Do you want to make a legendary game? Remove Levels from phobias, let the game be fair for everyone. Oww won’t they make money? Change the way you monetize, battle passes, cosmetics, skins, taunt packs, anything else that doesn’t affect the balance between players. is the game good? Yeeesss, one of the best I’ve played, but unfortunately it won’t last long and will be forgotten by players who leave the game. I want to be able to play this game without a calculator on the side. the game has potential, but then I ask you developers: do you want a legendary game that lasts for a long time and attracts more and more players, or do you want to earn a little money for a few months and make a game that will be forgotten in less than 1 year? that’s up to you.
Hi @brbrbr333 I want to understand your point correctly. So what you’re saying is because players can level up their Phobies, there’s a huge gap between the levels of the Phobies of the paying players versus the non-paying players, or the older players (whether they are paying or not) versus the newer players, which a lot of players think is unfair and making the game/matches unbalanced. And you think this may be one of the reasons why players may leave the game?
the big reason for players to start leaving the game is the feeling of imbalance in the matches, just today I played against phobias lvl 17 / 18, while my maximum phobia is at lvl 6 and that makes a lot of difference in the match. I like the game, I want to buy something in it to support you, but I can’t, because the game is clearly p2w. I’ve spent money on several games, but all of them were games that the purchase wouldn’t make a difference in the matches, like skins and battle passes because I felt like I was supporting something fair. What I think is a workaround, either reduce the lvl outlier, or make it easier for players to reach max lvl faster and easier, or make a mode where all phobias enter the match at the same lvl. invest in skins, animations and countless other thousand things that you can monetize without changing the balance of the matches.
You could adopt the system that most battle royale adopt nowadays. they could have put lvls on weapons, on characters, but they didn’t and still we had many successful games in this style and to this day they continue to be successful because the focus is on the fact that anyone has a chance to beat anyone, no matter if one person has the coolest skins in the game and the other the most basic, the chances are the same, the difference is only in the skill.
Okay, thanks for your detailed feedback and your suggestions for the possible fix. I will make sure to include this in my feedback report and discuss this in our next meeting.
How did that meeting go?
This game is inherently a strategic, competitive game. I don’t even think this needs to be said, but having a match with imbalanced levels makes both the competitive AND strategic aspects go out the window, which is almost like the developers shooting themselves in the foot since I can see that they clearly put in quite a lot of effort to balance the Phobies at level 1, from stats to mechanics.
Quite simply put: Strategic, competitive mechanics do not work with a level system with large gaps. They actually are opposites and destroy each other.
The levels wouldn’t be so bad in some cases, but the issue is compounded by:
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The stat differences between levels are so large that combat mechanics stop working, such as Jar Cannon being able to be one shot by certain Phobies
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Even further compounded by the fact that levels are extremely hard to get without shelling out huge amounts of cash
The game already has some form of restricting players behind a pay wall just by the fact that new Phobies are relatively difficult to get while F2P, but the level system is like the 10 ton truck that broke the camel’s back.
I, and I’m sure the rest of community, appreciate that the developers have appointed you to listen to our feedback. It makes a world of difference. And I understand that releasing any sort of statement about how your team plans to deal with this issue could be very sensitive and even result in backlash on Smoking Gun. But at the very least, could we get some communication about what’s being done for the issue? Some ideas that you’ve brainstormed but threw out, possible future plans, anything.
I believe you mentioned in another post that the devs are working on a level 1 mode, is that just a consideration, or something being worked on already?
I want to jump on here to just further validate these concerns. I completely agree that the game could have much higher potential to be a legendary game that lasts if there were a way to remove the leveling gap. I have lost several close matches because I am 1 or 2 levels below one of their characters. Coming into a match and seeing that their murder wing is Level 15+ tells me that they are a p2w player and I’m only here to try to salvage some tears.
I understand the devs have to be tactful in how they acknowledge flaws in the game, but some feedback or acknowledgement would be nice for the few of us who care enough to get on here and voice our concerns as devoted players.
I truly think more people would start playing this and keep playing this if it weren’t so hard to progress. Trust me, I don’t mind grinding. I’ve sank hundreds of hrs into single games grinding and been fine. However, when I am spending 2 hrs a day for months with little progress, you need to rethink your progression strategy. You will lose your casual gamers, which is where the biggest market is. I believe it would benefit everyone if the grinding/leveling issues get resolved. I just want this game to stay around. I would even be down to buy a more permanent version of this game in the future once all the wrinkles are ironed out. Love the game, just want to know the players are being heard.
You will lose your casual gamers, which is where the biggest market is.
Actually, for gacha-style mobile games the largest source of income seems to come from a very small group of very rich players, which transactions such as the $100 Bad Omen pack target.
That said, if the rich players are the revenue and lifeblood of the devs, the casual players are the lifeblood of the game. They make a majority of the player population, and losing them would mean that it would become difficult to find new opponents, which means you can’t play at all since PvP is the only mode this game has. BOTH are necessary and one is clearly being ignored, at least at the moment.