Early on, at the end of "beta" and at the start of "Release" I heard a comment about Jordy's Vision.

The comment was that "he was making the game he always wanted to play."
I am very curious if weather the current state of xsyon is what he meant.

I am fully aware some here still love this game, and a few might take exception
to what I am saying, but it seems more important to me to be honest and specific
than to worry about ruffling a few peacock feathers.

Mechanics of a game define what you can do in a game. But More important is the
psychological aspect of what a player gets out of a game that will determine if they
will contimue to play it for years or just quickly move on to something else.

All the commenting, suggestions to date, and ideas and conflicts between the PVP and PVE
crowds, have not improved the game to be more playable, and it doesn't matter who is to
blame since we still lost a ton of players that just didn't stay. Population is the key.

The game in it's current state is just not "fun".

I define fun in the same way as anyone...

"I really enjoyed doing that." ( examples: Winning at tag, dodging ALL the balls, Your team won )
"We really had a hard time taking down that huge bear, but man, we had a blast!"
"You know, those zombies can be a real pain, but they do drop really useful things"

Building a cool multi-story house is fun to me personally, but hardly anyone else
seems to enjoy the process involved in doing it. ( dirt piles and dirt removal )

Mutants and zombies surely give a sense of fear and caution, but the difficulty and
lack of reward makes them more of a frustration than anything, and adds a sense of
pointlessness that drives players away.

So many have downloaded this game, played for various amounts of time and ultimately
logout and find something else to do. What's worse, is many of them were strongly
driven to support and champion this game, but now are even driven to steer others
away. Many of the people in my tribe, shoot and in many other tribes came, saw, and
left because they just didn't enjoy the experience for whatever reason.

All this is very sad to me, when you see all that CAN be done here.

The premise is great, the graphics are well done and the construction mostly spot on.

However the tedium, lack of a sense of accomplishment, and built in frustration level
is enough right now to hold this game back. Players whant to login and have fun, enjoy
the entertainment the game provides and feel like they have not wasted their time.

It's like you went to a blockbuster movie at the movieplex, expected from the ad's
that it will be full of big names and may be what you like, but after watching it you
realize the film was really tedious, you never cared about the characters, and left
feeling you just wasted 10 bucks and 2 hours of your time. ( not an exact analogy )

Think "Prince of Persia" cost 200 mil to make, made 90 mil.
( most here have experienced this even if you won't admit it )

My current suggestions.

Add regeneration or ways to heal.
Keep normal animals respawning regularly and cut down on the number of mutants.
Only spawn zombies where a big tribe was and never at 1 man totems.
drasticly reduce the number of junk piles or at lease reduce the size of the ones in game.
Re-balance the scav tables to be in line with reality, few manufactured items and more resources types including patterns.
Simplify mechanics until you can be SURE what you put in are actually working like you want.

Of course, all this takes money, time and effort. You seem to have the money, and have put in lots of effort, but I fear you are out of time.


( I really would love this game to suceed. However I can't even sucessfully login to the game )