I see it a lot in game now about how what we have now is pretty much all we are getting along with some balance changes and RTC/Cosmetic items. People comment about the low player base being the death of the game, The fact the development team has gradually gotten smaller and the scope for the game has changed. You need to provide reassurance to players and a great way to do this is through a roadmap. The Roadmap should disclose in list what is actively being worked on, items are listed in order that they are going to be implemented with only the closest items requiring a date. The list might be as follows (only for example) 1. Mastercraft Weapon Rework (March) 2. Elite Units (April) 3. Vehicle weapon customization 4. Vehicle Cosmetics 5. New Game Mode 6. Bike based vehicles Between all of these items you get the usual content updates consisting of mainly tweaks and balance changes. The list would go on to show more long term goals and many would not have dates be disclosed. The list serves to show what is actively being worked on now and an estimate of when it can be expected, Delays happen we all know this. It also shows what is to come in the future. Currently there is nothing we can do to find out what the game will become, The only thing we have had given to the community is our top 10 wish list but no word on what is actually happening. Everytime the stream is up we get the usual "Bug fixes, Changes and we are working on stuff to come" The community needs some reassurance especially given the frequent reduction in the development team. Without this it simply seems like the people are right with "This is it, nothing much changing, Little content and just cosmetics to get money before another game is announced or this ones development is officially closed"
Remember when this game was released as beta version and Campaign got launched at 2017 instead of 2016 december. Setting up roadmap/due date are not type of things to EC development team. This is how EC development team working on it 1. Mastercraft Weapon Rework (2017) 2. Elite Units (2017) 3. Vehicle weapon customization (2017) 4. Vehicle Cosmetics(2017) 5. New Game Mode (2017 or 2018) 6. Bike based vehicles (2018)
Don't expect too much in the way of disclosing intentions or plans. They wouldn't even confirm/acknowledge the major shift to ranged meta.
They don't need to do anything, they already have our money. If the game shuts down tomorrow, they will be working on other projects the following week. It is this air of hopefulness that they rely on, hoping people will buy more RTC. Spending RTC is irrelevant, most of us have thousands sat doing nothing, so the chance of someone like that paying anything else towards the game are non existant.
You mean the chances of the new players who are about to influx into the game? Those who do research will not buy anything with RTC as the game simply appears to not have future plans or go anywhere beyond balance and cosmetics.
While i am completely annoyed by how the handle things and how they lack any kind of transperecy I also understand that they will never be able to create such a list without beeing accused of it later down the road. The bE team which works on EC is (to my best knowledge) probably around <10 guys, some not even working fulltime on it, other stuff just gets bought or implemented from other inhouse projects. The game itself was at a point where keeping up those <1000 concurrent users barely covered running it and allowed only for adding small features to exstract fresh cash from -existing- costumers. While the rest of their energy had to be focussed on the future. EC without the bundles and promos simply didnt sell anymore. With the fresh f2p launch they can not make any kind of promises. They dont know how many sales they will have and if they can afford to maybe double their team, or maybe even have to move someone away if things dont pick up. So in reality they give you a list of maybes and vague ideas in the hope for things to stabilize. Especially since some of the things they might have on their internal roadmap might not be feasable for the public. Everyone would be annoyed and scream murder if they would have bulletpoints screaming cheap profit increase before new content. Furthermore it would turn off existing players if they knew their promised Elite class might be moved to the backburner for 2018 in favour of adding features to make the game more attractive for f2p players. People (myself included) often make the assumption that we can compare EC to some early alpha game who pushes out big roadmaps or some successfull tripple A company giving out a roadmap after secretly designing the game for years and pretty much having infinity ressources to push through incase things turn south. bE on the otherhand drove the project to the ground before Nathan and Brent took over. They worked with what they had and they tried to salvage it as best as they could and it is not even clear at this point if they were successfull. So are we all really ready for the honest answers and the ugly implications they might have? I think not and neither would it be healthy for the game which might still be salvageable.
Very good post @LordSloth ! I just want to add the example of the Terminators: They showcasted them in the Steam-Show in an early stage and sayed they are working on them and they will be there soon. And everyone was hyped! But then some things happend (animation too expansive? not enougth manpower to do them and at the same time still fix and expand the actual game?) and they had to stop the work on them. And now, in every steam but also in almost every thread, there is someone asking about, when the Terminator we saw will be ingame... So even if I don't like it from my perspective, I would probably do the same, if I was them: Just talking about things that are close and that for sure will make it into the game...
