Well I have nothing new to add. Everyone's opinions pretty much sums up how I feel. I just want to thank Kixeye for getting me off my own addiction. I wasn't a big spender like some here (maybe $20 a week). However after grinding and playing countless hours to get the bigger and better ships (or the $100 I spent to get the rag in December/January cause my ships could only hit lvl 35 vsecs), so in the end I could have a great feeling of finally getting a great ship. Or the feeling I got after grinding and grinding to get a BP complete so i could finally get a great weapon that will allow me to raise the level of my fleets that I may take on bigger players and not get creamed in pvp all the time....just to find out it was all for nothing.... It is like my drug dealer moving from marajuana to rosemary and telling everyone it's a better high; and then giving me a swift kick in the balls while he smallest at you.
So thanks for helping me get clean.
Sooner or later another addiction in the form of a space game that I can play on my tablet will catch my eye and wallet and provide me with the sweet feeling of finally working to get the big prize.
Until then I think I will enjoy an extra 2 Stabuck coffees a week. Or Treat myself to a movie once a week with the money you saved me.
To you, the long time players, the game feels good as it is. It doesn’t feel broken or badly out of shape. You like playing the game - if you didn’t you wouldn’t have continued playing it month after month. And yet here am I saying it needs fixing. Well... we’re both right. As it turns out, you guys (and gals) are pretty unique. Out of the millions of people who have played VC, it really connected with a small, select subgroup of those people (you) who really enjoyed playing VC day after day, month after month. The majority of people didn’t find what they were looking for in VC and simply stopped playing. For those people, VC failed. It failed to be fun. It failed to be engaging day after day.
And there lies the catch-22. Some of the aspects of the game that appeal to the current player base are the exact same aspects that frustrate or overload new players. To improve the experience for new players, and to grow VC, we have to alter the game to make it more attractive to new players. Sometimes, after considering all other options, this includes altering the game in a way that frustrates the current player base.
At the time I make this reply, your post have 2 likes and 55 dislikes. Still not enough of an explanation from Paul.
Now, lets talk about mid-game players and attrition. The key question is WHY do mid-game players quit?
1. Build times are really long and they want to be top-game immediately
2. Repair times grind play to a halt once you have 1 or 2 level 50 fleets
3. They lose in fights too much to top players
Lets talk about how this rebalance doesn't fix any of this.
Build times are still the same. Once you have 4 fleets, build times aren't an issue anyway, but players don't realize this when they are at mid-game stage
Repair times are going up for most of my fleets. My trit 5 revs I use every day are almost doubling in repair time.
A level 58 maxed out heretic fleet is going to blow a MK1 or MK2 rev fleet out of the water. They will still be dominated. It will just be brawler style only.
Here are my solutions to making this game more mid-game player friendly, when you restore legacy speeds
As much as we hate it, run 2 riots a month to give more tech out constantly. Hell, you just gave a lot of new players all the hulls pretty much anyway. 1 Vega riot, 1 VSEC riot a month
Reduce build times on rebel hulls a LOT. Cut them in half, but leave the premiums for Vega, VSEC high-ish.
Upon restoration of legacy speeds, maybe do some tweaks to throw the rebels a speed bone but not kill variation: Give rebel cruisers a +20 speed buff, give rebel battleships a +20 or 30 buff. Some moderate speed buffs, combined with reduced build times will make anybody, even me crank out more revs [even though I have like 10+ event hulls]
These suggestions should help item #1 and #3 a lot. Grinding out a rev fleet in 2.5 weeks, with a forward speed of 300 is enticing, even to somebody sitting on 5 MK5 pocs. This addresses mid-game issues substantially. The only thing my ideas don't address is #2, repair times, which hurt end-game players more than mid game players
I play on mobile, and the issue/ frustration with the game had more to do with control/ fleet movement commands and high punishment in general for mistakes/ disconnects, too much grinding in general and less to do with the factors addressed in the rebalance. I am sorry to say, but I agree with your general assessment that confidence in your product has been fundamentally eroded.
I am changing from a frequent purchaser of coins to a non purchaser simply because these actions have made me acutely aware that you are willing to de-value my time and purchases through changes of your product whenever developers see fit. I finally have fleets that can complete events at a medium to high level without all the high grinding times with auto fleets. This option is gone; you changed my product that I worked for and purchased and now it cannot do what I paid for. I would not have invested time any money into this product had I known you were going to change it. Your company knew this change was happening and instead of informing the consumer you waited and then made changes that you knew were in benefit of other things. Let be honest, everyone is using the time/money resource to purchase a non-real thing. We all secretly feel guilty for it. You have made us feel like fools for ever investing when you make sweeping changes without telling us. For you it was ripping the band-aid off. For us who had no idea what you were doing, it was like stabbing us in the back.
The relationship between consumer and producer is based fundamentally on trust. At the end of the day, the action you and your company did can only make sense from the standpoint of attempting to make the most money before this change so that you could offset the lost of players making future purchases. I know I purchased things to get the Rag and the Dread for the hope that I would finally have a fleet that could consistently hit higher level Vsec. Your company put out deals for these things knowing you would later lower its value. I understand the terms of service, but doesn't that feel fundamentally dishonest? If you put your time into something that the other party knew they were going to de-value, wouldn't you feel cheated?
You hope that overall the changes will be viewed favorably so that new players can enjoy your product. Maybe you have some metric where you determined you can no longer extract value from long time players. The problem with this logic, is your base as eroded. As a newer player, older players helped to keep me invested in the game with their experience and the general concept that their is a light at the end of the tunnel. Without that, I too would have quit this long ago. If the goal post keeps moving, there is no light, just changes to the base parameters to make more money. You could have made VSec the best fleet, you didn't because you thought you could extract more if you made the worst ships better. Save on development cost, save on producing new product. Some new guy can't lean on Kixeye to show them the ropes and make this game enjoyable, the forum and the players did that. There has to be a way to meet your overall objectives and still make the player base happy.
I will continue to enjoy your game to the best I possibly can, but until you re-establish trust, I would be foolish to invest money into this game. Maybe you can recoup the difference on new players, but i just can't see myself putting all the previous effort in again when you could change things in a month.
Thank you for your time and consideration on this matter.
Wow you hit the nail on the head with this well said!!!!
Think about it who nees an apoc or a dread anymore when they have revs or a furry theres no reason to get bps anymore or do events because each class of ship will be the same as the ships you can research pretty much the only ship that will be better is the zeal and wait for it go figure thats the ship with the longesr build time
I don't understand. Why they care more about the noobs then the vets. I worked hard to get all my **** and build all my ship's took a long time. Now revs are just as good as raptures. I should have just built revs this while time. Way to kill it for us.
I don't understand. Why they care more about the noobs then the vets. I worked hard to get all my **** and build all my ship's took a long time. Now revs are just as good as raptures. I should have just built revs this while time. Way to kill it for us.
Oh that's simple. You ignore the newbies you stifle your future. Defense is not the way to play forever, essentially you would be maintaining a playerbase until it dies off. The problem is that everyone is stiffed by this, so even that is not a reliable explanation.
There seems to be a strong element in the address that you want to encourage new players. OK, good. But that has to be in a manner where the new players stay playing. The recent trend of more complication has made it impossible. I have grown tired of trying to explain to new guys about the difference between vega/event/riot etc etc fleets and which ones they should hit and in what order to get what BP etc etc....then there is the fact that as they struggle to get to level 20 -25 they are hit by higher level players.....whatever your view is of that the fact remains the experience for new players means they stop playing....but instead of addressing this to encourage new players to stay you say you want to make it more complicated - instead of managing with regular researched ships and bp/vsec the ladder is made taller.....you are actually making worse and driving new players away. Scrap the crafting......make the craft/ship upgrades a bp or riot/event prize.....just have a upgrade token which will instantly upgrade a given class of ship..at least that way there will be more regular vega for new players. Give us manual control for base weapons.....stop nerfing ships we have worked hard for. How do you think new players feel when they hear us saying in chat our hard worked for ships are scrap. Fix the friend issue where we can not relocate to friends on other platforms. You have so many issues in this game and all you seem to do is add more. Fix the bits that are broken and stop making more broken bits.
Assuming everything you said in that post is true and you need to normalize the speeds due to phone users, that still doesn't explain why you are nerfing our vsec hulls and buffing the ISC hulls. We have spent over a year of our time and a lot of our money getting, building, refitting and upgrading vsec hulls, and you are basically making them worthless. If you insist on making these changes, at least put the ships we already have (vsec) at the top. I won't start over with ISC hulls. Yes, I am just one player. But I'm not the only person who feels this way. If you go ahead with this plan you will lose thousands and thousands of players/coiners.
I think this rebalancing takes balls on your part. It could or could not ruin the game. You say normalizing, i don't believe that's true. Let me ask you this......are the hull build times going up or down??
THANK YOU FOR ADDRESSING THE FORUMS******I like to keep a positive attitude towards these changes , and as you can see for so many there disturbed and concerned by the direction of the game , I am at the very least happy about what you have said , that your doing everything all at once ,ripping off the bandaid as you texted.
Now in the coming months you'll have to see how the numbers play out .
I'd like to share how I feel about the game before this rebalance , it has its moments of fun , but the majority of the time its very calm and boring , you can fight all you want , but sometimes players run into there bases , or you lose , its the repair time's that folks would rather not deal with . I can't believe there isn't rewards for destroying others ships you should be able to get medals for it, this in itself would boost the players interest.
Base defense at a certain level is only capable of being destroyed by snipers fleets , for example a Lance fleet equipped with siege, the dread , zeal, vigilante type ships are useless in defeating a base, I feel this should be addressed in my opinion .
The build time is just right , the research time as well. The repair time does seriously need a revamp , you need to fill the numbers up with consistent players , but this is all my 2 cents worth.
I wish I could mark the original post as troll. I guess I'll have to settle for a dislike. I have one question though, Mr Paul. You say you want ship longevity. Please enlighten me, what would be a single use for the destiny after the speed homogenisation?
Sunday, 13 March 2016 - USA Monday, 14 March 2016 - Europe The day VEGA died.
We do not want you thinking that you are not important to us. Long time players are the lifeblood of the game. In many ways you are the game. However for VC to grow and entertain a new generation of players it must change and adapt. Ultimately we feel the result is worth the effort.
If long time players are the life blood and the ones that coin a lot (almost all) then good job killing the game. You are willing to lose people that DO coin now for new players that MAY coin in the future. Thats GREAT business logic.
Another thing, what makes you think the new players will keep playing the game when they realize you gives dont give a **** about what we think. Like some guy here said, even your own former employees say the same thing we do, management has no idea how to run the company or even treat employees.
What pissed me off was the offers I bought before you came out with this bullshit "rebalance". As many have said, when this patch comes, bye bye vega, hell next space game
Over the last few days, I've been collecting and collating some of your responses to the great rebalance. I promised an explanation from the person in charge of these changes, and here it is. I've rephrased the questions somewhat, but I feel it keeps the original spirit.
For those of you who don't know who he is, Paul Preece is one of the original founders of KIXEYE, and original creator of Battle Pirates.
Blue is me, Orange is Paul. What is the point of this change?
To find the reason for the changes we have to go back in time, to when VC was first created. When KIXEYE first imagined VC it was as a space themed version of a PC game we had previously created called Battle Pirates. It’s not in our DNA to simply clone games, even one of our own, so we purpose built VC from the ground up as a true PC space game. In the process creating a bunch of new features such as combat strafing, hull classes, weapon arcs, planets, moving PvE fleets, interception, wormholes, shields, mines, asteroids and factions. As is often the case when creating new things, some of them work well, some… not so well. We’ll come back to the not-so-well bit in a minute.
At the same time as we were launching VC on PC, games were exploding onto a different device entirely: the phone. As VC was our latest and greatest game we decided to create a mobile version of it as our first proper excursion onto the mobile platform. We also decided that the mobile version of VC was not going to be a different game, dumbed down for mobile players, it was (and is) the exact same game as the PC version. Mobile players coexisting and competing with PC players in the same universe. Which is pretty cool and, as far as I’m aware, unique among realtime MMO games.
Mobile has since gone on to become the largest platform for VC. However, designing and supporting an identical game across platforms that are so different in size, power and accessibility is not without its tradeoffs. Some aspects of the original PC game work well on mobile, some not so much.
And this is where we catch up to today, or rather five months ago, when KIXEYE started to put some serious thought into addressing the areas of VC that were not working well.
To you, the long time players, the game feels good as it is. It doesn’t feel broken or badly out of shape. You like playing the game - if you didn’t you wouldn’t have continued playing it month after month. And yet here am I saying it needs fixing. Well... we’re both right. As it turns out, you guys (and gals) are pretty unique. Out of the millions of people who have played VC, it really connected with a small, select subgroup of those people (you) who really enjoyed playing VC day after day, month after month. The majority of people didn’t find what they were looking for in VC and simply stopped playing. For those people, VC failed. It failed to be fun. It failed to be engaging day after day.
And there lies the catch-22. Some of the aspects of the game that appeal to the current player base are the exact same aspects that frustrate or overload new players. To improve the experience for new players, and to grow VC, we have to alter the game to make it more attractive to new players. Sometimes, after considering all other options, this includes altering the game in a way that frustrates the current player base.
We do not want you thinking that you are not important to us. Long time players are the lifeblood of the game. In many ways you are the game. However for VC to grow and entertain a new generation of players it must change and adapt. Ultimately we feel the result is worth the effort.
Paul Preece
Founder, KIXEYE
Who in the dev team came up with this? They should be fired/stabbed/[Insert terrible thing here]:
That would be me. As a huge fan of VC I want to see the game reach the highs I know it can. I returned to the game as Creative Director back in August, and while the current situation is definitely a low point, the features the team are currently working on are some of the most exciting I’ve seen in any of our games.
You’re removing the ships individuality/variety:
We’re putting together another post to address this in more detail and with more data.
You’re dumbing down the game, I like complexity.
The game is getting more simple with regards to ship speeds, that is true. However there are different kinds of complexity. Speed is a very important stat. So important that it can override nearly all other stats except for Range. When that happens the game actually loses a ton of complexity, as the number of meaningful combat stats drops from many to few. Bringing more consistency to hull speeds should return more complexity than it takes as the number of meaningful stats increases. Over time, we expect more hull classes to become useful to more players.
You’re only doing this for the money:
This specific set of changes will most likely lose us money in the short term. We know we’ve lost the confidence of players by moving the goalposts and it will take time to rebuild it. None of the changes are designed to make money, they are designed to improve the accessibility of the game by better defining the meta.
How can I feel safe investing time/money into the game when you can just change everything in a heartbeat?
We decided the best approach was to get all the disruptive changes out in one go. To just rip the band-aid off. More disruptive in the short term but it sets us up to be more consistent in the longer term. One of our key goals for the future is to increase the longevity of ship builds across all classes. It is vital to the health of the game that ships have long, useful lives.
LXC: Ok, this was Scarlett. Credit where it's due. Based on currently available information, it appears that several fleet repair times will actually be going up (https://www.kixeye.com/forum/discussion/617254). Is there something we’re missing?
The hull repair change will significantly shift the meta of ship design towards lower armor, high damage ships. As it does ship repair times will fall. We are planning on providing some assistance to players to help them adjust their equipment to the new meta.
In the examples linked to above many of the ships have traded weaponry for armor and shields, which is the current meta. Those ships should now downgrade their shields and armor and take more weapons. As they do their repair times will drop. We will be monitoring builds to make sure this happens.
Note, the ISC / Cruiser Armor bonus is ‘repair free’. An ISC ship with a 30% Armor bonus is not charged repair for the additional armor points.
Paul is currently asleep, (and I'll be off shortly), but please leave your comments and questions below, and either he or I will get to them when we can. We read everything, so don't just link your previous forum thread. Remember that this is my bosses bosses boss, so keep it on topic and constructive.
I'm sorry about some folks expressing themselves in a rude way, a lot of us love Vega conflict and it feels like a swapping out of an old toy , for a new toy .
We just hope that all the time and effort we have put in the game isn't going to be lost ,
Thanks again
I will say this though. Thank you for coming down and gracing the forums. It's not an easy decision, and you know you are going to be mobbed. You at least have the respect from some of us for walking into the ambush.
"The game is getting more simple with regards to ship speeds, that is true. However there are different kinds of complexity. Speed is a very important stat. So important that it can override nearly all other stats except for Range. When that happens the game actually loses a ton of complexity, as the number of meaningful combat stats drops from many to few. Bringing more consistency to hull speeds should return more complexity than it takes as the number of meaningful stats increases. Over time, we expect more hull classes to become useful to more players."
I don't get this statement at all. What do you mean by meaningful combat stats? Isnt speed a meaningful combat stat?
We wanted more diversity in combat, and speed was a good avenue for us to do so. Also you have established Vsec hulls to be one of the best, because they take super long to build, you've even given them the highest levels of the crafting fleets, so why the sudden jump in mass Increase for the ISC Hulls?
A Good progression should be Rebel and VEGA at the same level, and ISC and Vsec on the next.
Now, Everything else is fine, but the mass changes will severely disrupt new players (Not that I care cos im not new), and the speed will completely destroy diversity in the game. Do you even understand you are throwing away what makes most hulls unique from the rest? The Eagle has high strafe speed, the Python has high sector speed, the Vigilante has high Turning speed, are you seriously going to scrap all of this in favour of "Normalising ship speed" in the name of a rebalance? Its the Diversity which makes the game fun to play. If you want to rebalance everything, you should take a look instead at buffing the lower end hulls, (miner Rebellion hulls) such that the researchable hulls can match up to their super stronger cousins.
Instead of addressing this first, you should have looked at build times first. It makes no sense that a Corinthian Cruiser takes 2 days longer than an apoc just because of a small little boost, and a Zeal Battleship takes more than two weeks to build in this state of the game. With people rushing to refit ships because a Riot is coming, implementing this rebalance will destroy chances that people can win the top prize in the riot because they will suddenly find their own strategies obsolete.
Long story short:
1.If you really want players to have fun, rethink your decision of normalising the combat speeds of every hull class. If you really want to do a speed rebalance, do it for the lower end hulls, IGNORE the TOP END ONES because they are COMPLETELY FINE and DONT NEED CHANGING. Everything else, im fine with it.
2. Understand what is more urgent, build times in this case.
3. ISC Hulls should be as good as Vsec, not better than them.
Make it such that
Lower end: VEGA and Miner
Higher End: Vsec and ISC.
Please, for once, read my input, unless you want to risk everyone leaving this game.
Admiral and Head Intelligence Officer of the Frontier Liberation Army.
I don't understand. Why they care more about the noobs then the vets. I worked hard to get all my **** and build all my ship's took a long time. Now revs are just as good as raptures. I should have just built revs this while time. Way to kill it for us.
New players get alot bigger rep times. How is it better fore new players? If these things would be so when i started i would not played that more then week. Insta rep fleets is must have at least first 3 months. After that u maybe get something better to use for farming but right now low lvl players have nothing to just farm ressies or something.
The reasoning behind mobile players is false I have been playing vc for near a year now starting on mobile in between work and progressed to pc as well as mobile for different aspects of the game. I am not really a gamer which is why it surprised me by how VC took a hold but I loved all aspects of them gameplay which when first entering vc is very very straight forward and easily came to terms with. I then persuaded both my son and daughter to join in playing also on mobile they now no longer play no because of any of the reasoning you have made about complexity but more for the fact VC is no COD or any other game like this clash of clans we all tried but soon tired of the build hit repeat with the same old armies. The problem here is not one of complexity but more one of a niche VC is one of a kind in the market (Believe me since rebalance has been pushed up i have looked) due to the level of diversity VC offers. You have a good game here which could be made great so very easily and us the players have a great interest in that as can be seen from the many posts about this. OK so you want to lower shields and make armour all the same value why it was always the trade off the strategy of use iridium keep repair down or zynth and make the tank you want to standardize speed why like everyone before me said we spent hours / coins grinding for these new special ships because of their stats i myself now have most of the hulls that has been released because of hard work and coin because you gave us the reason to get these new hulls the speed the rotation the strafe etc a new player coming in now will not want or feel the need to get the newer ships because they all fly and handle the same and this i think is my biggest worry for vc as my goals were now set to building and trying these new hulls some of which i have never had the chance to build but now there is no reason to even build them therefore loss of interest in game is inevitable sooner rather than when i had built my zeal fleet or a full fleet of corinths. All this update does in my opinion is push people to find something new we have to start over here so why not start over in a new game. The responses on the forum are very timid compared to the comments in game chat i don't know if people will stop playing /coining but what a shame that you forced everyone of your loyal player base to make that decision instead of just coming up with a add on like tournament weekends or the ability to pilot a ship in 3d something anything but not this update.
If you want to make these changes, fine. Provide big time spenders some form of compensation. Instead you have no real Customer Service. If you change the game 100%, and it impacts my investment, then i deserve a refund, coins something... Not a big F you by Kixeye. Frankly I dont want to play this new Vega. I want a refund and I never want to play another Kixeye game. Im a PC player, I love it. Im starting play games in mobile. Vega is not a fun game on mobile and the update doesnt make it so. Flying is the fun part and u cant do that in mobile. Vega was for hardcore gamers. Trying to repackage Vega for casual gamers in the mobile market is insane! It cant hang even with your update. You need a new game for mobile entirely. Look at Forge if Empires or Astronet. Those are games that work on mobile but cant compare to Vega on the PC.
Simply put, everything in your post relates to why other companies will release a "Vega Conflict 2" rather than try to "re-tool" their existing game and blast their player base. Then, once stable, use incentives to move players over.
Reasoning may be sound in your mind, the method and way it is being carried out by your company is not. I will not spend a dime on anything more your company makes once this goes live. I do thank you for the great game you delivered I was able to take part in for a short while and other than the last few months...am not regretful for any money I have spent here to date.
Over the last few days, I've been collecting and collating some of your responses to the great rebalance. I promised an explanation from the person in charge of these changes, and here it is. I've rephrased the questions somewhat, but I feel it keeps the original spirit.
For those of you who don't know who he is, Paul Preece is one of the original founders of KIXEYE, and original creator of Battle Pirates. Joining us today is fake superstar, and disgruntled player MasonD.
Blue is me, Orange is Paul. Bold is MasonD
What is the point of this change?
To find the reason for the changes we have to go back in time, to when VC was first created. When KIXEYE first imagined VC it was as a space themed version of a PC game we had previously created called Battle Pirates. It’s not in our DNA to simply clone games, even one of our own, so we purpose built VC from the ground up as a true PC space game. In the process creating a bunch of new features such as combat strafing, hull classes, weapon arcs, planets, moving PvE fleets, interception, wormholes, shields, mines, asteroids and factions. As is often the case when creating new things, some of them work well, some… not so well. We’ll come back to the not-so-well bit in a minute.
Wow! Its really nice for kixeye to acknowledge they have been ignoring the player base for three years running. I am really not sure why you are talking about Battle Pirates, they are both 2D RTS rendered in 3D, but are very different games. Talking about Battle Pirates raises questions why that game is so messed and is in a state of panic as you manage to alienate and kill off the player base by ignoring community members willing to share information and player difficulty. What brought you over to VC?
At the same time as we were launching VC on PC, games were exploding onto a different device entirely: the phone. As VC was our latest and greatest game we decided to create a mobile version of it as our first proper excursion onto the mobile platform. We also decided that the mobile version of VC was not going to be a different game, dumbed down for mobile players, it was (and is) the exact same game as the PC version. Mobile players coexisting and competing with PC players in the same universe. Which is pretty cool and, as far as I’m aware, unique among realtime MMO games.
Mobile has since gone on to become the largest platform for VC. However, designing and supporting an identical game across platforms that are so different in size, power and accessibility is not without its tradeoffs. Some aspects of the original PC game work well on mobile, some not so much.
And this is where we catch up to today, or rather five months ago, when KIXEYE started to put some serious thought into addressing the areas of VC that were not working well.
You mean like long waiting times such as repairs, building, research, and AI fleet grinding that have been traditionally a major factor in killing off players?
To you, the long time players, the game feels good as it is. It doesn’t feel broken or badly out of shape. You like playing the game - if you didn’t you wouldn’t have continued playing it month after month. And yet here am I saying it needs fixing. Well... we’re both right. As it turns out, you guys (and gals) are pretty unique. Out of the millions of people who have played VC, it really connected with a small, select subgroup of those people (you) who really enjoyed playing VC day after day, month after month. The majority of people didn’t find what they were looking for in VC and simply stopped playing. For those people, VC failed. It failed to be fun. It failed to be engaging day after day.
Ok, so its the games fault Kixeye hasn't been listening to the community and you fail to obtain even the seven month player life cycle. How about opening up discussions with us on a fix or how to make it easier to retain more players?
And there lies the catch-22. Some of the aspects of the game that appeal to the current player base are the exact same aspects that frustrate or overload new players. To improve the experience for new players, and to grow VC, we have to alter the game to make it more attractive to new players. Sometimes, after considering all other options, this includes altering the game in a way that frustrates the current player base.
No one ever complained about the different hull speeds! We have been complaining about long wait times, the inability to build and refit a ship, grinding AI fleets, the low drop rate on everything, research, upgrading, and building on you current base takes way to long. Did you know that a case study two years ago finds that any wait time beyond 4 days, player interest declines as they seek new avenues of fun. I mean dude, it's great you didn't invited me into the fake dialogue and stuff. But seriously, you are talking to a community of players that have been discussing real issues for the past three years and this re-balance is the same garbage good idea fairy have been investing board rooms around the world that hurt profits, destroy productive, and turn a simple problem into a more complex problem. You have fixed nothing at the end of the day, you do realize that right?
We do not want you thinking that you are not important to us. Long time players are the lifeblood of the game. In many ways you are the game. However for VC to grow and entertain a new generation of players it must change and adapt. Ultimately we feel the result is worth the effort.
Dude, you keep ignoring us and you will find just how much of a PITA we all can be. If we are not important then how can you justify continuing with your plans, shouldn't you poll the community. I mean its not that hard, or you just never consider a means of talking to players directly and determining the communities feelings and the best direction for the company, game, and players involved.
Paul Preece
Founder, KIXEYE
Who in the dev team came up with this? They should be fired/stabbed/[Insert terrible thing here]:
That would be me. As a huge fan of VC I want to see the game reach the highs I know it can. I returned to the game as Creative Director back in August, and while the current situation is definitely a low point, the features the team are currently working on are some of the most exciting I’ve seen in any of our games.
Dude, In your initial letter you wonder who in the world uses Frigates. If your a fan then you should be able to name two to three people who can kill tons of fleets with just their Nighthawks. If LXC says he is a huge fan, no one questions him. We can smash him in game and is a visible member of the community that acknowledges the different players for their accomplishment and skills. Trying to lie to us at this point in the game is insulting our intelligence.
You’re removing the ships individuality/variety:
We’re putting together another post to address this in more detail and with more data.
Your Marketing staff can't sell us this pile of garbage. You sad devotion to propaganda hasn't resolved the past 6 months of community insults and neglect.
You’re dumbing down the game, I like complexity.
The game is getting more simple with regards to ship speeds, that is true. However there are different kinds of complexity. Speed is a very important stat. So important that it can override nearly all other stats except for Range. When that happens the game actually loses a ton of complexity, as the number of meaningful combat stats drops from many to few. Bringing more consistency to hull speeds should return more complexity than it takes as the number of meaningful stats increases. Over time, we expect more hull classes to become useful to more players.
Meaningful to who?
You’re only doing this for the money:
This specific set of changes will most likely lose us money in the short term. We know we’ve lost the confidence of players by moving the goalposts and it will take time to rebuild it. None of the changes are designed to make money, they are designed to improve the accessibility of the game by better defining the meta.
You honestly think we didn't notice how with Mark upgraded no battleship will get any free refits and hey look at that the rapture base hull mass was decreased by 500, making free refits a extremely rare thing. So I guess your implying free refits because you are fundamentally changing everything without addressing the real issues of long wait times, AI fleet grinding and this update will kill auto-fleets. So with a statement like that one would assume free instant refits. Please clearfiy without the use of propaganda. I am a master at it, and you clearly need some lessons in it as the community is just pissed off, many are asking refunds, and others are in a state of "well no more money for kixeye."
How can I feel safe investing time/money into the game when you can just change everything in a heartbeat?
We decided the best approach was to get all the disruptive changes out in one go. To just rip the band-aid off. More disruptive in the short term but it sets us up to be more consistent in the longer term. One of our key goals for the future is to increase the longevity of ship builds across all classes. It is vital to the health of the game that ships have long, useful lives.
And your track record speaks volumes, the Battle Pirates Community was in a state of chaos and near death. Many ships do have long useful lives, every end game player still has a variation of the 55, milk trucks, cargo fleets, and decoys that will be useless when your changes go into effect. So your claim is a pile of lies. So since the claim does not hold logic, and the truthfulness in question, I can faithfully make a educated statement, that this is nothing more then pointless garbage that doesn't lead anywhere and problems continue to get worse. This next update you are killing off all the lower tiered ship classes to high level players, extending repair times, failing to address AI fleet grinding, Low drop rates, and our wait times are still going up. But I understand, these were the most critical changes that had to be made. Why am I here, can't we get Elmo? Elmo can explain how long wait times kill the game just as easy. You aren't addressing anything, this is fake dialogue. I used it all the time to shape people mindsets and set narratives. This doesn't do anything because you fundamentally avoid all the issues; old and recently created. If you were in my schoolhouse I would recycle you back to information security. Not because you need it, but 40 hours of long torturous lecture would bring about some measure of social justice.
LXC: Ok, this was Scarlett. Credit where it's due.
Based on currently available information, it appears that several fleet repair times will actually be going up (https://www.kixeye.com/forum/discussion/617254). Is there something we’re missing?
The hull repair change will significantly shift the meta of ship design towards lower armor, high damage ships. As it does ship repair times will fall. We are planning on providing some assistance to players to help them adjust their equipment to the new meta.
In the examples linked to above many of the ships have traded weaponry for armor and shields, which is the current meta. Those ships should now downgrade their shields and armor and take more weapons. As they do their repair times will drop. We will be monitoring builds to make sure this happens.
Note, the ISC / Cruiser Armor bonus is ‘repair free’. An ISC ship with a 30% Armor bonus is not charged repair for the additional armor points.
Oh, so glass cannons that will die on against well built fleets and increasing repair times totally solves the problem of player retention. I mean I get it, since auto-fleets are used by mobile players and AI fleets stats produce enough DPS to kill glass cannons, you fundamentally breaking the game in a way the makes everything you just said totally hypocritical. Increasing repair times for players trying to develop into end-gamers, restricting diversity among hulls, and continuing to ignore the community will solve all of these problems? I only see a smorgasbord of new problems developing that didn't exist before. Just losing auto-fleets will drive enough developing players to quit because they really don't want to grind all the BPs, crafting materials, and events. Now given PvE, you setting mobile players loose to contend with PC players to complete events. Where do you want to start? Do you know what analysis is, or the concept of 2nd and 3rd order effects, because I would love to attend your meetings watch you erupt into a state of total dictatorship as you can't defend your logic and must resort to the same childish behavior that produce such analogies as dixeye, glitch-eye, or greedy corporate promoter of socialism. Where is this guy, he owes sound logic. I want the actual logic behind this so called solution because it solves nothing and makes the problem worse. I want Paul to go on a date with my mother!
Paul is currently asleep, (and I'll be off shortly), but please leave your comments and questions below, and either he or I will get to them when we can. We read everything, so don't just link your previous forum thread. Remember that this is my bosses bosses boss, so keep it on topic and constructive.
MasonD is no longer allowed to participate in any fake dialogue as his mind clearly has at least three to four distinct personalities that are not easily distracted and others are outright insane.
To all the players who are still wondering just what is happening, I have this for you.
"Forged in the flames of the original 8k wars" "Participant in the Jova Crusades; the winning side" "I hate cargo fleets. What else do you want me to say" "I attacked you because you stole my piece of cheesecake with cherry toppings." "The government has ordered me to harvest this farm. Please be patient as your base is harvested." IGN: MasonD ~Condolences to all who share a similar name - there can only be one.
Hey guys. I am still not sold on the new update yet. All i see in a tier progression of ships. No variety. I was a day 1 destiny player and the constant changes that bungie made, reseting exotics and such was a big dissapointment for me. It took away what i had worked for to achieve and as a result al lot of players have abandoned the game. Now i see the same happening here. All those riots and events (and coins spent) to get to where i want to be are now useless! Its is so close to starting over again and a dissapointment. And what to do now in the game but build the 'best' hulls so most of the player base will be flying the same ships with same wpns, reducing tactics and piloting skill as well as any semblance of individualism the player has through a 'trademark' fleet of thiers they have so hard to build and tune.
From a dissapointed 'customer'!
Remember that kixeye, we are not just a player base but your customers and clientel.
"Some of the aspects of the game that appeal to the current player base are the exact same aspects that frustrate or overload new players. To improve the experience for new players, and to grow VC, we have to alter the game to make it more attractive to new players. Sometimes, after considering all other options, this includes altering the game in a way that frustrates the current player base."
I'd also like to know what kind of research you did to determine this is why new players quit? I did recruiting for an alliance for a long time and I can tell you (a long with a lot of players here) that the reasons they left the game was overwhelmingly to do with the long build and repair times. After that it was the game being steered more and more towards the coin to win direction. No one left because they felt certain types of ships were faster then the other or anything at all with ship classes.
There have been a lot of great ideas expressed here so far by the players, ideas that make the game more balanced are far better then the ones being implemented by this update. This community is the best resource your company has for ideas, and you continually ignore it. And its a real shame too, because if you had just come to this forum a few months ago, told us about these plans and taken the best ideas from us, this could have been a truely great update. One that benefited everyone.
The game is getting more simple with regards to ship speeds, that is true. However there are different kinds of complexity. Speed is a very important stat. So important that it can override nearly all other stats except for Range. When that happens the game actually loses a ton of complexity, as the number of meaningful combat stats drops from many to few. Bringing more consistency to hull speeds should return more complexity than it takes as the number of meaningful stats increases. Over time, we expect more hull classes to become useful to more players.
I firmly believe you are approaching this the wrong way. you should be adding more complexity and variety not dumbing things down further. You could adjust some of the speeds to make those ships not currently used much a little more effective, or you could nerf some of the ones with crazy speed. and you could adjust turn rates and strafe speeds.. little tweeks, nothing major.. there are sooo many ways you could have brought about balance. But instead you are creating a dull lifeless, uniform platform.
I understand it makes things easier for you in the long term.. but really, with a little thought you could have done so much better.
Putting aside the alienation of all the regular players, many of whom will leave, and many of whom will stop spending, and many will give up playing as much and find something else.. putting all that aside, you do realise that your new players are going to be absolutely hammered in this update. the repair times on the low order ships now means BP hunting will be far far harder. its already a boring grind, but beginners are going to be in a much worse position.
do you know what we actually want? have you ever asked?
variety, lots of it, so every fight is different.. not this boring as crap same speed bollards.
Narrative.. at some point one of you guys are going to realise there is almost no narrative to this game, it needs something to drive it, your just not getting that, Events could be so much better if there was an actual narrative, something more than the continuous dull grind.
and we want to be listened to, and I don't mean that someone deigns to come on here after weeks of abuse to try and softly softly people into accepting what we universally resent. Im not saying you have to take into account everyone of our widely differing views.. but you could listen, and if you did you would see that some of those ideas are actually good, and well worth developing.
We want this to be a great game, and we want you to get it right.. preferably first time, so balance does not need to be done. if your going ahead with these changes, your going to kill the game for the majority of players.
Well I have nothing new to add. Everyone's opinions pretty much sums up how I feel. I just want to thank Kixeye for getting me off my own addiction. I wasn't a big spender like some here (maybe $20 a week). However after grinding and playing countless hours to get the bigger and better ships (or the $100 I spent to get the rag in December/January cause my ships could only hit lvl 35 vsecs), so in the end I could have a great feeling of finally getting a great ship. Or the feeling I got after grinding and grinding to get a BP complete so i could finally get a great weapon that will allow me to raise the level of my fleets that I may take on bigger players and not get creamed in pvp all the time....just to find out it was all for nothing.... It is like my drug dealer moving from marajuana to rosemary and telling everyone it's a better high; and then giving me a swift kick in the balls while he smallest at you.
So thanks for helping me get clean.
Sooner or later another addiction in the form of a space game that I can play on my tablet will catch my eye and wallet and provide me with the sweet feeling of finally working to get the big prize.
Until then I think I will enjoy an extra 2 Stabuck coffees a week. Or Treat myself to a movie once a week with the money you saved me.
Good day and **** you for ruining my high.
At the time I make this reply, your post have 2 likes and 55 dislikes. Still not enough of an explanation from Paul.
Now, lets talk about mid-game players and attrition. The key question is WHY do mid-game players quit?
1. Build times are really long and they want to be top-game immediately
2. Repair times grind play to a halt once you have 1 or 2 level 50 fleets
3. They lose in fights too much to top players
Lets talk about how this rebalance doesn't fix any of this.
Here are my solutions to making this game more mid-game player friendly, when you restore legacy speeds
- As much as we hate it, run 2 riots a month to give more tech out constantly. Hell, you just gave a lot of new players all the hulls pretty much anyway. 1 Vega riot, 1 VSEC riot a month
- Reduce build times on rebel hulls a LOT. Cut them in half, but leave the premiums for Vega, VSEC high-ish.
- Upon restoration of legacy speeds, maybe do some tweaks to throw the rebels a speed bone but not kill variation: Give rebel cruisers a +20 speed buff, give rebel battleships a +20 or 30 buff. Some moderate speed buffs, combined with reduced build times will make anybody, even me crank out more revs [even though I have like 10+ event hulls]
These suggestions should help item #1 and #3 a lot. Grinding out a rev fleet in 2.5 weeks, with a forward speed of 300 is enticing, even to somebody sitting on 5 MK5 pocs. This addresses mid-game issues substantially. The only thing my ideas don't address is #2, repair times, which hurt end-game players more than mid game playersWow you hit the nail on the head with this well said!!!!
You use ship factory to build not the fleet bay bud
Think about it who nees an apoc or a dread anymore when they have revs or a furry theres no reason to get bps anymore or do events because each class of ship will be the same as the ships you can research pretty much the only ship that will be better is the zeal and wait for it go figure thats the ship with the longesr build time
I don't understand. Why they care more about the noobs then the vets. I worked hard to get all my **** and build all my ship's took a long time. Now revs are just as good as raptures. I should have just built revs this while time. Way to kill it for us.
so lets make this straightforward…
how will u make up for those who have lost confidence in you?
and atleast leave the eagle alone
Scrap the crafting......make the craft/ship upgrades a bp or riot/event prize.....just have a upgrade token which will instantly upgrade a given class of ship..at least that way there will be more regular vega for new players.
Give us manual control for base weapons.....stop nerfing ships we have worked hard for. How do you think new players feel when they hear us saying in chat our hard worked for ships are scrap.
Fix the friend issue where we can not relocate to friends on other platforms.
You have so many issues in this game and all you seem to do is add more. Fix the bits that are broken and stop making more broken bits.
I think this rebalancing takes balls on your part. It could or could not ruin the game. You say normalizing, i don't believe that's true. Let me ask you this......are the hull build times going up or down??
THANK YOU FOR ADDRESSING THE FORUMS******I like to keep a positive attitude towards these changes , and as you can see for so many there disturbed and concerned by the direction of the game , I am at the very least happy about what you have said , that your doing everything all at once ,ripping off the bandaid as you texted.
Now in the coming months you'll have to see how the numbers play out .
I'd like to share how I feel about the game before this rebalance , it has its moments of fun , but the majority of the time its very calm and boring , you can fight all you want , but sometimes players run into there bases , or you lose , its the repair time's that folks would rather not deal with . I can't believe there isn't rewards for destroying others ships you should be able to get medals for it, this in itself would boost the players interest.
Base defense at a certain level is only capable of being destroyed by snipers fleets , for example a Lance fleet equipped with siege, the dread , zeal, vigilante type ships are useless in defeating a base, I feel this should be addressed in my opinion .
The build time is just right , the research time as well. The repair time does seriously need a revamp , you need to fill the numbers up with consistent players , but this is all my 2 cents worth.
THANK YOU FOR ADDRESSING THE FORUMS!!
I wish I could mark the original post as troll. I guess I'll have to settle for a dislike. I have one question though, Mr Paul. You say you want ship longevity. Please enlighten me, what would be a single use for the destiny after the speed homogenisation?
Monday, 14 March 2016 - Europe
The day VEGA died.
We do not want you thinking that you are not important to us. Long time players are the lifeblood of the game. In many ways you are the game. However for VC to grow and entertain a new generation of players it must change and adapt. Ultimately we feel the result is worth the effort.
If long time players are the life blood and the ones that coin a lot (almost all) then good job killing the game. You are willing to lose people that DO coin now for new players that MAY coin in the future. Thats GREAT business logic.
Another thing, what makes you think the new players will keep playing the game when they realize you gives dont give a **** about what we think. Like some guy here said, even your own former employees say the same thing we do, management has no idea how to run the company or even treat employees.
What pissed me off was the offers I bought before you came out with this bullshit "rebalance". As many have said, when this patch comes, bye bye vega, hell next space game
/rant
I'm sorry about some folks expressing themselves in a rude way, a lot of us love Vega conflict and it feels like a swapping out of an old toy , for a new toy .
We just hope that all the time and effort we have put in the game isn't going to be lost ,
Thanks again
"The game is getting more simple with regards to ship speeds, that is true. However there are different kinds of complexity. Speed is a very important stat. So important that it can override nearly all other stats except for Range. When that happens the game actually loses a ton of complexity, as the number of meaningful combat stats drops from many to few. Bringing more consistency to hull speeds should return more complexity than it takes as the number of meaningful stats increases. Over time, we expect more hull classes to become useful to more players."
I don't get this statement at all. What do you mean by meaningful combat stats? Isnt speed a meaningful combat stat?
We wanted more diversity in combat, and speed was a good avenue for us to do so. Also you have established Vsec hulls to be one of the best, because they take super long to build, you've even given them the highest levels of the crafting fleets, so why the sudden jump in mass Increase for the ISC Hulls? A Good progression should be Rebel and VEGA at the same level, and ISC and Vsec on the next.
Now, Everything else is fine, but the mass changes will severely disrupt new players (Not that I care cos im not new), and the speed will completely destroy diversity in the game. Do you even understand you are throwing away what makes most hulls unique from the rest? The Eagle has high strafe speed, the Python has high sector speed, the Vigilante has high Turning speed, are you seriously going to scrap all of this in favour of "Normalising ship speed" in the name of a rebalance? Its the Diversity which makes the game fun to play. If you want to rebalance everything, you should take a look instead at buffing the lower end hulls, (miner Rebellion hulls) such that the researchable hulls can match up to their super stronger cousins.
Instead of addressing this first, you should have looked at build times first. It makes no sense that a Corinthian Cruiser takes 2 days longer than an apoc just because of a small little boost, and a Zeal Battleship takes more than two weeks to build in this state of the game. With people rushing to refit ships because a Riot is coming, implementing this rebalance will destroy chances that people can win the top prize in the riot because they will suddenly find their own strategies obsolete.
Long story short:
1.If you really want players to have fun, rethink your decision of normalising the combat speeds of every hull class. If you really want to do a speed rebalance, do it for the lower end hulls, IGNORE the TOP END ONES because they are COMPLETELY FINE and DONT NEED CHANGING. Everything else, im fine with it.
2. Understand what is more urgent, build times in this case.
3. ISC Hulls should be as good as Vsec, not better than them. Make it such that
Lower end: VEGA and Miner
Higher End: Vsec and ISC.
Please, for once, read my input, unless you want to risk everyone leaving this game.
VEGA Conflict Wiki: vegaconflict.gamepedia.com
NPC Target Infographics Database: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_EKMu0UVmG0219GrfHUkqZz-aDovGv9r
Practically all the information you need for the game.
New players get alot bigger rep times. How is it better fore new players? If these things would be so when i started i would not played that more then week. Insta rep fleets is must have at least first 3 months. After that u maybe get something better to use for farming but right now low lvl players have nothing to just farm ressies or something.
Thanks for ripping the band-aid off my Vega addiction, b/c this update will cure me.
If you want to make these changes, fine. Provide big time spenders some form of compensation. Instead you have no real Customer Service. If you change the game 100%, and it impacts my investment, then i deserve a refund, coins something... Not a big F you by Kixeye. Frankly I dont want to play this new Vega. I want a refund and I never want to play another Kixeye game. Im a PC player, I love it. Im starting play games in mobile. Vega is not a fun game on mobile and the update doesnt make it so. Flying is the fun part and u cant do that in mobile. Vega was for hardcore gamers. Trying to repackage Vega for casual gamers in the mobile market is insane! It cant hang even with your update. You need a new game for mobile entirely. Look at Forge if Empires or Astronet. Those are games that work on mobile but cant compare to Vega on the PC.
Reasoning may be sound in your mind, the method and way it is being carried out by your company is not. I will not spend a dime on anything more your company makes once this goes live. I do thank you for the great game you delivered I was able to take part in for a short while and other than the last few months...am not regretful for any money I have spent here to date.
MasonD is no longer allowed to participate in any fake dialogue as his mind clearly has at least three to four distinct personalities that are not easily distracted and others are outright insane.
To all the players who are still wondering just what is happening, I have this for you.
"Participant in the Jova Crusades; the winning side"
"I hate cargo fleets. What else do you want me to say"
"I attacked you because you stole my piece of cheesecake with cherry toppings."
"The government has ordered me to harvest this farm. Please be patient as your base is harvested."
IGN: MasonD
~Condolences to all who share a similar name - there can only be one.
Hey guys. I am still not sold on the new update yet. All i see in a tier progression of ships. No variety. I was a day 1 destiny player and the constant changes that bungie made, reseting exotics and such was a big dissapointment for me. It took away what i had worked for to achieve and as a result al lot of players have abandoned the game. Now i see the same happening here. All those riots and events (and coins spent) to get to where i want to be are now useless! Its is so close to starting over again and a dissapointment. And what to do now in the game but build the 'best' hulls so most of the player base will be flying the same ships with same wpns, reducing tactics and piloting skill as well as any semblance of individualism the player has through a 'trademark' fleet of thiers they have so hard to build and tune.
From a dissapointed 'customer'!
Remember that kixeye, we are not just a player base but your customers and clientel.
I'd also like to know what kind of research you did to determine this is why new players quit? I did recruiting for an alliance for a long time and I can tell you (a long with a lot of players here) that the reasons they left the game was overwhelmingly to do with the long build and repair times. After that it was the game being steered more and more towards the coin to win direction. No one left because they felt certain types of ships were faster then the other or anything at all with ship classes.
There have been a lot of great ideas expressed here so far by the players, ideas that make the game more balanced are far better then the ones being implemented by this update. This community is the best resource your company has for ideas, and you continually ignore it. And its a real shame too, because if you had just come to this forum a few months ago, told us about these plans and taken the best ideas from us, this could have been a truely great update. One that benefited everyone.
I understand it makes things easier for you in the long term.. but really, with a little thought you could have done so much better.
Putting aside the alienation of all the regular players, many of whom will leave, and many of whom will stop spending, and many will give up playing as much and find something else.. putting all that aside, you do realise that your new players are going to be absolutely hammered in this update. the repair times on the low order ships now means BP hunting will be far far harder. its already a boring grind, but beginners are going to be in a much worse position.
do you know what we actually want? have you ever asked?
variety, lots of it, so every fight is different.. not this boring as crap same speed bollards.
Narrative.. at some point one of you guys are going to realise there is almost no narrative to this game, it needs something to drive it, your just not getting that, Events could be so much better if there was an actual narrative, something more than the continuous dull grind.
and we want to be listened to, and I don't mean that someone deigns to come on here after weeks of abuse to try and softly softly people into accepting what we universally resent. Im not saying you have to take into account everyone of our widely differing views.. but you could listen, and if you did you would see that some of those ideas are actually good, and well worth developing.
We want this to be a great game, and we want you to get it right.. preferably first time, so balance does not need to be done. if your going ahead with these changes, your going to kill the game for the majority of players.
Player 1: ooh look that fleets better than mine.. Ill run away..
Player 2: ha ha I think Ill win this..
pause while the game starts.
Player 1 runs....
Player 2 cant catch Player 1 because all his cruisers are the same speed as his opponents....
5 minutes later the chase ends in a dissatisfying draw.
the end