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Patch 1.0: Hellgate just jumped the shark (LONG but bulleted)!
Souldrainer
Member Posts: 1,857
FSS released a major update two days ago. In the update, they included numerous bug fixes, a new city, several new dungeons, 1-time respecs, some class tweaks, as well as new equipment, tile, terrain, and enemy types.
How could such an amazing patch that fixes so many things wrong with the game bring about its demise?
EASY. All the company had to do is break more things than the patch fixed. Never one to disappoint on their duty to Flagship people, FSS has done this in spades. On Tuesday of 1.0 release, HGL jumped from 200 to 2500 players. Yesterday, it jumped down to 1500. Allow me to state what went wrong.
#1 Nanoshards
They put these in because they decided to reduce the required reagents for crafting. This was supposed to offset the change. So, what went wrong?
A. Why does a positive change need to be offset by anything? It Doesn't.
B. The shards only randomly appear when you wrench blue items or above. You can wrench a dozen uniques and not get one.
C. The cost of crafting has actually been raised.
D. Everybody is wrenching everything now in order to get these stupid things, and not making any money selling items.
E. It takes up one more inventory slot.
#2 Essences
So, they put new dungeons in the game, and made them so you need 5 shards to get in. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Problems include...
A. Shards only have a 15% drop rate from rares and uniques. Getting into one dungeon? ~20 hours of play.
B. Once you use the shards, you need more of them the second time you enter the dungeon. So, if you decided to be a skinflint and walk out of the place instead of wasting a relocation device, reports tell us that the dungeon locks you out and you need 20 more hours of farming to get back in.
C. They take up even MORE inventory space.
D. You must gain exps to gain shards. This means that if you are playing on NM, you cannot backtrack and try any new dungeons on normal. I am not sure what happens to level 50 players.
#3Minigame Timer
There was apparently some bug for level 50s where they could not complete the minigame if a quest icon came up. In order to fix this, they implemented a change that got over 90% negative feedback on the test server. Here are the problems...
A. Changed the pace of the game. People are no longer methodical in town. The clock is ticking. People don't chat and don't strategize as much.
B. For some people, the minigame has become nearly impossible to complete.
C. There are many other possible solutions to this problem.
(TLDR version below.)
D. FSS is not listening to player feedback at all.
We told them time and again what we wanted and what features were bad ideas. Instead, they went off and did their own thing. They are seriously off in their own world, doing whatever the fuck they want in order to ruin this game. Stick a fork in me, I am done with HGL.
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Comments
I was reading about these issues on the official forums earlier today.
I reinstalled last night to try the evoker changes out,which seem all well and good,but doing a /who revealed only 1900 people online,only a few months ago at release this was in the region of 6000+.
Are there times where its really only 200 people on line? If thats the case then its a pretty sad state of affairs all round. I did actually really enjoy playing it again,but there was talk in chat about the ridiculous difficulty of some of the new bosses and as you said,various frustrating changes.
The stonehenge ideas about 5 man raids and non linear scaling play does seem like a step in the right direction,but flagship seem to have missed the mark again.Shame. Is the Stonehenge stuff actually any good?worth subbing for a month to play through it?
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Nanoshards - Was able to get 10 in 6 hours of gameplay. Don't see a problem here at all. Half the time I don;t even bother witht he nanoforge because there is always a better item to find.
Essences - Got all the essences I needed the first day the new content was released. Elite mode is easier to obtain the essences becase there is more rare mobs. Normal mode takes a little bit longer because there is less rare mobs but you can always reset the zones and go back and kill some bosses for the items.
Mini-game - I hit the mini-game more times now that it is on a timer which equates into more items. I break down the items for materials and I have even got a few nanoshards from it.
I think sometimes people forget that everything in Hellgate when it comes to items is that it is all about randomization and luck. Sometimes you are lucky, sometimes you aren't but in all cases everything is very dobale and possible.
On a side note, Hellgate gets more players at night than they do during the day. It seems they actually draw a more mature crowd, people who go to college and even have full time jobs. The most I have seen when I have done a /who was 4000 a few times but keep in mind that there is single player so you never get a real accurate count of how many are actually playing the game. There is also a Eu server which I have no idea how many play on there and soon helllgate will launch in Korea so there is another server to be added.
Still, Hellgate suffers from a shakey release and those who chose to review the game while it was still in beta. Though since the fixes Hellgate has been pretty much bug free except for a few minor annoyances people still whine about but those are the ones who you can never please. Hellgate is looking pretty good and it is only going to get better as more new content gets pushed out over time.
I know all this because I actually play the game and I don't just read what other people wrote after playing for only 5 hours and write some kind of ridiculous review.
And what do launch reviews have to do with the game? We are talking about 1.0 here. Stay on topic please.
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