My first reaction to this proposal was disappointment, specifically over how seemingly out of touch the development team of this game appears to be with not only the players of LIF:MMO, but the very concept of the game they sold to us. After sitting down and evaluating the proposal you’ve obviously spent some time working on as the Project Leader of this game, I’m actually left with pity and condolences for the direction this game has gone and where it appears to be going. The MMO version of LIF could of been a fairly neat niche game, if it were left to naturally progress as it was originally advertised (
https://lifeisfeudal.com/Main-media/?se ... comparison ). Instead, you’ve resorted to an attempt to tread water with what are quite literally distractions while the game’s population is bleeding like a siv.
It’s ironic that you’ve gone to the extent of trying to reference a twenty two year old paper on gaming archetypes as a method to explain to your players your interpretation of the people who play your game. The last MMO team that decided to base its’ design decisions around game theory authored by Bartle and “typical archetypes” rather than listening to what it’s players wanted that was WildStar, and we can all see how that turned out. And then, to add to to the perceived ignorance you possess as it relates to identifying the playerbase of this game, you take it upon yourself to define what the “typical” LIF players are as it relates to playstyles. I cannot fathom how you were able to obtain the plethora of gameplay data it would take to analyze and properly “categorize” what its’ players do in game over the past six months when it seems that even crossing servers cannot be solved correctly or compently. Therefore, I take it that you are either:
-Running purley off of what you personally assume your playerbase wants, or
-Attempting to stall for additional time while additional features are developed and implemented for the MMO by using a formula you and your team feel safe and familiar with
From the onset of the MMO, I have personally been heavily involved with everyone from the “Sheeps” you refer to, all the way to the “Wolves” you reference. The underlying factor of all these players have been, from early access up until this very moment, that they wanted a game that worked and did what it advertised. LIF is in no way a game-changing, unique snowflake as it relates to the genre it finds itself in. What really sold people on LIF was that it advertised things that players couldn’t find with games such as Reign of Kings, Rust, or countless other “Survival/MMO” hybrid games - things such as increased playerbases (10,000 players!), full-fledged sieges, mini-games, politics and an EVE-like atmosphere that encouraged shadowplay and politics and espionage.
When it came readily apparent that the servers can’t properly handle more than a hundred people in a single tile at once, or that things like mini-games have been broke since day one, or that safe-zones existed where you could literally build an entire claim in that would be impervious to all JH attacks by enemy players, people started to get a little sour. When we discovered that sieges, and by extension, the ability to literally play the game as your team designed it to be were not implemented nor has any singular comment been made in reference to them since launch as to when they’ll be coming, players started to doubt the vision your team advertised.
Your initial game design, simply due to the nature of how dependant PVP is upon logistics, had already offered a place for your “sheeps” and “wolves” to exist and, to an extent, flourish. PVE orientated characters (that is, those whom are willing to put in a majority of their time to craft/maintenance skills as opposed to simply utilizing gear and PVPing) are literal assets to PVP-centric guilds as they allow for PVP centric characters to do their thing and not worry about “chores”. You literally created a feudal system, and, with more attention to the finer details, could of kept a large majority of those players in-game and engaged if it weren't for your half-handed approaches to “fixing” the game for the “sheeps” and the “wolves”. Instead, you attempted to cater to both sides of the coin, and at the end of the day, created a system in which neither party is happy - boring PVE, and PVP that is literally meaningless at the end of the day as you have allowed town zones, limited JHs for the NA servers, and of course, no sieges. Finally, due to the fact you actively encouraged different regions of players to essentially zerg the NA server and failed to implement any sort of Asian based regional server that they could play on, the players that would of normally stuck around to put up with all the aforementioned issues in the hope you’d have the advertised launch feature of sieges in place within a half-year after launch are now leaving as well. All that is left of the main population of the NA servers are those whom enjoy the PVP and combat system, which is admittedly fun and engaging.
All that you will achieve with this half-hearted experiment in bringing YO culture to the MMO will be further diluting the already shallow player bases of the servers that have been on a steady decline for the past few months.