Is the game already dying?

    If a standard work week is 40 hours and been working 4 weeks, that's 160 hours of work. If work 60 hours a week, then 240 hours in a month.


    Anyone who play this game more than ppl work and wonder why there's no content...

    This is a direct symptom of the issue I went into great detail on in my thread: The leveling grind will kill this game.


    Though In this thread I specifically focus on the poor leveling design and how it will be the number one reason that players quit, it is still the same concept for endgame progression as well. I only focused on the leveling system in that thread because that is the first thing that a player will experience in an mmorpg, and this is something that CAN be worked on in the bate stage. If you fail to captivate a playerbase while they are in the leveling phase, then your game has a much more serious problem than "lack of endgame content".


    I planned on making a series of threads like this, detailing problems in the game that can be remedied in our version, given GF puts in a little effort to actually attempt to learn from the mistakes of other versions. But at this point I lost all interest in providing feedback on this beta. How many Korean MMO have I seen flushed down the drain by terrible publishers. Why would I think it would be any different for this game.


    Anyways, Just like OP, I was in quite a few guilds and I noticed the exact same thing, the vast majority of players tend to quit or play significantly less around level 35-50; the point where the game's terribly unrewarding and repetitive, grind begins to hit home. This game IS losing steam, and a lot faster than I predicted. After a lack-luster leveling experience, these players will get to level cap and find, you guessed it: literally nothing. The grind is terrible, the end game is non-existent, the cash shop is overpriced and unfair. A perfect recipe for having the worst player retention rates possible in an online game, and it can be so easily remedied. It blows my mind how these publishers are so bad at running a game.


    There is a reason why Warframe - a game that was on life support by a nearly bankrupt studio for years, a game that was terribly grindy and lackluster in its beta (like soulworker, but probably worse tbh), went from being an irrelevant passion project from a tiny indie studio, to one of THE greatest F2P games of all time. Soulworker has much potential to be a force in the Western anime mmo space. Too bad it will never be realized by the people who own/run the game. Same old sad story, different game. Perhaps the next anime mmo that releases will be that game. Better luck next time I guess. I was hoping it would be this game. Yeah, never gonna happen with Gameforge. Their name alone has the power to turn away players en masse.

    • This game is so dead, it takes hours to find a group in dungeons with manic quests
    • This game is so dead, nobody sells anything
    • This game is so dead, nobody is posting on the forum
    • This game is so dead, nobody is making videos

    Gosh those threads are annoying. No the previous statements are still not correct and most of what was said about the game dying is just random mumbling. Sure there are things to improve, there are always things to improve, but we are in no crisis. Those thread pop up in every game once in a while and are as relevant as a raincoat at a sunny summer day.


    A game dies when the publisher releases no more content or decides to close it. I have only rarely seen a game dying due to low popularity.

    Quote from Nitros
    • This game is so dead, it takes hours to find a group in dungeons with manic quests
    • This game is so dead, nobody sells anything
    • This game is so dead, nobody is posting on the forum
    • This game is so dead, nobody is making videos

    Gosh those threads are annoying. No the previous statements are still not correct and most of what was said about the game dying is just random mumbling. Sure there are things to improve, there are always things to improve, but we are in no crisis. Those thread pop up in every game once in a while and are as relevant as a raincoat at a sunny summer day.


    A game dies when the publisher releases no more content or decides to close it. I have only rarely seen a game dying due to low popularity.

    Games die from low popularity all the time, a perfect example of this is MxM a game published by NCSOFT that released last year then closed like 6 months later. Some of the main reasons it died was due to the publisher not listening to its payerbase, and when they finally did listen it was to late the population had decreased to much for it to be sustainable.


    While the genres of these two games are different it is still a perfect example of what happens when a publisher ignores what the payers have to say.

    qk24OWM.png

    A game closing after 6 month probably doesn't reached a specific quota. What can you change it 6 month? Almost nothing. In other words the publisher considered it not being worth to invest in it further. This can have a multitude of reasons, besides "the publisher not listening to its playerbase". Like being way more expensive then what is earned or revenue being to small for the management, although it's totally within what similar games earn.


    You also don't listen to the whole playerbase, you listen to specif smart suggestion of certain individual in the playerbase. The majority of humanity is way to easy to influence and doesn't think for themself, nor has the knowledge to to make wise decisions. The remove stamina vs. the lack of endgame content topics are a good example where the playerbase contradict each other and it's better to follow the initial game design.

    If people can't put a bit of effort leveling in something like this game then everyone's been spoiled to shit from playing faceroll games where challenges only begin after hitting cap.

    Certainly not. I plan to whale this game so I can have all the cute costumes and leet gears for all characters /s


    In all seriousness, I don't think you should be putting your expectations too high because while the animation is fluid and the gameplay is great, it certainly won't attract a lot of consumer at face value due to being instance based and sports a anime-themed graphics (I must say it looks very great compared to other games). Who knows though? Once they officially announce it, you could see players who left come back.


    I for one am planning to stick with it because I've been looking for a anime-themed online game for ages. 2D platform games just doesn't suit my taste and other anime online games features chibi character that I don't find appealing at all. Rusty Hearts was a good game (and had a funny story) but sadly it got shut down.


    Sincerely a lvl 55 Haru Bestia trying to rock with all da moniez

    Quote from Nitros

    A game closing after 6 month probably doesn't reached a specific quota. What can you change it 6 month? Almost nothing. In other words the publisher considered it not being worth to invest in it further. This can have a multitude of reasons, besides "the publisher not listening to its playerbase". Like being way more expensive then what is earned or revenue being to small for the management, although it's totally within what similar games earn.


    You also don't listen to the whole playerbase, you listen to specif smart suggestion of certain individual in the playerbase. The majority of humanity is way to easy to influence and doesn't think for themself, nor has the knowledge to to make wise decisions. The remove stamina vs. the lack of endgame content topics are a good example where the playerbase contradict each other and it's better to follow the initial game design.

    The 6 months was just between official release and its closure, the game went through multiple closed and open betas before release. Also no more often then not when a specific issue is brought up by multiple players there is something wrong, you cant just wait for some suggestion jesus to come along point the publishers/devs in the right direction. You look at how players are reacting to your game and ask yourself how can we improve this? You said it yourself, there is always room for improvement.


    As for a game closing due to poor earning, what do you think leads to that? Players get fed up with how things are going and leave, or they simply get bored and leave. What do you think is happening here? Players are getting fed up with how Gameforge is handling the game, getting bored with the current content or are being told to leave by the community for voicing an opinion. This all adds up eventually there wont be enough people around to sustain the game.


    I said it in the first post i made in this thread, the game may not exactly be dying but it is doing everything it can to get there. Gameforge and the community are certainly not helping.

    qk24OWM.png

    It would be dead if it had been highly populated and people left... but players haven't even arrived yet. The word is not dead, it's "undiscovered".


    Think about it, how did you find out about this game? Gameforge did a poor job in terms of promotion (or lack of). I knew about SW because I follow korean game news and youtube channels like Steparu or Rendermax, but without them I'd have no clue that this game exists and even less that it came to the west.


    All it takes is a couple of big youtubers to try it and the servers will start filling up. I remember when Blade and Soul came out NCSoft sponsored a few streamers to play the game and to do giveaways on their twitch channels, it worked really well.


    It's only been a month, let's not rush things.

    Well, gigantic payed too to some streamers to play the game, and draw the attention.

    We know how it ended

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    Quote from Misoshiru

    All it takes is a couple of big youtubers to try it and the servers will start filling up. I remember when Blade and Soul came out NCSoft sponsored a few streamers to play the game and to do giveaways on their twitch channels, it worked really well.

    As much as dislike ncsoft for various reasons, one thing they know how to do is promote their shit. it kind of makes you wonder how much faith GameForge had that soulworker would succeed, considering the promotion for their game is almost nonexistent.

    qk24OWM.png

    Quote from Geis
    Quote from Misoshiru

    All it takes is a couple of big youtubers to try it and the servers will start filling up. I remember when Blade and Soul came out NCSoft sponsored a few streamers to play the game and to do giveaways on their twitch channels, it worked really well.

    As much as dislike ncsoft for various reasons, one thing they know how to do is promote their shit. it kind of makes you wonder how much faith GameForge had that soulworker would succeed, considering the promotion for their game is almost nonexistent.

    Promote it, and then do absolutely nothing and let it die anyway.


    They hyped the fuck out of pvp and becoming an esports game, then proceeded to do nothing at all to make pvp more enticing or rewarding, with the number of imbalances, bugs, hackers, etc. Then these companies or whatever that wanted to do something with BnS and esports just left and the game tanked after that.

    Quote from Komari

    Promote it, and then do absolutely nothing and let it die anyway.


    They hyped the fuck out of pvp and becoming an esports game, then proceeded to do nothing at all to make pvp more enticing or rewarding, with the number of imbalances, bugs, hackers, etc. Then these companies or whatever that wanted to do something with BnS and esports just left and the game tanked after that.

    You're right and I'm not denying any of that. The game was badly managed and people eventually lost interest, but you cannot deny NCSoft did a very good job from announcing the beta in the west until releasing it. They had weekly livestreams of +1 hour with 3 employees answering all sorts of questions, they organized a contest to design costumes with the winners having their design added to the game, they sponsored twitch streamers as I mentioned and they knew very well how to generate interest and get new players' attention.


    What has Gameforge done so far? Absolutely nothing.

    Having a successful launch is one thing, and keeping the game alive, healthy and interesting is another. How long it can stay alive will largely depend on Lion Game's ability to create new and relevant content, while the release of the game and how it's promoted is 100% down to Gameforge, and so far they have done very poorly. I'm hoping when the beta is over they will start their marketing efforts to populate the game.

    I love Soul Worker and I'd hate to see it fail.

    Quote from Misoshiru

    I'm hoping when the beta is over they will start their marketing efforts to populate the game.


    They will promote it the same way they do with all their games. They will add image advertisements here and there in sites like Youtube and that's all.


    Just take a look at how TERA ended. This game is going to follow the same path.

    Well, it's not problem with the game, but with the people. Somebody forced you to fast grind to max level? I'm currently hitting 50 level and I still have plenty of fun with my friends. The game is still in beta so more content will be released sooner or later. There are many achievements, progress, subsequences or-whatever-they-are-called etc.


    What is more, it's really funny. People were complaining that energy system makes them unable to level up their characters. Now they are complaining that they levelled up too fast and they are bored. The irony is hilarious.

    See but people don't want that. They wanna hit cap in one day, grind for gear for a month or two, and then complain about having nothing to do and leave until the next content update comes, and then repeats. That's how most similar games like this are so clearly it's a problem when this one isn't like that too.