[Suggestion] the game needs advertising, online is dying!

if the budget is limited, hire streamers with a small number of subscribers of 20-30 thousand, I don’t think they will cost much, but there will definitely be some kind of increase in people. The company will receive donations from new people for skins, etc. And old players will not look for fights in empty zones. It is also necessary to return Koltir and add rewards for alerts there, also remove stalker invisibility, it spoils the game. And give back the opportunity to donate to Ukraine.

Someone told them that to increase online they need to nerf. Who was that? It would be interesting to see this man.
A year ago they spent a huge pile of money on the previous nerf, it was called the Defortification update. Before that, they also nerfed a lot of things. Every time before they started nerfing, online was much better than after the nerf campaign.
And time has proven that the problem was not the "need to nerf something". They only made things worse. The problem is something else.


And how does this: "give back the opportunity to donate to Ukraine" related to the problems of this game?

This is the reason. But there weren’t that many builders. It’s just that a lot of people left because Wrel left + the developers changed + there was no need to make an update completely focused on the Construction System, because most people don’t like this system in the game due to the decrease in FPS.

My FPS depended only on the number of players in the field of view of the video card. Constructions had no noticeable effect on FPS.

Stalkers aren't invisible. They're cloaked. Not that hard to spot if you look (and listen)

One update that did bring alot players back (myself included) was the arsenal update. That update was mainly a balancing update and whilst being far from perfect it was a one of the better updates wrel commissioned. If they would do another arsenal update "pass" and remove dumb **** like unstable ammo +kcap ammo it would be an amazing update that would rekindle interest in retired vets. A lot more balancing could be done to make the game more bearable such as nerfing the overly buffed Semi auto snipers (99sv,spectre etc) and buffing the NSO assualt rifle arsenal. Even adding impact ammo to all the empires so they can have mpre interesting loadouts(like a 40 round per mag 200-167 dmg Guass Saw S). Just some things off the top of my head but similar small changes would go a long way.

Yeah before they can advertise the game needs to be new player friendly first. Infiltrators, a2g, 20s respawns, unstable performance, etc... there's also quite a lot of small-mid size issues that need to be addressed before the game advertises. And that's not even addressing the bigger issues like oshur, finishing hossin or the lattice system for example which would require a lot more work than tweaking some balancing numbers. I'd say even server merges before advertising would be a good idea. Imagine the new players go to connery or some other dead server and see 0 action. Or returning players come to check on their characters and see they have to restart and lose all their progress on emerald because the server they're on died and never got merged.

Unfortunately many of this game's updates were overhyped, and never delivered. Drawing people in then disappointing them is no a good idea, yet it has been this game's motus operandi for years. After each update, fewer and fewer people tune in since they already know it'll be a disappointment. And since the game advertised mainly to the community, these are people who used to play and have sentimental attachment to the game. Now imagine advertising to actual new players, who don't know or care about the franchise. One bad experience and they'll just quit and never come back.

So before investing anything in advertising, a lot of work needs to be done in restoring the game to something that most people can enjoy.

I don't think the solution to improving the online game is to nerf as many as possible (infiltrators, etc.). It doesn't work that way.
I never considered performance as a significant issue, even though my graphics card is not powerful.

As far as making it easier for new players to get into the game, i can agree.
There is also a big problem - double teaming during an alert.

it’s one thing when it’s not a very experienced person to actually find it, but there are people who live by it, with improved camouflage with a president pistol or blackhand.

Has nothing to do with nerfing everything, it's simply a matter of actually balancing things that have been broken for years. The cloak in it's current state is one of the most cited complaints from vets and especially new/returning players. It's just not fun to play against, since the only counter is to pull an infil and engage in the mind numbing gameplay yourself. A class that has the ability to cloak and 1hk from any distance, as well as equip smgs and motion sensors is just not meant for this game. Factoring in the clientiside issue, it's the cause for many frustrations, including new players who often believe the person that killed them is hacking, since they often appear to fire when still in cloak. It's the reason that cloak in ps1 was a weapon, so you couldn't directly fire out of cloak. Not sure why they introduced infils in ps2 this way, and chose to keep them this way despite the numerous complaints, but it's definitely something that's been hurting the game.

A lot of people I encouraged to play the game said they just ended up dying to invisible people or getting spawncamped. Even more thought the game was p2w. Yes the issue isn't just about balancing, but it is a significant part of the problem.

Same with a2g. Huge issue since there's no counter to it, at least not intuitive ones for new players. No new player is going to imagine aa is useless and that they should buy a deci or ap if they want a chance to kill an aircraft. Again it doesn't make sense that these things can just shred ground targets and turbo away without any viable counters. It's another frustration for new players, especially those that try to get into tanking.

A lot of people mention performance issues, even on higher end rigs. I experience it sometimes myself depending on the base or continent I'm on. It's a bit weird.

I've had great fights while being double teamed, I've also had bad ones. It really depends on pop, the base and how your faction coordinates against it. Double teaming in itself is a result of poor lattice and spawn system design. The lattice system was supposed to be a temporary patch while they completely reworked bases and battle flow, yet obviously years later nothing's changed. And they made it worse by ruining biolabs and adding insane redeploy times that just end up punishing players for dying, in a game where the tutorial literally tells you it's normal to die. New players obviously are more affected by this since they die more, and no one like waiting 10+ seconds to respawn or redeploy to a new fight. I've had a lot of friends quit when they changed that, not even noobs but actual vets just deleted their accounts and quit for good because they just made it hell to respawn and redeploy. Even today I wanted to spawn a vehicle a base back and I had to wait more than 20s to redeploy there cause supposedly the terminals were hacked (they weren't) and I couldn't instantly glitch pull from the screen. Made me wanna log out. So imagine a new player that's dying every 2s to things he doesn't even understand. Wild how that's still not been addressed.

That's not even getting started with the grind and everything else wrong with the game. Numerous players have mention they quit because the server they're on is dead and they don't want to restart on another server since the grind is just insane. People have been playing for over 12y. How does a new player or even the average player creating an alt stand a chance? It just seems like an impossible task to catch up. Especially when some of the directives or items are just gone, and there's not at much pop/fights as before to grind out certs and directives. Plenty of players have mentioned they'd come back if they merged the servers so they wouldn't have to restart again. Yet for some reason no merge has happened and the gap between active players and players that could potentially return keeps widening. Eventually there's gonna be no point in merging since all the players from the dead server will be to far behind from the ones that kept playing on the surviving servers to catch up.

All these things stack up to make the new player experience, the returning player experience, and the active player experience unpleasant. Obviously the game's old and it's impressive it's been alive this long, it's normal for games to fizzle out in popularity over time. Yet you can check on the forums or after every update, there's still a huge amount of people interested in the game. Yet for some reason they don't play it, at least not consistently. Usually they test it for a week after an update and leave. Why is that? People want to play the game yet they don't, simply because there's so many issues that stack up to make the current experience less than fun for most people.

Before considering advertising to new players, fix the game so the people that actually are interested in the franchise want to play it. There's literally a huge customer base telling them what to do to get their money, yet the game goes completely in the other direction. I'm not saying make crazy changes because a random on reddit threatened to cancel their membership, but it's baffling to me that non-controversial things like server transfers haven't been implemented, when people have literally been begging them for months to do it saying they'll start playing again and renew their membership.

Oh, I guess what "lots of criticism" means. This means a small group of haters who present themselves as the majority. The same thing happened with constructions and other nerfs.
After this small group of haters get their satisfaction through the nerf (and the huge cost to the developers), we see that it didn't have any positive impact on online, online still continued to decline.

I also always say one simple thing. If you think something is overpowered, just play this class. Why didn’t everyone start playing super-duper infiltrators if it’s so cool and powerful and gives free kills, etc.? The question is rhetorical.

And yet - a few years ago, before prowlers, infiltrators, and constructions were nerfed - online was much higher for years and people did not leave. After all the nerfs the online goes down. We need to turn on logic and see the obvious.


This is all the wrong way. There are some really significant problems with the game that need to be identified and worked on instead of pandering to the small groups of haters who are the loudest.

spot the infil lol. when were they ever nerfed?

The reason a2g and infils were so buffed is exactly because they're a very vocal part of the community on reddit and for some reason the devs decided to listen to them instead of the rest. A youtuber leading the game led himself by redditors. Put that way I'm surprised the game's not in a worse state. As a result the majority no longer plays the game, and the minority of infils and a2g rule the servers. How fun lol.

I simply don't play infil because it's not fun gameplay. I do have sniper and infil aurax on all 4 factions. I can safely state it's op. That doesn't mean don't others play it, most fights now especially off hours are just an infil fest. Between the smg (some with unstable ammo), bolters and the stalkers it's a cringefest of soul crushing gameplay, which could've easily been avoided had they followed ps1 mechanics. It's been debated to infinity, the class is inherently broken, and is a valid complaint a majority of people who have tried the game make.

Anyways great job missing the point. There's a bunch of undeniable balance issues on top of other things that need to be addressed before advertising for returning players and new ones.

Random post.

EXACTLY.

The game is gaining pop, not dying, & no it's too late for streamers. The updates are fine.

Why is the game gaining pop? probably because as I've said before; ps2 is still the best free game on the market. & theirs still going to be no new mmo's, who knows how long. years?

They just have to deal with that 1 flying mana turret guy on emerald; to keep the morale rate of population sky sent. & for EU too. Just deal with another chinese guy. Evening hours. If they haven't already.

They'll gain 500 more pop per mini update, & 1,000+ pop per fancy update trailer. So something like Sunderer rework and the new alert mode; gains them 500 more pop for both emerald and eu.

Then something like Koltyr 2.0 + Nexus 2.0 for a fancy trailer. Would gain them 1,000 pop + 1,000 pop for the 2 servers. So +2k pop. They got this; they're great. Steady wins the race. & then they can work on their other games too.

Infil's strong point is to find a convenient spot and shoot from there.
When they started showing where the killer was after he killed you, they nerfed the infils. This affected infils the most, especially with a long range rifle.
At first they began to show only the direction of the shot - this also nerfed the infils.
Perhaps you are new to this game and don't know how it was before.

As for playing as "super-duper powerful infils" - you still haven't given a good answer. Because you don't have an answer, you just have a personal hatred for them. "Not fun" - is not the answer.
Anyone can become a super-duper infil, but 90% of the population is not infil. As I said, the question is rhetorical.

Not dead, but let's be real, it ain't gaining players at the moment.

1. Advertising for the game isn't going to solve its population issues. The game doesn't have a problem attracting players, it's keeping them. The game is a badly designed mess with an unfathomable amount of cheese so naturally people are going to drop it quickly after picking it up.

2. Blaming people for leaving because construction (and other things) was rightfully nerfed is pure cope with no facts to support it.

3. There are more people giving feedback on reddit, it makes sense that the devs would go there. We all know the reason you people only post on the forums and not also on reddit is because most people don't agree with you and your ego can't take the hit.

I've been playing since beta and I've played ps1 as well, I guarantee I know the game better than you. If you want to drop fisus then we can check. As I said, there's a reason cloak took up a weapon's slot in ps1. You've either missed the point deliberately or due to your lack of English, but you haven't addressed anything regarding why the infil in it's current state isn't broken. I don't enjoy playing them because they are not balanced, and the low kpm/high kdr playstyles they encourage are not my thing.

Anyways, the whole point was that there's a lot of things that need to be fixed before the game can advertise.

Tuesday night had covid levels of pop. Meaning many. Then Wednesday & Thursday had that chinese flying mana turret guy; lowered the morale and ye you have what you see.