Letter to the devs

Captain_Trips88

Note: This was written out prior to coming onto the forums and seeing the update regarding changes happening maybe by the 4th April. I have added an additional paragraph to the end regarding this announcement.

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I do not believe that this will find it's way to anyone involved in developing the recent changes to the gameboard but at the very least this will serve a cathartic purpose for myself and anyone else on the forum who is in a similar position of being unable to play a game that has been a part of their daily lives for the last X amount of years.

The changes to the gameboard have raised many questions regarding the developing process by the team responsible, the main one for me though is quite simply, why? The other changes that we have seen (endured) over the years have all made some kind of commercial sense if not necessarily been positive ones from our view as the player, and certainly we will grumble but the purpose of this game is to generate income for a company, our happiness is secondary to that aim. That hasn't really been a problem as the game has remained enjoyable throughout all of these changes for the vast majority of all players.

But now we have game breaking changes that are literally making the game unplayable. And I return back to that question, why were these changes made? There is no commercial gain for the company, you do not attract new players through making changes like this as those players are oblivious to what came before. In fact, quite the opposite, many players are now no longer able to play and are certainly not going to keep providing funding as they previous would. We have also seen via the forums, and anywhere else that people can spout their opinions, that any changes on the game polarise the community - a change such as this was always going to have a negative reaction from a proportion of players simply for being different, and that's not taking into account the fact the health issues that are now attached to playing the game. 

Away from the commercial side, I cannot see the game development argument as to why these changes were required either. I have trawled through the forums, and aside from requests to see which round of the Wave battles we are on (which is still not a feature!), there are no clamours from the community to make radical changes to the gameboard because it looked good and it was functional. And quite frankly, that is all that the gameboard needs to be - functional. 

I guess it gave the dev team something to work on? But there are so many other areas that the game could be improved upon that do not hamper on the actual gameplay experience in such a negative way. New stories for PVE would be extremely welcome, and the new styles of play as we've seen through the excellent puzzle gauntlet have gone down a treat along with more milestone goals - lets face it, everyone loves collecting achievements! 

Lastly, it would be hugely beneficial for there to be a presence on the forums or somewhere else accessible whereby the community can interact with the dev team. It doesn't have to be all the time, but just enough to know that you actually give a damn about your players. Because quite frankly, the response to this trainwreck of an update has been appalling.

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The update today that we are 2/3 weeks away from having changes is at least some kind of communication. The fact that it has taken so long is not acceptable and the game itself remains in its health impacting state without any kind of in game warning to players. I do not have any game programming knowledge, I do not know the process of getting updates out through the various app stores, but I do not believe for a second that a simple warning could not have been implemented instantly once the issue was raised. 

I have to say I am quite concerned by the response regarding the changes that will be made in 2/3 weeks. The claim is that months and months have been spent working on these changes, and yes I appreciate that big changes take a long time to implement, but I have to ask the question of how much testing was done at the end of these months of work or did you just rush to get the product out? Testing is the most important part of any process, and you should not be relying on your end users to actively test your product for you. The resulting headaches, nausea and potential epileptic fits is opening you up for serious legal action. Furthermore, the wording of the response very much feels like - "well we spent a lot of time on this and just because of that we aren't going to roll back to what worked perfectly fine, despite all the issues to our customers".

I will see what the changes are like in April, if the game is playable then I know that I will carry on playing (FTP here, so my wallet isn't impacted either way) but if it remains unplayable then I'll be done despite the enjoyment that I've had out of it for the last 6 years.