Forum Discussion

Cohmethazine's avatar
Cohmethazine
New Novice
2 months ago

Returning players being punished, badly.

Hi guys!

I really hope this reaches the right people because there is a major issue that me, and I'm sure plenty of other players are experiencing as well.

I made my account in 2016. As far as i know: Servers and sharding group up X amount of people and keep them in a static server. That server won't ever change. As I made this account EIGHT years ago, this was before the journey guide came out with a determinative way to end game content, arena was the only source of free crystals other than daily activities obviously. 

NOW: I have 0 relic characters, 0 7-star ships, I'm 1.3m gp still working on the tier 2 journey characters. 

NOW: People on my shard have dominated the Squad, and Ship arena. RELIC 9 characters, and a leaderboard full of 7 star leviathans, which also require relic 9 characters.

I will say this the kindest way possible as I'm very frustrated: Even though I understand this game takes a lot of time/money/dedication; what kind of design is this and why is this allowed? I should be put in a shard with people AROUND my GP/Time/Characters. 

My farm to the Arena modes will not only take 8 years worth of me being gone to be where they're at, but I'm getting punished already as my rewards will never be the same as what they are getting! and they are at the top, and probably reaped all of the benefits of having that currency anyway.

I don't see a world where in a business process of any kind, that this makes sense. You are essentially forcing people that are behind, to never get to a reasonable position in the game versus their peers.

I am no game designer (just a big gamer), but I am a business student in my full time occupation, and here are a few solutions I can think of, being ignorant to how much time/effort that they will take:

  1. Rejuggle every accounts server and make them similar in GP, or a small disparity in gp and reclumping everything.
  2. A complete re-design of the entire idea of the server system, and how people are clumped together.
  3. Remove Crystals from being in the top 5 fleet arena. Redistributing them to other areas of the game such as: Daily Activities, Guild Participation, Either of the galactic modes. This I think has to be the most realistic solution. This removes emphasis on having a crazy ship fleet that requires a decade to build. every player involved still gets those crystals, and this still allows returning players to have an AVENUE to be able to be on the same level as those on their shard, if a server re-design is not possible.

There are SO many benefits as a student that I think would be mutually beneficial from an EA, and player standpoint. First and foremost:

  1. Returning players from X amount of time ago are not being punished
  2. These players, if they have an avenue to victory would most likely be more open to paying more money, if they knew the avenue was actually achievable. I know for one, if I had an avenue to being on the same level of people on my shard, I'd throw a ton of money at EA. Simple consumer behavior. No one wants to pay for and items that don't put them on the same competitive field.
  3. Retention of players would skyrocket. I would put filthy bets that all of these servers are 1/2 of people or maybe even 3/4ths dead. and 500-250 people are really on a given shard. All of the players that had given up, were to come back, you're currently not giving them a warm welcome. Just enticements to not come back.

I really hope this reaches the right set of people/person(s). I believe this to be a serious issue that should be resolved to ultimately increase the experience from EA, and a player perspective. I've took the time to carefully explain a very common issue that I think is required to be addressed for the betterment of both parties.

Thank you guys, xo