Hi Byron, thanks a lot. Really appreciate it. Yeah I hear you and agree that having negative feedback is actually really helpful. Didn't want to sound like I can't take the criticism. Well, I did rant a bit before I replied hahaha. I did feel a bit that with the ex-employee assertion stuff, it's more at a personal level, and I felt like we already talked about this, so I was frustrated. But it's cool though.
About the specific points, again, I think with what is missed vs what we're working on, I felt like we've been through this quite a bit, so it's probably not needed for me to blabber on for too long here. With co-op/Alliance/Adventure, firstly, co-op is Alliance. If this was causing confusion, we might have used a development code name like project x? Not sure, but co-op should pertain to more of an actual game genre, while Alliance is more of a naming term we're coming up with. Because, ultimately, we need a name to call what we are working on. And we tried to articulate this in the KS update post. Contrasting this to Adventure, we cannot call what this is "Adventure" because we did not reach the thresholds and tiers for the KS fully, and so if we deliver what KS backers back us up to, we should call what we're delivering something else. I think this is the responsible thing to do. I do feel like we've tried pretty hard to communicate this openly and clearly, but yeah, we could do better. I think whereas with the original KS where we were totally stupid in how we communicated scope as Kushmeyer pointed out, we tried to be pretty careful with the expansion KS.
With the issue of decay or balancing. I can't say balance is perfect, and in some ways the balance of a game should never be perfect. But while we see debates about usage and "OPness" of some guns (ex. hwacha etc.) I do think that we've improved with balance compared to when we first started. You may argue that well, that's not saying much. But when we first started, as you remember, we had plenty of times where 1 gun dominate usage and win rate. Ex. heavy flak, artemis, merc, and so on. Looking at usage and win rate data recently, I can at least confidently say that there are multiple viable builds in play in pub matches as well as competitive. You're a better player than I, so you can probably say that I'm not in a position to argue about individual use cases and tactics, but I don't think I'm off here either.
As far as the feeling of the game in decay. One, we're continuing to update the game while working on the expansion. I totally get that you feel that we're not doing enough, with new contents, features, or balance. At some point though, look at it from my point of view, there is almost no win. If I update something, or change something, balance wise let's say, I could be causing decay in people's minds, as I would be risking eroding balance from an expected golden mean. I can look at a gun's data, and say it's OP. And even if people agree, and I balance it, I'm bound to piss off people who use that gun. If I make new features, I can have some people yell at me and say, hey, why am I not working on the expansion, or hey, why is my specific ideas not implemented. If I work on the expansion, I can get yelled at for not doing more to update the game, etc. The point I'm making is, at some point, say after a few hundred hours of play, I might be fighting a losing battle with some people. I change and get yelled at by some. I don't change, and get yelled at by some. So honestly, I can only say that we'll keep trying our best, with the understanding that at some point, a given player would get everything he/she could get out of the game experience and move on to the next great game. And I think I need to be ok with that and be thankful, as there are a lot of great games out there.
If you decide tomorrow or today even that GOI just isn't worth your time anymore, I'll definitely be sad and will miss you a lot. And I'll of course take the criticisms and try to do better. But, I think I should also be supportive. If I've given you at least a few hundred hours of enjoyment, I'm actually pretty proud of that.
Anyways, I might have gotten off track. Appreciate the support Byron!