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Expectations for the new Feature
Thurthorad
✭✭✭✭✭
in The Bridge
I just wanted to say in response to some others in a thread that has now been closed (with no reason why), that I think putting all your hopes on this new feature is not a good way to approach it.
Do I hope it's great? Absolutely. Do I fear it won't be because it addresses the wrong side of the problem, yes I do.
So my expectations are tempered. And that's fine. No game should be judged on one feature. TP are going to try something and that's good enough for me. Where my attention will be focused is on what they do after the new feature is delivered. No matter how successful the new feature is we are going to consume it in short order and we will need something else to keep the dollars flowing. I hope that this is the lesson that TP has learned. Games-as-service development never stops and pretty pictures can only get you so far.
This is absolutely the most restive I have ever seen the population of this game, and I for one don't want to see a mass walkout of players if the new feature comes in below expectations.
I also understand that this new feature is going to be iterated upon and that's great. But that isn't enough. TP need to be constantly finding new ways for us to use crew to drive our demand for them, so after a deserved break I hope they will get right back to developing the next new feature and will do what is required to deliver it in a more timely manner than this one (not a covid related criticism, I am extending my critique all the way back to Skirmishes as the last major game element added, and really Voyages was the last major important system.)
I know it's ironic that after years of campaigning for a new feature that on the eve of it's release I'm already starting my campaign for the next one and that I am now trying to lower people's expectations for the new one. The reason I spoke up asking for new features many times over the years is because I like the IP, the community and even the game and I don't want to see it fail. So, if TP signal that there is more to come I would urge people to keep an eye on the game going forward and see if things change for the better.
If this new feature is good, I will be hyping it to my RL friends who have left over the years. I really do believe that continued innovation and focus on player enjoyment can grow the player base again.
Do I hope it's great? Absolutely. Do I fear it won't be because it addresses the wrong side of the problem, yes I do.
So my expectations are tempered. And that's fine. No game should be judged on one feature. TP are going to try something and that's good enough for me. Where my attention will be focused is on what they do after the new feature is delivered. No matter how successful the new feature is we are going to consume it in short order and we will need something else to keep the dollars flowing. I hope that this is the lesson that TP has learned. Games-as-service development never stops and pretty pictures can only get you so far.
This is absolutely the most restive I have ever seen the population of this game, and I for one don't want to see a mass walkout of players if the new feature comes in below expectations.
I also understand that this new feature is going to be iterated upon and that's great. But that isn't enough. TP need to be constantly finding new ways for us to use crew to drive our demand for them, so after a deserved break I hope they will get right back to developing the next new feature and will do what is required to deliver it in a more timely manner than this one (not a covid related criticism, I am extending my critique all the way back to Skirmishes as the last major game element added, and really Voyages was the last major important system.)
I know it's ironic that after years of campaigning for a new feature that on the eve of it's release I'm already starting my campaign for the next one and that I am now trying to lower people's expectations for the new one. The reason I spoke up asking for new features many times over the years is because I like the IP, the community and even the game and I don't want to see it fail. So, if TP signal that there is more to come I would urge people to keep an eye on the game going forward and see if things change for the better.
If this new feature is good, I will be hyping it to my RL friends who have left over the years. I really do believe that continued innovation and focus on player enjoyment can grow the player base again.
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But I do expect a serious uptick in the attention that is given to the requests of the players once the tp/wrg team can pull some resources off of the feature development.
This forum only constitutes a thin % of the gaming platform, but most of the people who care enough to post here about it, also have some level of influence/investment in the players that don't visit the forum.
And I agree 100% that a large part of the enjoyment of it will come down to how heavily monetized it is. I dont mind paying to get ahead a little faster, but if I can't get their through game play, I am not interested.
Lets just all chill.
I do dig IRL is crazy. plz leave it at the door.
This game is a good place to just tap and escape............
Long time poster, recent lurker. 100% this.
🖖
My expectations aren't particularly high, but given that there hasn't been an honor sale (and there might be none for a long time) I'm now looking forward to the new feature instead.
I hope that it brings at least some of the advantages an honor sale does over the first week(s) after it's implemented:
1) Anticipation for daily pulls/rewards/activities
2) Chances to get (new) crew
3) A need for planning or managing resources
If it does that, then I'm happy with it. If it doesn't, I won't be upset, but my interest in the game and my need to spend will go down.
The only things I'm currently hoarding resources for (which is the only reasonable way to deal with resources for everyone who is a long-time player and not a big spender) are a possible honor sale and a possible addition of a crew that I really want to a Tuesday pack. At some point I will have enough honor and dilithium that it won't make sense to purchase campaigns or monthly cards anymore.
I generally agree with this. This thread is off to a decent start though. Nothing wrong with wanting to keep people's expectations at a reasonable level. There does seems to be a problem of players expecting too much sometimes, then getting let down, so they leave the game. I kind of like the approach of keeping expectations reasonable and remembering that there is more coming than just this one feature. Like you, I hope people try to check some of the negativity at the door and keep complaints as objective as possible. So far, I think that's happening here.
To me this is the potential issue, I've been playing nearly 2 years, initial challenge was cadets and then galaxy missions. They've been finished a long time now and ever since the game has been the repetitive same clicks daily with the very occasional divergence to something a bit more interesting.
How many cracked through Episode 10 in short order when it introduced? It arrived, was consumed by many in a day or two and ignored ever since, for newer players it at least extended their challenge by a few days or even weeks.
What ever is coming it needs to engage those that have been around the longest for more than a few days, it needs to be something to work at for months.
I have slight hope that it is something different, comparable to merits to be turned into transmissions to actually play with the crew instead of getting more. Very slight hope though.
Something cool (but probably difficult to implement, but then again they've had a lot of time now) would be if all crew got some new quality, that you'd then use in the new game mode. For instance like ship abilities are now in the arena. Say, a defence ability in a new "defend a starbase" mode.
If only there was a way that TP could help manage those expectations to keep everyone on a similar track of excitement in the development and lead up to a major new game update... damn, I guess we'll never come up with a good solution to managing the expectations game. /s
If expectations get blown out of proportion, I take offense at anyone who tries to blame the players for being unrealistic. We've heard nothing from TP for months other than "we're working on a new feature, youre gonna love it!" And an assumption that we will. What do they expect to happen in the meantime? That the players would sit around and wait, just taking them at their word? Or that players would start to dream up their ideal next addition to the game?
We know basically about as much of the new feature thanks to the quantum currency being added to the master game file and causing an error on a loading screen as we do from official announcements... and by official, I mean Ben jumping on the fan stream.
Where have the developer blogs been along the way to help us get realistically excited? Instead we get a sneak peak and then it goes active just 7 days later?
I've said it before and I'll repeat again, TP is their own worst enemy when it comes to the expectations game- they have a horrible track record of unrealistically raising expectations through their words that then fail to deliver. Any disappointment in expectations falls squarely on their strategy to tease with non info for a stretch of time and then surprise release things into the game. It costs them nothing to show a peak inside development but it would gain them a player community that was willing to jump on the same road they're driving down.
As a day 1 player that for the longest time played this game 24/7 and now stepped back huge(regarding spending money, as well) to maybe 1h a day
(except for events), i do have high expectations. Give me something new, something thrilling, something worth accomplishing, something to spend
my money on.
The next couple 2-3 months will decide if i continue to stick to the game,
that i still love, but sadly has become mainly boring to me, or maybe leave
the game for good.
I really, really hope and wish for the best. Fingers crossed. 🤞🏻
This is very well said. You did a really good job of highlighting the major issue, communication.
The honor sale is another great example of that. They obviously knew of players hoarding habits after the last honor sale in August, yet, they waited until two weeks before the anniversary to tell folks there would be no honor sale. Of course people are going to be upset, even though nothing was confirmed, they were saving their honor in anticipation of a sale this anniversary.
This is hardly the players fault. A constant topic on these forums, in the discord channel, in the universal chat, and on the fan stream is “honor sales”. There are many, many wavs for the devs to keep a pulse on the community. And before someone says “no one has time for that”, i think EVERY business has the time and interest in studying what their customers want.
People love honor sales, and were speculating that there was one coming either christmas or anniversary, so they hoarded honor. tp/wrg should have taken the initiative many months ago to announce there would be something other than an honor sale for the anniversary, and that no honor sales were planned in the next 6-12 months. Manage expectations, you know?
But instead of that, on the eve of the speculated honor sale, we get the announcement that there would not be one. Thats a great way to upset the fanbase. Its also a great way to lose customers faith and loyalty.
― Musashi, Japan's Greatest Swordsman and Samurai
I would hope we all hope this will be a positive change and there is no point being negative over a few clues but TP doesn't help themselves at times hyping up the behold change. That being said the game has come along way, i remember when people wanted a break from events after they were first introduced.
My hope is for ways that we can add to our crew and improve what we have for people who dont spend or spend rarely, i know that sounds like the honor system so it will be interesting to see what it is.
I do have a question though for the people far more knowledgeable, why is content so difficult to add? For example you would imagine a mini event is relatively easy to add, i understand TP wants to make money out of everything, which is why we dont have expeditions anymore but why are changes such a problem?
Agreed. I don't think players have put unfair expectations on the new feature - I think TP has clearly done that themselves, the way they have built it up so much, seemingly at the expense of other updates that were put on the back burner or abandoned altogether. If this flops and doesn't live up to expectations, let alone leads to a mass player exodus, that's totally on TP.
I hope for the best but fear for the worst, since nothing TP has done since taking over has done anything to instill confidence that they have the pulse of the players. We shall see!
I actually would like that a lot.
I would love to see a market place. Lots of games have them. I use some of them to various degrees. Some folks will rage quit over it.
I stand corrected. The thread has taken on a decidedly negative tone. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt. I'm just trying to decide if this could actually become helpful. Dragging the devs, post after post... maybe people will expect the new feature to be the product of incompetence and not expect much. It's not a view that I hold, but I suppose that's the most positive thing I can say about this thread.
/ˌekspekˈtāSH(ə)n/
noun
plural noun: expectations
a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.
"reality had not lived up to expectations"
I remember when I first found this game in the Google Play store in early 2016. Up to that point, I had only found one mobile game that lasted more than a week on my phone and that one had a true micro-payment economy. It was fun in a largely mindless sort of way, but it had started to become repetitive and I wasn't necessarily a super fan of the IP. So when I came across a game that loosely had some similar game play aspects attached to a beloved IP, it seemed promising.
Playing the game without any supporting third party resources was basically like playing the game from the episode "The Game". I didn't really have any clue what I was doing, but it seems kind of fun and I'm getting neurochemical stimulation? Ok! Then I realized that, holy targ droppings, the game economy was bonkers!! "Who would pay for this??" was probably one of the earliest and most enduring impressions I had about the game.
But, bruh, that nostalgia factor kept me hooked tapping away every now and then. So naturally it reached the point that I had to see what else there was out there about the game. I found the forum, reddit, and the wiki. That was just enough support for me to not only decide to keep playing, but also to put some money in the game largely through the occasional monthly dil card.
For years thereafter, it was marvelous watching people trumpet the cards they'd gotten and events they'd won, clearly having spent a small fortune at some point in the game to reach that point. Sure, every now and then you'd hear about VIP0's snagging the occasional top spot through herculean hoarding efforts and living attached to their phone(s)/device(s) for 96 hours, but it was super obvious this game was all about P2W and the players at the top did not give the slightest care to what they were investing in. It was Star Trek and they could spend oodles of money on and feel sparkly. Those small fish or other misc. dissenters who had substantial criticisms of the mindless tapfest of a game and poor rng attached to it were routinely derided to an avalanche of witticisms certified with an echo chamber of awesomes.
Fast forward to the present and look at the players complaining about the "lack of deals" or an honor "sale", which, let's be real: rewards those best who spent the most. Oh and now the obligatory come to jebus realization the "game is boring, stale, repetitive", "where is the new content", "what can I do with my cards", etc. 🤔
Me on the other hand? Still cynical as Gre'thor about the game but now spending way more money than any responsible individual should be. Why? Because I knew at the outset this game was kind of a waste of money and time. I knew that I could never outspend the space whales. I knew the game economy was going to remain funny (but not "ha-ha" funny). Those were and are my expectations, and I remain comfortable with that. I don't need to let a phone game get to me so intensely that I'm posting paranoid conspiracy theories about the evil machinations of the devs and their secret war on the celebration of Horus' birth.
The addendum to having set clear expectations about this game early on is that in 2019 there was a joyous convergence of stat creep and me having the financial resources to burn while also making matching charitable donations that similarly, did not impact my ability to support myself and family. You know what happened during the festive season when I didn't get more deals I wanted? I spent more on family and friends. I made more charitable donations. I sighed, shrugged, and life went on. No honor sale for a few more months (maybe never)? Well, I've got most of the top 100 voyagers in the game... I don't need to spend honor to massively improve my crew. So let it ride.
I spent virtually no money for 3 years... I can wait out the devs to find the value that, while still not actual value, is at least somewhat meaningful in terms of the ridiculous economics of this game. If I'm going to "go negative", it ain't about that ish.
Having watched, for years, as innumerable posters replied "well, stop playing the game" to every range of discontent from other posters' concerns and found it crass, senseless, and short-sighted, I'm not going to repeat that mistake here. What I'm going to do instead is ask, "well, what did you expect?"
Many moons ago when this post began, I bolded the word "belief", because it's important to examine what a belief is. Beliefs are usually the domain of the individual. The existence of external Belief Systems has been confirmed by science, but you usually have to opt into a belief on a personal level, at some point, during the process of adopting or formulating said belief.
For years, the coolest/loudest/biggest voices in the community have believed that they should be throwing money at a casino skinned with an IP based on a post-scarcity post-capitalism utopian future. TP/WRG, and DB before them, didn't force anyone to believe this. Maybe the paroxysm of players confronting reality isn't the fault of a game developer, but indicative of a deeper personal issue of untold complexity that's being avoided and ignored irl? 🤷
That's my current belief as it relates to the game and some of the posters here lately, at any rate.
Oh, and more closely back to the thread's original topic: see above shrug emoji.
Time to get back to tapping. Thank you for reading this manifesto rambling word salad. On the off-chance you've read this far and would like to respond meaningfully to this post, please visit https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank and/or https://www.wfp.org/. Stale image macros and gifs also accepted from those allergic to introspection, empathy, charity, what-have-you. Be excellent to each other. 🖖
I'll throw their advise back at them. If you don't want to see opinions or beliefs you don't agree with, stop reading them. No one forced you to read anything here, it was your choice. Making a new river over every negative communication is no more constructive. What is the point of crying over criticism you don't like? Are you trying to give the impression you think the devs are babies who can't handle negative feedback? If you have something to say that you think will impart perspective, great. If you just stopped by to insult people and leave your own rant about rants, you don't actually have high ground. Few things are more hypocritical.
My expectations are very low. Any new feature is probably going to just be another way for existing spenders to lighten their pockets. If it's useful for the unwashed masses that will be awesome.
One small thing I wanted to address in the previous comment. While honor sales certainly benefit people who spend a lot, they are one of the few ways you can feel rewarded for hard work if you can't spend as much as others. A lot of the cash trolls in this game like to frame not spending as if it were only a personal choice. They talk down to everyone and make them feel horrible when they are simply playing within their means. Aside from specials like Paris the game doesn't offer much to players who don't live with the same means as those who dominate it. I don't demand an honor sale. That doesn't mean I don't want one. I'm not going to throw tantrum if TP chooses to eliminate the only effective reward for hard work and saving in favour of a new way for spenders to spend (which is an assumption and may be entirely wrong). It's demoralizing being treated as expendable for failing to bring whatever arbitrary cash metric TP and the deep pockets feel validates the right to play and give feedback on what might feel rewarding. And it feels dismissive when the few ways to feel rewarded are denied or removed, and when spenders try to humiliate people for wanting to be rewarded when they seem to believe spending is the only thing worth rewarding. I don't tell other people how to play or attempt to impose my idea of what makes things fun on others, and it would be nice if others didn't assume I needed to adopt theirs.
There's legitimate reasons to complain. There's flaws in the game that most of us would love to see addressed. None of that is being discussed at this point. If it is, it's not being done in a manner that even resembles productive. I'll try to to get the thread back on track...
Game developers have a line to walk in terms of getting their fan base excited for a new feature and over-hyping it in a way that sets player expectations too high. How would you communicate a new feature? Where do you think is the right balance for such communication?
1. the content towards better meeting the players' expectations
2. the quality
3. communication.
I have wondered about this. Would it give said beta testers an unfair advantage in terms of advanced knowledge? They would know which resources to hoard on their live accounts. Alternatively, if these things are done transparently so all players see it (minimizing above advantage), then you get players across the spectrum giving feedback, despite only having third-hand or second-hand knowledge at best. Then when the ideas, complaints, and other input are not taken seriously due to this lack of first-hand knowledge, it can disenfranchised a large swath of players.
I don't know where that balance is between transparency, involvement, and keeping a level playing field. There's just so many times that we read (legitimate) complaints that it appears no one at WRG is play testing this feature or that change before it is rolled out. There's room for improvement. I just don't know where the balance points are or how to achieve a better equilibrium.