Originally Posted by
Obsidian99
I'm the CEO of a substantial game development company in Vancouver, BC.
I've been in charge of the company for 12 years now, and we mostly produce PC games. I won't name the company but you've heard of it.
SC - it is clear that you broke your top game. Without discussing (too much) my amazement that you don't have a beta server that is open to players (we focus group and include every category of our players on our beta servers) who could have tested your update properly - I will say that I'm surprised that you changed as many things that you did within a single update. Do you not understand scientific method?
With Scientific Method (very applicable to game operations) you change one major element at a time and gauge the response. In this way, you can ensure that you maintain the game balance for ALL PLAYERS in all areas before you change something else.
Here, you introduce TH11 along with new hero and new defences. That is a huge update by itself. Why in the world would you also try to get rid of bots in the same update? The bot killing content was so overbroad that it destroyed the ability for TH7-9 to maintain casual gamers. That was reckless imho
But my main issue, the one that demonstrated to me that you are not a professional operation (in the sense that you must be run by inexperienced management and C-level staff) is that you made these changes in the holiday season.
Why in the world would you have made ANY change other than introducing new content (TH11) over the holidays when you KNEW you wouldn't have the staff to respond to complaints, and when you knew you wouldn't have the staff to correct issues and re-patch or revert to prior, and when you most needed to keep the community happy because all the players have extra time to play???
In my opinion, doing a major patch over the holidays and even risking user unhappiness is incompetent. A community will forgive a game developer for ruining their ability to enjoy a game for a few days or even a couple of weeks if there is COMMUNICATION about the issue, and a somewhat quick resolution to it. But once a few weeks goes by, the most disenfranchised users will find a new game to play and you will have lost them forever.
Sadly, I believe this game was balanced well, but it was luck not skill on the part of SC. The game balanced for casual players by allowing loot from dead or suspended bases that could be snipped. The cost of progress was balanced because sniping gave sufficient loot that upgrades could be made even by casual players, but they would then gem to speed the update or speed army build-time. That was unintended, but it was very lucky on the part of SC.
The game was balanced for serious gamers by the introduction of clans and wars, as well as win bonuses at high levels - not luck, but as intended by SC.
In these ways, game balance worked at both the low and high end for gamers, and SC got the Whales and small fish to pay for gems.
I would have fired (not joking) anyone who pushed this update between Thanksgiving and New Years. It never would have happened here, of course, as we would have just pushed the TH11 component, and then tested the rebalancing one patch at a time over about 3 months. But shoot, I guess that's what happens when you get a game that works because of luck and not design.
