Very frustrated about Multiplayer being pushed from the first update for the Crucible

Wicked Feedback
21

I don’t want to give the impression that the Crucible doesn’t need work. But the reality is the entire game is in need of work. Is there any part of this game that can actually be considered finished?

So, something has to come first, and I would have preferred that something to be the major feature they advertised as coming first as part of their sales pitch: multiplayer.

And for several reasons - 1) because I feel adding in multiplayer is more important than the Crucible being fleshed out this early into Early Access. 2) Because I will get more enjoyment out of multiplayer than the Crucible. And 3) because Moon Studios used Multiplayer’s priority as part of their sales pitch to convince people to take an interest in/purchase their Early Access title.

Is it too much to hope that a developer would stick to what they repeatedly advertised? At what point does the excuse “it’s early access, expect change” become cover for what feels like a bait and switch?

I’m sure there has been loads of feedback on the Crucible, given that it is the only thing for active players to do once they reach the current end-game. But that doesn’t mean other players weren’t waiting on multiplayer to be delivered. I didn’t feel the need to come on here and create posts about multiplayer every day because I was led to believe it was already being worked on as part of the first major update. What more was there to say on the subject?

Apparently that silence was misinterpreted as disinterest.

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1 and 3 are valid points but this idea of it being pushed back is still ignoring that even if the crucible does push it back somewhat we have no guesses that it’s anywhere near in scope such that we can consider Crucible now a metaphorical Major Update #2 and Crucible Major Update #1. Feeling jaded is perfectly fine but describing this as bait & switch just doesn’t feel like the right term. EA means usually 1-2 months of hotfixes & patches, we got confirmation of a skill tree/stats overhaul. If it was a skill tree/stats overhaul and that pushed Crucible back 1-2 months would you still be jaded? What if it was a crafting overhaul? What if Multiplayer got pushed back in favor of the addition of several upcoming weapon types in 1 big patch(nunchucks, lanterns, wands, greatbows, fists, claws, whips, etc)? I’m not specifically defending these devs decisions here to overhaul Crucible, just that this loose timeline we all envisioned doesn’t seem to be in danger of collapsing IMHO.

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And that is a big part of the problem - the communication on all of this has been quite poor.

I am not expecting the developers to keep players in the loop on ever little thought they have. But when they repeatedly advertise a roadmap with major features like multiplayer and additional story campaigns and maps, and they’re using that roadmap as a means to generate interest and additional sales for their game, then I feel they have a responsibility to discuss significant changes to that roadmap with the community helping to fund their game, or at least make players aware that those changes are occurring and explain why. And it should be done as more than a few lines of comments in a Discord chat that few will ever see.

As for saying it feels like a “bait and switch”, when a company repeatedly promises that a popular feature is next in line as part of an effort to make their game more appealing and sell more copies, and then quietly shelves that feature for an undetermined amount of time to work instead on a feature no one ever bought the game for, then I don’t know how else to describe it. It feels like a bait and switch. I know it’s Early Access and things can go this way, but both statements can be true at the same time.

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Gee, you sure know a lot about the reasons behind thousands of people buying a game. How did you survey all of these people to determine that 0 people bought the game for the Crucible?

I must not have been on your survey’s mailing list, because this was one of the primary reasons why I bought this game.

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I wasn’t planning to respond to you here or on reddit because it looks like you simply can’t let it go and you just want to publicly grieve but for the love of god stop pretending that you know what everyone in community thinks and why they bought the game:

The only reason i bought this game in early EA stage is because in interview prior to release they said that:
A) They will shift from standard ARPG formula of single click spam in combat to precise combat system
B) They will have roguelike endgame system inspired by Hades

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I knew as I wrote it that someone was going to focus on that instead of everything else I said.

A little common sense here will serve this discussion better than sarcastic remarks, so please give that a try going forward.

The Crucible was not listed on the roadmap, nor had anyone had the opportunity to play the content of the Crucible prior to actually buying the game. There was very little information available on the Crucible prior to the Early Access release, most of it coming from developer interviews that (for better or worse) relatively few bother to read because anything longer than a Twitter statement causes the average gamer to recoil in pain.

On the other hand, features like multiplayer (co-op and PvP), and additional maps and story campaigns (which were on the roadmap) were advertised heavily and need no explanation. Everyone knows what they represent.

So, yes, I do think it’s accurate to suggest the latter drove interest and sales more than the other.

1 Like
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The description of the Crucible in that interview said it offered “randomized challenges which focus on platforming, combat, and puzzle-solving”.

What else does that description fit? The entire game. All the areas you fight through in Wicked are randomized challenges with a focus on platforming, combat, and puzzle-solving. The Crucible is just a contained space with increased difficulty where you can obtain end-game items until boredom kills you.

As far as Wicked “shifting away from the standard ARPG formula” (which I also was excited about), the Crucible is similar to the same unpopular content we were left to grind through at the end of Diablo 3 - a game Wicked was supposed to be moving away from, not trying to emulate. And it’s also proven to be unpopular here in Wicked - hence the coming rework.

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Why do you feel the need to categorize and insult gamers. It is what ‘modern’ video game urinalists/activists and politicians are doing and have been doing for decades. You play video games yourself, like all of us here. Why insult a group of people that you yourself belong to. Or do you think yourself above the ‘average gamer’.

Once you start saying stupid stuff like this, it is hard to take you serious. But, nonetheless I’ll respond to some of the argumentation.

I disagree with the statement that communication has been ‘poor’. I think in general communication has been good. Would I have liked more forum interaction from the devs, sure. But, they are very active on X and in their discord. And when compared to other EA titles, their communication is a lot better than most.

Now I do agree with that there should be more formal communication outside of discord to inform the playerbase. Monthly devlogs would help facilitate this.

When working on a project priorities can shift depending on the situation. This is the case for most organizations. One can only assume they are doing so with the intent of delivering better quality. That being said, I have yet to see proof of this ‘change’. (change referring to multiplayer being moved to a later patch).

Also stating that an EA game is in need of work, come on…

This is normative data, opinions, the lowest level of data and often disregarded in these cases. If you want to make a bold statement back them up with quantifiable evidence and not speculation. Hold a poll, so you can use the results to back up your, wild, claim.

Also I’m fairly sure the crucible rework was always going to happen. They just wanted to show us a tad bit of what was in store for us. And, due to feedback it got upped in priority. This is all conjecture, but seems plausible. This is where opinions can matter as it calls for qualitative data and not quantitative.

2 Likes
29

I just want to address the “average gamer” question really quick (because I’m short on time at the moment), and the rest I’ll edit in later.

More often than not any post longer than a few sentences will be met with insults which focus on the length of the post rather than attempts to participate in an exchange of thoughts.

It depends on the location, of course. Some sites are worse than others. Steam discussion forums, for example, are particularly bad about this from what I’ve observed. Gaming sites on Reddit aren’t much better. Private forums like this one tend to be better, perhaps because the fear of moderation is higher and/or the attracted audience is more interested in actual discussions.

The lack of tolerance for reading anything longer than a few lines has become frequent enough, in my opinion, that I now see it as typical, or average. If it doesn’t describe you, then congratulations, you’re atypical in my mind, albeit in a good way. I don’t particularly see my comment as an insult, more of a condemnation of the sad state of attention spans and reading.

Gamers absolutely fit into categories… they are not all alike. For example, there are gamers who subscribe to philosophies like “exploit early, exploit often”, and there are gamers who have no tolerance for cheaters. There are gamers who will quietly wait for a scheduled feature to be added to an Early Access game, and there are gamers who feel they are entitled to a complete game right now. The latter is what motivated the developers to spend (in my opinion “waste”) precious development time fleshing out an unpopular end-game activity that will allow said entitled bunch to grind indefinitely for gear which will likely be wiped before the 1.0 launch.

Promised edit:

As for the comments on communication, I don’t place a lot of value on communication happening on X or Discord. I don’t use X and I try to only go on Discord when it’s absolutely necessary. And while it would be fair to say “well that’s you’re fault then”, I feel there’s an argument to be made that stretching your communication across multiple platforms to reach as many people as possible only works well if you’re making sure your communications actually end up on each platform. If someone has to go to Discord for a piece of information that isn’t available on your game’s forums, your Steam forums, etc., then that isn’t a level of communication I can applaud.

As for their communication being better than most, I think that says more about how bad things are everywhere than anything else. If we have to fall back on agreeing that at least this thing isn’t as bad as this other thing then that’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

As for holding a poll, I doubt that will yield any data that can be trusted. Wicked started with 30,000 daily players and is down to just a 1,000 these days. Most are likely not paying attention to it lately and instead waiting for the next big update (which was supposed to be multiplayer). And the players who are still around are probably the same people who have been complaining daily that they’ve run out of interesting things to do and helped inspire this whole shift of development focus towards the Crucible.

So, the people who are still around to see a poll at this moment are likely the very same people who are in favor of more end-game content delivered ASAP, which probably also explains the level of pushback on any suggestion of introducing multiplayer and additional maps first as per the original plan.

Lastly, there is no proof of multiplayer being moved to a later update other than the comments Thomas made in a chat in Discord. That’s kind of the problem, right… why is it tucked away there instead of being announced everywhere that actually matters? Why not update the roadmap being used to encourage sales of the game?

Since then the news has also made the rounds on a video put out by a NRFTW content creator as well. But to save you a trip to Discord, the chat was this:

Question asked to Thomas: Are we still expecting multiplayer to be before the breach as per the roadmap, or plans changed and we’ll see the breach first?

Thomas: We actually did change plans a little bit based on player feedback. The next bigger thing we’re releasing is turning the Crucible into what we always wanted it to be.

Later on there were some additional comments from Thomas about hoping players will be ok with them placing a large focus on the Crucible first, difficult choices to make, never making everyone happy, etc.

It would have been nice to have received an update here and on Steam.

1 Like
30

I bought this game to experience it in coop with my friends, I’m not actively playing it solo and won’t until multiplayer is integrated, so I share some sentiments with you Gyson.

That said, because I’m a software engineer with 2 decades of professional experience, I sympathise more with the devs… I understand how roadmaps can change. I’m not disappointed.

If I could offer a potential for some self reflection…

It may not be that gamers don’t like to read much but instead that they don’t like to read much of what you specifically are saying, I’m not trying to insult you or hurt your feelings, but you can be pretty exhausting.

The developers are probably very aware of your complaints so you are at least heard, if so.

1 Like
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Without getting into what I do for a living, I also understand that schedules can change. But the why matters. And perhaps there are meaningful reasons we’re not aware of that, and it wasn’t done simply to appease unreasonable complaints. But I can only go by what little information we were provided in a Discord chat and Moon Studios has chosen not to elaborate further.

And, for the record, I’m very aware that my comments can be quite lengthy, and never do I have an expectation that someone will take time out of their day to read them. But, in my experience, I find that more often than not they tend to applauded when they match the reader’s opinion and criticized (often for their length rather than their substance) when they don’t. And responses that essentially read like “I came to this forum and found words… why is this happening??” I’ll never understand.

The responses that start off by clarifying they couldn’t be bothered to read the post but then go on to share their own opinion are also pretty head-scratch worthy. None of that has happened here, but as it has been pointed out this discussion is also taking place elsewhere.

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Sharing my agreement that multiplayer should be on the first major update.
This is what myself and other friends are waiting for. I’d rather see this than more content as we’re waiting to enjoy the current content until multiplayer is available.