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« on: May 04, 2015, 11:46:47 am »
Goio had the potential to be a truly unique game, not just in theme and setting, but in gameplay. It has all the necessary elements for a competitively successful game- easy to grab but without a skill ceiling, rewarding communication and tactical play. It had a meta that was flexible and not set-in-stone. People were always complaining about this or that being OP, but truth is that without any balance adjustment we had at least a year where different ships and builds became more or less prominent, simply due to people adjusting and improving.
I always thought that Muse should've promoted this aspect of the game more. Instead of silly youtube videos, with 'fun' online personas goofying around clueleslly, they could've taken the time to show how the game plays at a high level with promoted twitch streams, featured tournaments and utilities such as pov cameras, replays, pausing etc. The game was promoted to a sort of crowd that it naturally had no appeal to. We kept having huge population bursts with only a tiny bit staying, simply because they found the game to be nothing other than a PUG deathmatch where your own skill was largely irrelevant.
The features mentioned above did eventually come, but it was rather late. As with all games, players don't give second chances easily- especially so players that have already invested a lot of time and saw the game head towards a direction they didn't find appealing. Instead of crucial updates of this sort, as well as updates that actually offered new content to explore, experiment, and have fun with (such as new maps, modes, guns and ships), we got an endless series of self-canceling, largely unecessary balance updates and features. Maybe in an attempt to keep everyone happy, Muse has diverted their limited time and resources in getting many different things done instead of picking a specific direction, being bold with it and standing by it from start to end. The amount of ideas that were toyed without ever being properly implemented (or at implemented at all) is truly huge (gunner ammo, engineer tools, matchmaking, stamina, balance changes).
This last update, to me, makes even less sense than the rest. It nerfed mutliple guns (that were, mind you, deemed underwhelming in their exact same version some months ago), and then gave gunners the means to negate this. It gave pilots an omni-tool that largely destroyed the idea of specialization and counter-play that was prominent before. It gave engineers a totally out of place mechanic, that goes against the core element of timing your actions and being aware of your surroundings, by instead allowing you to sprint into position in a 20m2 environment (seriously..). It dumbed down the flamethrower and the flare (I can't help but wonder who was unable to properly use the flare or counter the flamethrower after 30h of gameplay- if someone's that bad at the game, you don't adjust the game to his/her lack of skill, you give him/her the means to improve). What I also fail to understand is who this update was even targeted towards- previous versions were more or less the absolute peak of balance the game's ever been at.
To answer your question, no, I don't think the GOIO's beginnings were as glorious as you try to present them as. Balance was terrible, bugs were common, population was low- I will agree though that were was a point in time when I too thought GOIO is a gem, temporarily hidden, which will eventually rise to the glory it deserves. And it truly is (was?) a gem, but any chances of it ever being received as such are gone. Most of the updates were to me a waste of resources. The game's essentially the same as it was 1 and a half year ago- equally small content, with random patches of irrelevant or badly implemented features here and there. I don't want to sound rude or harsh- I appreciate the game for what it is and I loved all of my 2,000 plus hours playing it. I recognize Muse had an extremely difficult task to perform, being an indie company and all. I just wish launching the game after a long break would feel me with joy (as all other games I grew attached to do) instead of give me a bitter feeling of regret.
I guess some of you are still having fun, though, and the update seems to be well-received to the current playerbase of 200, so that's good. Maybe GOIO has good things yet to say, just none that I'm willing to listen.
edit: Maybe it's unfair to blame this on Muse. Maybe it indeed is just the nature of the game and the state of the industry that hurt it. I honestly don't know.