest issue is stability, which a lot of people have suffered from and are suffering from.

This doesn't touch on the fact that the closed and open beta didn't even have access to all of the decks and the most popular/cancerous decks were from that lot that wasn't tested.

There isn't anything they can do now. The ship sailed. I just hope they learn from this mistake.

They've got some odd policies in place that just don't make sense to me, like they won't discontinue things like clearly broken units or game modes that don't really work with the overall vision.

Personally, I'll play SD a bit more. Hit level 10 soon for my achievement which would give me all of them sans hitting level 20 and then I'll hang it up until they give us major DLC. DLC that hopefully comes in the form of a new theater and I just want them to learn from all the screwups and not repeat them.

Its a real shame.

Oh and saying so doesn't honestly mean anything. This game will be dead before the end of summer. Not like meme dead, I'm talking like sub 100 players on a weekend.

I can say that because that's what the trend is and I'll certainly change my tune if those numbers stabilize or reverse, but for now, I'm right in saying this game is totally screwed before the weather changes.

Edit: I think my biggest gripe is that they've been slow to implement or at least only half-assed things. Like the expansion of match-making was hyped in some videos and it went from a Ranked clone to just a bigger ranked clone. Like why even bother? Don't tell me I'll be able to select all of these options eventually and search for them and "they're coming soon" and then just roll out like one tiny change and then go silent.

They sold us a complete game or at least it was priced that way, when it should've been labeled as early-access and then they told us a bunch of new stuff was coming, but it has been painfully slow to release.... if it ever does.

Regardless, I just hope they take the money they got from this and roll it into a properly working and full-feature expansion.

Have you considered that you might not understand the dimensions of the problems they're trying to solve, nor do you have the skills to even assess the situation or propose reasonable solutions to same?

 

[I WUB PUGS]

Have you considered that you might not understand the dimensions of the problems they're trying to solve, nor do you have the skills to even assess the situation or propose reasonable solutions to same?

Why should I?

That sounds like a copout considering the problems I'm talking about are ones they created for themselves by saying the game would have X, Y and Z features and then not deliver on those features in a timely fashion or even bother to give a rough timeline of implementation. That type of shit doesn't fly in the business world. Those are what we call "empty promises" and that destroys credibility.

As for balancing decks which has always been the community's biggest gripe, that's utter horse shit that they can't be more proactive. They are slow because they rely on their internal data (something they've told the community repeatedly). The changes themselves do not take long, have a look at modding for yourself. You can completely rebuild half the decks or all of them in a day's work if you know your way around the files.

The only thing I'm not capable of assessing is their server instability and game performance for certain customers. The rest of this is business and I am very much capable of assessing their failures there.