I absolutely feel this sentiment. I fall squarely in the 900 hour group. But I would also argue that 1 passionate player who leaves positive feedback on steam and recommends the game to a multitude of friends is worth more than a player that picked it up on a steam sale and played for an hour before moving on after mount hype. The best type of feedback is word of mouth. Negative reviews on steam stack up and will be a huge deterrent for profit in the long run. Short term gains need to be balanced out with a long term plan.
I do get that the community managers have orders of what they can say and what they can’t say and it’s obvious this patch is contentious and large in scope with a constant management push to stay in target. There is a PR directive and keeping their cards close to their chest is the current apparent strategy. But the deafening silence also sends a message, one that that they may be unintentionally sending. I came to these forums as a last resort hoping to find rationale of massive changes and I really haven’t seen a sufficient answer with a lot of information buried deep in posts with one off comments from a company rep. I think some good will goes a long way and I hope after this patch, they reassess. There is no reason they can’t simply reply back saying we understand this issue and we’re looking into it. Instead I feel some of the reply backs are brush offs or an obvious attempt to dance around or address a concern without addressing the concern. There should be no mistaking some of these player comments/questions. They are very specific and articulate.
I’ll leave off by saying that This is a really good game, and it could be one of the best if not the best survival game of this genre if they addressed some of the core issues that are brought up by some very well reasoned and apparent long standing players. These guys are worth 200 new accounts imho. A couple of guys who used to play were veteran ark players and for the first week or two they couldn’t stop singing praises, but after weeks/months of the bugs and botched releases and core game issues, they just lost interest. Placing a rare thrall down only to have it immediately disappear (later learned thralls do sometimes fall below the map) was the last straw for one of my clan mates. Like I’ve said before, mounts seems to be a complex feature that is adding a problematic layer to a base that needs work and polish to be that great game I want this to be. I just think patches like this do more harm than good in terms of flattening out the game and making sure the underpinnings are sound. Maybe I’m just a naive newbie with only 970 hours under my belt and no real working knowledge of how this company runs its affairs. But I’m hopeful the core issues will be addressed before flying mounts are released.
