Why the community is divided and the devs biggest failure
Good afternoon all, I hope you're having a good day/night/morning. Today i'm going to be talking about two major points the communities division. Specifically what it is that we're divided on and why. I will also talk about what I believe to be the developers biggest failing (obviously my opinion and not fact.) And also potentially what can be done to aid both problems.
The great divide:
I think the best place to start here would be what caused the division as it will give context to what the divide is. In order to do this we have to travel back in time to the beginning days of For Honor. Back when people were not teching every guard break. Back when switching your attack direction was enough to throw someone's block game off, and parrying someone's move was considered very cool and praise worthy. Many players like to think of this time period (specifically season 1) to be the glory days of For Honor. The vocal majority of players were satisfied with the games balance. Sure there were a few problem moves or bugs but overall it seemed like the game was very sturdy and well built.
But then out of seemingly no where complaints started rising up in numbers. Warlords headbutt was broken, wardens shoulder bash was vortexing people into oblivion. And then the biggest complaint came out. "The game is not competitively viable." This statement was seemingly followed by a near endless list of every issue that could be found. If it existed it was probably listed. The game started receiving lots of bad press. And this continued from some time. But who were making these complaints? Back then It was a very small group of players. They were the few people who managed to play all of the open and closed tests and seemingly mastered the game not even a month into it's life span.
Thus the birth of competitive group was born and this is where the divide started. At first their requests seem small and reasonable. But the suggestions would become bigger and more game changing at time went on. And would be the catalyst for the change in direction for the game to foster a competitive atmosphere later down the line.
The fracture today:
So now that we know what started this we now need to examine how things are today because of this. In other words the aftermath of it all. The community as a whole has needed to endure several changes big or small that drastically changed how people approach the game. Change in itself isn't a bad thing, but when you can't have solid ground to stand on in order to start somewhere it makes a frustrating experience for everyone.
Now the community is very heavily divided between roughly two factions. You have casual players. This group covers a wide variety of people. From people who mainly play "player versus AI" to those that play often but do not care for statistics or meta. They just want to have a good time. Then you have the competitive crowd. This group of players covers two types of players. Those who do not participate in skrims or tournaments but very much care about the competitive scene and direction. Personal growth is their driving factor. And then you have the skrim/tournament players. The people who are practically guru's on the game and arguably know it better than the devs themselves. They want the game to be able to foster a healthy environment for all. Even if a lot of their suggestions come off as otherwise. They recognize the need for balancing around the top down.
This has created a mess overall for the devs. Both sides want a fun game for everyone. But both sides offer different suggestions to attain this goal. This is absolutely because of the different mindsets. But it's not the whole reason. Far from it. What else is causing it? Misinformation. This comes from all sorts of things. The game not having proper learning material. incorrect information gets spread about how things work. People's grasp on concepts as a whole. And simply correcting the false information/poor grasps on concepts isn't enough. But we will get to that eventually. Now we have to touch on the other problem...
The developers biggest failing:
The devs can be faulted for many things. Their general slow behavior both to responding to the community and changes for the game. Their seemingly very lacking open communication with the community. They seemingly ignore any help they actually requested from work shops where they invited people. Simply how poorly the game teaches players about itself...many things. But in my opinion the biggest problem the developers actually have is....Their perspective on the game.
The devs seem to have an entirely different view on the game. They say they want the game to be fun at a casual level while also having room for a competitive scene to grow. Sometimes they respond to complaints from either side. and sometimes they might even make a change that was wanted. But overall this is rarely ever consistent. A majority of the changes they make regardless of which side they are intended for seem to miss the mark. In other words the developers usually do a pretty poor job of appeasing either side of the community. Sometimes they make a stand on one thing but don't commit to it. The most recent being their stand on light spam followed up by nerfs to aramusha, a character known for light spamming.
Now it's true that it's impossible to please everyone and that no developer should try to. It's also true that not every change born by the community is the right change that needs to be made to address the perceived problem. However I think in this case it's very evident that even if the change from the community isn't the best choice, the devs are not making the right choice themselves. The most evident this can be seen with is whenever a hero receives number changes only. Or that's the biggest change they receive. To site a specific example we can look at Jiang Jun. He was reported to have no offense from the open test. The devs response to this was to speed up the soft feint attacks to 400ms and give him more damage.
The change to 400ms was an alright change. But it alone wasn't going to solve his issue. And we can see that. in a 1v1 Jiang Jun still has no way to actually be aggressive. His design in general seems to go back on their philosophies. As it was stated many many months ago that they wanted a hero to be viable in all game modes. But they clearly state that Jiang Jun was designed for 4v4. But I don't need to focus on this anymore than I already have. My point is however the devs view the game it's clearly not like how we view the game. And it's because of that that the fixes they put forth are not good enough. And it's because of this that the progress of the game becoming better overall is stalled and the community is at each others necks.
We can rebuild:
So now that we've talked about the issues it's time to fix them. It's important to understand that the casual and competitive groups will never feel the same way about everything. But it is entirely possible for both crowds to have an enjoyable experience with the game. How do we get there? First thing is first. We need to have a summit. Meaning the developers need to hand pick people from the community from all corners of the game. People who play just for the atmosphere. People who play because they are a history buff on any of the factions. People who play this game maybe once a week. People who understand the mechanics of the game. etc. They need to get everyone.
They then need to talk to all of these people at the summit. They need to be painfully transparent on what the devs think the issues are and how they see things. They then need to accept and really listen to the responses from the people they picked about that. And then they need to ask the individuals their problems with the game. And the devs need to put aside any response they might have to that and really just chew on it. This whole process should take a couple of days. A day or two for open discussion and then a day or so for some rough ideas to be sketched up.
The devs would take those rough ideas and then give some suggestions on how those things could be added into the game. They would then need to take those ideas back to the group of players and explain in detail what their ideas are and how they would work. If the group is majorally in favor for those changes then the devs can get down to work. If not then the devs need to go back and try again and then bring the ideas back. Repeat that process till the group is happy with the ideas going forward.
Why do all of that? Simply put it gets the community and the devs on the same page. Grabbing a variety of players assures everyone is being represented and heard. And everyone being open and honest will help clarify perspectives and hopefully get the developers to really understand the communities perspectives and plights.
Next would be test servers. And these servers would not only be around to field test these community approved changes but they would stick around so any other future changes that were to be made could be tested first. Rather than shoved through every few months and being forced to stick with whatever outcome said changes create. Good or bad.
Probably even more important than that would be the devs updating and overhauling the games teaching tools. The basic and advanced videos should be scrapped entirely As hero tactics more or less covers that to some degree. Instead the videos would be replaced with duel tactics and team/gank tactics. Where chosen members of the community (voted on by the community) would write or insert their guides into there in video format.
Hero training mode needs to be overhauled entirely. It's fine as is for teaching the game controls. But it also needs to teach in depth aspects. Like hit stun (both locked and unlocked) Like guard break vulnerabilities based on different attack speeds. Like delaying moves and what that does. etc. Basically all the info the game does not currently give you but is found in the community side bar for the competitive reddit. Hero tactics and what it is can be placed inside training mode. Instead hero tactics can focus on match ups. Giving information on who you're playing vs who you're playing against. And training mode needs to expand. You need to be able to tell the bot exactly what to do. This means which side to guard from. Specific combo strings that you build. etc. You also should be able to spawn/have a third player so external situations can be more easily tested/practiced against. etc.
operation health. For those who don't know what i'm referring to i'm talking about a period of time in rainbow six siege's life span that spent a significant time making fixes for the game. Both small and big. No new content in this period. For honor needs this. To be safe it should probably be at least half a year long. Maybe 8 months. And in this time frame the devs need to be 100% open. Talking with us almost daily about what's being done and the progress of what's being done. The devs need to be willing to change anything no matter how big. As an example if it's been decided that how guarding works is a big change by the community the devs need to do so. And put it on the test servers to see if it's what people want. and see how it plays out. If the community agrees that a rework needs to happen then the devs need to be willing to let go of the current kit almost if not entirely. etc.
And finally in general the devs need to be more in touch with us. Weekly dens need to be about the state of the game. They need to address common topics. They need to tell us what we can look forward to both in the near and the far future. There is nothing wrong with having more relaxed dens when there isn't much to add on to what has already been discussed. and having the silly streams is a nice thing to have on occasion. But the primary focus of the warriors den is for the devs to be open with us and tell us what's going on. It's for us to know we're being heard.
I think that about covers it. I'd like to thank everyone who voted in my poll and also thank everyone who manages to read all of this. I had fun writing about it. Until next time~
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