Beta player, +100h played : my thoughts

Hi guys,

I played this game during beta, then a lot during launch (despite a lot of freezes) and I have some experience in video games. Here are my thoughts about and some ways to improve it (cause I like this game) :

1)How to retain new players ?

In MyM, you have builders in on side, and raiders in other side (and most people do both). If there are only builders, there are no builders (cause nobody would raid so nobody would build anymore). I think the main issue in this game is this balance between number of people raiding, and people building. How retain players ?

• Curve of progress : In MyM, after few tutorials, you are just launch in game and you can directly start a raid on a brutal outpost, made by a builder with 200h+ and so, you got frustrated. On steam, you could read a lot of posts made by frustrated players about killboxes, why builder have to validate their outpost,...

Proposition : To prevent new players doing hard outposts at the beginning : they can only play normal outpost until lvl 5 (for ex), then dangerous outpost until lvl 8 when they could try brutal outposts. They would learn step by step how this game works, and how hard could be some outposts ! It could be cool aswell, new players start with outpost with a few of different traps and ennemies.

• Rework the system of ressources earned : during beta, to upgrade your outpost from lvl 1 to lvl 2 (for ex), you need 200 synthite. From 2 --> 3, 300 synthite, ... So it was way easier to upgrade your outpost at the beginning and still hard to mastered it. Devs said during Q&A that players who just want to raid can do it, and same for builders. But in fact, builders have to raid (a lot). In the last patch, devs decided to improve synthite from... raids. But thats not what builders asked for. And thats not what you said about the fact builders can only build ! Just to give you an idea, as a main builder, I have 40k parts for 200 synthite. Some main raiders have 10-20k parts for 50k synthite. You really need to rethink your economic balance.

Proposition : Raids need to give more parts than synthite (cause you need it to improve your stuff to raid), and kills in outpost more synthite than parts. Raiders have enough both ressources but for builders you need to adjust synthite from kills. Maybe a calculation like : if a dangerous outpost lvl 5 get 8 raids per lvl of prestige, and kill 4 players per raid (so 4 x8 = 32 kills), he would need 600 synthite to prestige it (for ex), and would earn 70-80% of synthite needed (to let player do some raids) so a kill give 15 synthite per average. But your new patch are just going in the wrong way !!!

2) How to retain hardcore players ?

During first 2 months of this game, Ive seen a lot of hardcore players grinding the ranking system, then hit master and... disappearing. Why ? Cause there is nothing more to do after that for them. They think they ve seen every outposts possible, beat all of them and finished the game.

I understand that this game is made around the fact that players cant choose what outpost to raid, to avoid the same outposts getting raid hundreds of times and others get no raid at all. But because of that, its both frustrating for raiders and builders cause hard outposts cant match hardcore gamers, and vice versa.

• Rework of ranking system : if you want players to keep playing MyM, you need a real ranking system, balanced. Ive seen so many new players trying to beat my 15 KDA outpost and leaving it, frustrated. I think when you reach gold ranking for ex, you need a way to be sure such players know how to be good at raiding. And so, I think they need to only raid dangerous and brutal outpost. And for master players, only brutal one. But, if a master player want to raid some normal or dangerous one, they need to have a possibility to do it so we need another way to play your game (see above). In that way, deadliest outpost need to match best raiders (mastered ones) and easiest outpost (with less KDA) need to match beginners.
• Ranking board : when a raider hits master rank, he needs something to push it more. I think a top 100 of best raider, with a calculation of KDA could fit (thats why they need to only raid brutal outpost). In that way, they could compete each other to be top 1. And sometimes a new guy with a very good KDA could hit master rank and has a chance to be top 1. A top 100 of deadliest outpost (with KDA aswell) could be great too (even most of builders dont create outpost for that I guess).

3) More interactions between players :

MyM is weird. Its an asymetric game but most of time, you have the feeling of playing a solo game (except with replays). Cause you have no way to interact with others. The only way is with the rewards when raider finish a raid. But right now, this rewards are totally useless. Its not use in any ways, even most of players give a reward after raiding. As said before, a ranking board is a first step to have more interactions between players cause they could compet with each other and read name of other competitors. But its not enough.

• Choose a specific kind of outpost to play in "normal" games : if a competitive ranking system is created, another way to play this game is needed for people who wont play it in a competitive way. So we need a fun way to play it. Here, the rewards are useful could you could create 4 categories of outposts, based on number of rewards in each catgory : artistic one (if player likes maze, decorations,...), brutal one (if player likes killboxes), ingenious one (for builders who want to see different way to create outpost) and funny one (with different ways to play this game). Of course, to be sure different outpost should be played, the choice of outpost should be random.
• We need a difference between rank games and "normal" game. I think rank game should give ranking points ofc (and no points for normal one) and more xp than normal game (maybe more ressources earned aswell). The social outpost (mastered one, outpost that dont respect HRV way,...) could be in this normal raid aswell (with filters needed to have a difference between mastered outpost, HRV way or not,...). Builders would earn less ressources from kills when a player is doing their outpost in normal way. Ofc, you could see the difference between normal and rank raids in replays in order to help builders to understand the way players is doing it, and why they earned less ressources from kills.
• Daily/Weekly outpost to raid : A lot of players on steam forums asked for a daily or weekly outpost. It could be a mastered outpost, every day / week a different one, and maybe in each category. Players who raid it could earn a lot of ressources and we could have a leaderboard of players with less death and after that best time (when a player escaped with matgen, he couldnt do it again, 1 "try" per outpost). In that way, players would could back to play MyM again and again (specially the hardcore gamers).

In this post, I tried to respect the work of devs as much as possible. I didnt talk about some changes like finishing their outpost to publish it, that is against the vision of devs. I gave my thoughts of the easier, faster and best ways improve it. Because I think its a good game overall and I totally understand the way they created it. I didnt write anything about bugs, crashes or freezes cause they know there are some issues and they work on it.

I know my propositions need some work and it couldnt be create in just few weeks, but I think it could help this game to have a good core players (specially about the way to have more interactions between players). As for DbD, this game could start slowly and have few thousand of players in some months !! And ofc, we all hope to have more seasons and more traps/unit/weapon and armor every season ;-)

I hope some devs would come here and just say they read me, cause to be honest I wrote a lot to give some advices and my thoughts of this game, and Im bored of doing it anymore so its gonna be my last proposition...

Thank you read me.

L3goury