Casual Breakthrough: Broken Promises/Portal
For the average gamer, casual breakthrough may be a Godsend. A lifeline. EA listened!
But what a slap in the face! Promises made, promises broken.
What's the problem? Well, this game was advertised as community-focused. We expected Portal. We expected something more than just the 'trash' that a developer makes. When you release casual breakthrough, what is the message you are sending? YOU can do it but the community can't? Do you not see the hypocrisy?
I totally get why casual games are desirable. People want their fun time to be fun. That's why they were so angry that you nerfed Portal. You made a good thing and then killed it. What do you care where people level up? Someone leveling up in a location different than other people has no affect on the group who isn't interacting with eachother. You get it. You made casual breakthrough. So what's the problem?
Bot farms are the problem, right? Well, here's the thing.... it's your game and your Portal. You can police it better than you have been. You can police it without killing it. If someone makes a farm server where all one team is bots and none of them have guns... come on!... you can fix that easily and automatically without killing every other Portal server XP experience. Make the Portal check-boxes have consequences. If someone makes bot-fill only on one team or change which weapons bots can use, you make Portal automatically limit XP. If not, you don't.
So, now you have casual breakthrough. And what about all legitimate servers with absolutely no unfair settings, using official game modes and official scoreboard, who just have bot fill like yours. They get no XP?
And then what about the game modes you forgot to care about? Conquest, rush, and breakthrough are the only "verified" game modes supported in Portal. All the other modes you forgot you created, are "custom". When it is EA's server, they exist and get full XP, but if someone makes one in Portal, it is custom and gets no XP. Why not make them official in the first play? And if you force them to be custom, why not give them XP? Just because they CAN have custom rules because you FORCED them to be a "custom" experience, doesn't mean that people will use custom rules. If there are no custom rules used, why not detect that and give them full XP?
I am biased because I like hardcore team deathmatch and squad deathmatch. I am biased because I like hardcore in general. YOU forgot to put that in your game, or make it only something you officially offer at some times. Why punish creators who want those experiences, aren't gaming the system, aren't creating farms, and spend a week creating the thing you forgot to make? Why punish the creator for creating the thing that people want, when that thing is legitimate and not gaming the stats?
All you are doing is making dedicated and passionate people angry, acting hypocritically, and destroying a potential community. We can all see the writing on the wall. This is going to be developer trash and we will eat it up. You'll make your COD game for the COD crowd. You'll get rich. We'll just be angry.
