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| Analysis & Criticism of the behavior of SpaceTime Studios to Pocket Legends |
About my YouTube channel, Blog & Pocket Legends
If you follow my YouTube channel [YouTube.com/OPiest] (I'm not making it clickable link, if you want, you may type/copy paste it in your browser to visit my channel), you would know that I kept making Pocket Legends videos for long occasionally sometime. I won't quit this game theoretically, that means there may not be any particular day that I will decide to stop playing PL but slowly I may not play or stop making PL video, but again at some point I may be back time to time so it would be foolish to say that I'm gonna quit this game. Why I'm saying this? because I really love this game even if I don't play PL but if I look back, I find myself in strong nostalgia & I care about the fellow players who expect more videos from me, so It's really important for me to clear these things. Blog is perfect for all these thoughts than video since, I don't talk in videos. Although you may not care reading long post which is expected mostly but you do care as you reading this far, chuckling. Also there always have been network issues with me, what I always wanted is stable net even ping is at 500+, recently india's biggest private sector company brought new 4G service which is also the first ever 4G service in our area, I switched to it. Also it offering unlimited free Data for 3 month and also which will be extended to another 3 months more than that I expected with first ever 4G experience I'll stream alot in this free period, guess what, the speed and stability is crap. It's Reliance JIO, you'll get alot info about this 17 billion dollar investment to bring world's cheapest data, if you want search in Google, I should not carry forward the topic more, but it's interesting that's why I mentioned. Story in short, I'll log in PL abit more than now, one time per 2-3 days with this JIO Disconnection in every 2 min LOL.
The initial hard work & plus point of Spacetime Studios
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| First Appearance of Pocket Legends |
Let's get into the topic of this post. STS is small company of few developers & team working, before start to criticize in a constructive way, it's my duty to mention the plus point otherwise it would not be complete and may seems to be one sided. I or we the players complain about STS because we loved Pocket Legends or atleased we loved it in past. The credit should go to STS the creatos of the game. According to Wkipedia in the first year after Pocket Legends release, the game had been updated 200 times including small patch updates, also in our initial phase of PL, we noticed the enormous amount of updates. Such dedication, that continuous dedication made PL what it is today, well polished game other than the PvP balance issues that actually gone worse with time. The STS background belonged to and came from PC multiplayer gaming background. Good thing PL followed PC multiplayer gaming or directly saying PC MMORPG better they didn't follow Mobile MMO that made this game quite unique and the concept still going strong at least as I see it and compare it other MMORGs available on mobile devices today.
So what happened to PL?
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| The cause behind STS's motivation shift from Pocket Legends |
That's the time I'm talking about the golden days of PL as if the care it got from STS, so what changed that? yes you're right, Arcane Legends, but if you're thinking that PL was getting dead, most probably it's wrong. It's not because old horse was getting old fast rather the new horse started to run way faster than the old horse could do ever. The message is clear, if Arcane Legends generate 10x money with the same amount of work on PL could do, why would STS work more on PL? So business perspective it would seems to be correct, but not totally, I'll justify latter in this post. It's not like they didn't tried to give boost to Pocket Legends after that. Introducing 2 more classes (Rhino & Fox) was one of them, they also tried to address the PL PvP balance issues but that didn't bring the expected result and PL balance! was just failed hard infect the more they tried (or at least seems to try) they failed harder, PvP balance is hugh issue and I can write whole book about it so it deserve another post not here.
So what was wrong?
By far, this seems that STS did nothing wrong, so what was wrong? they tried to forget Legacy games specially PL totally other than keep running the servers, PL developer also stated that legacy games does not run on their own, it's seems exaggeration specially to PL, PL carried a team of 30 people in past and since then nothing great changed in PL that it's now can't even run it's server, if you're an old player and say alot of my friends left PL that doesn't mean PL is also emptied in the same manner because old players leaves and new join that's what happens to every game but it maybe not in that much quantity. The reason same, AL generating way much more money with same amount of work. Recently PL got Halloween update and like an year's ago Level cap update but before that STS officially announced that PL won't be update ever other than the server maintenance updates not only that the way Devs made believe people that there won't be more updates in PL by enormous reply in PL forums, I've been an active forum member for long and we watched that, so those update were nothing less than a shock. They did it, but was it from within their heart or sake of Love to the game?The new updates, sake of love for Pocket Legends?
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| Pocket legends halloween update 2016 |
The moment I saw Halloween update, I thought it was for the sake of Love and for the dedicated community but the next moment I saw the contents of the update, it's looked like it was to generate some quick money from dedicated community, XP Packs (XP is directly purchasable) Increased rates of Plat items etc and what's new? recolored pumpkin hat, Halloween ring & L80 Forgotten weapon, and this Halloween weapons are not scaled with L80 weapons that we use, if this forgotten items are not competitive with existing elites that to be honest, there's no point of bringing this in game. There should be elite forgotten weapons and the stats should have been at least similar to elites if not over powered. Let's say more crit but less dodge, something to make it variant rather than under powered or overpowered. This updates are least to make most of it. Don't expect more updates in future but anytime if they feel like they need to make some quick bucks or change pl the way they want, then there will be more updates.
Is it good business?
As said earlier same amount of work on Arcane Legends generates more money, so why work in PL. Pl has small but dedicated and hard core community base, when I say that, I really mean that. The existing PL community provided initial boost to AL when AL was released, it's not like PL community made AL successful neither AL would be still successful if it's not good the way it is, rather as said, it provided nice and solid initial boost. The community is free form and not professional in terms of judging and fair criticism AT RIGHT PLACES, why am I saying this? and am I blaming the community? nope let me explain. PL fans raging and raged (well justified) over many issues, such as not getting new updates, PvP balance issues, 300k XPs to cap etc etc and not only rate & rage comment on PL App page only (Google play & iOS app store) BUT ALSO ON OTHER GAMES OF STS such as Call of Champions & Arcane legends, It matters alot and this is where STS MADE A SOLID MISTAKE, let say a new game released, PL fan community start to rate bad and negative review on App store pages, even also in various mobile gaming websites and blogs, that really hamper the new game if not totally ruin the game.So what's the solution?
Should STS start to update the game as before? not really, it's possible to maintain good will with minimal effort but STS, to be honest never tried that rather when community get angry ALL TOGETHER they did something little to counter that, yes they listened. STS is small studio and I also guessed after success of AL they expanded the team. The problem is either they try or don't try stall they're unable to balance things. Let me ask SERIOUSLY how much time it would take to bring an old event like Halloween/ winter feast event? actually nothing if there's no new level cap expansion because then literally everything stays same, Items same, Maps same etc if something ain't same they could eliminate it. Then PvP balance, they could change the stats of endgame items on a regular basis like twice/thrice per year so that the under powered class would have chance in PvP at some point, it would be ongoing process. There had been pretty active forumers in PL forums, they could simply make a poll based post to cast vote. Just a small example to save time and work pretty little occasionally. Seriously how much time these things would take, pretty nothing, I guess the work of one day of one Dev among 30-60+ in a month would be enough for such negligible things. Third type of update would be introducing new gear rather than Cap expansion. No need to do much work, let me breakdown, take the existing best items and add little stats in it also implement change according to PvP balance issues and name like Sentinel talon 2 farm able from same map and old sentinel would be discontinued. Just an example that how STS can perform really pretty small updates and keep the existing player base happy and intact, trust me there have been so many left, some of them would not leave neither they would hate STS the way, some of them doing.The mistake in doing good, STS should be professional and to do that they should behave like them, as said earlier not only official announcement but also in enormous replies the CEO of SpaceTime studios made it clear that there won't be any more updates but even after that they started to work small updated and they want us to believe that someone specific dev did it all alone that's different matter that they want us to believe this or just really someone did it without taking permision, the matter is they should stand on their official announcement, breaking it, is like breaking the professionalism and trust worthiness.
Thanks for reading. There is more blog posts coming not less but more interesting, Blogspot.com aka Blogger.com is google's product, you may search more about it on google. Nothing hard to subscribe here in google more like subscribing in YouTube. It encourages me along with comments below.
Interesting read!
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