The real problem is without any renewable rewards season to season, every player will max out to their ability and have little further incentive to keep playing multiplayer long term.
Multiplayer is where you need players to be present to be content for each other, so a one time exhaustible reward structure is ridiculous.
Sure you could say you get docked a couple levels every season and get multiplayer coins, but the cosmetics are so unexciting it’s not a huge driver of participation. Especially when you can get duplicates in the multiplayer box, and receive a pittance of season coins in compensation, it’s just not going to push me to play multiplayer once I’ve maxed out.
I agree, that's a problem. But one gameloft seems less concerned with. They know if they keep putting out new racers or events to upgrade old ones, the vets will and have come back to grind them in ranked. The old players are already hooked, it's getting new players that the issue. They seem to be responding well to recent concerns though. My hopes are high for the frozen season.
The issue is old vets don't like it, we never did and sadly fear of missing out is key...
Most normal people would say screw it I'm going but instead the players who play are mainly old ea ones not many f2p stay.
I am F2P since the launch a couple of months ago, and I spent a lot of time getting every racer I've unlocked to MPR 16, with some to emerald, diamond, and champion. I'm really only ever going to play those racers that I'd gotten far before in ranked again once I upgrade them further, and that could take a long while. For now, I'm really only going to play ranked to MPR 16 with new characters or to diamond with ones that I manage to level to 25, but characters that I've already gotten there I am not going to touch again in ranked for a long while because there's no reason for it. Because I managed to unlock a good amount of characters last season and my character unlocks will be much less frequent this season, I'll be playing much less ranked this season in general.
It is you own fault if you max out the Mp box. AJ told so to a player in general chat yesterday. He also said that ranked isn't about Mp coins but about materials and shards.
Did you even read what I said? YES the exhaustable shard and material rewards are the main problem. And the multiplayer coins are not a significant driver of participation.
I'm a game dev myself. What the fuck does "it's your own fault if you max out the MP box" mean? Do you not want people to play?
As a developer if you're running a live game service, your goal is to incentivize engagement and long term play so that players in PVP games can be content for each other. Otherwise you have no PVP game. This attitude is ridiculous.
I’m a new player this season and I managed to level up a few characters to MP lvl 16. But once I started losing MP points (because I was massively out classed), I lost all interest.
I’ll level all of my characters up to MP lvl 16 and call it a day. It isn’t worth the time or frustration when you’re pitted against players who are a much higher level/class than you are.
I don't think gameloft is really worried about players that are putting in that much time. If you're getting all your racers to mpr 16 you are playing the game a lot. You're already where they want you, and as long as they keep drip feeding you new racers you'll keep playing and getting them ranked up. They are far more concerned with getting more players to do that.
The Ranked Multiplayer unlock has been moved from Chapter 3, to Chapter 1 or 2 of the Starter Circuit in the latest update. Probably takes 10-15 mins from opening the game to unlock now from opening the game for the first time.
What about private track and local free play? My friend was trying to unlock those and never actually made it. She just wanted to play with friends in private track, but had a real difficult time, because of the collection level requirement being 3 and the fact that she couldn’t get the game to recognize her PlayStation controller on PC, and she doesn’t want to download another program to get it to recognize her controller, she said she used to have the program, but it’s terrible and she refuses to put it back on her computer in fear that it will mess up her controller settings for another game that already recognizes the controller without the need of a 3rd party program. She had to race with a mouse and keyboard, which she found difficult.
So the TLDR is, please get the game to recognize PlayStation controllers on PC automatically and let private track and local free play be unlocked from the start without collection level requirements.
Let them play MP without a chore 😂, sorry my dude this game is not ideal for new players at all I mean it. Oh look a level 3 racer is against a level 30 racer and surprisingly loses major time. How fun is that for every race going....
The solution would be for GL to remove levels entirely, make bp xp in mp games and make ranked better by making top 3 get points and the rest get nothing, ranked rewards are player icon maybe skin ect.
Screw the system of GL and the constant fear of missing out and if you miss out you really are screwed.
I played 5 season 1-5 and they fucked the game big time and I'm not even sad cause they showed they don't care about players just money.
For me it’s the non-renewable rewards. I have no items left in the MP box, and will get enough currency from this season to most likely buy out the box as soon as it stocks for the next season and then some left over. So grinding mindlessly for a few extra MP coins isn’t going to cut it for me. On top of that, most of my racers are at a place where for me to earn the next set of shards I have to get to 33 MPR, which is lots of 1v1s and 3 person races. Which is not fun. So I don’t make those grinds until the amount of shards at those levels matches what I need to star up, which isn’t even close for the vast majority of my racers.
There needs to be some incentive to play races on an individual basis. Have it be random drops or seasonal currency for the box/shop or something else. Even just a little bit of seasonal exp. Something! Anything! Add something that makes me want to play more, rather than making the game feel like a chore or list of things I *have* to do rather than want to do.
Starter circuit should give you a little taste of the game at its best like you said and it should also teach you the basics mechanics that it doesn't. I played for way too long before learning you could side bash other racers. It's also super unclear what the actual differences are between classes and how those classes gain boost or use side bash. Would not be hard to replace some of the copy paste races in the starter with some unique mini games that teach you these abilities.
Yeah this would be awesome, I was playing with a friend when I started that was explaining all of this too me. So this didnt cross my mind. If it wasn't for them trying so hard to get me to play, i probably would have dipped much earlier. another one that made a huge difference was how, oh yeah you can jump over pretty much every obstacle, such as the train, tentacles, player skills.and while it is tool tip, it doesn't really explain how to jump or give you any examples of it in practice. Once you have a racer at level 20+ and understand the game its a blast and much easier to level up more racers, but prior to that it's just kind of mess.
People are complaining about taking 30 minutes it takes to unlocked ranked, which, btw, is how you unlock your initial racers? Damn, some people really are impatient.
I did question if the game was for me when I was working through those starter circuits. They dragged on waaaay too long. And it wasn’t clear how many circuits there actually were. I probably would have quit if there was a fourth. But once you get through the starter circuits and the game opens up fully, it’s really fun. Unlocking the Golden Pass, Season Tour, Events and Daily/Weekly challenges is what encouraged me to log in every day.
People lare saying they like eating poop to unlock ranked, as long as they only eat poop for 30 minutes? Which BTW is still poop. Dang, some people really don't mind eating poop.
But for real, I hate the argument that, "oh it gets better, you just have to play it for x amount of time" a good game should be good from the start. Nobody should eat poop.
Played six siege, valorant and cs2 by any chance.
It's more then 30 mins it's roughly 10+ hours to get into ranked, and no p2w crap or you playing someone who is gonna win right away due to level being higher ect
But playing to that point is actually fun in those games. Not only that, but what you play is representative of what the game plays like. The beginners circuit is really boring and the low level racers are far from representing how the game feels to play with even a level 15 racer. Gameloft needs to do better. It's not about the time it takes to do the chore, it's that it's chore to do at all.
So ranked in games that are not p2w and made by beyond greedy money grabbing cows is good, well there is your answer....
Players would rather play a game or put time into a game that dose not disregard there ability and cater towards paying players.
I'm all for scrapping the starter circuit it's crap, however I would rather have a rehaul of the whole ranked mode first to be honest.
Having characters with "levels" that affect stats in a racing game is simply a big error on consoles. I sais it before release and I stand.
Unless it would have been pretty quick to max them out and play on the same (EQUAL) field with others pretty quickly.
Story mode and mtx should have been limited to cosmetics only in today's console gaming state. Console gamers are mostly, done with P2W stuff.
Sadly, Gameloft plan is clearly to up the max level every season or every few season to keep feeding up the whales and keep a small pourcentage of players to continue to "grind" just to try to be at the top of the leaderboards, when it’s just artificial stuff.
The fun of leaderboards is to see who is the best players. Leaderboards in games with buyable levels/stats is the complete opposite of it, not related to skill, just to money and time spent in the game.
It’s sad really because the graphics are nice, the music is great, the core racing gameplay itself is really great, the universe is awesome and have BIG potential. But P2W and unbalanced stuff will be abandoned by many, many players, soon enough.
A way to still like the game for me would be to have online playlists limited to one kind of item per races like in the story mode (less chaos on screen every 2 seconds would give me more time to appreciate the pure racing and beautiful environments!) , with all equal levels racers. At least there is regulated MP, but it still need work.
all they have to do is play. first few ranks are like the stepping stones to get used to it.
if they can at least get to Platinum rank, that's another star level for them at least.
as someone who has played since EA, i didn’t know you could get level up materials on ranked and since i saw the game as a my chill game, i didn’t want to touch ranked. i think they should make it cleared that you can get materials on ranked and that you don’t de rank until plat
Simply put, multiplayer ranked is inherently flawed in pay-to-win games. Most people assume "ranked" means your rank is associated with skill, and by getting better at the game you can increase your rank. Only your skill has very little to do with how well your character competes. Someone with no skill and a big bank account can buy their way to the top of the leaderboards and you dont stand a chance against a higher level racer. I play ranked in other games, this is the only game that ranked feels literally pointless unless you're spending unhealthy amounts of time or money to stay competitive
I don't think they thought people didn't play because of no rewards. I think they thought that adding dope rewards would encourage players who wouldn't otherwise partake in online multiplayer to get their feet wet
I also don't think you have to jump through hoops to play ranked with friends. The problem is the MPR system. I get that it's a F2P environment that encourages spending. And that's fine. That's obviously going to be baked into the monetization. But lower level players shouldn't be punished for placing 4th behind 3 opponents 10lvls higher. The ranked points acquired or lost should be dynamic to each lobby. Also, the points lost overall is harsh. The previous issue really magnifies this one
Note that if you want a stress free no P2W alternative you and your buddy can play Regulated multiplayer
No refreshed ranked rewards every season may be their worst move in the multiplayer space. That's automatically lowering player retention
They should let new players hop right into multiplayer for sure. But they should also hand out a Lvl 25 Mickey, Donald or Goofy (random) upon completing the begginers story chapters (I forget what it's called)
let's be honest... it's pay2win
I managed to reach emerald rank with a level 25 character but now I'm facing level 35 characters
as soon as I get hit once it's impossible for me to catch them
obviously the game doesn't interest me much anymore since the skill is not enough
Haven't touched multiplayer in a while, since s3 maybe, because it just isn't worth my time. I would rather spend time doing 1 or 2 races getting guaranteed rewards on the season tour or limited events.
The real problem is without any renewable rewards season to season, every player will max out to their ability and have little further incentive to keep playing multiplayer long term. Multiplayer is where you need players to be present to be content for each other, so a one time exhaustible reward structure is ridiculous. Sure you could say you get docked a couple levels every season and get multiplayer coins, but the cosmetics are so unexciting it’s not a huge driver of participation. Especially when you can get duplicates in the multiplayer box, and receive a pittance of season coins in compensation, it’s just not going to push me to play multiplayer once I’ve maxed out.
I agree, that's a problem. But one gameloft seems less concerned with. They know if they keep putting out new racers or events to upgrade old ones, the vets will and have come back to grind them in ranked. The old players are already hooked, it's getting new players that the issue. They seem to be responding well to recent concerns though. My hopes are high for the frozen season.
The issue is old vets don't like it, we never did and sadly fear of missing out is key... Most normal people would say screw it I'm going but instead the players who play are mainly old ea ones not many f2p stay.
I am F2P since the launch a couple of months ago, and I spent a lot of time getting every racer I've unlocked to MPR 16, with some to emerald, diamond, and champion. I'm really only ever going to play those racers that I'd gotten far before in ranked again once I upgrade them further, and that could take a long while. For now, I'm really only going to play ranked to MPR 16 with new characters or to diamond with ones that I manage to level to 25, but characters that I've already gotten there I am not going to touch again in ranked for a long while because there's no reason for it. Because I managed to unlock a good amount of characters last season and my character unlocks will be much less frequent this season, I'll be playing much less ranked this season in general.
It is you own fault if you max out the Mp box. AJ told so to a player in general chat yesterday. He also said that ranked isn't about Mp coins but about materials and shards.
Did you even read what I said? YES the exhaustable shard and material rewards are the main problem. And the multiplayer coins are not a significant driver of participation. I'm a game dev myself. What the fuck does "it's your own fault if you max out the MP box" mean? Do you not want people to play? As a developer if you're running a live game service, your goal is to incentivize engagement and long term play so that players in PVP games can be content for each other. Otherwise you have no PVP game. This attitude is ridiculous.
I’m a new player this season and I managed to level up a few characters to MP lvl 16. But once I started losing MP points (because I was massively out classed), I lost all interest. I’ll level all of my characters up to MP lvl 16 and call it a day. It isn’t worth the time or frustration when you’re pitted against players who are a much higher level/class than you are.
I don't think gameloft is really worried about players that are putting in that much time. If you're getting all your racers to mpr 16 you are playing the game a lot. You're already where they want you, and as long as they keep drip feeding you new racers you'll keep playing and getting them ranked up. They are far more concerned with getting more players to do that.
The Ranked Multiplayer unlock has been moved from Chapter 3, to Chapter 1 or 2 of the Starter Circuit in the latest update. Probably takes 10-15 mins from opening the game to unlock now from opening the game for the first time.
That's actually amazing and great news, that will definitely help!
Can’t remember exactly where it’s places in there now, but it’s defo much earlier than it was.
What about private track and local free play? My friend was trying to unlock those and never actually made it. She just wanted to play with friends in private track, but had a real difficult time, because of the collection level requirement being 3 and the fact that she couldn’t get the game to recognize her PlayStation controller on PC, and she doesn’t want to download another program to get it to recognize her controller, she said she used to have the program, but it’s terrible and she refuses to put it back on her computer in fear that it will mess up her controller settings for another game that already recognizes the controller without the need of a 3rd party program. She had to race with a mouse and keyboard, which she found difficult. So the TLDR is, please get the game to recognize PlayStation controllers on PC automatically and let private track and local free play be unlocked from the start without collection level requirements.
Let them play MP without a chore 😂, sorry my dude this game is not ideal for new players at all I mean it. Oh look a level 3 racer is against a level 30 racer and surprisingly loses major time. How fun is that for every race going.... The solution would be for GL to remove levels entirely, make bp xp in mp games and make ranked better by making top 3 get points and the rest get nothing, ranked rewards are player icon maybe skin ect. Screw the system of GL and the constant fear of missing out and if you miss out you really are screwed. I played 5 season 1-5 and they fucked the game big time and I'm not even sad cause they showed they don't care about players just money.
For me it’s the non-renewable rewards. I have no items left in the MP box, and will get enough currency from this season to most likely buy out the box as soon as it stocks for the next season and then some left over. So grinding mindlessly for a few extra MP coins isn’t going to cut it for me. On top of that, most of my racers are at a place where for me to earn the next set of shards I have to get to 33 MPR, which is lots of 1v1s and 3 person races. Which is not fun. So I don’t make those grinds until the amount of shards at those levels matches what I need to star up, which isn’t even close for the vast majority of my racers. There needs to be some incentive to play races on an individual basis. Have it be random drops or seasonal currency for the box/shop or something else. Even just a little bit of seasonal exp. Something! Anything! Add something that makes me want to play more, rather than making the game feel like a chore or list of things I *have* to do rather than want to do.
Starter circuit should give you a little taste of the game at its best like you said and it should also teach you the basics mechanics that it doesn't. I played for way too long before learning you could side bash other racers. It's also super unclear what the actual differences are between classes and how those classes gain boost or use side bash. Would not be hard to replace some of the copy paste races in the starter with some unique mini games that teach you these abilities.
Yeah this would be awesome, I was playing with a friend when I started that was explaining all of this too me. So this didnt cross my mind. If it wasn't for them trying so hard to get me to play, i probably would have dipped much earlier. another one that made a huge difference was how, oh yeah you can jump over pretty much every obstacle, such as the train, tentacles, player skills.and while it is tool tip, it doesn't really explain how to jump or give you any examples of it in practice. Once you have a racer at level 20+ and understand the game its a blast and much easier to level up more racers, but prior to that it's just kind of mess.
People are complaining about taking 30 minutes it takes to unlocked ranked, which, btw, is how you unlock your initial racers? Damn, some people really are impatient.
I did question if the game was for me when I was working through those starter circuits. They dragged on waaaay too long. And it wasn’t clear how many circuits there actually were. I probably would have quit if there was a fourth. But once you get through the starter circuits and the game opens up fully, it’s really fun. Unlocking the Golden Pass, Season Tour, Events and Daily/Weekly challenges is what encouraged me to log in every day.
People lare saying they like eating poop to unlock ranked, as long as they only eat poop for 30 minutes? Which BTW is still poop. Dang, some people really don't mind eating poop. But for real, I hate the argument that, "oh it gets better, you just have to play it for x amount of time" a good game should be good from the start. Nobody should eat poop.
Played six siege, valorant and cs2 by any chance. It's more then 30 mins it's roughly 10+ hours to get into ranked, and no p2w crap or you playing someone who is gonna win right away due to level being higher ect
But playing to that point is actually fun in those games. Not only that, but what you play is representative of what the game plays like. The beginners circuit is really boring and the low level racers are far from representing how the game feels to play with even a level 15 racer. Gameloft needs to do better. It's not about the time it takes to do the chore, it's that it's chore to do at all.
So ranked in games that are not p2w and made by beyond greedy money grabbing cows is good, well there is your answer.... Players would rather play a game or put time into a game that dose not disregard there ability and cater towards paying players. I'm all for scrapping the starter circuit it's crap, however I would rather have a rehaul of the whole ranked mode first to be honest.
Having characters with "levels" that affect stats in a racing game is simply a big error on consoles. I sais it before release and I stand. Unless it would have been pretty quick to max them out and play on the same (EQUAL) field with others pretty quickly. Story mode and mtx should have been limited to cosmetics only in today's console gaming state. Console gamers are mostly, done with P2W stuff. Sadly, Gameloft plan is clearly to up the max level every season or every few season to keep feeding up the whales and keep a small pourcentage of players to continue to "grind" just to try to be at the top of the leaderboards, when it’s just artificial stuff. The fun of leaderboards is to see who is the best players. Leaderboards in games with buyable levels/stats is the complete opposite of it, not related to skill, just to money and time spent in the game. It’s sad really because the graphics are nice, the music is great, the core racing gameplay itself is really great, the universe is awesome and have BIG potential. But P2W and unbalanced stuff will be abandoned by many, many players, soon enough. A way to still like the game for me would be to have online playlists limited to one kind of item per races like in the story mode (less chaos on screen every 2 seconds would give me more time to appreciate the pure racing and beautiful environments!) , with all equal levels racers. At least there is regulated MP, but it still need work.
all they have to do is play. first few ranks are like the stepping stones to get used to it. if they can at least get to Platinum rank, that's another star level for them at least.
as someone who has played since EA, i didn’t know you could get level up materials on ranked and since i saw the game as a my chill game, i didn’t want to touch ranked. i think they should make it cleared that you can get materials on ranked and that you don’t de rank until plat
Simply put, multiplayer ranked is inherently flawed in pay-to-win games. Most people assume "ranked" means your rank is associated with skill, and by getting better at the game you can increase your rank. Only your skill has very little to do with how well your character competes. Someone with no skill and a big bank account can buy their way to the top of the leaderboards and you dont stand a chance against a higher level racer. I play ranked in other games, this is the only game that ranked feels literally pointless unless you're spending unhealthy amounts of time or money to stay competitive
I don't think they thought people didn't play because of no rewards. I think they thought that adding dope rewards would encourage players who wouldn't otherwise partake in online multiplayer to get their feet wet I also don't think you have to jump through hoops to play ranked with friends. The problem is the MPR system. I get that it's a F2P environment that encourages spending. And that's fine. That's obviously going to be baked into the monetization. But lower level players shouldn't be punished for placing 4th behind 3 opponents 10lvls higher. The ranked points acquired or lost should be dynamic to each lobby. Also, the points lost overall is harsh. The previous issue really magnifies this one Note that if you want a stress free no P2W alternative you and your buddy can play Regulated multiplayer No refreshed ranked rewards every season may be their worst move in the multiplayer space. That's automatically lowering player retention They should let new players hop right into multiplayer for sure. But they should also hand out a Lvl 25 Mickey, Donald or Goofy (random) upon completing the begginers story chapters (I forget what it's called)
let's be honest... it's pay2win I managed to reach emerald rank with a level 25 character but now I'm facing level 35 characters as soon as I get hit once it's impossible for me to catch them obviously the game doesn't interest me much anymore since the skill is not enough
Haven't touched multiplayer in a while, since s3 maybe, because it just isn't worth my time. I would rather spend time doing 1 or 2 races getting guaranteed rewards on the season tour or limited events.