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What I (and the community) think is wrong with the game

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Pricey
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What I (and the community) think is wrong with the game

Post by Pricey » Tue Jun 25, 2019 9:58 pm

As a player of Superfighters Deluxe for almost four years now, the Steam release of the game was always something I avidly looked forward to, and couldn't wait for the game to finally have the compatibility of Steam servers and accounts. When the day finally came around, it was unfortunately quite underwhelming, and didn't really have the excitement behind it that I (and many others) thought that it would. While this could be down to a multitude of reasons, I've gathered some of the community's ideas, suggestions and reasons as to why the game didn't explode like most of us thought it would, and also as to why the game today is pretty inactive.

The Paywall

Something a lot of us anticipated is that diminishing of the playerbase due to the paywall and the young average age of the community. People obviously weren't going to buy the game, either out of financial reasons or in protest or not thinking it was worth it, nonetheless, a lot of the community parted ways with the game when it released on Steam, and it was noticable, too. At any given time you'll probably see about 10-15 servers on the server browsing tab, compare this to the Pre-Alpha, Alpha and Beta versions - where server numbers often exceeded 40 and 50 - and it's not difficult to see that the community clearly is smaller now than it was before. The financial world of gaming isn't a very forgiving one, and many people will probably pass on the opportunity to buy a game from a small indie-developer team, especially with no marketing. This is why I think the game needs a demo version, a small version of the game, having a locked amount (say, 30 minutes to an hour) of online server gameplay, and on top of that have snippets of the campaigns and challenges be allowed to be played. More people will be willing to try a game where they know they have no money to lose on it, and more people trying it will eventually lead to more people buying it, and hopefully, the community expanding.

Community Interaction

Simply put, there is not enough community interaction between the devs and the players. Places like the forums can only allow for so much communication, and real-time, quick communications between the devs and the playerbase will encourage more people to play more often, and address another problem that I think the game has, which is unneeded/wanted additions to the game (some of which the community has really had no say in, like the chainsaw, which a lot of the community feel is still too overpowered as a weapon). Take Invisigun Heroes for example, the game has a guest version demo, which can be used to get a taste for the game. It also operates a discord where the developer of the game interacts frequently with the community, asking for input on additions, bug fixes, updates, etc. The game started in the same position SFD was in, a small indie developer with not a lot of recognition nor marketing ability for his game, but his interaction with the community on a regular, real-time basis allowed the game to flourish and the community to stay active, constantly trialling the game to find new tactics, additions, and exploits for fixing, which can be directly reported and responded to within a moment's notice. The game's Discord server is now verified and has almost 1,500 members, runs regular tournaments organised mostly independently by the community and acts as their "forums".

The message here is that regular, easy community interaction goes a long way. People are reluctant to post threads on the forums but are much more comfortable communicating in a casual, less-strict environment like a Discord server. Indie games like Nuclear Throne (community verified server, 3,200 members), King Arthur's Gold (also community verified, 2,670 members) and Deadbolt (360 members), RoR 1 (community verified, almost 5,000 members) and RoR 2 (official server, nearly 70,000 members; although I understand this one is not entirely plausible) have benefitted immensely from the community's and developer's constant presence. I understand that with full-time jobs in the real world, constant communication is not possible all the time, but making the effort to establish a presence on a messaging service like Discord will get the community involved a lot more than they ever would on the forums.

Game Additions and Updates

We all love when updates roll around, especially when it's to address things that have been flagged as major problems within the game itself. I know that I, for one, do love the increased amount of content being pumped out into the game, but I don't think that it is good for the game or its balancing. One problem that I think these additions are facing is that there is not enough testing done within an intense, game-like environment, and because of this, weapons often get added that are unbalanced, don't fit into the current weapon pool, or are just downright overpowered. Take two quite recent additions as examples, the Chainsaw and Incendiary Ammo. Both of these things are extremely good pickups, while chainsaw has been nerfed somewhat by making fuel consumption triggered any time the weapon is wielded, the chainsaw is still the best melee weapon by a long margin and is still 100% a power weapon. Whether this was to counteract the natural imbalance between guns and melee, I have no idea. But the weapon deflects all bullets and can even send grenades flying back in the direction they came from, all in the package of a melee weapon, which should be outclassed by a gun. The weapon's power is quite obvious to see when the developed meta for countering it is to just run for your life. Incendiary Ammo turns any ordinary, common gun and turns it into a near-power weapon. The Uzi is a mediocre weapon by itself, it has some unpredictable inaccuracy which can translate to poor range when shooting. Slap some fire ammo on this bad boy, and it becomes a weapon of mass destruction with damage output rivalling the M60.

Another thing that contributes to these new additions is campaigns. We all love campaigns (and want to see more come out), but one thing I think is misunderstood is that we want all weapons from the campaign in the game. This is not the case. It almost seemed as if the introduction of characters such as the MetroLaw guards and Meatgrinder was the sole reason as to why the Riot Shotgun (quite evident from the game's initial phase as a pump-action shotgun reskin) and Chainsaw was added to the game, respectively. These weapons really had no real reason to be added, other than the campaign's existence. We are fine with campaign-exclusive weapons, some weapons are better suited for campaign play and less suited for 8-player battle royale gameplay.

One thing I would like to add onto my first point in this section is the introduction as some sort of beta-tester program, similar to the one operated before the game was released on Steam, but for additions to the game. With your jobs in the real-world and time spent actually developing the game, coding, making maps, etc. it is not possible for you to play the game as much as we do. I'd be confident in saying that the introduction of a beta program to first test and balance these new weapons would be largely beneficial to the game and would stop overpowered weapons from entering the weapon pool in the first place, being complained about, then eventually being nerfed into mediocrity (.45 Pistol) or not being nerfed enough (Chainsaw) in a later hotfix. The game is too far in now for "fun" and "it's not meant to be played seriously" to justify the addition of these types of things.

I will quote something I have previously said in the "Player Count Recovery is essential" thread that I will have linked below, concerning the lack of active playerbase for the game:
Pricey wrote:Free weekends work wonders for games, especially smaller indie ones that people wouldn't normally risk paying money for (even more so at the price SFD is marketed at). I have plenty of games in my library that I have gone out and bought after free weekends (Crusader Kings 2, Monaco and Payday 2 are a few examples).
Weapon Uniquity

The past few updates, especially through the Beta and Release versions, have seen the release of many weapons that are too similar to the other, pre-existing weapons in the weapon pool. Most of the automatic rifles, excluding the M60 and Assault Rifle, are basically the same guns with some lightly tweaked damage stats and fire rates (MP50 being another campaign-spurred addition). Weapons that are added should be unique and have a place in the weapon pool, as opposed to being reskins of other weapons that have been changed a little. It is futile to add new weapons that won't stand out if they're not powerful, the .45 Pistol stood out because it was the best secondary when it was added, but was eventually nerfed into what is essentially a normal pistol.

The game's weapon pool is destined to stagnate if the addition of redundant weapons continue (weapons like the MP50, Riot Shotgun, Machine Pistol, Lead Pipe, Hammer, etc.). This is not to say that the game hasn't undergone unique weapon additions recently, the Whip has long range at the expense of hit speed and can be used to keep someone off you from a safe distance, the shock baton's stun ability can be utilised in combat but is countered by its recharge time. These weapons are good, unique additions that have a place in the weapon pool, whose abilities are not shared by any other weapons. These are the types of weapons that should be considered for addition, not the other weapons that are essentially just reskins of already-existed weapons that I mentioned above.


Some Useful Threads

I've highlighted these threads in particular because they already address things I've wanted to bring up, I encourage anyone reading this post to check these threads out as well:

What's the point of power weapons? - mgtr14
Player Count Recovery is essential - Rick Avory
Opinions on combos in melee? - mgtr14
Why I think the game needs a free weekend - The Potatolord
Two game versions - Shock
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Post by Noble » Wed Jun 26, 2019 5:18 am

That's a nice post. I'll try to explain my point of view about this and make suggestions too.

First, I think the community is falling and it can fall deeper if we don't do anything. The game sales are probably increasing yeah, and there are probably a consistent number of players playing it daily. Actually, we can see it here (it's weird though, I guess most of them are playing the campaigns and challenges by themselves? Join the multiplayer guys!!). but let's be frank and accept that the game is not as before, in a bad way. The devs are probably saying "what?" to this, but all these posts about a supposed game decadence aren't just exaggeration or hysteria, it's a legitimate concern of us, few resting active players.

I've seen a lot of games, development tools and artists growing and building up an active community through Discord yeah, I think it's about time the devs make a community base there. But I'll be simple and take quick examples here, I've just took a look here real fast and starting by the Godot Engine, an official well structured Discord server for it made the community overwhelmingly active; Coromon, this game did not even launch, and the Discord server they made is already their mean of feedback and suggestions and it works so well (but their growth is probably mostly because of Twitter I guess, people like to interact with game gifs they see there apparently); Haxarena, it's a random browser table football game which isn't even that good and it had ads of it on FB back ago, but it surprised me how there are a lot of community interaction along with events and competitive championships in their server (believe me, it's something massive).

Also, having a Discord account or server doesn't mean y'all need to be very active there or read 100% of the messages and feedback from people, you wouldn't have to read even one third of them. In fact, in most of these servers, the developers rarely show up (of course the better the interaction is the better it is for the game, but we can just be efficient).

I think the lack of official events are something to be added to the list, too. There are people complaining about this ALL AROUND THE GLOBE! Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating. But this game is a competitive work of art despite what people says, godamnit, let its potential shine!

When I think about the paywall part, I boldly but respectably (I hope) assume the devs misunderstood the game price. If I think about how much time it took for the game to be made, in its quality, in its replay value and on how much this game is important for me, then this price is below how much this game deserve, I myself would pay much more than this and even more just as form of gratitude. It was even reduced for my country, that was a real big favor. But notice the most part of what this casual multiplayer shooting game is: Playing with others. If there aren't much people to meet and play with then why would I excitingly open the game? A low price does not mean in any way that the game is bad, it just means it's accessible, exactly what SFD needed as it had not an initial solid 'fanbase' to burst on Steam (even though it looked like with all the players in the old version).

To exemplify, I'm barely surviving this version. My playtime in the Steam Beta was way below decent, I tried to be active there sometimes since it was also a responsibility as Beta Tester, but during this period I played countless hours of the free SFD that was still available, it was still amazing. Now, the unusual enthusiasm I'm having to play this game is to play with a few 2 or 3 other players and rarely join some servers when they're there, I have no idea what is keeping me alive.

We can also think about what 'went wrong', and I honestly think this game will still be a real big success. But we were very unlucky, there were not many ways for us to expect that the year and period this game launched would not be a perfect soil for SFD to grow. That could probably explain why there aren't an overflowing quantity of players in the game by now (I'm sure it would be).

Image

Another explanation is something that there isn't a simple way to deal with or even explain it, but the game 've been a bit stiff lately, ain't it? Plus something about its performance and optimization: It's becoming harder and harder to get good performance, we see a lot of people complaining about this from time to time in this forum, it made several players discourage from playing.

I don't have much to say about the weapon additions to be honest. I guess the versus multiplayer mode should rely more on the traditional, in the way it was before? New items are certainly fun, and all this chaos is by design, but shouldn't we be looking for balance by now? I mean, we surely wanted to play with a Chainsaw and Riot Shotgun, but that doesn't mean they should strangely default spawn around there; and here a suggestion: maybe some official maps should spawn specific items so we reduce that overdose of unnecessary items Pricey is talking about.

Free weekends are very important, we all had the opportunity to play the game while it was free and that's what united all of us here, let other people have that chance too, and let it be massive!
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Post by Tom Th3 Assasin » Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:13 am

i feel like the current climate of the game is fine. we are getting new content every few months. bug reports fixed within a couple of hours when brought up, and being released with the next patch shortly. then why such a hassle?

i do get you want the community to be expanded. and mostly, we sure are rooting for the mulitplayer. but, you do know, singleplayer has already took over multiplayer in most of the aspects, newcomers doesn't really enjoy getting mercilessly devoured by veterans in the multiplayer, this is why they opt for the singleplayer, where they find it much more easy, enjoyable and reliable in terms of the gameplay, and there is no doubt it surely is. Campaigns, survivals, local co-op, bots, challenges are all there for them, So there is utterly no reason for them to go back and try their best play in MP, And taking into account that most of the servers are awfully inconsistent. higher pings and latency can strip away that fun in no time. Also there so is no reward in winning an MP match. Nowadays its quite obvious that MMO's in-game achievements and rewards are what keeps us kicking back in the game, but in SFD, there hasn't been any new 'reward' mechanic implemented, even after the final update. Despite, it being suggested numerous times. i'd say this point proves that they weren't intrigued in multiplayer after all, it worked like a testing station for them where we gladly volunteered to become a part of it.

We do feel like there used to be a massive player-base back in the alpha and beta period, and this is what we overlooked; those so called player-base was never a real thing, they never cared for the game like we did, back when the park's entrance was entirely free, they never hesitated to join in, and when its requires a pass, they finally gave up, or there are other major factors too, which made their mind restricted from buying, and playing even if its in their library. and that all just shows how long the length of our community really is and now we are realizing it.

Its easy to imagine a demo version of the game where it could possibly raise or attract a few players to try it out and eventually going for it, but locking it in a certain way with most of the content removed is going to be kind of a hurdle to pull off, because we are pretty darn aware of our dev's execution consistency. possibly they would fear introduction of any leaks or any newer kind of bugs that may totally dismantle their momentum, and that's not we all went for. and it is also kind of retracting the entire game. Where they should have done that before the prime release in the first place, if not, then you are welcome to keep suggesting it that way, instead of going through all that hassle featuring the demo they could rather utilize their time on the future updates.

I wasn't present at the time where the minichat system was actually used as a real-time discussion in the forums. As to see why they permanently turned it off. So I will have to retaliate where the part you say that the community's interaction is not strong as it could become more with the devs. so in that regard you are suggesting an official discord server? oh dear, we would love to see that Discord happen, but it is still going to have its consequences. it seems like you haven't thought that far. People are still pissed off with the steam release, as the consumers don't feel the game like it was before, they wont be going to miss the chance to disrespect, mock and use such profanity against the devs, in protest. that's how a stagnating group would like to behave. and i presume with ''less strict environment''? That's just an honest suggestion, but don't mind that, its quite stupid at the same time. But more importantly, from what sort of people do you expect to have opinions and suggestions about the game that could enlighten them better than us?

Game has finally reached its peak, there is not single ounce of doubt that the indie devs achieved what they aimed for. well, if go through the flow chart of how our devs performance with To-Do's and promised suggestions, i'd say they pretty much nailed it!

I just simply explained the terrain here with my neutral point of views of how things going to turn out, good? or worse? So there is definitely no salt from my side.
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Post by Sree » Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:12 am

Tom Th3 Assasin wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:13 am
i feel like the current climate of the game is fine. we are getting new content every few months. bug reports fixed within a couple of hours when brought up, and being released with the next patch shortly. then why such a hassle?
the thread is not focusing on new content or the dev's response time when it comes to fixing bugs, it's talking about the decline of playerbase and how it's not improving much.
Tom Th3 Assasin wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:13 am
i do get you want the community to be expanded. and mostly, we sure are rooting for the mulitplayer. but, you do know, singleplayer has already took over multiplayer in most of the aspects, newcomers doesn't really enjoy getting mercilessly devoured by veterans in the multiplayer, this is why they opt for the singleplayer, where they find it much more easy, enjoyable and reliable in terms of the gameplay, and there is no doubt it surely is. Campaigns, survivals, local co-op, bots, challenges are all there for them, So there is utterly no reason for them to go back and try their best play in MP, And taking into account that most of the servers are awfully inconsistent. higher pings and latency can strip away that fun in no time. Also there so is no reward in winning an MP match.
there are only 2 campaigns in this game and the lack of eastereggs and achievements make it so you only feel like playing them once, there is kind of no reason to play them again once they are completed. meanwhile multiplayer offers infinite replayability and a large collection of maps - both official and the huge roster of community made maps, there are also campaigns made by community but very few and I am going to assume that nobody is playing them because of how low their subscriber count is. so no, singleplayer has not taken over multiplayer and if newcomers are only playing singleplayer maps, that's bad because once they are done with it, they are going to have to come to multiplayer which proves that multiplayer is the bigger part of the game.

also if the game is gaining a good amount of newcomers, it shouldn't be long before newcomers outnumber the veterans, which means, not every server will be hosted by veteran players and not every server will be full of veterans, which would provide a better multiplayer gameplay for newcomers as they will be mostly playing with players of their own skill level.
Tom Th3 Assasin wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:13 am
Nowadays its quite obvious that MMO's in-game achievements and rewards are what keeps us kicking back in the game, but in SFD, there hasn't been any new 'reward' mechanic implemented, even after the final update. Despite, it being suggested numerous times. i'd say this point proves that they weren't intrigued in multiplayer after all, it worked like a testing station for them where we gladly volunteered to become a part of it.
I don't see how the lack of achievements imply that the devs were never intrigued about multiplayer. most of the content updates, additional weapons, balancing, mechanics like recovery roll, grabs etc were for multiplayer, even the trailer of the game showcases multiplayer before transitioning to single player.. besides, achievements can also be done for singleplayer.

maybe.. just maybe.. the safest assumption to make is that the devs are not interested in doing achievements itself and not that they aren't interested in multiplayer.
Tom Th3 Assasin wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:13 am
We do feel like there used to be a massive player-base back in the alpha and beta period, and this is what we overlooked; those so called player-base was never a real thing, they never cared for the game like we did, back when the park's entrance was entirely free, they never hesitated to join in, and when its requires a pass, they finally gave up, or there are other major factors too, which made their mind restricted from buying, and playing even if its in their library. and that all just shows how long the length of our community really is and now we are realizing it.
nobody is talking about the players back in beta / alpha period who didn't buy the game, we are talking about how the playerbase was big back then and now it has drastically reduced. most of us were already aware that the game would lose a significant amount of old players when it's behind a paywall, but we thought it'd be also gaining a massive amount of new players over time because it's being launched on steam, the biggest platform for gaming.
Tom Th3 Assasin wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:13 am
Its easy to imagine a demo version of the game where it could possibly raise or attract a few players to try it out and eventually going for it, but locking it in a certain way with most of the content removed is going to be kind of a hurdle to pull off, because we are pretty darn aware of our dev's execution consistency. possibly they would fear introduction of any leaks or any newer kind of bugs that may totally dismantle their momentum, and that's not we all went for. and it is also kind of retracting the entire game. Where they should have done that before the prime release in the first place, if not, then you are welcome to keep suggesting it that way, instead of going through all that hassle featuring the demo they could rather utilize their time on the future updates.
there already has been plenty of new content after game's release and they do not seem to fix the playerbase issue, which is why people are suggesting the devs to do a free weekend or a demo version. so i think it's totally fine if the newer contents are delayed a bit so the devs can work on something that could showcase the game better to newcomers and encourage them to buy the game which will ultimately improve the player count.
Tom Th3 Assasin wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:13 am
I wasn't present at the time where the minichat system was actually used as a real-time discussion in the forums. As to see why they permanently turned it off. So I will have to retaliate where the part you say that the community's interaction is not strong as it could become more with the devs. so in that regard you are suggesting an official discord server? oh dear, we would love to see that Discord happen, but it is still going to have its consequences. it seems like you haven't thought that far. People are still pissed off with the steam release, as the consumers don't feel the game like it was before, they wont be going to miss the chance to disrespect, mock and use such profanity against the devs, in protest. that's how a stagnating group would like to behave. and i presume with ''less strict environment''? That's just an honest suggestion, but don't mind that, its quite stupid at the same time. But more importantly, from what sort of people do you expect to have opinions and suggestions about the game that could enlighten them better than us?
there are privacy settings in discord where the devs can disable private messages and friend requests from anyone who shares the same server as them. this would force people to only communicate with the devs on the discord server itself which will be well moderated.
Tom Th3 Assasin wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:13 am
there is not single ounce of doubt that the indie devs achieved what they aimed for.
> While the amount of copies sold isn't nearly enough to let us quit our day jobs and move into full time development (go figure!), we aim to keep improving and building on SFD over the coming months.

well hjarpe said that quite long ago but taking into account what gurt said in his previous status update about how his free time is gradually decreasing, i think it's safe to assume that they still haven't quit their day jobs and therefore haven't achieved what they aimed for through sfd.
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Post by Noble » Sat Jun 29, 2019 4:23 pm

It's probably a little risky and selfish for me to just presume that, but I really don't think players quit the game when they are 'destroyed' in the game. No no, I don't just think, I'm pretty sure they don't. That kinda makes them much more anxious and interested in the game like they would be in any other game if they lose, difficult games do even make a lot of success nowadays. They'd not even have a reason to give up on playing unless they don't think they're dying fairly or also if we're being toxic to them, but the actual lack of servers due to that paywall is probably already a reason for them to not be playing, think about that.
There's also a thing that could be a possible cause, the difference between SFD and other games though are just the time between the rounds probably, because I think nobody likes to wait much when we're learning and losing in a game.
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Post by Hjarpe » Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:30 pm

It's true that we haven't made enough money to quit our dayjobs yet. Lack of time has always been the main problem facing the game. We obviously don't have the sort of momentum and energy we would have if we could work on it full-time.

It's also true we aren't as hands-on with our community as some other devs are, mainly due to said lack of time and partly due to my introverted (Swedish) personality. We're more comfortable focusing our attention on the game itself and using the forum to respond to your questions and broadcast information. Juggling other platforms like Discord I feel would add stress to our lives.

As for the player count, we're not ignoring the problem. We obviously won't let the game die. But we're not interested in doing microtransactions, so free-to-play is our very last resort. We have other cards to play before it comes to that. Our priority after the next update is expanding to as many other PC platforms as possible besides Steam. This will increase our exposure and hopefully inject some fresh blood into the playerbase.

The current situation for me personally is that working on the next campaign is swallowing pretty much all my time and mental energy. It's almost done, and it's gonna be great (I think!) but it's becoming clear that the "investment return" on campaigns isn't great. Instead of spending months on something most players will experience only once or twice, the same amount of time could have been spent on smaller pieces of content with more value to players.

With this in mind, it looks as though this next update will be the last big update we release for SFD. Partly because 7+ years working on anything seems long enough, and 3 campaigns seems like a respectable number. In short, we want to move on and focus our attention on our next game pretty soon. BUT...

Even though SFD won't be our main project, we'll try to inject life into it with small updates now and then. As we get a bit of distance from it, we may be able to see more clearly what needs to be tweaked for balance and what small things can be added that will have the biggest effect on the game. Quality over quantity, in other words. And if we get the funding we need to work full-time, we'll be able to do a lot more in this regard - new maps, challenges, weapons, customization items, etc. We'll see!

Sorry if this was a rather rambly response. There are a lot of factors to this, and we're still very much in the thick of it. We'll know more after we release the next update and have a nice, much-needed vacation.
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Post by Pricey » Sun Jun 30, 2019 12:38 am

► Show Spoiler
I understand. I am glad you acknowledged the thread and that you've taken some of my points to heart. As for the rambly response, well, I can only expect one for a rambly thread!
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Post by Shock » Sun Jun 30, 2019 10:08 am

► Show Spoiler
I guess you need some rest and also help, at least help with official maps. I know such a great map makers like @Bash Kraken or @Rada and others... They can make great oldschool classic maps, if they need it actually)

Eh... It's so sad that this will be the last big update of SFD probably... The best 7-6 years of my life. Thank you.
I hope we'll back into this dimension once... I'll probably wait for so long.
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Post by Sh4d0w » Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:45 pm

Hjarpe wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:30 pm
[...]With this in mind, it looks as though this next update will be the last big update we release for SFD. Partly because 7+ years working on anything seems long enough, and 3 campaigns seems like a respectable number. In short, we want to move on and focus our attention on our next game pretty soon. BUT...

Even though SFD won't be our main project, we'll try to inject life into it with small updates now and then. As we get a bit of distance from it, we may be able to see more clearly what needs to be tweaked for balance and what small things can be added that will have the biggest effect on the game. Quality over quantity, in other words. And if we get the funding we need to work full-time, we'll be able to do a lot more in this regard - new maps, challenges, weapons, customization items, etc. We'll see!
Well damn, I guess those 7 years of Superfighters Deluxe were real fun. I understand that you guys want to take a bit of a break from Superfighters Deluxe and focus on your new game. I would even support ya, y'know. But it's a shame that one of my childhood (sort of) games will probably get its last big update. Hopefully that would change in the future.

But as of now, I hope you'll have fun with your newest project and hopefully it would have the same impact as Superfighters Deluxe had with my childhood - a pretty large one.

also where the heck is my blurry's moderator payment smh
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Post by Scroffel5 » Fri Jan 31, 2020 6:55 pm

The reason a lot of people don't buy this game is because they can get it for free, so they will. Another reason is that they can't buy it because of the economy. A dude I talked to said that it would take months for him to save enough to get this game. Reducing the price wouldn't do much unless you forced people to play the game if they wanted to play the game. Minecraft did something where you needed to buy the game to play it by adding a licensing ticket or something. Before, you could get minecraft for free by downloading it from a different website. I am not sure if you would benefit from excluding players who don't pay for the game, as they make up a great percentage of the playerbase, but it could get you more money from the people who actually can buy the game and just don't want to.
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Post by Mr Argon » Fri Jan 31, 2020 11:38 pm

Well, about the price...

Here in Aegentina buying in dollars is not an affordable option, because of the actual economic situation of the country. But besides that, Steam luckily accepts ARS, and they don't transform the value to the actual one, they instead transform it to a more affordable one. Let me explain...

At the time I write this, 1 USD is equal to 60.27 ARS.

That means buying the game at 10 USD (I think that's the price) would be around 600 ARS, which is not a very big amount of money, but it's definitely not worth for SFD.

But luckily, steam makes 1 USD equals to 13 ARS, making SFD cost only 130 ARS, which is reasonable for me, and many people I know who bought the game.

So, tell me what wou think...

EDIT:

PD: I personally think Steam games are still very affordable here, even with steam sales. I'll give you some examples of games I bought

Terraria (3-4) years ago at 77 ARS (75% off sale)
Rimworld (1 year ago) ar around 320 ARS (was worth bc loved that game)
I bought the orange box at 30 ARS 4-5 years ago (90% off sale)

So I almost pray every night for Steam to keep accepting local currency...
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Post by Mighty Spirit the 2 » Mon Aug 24, 2020 3:39 pm

This post has been a long time coming. After playing the game for ages, and noticing more and more problems with the game, I felt like I had to post this here.
I am the player who goes by the nick of "Mighty Spirit the 2.". Ever since I downloaded Superfighters Deluxe Alpha 1.3.4c for the first time in September 2017 on my then brand new laptop, I've been playing the game ever since. I used to play the game on average every day until the free beta 1.02c closed down. I was very excited for the Steam release of the game and had thought that everything was going to become even better now. I had started my own channel where I was making SFD content among numerous other channels who did the same thing (many who have since closed). I even bought a brand new gaming desktop to record videos in full HD and a new keyboard since my old one good enough for the old melee system. That's how much the game meant to me. When I finally bought the game, it was very different from the game that I had come to like. I guess you can say I bought the game because of Nostalgia. And now after 900 hours of playing the game on Steam I have enough first-hand experience to write this post. Listed below are several things that i think reflect why so few people play the game.

The shift from skill to chaos

Before the game was super competitive and kept me hooked for many hours, and even years. The thrill of beating people in melee or with somewhat balanced weapons was always a blast. But now the luck factor has gotten too strong in this game. Shifting the game to a chaotic atmosphere is great and all, but what about us who wanted to keep playing for real? Why couldn't you leave the game as it was, and make the split for servers into casual and more serious players? A lot of people had already asked for it, there are several posts on forums that wanted to make the leap to a competitive version. Instead of neglecting this part of the community why didn't you embrace it? You just ended up cutting out a loyal band of followers. I've seen a few veteran players who bought the game after it came out on Steam and then left the game, feeling it wasn't enjoyable anymore. The competitive community were your most dedicated players, why change things we liked?
In my opinion the main problem with this version is that it's supposed to be some kind of a fun chaotic party game, but that's a complete contradiction to the gamemode versus itself. Let me paint you a picture: When I go to my friend's house and he wants to play Kung fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends (similar to Smash bros.) together with other friends. I have absolutely no idea how to play the game, but he quickly explains the controls, and we start a 4-player game. I'm just mashing buttons in melee, and hoping my projectile spam keeps people away. But then I die. But death isn't the final destination in this game. You have several lives, so you are revived. So the fun continues. Now imagine if I did not respawn + had a ridiculous small amount of health for a brawler. Now I gotta wait 2-4 minutes till I can play again. This is exactly the thing that turns new players away. They keep dying frustrating deaths and have to wait a long amount of time until they can play again, only to die again superfast next round. I wouldn't play that game then. This pretty much exactly what would happen if a New Player joined online play in SFD. The game has way too high stakes + is slow paced (unlike Superfighters), the game drags on for too long time for people to have patience and play it. Only with the use of scripts like deathmatch (and uberkick) which revives the players, could you possibly find enjoyment from the chaotic FFA mess we have. That's where casual players could find a lot of enjoyment with all the crazy weapons. Summed up: We need different game modes that can appeal to more people

The Melee

Probably what disappointed me the most from the transition to Steam. Remember when melee mechanics where advanced and rewarded superfast timing and inputs? Remember advanced moves like 4-hit combo, 2-hit combo and instantaneous rolling as a defensive technique? These moves required quite a long time of playing the game to figure out on your own. You would also have to be very interested in melee and payed much attention to attacks. Why where all these tricks removed from the game? The melee now is so shallow, there are no secret techniques one can learn, nothing really to encourage people to keep studying melee. It's not a bad melee concept of "rock, paper, scissors", until that moment you realize that you can't play rock, paper, scissors competitively, cause the outcome is based on uncertainty and luck. Now don't get me wrong, there are still some people who are excellent at melee. But even they can't survive in 2v1 fights, when they get pinned down in a corner. But why did all the good players have to be nerfed down to exactly the same level and restrict their moveset to the same as someone who just picked up a controller? Having advanced melee mechanics in a game isn't going to make any difference to a casual players experience of the game. No, quite contrary it will show that melee has a lot more depth and a huge reward for leaning the game. Melee before was exciting and fun, you kept learning new things, and it made you want to become good, it inspired competitive playing. We had access to so many different moves and possibilities, there existed a variety of unique fight styles. There were some people who were quite frankly in another dimension with the melee system. Old melee was great, we could deal with 2v1 situations much better (now you have to run as far as you can), and avoiding spam combos was much easier. Why did it all boil down to this in the end? A good and interesting melee system is defined by "easy to pick up, hard to master", all of which applied to old SFD (imo).
The new melee system also has a ton of problems, but the worst part is the inconsistency that totally turns me of from playing, along with a melee system which is very unfair with ping. The free flowing melee system is much better for people playing with lag, knowing that their inputs are registered, and at the same time relying on the fact that they could cancel out the rest of the keyboard pushing by rolling.

The inputs

Probably the worst part of melee. Jesus Christ, remember when you could trust your inputs 100%? Or at least 97%. Whenever you did something you didn't want to do, you could always cancel out of most attacks by rolling. Good old roll had your back. And the roll was fast, super effective and a quick way to dodge damage. Now all our attacks are committed, a missclick can kill you or cause unnecessary damage. With high ping, this is actually horrifying. I used to be able to melee with high ping just fine, just spam roll and cancel out attacks. This change wouldn't even be so bad, if our inputs where actually trustworthy. Often the game will gracefully ignore inputs. I have long dwelled on the thought that maybe the input lag for the game has increased ever since the Steam version came out. One of my favourite quotes I've read while playing on blurry's, I will quote another player here:
"Melee is a mess
Sometimes our attacks display, but they don't register.
Sometimes our attacks register, but they don't display.
And sometimes our inputs are outright ignored, and we do nothing at all."
The worst thing is the inconsistency which makes every melee encounter a gamble. Sometimes it all boils down to luck, oh you received a cooldown even when jumping down an object? Well, let the opponent get a free grab. Bam your dead. Saying that SFD isn't deterministic doesn't cut it in these situations. Dying because of an unfair cooldown feels terrible and worse is when you mash block and keep getting hit. Even worse, I've seen people display the beginning of a block animation and still get hit by punches or objects thrown at them, this could be considered broken, and it discourages people from melee situations in the first place. Which again is sad, because for me melee was the most fun aspect of the game. Having simple controls doesn't necessarily mean that a game is bad, quite on the contrary, Superfighters Flash version has very simple controls basically just remember 4 keys, and it's one of my favourite flash games and very noob-friendly, however having unresponsive controls does make a game bad to play and enjoy, since certain actions like blocking don't actually seem to work. Might add that ever since the game hit Steam it hasn't felt right there seems to be some sort of microlag or something, even with really low ping. Overall the changes have made us have less control over our character.

The polluted weapon pool

Another big disappointment to me. I have no problem with new additions into the game, except that in my opinion these additions could well be left in the campaign or implemented for a separate gamemode. I don't think this even requires any explanation at all. Making wins more about the OP weapons then the players who wield them, already ruined all aspects of a skill based gameplay. I'm not kidding when I say pretty much every OP weapon that was added has been complained about. These weapons are a bit fun in the beginning, but over time take a heavy toll on the gameplay. I see that Drones got a hefty nerf now, though I still don't see any purpose having them in Versus mode. Now they feel more like bullet sponges that I have to waste my ammunition on. They are still annoying as well. Also what is up with all these weapon reskins? Why do we suddenly have so many automatic weapons in the game. I feel we already had enough of them before. Also arguing that the game should be played for fun and not taken serious, can't apply here. Weapons that make you die so quickly, that you hardly even get enjoy a round because you are dead so fast, is hardly fun for any player, serious or casual. At least add options to disable such weapons easily from the host menu.

The static and stiffness (clunky, constraintness whatever you call it)

Changing fundamental things like how we interact with walls lowered the concept of paying attention to your surroundings, again forcing us into rock, paper, scissor fights, which honestly are pretty boring to watch and play, because the mobility of melee was killed off, and so there's absolutely no way to avoid incoming punches, which is sad because the mobility of old melee made the game so fun in the first place. The mobility of the roll was so crucial to melee, because it opened up a ton of possibilities and it made you forget just how simple the melee system really was. A spammy grab combo could have been easily avoided with a quick and well timed roll. I miss wall nailing, it was a very nice feature, and contributed greatly to what made the game feel whole with the environment. This change ultimately hurts combo variety.
And what even happened to barrel jumping? I recall back in beta 1.02c a rival player with 80 ping doing barreldives consistently to the point that i myself decided to learn them. After the Steam release i have seen the same person trying to do barreldives only to fail miserably and get launched full speed into a wall. Why was barrel diving physics changed, if it was something players really liked? Its just another example of how the changes unfairly affect people with ping disadvantages.

The Stamina


Really painful to want to engage in melee with such a crippling system. In short: Stamina today drains too quick, makes melee even slower and stiffer than it already is, rewards runners and gunners, instead of people trying to tackle them with melee. When we punch it drains stamina, and worse we can't cancel said punch anymore, meaning the distance toward a runner increases much further, as we have to finish the punch. Halfway through a fight your gonna be out of stamina and wanna recover somewhere. So basically there's a timeout, where both players try and avoid each other for a while, before going back toe-to-toe. Yeah, it's that bad. What makes stamina even worse in melee is that when your done fighting one guy, and all your stamina's gone, another guy will come at you and your left at a huge disadvantage. No stamina to run and no chance to fill up before you have to engage into another fight. Another thing I dearly miss and brought a strategic feel to the game was the ability to regain stamina while holding dead bodies up as meat shields. Perfect makeshift cover to build enough strength to make a quick dive away from gunfire or towards an active shooter.

The non-existent community

It doesn't come as a big surprise that much of the community would leave when the game became paid. Right at the start after it came out the game was still strong. But over time with more and more updates, the player base seemed to diminish. But just how painfully few people that are playing the game now in 2020 is quite obvious. Most of the servers are empty or half empty at best. Now I know that a portion of the community is involved in creative works like scripting and map making, who don't have the time to play with people online. But the active player base is tiny. The bots aren't smart enough to entertain me either and are not a worthy alternative. I even hosted a dedicated server. But to no avail, the server was empty most of the time, and it seems like a waste of electricity at this point. It's been such a long time, why is there not yet a free demo with locked down features? It was suggested a long time ago, with no results yet. Another problem with having a price tag is that in a game difficult to learn, there are not enough people joining the game so that new players can play among themselves. People should play with people on their own level, or else they'll just get frustrated. I remember when i started playing SFD there were so many people playing it wasn't difficult to find people on my level, today i reckon it's pretty hard.


To you, the devs, i would like to advise you to listen more to their community, instead of changing stuff that just drove parts of the community away. Thanks for letting me play for 1.5 years alpha and beta i had a really nice time. And i got to know a lot of great players whom i would never get as good as. It's a shame it came to such an end. Just to clarify I bought the game in order to pay of the time that I had played for free. However, looking back I would not pay for the final product that we got delivered. Especially where we are now over these updates.
I don't really want to leave this game on a "Don't be sad because it's over, be happy because it happened" note, because I still see a lot potential in the game, sadly a lot of wasted potential. Instead of purely complaining I will also come with a few suggestions in the future to try and tackle some of the mayor problems above, at least so that it might become a little more enjoyable for me again. Of course I as an individual can't do very much to change the game (I am completely powerless), except voice my opinion which I am trying to do here. However if these issues aren't addressed I will probably have to leave the game for something much less frustrating. If you at the very least added mod support more people could enjoy this game and perhaps release some community made patches to fix some of the problems.
I understand that working on Superfighters Deluxe for almost a decade is a long time. It's understandable that you have moved on to other projects and SFD isn't going to receive any big updates for a while. The game received a ton of updates within a year that added a lot of stuff into the game, which must have taken a lot of time and tiring work. But I hope that you do not leave the game in this state. There still are a lot of problems with the game, especially with the melee (so many in fact it is hard to believe that this is supposed to be a finished game). I sincerely am convinced that Superfighters Deluxe was a one of a kind game that with a bit more polish and fixing can still become really famous and could once more acquire a big playerbase.
I just hope that when the game hits another Store in the future it will feel much more complete than it is now, and with rich customization options that greatly expand our personal freedom.
Last edited by Mighty Spirit the 2 on Wed Sep 02, 2020 10:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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I will tell your story and keep you alive the best i can
...
But I've always had the feeling we would die young
Some die young
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Post by RiD » Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:20 pm

Personally I started to like the game less when they began to erase mechanics that I suppose were not intentional. (I suppose we all know the story of Street Fighter in which a bug gave the ability to hitting combinations).

SFD had several interesting mechanics that took the monotony out of the game:
Barrel Jump (Which was not exclusive to barrels): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to7e6h_Y8F8
(Perhaps the barrel jump is still possible to do, but it must be under certain circumstances, which makes it impossible to implement in a fight).

Dive combo with a wall: (I don't have a video available at this moment, this combo was very new and was patched very quickly) It consisted of doing a dive to an enemy with a wall next to it, which caused the dive to be canceled quickly and it gave the possibility of connecting a blow.

I suppose there are many more examples but I do not remember exactly another.
(This is all a direct Google translation, so there may be errors, I just wanted to give my opinion).
(All video credit to their respective authors).
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Post by Cabo_Fiambre » Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:48 pm

I don't want to sound rude or anything but the dive wall thing was annoying as hell. I remember experienced players abusing that technique with new players all the time. I think it was good that the devs removed it since it gave an unfair advantage.
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Mighty Spirit the 2
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Post by Mighty Spirit the 2 » Wed Sep 02, 2020 9:51 pm

Cabo_Fiambre wrote:
Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:48 pm
I don't want to sound rude or anything but the dive wall thing was annoying as hell. I remember experienced players abusing that technique with new players all the time.
Ok, let me tell you one thing mister Cabo. New Player are naturally going to have a hard time when fighting against someone with 2 years of experience. Its because we had something called a "Skill ceiling" in SFD before. Ofc New players aren't going to stand a chance. I think its "annoying as hell" that it was removed, it made the game less dynamic and doesn't encourage using your surroundings in a fight.
If your thinking of spam infinity combos like: Dive->Superpunch->kick->grabpunch (towards wall)->Dive->.... (repeat)
That didn't exist before. Its because an experienced player could always roll away after the kick and avoid the entire combo. You just had to learn how to escape it that's all.
The games much worse towards New Players overall, anyway now. Any subpar player can tear them to shreds with the new weapon additions without breaking a sweat.
Cabo_Fiambre wrote:
Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:48 pm
I think it was good that the devs removed it since it gave an unfair advantage.
What exactly is unfair about it? A New Player could have done this easily on a pro player as well. Its not hard to learn at all. Just dive and attack.
Lets quote Hjarpe here:
Hjarpe wrote:
Sat Apr 30, 2016 5:33 pm
You can do it and your opponents can do it, so what's unfair about it?
Yeah, what's wrong with it if both people can do it.

In fact after the melee changes, a lot of infinity combos started appearing so thanks for that devs. The games much worse now because a player who played 2 months can easily beat someone with 2 years of experience just by spamming moves that are much worse then "double hits" ever were.
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🎶I will tell your story if you die
I will tell your story and keep you alive the best i can
...
But I've always had the feeling we would die young
Some die young
🎵
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