Something needs to change. This game is slowly dying.

[israphial]

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, straight to the point.

This game is not doing well. I've played this game on-and-off for a long time (not nearly as long as some of you, but I have been here a while) and I can't help but notice that the dedicated amount of players is slowly but steadily decreasing. The obvious exception to that was when Realm of the Mad God went down a while back, during the SwatSec hacking incident.

I love this game. I look up to Rob and Tim - I am an aspiring programmer, I'll be going to college to get a Comp. Science degree. I see all of the time that Rob and Tim put into this game and it saddens me to see how the playerbase is shrinking instead of growing. It should not be that way. This game has potential. The developers are dedicated, and listen to the community, and have experience. That alone shows that this game will go somewhere, however if there's no playerbase to support the game, it WON'T go anywhere.

So, what can be done to mend this issue?

First off, current players need to start advertising this game to people who would be willing to play it and are interested in strategic games. Grid12 is a very strategic game, as well as CO-OP. It's very fun when you have a group working together toward a goal.
We have invite codes for a reason, folks. Do some giveaways. Appeal to the proper crowds with your codes, and this game could gain some very loyal players. Many potential players flock to websites such as Reddit. David and I were talking about this issue earlier and he brought up /r/Flashgames, which is the main subreddit for... Well, flash games. People that go there are interested in games starting up like Grid12 is and seeing a dedicated developer team only adds to the appeal. If you're ever short on codes, remember that there ARE people out there that are looking for games like this, you just have to find them.

To the developers, Rob and Tim, I think I speak for everyone when I say that you're doing a good job. I am personally very impressed with both of you. Not only are you both loyal, but you're both transparent and flexible developers whose aim is to please, which impresses and attracts people, including me. However, if you'd take a suggestion, I'd like to make one. Try to find ways to appeal to a larger population. As of now, our little niche community is happy with the game for the most part, but it takes a special taste in games to want to play Grid12.
This day in age, many people only look at games for the graphics. Don't bother with those people, you're not going to get anywhere with them.
In my opinion (and experience in testing many games over the years), the more flexible a game is to a player, the more appealing it is. Let's take Minecraft, for an example. There are many methods of gameplay in Minecraft - you can do whatever the hell you want and still have fun. You can be a pacifist gardener who lives in the sky, or you could be a dwarf and live underground forever, or you could be a nomad hunter, and kill everything you come across, never stopping to rest. This sort of game flexibility appeals to a LOT of players. Players like being able to play a game how THEY want to play it.

As of now, Grid12 is somewhat flexible, however you can only do one thing one way, and that's fight stuff with tanks that all do very similar things. Perhaps you (Rob and Tim) should expand upon this and branch out a bit. Add some exotic tanks that focus on other things. Add collectible items. Add buildable towns or buildings, or whatever. Give players the opportunity to play how they want to play; restriction doesn't attract people, it repels them.

Now, I am in NO way insulting your game, guys. I love it. If I didn't, I wouldn't be making this post now or playing. I know this game has potential, and I know it can do well. All of the suggestions I made in the last paragraph are simply suggestions/examples of how the game could be expanded. There's no need to pick them apart, I didn't think them through much. I was just using examples.

Anyway, I think that's about all I have to say. No, you're not getting a tl;dr. If you don't want to read it, I don't wanna hear it.

~isra

EDIT: After a long talk between me and Justin (which is still going) I realized what could be done to quickly attract more people and keep them here.
On the roadmap, in half-baked ideas, there's the 5th trigger and mineral section. If this was added along with some customization, I feel like this game would be expanded a LOT. People LOVE customization. They like being able to control their game. My suggestion would to be get working on these ASAP, Mistuh Rob and Tim.

[tarbomb]

/r/flashgames thread: www.reddit.com/r/FlashGames/comments/20u310/grid12_beta_game_see_comments_for_instructions_on/

I'm freely giving out invites there. Feel free to join in (just post when you give people invites so we know who has codes already).

If you can figure out who's still interested from those who applied during the RotMG outage (i.e. those who still want to play now that realm is up again), I'd encourage you to send them codes too.

[israphial]

I'll definitely comment and add to your thread on reddit. I'll also join in on giving away codes there.

Thanks for reading and posting, David.

~isra

EDIT: By the way, I subbed to you on youtube. Nice videos.

[israphial]

Sent invite codes to OptionalFrank and Grimslayersem on the Reddit post.
EDIT: Also sent one to GothamAsshole - His username looks rude but his post history is good.
EDIT 2: To those that have reddit accounts, I'd appreciate an upvote or two on my comment that's on the grid12 post - I included a LOT of information on the game there so it should probably be near the top of the comment list for visibility purposes.

[israphial]

Added an edit. Waiting for more input.

[Justin]

Please prioritize this: trello.com/c/COEyCJwZ/454-put-triggers-on-cooldown-at-connect-and-tank-switch-set-shields-to-zero

It's too easy to abuse refreshing, since dying and refreshing do the same thing and you regain all triggers/teleport ability upon death. So people could refresh and bypass the cooldowns on teleporting and trigger cooldowns.

Will edit this as I continue to read roadmap. I only recently discovered you can actually click the individual topics.

[Justin]

The game can keep going in the direction it's going now - more content, more challenge, more things to do. But eventually there'll have to be purpose added, as right now, as Isra said in game:

"My issue personally is that I can't make a difference. I can kill shit forever but I can't CHANGE anything. There are no fruits from my labor."

There's no purpose at this moment besides unlocking all the tanks. That isn't very fun, considering how much of a grind that is.

---

There's another direction the game could travel in. It's a massive change, however, probably much too late to consider unless you do some of the workarounds I will explain afterward.

Remove all the tanks. Rename tank unlocks - tank space or tank slots.

A tank slot starts you off with a very weak tank. You can upgrade it with a variety of things. I'll call them modifications simply because I cannot think of any other term. So, a shield mod, turret mod, trigger mod (The 5th trigger mod on roadmap inspired all of this), and possi-robably asethetic mods. How they will work, I'm not too sure, but they wouldn't be progressive like how augments and modules currently work.

ie: For shields, you could sacrifice the bulkiness of your shield for more layers, and/or more sections to a specific layer of the shield. Then you could upgrade those layers with augments, and modules could upgrade the specific layers/sections of the shield.

Tank space would work exactly the same as tank unlocks. They're easy to come by early on, and extremely difficult to come by later on. They aren't even necessary, it's just for adding strategy to the game. That's what this game needs.

---

That's just one idea for implementing building/crafting. Craft your tank.
The workaround would be to, instead of removing all the current tanks, make tank space/slots purchasable. Your tank will not be as good as any of the other tanks until you get a lot of modifications. I don't know how the loot-drops for the customize-able tanks would work if this were added instead though.

Another buildable object could go along with someone(tarbomb?)'s idea about towns gaining features as they level up could be to implement a friendly satellite that orbits the town. It originally has no function, but can be upgraded and changed to provide certain advantages, like spawning friendly tanks that assist you in battle, or attacking regionbosses when they spawn, firing a constant laser that inflicts stun on the nearest fortress/tower of that boss.

I don't know how changes would work without having people troll and constantly switch the function of the satellite though.

That's all I've got for now.

[israphial]

See, I absolutely LOVE the satellite idea, for example. I could BUILD that.

I really liked the idea of Gridshards before they were removed, and I feel like removing them from the game took away the building aspect, which was a serious blow to a lot of players including myself. In fact, I feel like the biggest development mistake made so far involving Grid12 was the removal of Gridshards and the things that came with them. I feel like that aspect of the game needs to be given absolute top priority and added ASAP.

As Justin said, I said that I feel like I'm never accomplishing anything. And I'm really not. I can't build up to anything significant besides augments, which don't make a difference at all. It's almost impossible to build mods, due to a combination of issues.
For one, I can't decide what mod drops. There's what, 22 tanks? Each one has a mod, and I only want the mods for one tank, but instead, I'm constantly getting mods for tanks that are useless to me. I'd love to buy my own mods, however I don't have any coins, and it's impossible to solo voys to GET coins, so right there, I'm in a lose-lose situation.
I believe that one of the recent builds nerfed the droprate of modules along convoy routes - this decision was foolish, in my opinion. If you want this game to be oriented around grinding fortresses for loot, you have to make the CHANCE to loot either relatively high or guaranteed, and as of now, it's neither. Why should I spend HOURS grinding voy routes just to occasionally loot mods that I don't want?

It's frustrating, and I feel like it's a lose-lose situation just by playing. I wouldn't feel this way if there was more players that are active, but there isn't much to keep players active as of now, so I can see why the player population is declining.

Either give players a REASON to want to continue playing (think building and crafting, making a legacy/difference) or make things easier for people that play solo, seeing as how there's rarely more than one person on at a time.

~isra

[Crunch]

Mar 20, 2014 21:01:24 GMT -5 Justin said:

Please prioritize this: trello.com/c/COEyCJwZ/454-put-triggers-on-cooldown-at-connect-and-tank-switch-set-shields-to-zero

It's too easy to abuse refreshing, since dying and refreshing do the same thing and you regain all triggers/teleport ability upon death. So people could refresh and bypass the cooldowns on teleporting and trigger cooldowns.

I disagree with this solution, based on the premise that our current teleport restriction is not a good enough system. To quote Rob, "These [current] rules attempt to prevent the cheesy strategy of teleporting out of a fight, healing, and teleporting back in (sometimes repeatedly)."
Yes, the system we now have sufficiently deals with this issue. But the side effects are: slower gameplay, conservative strategy/gameplay, punishment for bad teleports (several types), missing loot (leading to conservative gameplay), reduced teamwork, and an overall reduction of flexibility. Having played with this since build 78, I can say that it has not done anything to increase my overall enjoyment of the game. This isn't a constructive feature, not from a macro, micro, delayed gratification, or strategic limitation standpoint. It currently acts as a simple restriction, and it makes the game less interesting.

Now, David did suggest a mana or energy based teleport system (it could even be levelable). Something where you may have enough energy to teleport back one time, either immediately or maybe after a few seconds (3-8), but would need to wait for the full regen after that point. This seems like a good compromise, as it still deters abuse but doesn't push people to refresh just because they want to change a tank without waiting 20 seconds to rejoin their friends. I've found myself using the refresh more and more over the last few weeks, but I only need it once over the course of several minutes (well within reason). One 'free' tele would go a long way toward making the refresh trick moot. Hell, your second tele could even trash your shields or bring your triggers to half because of a "power transfer" or some such mechanic.

----

Mar 20, 2014 22:08:02 GMT -5 israphial said:

I'd love to buy my own mods, however I don't have any coins, and it's impossible to solo voys to GET coins, so right there, I'm in a lose-lose situation.

This isn't exactly true, even without exploits (such as trigger/tank cycling or perma cloak) but it does require a good deal of experience and the right tanks. "Surfing" is one of the most important skills to develop, if you plan to take on voys alone. Tarbomb's sig should lead you to his videos showing it off (here). And this brings me to a point that I've been wanting to make. More content should be surfable, albeit incredibly difficult, in one way or another. I'm not saying that a lone player should be able to destroy an entire convoy by learning a simple trick. But skillful play and tank control should be rewarded. Currently, there are only a few instances where fine motor skills > dps + patience. That's discouraging. I'd like to see more instances where things can be dodged, but not limited to projectiles/bombs. It would be interesting to have enemies with sweeping laser turrets, fields of vision, orbiters, or weak points, where finding and using a movement pattern can keep you from taking most damage or even let you destroy them faster. Basically, reward playstyles other than "give/take damage, regen, give/take damage, regen..." or straight-up mob style play.

----

I'm still trying to sort out my thoughts on buildings/town crafting but, generally speaking, I'm in favor. Again, I'm not sure how it would work, but it would be nice to take some personal degree of ownership of a map. It would also be enjoyable for the map to represent more than just a grid of procedurally generated drop-tables. 

That said, I think the issue with maintaining the testing base around this game has to do with one major thing, and it's been said many times before: the game is just too bland, with too much grind, for no real reason or payoff (yet). It's just a lot of, "kill stuff from the North, or South, or West, or East. Kill stuff in a circle, kill stuff as it runs away from you, or kill stuff before it disapears..." It would be nice to have some "Kill it before it kills you." It brings up a question: Why is it, that for all the damage we do to the enemies (which completely surround us) there is no concerted effort on their part to drive us back? If even 5 small towers rushed all their minions at once, most tanks would be overwhelmed and would be forced to retreat. Now imagine an entire region hell bent on expelling you, your cities, and constucts, focusing on taking back territory and resources. 

I'm not saying that all of that is practical for this game, but what we currently have is a system where all the enemies patiently wait to be debuffed and/or destroyed. One where "Patrols" ignore rampaging tanks, never altering their courses or actively pursuing players or calling in backup. And one where the people (aliens, robots, defectors, imperials?) never once consider changing the routes of their convoys... even if they're getting slaughtered. So, why are our enemies so stupid and unchallenging? Is it fun to beat up on witless targets that can only return fire when players choose to engage them? Personally, I think it would be nice to feel like we were actually fighting for life once in a while, not just grinding vs RNG for loot.

I've been thinking on this topic for a while now, and it occurred to me recently that the bulk of my enjoyment from this game comes from seeking/reporting exploits, bugs, and oversights. We are "testing" so it makes sense to test, in my mind. But I really don't know how fun this game would be if I stopped searching for silly/niche exploits, and decided to play the game as intended in the final release.

TL;DR
A dingo ate your baby

[israphial]

A hostile region would be amazing. I love that idea. I can see where adding a system like that would be, well, awesome. Having to fight to defend your towns? Now that would be fun.

[israphial]

Bump for Rob.

[shadowa753]

It really is obvious and simple what we must do. We must wage war on RotMG.

[israphial]

Let's not bring up an unrelated game, please.