Feedback on Recent Updates and Game Balance

Buckingham Palace Suggestions
1

Genuinely, Alfred, it really feels like you must hate civilians at this point. I don’t understand how else to explain the direction these updates have been going. First, you decided to re-enable the body armour, which, in my opinion, completely ruined the balance of the game. It took away a lot of the skill and strategy that made gameplay enjoyable, and instead made fights feel dragged out and frustrating rather than fun or rewarding.

Then, on top of that, you went ahead and nerfed heists. Heists used to be one of the most exciting parts of the game they were challenging, sure, but they felt doable with the right planning and teamwork. Now they just feel unnecessarily difficult. The changes have made them way harder to complete, to the point where it feels more frustrating than engaging. Instead of rewarding smart play, it feels like you’re constantly being punished, and even experienced players struggle to pull them off consistently.

And as if that wasn’t enough, you also nerfed civilian cars. That change especially makes it feel like civilians are just being pushed further and further down in terms of importance. It’s like every update makes it harder for civilians to enjoy the game or even keep up, while other playstyles seem to get more attention.

Honestly, ever since you became a developer, the game has felt like it’s been going downhill. Update after update, things seem to get worse instead of better. Instead of improving gameplay or addressing real issues the community has been talking about for a long time, it feels like changes are being made that nobody asked for or worse, changes that people specifically didn’t want.

What’s frustrating is that the community does give feedback. People are constantly sharing ideas, suggestions, and concerns, but it doesn’t seem like those voices are actually being heard. If anything, it feels like the opposite is happening.

You really need to start listening to your community more. And I don’t just mean one group I mean everyone. Ask the MPS players, sure, but also make sure they actually look at and consider the suggestions civilians have been making. Right now, it feels like there’s a disconnect, and that’s hurting the overall experience for a lot of players.

At the end of the day, people just want the game to be fun, balanced, and fair for everyone. But with the current direction, it’s hard not to feel like that’s being lost.

7

Hello,

It seems safe to say that whenever a change actually makes the game more fun to play, MPS mains complain on mass, resulting in that change being quickly removed or nerfed. Because MPS mains make up the majority of the current player base, it is obvious that their numbers will always drown out the opinions of civilian players.

Let’s take the recent body armor removal as an example. When body armor was disabled, civilian mains who had quit because of it started playing again. Even some MO19 mains admitted the game was much better and a lot more fun to play. However, players lacking game sense complained because they could no longer just dismount into straight gunfire and rely on their armor to survive. :sad_but_relieved_face:

Around this same time, server lag was causing guns to appear to shoot faster due to an audio/visual bug. Alfie, assumed we were autoclicking or macroing, which made no sense. Your subsequent “fix” actually proved this was impossible, as it showed you cannot shoot faster than the game’s internal settings allow anyway. Despite this, armor was brought back to the game -and keep in mind, this was done without the feedback thread that was explicitly PROMISED to us in the update log.

Another aspect that makes the situation worse is that Jake is the only developer who occasionally plays as a civilian (and he is the only one actively trying to improve the civ experience). I do not intend to attack you, Alfie, but let’s be honest: whenever something annoys you in-game, your immediate solution is to just block it or remove it. Getting sniped from the Green Park wall? A massive invisible barrier is added. Cars driving in front of the gates? Invisible barriers. People driving around the fence near Broadway? Invisible barrier. Supercars that cost £250 worth of Robux actually being fast? You made them slower and caused them to break after hitting just one person.

It is getting to a point where you ask the community for feedback, only to do the exact opposite. Even when you do listen to the polls, the results are obviously skewed in favor of MPS advantages. This is simply because MPS mains are the only ones left playing; alot of the dedicated civilian mains have already quit due to these changes.

One of the reasons I brought Infernus back was because I felt playing as a civilian was becoming slightly more enjoyable again. It reminded me of the old days, and honestly, playing MO19 was no fun at all when there were no real civilians left to fight against which is why I resigned along some other factors. But then, suddenly, everything reverted: you re-added armor, nerfed civ cars, nerfed the heist, increased lockpicking difficulty, and reduced the top speed on upgrades we literally paid for.

I highly suggest that the developers use alternate accounts (or change their in-game usernames) and play on the civilian team with just one perm gun to see if they actually enjoy the current balance. Right now, developers seem to primarily play as police, and whenever they do play as civs, they aren’t experiencing the role organically. You can’t ignore the fact that people are quitting because the balance has gotten so bad. Realistically, what is this game without civilians and OCGs? Just driving around an empty London with no crime to deal with - sounds very fun because according to some people ITS MORE REALISTIC. :+1:

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3

I completely agree with Eevee. The game has been deteriorating day by day, and players are no longer enjoying it after these updates. Most of the good updates seem to go to MPS players, while updates for civilians are either very rare or practically nonexistent

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4

this is so true. idk why they are putting civs so down. probably as theyre so much better tehn all the rest of the ‘serious’ divisions.

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5

I can see this as true as all the updates, all the good things go to MPS, RG, but all civilians get is just some more things that makes heists/killing MPS harder.

6

Eevee, I am so glad you have pointed this matter out. Although I do not necessarily agree with talking ill of a developer in a sense: these changes must not go unnoticed.

I really value you taking the time to point out this conundrum in its entirety. Although I must address some things.

BODY ARMOUR:
PROS:

  • Provides an advantage in player vs player combat scenarios to the enforcing team (RG, MPS), which in turn provides a combative advantage unique to these divisions or teams, therefore allowing for more dynamic PvP situations.

CONS:

  • This creates, in some scenarios, an imbalance to the civilian team, which you have pointed out in your suggestion post. I believe that across a wide variety of combat dynamics, the civilians are placed into a severe, game play ruining imbalance, which must not go unnoticed.

I believe armor, especially for divisions with copious amount of body armor, like combative uniform for the Grenadier Guards, which provides close to 70 percent of extra health, is simply unacceptable. There should (and already has been for civilians) a limit to body armor. I believe combative armor and divisional armor should be capped at a more reasonable, equally obtainable (on both sides of the player base: civilian and teams) scale, like 50 percent body armor (obtainable for 400 in game currency for civilians, for free for divisional members and armed officers) which means that the advantage is still there for divisionals, in that divisionals are then able to get body amour consistently ever life for free, but civilians can get the same amount of armor for a hefty price (400 in game pounds for heavy body armor, with smaller amounts of armor for a smaller fee as is currently implemented)

All in all, there are more things I would like to point out pros and cons for, in account for both sides of the argument to ensure there is no imbalance created out of spite, but I do wish for the negligence to the civilian team via consistent nerfs, lack of fun updates, and much more.

I must say I do appreciate the recent nerfs and regards to feedback, most notably including the PAVA nerfs, where PAVA is now useable as a way to incapacitate civilians, but not to its former, superbly overpowered sense wherein civilians faced no opportunity of escape.

All in all, there has been efforts to rebalance civilians and MPS, but I believe there is still ABSOLUTELY work to be done in regards to current major imbalances to the civilian team, and the constant nerfs to enjoyable aspects of civilian gameplay must come to an immediate halt and reversal.

Kindest regards,

ThatAirlineGuy :cold_face:

PS: Alfred, pls can u return the McLaren to its original state or just refund people who bought the car when it was actually usable, not a flying piece of glass, or however you described its update, as it is as fragile as a ford fiesta now without spending hideous amounts of money on upgrades!

9

I agree 100%. I’m fed up with MPS constantly being favored, and there being no balance. Oh yeah, I forgot: Civs has sports cars that are 100% faster than normal MPS cars, but MPS still has more protection on its cars and more unbalanced elements. For example, as a Civ player, you have to spend 80 Robux just for a sniper rifle, which is free in the MPS team. Where is the balance? Make the sniper class be removed so that MPs and GGs have to pay for snipers with in-game currency in the future, even in Civ teams. This would improve the balance and make it more fun.

I’ll set a price, since the sniper is a really overpowered weapon. The price would be 2500 in-game currency for each side; that would be fair for everyone involved.

10

I agree, the changes caused me to quit to, i only come back for the people still playing the game not for the game itself as its so shit and boring to play

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8

I agree nice

11

I do understand where a lot of this is coming from, especially from a civilian perspective. Some of the recent changes have made gameplay feel more restrictive and less rewarding, and I do think that’s a fair concern to raise.

That said, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to direct this at Alfred personally. At the end of the day, Volute Games is a business, and he’s “just” a developer working within that business. He implements changes based on multiple factors like priorities and feedback, not just personal preference.

I think the more productive discussion is around overall balance rather than blame. From what I’ve heard, there does seem to be a growing disconnect between civilian gameplay and the rest of the game. The game relies on both sides being enjoyable. If civilian gameplay becomes frustrating in the way described above, you’ll naturally see fewer civilians, which then impacts the experience for everyone else as well.

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13

I’m going to sum up my response to this generic feedback post into a few points, and if anyone has any specific suggestions around changes, they can feel free to make separate suggestions.

Why was body armour re-enabled?

Response

As we stated when we disabled body armour, it was for a live test to see how the game would fare without it. We saw an interesting dynamic happening with ‘organised criminals’ vs Police Specialists where gunfights had fundamentally changed back to how they were before body armour was added. Whilst this was positive, we did see negatives in other areas, especially with unarmed players and armed players alike. RG and MPS rely on their reactionary basis to be able to respond to threats - they cannot engage somebody unless their pull their weapon out. We saw that by the time MPS had any tangible time to respond to a gun (often being shot in the back), they were already dead.
We didn’t want to extend the TTK across the board, so we made the decision to reimplement body armour. This gave MPS a fighting chance when they were disadvantaged prior, giving them a suitable time to react to a threat and return fire (or hide, or flee). This helps with our general goal of ‘slowing the game down’ (more on that later).

Why do you keep nerfing the heist?

Response

Players will have noticed we’ve made numerous balancing changes over the past few months to the national gallery heist. The intention for heists were to be a big-ticket, high-risk, high-reward mission where players are thoroughly challenged in order to receive a sizable payout. The heist is not meant to be the main attraction of the game and is intended to unite groups of players together in a payday-style mission. Heists have always been massively unbalanced and we’ve implemented various measures over the past few updates to try combat this.
We’ve been tracking heist statistics and seen that over 66% of heists are a success, with 90% of the heists raking in the maximum reward available. In line with the economy for the game and how it’s meant to work, it is important for us to control the success rate of the heist to ensure that players are not earning too much money in a short timespan which would defeat the progression element of the game.The balancing changes we make are thoroughly reasoned and examples are demonstrated below:

Problem: Players can ‘farm’ heists in smaller servers to avoid being caught as easy
Solution: Increase amount of MPS required and total players required to start a heist

Problem: Players who are evading the police can use a friend’s fast car to evade the police and ANPR detection, often leading to confusion as to who the heisters are
Solution: Players must infiltrate NG with the heist van and also exfiltrate their goods with the van

Problem: Players will often enter the gallery and immediately exit once the alarm goes off, then circle the map for 5 minutes whilst the police search for them. They will then return to NG to collect the rest of the loot.
Rebuttal: Police should guard NG to prevent them coming back (not engaging for police)
Solution: Players can no longer unlock the “high ticket” inner-room once they are evading the police, reduced time limit on heists to avoid endless chases.

People seem to forget that the heist is intended to be difficult and is intended to be a struggle for all players.

Why did you nerf civilian cars?

Response

We didn’t nerf civilian cars. Every vehicle across-the-board was nerfed to reduce it’s top speed. The engine upgrade change also affects police vehicles. Pursuits are no longer engaging when you can flee the police at 200+mph, especially considering performance implications with streaming and rendering new content. This, again, reduces the pace of the game slightly and makes it a bit more manageable.

You don’t listen to the community on what we want

Response

Some direct examples of changes we’ve implemented based on community feedback:

  • Major PAVA Nerf
  • Additional respawn timer if you repeatedly die
  • RG Officers have handcuffs
  • Players involved in a heist when the server shuts down will be reimbursed
  • Horse revamp
  • Reworked ATM robbery
  • Readded auctions
  • Gave PM access to animations menu
  • Cars no longer despawn if you leave whilst someone is driving it
  • MPS vehicle armour nerf
  • Increased vendor count
  • Armour vest nerf (before we disabled them)

… and so many more. I don’t agree with the prospect that we never listen to the community because most of our updates are based on feedback.

“Slowing the game down”
I’ve referred in this post to this a few times. The game’s pace currently is far too fast to keep up with. For some experienced players, this is normal to them and what they expect – but this isn’t necessarily positive. It’s extremely restrictive for new players who are trying to learn and casual players who aren’t as competitive as everyone else. We want to slow the game down to make it fun for everybody, and more accessible. Yes, this means nerfed time-to-kill speeds (body armour, possibly a reduction in damage for guns), vehicle top speed reductions and other balancing changes that make gameplay more thought-out and less ‘meta-meta-meta’.

We thoroughly value community feedback for all of our updates and changes. Players will naturally dislike changes because people are resistant to change, but in reality, change is needed in order to preserve the game’s lifecycle and keep the game fun for all.

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