I am taking an extended unlimited time off the game. I may return to it one day if things really change but that seems unlikely.
Before anyone goes: "Oh we don't care, why are you posting this, etc" I am posting this because maybe, just maybe, someone in charge might see it and read what reasons can make a player finally decide it's time to let go and perhaps do something to prevent it. I am also going to post what in my opinion could have been possible solutions. If you are not interested you can just skip this thread ^_^
I started playing in 2014, took time off then started over fresh, last year. I've been there since the early beginning, and witnessed most of the major changes over time. So, I am a loyal player, and very patient, this is not "rage quit"
I have spent 440$ on this game in the time I have been playing since last year. Never have I spent that much on a game. So, I am not "just ftp and should just take what I get", I invested in this game. Looking back now, I regret I have.
Reasons:
1) Wars are no longer fun:
-Matchmaking:
The most fun aspect in the game for many of us has been wars!
strategizing, working together with 29 other people to defeat the other team was great fun
However, war matchmaking has been broken for far too long: We either get a top 10 team that wipes us, with no chance for us whatsoever, or we get a weak team that we wipe. You can know the result of the war from the first look.
The close, nail bitters are so extremely rare. But that's what makes it fun!
I want close matches! I want to not know the result from first look.
We made a thread with plenty of suggestions how to fix that, and there has been no news or feedback whatsoever on this issue, all we keep getting is more events and more monsters and more additions. I can't fathom why such a huge part of the game that is the most fun for most people, gets so little attention.
solution: this thread is full of solutions: https://forums.socialpointgames.com/topic/1593/war-matchmaking-discussion-and-suggested-solutions/1
-War Rules:
The library was supposed to bring more variety to wars, it has done the absolute opposite. I am so sick and tired of Spirit, Dragons, Female, Sea, Winged over and over.
I am only using 10% of my monsters: Thetys, Learnen, Tempest, Ingvar.
I have a 120 Uther (good legions, exclusive) that I haven't used in months, I have a 120 Mercurius (superheroes), a Frostbite (?), a Krampus (Evil legions). Where are they? Why can't I use the monsters I worked hard on and which I love using?? I keep getting forced to use Thetys and Tempest and Ingvar. This is in no way shape or form fun .. or varied. It is boring. I can't stand looking at Learnean or Tempest anymore, from all the dragon and spirit rules, eventhough, they were among my favorites before.
solution: add the new books to the rules, alternate with element, element, book, or rarity, element, book, and for the love of all that is holly, enough with the double same book rules.
2) Illogical Progress to Reward ratio
As our level increases everything becomes harder, but a level 100 player still gets same rewards as a level 20 player.
Gold and Food dungeons for example: their difficulty increases as our monsters are stronger, but the rewards don't increase. 20k (or whatever food it is) are nothing to a lvl 100 player with 120 monsters.
72 hour challenge: the difficulty for higher level players goes through the roof, but we still get the same level 100 legendary that has no use till it's ranked to 115 at least in our wars.
solution: Increase difficulty but also increase reward!
72 hr challenge, for example: make the legendary unranked if player is 1 to 50
1 star ranked if you are level 51 to 75
2 star ranked if you are level 76 to 95
3 star ranked if higher
or whatever ranges, just make it worth the effort! reward progress don't just punish it!
Why should I level up? I have been avoiding doing adventure map because I know once my level increases everything becomes harder with no up side.
3) Running out of reasons\motivation to play
Even though there are more events and dungeons than ever, we technically have less and less to do. Example:
Breeding events: Most breeding events require obscure rare legendaries, while the jokers can cover for common monsters which are often breedable or given in a monster dungeon at the same time! what's the point of the jokers then! I really feel scammed for buying Galante and Violet. The %s are too low, it's a joke, and the addition of random epics and legends has made it worse. So I don't even bother anymore. I rather keep breeding my Ultrabot and Laomu..
Wars: in addition to becoming not fun due to the reasons mentioned above about matchmaking and rules, the reward to effort ratio is just not worth it anymore.
For me, to get one thetys, we have to get 8 wining wars with 350 coins minimum, and what does one thetys do when you need 17 copies to fully rank her?
I used to save up war coins to get high single runes from team shop, that was ripped away with no warning, never to return.
I made a suggestion here to at least add some gems or elementium as rewards for the winning team, so we have some form of motivation. https://forums.socialpointgames.com/topic/1211/suggestion-to-make-wars-more-rewarding
PVP: renewing the pvp system at first seemed like a step in the right direction, but it soon turned to another aspect of the game we are better off ignoring.
I go to play pvp, all I see are 130s with X runes in my legendary 4 league, and I can't even refresh now to change them.
I will lose if I play against them, so I am better off just not attacking at all, at least then I won't drop. In what kind of game is NOT playing more rewarding than playing? PVP is just now sitting there, just like it was before the revamp.
Adventure Map though adventure map is still some fun, it comes at the high price of adding lot of lvl XP forcing you to level up which makes everything harder with no upside.
Dungeons Book dungeons and survivor are okay. But, Rune, Food and Gold dungeons are near useless. Spending the time and the stamina to get a lvl 4 rune at my level is a waste of time. Why not increase the runes with player level? don't we buy enough runes already? pretty sure adding a lvl 6 or 7 rune at the end for higher level players won't bankrupt you.
The statues of Premiere monsters: useless decoration, why not make them do something, like slightly increase gold production of habitats placed near it.
No motivation to get new monsters The lab has been imo the biggest mistake in the game. Unranked monsters are useless vs ranked ones no matter how good they are. So why should I bother getting a lvl 100 "Living forest" or "Psilotus" when it will not replace my 115 Sara, or be able to fight a 130 Laomu and Alces?
The effort and dedication required for progressive islands and mazes is not worth the reward. The only monsters many of us care about now are older ones so we get a copy to extract and help rank them.
I miss the old days when a good new monster would come along and all you had to do was swap runes for it.
I would have gotten Crissandre and given her my Malair's runes. But not when he is 120 and she is 100.
I would have gotten Darmith's bodyguard, if I didn't need at least 8 copies to make him usable.
solution: As mentioned above, increase the rank of the monsters given in mazes, 72 hr challenges, and progressive islands, according to player's level to make us want to bother with them. They are useless for us at 100, so most of us don't even bother anymore.
When the lab came out, you promised us ranking will be easier. "Second rounds" in events, but instead what we got was making the first round even harder and harder. Seriously, who here has ever seen the 2nd round in a maze or progressive island?
Another possible solution for mazes and 72 hr challenge in particular, allow a 2nd round without having to finish all event. Example in the maze if you get Hasai, his path resets and you can play it again and get another copy instead of having to finish it all to get to get him again. Same in 72 hr, reset that one monster puzzle after you get him, instead of having to finish all 3 puzzles to get to 2nd round.
4) So many unnecessary frustrations
-I go to play a dungeon, want to use my Uther, but nope! it's locked in my pvp defense, I have to go switch it then come back instead of just doing the dungeons. Why? why is this necessary. It doesn't make me want to get another Uther or whatever the purpose is, it only makes me curse.
-I want to trade cells with my teammates, I can only donate legendary every 24 hrs. 100 L cells take us 20 days to trade. Why? why can't we just trade as much as we want, or at least double the amount like in the "sharing is caring event" (where has that gone?). The lab has been out for over a year, and it is still as hard to rank and trade as when it started.
-My teammate struggles to get enough food to rank while I am sitting on 22 million with nothing to feed, but all I can do is send him 250 food? Make this a % instead of an amount. Since 2014 the gifts have not changed, what use does anyone have of a firesaur and 250 food and 2500 gold. Come on, why not improve these a bit, it's been years.
-Half time breeding and hatching events: if you added the egg like 10 mins before it started it doesn't get the reduced time, but if it runs out before you remove the egg, even if the egg is done hatching, but you haven't placed it in a habitat it restarts and gets the original time. Why? these little things really add up.
5) Too much additions too quickly all the time!
The lab came out, we barely had time to rank our monsters and we are still ranking them, then the library jumped in, making almost all of our effort obsolete.
We ranked rares and epics and uncommons, then suddenly they became obsolete. I literally had just max ranked my Salyentaur who is one of my favorite rares (unbreedable and not up for gold) when the library came out, I never got to use him.
I had 2 high level players on my team that been with us since the start, quit the game because of this. They invested their money to get 130s and X runes, suddenly all their progress meant nothing because they didn't have a "spirit" or an "undead" and the monsters they invested in were not in books.
Keeping things active is good, making new goals to prevent the game from becoming static is good, but not so quickly that the players feel they are not making progress at all because every time they are half way through, the goal moves, and all their progress is washed away. That is not motivating, that is disheartening.
Please stop taking the top few as the measurement of progress, these are your lowest % of players. Just because they had 120 and 130 doesn't mean others did. The library could have waited a few more months instead of throwing it out half baked. We were still working on the lab, on ranking, there was no need for it yet.
let things settle. Instead of producing new monsters every week that are so much alike, that we can't even keep up with, give us time to appreciate and enjoy what we have gained. Give us more chances to rank, more chances to use our monsters, to compete. A tough monster dungeon that really gives us a good legendary monster for example.
Give us more breaks between events to really enjoy them instead of making them feel like a chore .
and Finally as lead of a team I am tired of having to recruit to replace our good players and teammates who quit the game due to the same frustrations.
We have lost 7 high level long terms players from our team since the library came out with the main reason being "the game is not fun anymore."
so please @Fox @Carlos please try to get this feedback across before you lose more and more long term players.
One final note:
The good things
To give credit where credit is due, and to not only complain: the things that I have enjoyed the most are: monsters designs and stories. The monsters have a variety of cute, pretty, and scary and are well made artistically for the most part (I pretend guava juice, D-evice, and chocolove, don't exist).
Updated player profiles were a great addition.
Despite the bad rep support gets, there were times when certain representatives were really helpful and went out of their way to help me with game issues I was having.