Yep. I’m out! It was fun while it lasted! Spent a lot of time (and money!) getting to level 58, but too many bugs and making detrimental changes like taking away the benefit of the trace charm with low level duplicates for me. Game Over!
At this point, I imagine those devs sitting there, punching themselves in the face while grinning. You're basically saying that you don't want our money.
If the Trace Charm was 'overpowered' then it wasn't because WE were going too fast, it's because you can't provide enough new content, and that sounds like a YOU problem.
Like many have said before me, this is my first time posting and joined specifically to comment.
I will be one of the accounts that won't be playing this weekend to protest this continued lack of respect toward your faithful players and customer base. I was one of the folks that used to spend money on this game to demonstrate my support for this fun and detailed game during these trying times.
However, what was supposed to be an easy escape has turned into a path of frustration and heartache. It's bad enough to continuously have Knight Bus issues, Android-specific delays, inabilities to log onto the game itself, and the bait and switch with Trace Charm proficiency. Now, you're going to completely dismantle Trace Charm itself. It truly is no better than the Tonic for Trace Detection potion now- and far more expensive and time consuming.
This is rapidly becoming unacceptable. Developers are starting to frustrate a lot of players with the lack of communication and unwillingness to listen to your consumers on what we want.
The list of demands are simple.
STOP messing with SOS lessons and telling us it's our fault for not understanding the text. To date, the information for trace proficiency charms still list number of fragments.
Don't roll things out until they have been vetted and checked. Don't "fix" things that players didn't ask for (ie: number of fragments promised and now the type on TC) and not fix actual bugs in this game (ie: the new traces disappearing after you click on one of them, Knight bus crashing the server for the past 3 events, etc.) I'm sure some of us would volunteer to test out some of the new features; stop forcing your entire player base to be the guinea pigs.
If we are forced to proceed forward with TC proficiency and efficacy nerfed, then refund us our books and resources we have used on the SOS tree so far. Let us decide how we want to fill up our trees with this new information on how TC works.
If that is not the option, then allow TC to be what it's been for the past month: you got the same or higher traces that appeared.
If that is not possible, then allow them to be the unique confoundable from the same family.
Gift sorry gifts that we can actually use. If lessons need 14-100 DADA books to be viable, an apology gift of 2 is an insult. A greater gift would be in the redo of the SOS tree, restricted spell books are changed to red spell books for those SOS lessons. That would make more sense since that would force players to mine the fortresses for those books. You already have SOS lessons for them, which most high-level players have an excess of. Allow us to use them so they aren't as useless as scrolls.
Allow us to exchange scrolls and/or spell books for other types of spell books and/or coins. ****, even exchanging them for ingredient/spell/runestones would be another option. Allowing us to purchase gift items so you don't have items that are considered useless.
As you can see, these are reasonable demands. I hope WB and/or Niantic will read this so we have these immediate changes. If not, you will notice a substantial drop in playership since for a lot of players this is the straw that broke the camel's back in an established pattern of complete disregard to your loyal customers. We like this game, but we don't appreciate this constant bait-and-switch.
I haven't posted here in a while, but I will gladly add my small voice to the chorus. As a player that has no inns nearby and only one greenhouse within walking distance, the Trace Charm was great way to get some of those rare, high threats that I almost never see around me. For two solid months, we were operating under the assumption that only the TEXT in the SOS skill tree would be changed, not how the charm itself worked. Players--including myself--dumped valuable resources into upgrading in order to fill out our pages for prestige. What is the point of me having the maximum five charges if I'm not going to get more rare foundables from them? Most of the lower level threat pages I already have on gold. I don't need those. I need the other ones.
There is clearly a disconnect in the communication between the players and the developers. Not just on this issue, but in general. From the fiasco with the fragments and now this, people have and will quit playing this game. Either learn how to communicate better or don't "fix" things no one wants fixed!
Please return Trace Charm to earlier condition where it worked, spawning multiple equal level foundables. Since the "fix" which broke it, I've used it twice. Once I got one equal foundable, only one. No higher or lesser just one. I spent hundreds of books. As a working parent in an area under 90% quarantine, if I use a trace tonic at night (never i the day, I sometimes see an orange or once a week maybe a red foundable. Trace charms allowed the illusion I might level up a page. I imagine this is the same for rural players. Buy "fixing"/breaking the trace charm, there is no reason to use it. If I use it, I might get lucky and get one equal trace charm. Silver pages require about 20 fragments and gold 55. Places an image could now take so long, I don't care. I was excited about Wizarding weekend. Then the fix. I opened the game at 4:30. Not excited.
We players invested a ton of time to invest books to get our trace charms close or at max. Then WU made them almost worthless and certainly worth less than trace tonic.
Please restore our Trace Charms and stop changing the rules mid-game.
Also why the heck am I earning scrolls? I don't need them for anything.
If you are asking us to understand your point of view, you have to understand ours as well. Everyone is angry for having spent thousands of field guides and ministry manuals, as well as hundreds of precious green restricted spell books for an error that you made.
No one would have bought those nodes in the SOS tree if it was stated at the very start. Everyone would have either focused on other nodes or saved them for the second profession lessons (even if it only comes out 5 years later at the rate it's been saying "coming soon" )
A compromise needs to be met between you and the players should you not want to lose them. Many have recommended the severity of trace charms kept to all clones being onf a variety of same severity eg a trace placed on a red flare produces one emergency of each family like one Tom Riddle, one Hagrid, one Mcgonagall, etc.
If this is ignored, then more and more players will continue to leave the game because your "exciting events" is not going to make them stay. Especially if your "sorry" complimentary pack does not refund all the resources spent on upgrading the trace charms. If your pack contains items that can be easily found or gained, it will be seen as a slap in the face to your loyal players.
Put the trace charm back as it was please. If we charm an emergency level trace we meed to see emergency traces in return. Not traces we see everyday and prestiged to gold a year ago.... pointless and demotivating. Games are supposed to be fun.
edited September 2020#33905 September, 2020, 01:01 am.
I haven't seen it mentioned much, but the alternative is fixing trace appearances. Many people were enjoying finally getting to prestige pages and earn field guides at a good rate. There isn't a need for me to get 16 young Harry Potters on a trace charm unless I only see one every 3 months.
I can honestly see where I would be happy with 4 fragments of a specific rare trace per charm if I knew it wasn't going to be my quarterly chance to make any progress towards prestiging a page.
Bring back the red flares on the trace charm. It's hard enough trying to get trace charms to fill up, without it already feeling like loot box mechanics. If I want a load of random traces I'll put on a tonic for trace detection. Please don't be stubborn , admit you made a mistake. The data should tell you that more people were playing before the trace charm was changed.
Switching the the charm is no different to using the tonic. Please switch it back. If I wanted more medium and low common level traces I would use a tonic in the first place!
edited September 2020#34305 September, 2020, 01:28 am.
We've dealt with error and we endured.
We've dealt with recurrent incompetence and we endured.
What we cannot deal with is ZERO TRUSTE in this management team. I will not keep playing a game where the developers totally trash over ONE YEAR of effort to gather the resources to obtain an advantage that is now worthless.
I don't care I got to over L59 and a half. Nothing is granted now. Not your time, not your money, not your effort.
This team has ZERO RESPECT for the player base.
This attitude can not and will not work.
My RESPECT to all the players who got to this point. My condolences for those who stay.
I've played more in the last couple months than I have since the game launched—because living in an unpopulated area, it never felt like I was making any progress in the game. That's gaming 101; your players need to be able to feel like they're making headway.
And the new mechanics breathed new life into it for me, and they made it fun again. I felt I was able to keep up.
And then we're not allowed to have nice things...why? You don't even make any money off of trace rarity; that's not even something people can pay for. I live in the suburbs, and I'm working from home in a global pandemic, so I'm not getting out to populated areas to find rare traces. I'm basically back to catching the same 7 things again all the time in every family.
Not to mention I NEVER would have spent all of those books to open up branches on the SOS training trees that led to trace charm perks had you chosen to explain how it was intended to work. That's certainly over 1,000 books; a lame consolation store pack is not going to make that right. Only a total respec will.
But then again, what's the point? This isn't a game where "catching up" is intended to be possible. It just feels more and more like the game hates its players and wants it to feel as hard as possible. And not hard in the "you need to practice to get better at it way," just hard in the "let's make this repetitive and boring and expensive" way. That's not "balanced;" that's just not fun.
I was among the many who lost hundreds to thousands of fragments in early May, to then watch even more losses with the supposed “fix.” I lost green starred fragments and lost so much progress in round two. I was then insulted with an “apology gift,” in which you “apologized” to the entire player base, including those who lost nothing, TWICE!!!
With the TC, it’s given me the chance to try and recoup some of my very hefty losses. However, as all things go with Niantic, I decided not to invest DADA books or green restricted books because my gut just had a feeling, and man was it ever dead on accurate. With ALL of the major losses our community has endured with this game, it amazes me that perhaps the best help for all players was in turn taken away from us. Repeatedly hurting players is what drives people away from the game, not to it. So the release wasn’t what you had expected it to be. That was YOUR FAULT for not testing it properly. Why are WE now being punished for YOUR mistakes?!? This should have been fixed immediately after release, not WEEKS AFTER!!
If this wasn’t you intended, you don’t take it away, but rather make adjustments to the system after the fact, by increasing the number of ministry manuals and field guides it takes to complete a lesson, or find another adequate change. What you’ve inadvertently created now is a forest fire. Are you going to find some water to put it out or just let it burn down?
While I welcome the long-awaited return of dragons, given the stubborn maintenance of the “this puts us back on plan” mantra, I remain perplexed and concerned about the reluctance to offer a respec feature or even a one-off. A compelling case has been made for all the reasons both here and in the explanatory thread before that was eerily subjected to censoring and the player base allowed to continue feeling robbed by a re-vamped return that simply isn’t commensurate with - what was needed to unlock it (and I target the RSBs here mainly as they could be deployed in other ways to try to provide a player with some fun. I had been saving RSBs up with a view to adding a profession when I had enough to “one shot” it, and enjoying learning how to battle fortresses as a different class. The disappointment that now felt by players who had to pour these very hard to come by resources into something else (using DADA books alone for SOS Training would have been a much more appropriate and accessible mechanic that, to consider @hpwulola ’s defence of needing to control progression, offered such control absolutely, being an entirely new and limited resource) was in part salvaged by the fun of what I could then do having had to spend a lot of them. Now I, and I’m sure many others, are left with neither aspect of enjoyment and are denied even the chance to try to recapture one. The decision-making process at work here is challenging to follow in the extreme, especially as, returning to the apparent justification-after-the-fact, a respec doesn’t advance a player’s progression (though it could be used to improve it in the future), it simply maintains the current position reached and permits a rearrangement of how that’s executed.
Another way of looking at this? If I had made an error, let alone a series of them, that meant I ended up with something that someone else had worked for, inadvertently under false pretences (as I don’t doubt the innocence if eminently avoidable/negligent nature of the mistakes by the game’s producers in this instance), the very least I would do is offer to give that something back when the error was pointed out - that’s just being a decent human being.
@hpwulola@HPWUTeam everything you just said in "A message on recent changes to the Trace Charm" announcement is a complete load of bull, make the trace charm as it was or prepare to face boycott and/or massive playership exodus. Enough is enough, oh yes and dragon event is a cheap bribe effort, to 'rebalance' your 'trace charm fix' (MASSIVE NERF) we require at the very least 2nd and 3rd profession plans for all 3 professions. Nothing less..
Please keep the trace charm as it was. The excitement of finding a very very rare foundable and being able to create multiples so that there would be hope of finally presenting a page is so exciting. I have playing since June 2019 level 52 and TC has really revived my interest in the pages I used to pass on because the rare item would never show in enough quantity to justify using spenergy on Anything on that page because it would never prestige. BYW still awaiting Harry from Legends page....
Please don't remove it. I've spent my precious books on unlocking all those lessons and it's the main thing which is actually helping me progress properly.
"To clarify the above, there will be no changes to the SOS Training mechanics or node bonuses. There will only be changes to the text to reflect the intended benefits."
What I still see is how you still haven't answered to people asking about what was written here.
This just goes to show the lack of honesty the team has with its players. Don't convey it has bug fixing. You just conned your playerbase. And you don't even offer a refund of what they spent, you just throw a dragon bait and wait for all the players to sweet bite it while your better communication skills and transparency closes threads.
I can't even think about opening the game without feeling obnoxious about it. You are not to be trusted with words you give, my time, my money, my have fun time out.
Honestly, this is far too much. I am pretty patient with the bugs and problems. I even grit my teeth and grind through the boring slog of incessant repetition. But this? Don't insult our collective intelligence by saying your recent changes to the Trace Charm boils down to bugs and typos...
Just DON'T.
I am level 52 player with two maxed out professions. I have been playing since launch. The TC is the only thing to breathe life into a game that was going stale. You want balanced game play? Let's talk about higher level players busting their bums and feeling like we hardly have any better capabilities than when we first started playing. What's the point of leveling up if we don't gain true abilities and strength? If Ibust my bottom to gain a high level, I want to feel like a bada$$.
We were given the Trace Charm, and consistent promises throughout the SOS training that we would gain more traces and fragments. I worked ridiculously hard to grow this skill, the truly only exciting component of the skill tree. It was fun. It was exciting. It made me happy to get out there and grind again.
And now? You give us the same, tired common traces we have seen ad nauseum.
You should be grateful that your players were excited. Grateful that we were having fun with the new ability. Instead, this feels like a slap in the face.
You want balanced play?How is taking away a skill that was promised and that many of us worked hard for truly balanced? How is keeping higher level players atva standstill balanced? The devs already control a lot with the tiny ****, ****, **** of DADA books that will take forever to save to complete higher nodes.
Why don't you guys make good on long held promises instead of destroying the one great aspect of game play you provided in a very long time? Where are the new SOS assignments? Where are the new jobs? Where are the new distinct spells so we can finally gain to 20 distinct spell achievement?
Stop giving us exviting features and then watering them down to be the same, boring incessant common feature **** we have seen 1000 times by now.
And don't waste our time by having us work hard to earn abilities, only to make them worthless a short while later.
This is very poor. The trace charm has been made almost useless now. Please reconsider. I’ve spent lots on this in my sos tree including green books which I wouldn’t have done otherwise.
Please also think about testing better before release. Every single release has multiple bugs. This really shouldn’t be happening.
And also get someone to proof read so you don’t have to change all the wording. It’s really basic stuff you getting wrong.
it boils down to this (for them): they dont have the staff to create content fast enough, b/c the game's a flop that's not creating enough revenue to justify hiring extra staff (hiring freeze for months now). So, the Trace charm was overpowered off the chart and ppl have been getting finished with their sos trees other than the time gated nodes (rsbs/dadas) so they/we have been demanding more ways to earn those time gated currencies, and more of them in the monthly events. They cannot do that b/c then an increasing amount of players will finish sos tasks in 6-18 months and they dont have the staff to create content fast enough so either way, either by ppl finishing stuff too fast and them not having new content, or by no new content and current one dragging on for years (ie: 5-10 years for sos trees completion), ppl are going to get bored and leave, they are between a rock and a hard place and unless the hiring freeze is lifted that is a dead end (for them) that is not going to change so they have but one option left: anything that allows/helps players progress too fast remove it.
I can fully see them removing the Knight bus if/when the new profession lesson plans are released and players start maxing them out within 2-3 months b/c they can group-fort all day long for the non-rsbs/dadas currencies, be it scrolls/reds or new ones. They say KB is there to stay, but do you trust them at this point? I know I dont in any shape, form or way. Just like they 'excused' the trace charm nerf w 'bugs and typos' they can then justify KB removal with "covid's almost gone (even if its not, trump's shown us the truth can be denied w/o care or remorse), so now that y'all can go out and walk you dont need the KB, you can form real groups". (I dont have inside info, I have no idea if this is going to happen, just giving a potential example how they may 'nerf' something b/c its allowing us to progress too fast/faster than they like).
So it boils down to this (for us): this is a flop game and a disaster of a development, it is going stale if its not already, and they dont have the revenue/income to justify increase staff in dev team, and so they are in a spiraling foul circle (bad dev leads to less players leads to less revenue leads to less devs leads to worse dev leads to etc), the game's going to die and it wont be in 5 years as they originally intended (the game has a 5 year plan), they are throwing spaghetti on the walls hoping something'll stick and from that employee leak a few months back (may) (glass door) we know 'they know wu is a flop but they'll keep it up as long as they can milk it'. So, if you, like me, want to have something to do whilst walking/jogging w/o any expectations of this game actually improving and the team starting to listen to us, stay (at least until something better's found, maybe witcher? not going to catan wu was my 1st and last niantic dev'ed/supported game, even if they only gave the pois network db, their reputation is mired even if WB is to blame mostly for WU).
If not, via con dios, best of luck in your endeavours, WU's not something you should be a part of, imo, it'll only continue to provide you with frustration and grief and increasingly decreased fun/entertainment. Ik im only waiting for something else to come my way before uninstalling.
Please do not fix the efficacy 'bug' that did not seem to be a bug at all for months. Maybe fix the proficiency bug instead?
If it was not meant to be all duplicates that arise from the trace charm, at least leave the level of the traces that spawn from it to be the same as it was?
If this really was a bug from the start, why not communicate this sooner but instead wait for people to invest in it based on what they see in the game? Many players invested first in proficiency to be disappointed as this out this turned out to be useless and then invested in efficacy to now too have this rendered basically worthless.
they wont do that, and considering the fix after fix after fix that took almost a month and a half the last time they messed with a live database in May after the registry foundables update....I dont want them to either, it'll only lead to ppl getting less or no currencies and it'll be a mess that'll only make things intensely worse as the loss of dozens, hundreds or thousands of guides/manuals/rsbs/dadas will only pile on the hurt feelings everyone's got now. Additionally we know the sos trees are bugged, nodes that dont unlock as they should, nodes that dont function as they should, what if resetting them breaks them further as well as losing currencies? Then leading to further bugs in the trees that they end up fixing in ways we dont like? Further fixes that negate our fun in the game? Potion brew decreases that dont happen, mastery lvls and depart rates that dont increase/decrease, and so on? Yes, I believe they are that 'useless', they have shown and displayed that. We have spent currencies in ways that we'd not have and we'd like them back, but in the end weren't we gonna finish up the trees anyways? I know I intent to if I dont stop playing the game and uninstall it so....I dont want them to reset the trees with completely unforeseeable results. I'd much prefer them they give an actually good gift in diagon alley w a couple dosen dada and rsbs as well as...say 100 gold or something, about 20 runes of each family and call it a day. They won't do that either they'll give 1-2 dada/rsb and a few dittany, but at least either of those doesnt create additional bugs.
theyre mostly referring to pogo/niantic but there's a jab at the end abt march 2019 and how 'wu being majorly sub-par hurts niantic's bottomline even if WB's mostly to blame for it'
they also say how niantic likes to ignore player feedback (mostly pogo) and how he was punished for bringing forth player concerns in meetings, and so on. Admittedly it is mostly niantic when WU's mostly WB, but it gives an idea of what's going on behind the curtains.
Comments
Yep. I’m out! It was fun while it lasted! Spent a lot of time (and money!) getting to level 58, but too many bugs and making detrimental changes like taking away the benefit of the trace charm with low level duplicates for me. Game Over!
At this point, I imagine those devs sitting there, punching themselves in the face while grinning. You're basically saying that you don't want our money.
If the Trace Charm was 'overpowered' then it wasn't because WE were going too fast, it's because you can't provide enough new content, and that sounds like a YOU problem.
Like many have said before me, this is my first time posting and joined specifically to comment.
I will be one of the accounts that won't be playing this weekend to protest this continued lack of respect toward your faithful players and customer base. I was one of the folks that used to spend money on this game to demonstrate my support for this fun and detailed game during these trying times.
However, what was supposed to be an easy escape has turned into a path of frustration and heartache. It's bad enough to continuously have Knight Bus issues, Android-specific delays, inabilities to log onto the game itself, and the bait and switch with Trace Charm proficiency. Now, you're going to completely dismantle Trace Charm itself. It truly is no better than the Tonic for Trace Detection potion now- and far more expensive and time consuming.
This is rapidly becoming unacceptable. Developers are starting to frustrate a lot of players with the lack of communication and unwillingness to listen to your consumers on what we want.
The list of demands are simple.
As you can see, these are reasonable demands. I hope WB and/or Niantic will read this so we have these immediate changes. If not, you will notice a substantial drop in playership since for a lot of players this is the straw that broke the camel's back in an established pattern of complete disregard to your loyal customers. We like this game, but we don't appreciate this constant bait-and-switch.
I haven't posted here in a while, but I will gladly add my small voice to the chorus. As a player that has no inns nearby and only one greenhouse within walking distance, the Trace Charm was great way to get some of those rare, high threats that I almost never see around me. For two solid months, we were operating under the assumption that only the TEXT in the SOS skill tree would be changed, not how the charm itself worked. Players--including myself--dumped valuable resources into upgrading in order to fill out our pages for prestige. What is the point of me having the maximum five charges if I'm not going to get more rare foundables from them? Most of the lower level threat pages I already have on gold. I don't need those. I need the other ones.
There is clearly a disconnect in the communication between the players and the developers. Not just on this issue, but in general. From the fiasco with the fragments and now this, people have and will quit playing this game. Either learn how to communicate better or don't "fix" things no one wants fixed!
Please return Trace Charm to earlier condition where it worked, spawning multiple equal level foundables. Since the "fix" which broke it, I've used it twice. Once I got one equal foundable, only one. No higher or lesser just one. I spent hundreds of books. As a working parent in an area under 90% quarantine, if I use a trace tonic at night (never i the day, I sometimes see an orange or once a week maybe a red foundable. Trace charms allowed the illusion I might level up a page. I imagine this is the same for rural players. Buy "fixing"/breaking the trace charm, there is no reason to use it. If I use it, I might get lucky and get one equal trace charm. Silver pages require about 20 fragments and gold 55. Places an image could now take so long, I don't care. I was excited about Wizarding weekend. Then the fix. I opened the game at 4:30. Not excited.
We players invested a ton of time to invest books to get our trace charms close or at max. Then WU made them almost worthless and certainly worth less than trace tonic.
Please restore our Trace Charms and stop changing the rules mid-game.
Also why the heck am I earning scrolls? I don't need them for anything.
If you are asking us to understand your point of view, you have to understand ours as well. Everyone is angry for having spent thousands of field guides and ministry manuals, as well as hundreds of precious green restricted spell books for an error that you made.
No one would have bought those nodes in the SOS tree if it was stated at the very start. Everyone would have either focused on other nodes or saved them for the second profession lessons (even if it only comes out 5 years later at the rate it's been saying "coming soon" )
A compromise needs to be met between you and the players should you not want to lose them. Many have recommended the severity of trace charms kept to all clones being onf a variety of same severity eg a trace placed on a red flare produces one emergency of each family like one Tom Riddle, one Hagrid, one Mcgonagall, etc.
If this is ignored, then more and more players will continue to leave the game because your "exciting events" is not going to make them stay. Especially if your "sorry" complimentary pack does not refund all the resources spent on upgrading the trace charms. If your pack contains items that can be easily found or gained, it will be seen as a slap in the face to your loyal players.
Put the trace charm back as it was please. If we charm an emergency level trace we meed to see emergency traces in return. Not traces we see everyday and prestiged to gold a year ago.... pointless and demotivating. Games are supposed to be fun.
I haven't seen it mentioned much, but the alternative is fixing trace appearances. Many people were enjoying finally getting to prestige pages and earn field guides at a good rate. There isn't a need for me to get 16 young Harry Potters on a trace charm unless I only see one every 3 months.
I can honestly see where I would be happy with 4 fragments of a specific rare trace per charm if I knew it wasn't going to be my quarterly chance to make any progress towards prestiging a page.
Thank for the detailed explanation on why trace charm was fixed. Please continue to post explanations of design decisions.
Time to move on to dragons!
Bring back the red flares on the trace charm. It's hard enough trying to get trace charms to fill up, without it already feeling like loot box mechanics. If I want a load of random traces I'll put on a tonic for trace detection. Please don't be stubborn , admit you made a mistake. The data should tell you that more people were playing before the trace charm was changed.
Switching the the charm is no different to using the tonic. Please switch it back. If I wanted more medium and low common level traces I would use a tonic in the first place!
We've dealt with error and we endured.
We've dealt with recurrent incompetence and we endured.
What we cannot deal with is ZERO TRUSTE in this management team. I will not keep playing a game where the developers totally trash over ONE YEAR of effort to gather the resources to obtain an advantage that is now worthless.
I don't care I got to over L59 and a half. Nothing is granted now. Not your time, not your money, not your effort.
This team has ZERO RESPECT for the player base.
This attitude can not and will not work.
My RESPECT to all the players who got to this point. My condolences for those who stay.
Goodbye.
I've played more in the last couple months than I have since the game launched—because living in an unpopulated area, it never felt like I was making any progress in the game. That's gaming 101; your players need to be able to feel like they're making headway.
And the new mechanics breathed new life into it for me, and they made it fun again. I felt I was able to keep up.
And then we're not allowed to have nice things...why? You don't even make any money off of trace rarity; that's not even something people can pay for. I live in the suburbs, and I'm working from home in a global pandemic, so I'm not getting out to populated areas to find rare traces. I'm basically back to catching the same 7 things again all the time in every family.
Not to mention I NEVER would have spent all of those books to open up branches on the SOS training trees that led to trace charm perks had you chosen to explain how it was intended to work. That's certainly over 1,000 books; a lame consolation store pack is not going to make that right. Only a total respec will.
But then again, what's the point? This isn't a game where "catching up" is intended to be possible. It just feels more and more like the game hates its players and wants it to feel as hard as possible. And not hard in the "you need to practice to get better at it way," just hard in the "let's make this repetitive and boring and expensive" way. That's not "balanced;" that's just not fun.
I was among the many who lost hundreds to thousands of fragments in early May, to then watch even more losses with the supposed “fix.” I lost green starred fragments and lost so much progress in round two. I was then insulted with an “apology gift,” in which you “apologized” to the entire player base, including those who lost nothing, TWICE!!!
With the TC, it’s given me the chance to try and recoup some of my very hefty losses. However, as all things go with Niantic, I decided not to invest DADA books or green restricted books because my gut just had a feeling, and man was it ever dead on accurate. With ALL of the major losses our community has endured with this game, it amazes me that perhaps the best help for all players was in turn taken away from us. Repeatedly hurting players is what drives people away from the game, not to it. So the release wasn’t what you had expected it to be. That was YOUR FAULT for not testing it properly. Why are WE now being punished for YOUR mistakes?!? This should have been fixed immediately after release, not WEEKS AFTER!!
If this wasn’t you intended, you don’t take it away, but rather make adjustments to the system after the fact, by increasing the number of ministry manuals and field guides it takes to complete a lesson, or find another adequate change. What you’ve inadvertently created now is a forest fire. Are you going to find some water to put it out or just let it burn down?
While I welcome the long-awaited return of dragons, given the stubborn maintenance of the “this puts us back on plan” mantra, I remain perplexed and concerned about the reluctance to offer a respec feature or even a one-off. A compelling case has been made for all the reasons both here and in the explanatory thread before that was eerily subjected to censoring and the player base allowed to continue feeling robbed by a re-vamped return that simply isn’t commensurate with - what was needed to unlock it (and I target the RSBs here mainly as they could be deployed in other ways to try to provide a player with some fun. I had been saving RSBs up with a view to adding a profession when I had enough to “one shot” it, and enjoying learning how to battle fortresses as a different class. The disappointment that now felt by players who had to pour these very hard to come by resources into something else (using DADA books alone for SOS Training would have been a much more appropriate and accessible mechanic that, to consider @hpwulola ’s defence of needing to control progression, offered such control absolutely, being an entirely new and limited resource) was in part salvaged by the fun of what I could then do having had to spend a lot of them. Now I, and I’m sure many others, are left with neither aspect of enjoyment and are denied even the chance to try to recapture one. The decision-making process at work here is challenging to follow in the extreme, especially as, returning to the apparent justification-after-the-fact, a respec doesn’t advance a player’s progression (though it could be used to improve it in the future), it simply maintains the current position reached and permits a rearrangement of how that’s executed.
Another way of looking at this? If I had made an error, let alone a series of them, that meant I ended up with something that someone else had worked for, inadvertently under false pretences (as I don’t doubt the innocence if eminently avoidable/negligent nature of the mistakes by the game’s producers in this instance), the very least I would do is offer to give that something back when the error was pointed out - that’s just being a decent human being.
@hpwulola @HPWUTeam everything you just said in "A message on recent changes to the Trace Charm" announcement is a complete load of bull, make the trace charm as it was or prepare to face boycott and/or massive playership exodus. Enough is enough, oh yes and dragon event is a cheap bribe effort, to 'rebalance' your 'trace charm fix' (MASSIVE NERF) we require at the very least 2nd and 3rd profession plans for all 3 professions. Nothing less..
Please keep the trace charm as it was. The excitement of finding a very very rare foundable and being able to create multiples so that there would be hope of finally presenting a page is so exciting. I have playing since June 2019 level 52 and TC has really revived my interest in the pages I used to pass on because the rare item would never show in enough quantity to justify using spenergy on Anything on that page because it would never prestige. BYW still awaiting Harry from Legends page....
@Drakonite but a lot still will play
Please don't remove it. I've spent my precious books on unlocking all those lessons and it's the main thing which is actually helping me progress properly.
"To clarify the above, there will be no changes to the SOS Training mechanics or node bonuses. There will only be changes to the text to reflect the intended benefits."
What I still see is how you still haven't answered to people asking about what was written here.
This just goes to show the lack of honesty the team has with its players. Don't convey it has bug fixing. You just conned your playerbase. And you don't even offer a refund of what they spent, you just throw a dragon bait and wait for all the players to sweet bite it while your better communication skills and transparency closes threads.
I can't even think about opening the game without feeling obnoxious about it. You are not to be trusted with words you give, my time, my money, my have fun time out.
Honestly, this is far too much. I am pretty patient with the bugs and problems. I even grit my teeth and grind through the boring slog of incessant repetition. But this? Don't insult our collective intelligence by saying your recent changes to the Trace Charm boils down to bugs and typos...
Just DON'T.
I am level 52 player with two maxed out professions. I have been playing since launch. The TC is the only thing to breathe life into a game that was going stale. You want balanced game play? Let's talk about higher level players busting their bums and feeling like we hardly have any better capabilities than when we first started playing. What's the point of leveling up if we don't gain true abilities and strength? If Ibust my bottom to gain a high level, I want to feel like a bada$$.
We were given the Trace Charm, and consistent promises throughout the SOS training that we would gain more traces and fragments. I worked ridiculously hard to grow this skill, the truly only exciting component of the skill tree. It was fun. It was exciting. It made me happy to get out there and grind again.
And now? You give us the same, tired common traces we have seen ad nauseum.
You should be grateful that your players were excited. Grateful that we were having fun with the new ability. Instead, this feels like a slap in the face.
You want balanced play?How is taking away a skill that was promised and that many of us worked hard for truly balanced? How is keeping higher level players atva standstill balanced? The devs already control a lot with the tiny ****, ****, **** of DADA books that will take forever to save to complete higher nodes.
Why don't you guys make good on long held promises instead of destroying the one great aspect of game play you provided in a very long time? Where are the new SOS assignments? Where are the new jobs? Where are the new distinct spells so we can finally gain to 20 distinct spell achievement?
Stop giving us exviting features and then watering them down to be the same, boring incessant common feature **** we have seen 1000 times by now.
And don't waste our time by having us work hard to earn abilities, only to make them worthless a short while later.
Dittany make up gift would be nice
This is very poor. The trace charm has been made almost useless now. Please reconsider. I’ve spent lots on this in my sos tree including green books which I wouldn’t have done otherwise.
Please also think about testing better before release. Every single release has multiple bugs. This really shouldn’t be happening.
And also get someone to proof read so you don’t have to change all the wording. It’s really basic stuff you getting wrong.
it boils down to this (for them): they dont have the staff to create content fast enough, b/c the game's a flop that's not creating enough revenue to justify hiring extra staff (hiring freeze for months now). So, the Trace charm was overpowered off the chart and ppl have been getting finished with their sos trees other than the time gated nodes (rsbs/dadas) so they/we have been demanding more ways to earn those time gated currencies, and more of them in the monthly events. They cannot do that b/c then an increasing amount of players will finish sos tasks in 6-18 months and they dont have the staff to create content fast enough so either way, either by ppl finishing stuff too fast and them not having new content, or by no new content and current one dragging on for years (ie: 5-10 years for sos trees completion), ppl are going to get bored and leave, they are between a rock and a hard place and unless the hiring freeze is lifted that is a dead end (for them) that is not going to change so they have but one option left: anything that allows/helps players progress too fast remove it.
I can fully see them removing the Knight bus if/when the new profession lesson plans are released and players start maxing them out within 2-3 months b/c they can group-fort all day long for the non-rsbs/dadas currencies, be it scrolls/reds or new ones. They say KB is there to stay, but do you trust them at this point? I know I dont in any shape, form or way. Just like they 'excused' the trace charm nerf w 'bugs and typos' they can then justify KB removal with "covid's almost gone (even if its not, trump's shown us the truth can be denied w/o care or remorse), so now that y'all can go out and walk you dont need the KB, you can form real groups". (I dont have inside info, I have no idea if this is going to happen, just giving a potential example how they may 'nerf' something b/c its allowing us to progress too fast/faster than they like).
So it boils down to this (for us): this is a flop game and a disaster of a development, it is going stale if its not already, and they dont have the revenue/income to justify increase staff in dev team, and so they are in a spiraling foul circle (bad dev leads to less players leads to less revenue leads to less devs leads to worse dev leads to etc), the game's going to die and it wont be in 5 years as they originally intended (the game has a 5 year plan), they are throwing spaghetti on the walls hoping something'll stick and from that employee leak a few months back (may) (glass door) we know 'they know wu is a flop but they'll keep it up as long as they can milk it'. So, if you, like me, want to have something to do whilst walking/jogging w/o any expectations of this game actually improving and the team starting to listen to us, stay (at least until something better's found, maybe witcher? not going to catan wu was my 1st and last niantic dev'ed/supported game, even if they only gave the pois network db, their reputation is mired even if WB is to blame mostly for WU).
If not, via con dios, best of luck in your endeavours, WU's not something you should be a part of, imo, it'll only continue to provide you with frustration and grief and increasingly decreased fun/entertainment. Ik im only waiting for something else to come my way before uninstalling.
WB/Niantic cannot be trusted. PERIOD. There is no other way to look at this.
If anything of what they stated was TRUE, the least they could do was to give you the option to unlearn SOS lessons.
This was a con, pure and simple.
Please do not fix the efficacy 'bug' that did not seem to be a bug at all for months. Maybe fix the proficiency bug instead?
If it was not meant to be all duplicates that arise from the trace charm, at least leave the level of the traces that spawn from it to be the same as it was?
If this really was a bug from the start, why not communicate this sooner but instead wait for people to invest in it based on what they see in the game? Many players invested first in proficiency to be disappointed as this out this turned out to be useless and then invested in efficacy to now too have this rendered basically worthless.
Reset the SOS Tasks to zero and refund our books and manuals.
You changed the rules. It’s not our fault this was poorly tested and implemented.
Don’t make us pay for your mistake.
they wont do that, and considering the fix after fix after fix that took almost a month and a half the last time they messed with a live database in May after the registry foundables update....I dont want them to either, it'll only lead to ppl getting less or no currencies and it'll be a mess that'll only make things intensely worse as the loss of dozens, hundreds or thousands of guides/manuals/rsbs/dadas will only pile on the hurt feelings everyone's got now. Additionally we know the sos trees are bugged, nodes that dont unlock as they should, nodes that dont function as they should, what if resetting them breaks them further as well as losing currencies? Then leading to further bugs in the trees that they end up fixing in ways we dont like? Further fixes that negate our fun in the game? Potion brew decreases that dont happen, mastery lvls and depart rates that dont increase/decrease, and so on? Yes, I believe they are that 'useless', they have shown and displayed that. We have spent currencies in ways that we'd not have and we'd like them back, but in the end weren't we gonna finish up the trees anyways? I know I intent to if I dont stop playing the game and uninstall it so....I dont want them to reset the trees with completely unforeseeable results. I'd much prefer them they give an actually good gift in diagon alley w a couple dosen dada and rsbs as well as...say 100 gold or something, about 20 runes of each family and call it a day. They won't do that either they'll give 1-2 dada/rsb and a few dittany, but at least either of those doesnt create additional bugs.
Do you have a link to the employee leak you are talking about @Drakonite ?
look under:
"Poor/false culture and too much politics. Only join if you cannot get similar pay elsewhere."
https://tinyurl.com/yxosrnll
theyre mostly referring to pogo/niantic but there's a jab at the end abt march 2019 and how 'wu being majorly sub-par hurts niantic's bottomline even if WB's mostly to blame for it'
they also say how niantic likes to ignore player feedback (mostly pogo) and how he was punished for bringing forth player concerns in meetings, and so on. Admittedly it is mostly niantic when WU's mostly WB, but it gives an idea of what's going on behind the curtains.