I would say having a stable platform resistant to crashes has to be a priority. The game was consistently called GlitchEye because of the frequent crashes. There was about a two year period where the game platform appeared to stabilize, but now we are back to frequent white screens and freezing. Not certain what happened, but if you can't play the game without it crashing it becomes a huge frustration. I realize there are some things players can do to mitigate this issue to some degree- which I employ, but it obviously isn't JUST the players fault.
Hell No this have been said before by the Devs that they will change the game for the better, has it happened yet? nope , more smoke and mirrors and blatant lies,
@CJSII said:
lol did Venture cut off Harbins dope allowance?
Funny thing, they got 20 million more in venture capital in May 2018...Google it....something about using machine learning for retention, marketing and monetization
always wondered if we were a big unknowing focus group/guinea pigs
If you're going to save this game, you're going to need a whole new direction and change in thinking as far as how to monetize the game, not just a slightly different version of the same-old-same-old. Get the bean-counters noses out of their precious metrics and stop trying to squeeze coins out of every last pixel. To me, this feels a lot like that "6 month test" garbage you did a few years back. You made all kinds of grand gestures but absolutely NOTHING changed. If this turns out to be nothing more than a replay of that, the future of this game is is royally screwed.
If you're going to save this game, you're going to need a whole new direction and change in thinking as far as how to monetize the game, not just a slightly different version of the same-old-same-old. Get the bean-counters noses out of their precious metrics and stop trying to squeeze coins out of every last pixel. To me, this feels a lot like that "6 month test" garbage you did a few years back. You made all kinds of grand gestures but absolutely NOTHING changed. If this turns out to be nothing more than a replay of that, the future of this game is is royally screwed.
NO to New Direction , thats what got Kixeye in to the New Mess is by changing it every 3 months to generate revenue Enough already!
LOL What a JOKE! I log in for the first time in over a week to get my points, Go to hit a base I walked with about 1/4 damage before, Nothing is different in this base, and I die! You keep messing things up and pissing off us players, then scratch your heads wondering why we get so mad and stop playing! Is's complete lunacy! You can't monopolize and seriously think people can keep up with having to build on average 3 new fleets every month to get things done. People are fed up. They are not having fun. Therefore you are losing money and trying to squeeze it out of the remaining players and pissing them off... It's a vicious cycle that your company caused by making stupid decision! Most of us players want a simple game where we can play for more than 5 mins without having days worth of repairs and we absolutely hate the build times on fleets! If you actually take it back a few years to when we had less chores and were able to actually have fun, I bet you could get players back and make more money. I doubt you will but hey I said how I feel so it's on you. Good Luck!
we dont need a new direction, we need an old direction and back to what we liked and enjoyed playing. stop with all the extra crap just to make money. i want to hit bases and fight with other people. not do chores. its that simple. and i **** sure dont want to be forced to coin or get behind if i dont because build and repair times are way to high
Working in similar industry it seems that Will has given this new team a task to try to save the game with probably some specific time lines. So my question is what are those time lines and what if they fail. Basically trying to figure out when they plan to turn the lights off
i guess ill do a second response to this BS . mega hulls were supposed to have a purpose as i recall , now most players would scrap if they could . if you let one player from outside of the alliance assist in the defense or attack of them and made them worth maybe 50 to 100 alliance points since you tied them to the base by losing your bbl if you attacked one or joined in the defense of them , it might help players attitude toward them , i'm only leveling mine up and not using anything players could steal to see what i can do . and i built mine because i swore i wouldn't touch one unless you gave it to me , another fail in Kixland . megas are boring , i'm trying to my my alliance members to work with them some , you going to help me or sit on your kixtard tails some more ,,,,,,and i suppose ill have to waste more time with more posts , lmfao , maybe i'll get a better label .
Funny, Cousin Will. Same lies. That makes things worse. On the other hand, if you had also said, "And as a show of good faith we are reducing damage in the FM targets" or reducing damage in some other target, or tweaking DPS so that it works properly, or announced anything real, something specific, then the responses would be different. That is my advice to you.
Mr Harbin. This probably isn't adding anything that hasn't already been said but I will say it anyway. As nice as it is to hear directly from the CEO, the words are hollow as they`ve been said before (a few times).
Im rarely at the very top of raid leaderboards or at the top of the PVP food chain but I do OK. At least well enough to keep a reasonable balance between game/home life and coining costs for game value. This last raid series has been a challenge and compounded a downward trend that goes back further than that in my opinion.
I started the series with a scatter build as that was the only tech available. We were advised by game hierarchy that from that point we would only need 1 fleet per raid series however quite soon after, missile based tech was released which "indicated" it might be a better build. If I had trust in the information thats been flowing down to players I would have changed nothing, however I chose to refit my fleet to the missile setup and was reasonably happy at event 2. I did have to do a refit as the countermeasures I was using didnt seem to be as effective as before. I came to the forum and found that there was a "game fix" to countermeasures to make them work "properly" (thanks for that!). Going into event 3 I was pretty hopeful but was very dissapointed with the damage levels per points and after watching a few videos I see that the scatter option was working much better based on the newer target layouts. Apart from maybe 1 different special, the best reported results were coming from a fleet build I had 2-3 months ago. I am now refitting again to the scatter setup and im absolutely 100% expecting event 4 to have new targets which will favor the missile setup. You can argue semantics that 1 fleet of Manticores is still 1 fleet regardless of what tech is on it, if you want.
I feel the game suffers badly from poorly tested targets and poorly released tech. Whatever your testing model is, you need to do better. Expect all players of all levels to have slightly sub optimal builds and then try some targets with those builds yourself. If you can do a target with a reasonable amount of damage then thats likely to be accepted by players. If you cant do it at all then what do you expect your players to do? 1 example of this is a hidden stat on Phoenix. This hull (with no additional stun resist specials) can be stunned by the drones in assault targets, stop for a second then carry on happily. You try doing this with Apollos with a higher stun resist stat and they get frozen completely until death. I understand the game did not want tier 3 tech doing tier 2 or higher targets but the "fix" was completely underhand. How hard would it have been to change the Phoenix blueprint stat to its correct value? instead of nerfing the Apollos out of the target. I wont mention that fully built Apollos have been offered for $$$ directly in store.
Releasing broken blueprints does not lead to trust. Not addressing those instances in a clear and timely fashion does not lead to trust. Posting spurious game strategy does not lead to trust. For a long time now you have lost the trust of your loyal and longstanding players and its going to take a bit more than a regurgitated mission statement before you get that trust back. Let your actions speak louder than your words and ill see you in a couple of months to see how well you`ve done.
Here's one for Ya ... You say you want to hear and are listening to the players right ? Well if you say this and are truly meaning it well how bout by starting with the ticketing ... when i started in Sept. 2011 everyone could send in tickets when their game was crashing and lagging and glitching , and than not even 2 years later you said no one could send in tickets unless they coined at least 50$ a month.. so that showed right there You didnt care about all players just the coiners , so fix that for a start if you mean what you are saying ! cause not all players coin
I love reading this crap and then watch them up the damage threshold on the 120's and 121's after they come out. NOTHING changes and NOTHING will ever change. I suggest checking into Warframe. Graphics make this look like a one year old monkey's coloring book and builds are 2 days and lower compared to , well you know what the build and repair time is in here. It's more like real fracking life builds.........
My question to Will Harbin is this: Where have YOU been the past couple of years when Battle Pirates was going down hill? Why have you waited until, what seems to be, the last minute to make a statement? Why weren't you monitoring this game and it's "progression" ?
In my honest opinion, you haven't gotten involved because the "cash flow" was just fine from where you were sitting. Now that your "team" under you, running this game, has just about ran it into non-existence and the money has stopped, YOU have decided to intervene.
Battle Pirates community is TIRED of hearing the same ole same ole Bullcrap coming from ANY of you at Kixeye. WE WANT ACTIONS! AND WE WANT THEM QUICKLY IF NOT NOW!
Think I've heard this before. *adopts a wait and see attitude*
I agree, i've seen this before and it's always followed by about a month of good will, then back to the status quo. I quit the game about two years ago, because all of a sudden my ships were not viable, almost no warning. considering it'd take 2 weeks (at least) to build 1 ship and maybe a couple weeks to rank up. that is 4 months total time (total, but not concurrent) to get a fleet going. I came back, when you gave out Icebreakers a couple months ago. did a few missions, then tried to build what i claimed. It was then when i remembered, why i quit in the first place. Monolith fleet, 2 weeks per ship, tideseekers 2 weeks per ship. Tried to refit my old ships, 1 week plus per ship. So i walked away again, no point in staying, when you are not listening.
You could fix the build/refit times easily, just let them all build at once. Real life ship building, is not one thing at a time. While the hull is being built, they are wiring, and placing some internal parts. arming is all done pretty much at the same time, not one turret at a time. You could knock the build times, down to a week for top shelf ships and scale it down as they age. You might be surprised to see more people coining a week over 2,3 or 4 week builds. But all you guys ever listened, to was the coins dropping into the coffers, not the complaints.
Now you say you want to right the ship? Heard it before, the first appearance of the scourge faction, almost destroyed the player base. Even PriceisWrong, one of your most die-hard supporters almost quit, due to that scourge invasion being just too strong. You changed and it looked good for a few months, then you started going back to the old ways
Mr Will Harbin, What i'm trying to say, if you wish to skip the bull, is Talk is Cheap. We've heard it all before, we even held your feet to the fire (As Robot asked us to do), but you kept ignoring us. Good luck and i hope you really REALLY mean it, but honestly this game ruined me for grinding games. You want a direction? You want to see a fair free to play model, check out Warframe, they been out for 5 years and still growing in fan base. I been playing that, for about 7 months and have not regretted it. Warframes built in 3 days not 3 weeks, weapons in 12 hours, not 3 days. Check it out, it's really good system they have.I would love to see Digital Extremes (Warframes developer) get a hold of this game and make it right, make it fun and make it worthy, of spending money in. I got no problem spending money if i see value, but i do not see value in just trying to and failing to keep up
I think you have highlighted the two main points which are causing the biggest frustrations in the game and leading to a fall in player numbers; the speed of changes/new content - this needs to be slowed down, and the focus on making money above all else - make the game fun and profits will follow.
Something else that I'd like to see is a reduction in game complexity - make it easier for players to design ships that will work after the 20+ days they've spent building them and make a clear pathway for new and lower level players to be able to progress.
In my opinion you started to get things right towards the end of the siege raid cycle. The co-op campaigns allowed more experienced players to get the ships for the smaller players and older fleets could still work in the lower bases (even if it meant more seat time and a little more coin, people accepted this). Players were coming back to the game who'd lost interest previously and the community was starting to have fun like I remember it when I first started. Everyone was online during the raid and the sector chat was a real laugh. Players felt they were getting value from the game again - all you had to do was continue on this path. What the hell happened? If you are trying to pinpoint where things went wrong, it was the series of decisions that lead from the fun of the Siege cycle to the game killer that is the Assault cycle.
At least you have acknowledged there's a problem, that's step 1. I sincerely hope you make the changes necessary to bring the game back to it's former glory.
I think you have highlighted the two main points which are causing the biggest frustrations in the game and leading to a fall in player numbers; the speed of changes/new content - this needs to be slowed down, and the focus on making money above all else - make the game fun and profits will follow.
Something else that I'd like to see is a reduction in game complexity - make it easier for players to design ships that will work after the 20+ days they've spent building them and make a clear pathway for new and lower level players to be able to progress.
In my opinion you started to get things right towards the end of the siege raid cycle. The co-op campaigns allowed more experienced players to get the ships for the smaller players and older fleets could still work in the lower bases (even if it meant more seat time and a little more coin, people accepted this). Players were coming back to the game who'd lost interest previously and the community was starting to have fun like I remember it when I first started. Everyone was online during the raid and the sector chat was a real laugh. Players felt they were getting value from the game again - all you had to do was continue on this path. What the hell happened? If you are trying to pinpoint where things went wrong, it was the series of decisions that lead from the fun of the Siege cycle to the game killer that is the Assault cycle.
At least you have acknowledged there's a problem, that's step 1. I sincerely hope you make the changes necessary to bring the game back to it's former glory.
The thing that killed the game for me, was when they took the creativity away from us. I remember building vindicators for counters, seeing jugg X launcher fleets and such being used. That was so fun, because you never knew what someone would create. Half the fun was finding something new, when it's all laid out, why bother? Nothing to learn, nothing to gain
The problem with your final statement is this. They have admitted, they had problems and would change many times. The glaring example to me, since in directly impacted me, is the first incursion of the Scourge. They created such a monster, that a massive amount of players stopped coining the raid. I remember Battle Vortex's Youtube cast that weekend, was so depressing that even PriceisWrong was considering quitting and had stopped coining. they posted a statement about promising helping, transparency and just saying they would change. CM_Robot even told us, to put their feet to the fire. things were fine for about two months then they started going back to the status quo.
I'd like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but kixeye as a whole burned too many bridges and made us use all the F's, we could spare for this game. I played this game for over 5 years, before i finally realized they only cared about the coins, not the players. I started this game in 2012 (Oct) and ended serious play in 2017(Dec.), so i have 5 years of game play under my belt and about two years of that, was Just because i wanted to believe they'd eventually change. But that never came
And where did the scourge targets go for base parts? Will, I can see you are still heading in the wrong direction... I don't think you have hit rock bottom yet until you run this game into the ground! Hey does anybody in your game team play this game? I doubt it...
you dont care about new or returning players i see. im a returning player, played since the beginning and i was gone for almost two years. i cant kill ANYTHING. i heard from some others that they got full fleets to help them out. know what i got? i 1 two day build token. kinda hard when you cant get anything to build because you cant kill anything, ive spend $200 bucks in the past month since ive been back and i still cant kill anything. now you just got rid of the only thing i can kill a lvl 30 basepart base. whats wrong with you money hungry people? you have so many people that hate you because of the way you treat us. show atleast me that you care and help me move forward.
you dont care about new or returning players i see. im a returning player, played since the beginning and i was gone for almost two years. i cant kill ANYTHING. i heard from some others that they got full fleets to help them out. know what i got? i 1 two day build token. kinda hard when you cant get anything to build because you cant kill anything, ive spend $200 bucks in the past month since ive been back and i still cant kill anything. now you just got rid of the only thing i can kill a lvl 30 basepart base. whats wrong with you money hungry people? you have so many people that hate you because of the way you treat us. show atleast me that you care and help me move forward.
Focus on the fm before anything else. Get Icebreakers and get to t5 of fm quickly.
"Are we friends? Or are we foes? That kind of thing you decide for yourselves! "
you dont care about new or returning players i see. im a returning player, played since the beginning and i was gone for almost two years. i cant kill ANYTHING. i heard from some others that they got full fleets to help them out. know what i got? i 1 two day build token. kinda hard when you cant get anything to build because you cant kill anything, ive spend $200 bucks in the past month since ive been back and i still cant kill anything. now you just got rid of the only thing i can kill a lvl 30 basepart base. whats wrong with you money hungry people? you have so many people that hate you because of the way you treat us. show atleast me that you care and help me move forward.
Focus on the fm before anything else. Get Icebreakers and get to t5 of fm quickly.
not sure how returning players are getting icebreakers, skyfires or some other type of fleet. i didnt get anything. theres a lvl 60 with them that just started. haha i bought the skyfire fleet but cant do a **** thing now since they take all the low targets away
you dont care about new or returning players i see. im a returning player, played since the beginning and i was gone for almost two years. i cant kill ANYTHING. i heard from some others that they got full fleets to help them out. know what i got? i 1 two day build token. kinda hard when you cant get anything to build because you cant kill anything, ive spend $200 bucks in the past month since ive been back and i still cant kill anything. now you just got rid of the only thing i can kill a lvl 30 basepart base. whats wrong with you money hungry people? you have so many people that hate you because of the way you treat us. show atleast me that you care and help me move forward.
Focus on the fm before anything else. Get Icebreakers and get to t5 of fm quickly.
not sure how returning players are getting icebreakers, skyfires or some other type of fleet. i didnt get anything. theres a lvl 60 with them that just started. haha i bought the skyfire fleet but cant do a **** thing now since they take all the low targets away
if you don't log in for a set time period, they will entice you back with a gift of an outdated fleet. I got the Ice breakers myself i had not signed in for almost 4 months at that time
you dont care about new or returning players i see. im a returning player, played since the beginning and i was gone for almost two years. i cant kill ANYTHING. i heard from some others that they got full fleets to help them out. know what i got? i 1 two day build token. kinda hard when you cant get anything to build because you cant kill anything, ive spend $200 bucks in the past month since ive been back and i still cant kill anything. now you just got rid of the only thing i can kill a lvl 30 basepart base. whats wrong with you money hungry people? you have so many people that hate you because of the way you treat us. show atleast me that you care and help me move forward.
Focus on the fm before anything else. Get Icebreakers and get to t5 of fm quickly.
not sure how returning players are getting icebreakers, skyfires or some other type of fleet. i didnt get anything. theres a lvl 60 with them that just started. haha i bought the skyfire fleet but cant do a **** thing now since they take all the low targets away
if you don't log in for a set time period, they will entice you back with a gift of an outdated fleet. I got the Ice breakers myself i had not signed in for almost 4 months at that time
i was off for 2 year's never logged in till last month. wish this was for everyone thx for the help though
I've been playing since May 2012 (on my first account), and I quit logging in for anything other than VXP weekend several months ago when the FM was changed AGAIN well before the promised time. A couple of years ago, I even started a 3rd account just to disprove people's claims that a new player had no hope of advancing. At that time, the first 3 tiers of FM gave players almost everything they needed in order to succeed in the FM (Zelos, Mono, morts, countermeasures, tech, etc.). It was a reasonable path to success. Not too fast, not too slow. Then targets became harder, so we needed two Zelos instead of one. Then we needed a fully ranked fleet of different hulls, and at that point it became unbearable.
I think Kixeye's biggest problem is with testing and setting reasonable expectations for players. It seems to me that most expectations are based on the whales, which isn't realistic. Let the whales win. Don't use them to determine how tough your targets should be. Or, perhaps give them their own sectors and events with completely different targets and expectations. But you can't expect a casual player/coiner to enjoy a game that is tuned for whales. I'm not saying that non-coiners should be able to perform as well as high-coiners, but they should be able to enjoy the game. Take a hint from Las Vegas casinos. Tens of thousands of people who gamble a few hundred dollars a day is better than a handful of people who gamble tens of thousands of dollars a day.
Back to testing... I work in a development environment. We are often on a 3-month cycle where new things are being developed, tested, then pushed to production. One thing we don't do is spend resources on fixing things after they get to production, because we expended that effort during the testing phase. There will always be little things that need fixing after something reaches production, but nothing anywhere near Kixeye's scale. The majority of your resources should be spent on testing new content (events, hulls, weapons, specials, enemies, etc.) for 4 months before it gets released in the production environment. You should be testing as regular users, not super-users. In fact, I might go so far as to say that every member of the company should be involved in testing, creating a new account at the start of each testing cycle in addition to their main account, and running through the whole cycle with both accounts. If you can't be successful with both, then you've set your standards too high.
I actually thought Kixeye finally "got it" with the garrison raid cycle right after Monoliths were released. I had a mediocre (at best) Zelos/Mono fleet that earned 150 million on one account and 120 million on the other once I figured out how to drive them. I probably spent $30 on the raid before I figured it out. I loved that. Skill and seat time could earn the same kind of points as money. That's how a free-to-play game should work. Time is money. The end result should be the same. One coin equals 30 minutes. If I spend 30 minutes hitting free targets, that should equal the points of hitting another target for 30 minutes of damage.
Since we have two hulls/weapons for each raid cycle, build times should allow players to build a full fleet of each by the end of the raid cycle. AND, the last raid should not rely on having a skulled fleet. Again, let the people who worked hard (or spent hard) to advance actually receive a bonus without hurting those of us who did not. I can't afford to repair 24-hour fleets during VXP weekend just so I can get them skulled. That's ridiculous. I send each of my fleets at a target exactly once, then spend the next week or so repairing them. By the time my fleet is skulled, it's obsolete.
you dont care about new or returning players i see. im a returning player, played since the beginning and i was gone for almost two years. i cant kill ANYTHING. i heard from some others that they got full fleets to help them out. know what i got? i 1 two day build token. kinda hard when you cant get anything to build because you cant kill anything, ive spend $200 bucks in the past month since ive been back and i still cant kill anything. now you just got rid of the only thing i can kill a lvl 30 basepart base. whats wrong with you money hungry people? you have so many people that hate you because of the way you treat us. show atleast me that you care and help me move forward.
Focus on the fm before anything else. Get Icebreakers and get to t5 of fm quickly.
not sure how returning players are getting icebreakers, skyfires or some other type of fleet. i didnt get anything. theres a lvl 60 with them that just started. haha i bought the skyfire fleet but cant do a **** thing now since they take all the low targets away
if you don't log in for a set time period, they will entice you back with a gift of an outdated fleet. I got the Ice breakers myself i had not signed in for almost 4 months at that time
i was off for 2 year's never logged in till last month. wish this was for everyone thx for the help though
If you got the flag with your skyfire fleet, you can use it in the next raid to get points. Search for skyfire videos from last raid and you will do well.
"Are we friends? Or are we foes? That kind of thing you decide for yourselves! "
I read your letter. You said, Your company has become complacent and it needed to stop. You also said that you and your company would start to listen to players concerns. "Battle Pirates has adopted a philosophy that dictates everything we do. It’s simple: “Players First.” " I would truly like to believe this and I did when I first read your letter. Now I have my doubts. The reason why I'm having doubts is because of the TLC Primus Ordinus. The description reads: Alert: Siege hulls, Tier 6 and up. I have a full fleet of Buccaneers and fully ranked. I've tried this Campaign when it was first released and the damage I suffered was unbelievable. As I was reading through the forums, Many were saying only a Hydra fleet would and could do this campaign. So once again, Some of us players are left out of this campaign and with the up coming raid. We the player who are left out could use the new MDS II. By my count, I've lost out on 10 MDS II and it's only going to get worse. Will, If you truly meant what you posted. Why dont you fix this campaign and let us players who have Buccs compete for the new MDS II or was it all hot air....
Will and his Sheeple employees are a bunch of liars.They do not and have not given a rats azz about players except those that coin and Rampages last video with wrongthinker ( great programmer name btw )said in the show they were listening to certain players feedback.Nothing will change for the good in the game and if you believe it will well good luck to ya .
@Golden Knights said:
Will and his Sheeple employees are a bunch of liars.They do not and have not given a rats azz about players except those that coin and Rampages last video with wrongthinker ( great programmer name btw )said in the show they were listening to certain players feedback.Nothing will change for the good in the game and if you believe it will well good luck to ya .
I really do hope the irony of your comment is not lost on you.
Playing this game is like trying to row a boat up a waterfall.
Approaching the last 2 clusters in part 2 with a fully skulled hydra fleet that got me a billion points in its raid one salvo and my whole fleet died...no wonder the game is shedding so many players.
hmmmm
??
?
Im rarely at the very top of raid leaderboards or at the top of the PVP food chain but I do OK. At least well enough to keep a reasonable balance between game/home life and coining costs for game value. This last raid series has been a challenge and compounded a downward trend that goes back further than that in my opinion.
I started the series with a scatter build as that was the only tech available. We were advised by game hierarchy that from that point we would only need 1 fleet per raid series however quite soon after, missile based tech was released which "indicated" it might be a better build. If I had trust in the information thats been flowing down to players I would have changed nothing, however I chose to refit my fleet to the missile setup and was reasonably happy at event 2. I did have to do a refit as the countermeasures I was using didnt seem to be as effective as before. I came to the forum and found that there was a "game fix" to countermeasures to make them work "properly" (thanks for that!). Going into event 3 I was pretty hopeful but was very dissapointed with the damage levels per points and after watching a few videos I see that the scatter option was working much better based on the newer target layouts. Apart from maybe 1 different special, the best reported results were coming from a fleet build I had 2-3 months ago. I am now refitting again to the scatter setup and im absolutely 100% expecting event 4 to have new targets which will favor the missile setup. You can argue semantics that 1 fleet of Manticores is still 1 fleet regardless of what tech is on it, if you want.
I feel the game suffers badly from poorly tested targets and poorly released tech. Whatever your testing model is, you need to do better. Expect all players of all levels to have slightly sub optimal builds and then try some targets with those builds yourself. If you can do a target with a reasonable amount of damage then thats likely to be accepted by players. If you cant do it at all then what do you expect your players to do? 1 example of this is a hidden stat on Phoenix. This hull (with no additional stun resist specials) can be stunned by the drones in assault targets, stop for a second then carry on happily. You try doing this with Apollos with a higher stun resist stat and they get frozen completely until death. I understand the game did not want tier 3 tech doing tier 2 or higher targets but the "fix" was completely underhand. How hard would it have been to change the Phoenix blueprint stat to its correct value? instead of nerfing the Apollos out of the target. I wont mention that fully built Apollos have been offered for $$$ directly in store.
Releasing broken blueprints does not lead to trust. Not addressing those instances in a clear and timely fashion does not lead to trust. Posting spurious game strategy does not lead to trust. For a long time now you have lost the trust of your loyal and longstanding players and its going to take a bit more than a regurgitated mission statement before you get that trust back. Let your actions speak louder than your words and ill see you in a couple of months to see how well you`ve done.
In my honest opinion, you haven't gotten involved because the "cash flow" was just fine from where you were sitting. Now that your "team" under you, running this game, has just about ran it into non-existence and the money has stopped, YOU have decided to intervene.
Battle Pirates community is TIRED of hearing the same ole same ole Bullcrap coming from ANY of you at Kixeye. WE WANT ACTIONS! AND WE WANT THEM QUICKLY IF NOT NOW!
SHOW US NOT TELL US!!!!
You could fix the build/refit times easily, just let them all build at once. Real life ship building, is not one thing at a time. While the hull is being built, they are wiring, and placing some internal parts. arming is all done pretty much at the same time, not one turret at a time. You could knock the build times, down to a week for top shelf ships and scale it down as they age. You might be surprised to see more people coining a week over 2,3 or 4 week builds. But all you guys ever listened, to was the coins dropping into the coffers, not the complaints.
Now you say you want to right the ship? Heard it before, the first appearance of the scourge faction, almost destroyed the player base. Even PriceisWrong, one of your most die-hard supporters almost quit, due to that scourge invasion being just too strong. You changed and it looked good for a few months, then you started going back to the old ways
Mr Will Harbin, What i'm trying to say, if you wish to skip the bull, is Talk is Cheap. We've heard it all before, we even held your feet to the fire (As Robot asked us to do), but you kept ignoring us. Good luck and i hope you really REALLY mean it, but honestly this game ruined me for grinding games. You want a direction? You want to see a fair free to play model, check out Warframe, they been out for 5 years and still growing in fan base. I been playing that, for about 7 months and have not regretted it. Warframes built in 3 days not 3 weeks, weapons in 12 hours, not 3 days. Check it out, it's really good system they have.I would love to see Digital Extremes (Warframes developer) get a hold of this game and make it right, make it fun and make it worthy, of spending money in. I got no problem spending money if i see value, but i do not see value in just trying to and failing to keep up
Something else that I'd like to see is a reduction in game complexity - make it easier for players to design ships that will work after the 20+ days they've spent building them and make a clear pathway for new and lower level players to be able to progress.
In my opinion you started to get things right towards the end of the siege raid cycle. The co-op campaigns allowed more experienced players to get the ships for the smaller players and older fleets could still work in the lower bases (even if it meant more seat time and a little more coin, people accepted this). Players were coming back to the game who'd lost interest previously and the community was starting to have fun like I remember it when I first started. Everyone was online during the raid and the sector chat was a real laugh. Players felt they were getting value from the game again - all you had to do was continue on this path. What the hell happened? If you are trying to pinpoint where things went wrong, it was the series of decisions that lead from the fun of the Siege cycle to the game killer that is the Assault cycle.
At least you have acknowledged there's a problem, that's step 1. I sincerely hope you make the changes necessary to bring the game back to it's former glory.
The problem with your final statement is this. They have admitted, they had problems and would change many times. The glaring example to me, since in directly impacted me, is the first incursion of the Scourge. They created such a monster, that a massive amount of players stopped coining the raid. I remember Battle Vortex's Youtube cast that weekend, was so depressing that even PriceisWrong was considering quitting and had stopped coining. they posted a statement about promising helping, transparency and just saying they would change. CM_Robot even told us, to put their feet to the fire. things were fine for about two months then they started going back to the status quo.
I'd like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but kixeye as a whole burned too many bridges and made us use all the F's, we could spare for this game. I played this game for over 5 years, before i finally realized they only cared about the coins, not the players. I started this game in 2012 (Oct) and ended serious play in 2017(Dec.), so i have 5 years of game play under my belt and about two years of that, was Just because i wanted to believe they'd eventually change. But that never came
I think Kixeye's biggest problem is with testing and setting reasonable expectations for players. It seems to me that most expectations are based on the whales, which isn't realistic. Let the whales win. Don't use them to determine how tough your targets should be. Or, perhaps give them their own sectors and events with completely different targets and expectations. But you can't expect a casual player/coiner to enjoy a game that is tuned for whales. I'm not saying that non-coiners should be able to perform as well as high-coiners, but they should be able to enjoy the game. Take a hint from Las Vegas casinos. Tens of thousands of people who gamble a few hundred dollars a day is better than a handful of people who gamble tens of thousands of dollars a day.
Back to testing... I work in a development environment. We are often on a 3-month cycle where new things are being developed, tested, then pushed to production. One thing we don't do is spend resources on fixing things after they get to production, because we expended that effort during the testing phase. There will always be little things that need fixing after something reaches production, but nothing anywhere near Kixeye's scale. The majority of your resources should be spent on testing new content (events, hulls, weapons, specials, enemies, etc.) for 4 months before it gets released in the production environment. You should be testing as regular users, not super-users. In fact, I might go so far as to say that every member of the company should be involved in testing, creating a new account at the start of each testing cycle in addition to their main account, and running through the whole cycle with both accounts. If you can't be successful with both, then you've set your standards too high.
I actually thought Kixeye finally "got it" with the garrison raid cycle right after Monoliths were released. I had a mediocre (at best) Zelos/Mono fleet that earned 150 million on one account and 120 million on the other once I figured out how to drive them. I probably spent $30 on the raid before I figured it out. I loved that. Skill and seat time could earn the same kind of points as money. That's how a free-to-play game should work. Time is money. The end result should be the same. One coin equals 30 minutes. If I spend 30 minutes hitting free targets, that should equal the points of hitting another target for 30 minutes of damage.
Since we have two hulls/weapons for each raid cycle, build times should allow players to build a full fleet of each by the end of the raid cycle. AND, the last raid should not rely on having a skulled fleet. Again, let the people who worked hard (or spent hard) to advance actually receive a bonus without hurting those of us who did not. I can't afford to repair 24-hour fleets during VXP weekend just so I can get them skulled. That's ridiculous. I send each of my fleets at a target exactly once, then spend the next week or so repairing them. By the time my fleet is skulled, it's obsolete.
I read your letter. You said, Your company has become complacent and it needed to stop. You also said that you and your company would start to listen to players concerns. "Battle Pirates has adopted a philosophy that dictates everything we do. It’s simple: “Players First.” " I would truly like to believe this and I did when I first read your letter. Now I have my doubts. The reason why I'm having doubts is because of the TLC Primus Ordinus. The description reads: Alert: Siege hulls, Tier 6 and up. I have a full fleet of Buccaneers and fully ranked. I've tried this Campaign when it was first released and the damage I suffered was unbelievable. As I was reading through the forums, Many were saying only a Hydra fleet would and could do this campaign. So once again, Some of us players are left out of this campaign and with the up coming raid. We the player who are left out could use the new MDS II. By my count, I've lost out on 10 MDS II and it's only going to get worse. Will, If you truly meant what you posted. Why dont you fix this campaign and let us players who have Buccs compete for the new MDS II or was it all hot air....
Thank you for your time
ACAM
I really do hope the irony of your comment is not lost on you.