Hey there guys, been playing the game for ~40 hours so far and i wanted to give my 2 cents. Cause there is no forum for general feedback, this will have to do.
The good is kinda obvious, fast paced, decent graphics, decently balanced classes and a pretty nice general idea of what the game wants to be. I like it that they want to push the game being an E-Sport, we’ve seen some games do that and most of them succeeded (as long as they had proper game play, Smite being a perfect example). For what other games have tried to sell as a ‘beta’ the game play is perfectly fine and i’m kinda surprised cause that is something i’ve not seen from Nexon so far.
The bad should be obvious aswell, the menu laggs horribly, hilarious ingame bugs (regarding the ramp on chapel for example), random crashes and some hackers here and there. But that is still ok for a public beta, nothing that cant be fixed before the game goes live.
But with the ugly it’s a different story, and that is something that will push back many customers and maybe drive them to other alternatives like the soon-to-come Overwatch, if Blizzard fixes those mistakes. I’m talking about the cash shop.
So, what is the basic requirement a COMPETITIVE game has to fulfill? Yes, it has to be fair from the beginning. All sorts of highly competitive games and sports are fair by default, everyone has the same chances of winning right off the bat and the athlete/player with the highest skill wins, Dota 2, CS:GO, Quake and any common sport fulfills this requirement. And yes, there are games that made it to the competitive scene without such fairness (League of Legends being the best example) but their success came widely because they were part of an overpopular genre and just the first ones (in LoLs case that was a casual Moba, take a look at all the LoL/Dota 2 copies, none of them made it).
Basically, the way you are doing it at the moment is that you are banking on being successful because everyone who wants a fast-paced, objective-based first person shooter will find their way to this game and not be turned away by the stupid cash shop mechanic immediately. And you are competing in a general market where there are already popular FPS games out, do you really think you can bind people to your game like that?
So, my general problems with the ingame shop are as follows:
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There are one or maybe two loadouts that are viable for each mercenary. The others are (from my point of view at least) just to frustrate people when they are opening a case or conduct a trade-up. And frustrating your customers is always a bad idea. Basing such a system on pure randomness is really stupid, especially when you have to basically roll a dice to get access to essential equipment while your opponent might have had a lucky day and is just stronger than you. Fairness? Nope, not today.
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You shouldn’t make all items that can only be bought for real money available to non-paying players. I know what you are trying to do here, you’re trying to be fair in a sense that you can get the whole content without paying. But making non-essential stuff like weapon/armor skins available to everyone is a bad idea in general.
What exactly do paying players want?
- a shortcut, to unlock essential stuff faster
- help the development of the game and get some hats for it
- be special
So in my experience the 3rd point is the biggest reason for paying players to dump money into free-to-play games. They want to stick out. That is why you buy skins in other games, i doubt many people are doing it for their own joy, the just want other people to see that they have the money to spare for a game. Those people are not getting anything here. Yes, they can buy a case and get a cobalt but then they meet someone who either got his .1 going for him or crafted it and they’re gone for good or at least wont pay another penny.
- The experience system is useless. You get to level 7 and then there’s just nothing more to unlock for you, it just shows everyone in your match that you dumped a shitload of time into the game if you’re past level 20-30. I really dunno what the point of this leveling system is, it isn’t even motivating (which is usually the reason to implement stupid leveling systems into any sort of game) because you’re not working towards anything. It also doesn’t really show your skill because it just shows that you’re playing the game for a while.
So what i would wish to happen to the cash shop/leveling system is to
…either remove it and make all gameplay-essential content available right off the bat, maybe throw in a leveling system for some low-quality skins, knives and such. A competitive game will usually get its playerbase from the fact that is is so competitive. People want to become better, climb the ladder and thusly be motivated to play.
…or change it so that it is not based on randomness, maybe do it like Nosgoth where you get your characters after a set amount of levels (but can still choose which one to pick), and maybe make the loadouts like a sort of ‘achievement-system’ or with some sort of ‘questline’ attached to each character where you have to fulfill certain requirements to get the next-higher loadout of your choice. Maybe even throw in the system of Smite where you can basically pay 23$ and get the experience of a full-prices game with everything essential unlocked. Of course the loadouts should be way better balanced by then making this an actual choice, not just a no-brainer. And just make the cash-shop a bunch of skins, maybe in a way that you throw a certain skin on a loadout you choose yourself so that you can still keep your ticky-ticky of equipment cases which will then just throw out skins.
Oh and remove the real-money value from everything ingame and use a proxy-currency. People will generally be less incentivised to spend money if they see directly how much everything is worth. But 8000 whatever-coins for 10 dollars with 1 equipment case being worth 3000 whatever-coins will sound ‘better’. And they have the leftover coins in their inventory causing them to maybe spend money later to use the change properly.
~Toby