Letter to OOO

i couldn't help myself - i had to write a letter to them to tell how the update affects me
here is my letter and their reply - if anyone is interested
> Knight: Dummymummy
>
>
> Hi to all developers - in the past I had asked about a possible Australian or
> Asian server. I know it's hard to do but I'd like to explain to you why it's
> now something that needs to be done. Since you eliminated health sharing revs
> the game has lost all it's fun for me. I use sparks of life a lot because I
> constantly lag into something.
> So to explain to you what I'm saying:
> BEFORE update : friends could give me pills - earlier even vitapods to help
> compensate for my lag but now that's impossible.
> BEFORE I did the rooms in eg FSC level 24 that I could do and leave the wheels
> with the spikes for others now I either have to forgo the loot or risk needing
> one or two more sparks and getting through level 27 has become a nightmare.
> (It's maybe hard for you to understand how it feels when you react well in
> time to what you can see but still get hit and loose health)
> I can do runs on normal or advanced but elite is almost impossible for the
> danger prestige missions - and in normal or advanced the drop of sparks is
> practically nil.
> I have been playing this game a lot and for a long time and I would love to
> continue so (I had an elevator pass every month for almost the entire time -
> didn't mind spending the money) but as it is now .... all my fun is totally
> spoiled. I know I'm only one person in the scheme of things so I'm sorry to
> bother you with my troubles but maybe ...only maybe you can see that this
> might be effecting a number of ppl. For now I remain hopeful that you will
> take my outpouring into consideration.
> And to you Nick personally : the changes did NOT in any way improve team-play
> as you had said in one of the earlier announcements. It has totally destroyed
> it.
> On the battle sprites itself I'd like to congratulate all of you - if they had
> come with some new missions on a higher level and maybe a new boss it would
> have been perfect. (provided you hadn't changed the loot/rev system)
> Thank you for at least reading my letter
> Kind regards Karin
>

Reply

Greetings,

Thank you very much for your feedback - we really appreciate it when players
take the time to explain what is and isn't working for them, and why. We're
definitely aware that there's an interest in having Three Rings-operated
servers closer to Australia and Asia to accompany the current Asian servers
and are to the best of my knowledge investigating the possibility, though
unfortunately "investigating the possibility" is a long way from being able to
promise that it's a thing we'll be able to do. We're all definitely on your
side when it comes to lag and high ping being things that suck - we're gamers
too, so we know what it's like to suddenly teleport into fire.

With regards to your feedback on revives and vitapods, I'm not able to comment
specifically, but again, thank you very much for explaining why they're not
working for you; it's appreciated.

Glad you like the battle sprites! Personally, I keep getting distracted by
mine and dying thanks to opportunistic beasties. He's just so CUTE.


Best wishes,

- Hyperion

Wow. I'm really surprised they replied. Somehow it seems they aren't going to change the loot and rev system any time soon though...

I like how the beginning is the same for when I had a letter about something. I bet they have a copy n' paste for the first few sentences....

But yeah, total agreement Karin. Team play for me is dead. I really can't carry people anymore because I can't give them health and I HATE how we can't even trade vial-type items. I also agree about a new, harder, non-SL boss lol. Darkfire vana really... wasn't that hard =.=

Despite good reasoning, I doubt they'll change.

Oh yeah, I really love those workaround answers for your thing about vitapods. Very annoying.

In this video, the team play is crucial if not the most important thing to do for elite missions. The update makes you go with others instead of the old mentality of "You go kill this over here while I go kill this over here and we all get crowns because its so easy."(Especially in FSC) Everyone had this solo mindset in the old system. Staying together actually works the same way as the old system if not better. 2-3 brandish charges are better than one, right?

Pets also work better in groups just like that video above instead of solo'ing everything.

The health pills being dropped was exploited for over necessary health. (Lets be honest here, we all have carried more than 4-6 pills in groups when they dropped too much into the next area.) And alt dragging for one person controlling two people.

Sparks don't really drop that much on anything other than elite, so I do agree that it's a pretty low drop rate on lower difficulty. And the lag, yeah...that's everyone's kryptonite so know I that feel. My apologies if that was a huge reason its has made you stop playing. A lot of people have came back for pets and the havens are pretty much crowded now.

Nice letter Karin -- I wish there was something they could do to help out all of the Oceanic/Asia players (besides the so-called "Asian Servers" that were mentioned in the reply, seeing as those are completely separate from the actual game we all are playing in US and EU). Whenever I have had lag due to connection problems, it was a frustrating experience -- I can only imagine how bad it can be for those who have to deal with it constantly. And it's bad for OOO because now someone who went from buying ele passes to now not playing much because of these issues.

Personally, I like having the loot drops instanced, because usually everyone stays together and doesn't wander off ahead or behind. Maybe that's what is meant by "improving team-play" but you still get some who don't load right away, etc., that have to run around to all the rooms to get their items.

And I'm reasonably sure that the health sharing revs were removed in order to discourage alt-dragging -- though I'm not sure about the reason for ending vial and vitapod dropping. Anyone know about that? Maybe a vampire sprite is needed that sucks the health from one player to transfer to another

ReadReact wrote:though I'm not sure about the reason for ending vial and vitapod dropping.  Anyone know about that?

I'm pretty sure it's because since they made separate loot drops it would be kinda not much point. Don't understand Vita since that was before that though...

You all wrote such awesome responses... I just wanted to congratulate you Karin, that was definitely passion-filled. But one thing... *affected not effected

Well yes, the 'I do this room and you do that room' wasn't really party play, but the system of revs kills any notion of better party play (even though what read said is a good point, about alt-dragging). Having to spend something with actual material value in the game on somebody just to give them something with no value outside the mission is lame. before, the only way this would happen would be revving somebody because everybody's dead or you're really struggling to get through a room. The removal of health-revs drastically reduces your length of survival in touch mission, or so I've seen. Like if you're the last one alive and are on fire and will die, just rev somebody so the team could keep going at no expense. Now, we have to just die and (if you don't have an emergency rev) everyone who wants to revive and not loose the next depth's emergency rev will be out a spark. In other words, I find myself needing to use "revs with value" way more often than I should. In addition, if somebody/multiple people are dead in a party, are out of emergency revs and sparks, and you don't want to spend yours, you've got plenty of deadweight there, just making it harder. The only good points I see is: no alt dragging advantages for those people with powerful/multiple computers and how you don't get stuck wasting health on somebody who's whining who dies every 5 seconds. But.. these pros are severely outweighed by the cons in my book.
 

Like how he gradually tries to change the subject to something about pets... lol.