edited September 2020#30204 September, 2020, 03:44 pm.
I only drink the tonic for trace detection potion when an event requires it for a specific part of the event or needs a lot of xp for that event. it's just not worth my brew time. Seeing that this was helping us in lower trace areas... most of us don't live in high population cities and my nearest inn is about 2 miles away... I only get to go once a week when I go out for a Dr appt ad so the inn charm and Greenhouse charms are useless to me and also that's where all of the spawns are so nerfing such a needed thing like this is heartbreaking.😪😭😤
And as a result the trunks spawning the books is now nerfed as well since we won't be placing traces into their frames as much. SOS leveling and even class leveling just got harder.
At the beginning of this year, I was struggling with the game. Could not find teammates to play with, and fortresses were daunting. I figured getting maxed Magi would take over a year. Getting past level 40 seemed daunting. Living in a rural area, seeing the advantages city players had made it feel worse and compounded.
The Knight Bus and Registry revamp changed things. Tasks that were so burdensome became easy and completed quickly. I felt boosted. I was leveling up and slowly starting to get confident and feel at the same level as other players. I am finally starting to grind out fortresses and getting those foundables easier to prestiege pages. It was something to look forward to in this bleak and dismal circumstances we are in.
Having the Trace charm give duplicates or clones of the original foundable was a huge asset for rural players. I got extra omnis and willows, amongst others. During events, I only see a handful of the rare spawns and barely get enough to complete the tasks. The Trace Charm help boost the rare foundables to make me feel like I saw an equal amount of rare foundables as those in bigger communities. I felt justified, equal, and more confident in my game playing.
The changes/typos/mistakes/nerfs/whatever that have occurred lately has downgraded and ruined any equality rural players were experiencing. I feel decieved. I feel that, once again, rural players are being decimated by these "bug fixes."
I am very concerned and terrified that the next round of changes will be, "Oh, we didn't realize you could get 1500 xp per treasure trunk. We are correcting that to 500. Sorry about your luck." After all, the other major game boosts have been altered and been bugged.
Please reconsider the "bug fix" on the Trace Charm. This change has very discouraging affects on rural players. I am starting to question and doubt how much I will play if we keep having game boosts changed due to "typing errors." I do not know how to startegize for game events if the tasks change mid game or the game malfunctions. I cannot give up my job or my family for this game to adjust to last minute changes. I do not want to go back to the thoughts and feelings that I had for this game I had earlier this year.
Finally, many of the players here purposefully avoid using discord. I don't want another program on my phone using space. Having to hear game changes second hand and not see it directly on this community board or in a game notification is also insulting. The communication needs to improve dramatically.
I appreciate all the hard work that you all do to make this game enjoyable. I live in a well populated Wizarding area and spawns are not an issue but I have visted friends while playing and the spawn rates are low. I think leaving the trace charm just as it is is better for those areas and play as a whole. It is fun.
I rarely got the exact duplicate of the trace I put the charm on. It was several traces of the same threat level. I was happy with that. Great source of Field Guides. The emergency fragments were great too but more and more of them are reaching the "gold & placed" state and becoming less interesting. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that often the other spawns vanished after I got back the first one. :-(
Now I put my Trace Charm on an emergency and get one more emergency (duplicate), if I get the current state of things. I guess it was "too good to be true" so it needed to be fixed. Now the Trace Charm ceases to be exciting and motivating people to play. The FG amounts seem like a joke to me now. I am definitely going to slow down with the game. Maybe it is Nia's way of telling people to spend more time with their friends and families. :D
edited September 2020#30704 September, 2020, 04:29 pm.
In reading through all the disappointment expressed here I noticed something. All the ire is being directed at Niantic (valid, it’s their programming) but HP is ultimately a Warner Bros property. If this weren’t a HP themed game I know I wouldn’t have started playing.
I joined today specifically to comment on this "fix".
I never use potions unless I'm required to for a task. A really good Wizard shouldn't need to use potions IMO. I am rural gamer on immuno suppressive medication. I don't go out unless I have to. I certainly don't go out just to use a green house or inn. Those are useless to me.
Nerfing the Trace charm? Why bother using it now?
With all the positive changes in this game it has become my primary game. I never play ingress anymore, I rarely open PokemonGo, but I've been opening HPWU multiple times a day.
Why do you want to discourage me from wanting to play?
Looking at the SOS I know there is a wall of books I don't have that I'm about to hit and you've just made that even higher. It appears unsurmountable now?
As anyone involved with software is aware, taking away a feature (even if it's an unintended feature) from your customers is a bad move. In this particular case, the ability to utilize Trace Charms to get additional traces of the same level was a huge, exciting feature. It made many players work harder to get better lessons to improve their Trace Charms. Additional playing = money for you. Now, you've just made everyone mad. Please update the Trace Charms so that they generate the same or higher level traces. It was one of the most engaging features you've ever put in this game.
I’ve had a lot of fun playing this game since launch; however, with the recent issues and now this nerf, it may be time for me to give it up. I’ll miss playing, hope this change is reconsidered.
Please keep it. I live in an area where the severe traces don’t happen every day. I rarely see red or even orange. Right now I can’t get out to chase them down. If people don’t progress, they might quit the game. If they’re close to the chance to finally prestige pages they’ll be more likely to buy the extra spell energy or potions to get those red.
Because I can’t get out the other two charms are absolutely useless to me. Now you’ve ruined the one charm that I could use. If you’re going to make it useless, just scrap charms completely and don’t waste screen space.
@MANATEEMOMMA i urge you to look the text in one of the bonus xp from trunks, b/c it very much says "complete this lesson for a CHANCE of bonus xp in treasure trunks" so far it is not a chance it is 100% always, ofc they are going to change it so that #/10 times you get 500 and only a #% you get the extra bonus wxp. and tbh...i dont mind, i went from lv 58 to lv 60 in 6 days w an hr of play a day w bonus wxp at 1.5k from trunks plus bbe that has become overpowered plus bbe and dark5xrune lv5 x5 ppl that give 3k a battle. 1 hr walk plus 1 hr forts a day 6 days= lv 58 to lv 60 more than 3million wxp points. ofc theyre gonna nerf it it is insane.
Do you guys still think that the Dev team really think this is a bug?
I daresay that it's just a stunt in the form of "OH this is a bug" to stop the unexpected effect this features caused: The average Wizarding level is now skyrocketing out of their control.
If it's really a bug, quite weird that it hadn't been spotted and fixed much much earlier than this. They could even disabled trace charm within a day after learning of this bug where everyone of us really faced this "bug" every time trace charm were casted from the beginning of this feature released.
This kind of absurd and selfish decision worth a campaign on Change. org or even class action lawsuit.
I vehemently agree with what other comments from the community have said here. As a player in an area with very few natural spawns outside clusters at POI, the clone Foundable was the best part of the Trace Charm, as it ensured I would get a fair chance of gaining an extra fragment for the Foundable I actually cast it on. Removing this function of the Trace Charm turns it into simply an immediate-gratification version of the Tonic for Trace Detection, which often spawns all the traces except those we immediately need for event tasks and the like.
As one of the WUtubers, I've been reached out to by several players who have been so demotivated and discouraged by this "fix" that they're sitting out the entire Wizarding Weekend. Some had completely lost interest in the game until the Trace Charm made it possible to progress in their new SOS Training skill trees. It brought an element of strategy into the game while playing at home so we would save those Charms for the Traces we REALLY needed in our Registry. Without that perk, us rural players are greatly disadvantaged, especially if we don't have the freedom to travel far from home while the pandemic still rages in our local communities.
I understand wanting to fix bugs in the game. But even the most basic of testing would have shown this bug prior to the update. This was how the Trace Charm was presented to the entire player-base from the start. Taking that perk away now feels to many players like you've purposefully dangled a carrot to get them engaged while always having the intention of snatching it away. It's alienating and disheartening, and I do hope you reconsider this move.
@Drakonite That's exactly why my wife is **** treasure chests to get to 60. After that 2 more pages upgraded to gold and she's done and over with the game... And she's a big Harry Potter fan...
@linjuzz You're probably right, although what's weird is that there were so many other ways they could've solved that. Just add some new levels, or increase the XP for levels going forward... you could get the same effect but still keep the fun of getting multiple high-threat traces with the trace charm. So if that's their concern, this is not only poor communications/a crappy way to treat users, but a real lack of creativity on the solution.
Also I came back to this thread today and got annoyed all over again reading @hpwulola's comment again. To say that this change doesn't lower the threat of the traces spawned compared to what was happening before is just objectively false. Before yesterday, if you cast a trace charm on a severe/emergency threat, you'd get 3-4 severe/emergency spawns. Now you get one and 2-3 lower-threat spawns. Not gaslighting users is a really low bar but it's the bare minimum we deserve from Niantic.
I would like to echo what is being said. This change in the trace charm is basically a bait and switch. I invested many rare book resources into a charm that is now worse than a tonic for trace detection.... The nerf of getting a smattering of lesser foundables on a severe trace charm drop makes this charm as worthless as the inn and greenhouse charms The fact that your language on the fragments was also misleading and now is worthless XP is another bait and switch I had already fell for. If you guys don't reverse this trace charm "fix" I think you can count me as one of your former players. This game is just not fun any more. No challenge... all random luck with foundables running away despite maxing out spell proficiency and family skill level and depart levels... The challenge of fortressing has lost it's appeal and all your game "improvements" are just more **** for catches with no skill or reason....Fix this or lose me forever. PS red books and **** ingredients are no longer worthwhile to play for. Please make all events give DADA books if you want me to play them.
Please return TC to the way it was. I do not want to collect foundables to open trunks for a chance at a trace charm to then apply it to a Severe threat and receive multiple low level threat foundables - which is EXACTLY what is happening now.
That is an absolutely useless feature.
This “fix” is so botched that I am still collecting a duplicate of the original spawn - which makes this a nerf and not a fix.
You have just ruined the trace charm for me .. I always got at least 1-2 duplicates of what I used the charm on, and 3-4 traces of equal level .. now i get 1 duplicate and a bunch of random ****! ALL of which, is lower level than my original target of the trace charm .. how is this change helping in any way??
The traces you get on the trace charm still disappear and you have to restart the app to see them. They are useless and clutter the screen so I don't always. That bug wasn't worth fixing either.
The Trace Charm was the first thing that got me excited about playing HPWU in ages. It really feels like Niantic has given up on the game--no new combat lessons, no new storylines and the SOS training was designed to keep us engaged--which it did, right up to the point that the Trace Charm stopped doing what it said it would. Bait and switch that feels demoralizing. Why bother playing anymore if anything good is going to be taken away on a whim?
I'm a bit annoyed that I spent too many FGs (thousands), MMs(also thousands), RSBs, and DADAs unlocking Trace Charm nodes that have now been severely nerfed. It makes me not want to use any resources in this game out of fear that it will just be taken away from me. Which just kills the motivation to play this game in general.
This is seriously a big **** to the community. You changed everything because you messed up. And rather than make the SOS nodes the way you initially described, you changed nodes that people already spent books on and did not give those books back, knowing full well if we would have known you were gonna change the nodes we would have spent the books on different nodes. You stole our currency and you lied. You will never see another penny for a lot of people and you will get 1 star reviews if you keep hamstringing users.
This change to the trace charm is very disturbing!!! Prior to your fix of the trace charm, playing the game was exciting. Getting 6 emergency flares was so fun! I am level 60, so no use getting extra WXP, it is maxed. I have been playing this game for over a year and I spend a lot of money a month, $400 to $500. I am done with spending any money on this game, if this is not changed back. you let us use this TC for almost 2 months. You need to go back to the way the TC worked with the multiple rare flares. What a disappointment for all my effort. I was loving the game. You destroyed the best part of the game removing the multiple rare flare spawns. Please change this BACK!!!
I have been spending from $10-$20 per month on this infuriating game. No more. This last "fix" is the last straw. Not another cent from me. I invested my books heavily in the trace charm, now all of that was totally wasted. I'm done. You do nothing but lie to and deceive the players.
This is such a blow to everyone who has spent any type of currency on the game, real money or books, to get the rewards that were offered by the Trace Charm. Please reconsider “fixing” this. Even those who have not spent money to get to this point are so discouraged with the bugs, mistakes and “fixes”. I so appreciated the changes made to accommodate for the restrictions put on because of the pandemic and was patient while waiting for progress in the storyline because we’re all dealing with circumstances beyond our control. Now I’m inclined to think that maybe the team has given up on the game and doesn’t care what the players want or need.
Also, as some have mentioned, going forward please announce the **** changes through the game, not through social media, not through another app (discord). It’s ridiculous - this lack of communication. I’m honestly considering not playing the game anymore and it makes me so sad.
This has certainly been an interesting ride the last couple of weeks. I think most players would understand the new features made the game unbalanced in the long-term. Short term it has definitely had bad consequences. Fortunately, what you DO have now is the ability to make some pretty positive changes based on the lessons learned here.
Most importantly, you found a new way to make the game "fun" again for lots of players, myself included. Whether these changes were on purpose or not, the player-base seems more excited than they've been in quite awhile. The great thing is, you can distill the feedback here into something more sustainable. Maybe the trace charm gives less red foundables, but you can earn charms back faster. Maybe the low-level foundables spawned by the trace charm take your most needed registry entries into account. I don't know what the ultimate answer is to balancing these mechanics, but if done right the players will jump on board again.
Secondly, it's clear that communicating to your player base and setting expectations could use improvement. Empower your community leaders to communicate more both in game and out of game. Robert eventually had a good post where he explained that the charms were working as intended but the descriptions were wrong. There was definitely disagreement, but it made sense for the longevity of the game.
However, seemingly out of nowhere, the level and types of foundables awarded changed completely yesterday with no warning or explanation. Even a simple "Hey, the latest update is really not working as intended, but enjoy it while it lasts." message would have been more useful.
I hope you take these lessons to heart, and best of luck to the team.
Comments
I only drink the tonic for trace detection potion when an event requires it for a specific part of the event or needs a lot of xp for that event. it's just not worth my brew time. Seeing that this was helping us in lower trace areas... most of us don't live in high population cities and my nearest inn is about 2 miles away... I only get to go once a week when I go out for a Dr appt ad so the inn charm and Greenhouse charms are useless to me and also that's where all of the spawns are so nerfing such a needed thing like this is heartbreaking.😪😭😤
And as a result the trunks spawning the books is now nerfed as well since we won't be placing traces into their frames as much. SOS leveling and even class leveling just got harder.
At the beginning of this year, I was struggling with the game. Could not find teammates to play with, and fortresses were daunting. I figured getting maxed Magi would take over a year. Getting past level 40 seemed daunting. Living in a rural area, seeing the advantages city players had made it feel worse and compounded.
The Knight Bus and Registry revamp changed things. Tasks that were so burdensome became easy and completed quickly. I felt boosted. I was leveling up and slowly starting to get confident and feel at the same level as other players. I am finally starting to grind out fortresses and getting those foundables easier to prestiege pages. It was something to look forward to in this bleak and dismal circumstances we are in.
Having the Trace charm give duplicates or clones of the original foundable was a huge asset for rural players. I got extra omnis and willows, amongst others. During events, I only see a handful of the rare spawns and barely get enough to complete the tasks. The Trace Charm help boost the rare foundables to make me feel like I saw an equal amount of rare foundables as those in bigger communities. I felt justified, equal, and more confident in my game playing.
The changes/typos/mistakes/nerfs/whatever that have occurred lately has downgraded and ruined any equality rural players were experiencing. I feel decieved. I feel that, once again, rural players are being decimated by these "bug fixes."
I am very concerned and terrified that the next round of changes will be, "Oh, we didn't realize you could get 1500 xp per treasure trunk. We are correcting that to 500. Sorry about your luck." After all, the other major game boosts have been altered and been bugged.
Please reconsider the "bug fix" on the Trace Charm. This change has very discouraging affects on rural players. I am starting to question and doubt how much I will play if we keep having game boosts changed due to "typing errors." I do not know how to startegize for game events if the tasks change mid game or the game malfunctions. I cannot give up my job or my family for this game to adjust to last minute changes. I do not want to go back to the thoughts and feelings that I had for this game I had earlier this year.
Finally, many of the players here purposefully avoid using discord. I don't want another program on my phone using space. Having to hear game changes second hand and not see it directly on this community board or in a game notification is also insulting. The communication needs to improve dramatically.
I used the charm today and only recieved 3 traces.
I have been receiving 6 to 8 . maybe I had been lucky but with the reduction in value of cloned traces and the reduced quantity,
this is very off putting.
and yes I did restart the game!
Reinstate the Trace Charm to it's original form!
Dear Niantics,
I appreciate all the hard work that you all do to make this game enjoyable. I live in a well populated Wizarding area and spawns are not an issue but I have visted friends while playing and the spawn rates are low. I think leaving the trace charm just as it is is better for those areas and play as a whole. It is fun.
I rarely got the exact duplicate of the trace I put the charm on. It was several traces of the same threat level. I was happy with that. Great source of Field Guides. The emergency fragments were great too but more and more of them are reaching the "gold & placed" state and becoming less interesting. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that often the other spawns vanished after I got back the first one. :-(
Now I put my Trace Charm on an emergency and get one more emergency (duplicate), if I get the current state of things. I guess it was "too good to be true" so it needed to be fixed. Now the Trace Charm ceases to be exciting and motivating people to play. The FG amounts seem like a joke to me now. I am definitely going to slow down with the game. Maybe it is Nia's way of telling people to spend more time with their friends and families. :D
In reading through all the disappointment expressed here I noticed something. All the ire is being directed at Niantic (valid, it’s their programming) but HP is ultimately a Warner Bros property. If this weren’t a HP themed game I know I wouldn’t have started playing.
I joined today specifically to comment on this "fix".
I never use potions unless I'm required to for a task. A really good Wizard shouldn't need to use potions IMO. I am rural gamer on immuno suppressive medication. I don't go out unless I have to. I certainly don't go out just to use a green house or inn. Those are useless to me.
Nerfing the Trace charm? Why bother using it now?
With all the positive changes in this game it has become my primary game. I never play ingress anymore, I rarely open PokemonGo, but I've been opening HPWU multiple times a day.
Why do you want to discourage me from wanting to play?
Looking at the SOS I know there is a wall of books I don't have that I'm about to hit and you've just made that even higher. It appears unsurmountable now?
Sunk Cost Fallacy ....should I quit now?
As anyone involved with software is aware, taking away a feature (even if it's an unintended feature) from your customers is a bad move. In this particular case, the ability to utilize Trace Charms to get additional traces of the same level was a huge, exciting feature. It made many players work harder to get better lessons to improve their Trace Charms. Additional playing = money for you. Now, you've just made everyone mad. Please update the Trace Charms so that they generate the same or higher level traces. It was one of the most engaging features you've ever put in this game.
I’ve had a lot of fun playing this game since launch; however, with the recent issues and now this nerf, it may be time for me to give it up. I’ll miss playing, hope this change is reconsidered.
Please keep it. I live in an area where the severe traces don’t happen every day. I rarely see red or even orange. Right now I can’t get out to chase them down. If people don’t progress, they might quit the game. If they’re close to the chance to finally prestige pages they’ll be more likely to buy the extra spell energy or potions to get those red.
Because I can’t get out the other two charms are absolutely useless to me. Now you’ve ruined the one charm that I could use. If you’re going to make it useless, just scrap charms completely and don’t waste screen space.
@MANATEEMOMMA i urge you to look the text in one of the bonus xp from trunks, b/c it very much says "complete this lesson for a CHANCE of bonus xp in treasure trunks" so far it is not a chance it is 100% always, ofc they are going to change it so that #/10 times you get 500 and only a #% you get the extra bonus wxp. and tbh...i dont mind, i went from lv 58 to lv 60 in 6 days w an hr of play a day w bonus wxp at 1.5k from trunks plus bbe that has become overpowered plus bbe and dark5xrune lv5 x5 ppl that give 3k a battle. 1 hr walk plus 1 hr forts a day 6 days= lv 58 to lv 60 more than 3million wxp points. ofc theyre gonna nerf it it is insane.
Do you guys still think that the Dev team really think this is a bug?
I daresay that it's just a stunt in the form of "OH this is a bug" to stop the unexpected effect this features caused: The average Wizarding level is now skyrocketing out of their control.
If it's really a bug, quite weird that it hadn't been spotted and fixed much much earlier than this. They could even disabled trace charm within a day after learning of this bug where everyone of us really faced this "bug" every time trace charm were casted from the beginning of this feature released.
This kind of absurd and selfish decision worth a campaign on Change. org or even class action lawsuit.
I vehemently agree with what other comments from the community have said here. As a player in an area with very few natural spawns outside clusters at POI, the clone Foundable was the best part of the Trace Charm, as it ensured I would get a fair chance of gaining an extra fragment for the Foundable I actually cast it on. Removing this function of the Trace Charm turns it into simply an immediate-gratification version of the Tonic for Trace Detection, which often spawns all the traces except those we immediately need for event tasks and the like.
As one of the WUtubers, I've been reached out to by several players who have been so demotivated and discouraged by this "fix" that they're sitting out the entire Wizarding Weekend. Some had completely lost interest in the game until the Trace Charm made it possible to progress in their new SOS Training skill trees. It brought an element of strategy into the game while playing at home so we would save those Charms for the Traces we REALLY needed in our Registry. Without that perk, us rural players are greatly disadvantaged, especially if we don't have the freedom to travel far from home while the pandemic still rages in our local communities.
I understand wanting to fix bugs in the game. But even the most basic of testing would have shown this bug prior to the update. This was how the Trace Charm was presented to the entire player-base from the start. Taking that perk away now feels to many players like you've purposefully dangled a carrot to get them engaged while always having the intention of snatching it away. It's alienating and disheartening, and I do hope you reconsider this move.
@Drakonite That's exactly why my wife is **** treasure chests to get to 60. After that 2 more pages upgraded to gold and she's done and over with the game... And she's a big Harry Potter fan...
@linjuzz You're probably right, although what's weird is that there were so many other ways they could've solved that. Just add some new levels, or increase the XP for levels going forward... you could get the same effect but still keep the fun of getting multiple high-threat traces with the trace charm. So if that's their concern, this is not only poor communications/a crappy way to treat users, but a real lack of creativity on the solution.
Also I came back to this thread today and got annoyed all over again reading @hpwulola's comment again. To say that this change doesn't lower the threat of the traces spawned compared to what was happening before is just objectively false. Before yesterday, if you cast a trace charm on a severe/emergency threat, you'd get 3-4 severe/emergency spawns. Now you get one and 2-3 lower-threat spawns. Not gaslighting users is a really low bar but it's the bare minimum we deserve from Niantic.
I would like to echo what is being said. This change in the trace charm is basically a bait and switch. I invested many rare book resources into a charm that is now worse than a tonic for trace detection.... The nerf of getting a smattering of lesser foundables on a severe trace charm drop makes this charm as worthless as the inn and greenhouse charms The fact that your language on the fragments was also misleading and now is worthless XP is another bait and switch I had already fell for. If you guys don't reverse this trace charm "fix" I think you can count me as one of your former players. This game is just not fun any more. No challenge... all random luck with foundables running away despite maxing out spell proficiency and family skill level and depart levels... The challenge of fortressing has lost it's appeal and all your game "improvements" are just more **** for catches with no skill or reason....Fix this or lose me forever. PS red books and **** ingredients are no longer worthwhile to play for. Please make all events give DADA books if you want me to play them.
Please return TC to the way it was. I do not want to collect foundables to open trunks for a chance at a trace charm to then apply it to a Severe threat and receive multiple low level threat foundables - which is EXACTLY what is happening now.
That is an absolutely useless feature.
This “fix” is so botched that I am still collecting a duplicate of the original spawn - which makes this a nerf and not a fix.
@hpwulola I'd like to put emphasis on @OGWizardWayKris comment. Please take note of it.
WB/Niantic,
You have just ruined the trace charm for me .. I always got at least 1-2 duplicates of what I used the charm on, and 3-4 traces of equal level .. now i get 1 duplicate and a bunch of random ****! ALL of which, is lower level than my original target of the trace charm .. how is this change helping in any way??
Definitely supporting this request!
I totally agree the new update to the trace charm is severely underwhelming.
And the knight bus just crashed. Guess that bug wasn't worth fixing when they fixed the trace charm, huh?
The traces you get on the trace charm still disappear and you have to restart the app to see them. They are useless and clutter the screen so I don't always. That bug wasn't worth fixing either.
The Trace Charm was the first thing that got me excited about playing HPWU in ages. It really feels like Niantic has given up on the game--no new combat lessons, no new storylines and the SOS training was designed to keep us engaged--which it did, right up to the point that the Trace Charm stopped doing what it said it would. Bait and switch that feels demoralizing. Why bother playing anymore if anything good is going to be taken away on a whim?
I'm a bit annoyed that I spent too many FGs (thousands), MMs(also thousands), RSBs, and DADAs unlocking Trace Charm nodes that have now been severely nerfed. It makes me not want to use any resources in this game out of fear that it will just be taken away from me. Which just kills the motivation to play this game in general.
This is seriously a big **** to the community. You changed everything because you messed up. And rather than make the SOS nodes the way you initially described, you changed nodes that people already spent books on and did not give those books back, knowing full well if we would have known you were gonna change the nodes we would have spent the books on different nodes. You stole our currency and you lied. You will never see another penny for a lot of people and you will get 1 star reviews if you keep hamstringing users.
This change to the trace charm is very disturbing!!! Prior to your fix of the trace charm, playing the game was exciting. Getting 6 emergency flares was so fun! I am level 60, so no use getting extra WXP, it is maxed. I have been playing this game for over a year and I spend a lot of money a month, $400 to $500. I am done with spending any money on this game, if this is not changed back. you let us use this TC for almost 2 months. You need to go back to the way the TC worked with the multiple rare flares. What a disappointment for all my effort. I was loving the game. You destroyed the best part of the game removing the multiple rare flare spawns. Please change this BACK!!!
I have been spending from $10-$20 per month on this infuriating game. No more. This last "fix" is the last straw. Not another cent from me. I invested my books heavily in the trace charm, now all of that was totally wasted. I'm done. You do nothing but lie to and deceive the players.
This is such a blow to everyone who has spent any type of currency on the game, real money or books, to get the rewards that were offered by the Trace Charm. Please reconsider “fixing” this. Even those who have not spent money to get to this point are so discouraged with the bugs, mistakes and “fixes”. I so appreciated the changes made to accommodate for the restrictions put on because of the pandemic and was patient while waiting for progress in the storyline because we’re all dealing with circumstances beyond our control. Now I’m inclined to think that maybe the team has given up on the game and doesn’t care what the players want or need.
Also, as some have mentioned, going forward please announce the **** changes through the game, not through social media, not through another app (discord). It’s ridiculous - this lack of communication. I’m honestly considering not playing the game anymore and it makes me so sad.
This has certainly been an interesting ride the last couple of weeks. I think most players would understand the new features made the game unbalanced in the long-term. Short term it has definitely had bad consequences. Fortunately, what you DO have now is the ability to make some pretty positive changes based on the lessons learned here.
Most importantly, you found a new way to make the game "fun" again for lots of players, myself included. Whether these changes were on purpose or not, the player-base seems more excited than they've been in quite awhile. The great thing is, you can distill the feedback here into something more sustainable. Maybe the trace charm gives less red foundables, but you can earn charms back faster. Maybe the low-level foundables spawned by the trace charm take your most needed registry entries into account. I don't know what the ultimate answer is to balancing these mechanics, but if done right the players will jump on board again.
Secondly, it's clear that communicating to your player base and setting expectations could use improvement. Empower your community leaders to communicate more both in game and out of game. Robert eventually had a good post where he explained that the charms were working as intended but the descriptions were wrong. There was definitely disagreement, but it made sense for the longevity of the game.
However, seemingly out of nowhere, the level and types of foundables awarded changed completely yesterday with no warning or explanation. Even a simple "Hey, the latest update is really not working as intended, but enjoy it while it lasts." message would have been more useful.
I hope you take these lessons to heart, and best of luck to the team.