[Feedback] New Beginnings for The Settlers Online

[RantNRave]

Is this the wordy version of:

We made the garbage decision to switch to Unity and farm the work out, which lost 95% of the player base over the couple years it took to make the game run almost as well as it did before, and since we have no creativity at all and no original ideas to enhance the game or events we're now selling it for 3 cents on the dollar to a company who will let it die once gem sales drop the rest of the way down the sewer pipe.

Because I've seen this before in other games (the Rift MMO for one) and I am pretty sure I know what to expect now.

my thoughts exactly. When your franchise main headliner from a 7 games series, and a sandbox mmo staple is outsourced to a third party, you know ubisoft is/has and only cares about profits while gutting the entirity of it the past decade.
Really makes you wonder why they went to great lengths to cover their tracks by deleting all the forum posts about flash-unity* debacle, to show a buyer how great this game is and how well it could generate profit.. Lol.

Old dev team had the heads up back in 2016 with flash being trashed by adobe.. adobe extended the support a few times there after and when push came to shove ubisoft/bluebyte only reacted during the end of 2019 when support was finally gone... 4 years later it took to rebase/recode and fix a good majority of the issues, but it pales in the comparison of watching this game slow decay not only from that, but 4 years or neglect leading up to it. (2016/2017 release of arabian knights and few other additions that were the last real content packages). similarily the same from german beta in 2010 to arabian knights in 2016.

Its not even all that, support for forums has/is was always non existant. As above i get my info from germans forums cause its ignored here.
Even the moderators were canned from forums a year+ ago, and in game as well.. instead of doing stuff they just removed global chat.. way to go. that'll show your dedication to the game.

They doomed this game by ignoring it for 8 years and alienating the playerbase, (though euro servers still thrive, NA base is pretty dead in comparison). a lot of issues still occuring after years, and nerfing of events the last 2 years to squeeze more gems out of noobs/whales.

Good luck to the new team, (though the letter says its the same team under different company, so status quo as usual) and hope they can make improvements to the game, but as ive done for the last 5 years+, forum lurk, pop in for an event explorer send, and bail... then wonder why this game is still disappointing after so long.

[Allnight]

Very best of luck, hope you enjoy the trip.

[Gwalben]

They know where they make their money. The Germans are the only reason this game is still debatably alive. They know they can make some money from the Americans, but not enough to justify dedicating much resources to it. This quote from a review of the fifth game 20 years ago still applies today.

Like David Hasselhoff's singing career, Settlers is popular in Germany and just sort of barely tolerated elsewhere.

I didn't take the hint 5 years ago but should have. Within the last couple of years, I dropped back to logging in once a day for basic tasks, but then a few events ago I got annoyed because there was nobody around to do the simple task of swapping a PFB after days of asking because hardly anybody else could (or wanted to) login, so now I just login for events as well.

Speaking from experience, I would argue the deletion of old forum posts is not necessarily nefarious. Large forums are resource hogs. Not something that a company this size shouldn't easily be able to manage, but it's easier to just get rid of posts from more than a few years ago that nobody is going to read anyway rather than buying a bigger server or hiring someone to optimize them.

[RantNRave]

im sure its nothing most is still intact up to 2020. all forums across the game were wiped up to certain time frames respectively.
The thing i dont see is the fake "server maintenance" errors across all platforums, rather only plaguing just NA / EN servers, which even after not logging in for a few months til yesterday, i got for hours this morning randomly. (and many times during christmas, not many during v-day)

It is what it is, this game was always a joy to me which is the only reason im still here looking, as im sure many still do cause this game was really great at certain points of time when it thrived and had plenty to do. (and still does if your new) and anytime new additions are added il gladly come back to dabble (i did the starfall for 6 months, competely broken method to obtain xp but i found it decent, guild fest i found to be garbage in a small guild)

I found it to be the best sandbox builder F2P and free playing was still great if you put in your time as a free player. they have been generous with certain additions like excelsior to help the gameplay without being a total whale to accrue gems.

What do you do when the game that could have been so much more sits derelict for 8 years, islands maxed out, population exceeding 100k, 3mil storage, army you cant use cause there hasnt been a new adv since mcc from 2017 (or bonabartis, split city). Sure they have maintained events for something, but do we need more explorers and population from wonders.. probably no, resources? nope.. new workshops? that stuff has been destroyed by x24 buffs/christmas markets/pfb years ago and ruined the trade economy. Its like this game only exists on life support to sell gems while fundamentally doing nothing for all the long term players, which basically is all that is left lol.

zombie clicking explorers for event res and using black tree arrows to instant clear adventures for event res is hardly what i call great gameplay.. can pitch all the ideas and feedback for years and youre met with empty forums/development taht doesn't even acknowledge your existance; likewise the same for in game mechanics that have never worked correctly in teh bug/technical sections.

I always held onto hope that ubi/bb got their stuff together to implement something more idealistic outside of rehashed game events but they never did.. the mayor update last year was a good read, thinking finally things are done with 4 years of unity transition, and back to content???.. some things came out but other did not... then this posting just seems like back to square one and another repeat of all of the above. This game needs a lot of work, and i dont know if it wil ever achieve the 2012/2016 prime again.. but as it is the last 5 its been dead af.

[Subotai]

one thing is obvious, even given the frustrations being expressed, there is an enthusiasm for the game that transcends our grievances. The best part of the game to me is its complexity. No two people play the game exactly alike. Just visit islands and see the diversity of focus. There is a variety of choices that really caters to our individuality inside our social circles. There is much to fix (my own bugbear is the bouncing arrow that must be obeyed) but much that keeps drawing us back, and much to work with moving forward. I'm looking forward to a burst of creativity.

[Perwyn]

one thing is obvious, even given the frustrations being expressed, there is an enthusiasm for the game that transcends our grievances. The best part of the game to me is its complexity. No two people play the game exactly alike. Just visit islands and see the diversity of focus. There is a variety of choices that really caters to our individuality inside our social circles. There is much to fix (my own bugbear is the bouncing arrow that must be obeyed) but much that keeps drawing us back, and much to work with moving forward. I'm looking forward to a burst of creativity.

+1

[techie217]

They know where they make their money. The Germans are the only reason this game is still debatably alive. They know they can make some money from the Americans, but not enough to justify dedicating much resources to it. This quote from a review of the fifth game 20 years ago still applies today.



I didn't take the hint 5 years ago but should have. Within the last couple of years, I dropped back to logging in once a day for basic tasks, but then a few events ago I got annoyed because there was nobody around to do the simple task of swapping a PFB after days of asking because hardly anybody else could (or wanted to) login, so now I just login for events as well.

Speaking from experience, I would argue the deletion of old forum posts is not necessarily nefarious. Large forums are resource hogs. Not something that a company this size shouldn't easily be able to manage, but it's easier to just get rid of posts from more than a few years ago that nobody is going to read anyway rather than buying a bigger server or hiring someone to optimize them.

This is by NO MEANs a large forum. I could literally run this forum on my old obsolete PC from 2009, no problem. The removal of older posts does seem questionable to me.

[Gwalben]

This is by NO MEANs a large forum. I could literally run this forum on my old obsolete PC from 2009, no problem. The removal of older posts does seem questionable to me.

The German one is.

[Tekleader]

I just wanted to say thank you to Blue Byte for many fun years of Settlers. It was a bumpy but overall enjoyable ride! I hope Cipsoft takes good care of your baby! I also wish all the Blue Byte folks the best in their future endeavors.

Tek

[Subotai]

What would an event be without a glitch? Explorers sent out while egg tree was active are not receiving bonus. This is after adding additional egg tree. costly incompetence.