Spiral Knights - Why do Grey Havens not communicate with the players?

Why do Grey Havens not communicate with the players?

8 replies [Last post]

Mon, 05/15/2017 - 13:51

Vigale

One of the other games I play is World of Tanks which is the 5th highest grossing online game [1], the 6th most populous online game [2] and hold the Guinness world record for the most players online at one time. The point being WoT is a very successful game however one of the reasons it does so well despite being the same age as Spiral Knights is the developer-community relationship. WoT players know what the dev team is working on all the time because they tell us either through videos, articles or forum posts. This steady stream of info to the player base helps keep the players interested in the game and anticipating the next update and thus keeps the money rolling in.

My question is why do Grey Havens not do the same? All it takes is 1 articles saying "hey guys we are working on X,Y and Z and it will probably be out by the end of this year." What are you up to Grey Havens we really want to know!

1. https://www.killping.com/blog/10-highest-grossing-online-pc-games/
2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/251222/most-played-pc-games/

Mon, 05/15/2017 - 14:16

Angel-Girl

Wrong comparisons?

Spiral Knights getting compared to games with world records and tons of profit is like comparing a cardboard cut-out sword with a real metal one. It's not consistent. (In no way am I saying SK is useless. It's a metaphor, shhhhh.) If SK had more players then that would be easier to compare, but I doubt that super popular games has not much to do with dev interactions.

But that is still a good question, though I feel like it would've been answered somewhere in the Grey Havens discussion thread back in 2016. Idk.

Mon, 05/15/2017 - 14:27

Carbon-Jm

Well

I'll tell you why. When news of the gunner update came out, people were insane and desperate. Grey Havens doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of OOO by letting the community know, then disappointing them by having the update come later than expected.

Mon, 05/15/2017 - 16:11

Vigale

The thing is you don't even

The thing is you don't even need to give a release date all you have to do is say what progress is being made. for example:

We are working on an update about XYZ! more info to come!

We have X part finished now we will be moving on to Y.

Progress is quite slow on Y because of blah blah blah.

Y is now done so we are starting on Z.

We are now going to fully test it all.

The test revealed a problem about Y that we are now working on.

We are testing the new version with Y fixed

It all works smoothly we will launch XYZ update into the game tomorrow!

You don't have to make any commitments about dates its more about keeping the communication between the devs and the players open. If players feel like they aren't cared about or ignored they just go play something else in the end. I mean come on when was the last time some one from Grey Havens or OOO even commented on something in the suggestions board! To be honest sometimes posting on here seems like a waste of time because it feels like the devs will never read it anyway. In the end a company that doesn't communicate with its customers is bound to loose customers it could of easily kept.

Mon, 05/15/2017 - 17:05

Jedwell

Well...

I don't think they're really working on anything anymore. At this point, I feel like all they really do is manage the game, as in server maintanence, keeping everything up and running, etc. Given the size of the developer team, I think that's perfectly reasonable. Just don't except the game to progress anymore, other than something minor, maybe. I mean, if even OOO took ages to release something half decent, how do you expect Gray Havens to? I've pretty much accepted that this game will probably stay the way it is forever, and maybe be around until even the veterans tire.

Mon, 05/15/2017 - 17:15

Paintool

There used to be a time where

There used to be a time where pay 2 players got bonus access rights to the beta testing server to play with and try out new features ahead of time, and give direct feedback to developers during the earlier OOO days, before the promo box avalanche years.

Maybe there's just nothing they want us to test right now, or maybe they have nothing special to show for it that warrants early access. The slooms were a nice surprise, and I'm glad to not hear negative feedback.

I don't feel like arguing about this right now.

We don't even really know Grey Havens, apart from Cronus and maybe somebody else, because they are the face of the game, and whatever they say is filtered.

Spiral Knights is like a restaurant that serves rando burgers in a box, and maybe a 1% side of french fries if you're lucky. And then when you want to talk to the chef or management about this crisis of a business model, all you get is the 30 year old cashier up front who honestly has no clue what they're doing in the back of the kitchen, because the chef is actually a replacement chef who replaced the old guys that disappeared, but also works part time as the chef for a seafood joint. The boss of Team Rocket's online gambling circuit, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found.

And people wonder why the mainline Pokemon games feel different these days, and moved on. But people still play Pokemon anyways, because it's their beloved franchise that can't die.

Nick Popovich hasn't even finished his game yet, and his legal slave Cherub is where the money is at. Godspeed, you devils, you.

I was talking about Spiral Knights. Right.
Base price of loot boxes in Overwatch: 2 boxes = 1.99$ gets you like 10 items?
Base price of a box in SK: 1 box = 4.99$ and you get 1 item?

I'M JUST SAYIN'.

Mon, 05/15/2017 - 17:15

Fruitalicious

@Jedwell

dont be a jabroni my guy, we literally got a decently sized update 4 days ago.
cut GH some slack, i'm sure they're working hard for us.

Mon, 05/15/2017 - 17:55

Draycos

The sloom/sleep update is a breath of fresh air from soulless cosmetics, but I'm not willing to trust GH yet. It's "decently sized" because it's been so long since we've had something of real quality. The only thing definitively new mechanically is the Sleep rework; the rest is reused assets which I am happy to see but not wowed by.

When they start polishing the game where it needs it the most, I will be interested. Gear functionality (sprites still control badly / are bugged; many weapons still need tweaking, and not just in the damage value sense), optimization (my rig can play graphically crazy games like PSO2 at max settings but has three second hangups whenever new material loads in SK), doubling back on bad decisions like removal of health revives / fire crystals barring progress harder than mist ever did / instancing loot instead of countering alt-dragging (free exploration levels are slowed down by the need to walk around doing nothing; having 4x consumables means overabundance of health capsules), the list goes on.

i will only support this game financially when they admit mistakes were made (idc whose fault it is) and actively work to fix what's busted instead of appealing to gambling addiction and nostalgia. A single step forward is just the start.

also somethin about sun shards

Mon, 05/15/2017 - 18:54

Jedwell

@Fruitalicious

Well, that's just it. It's "decent". I'm quite happy with some new content, really, it's just that it's only decent by SK standards of content updates, which we have all come to accept as very low. If you compared what we had in the last patch to an update in most other games, that would be pretty much unnaceptable, given the time it took. But I never really said they aren't working hard. I'm really not blaming Gray Havens that they can't do more, it's just the way it is.

There have been so many discussions about what needs to be changed, and what could be done. But from what I can tell, such major changes are simply too much for the team currently at work. Well, tweaking equipment stats may not be the most daunting task, but implementing a substantial ammount of new content that can be considered a big update may just not ever happen.

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Why do Grey Havens not communicate with the players?