Why I no longer don't believe in Ylands

[zarwil 393]

--In response to a recent negative thread--

As someone who has been quite pessimistic about the game here on the forums and privately with friends, I'd just like to mention that I'm pretty optimistic about Ylands for the first time in about 2 years. The recent attention to explore is what most of us expected when we first started playing. A steady stream of improvements for the survival element of the game. Anything I've ever done in this game has been in the hopes of some day being able to explore a vast world in some cool custom made ships. It seems this is finally coming to fruition, so the devs should get some well deserved credit! 

 

[Deadeye_Rob 908]

Here here!

[Nikki Severin 1148]

Hi there! 

Glad to hear you like what Ylands has been up to lately! Happy to hear any other feedback you might have! 

Have a fantastic day! 

[spiritchaser28 920]

I whole heartedly agree with @zarwil Cheers! It's getting fantastic!

[lady_whynot 71]

I don't know the history of Ylands. I've only been there for 3 months. So I was able to look at it without bias as it stands today and test it extensively. And - I think the game is just fantastic.

What happens to ylands is mostly up to the players. The developers provide us with a platform and we have to fill them with life, with our ideas. From a technical point of view, we should actively help the developers if something doesn't work as it should. We should communicate our wishes and expectations in a friendly and appropriate manner; this is the only way they can act in our interests.

We already have a wonderful game that gives us so many options. Let us enjoy it and be curious about what the future will bring us.

Edited April 15, 2021 by lady_whynot

[zarwil 393]

Just now, lady_whynot said:

I don't know the history of Ylands. I've only been there for 3 months. So I was able to look at it without bias as it stands today and test it extensively. And - I think the game is just fantastic.

What happens to ylands is mostly up to the players. The developers provide us with a platform and we have to fill them with life, with our ideas. From a technical point of view, we should actively help the developers if something doesn't work as it should. We should communicate our wishes and expectations in a friendly and appropriate manner; this is the only way they can act in our interests.

We already have a wonderful game that gives us so many options. Let us enjoy it and be curious about what the future will bring us.

The issue hasn't been player feedback historically, it has been that the feedback wasn't really acknowledged or acted upon. Players have been shouting about improvements to explore for years, and if anything, it got worse. The devs have recently stated how focusing on the editor was part of the bigger plan to improve explore all along, however this was never communicated once during the past 3 years. I think the forums have remained surprisingly civil given the circumstances.

We are finally seeing some long awaited upgrades to explore, and the devs have communicated a clear focus on further improvements. There's finally some light at the end of the tunnel! (let's just hope it doesn't go the way of Metallica's "No leaf clover"....)

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

On 4/15/2021 at 5:22 AM, zarwil said:

The issue hasn't been player feedback historically, it has been that the feedback wasn't really acknowledged or acted upon. Players have been shouting about improvements to explore for years, and if anything, it got worse. The devs have recently stated how focusing on the editor was part of the bigger plan to improve explore all along, however this was never communicated once during the past 3 years. I think the forums have remained surprisingly civil given the circumstances.

We are finally seeing some long awaited upgrades to explore, and the devs have communicated a clear focus on further improvements. There's finally some light at the end of the tunnel! (let's just hope it doesn't go the way of Metallica's "No leaf clover"....)

One of the reasons I left is the game is better than ever. When I saw that the Game had indeed fixed the issues and turned the situation around but players were not coming back I realized that because they hid the best part of the game behind the DLC they painted themselves in a corner. If they could make the exploration DLC free then I think the Game would have a real chance but I’m not sure they can legally do that because they charged for it.

moreover anytime I try to bring a large group of people to the game it’s super laggy and there’s so many bugs.

they may be able to do this on mobile and if they did this Game would have great potential on mobile at least on high-end devices.

however it has been totally abandoned on steam: https://steamcharts.com/app/298610

 

Edited April 19, 2021 by RedEagle_P1.

[lady_whynot 71]

I think first of all you just have to accept that this game also has to support the developers and employees. Everyone has to live, eat. Idiualism is very nice, but you can't score with it in business life.

I also see that Bohemie has probably not done some things so skillfully, but it is and remains their game, we only bought the usage. As long as I can play the game in a state that corresponds to what I bought, there is no reason for me to complain.

But whether I will buy another game from this company if the disappointment is too great remains to be seen. Bohemia must and should pay attention to its image.

All I can say is that, what you do RedEagle_P1,  not a good advertisement for P1.

Edited April 18, 2021 by lady_whynot

[zarwil 393]

Just now, RedEagle_P1. said:

One of the reasons I left is the game is better than ever. When I saw that the Game had indeed fixed the issues and turned the situation around but players were not coming back

But Red, there has been pretty much zero marketing for this game... why do you expect the player numbers to explode after like 2 updates to explore, when the player base is already minuscule? 

 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

2 hours ago, zarwil said:

But Red, there has been pretty much zero marketing for this game... why do you expect the player numbers to explode after like 2 updates to explore, when the player base is already minuscule? 

 

There has been a lot of marketing for this game. You just don’t notice because it hasn’t had an impact. If you search YouTube for the most popular Ylands videos over the last year you will see that they are paying money to Youtubers to feature the game often. They talked a long time about doing a big marketing push ages ago. 

but none of the above is what I’m actually talking about. The marketing is not just advertising, the marketing is the brand that they are portraying on steam. 

They market the game on steam as a PVP minigame style game which is completely contrary to what they started to do and which almost no one is interested in as can be seen by the player numbers.

finally, by locking the best content behind a pay wall, they have made it very difficult for the game to grow.

people come into the game hearing about a fun exploration game and get mini games which are not great. They don’t even know that they have to buy the DLC to play the game, and this way of doing things makes no sense.

Either make the whole game free or make the whole game paid. 

Thats what I mean by convoluted marketing, not like the advertisements out there.

 

For three years I stuck with this game thick and thin. I gave away some where around 700 copies of the game to try to make it popular. 

I invested more than 7000 hours, came up with new bug reporting systems, tried to become a channel between the players and the developers.

I found that the developers were living in an echo chamber. They always heard what we said but they didn’t listen and that was the problem. They are now listening that exploration is important for the players but unfortunately, due to the convoluted marketing it’s impossible for the players to actually get to the content.

 

The echo chamber that existed with the developers is becoming what we are seeing on this forum also, all the critics have already found in the game and given up faith. Only good news is tolerated and those who criticize are pushed aside. The vast majority of people no longer post here for that reason and that’s not a good thing for the game.

Anyway, I will make my presence scarce but I tend to check in every two weeks or so to see if there will be a chance this game will survive. I did so today and I was appalled by the numbers but I am also encouraged by the potential of this game succeeding in the mobile genre. I think it would be of them an opportunity to make exploration free at least on mobile.

My Ylands community is going to be making our own game in unity with some similar survival genre  principles.

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by RedEagle_P1.

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

I actually have a feeling @bojo2736 and @kimbuckmight have been onto something that I did not perceive at first. I have been seeing this trailer in China long before it came out in the west. I know Tencent was highly disappointed by the technical progress of the game at some point and I have a feeling that to some degree, control might have been taken over or highly influenced by that relationship. Ales must’ve been removed as project manager at some point or something because he said he was coming back, we were never made aware that he left or that he was removed from his position?  That would explain the free to play and mini game focus which is a really big thing in China.

however, in China from my understanding the whole game is free to play which makes a lot more sense. No dlc.

3 hours ago, lady_whynot said:

I think first of all you just have to accept that this game also has to support the developers and employees. Everyone has to live, eat. Idiualism is very nice, but you can't score with it in business life.

I also see that Bohemie has probably not done some things so skillfully, but it is and remains their game, we only bought the usage. As long as I can play the game in a state that corresponds to what I bought, there is no reason for me to complain.

But whether I will buy another game from this company if the disappointment is too great remains to be seen. Bohemia must and should pay attention to its image.

All I can say is that, what you do RedEagle_P1,  not a good advertisement for P1.

Although I respect your opinion, you have to understand that I have been here a long time and that I have done a lot for this game. Like I said I bought somewhere around 700 copies of the game and gave them out, ran paid advertisements, convinced Youtubers and streamers to play the game, try to create a bug reporting system that would work from discord, created the only active and widely viewed YouTube channel dedicated for this game, ran a creator group which represented about 80% of all creators for the majority of its existence.
 

I know that this forum is now mostly made up of people who only agree with party line But for the majority of the existence of the game, the vast majority of people have been disappointed with its direction which is clearly seen by the reviews of the game on Steam, YouTube and Reddit threads comments. 

If you enjoy the game by all means, enjoy it, but for those of us who are creators, community managers and people that are invested in the game for other reasons and my topics are informative. 

 

 

 

[Shadow72 187]

You probably won't reply to this but here are my opinions.

 

18 minutes ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

If you enjoy the game by all means, enjoy it, but for those of us who are creators, community managers and people that are invested in the game for other reasons and my topics are informative. 

 

    I think this really shows your intentions for playing Ylands. You weren't playing Ylands to enjoy the game and have fun, you wanted to get in on the game on the ground floor and be able to profit off of it. All of the points you keep bringing up revolve around the success of the game and the steam charts showing how many people are playing it. In your own words, if you enjoyed the game, enjoy it. In the videos you made criticizing the game you barely talked about things in exploration you didn't like or why the gameplay was bad. You focused on player numbers and coyn cashing out and other stuff like that. Your not criticizing the game because you don't like what the game has become, you are criticizing it because you have spent years trying to profit off of it and weren't able to do so.

 

1 hour ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

I invested more than 7000 hours, came up with new bug reporting systems, tried to become a channel between the players and the developers.

    Why do you think they would want you to be a channel between the players and developers when that is what community managers are for? If I were to go to the creators of Minecraft and tell them I want to be a channel between the devs and players they would tell me to get lost.

 

4 hours ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

One of the reasons I left is the game is better than ever. When I saw that the Game had indeed fixed the issues and turned the situation around but players were not coming back I realized that because they hid the best part of the game behind the DLC they painted themselves in a corner. If they could make the exploration DLC free then I think the Game would have a real chance but I’m not sure they can legally do that because they charged for it.

    So you say that the game is better than ever and the devs have fixed the issues, but later go on to talk about how the devs never listen and are in a echo chamber. They clearly listened to you and fixed what you wanted and added new stuff that made the game better. How can you complain about the devs not listening but then go on to say that they have fixed the issues with the game? Oh, but now it makes sense, down more in the post you explain that they are now listening but its too late and the player numbers are dropping. This just backs up my point of you not really caring about enjoying the game and instead are hyper focused on making sure the game's playerbase is big enough for you to make money off of it.

 

Some smaller points I want to make:

    You keep saying "I would really like to see this game succeed" but its pretty obvious that you don't. It seems like every week you are making posts on either the forums, the reddit, or the steam discussions talking about how the game is dying or dead and that the devs don't listen to anyone or take any criticism. 

    You always said that P1 Gaming was your community and that P1 creators was your business, but when you figured that Ylands wasn't going to be profitable for you P1 Gaming and P1 creators both left Ylands. In your own words the game is better than ever, so why would your community discord server leave Ylands? Seems odd...

 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

As a community creator player numbers matter to me. 

Edited February 7 by RedEagle_P1.

[bojo2736 1016]

I'm not sure what point you think I made, I have posted a lot on these forums. 

[Shadow72 187]

1 hour ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

Kids who have never worked to make an honest living see money as evil (I am not suggesting you are such a person)

    I know you said in parenthesis that you aren't suggesting I'm that person. But having that in your response to what I said kinda implies that you think so. I'm not a kid, i'm 20, and before the pandemic happened I worked 40 hours a week for 2 years and after that 20 hours a week while going to college. 

 

    There's nothing wrong with making money, its how you portrayed your communities. You portrayed it as a group of mature gamers who enjoy playing Ylands and helping each other out, when in reality you were planning on making money off of all of them. Right now you are looking at the game through the eyes of someone who wants to try and make money off of it, and because you aren't able to you are telling everyone to stay away from the game.

 

    Also the whole excuse of posting around all the Ylands forum/discord/reddit just to let people know your community is leaving for the 3rd time isn't a good one. 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

1 hour ago, Shadow72 said:

    I know you said in parenthesis that you aren't suggesting I'm that person. But having that in your response to what I said kinda implies that you think so. I'm not a kid, i'm 20, and before the pandemic happened I worked 40 hours a week for 2 years and after that 20 hours a week while going to college. 

 

    There's nothing wrong with making money, its how you portrayed your communities. You portrayed it as a group of mature gamers who enjoy playing Ylands and helping each other out, when in reality you were planning on making money off of all of them. Right now you are looking at the game through the eyes of someone who wants to try and make money off of it, and because you aren't able to you are telling everyone to stay away from the game.

 

    Also the whole excuse of posting around all the Ylands forum/discord/reddit just to let people know your community is leaving for the 3rd time isn't a good one. 

You need to not take what I say personally especially when I clearly mentioned that I'm not talking to you. 

I haven't posted on the Forum in ages but this was a reply to something I said and therefore felt it was relevant to reply.  I don't think conversing further will be a good use of my time. All the best ?

Edited April 18, 2021 by RedEagle_P1.

[bojo2736 1016]

As much as I'd like to share in spilling the tea, this is really off topic.  I do think the game is improving, it has strayed from what I originally bought.  Fighting bosses and leveling up is the furthest thing from what I found charming about this game. That kind of game is ubiquitous, and done better by other franchises. If we can find a middle ground, it will be worth staying for.

[kimbuck 746]

Some time   ago,  during the   echo chamber  era ...the period of the  great silence ...   i made the comment  that  after the  enthusiasm of  announcing Tencent  involvement,  we suddenly  get  mobile based   mini games  ( very popular in Asia) ..and a new Asian  Biome ..(which looks  great). 

But   exploration was forgotten.  The  PVE players  were forgotten.  A group of us   felt like we were un-paid  game testers,  as every time we played,  the game would  crash and we sent in bug  report  and  output logs. Some of us  spent  more time waiting to log in or sending in output logs   that we spent  actually  in game.  ( if  we got in and  didn't get  kicked out  after 10 minutes

Thankfully  Adam  arrived  and he listened to our  pleas to get the  game playable ... but  did they listen to him?

It was obvious  to  some of  us  that  Tencent  was  funding   Ylands ... because as the saying  goes   " He who pays the piper,  gets their  tune  played".   and  what we were hearing  ( when something was done)  was not  music to the  regular players  ears.

I stuck with Ylands  because of  P1 and   Red ... we had a community that was initially  working to  help Bi develop the  game, with  scripting  enhancements   and  suggestions that  made the game  playable  and   a community that interacted.

Suddenly the  rules  changed after tencent  partnership was announced ....  the  servers   changed,   other things  changed,  and all the  coding work was  tossed  out and those who worked their  butts off  trying to help  were literally  ignored.

And  so were the players.  The exodus  began.   and is  still going on.

We would  send in log /bug reports and  there was not  even acknowledgement.

And i   found out   as soon as i posted here  a positive criticism designed to  highlight  an area  of needed improvement ,  my posts were literally  pushed off the  front  page  by a  orchestrated   wave of   "fan-boi" postings waxing  lyrical  about the  mobiles  or  mini games ..

It was obvious  they didn't  want  people to see any criticism...  even though it was intended to  be  helpful in fixing  something  important.

Will i stay with   Ylands?  Its  basically a good  game in concept but  rather than  fixing   what they have   got,  there's  still talk of  adding mythical new  shiny things.

Guys...  all you are doing is  adding  pretty flags and shiny decals to a  car   that's got  no wheels and a broken engine.   

I play  Ylands  as i have an old   computer... and its capable of  running the game , but not powerful enough to run  other games  ...like   Journey of  Life,   Subsistence, etc.

I am saving up  for  a new  computer,  an  i7 with the  top  NVidia   graphics   card.   When that arrives ...  Ylands will be  collecting  dust on a shelf  along  with the original  sims,   donkey  kong, ...

Unless the game  improves...       but  i am not  holding  up  hopes  from  what   i  hear ...and  see  at the  moment.

 

 

PS   Just saw Bojo's   post  ..agree  100%     We didn't  buy this  game to  fight   boss monster, level up    etc ...we bought it based on the original  road map .    look at he original log in screen and see what we expected.

If you want to  bring  the players  back,  bring  the original concept  back.

But it may be too late.

 

Edited April 19, 2021 by kimbuck
updated

[lady_whynot 71]

18 hours ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

Although I respect your opinion

You're not doing that right now. You want to determine what will become of ylands and with your unjustified criticism you destroy the game for us. The developers of Ylands determine what will become of this game and the majority of players will have control over it. You can't outvote all of them. Fortunately, you won't be able to do this. Then ylands would really be at the end of your wishes.