Prototypemind

Rezi wrote: »

Prototypemind wrote: »

No testing before something this large scale was released is just more of a reflection that this update wasn't about truly giving players what they want, but what the director decided in his mind that players want.

Except that it was tested by Korean players who reacted negatively to it and outright said not to implement it, yet the DOL did it anyway. A lack of testing isn't an excuse; the feedback was simply ignored.

True testing isn't just letting players find bugs and ignoring all their feedback, so I supposed I should have put that qualifier in. How they handled it was extremely unprofessional. The worst part is how quick they are to implement nerfs if they feel something makes players too strong, but they ignore players saying explicitly that they aren't okay with the forthcoming changes.

hornywatermelon wrote: »

It's always such a pleasure to see all those angry NA players posting rants on top of cries coated with salt and a bit of spicy anguish.

Rise minus AD changes is the best thing that happened to Vindi in the past two years.

Yep, so good that players on all servers have dropped their +15s from their inventory and uninstalled. When you have players who have invested ridiculous amounts of hours and dollars in a game just walk away you're doing something wrong. One thing that you don't get and that DevCat doesn't seem to get is a basic facet of marketing/sales: it costs more to attract new customers than it does to retain old ones, and repeat customers tend to be the best source of revenue. The hardest things with games like these is getting players hooked, and part of what got players hooked was the challenged and the social aspect, both of which disappeared with Rise.

Add to that things like having to do the Enhance/Enchant quests, etc., on every single character and it's just tedium on top of bad design. Maybe Vindi exists in some special place outside of the norm, but it doesn't seem that way at the moment, and that likely means a continued decline. No testing before something this large scale was released is just more of a reflection that this update wasn't about truly giving players what they want, but what the director decided in his mind that players want. Worse still, he said outright that many of the changes were about getting new people to stick around, not making current players--the whales who keep the wheels turning--satisfied.

You can call it salt or whatever you like, but with games like BDO here, and Kingdom Under Fire 2, Lost Ark, the Bless revamp, and plenty of other titles on the way Vindi is going to hold less and less appeal with its easy early game and non-social end game.

Your weapon has to be fully orange because DevCat wants you to suffer. You have to risk losing the investment of all those shards rather than just the main essence, which in turn makes you more likely to buy the guaranteed runes that are being sold in most regions, or to farm your soul out to get seals to trade in for the special protection rune in the shop. That's the theory anyway, but lots of people have just run away and never looked back.

All of this is based on the decision of one person with no preemptive feedback from players before it was fully implemented, so it's not surprising that it's not something most are fond of.

Review is pretty accurate, though with the way players have been even more spread out and the difficulty with gaining seals--a huge step backwards--the game just doesn't offer nearly as much socially as is it used to. That on top of other horrible changes like an increase to a max of +20 with decreased enhanced rate and increased benefit to additional damage and there are just too many steps in the wrong direction for it to be worth any serious time or energy anymore for many former regulars.