General Discussion

[GORILLADICKNIGGER 0]

 

This is a response to both the developers and the playerbase.

I see a lot of people hyped up because the game will apparently be less p2w than it was, but this poses some big problems long term. The reason I'll be speaking from a profit maximization standpoint a lot of the time is because if the devs make no money the game shuts down again.

I'm not sucking up to our slavemasters and I appeal to their self-interest because it coincides with our self interest. I want a game that gets frequent updates, a proper anti-cheat system and a flourishing community. You get none of those things if only CSD autists are playing the game and you barely make a profit.

 

 

1) We need game imbalance

Let's start with the reason why the game shut down in the first place. It's easy to blame the P2W aspect for its demise but I'd argue that was the thing that kept it all afloat. Up until the introduction of the coupon shop which completely broke the game, the advantage RT players had wasn't as drastic all things considered.

Yes, having a Predator instead of an MP Pulse would make your life easier, but for a game with such a small playerbase (MicroVolts, even at its peak, was a niche game), sucking money out of our pockets for better weapons was a necessity.

I didn't mind the Duke, Gold Rifle, Predator and Sea Wasp series. If anything, that was the period were the game thrived.

What ruined everything was the introduction of weapons like the Potato Prime series, which basically rendered every other bazooka useless. It had better stats than the ADV Pocket Rocket coupled with Mimic swap speed.

This was quite frankly retarded. Capsule weapons should have slightly better thats than ADV weapons and that's it. Either that or make the capsule machine 2000RT/spin and don't give players 70% capsule discounts every other month. If you were smart you could get the most broken weapons in the game by splashing 200 euros at the right time.

1.1) For some time after the game's release, ExaVolts and most other tournaments were played with RT weapons, compare that to the game's last years where CSD (MP only with basic bazooka) was the standard.

People don't realise this was actually a bad thing and for some reason hope this will continue to be the status quo. When the best players all agree upon not using RT in the biggest tournaments it sends out 2 implicit messages to the rest of the community:

a) The game is broken beyond repair (not good)

b) If you wanted to play with the big boys, spending RT is actually bad as you should develop your skill by becoming accustomed to playing with MP weapons exclusively and avoid the bad habits that come with the luxury of better RT weapons (bad to the point where it broke the game, remember that at this point only the people who wanted to play with the big boys were left, the casuals had almost all stopped playing)

 

Yes, I am advocating for a slightly P2W game. The game won't survive if every single clan war is played by CSD rules, as per the post's first paragraph. It also won't survive if you go 3/18 in every non-CSD match. An equilibrium should be found.

 

 

2) Solving the massive skill gap (no, the ranked system won't do it)

Another thing which made the game terrible in my opinion is how you HAD to learn how to swap and wavestep in order to not be shit. I have no idea what Rock Hippo was thinking when they reduced the firing rate of shotguns, bazookas and grenade launchers while leaving their swap speed untouched.

If I remember correctly this was sort of an indirect nerf to the AC-ME shotgun series, but by leaving their swap speed unaltered they basically just fucked over new players, who up to that point could get a lucky kill here and there without having to mash 5 buttons like a spastic in order to overcome the weapons' incredibly slow firing rate.

The game was WAY better when the KW-79's firing rate was almost the same as its fire rate when swapping, same thing with bazookas or grenade launchers. When the game was relatively new people made fun of new players who only used the rifle and the minigun, but by making bazookas fire 1 rocket every 2 seconds you don't really give them a choice.

Why should a new player waste months of their life learning the swap/wavestep mechanic in order to become average instead of shit? Bear in mind the skill ceiling doesn't stop at wavestepping, so if you want to become decent you need an extra 1000 hours on top of however much took you to learn how to swap. AND after those 1000 hours (which by the way is a conservative number), you still get fucked by Hermes spamming mouth breathers.

I'd argue that ALL weapons should have default fire-rates which are similar to the their wavestep fire-rates (by similar I don't mean equal but like half a second slower at most). The extra mobility you get for wavestepping is already enough of an advantage and should be coupled with a fire-rate increase that is marginal at best.

MicroVolts is the least beginner friendly game I've ever seen and we DESPERATELY need an influx of new players because if we (the retards foaming at the mouth for the past 5 years waiting for a reboot) are the only ones playing then the game will be dead again by 2023.

Reverting the fire-rates the way they were is a great step in that direction and nobody talks about this.

 

 

3) On fucking people over with re-releases and not giving a shit about item rarities.

Don't release the Gold Rifle as a coupon item. Same with the Predator and the gold Ratchet (don't remember what it's called). Also, don't release the MP5 and the Intervention again as part of a golden capsule machine bundle and therefore fucking up their trade value because everyone has them.

People would spend hundreds of euros for rare items and the developers NEED to leverage that to their benefit. Make it so you can trade weapons for RT (i.e. I give you 400k RT for a Silver Rifle or whatever), that way you solved the scamming issue AND you get paid in the process.

Another thing, item rarity post-reboot should be congruent with old item rarities. What I mean is do not release the Anesidora set as an MP capsule set. Same for the Sea Wasp series, Elegant set, Musashi etc. In my opinion the best way to go about it is to release each capsule item ONCE and never release it again. Make capsule items exclusive, aside from slightly stronger than RT shop alternatives, and make it so you turn the underground item trading/account selling market that plagued MicroVolts before the shutdown into something that makes you money.

 

 

Other suggestions:

1) Make it so you can buy unlimited RT parts from the shop (so people who aren't gambling addicts but are willing to spend money on the game can get parts)
2) Make more unlimited sets like Tight and Colonel Crac (same reasoning as point 1)
3) Everything that costs MP costs WAY too much. 18k MP for an unlimited weapon is absolutely insane.
4) Weapon upgrades cannot fail but they require more battery/MP (like 5 times more battery so it's still a challenge to get them to level 9)
5) If you feel like you have to include God Weapons in the reboot, make them cost like 500 coupons each and nerf their stats to the point where they're only better than a fully upgraded gold capsule machine weapon.

 

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by GORILLADICKNIGGER

[Sorel 169]

24 minutes ago, GORILLADICKNIGGER said:

 

This is a response to both the developers and the playerbase.

I see a lot of people hyped up because the game will apparently be less p2w than it was, but this poses some big problems long term. The reason I'll be speaking from a profit maximization standpoint a lot of the time is because if the devs make no money the game shuts down again.

I'm not sucking up to our slavemasters and I appeal to their self-interest because it coincides with our self interest. I want a game that gets frequent updates, a proper anti-cheat system and a flourishing community. You get none of those things if only CSD autists are playing the game and you barely make a profit.

 

 

1) We need game imbalance

Let's start with the reason why the game shut down in the first place. It's easy to blame the P2W aspect for its demise but I'd argue that was the thing that kept it all afloat. Up until the introduction of the coupon shop which completely broke the game, the advantage RT players had wasn't as drastic all things considered.

Yes, having a Predator instead of an MP Pulse would make your life easier, but for a game with such a small playerbase (MicroVolts, even at its peak, was a niche game), sucking money out of our pockets for better weapons was a necessity.

I didn't mind the Duke, Gold Rifle, Predator and Sea Wasp series. If anything, that was the period were the game thrived.

What ruined everything was the introduction of weapons like the Potato Prime series, which basically rendered every other bazooka useless. It had better stats than the ADV Pocket Rocket coupled with Mimic swap speed.

This was quite frankly retarded. Capsule weapons should have slightly better thats than ADV weapons and that's it. Either that or make the capsule machine 2000RT/spin and don't give players 70% capsule discounts every other month. If you were smart you could get the most broken weapons in the game by splashing 200 euros at the right time.

1.1) For some time after the game's release, ExaVolts and most other tournaments were played with RT weapons, compare that to the game's last years where CSD (MP only with basic bazooka) was the standard.

People don't realise this was actually a bad thing and for some reason hope this will continue to be the status quo. When the best players all agree upon not using RT in the biggest tournaments it sends out 2 implicit messages to the rest of the community:

a) The game is broken beyond repair (not good)

b) If you wanted to play with the big boys, spending RT is actually bad as you should develop your skill by becoming accustomed to playing with MP weapons exclusively and avoid the bad habits that come with the luxury of better RT weapons (bad to the point where it broke the game, remember that at this point only the people who wanted to play with the big boys were left, the casuals had almost all stopped playing)

 

Yes, I am advocating for a slightly P2W game. The game won't survive if every single clan war is played by CSD rules, as per the post's first paragraph. It also won't survive if you go 3/18 in every non-CSD match. An equilibrium should be found.

 

 

2) Solving the massive skill gap (no, the ranked system won't do it)

Another thing which made the game terrible in my opinion is how you HAD to learn how to swap and wavestep in order to not be shit. I have no idea what Rock Hippo was thinking when they reduced the firing rate of shotguns, bazookas and grenade launchers while leaving their swap speed untouched.

If I remember correctly this was sort of an indirect nerf to the AC-ME shotgun series, but by leaving their swap speed unaltered they basically just fucked over new players, who up to that point could get a lucky kill here and there without having to mash 5 buttons like a spastic in order to overcome the weapons' incredibly slow firing rate.

The game was WAY better when the KW-79's firing rate was almost the same as its fire rate when swapping, same thing with bazookas or grenade launchers. When the game was relatively new people made fun of new players who only used the rifle and the minigun, but by making bazookas fire 1 rocket every 2 seconds you don't really give them a choice.

Why should a new player waste months of their life learning the swap/wavestep mechanic in order to become average instead of shit? Bear in mind the skill ceiling doesn't stop at wavestepping, so if you want to become decent you need an extra 1000 hours on top of however much took you to learn how to swap. AND after those 1000 hours (which by the way is a conservative number), you still get fucked by Hermes spamming mouth breathers.

I'd argue that ALL weapons should have default fire-rates which are similar to the their wavestep fire-rates (by similar I don't mean equal but like half a second slower at most). The extra mobility you get for wavestepping is already enough of an advantage and should be coupled with a fire-rate increase that is marginal at best.

MicroVolts is the least beginner friendly game I've ever seen and we DESPERATELY need an influx of new players because if we (the retards foaming at the mouth for the past 5 years waiting for a reboot) are the only ones playing then the game will be dead again by 2023.

Reverting the fire-rates the way they were is a great step in that direction and nobody talks about this.

 

 

3) On fucking people over with re-releases and not giving a shit about item rarities.

Don't release the Gold Rifle as a coupon item. Same with the Predator and the gold Ratchet (don't remember what it's called). Also, don't release the MP5 and the Intervention again as part of a golden capsule machine bundle and therefore fucking up their trade value because everyone has them.

People would spend hundreds of euros for rare items and the developers NEED to leverage that to their benefit. Make it so you can trade weapons for RT (i.e. I give you 400k RT for a Silver Rifle or whatever), that way you solved the scamming issue AND you get paid in the process.

Another thing, item rarity post-reboot should be congruent with old item rarities. What I mean is do not release the Anesidora set as an MP capsule set. Same for the Sea Wasp series, Elegant set, Musashi etc. In my opinion the best way to go about it is to release each capsule item ONCE and never release it again. Make capsule items exclusive, aside from slightly stronger than RT shop alternatives, and make it so you turn the underground item trading/account selling market that plagued MicroVolts before the shutdown into something that makes you money.

 

 

Other suggestions:

1) Make it so you can buy unlimited RT parts from the shop (so people who aren't gambling addicts but are willing to spend money on the game can get parts)
2) Make more unlimited sets like Tight and Colonel Crac (same reasoning as point 1)
3) Everything that costs MP costs WAY too much. 18k MP for an unlimited weapon is absolutely insane.
4) Weapon upgrades cannot fail but they require more battery/MP (like 5 times more battery so it's still a challenge to get them to level 9)
5) If you feel like you have to include God Weapons in the reboot, make them cost like 500 coupons each and nerf their stats to the point where they're only better than a fully upgraded gold capsule machine weapon.

 

 

I am kinda on ur side but in my opinion the swap mechanic should remain the same as we are all too acustomed to it and without it not only do we make all the comunity mad but also make zombie umplayable. The fact that u are overexagerating with the swap and averahe shit is very annoying, I personally as a kid learned to swap in less than 1 week and in like 2 months i was in the top of every zombie mode lobby and most of the people couldn't infect me. By expressing such a wrong and exagerated perspective over the swap mechanic you scare new players and only make newcomers believe in what you say, I am already creating a small comunity and I will personally give tutorials on swap to any player who asks me and I will personally trian newcomers so they will be average, bcs that's why is called average bcs it's how most players play, above average are only players that give that extra into the game and are talented with other mechanics like sniper, using grenades in different angle, knowing when to hit with the melee and other sutff like that. And no, being average doesn't ruin your experience you can have fun bcs it's a game, let me give you examples, you go to school and there's always an average but u still go bcs u are obligated, you play games like League of Legends who is based on ranked mode, but somehow people are having fun being iron and bronze and greatly below average and by playing non ranked modes. So in the swap part I really don't believe u are right. And knowing that more than 3 quarters of this comunity is with me on this and love the swap mechanic, u shouldn't assume that we want it gone or modified. I ask of you moderator and admins not to listen to the second part of this opinion as it will fuck up your game. Although i do not like the last part of the third point, u are clearly right about respecting the old value and rarity of some items that are legacy and the rt for items trade system but only releasing something once is too cruel, maybe one 2 years at least, bcs as most of us are not adults we are clearly limited by the budget our parents and economical situation allow us to have monthly, imagien loving a set and having it released in a month when your money situation is bad and knowing you might either barely get it with 100 dollars in the future or even more, or not ever having it. The other points are reasonable and alright, they did say that they changed the upgrade system to make it easier, and yeah u are totally right 18k mp for a weapon is insane, it means dedicating a week at least of playing with basic weapons over and over again and having to chose betweed what u would need first and what u would give up on if u buy that, I've been through that and it's absolutely horible.

Thanks for your time, i already mentioned this game needing to be a bit p2w at least and finally someone agrees with me, but the second part is right only about the begginer unfriendly part and it should be fixed by implementing many more tutorials that u can skip if u already know what to do and also including maybe some advantage for people who take time of their day to teach a newcomer, like make something like mentee system something like what already exists as recrutment system but change it so that it gives you rewards for teaching people how to play.

[GORILLADICKNIGGER 0]

50 minutes ago, Sorel said:

I am kinda on ur side but in my opinion the swap mechanic should remain the same as we are all too acustomed to it and without it not only do we make all the comunity mad but also make zombie umplayable. The fact that u are overexagerating with the swap and averahe shit is very annoying, I personally as a kid learned to swap in less than 1 week and in like 2 months i was in the top of every zombie mode lobby and most of the people couldn't infect me. By expressing such a wrong and exagerated perspective over the swap mechanic you scare new players and only make newcomers believe in what you say, I am already creating a small comunity and I will personally give tutorials on swap to any player who asks me and I will personally trian newcomers so they will be average, bcs that's why is called average bcs it's how most players play, above average are only players that give that extra into the game and are talented with other mechanics like sniper, using grenades in different angle, knowing when to hit with the melee and other sutff like that. And no, being average doesn't ruin your experience you can have fun bcs it's a game, let me give you examples, you go to school and there's always an average but u still go bcs u are obligated, you play games like League of Legends who is based on ranked mode, but somehow people are having fun being iron and bronze and greatly below average and by playing non ranked modes. So in the swap part I really don't believe u are right. And knowing that more than 3 quarters of this comunity is with me on this and love the swap mechanic, u shouldn't assume that we want it gone or modified. I ask of you moderator and admins not to listen to the second part of this opinion as it will fuck up your game. Although i do not like the last part of the third point, u are clearly right about respecting the old value and rarity of some items that are legacy and the rt for items trade system but only releasing something once is too cruel, maybe one 2 years at least, bcs as most of us are not adults we are clearly limited by the budget our parents and economical situation allow us to have monthly, imagien loving a set and having it released in a month when your money situation is bad and knowing you might either barely get it with 100 dollars in the future or even more, or not ever having it. The other points are reasonable and alright, they did say that they changed the upgrade system to make it easier, and yeah u are totally right 18k mp for a weapon is insane, it means dedicating a week at least of playing with basic weapons over and over again and having to chose betweed what u would need first and what u would give up on if u buy that, I've been through that and it's absolutely horible.

Thanks for your time, i already mentioned this game needing to be a bit p2w at least and finally someone agrees with me, but the second part is right only about the begginer unfriendly part and it should be fixed by implementing many more tutorials that u can skip if u already know what to do and also including maybe some advantage for people who take time of their day to teach a newcomer, like make something like mentee system something like what already exists as recrutment system but change it so that it gives you rewards for teaching people how to play.

I didn't mean they should remove swapping in its entirety. They should make the game more playable for someone who doesn't know what swapping is. Given that the current firing rates make no sense I don't see why they shouldn't be reverted to how they were.

You are wrong about comparing League of Legends with MicroVolts as the efficiency of League's ranked system won't translate to an infinitely smaller game like MicroVolts. The upper ranks will be flooded with players that have a decade of experience (80% of the player base) while new players will be stuck in the lower ranks forever. This makes playing the game extremely ungratifying. Making swapping not as meta as it currently is (new players will still get rolled although they will at least have a chance) can be a step in the right direction. I was at no point suggesting that swapping should be removed or altered.

I don't get how I am scaring anyone into believing anything, have a friend of yours play ToyHeroes for the first time then post his K/D ratio. I don't feel like claiming the game is not beginner friendly is irrational. Also the only reason I am even making this point is because the number one issue this game will have is expanding its reach beyond the people who already played it. I have no problem playing it the way it was back in the day because I am good at it. People seem to forget that number of active players = money = better experience.

While you're nice to teach new players how to play the game, why would any new player in their right mind go on Discord with some random dude who teaches them some arcane button pressing technique which might allow them to become better at a game they are not even sure they like yet?

Edited August 23, 2022 by GORILLADICKNIGGER

[Sorel 169]

55 minutes ago, GORILLADICKNIGGER said:

I didn't mean they should remove swapping in its entirety. They should make the game more playable for someone who doesn't know what swapping is. Given that the current firing rates make no sense I don't see why they shouldn't be reverted to how they were.

You are wrong about comparing League of Legends with MicroVolts as the efficiency of League's ranked system won't translate to an infinitely smaller game like MicroVolts. The upper ranks will be flooded with players that have a decade of experience (80% of the player base) while new players will be stuck in the lower ranks forever. This makes playing the game extremely ungratifying. Making swapping not as meta as it currently is (new players will still get rolled although they will at least have a chance) can be a step in the right direction. I was at no point suggesting that swapping should be removed or altered.

I don't get how I am scaring anyone into believing anything, have a friend of yours play ToyHeroes for the first time then post his K/D ratio. I don't feel like claiming the game is not beginner friendly is irrational. Also the only reason I am even making this point is because the number one issue this game will have is expanding its reach beyond the people who already played it. I have no problem playing it the way it was back in the day because I am good at it. People seem to forget that number of active players = money = better experience.

While you're nice to teach new players how to play the game, why would any new player in their right mind go on Discord with some random dude who teaches them some arcane button pressing technique which might allow them to become better at a game they are not even sure they like yet?

Reading this only proves to me that u had no patience to even read my entire response, something kinda disrespectul considering i took time of my day to read you entire topic and respond to it. I said i am totally with u when u say it is a beginer unfriendly game. I didn't compare League of Legends with MicroVolts like u said i compared the 'average' situation, in any game there is an average, there are several ranks and there will always be people stuck at the lowest or always climbing at the highest and no matter where they are they still play the game either hoping to get better or just bcs they enjoy it i just gave u League of Legends as an example bcs it's a wellknown game, i generalized the fact that it is not true that people give up bcs they are average. Yes the game being beginer unfriendly is a sad picture of good players farming newbies and this is something that has to be fixed, as I said through systematic and longer tutorials. And about the people who would be willing to speak to a random person, I guess u don't actually know how things are on games and with newcomer xd. I've thought so many people how to play so many things and spoke for the first, and sometimes last, time with people on disc so many times, and when a person voluntary comes to you to teach you how to play smth most of the time people will agree.

[desafinado56 358]

Theres a lot to unpack here.
I would make 2 changes that would end up fixing the whole players not getting game mechanics thing: A tutorial that actually shows you the mechanics, have a segment where the player has to learn about it and second make switching to your previously used weapon(namely hitting Q) is faster. Let me explain this, in the game you could say there are two kinds of swapping, regular and what i like to call ninja swaping(I call it that because of how much work your fingers have to do alongisde it being faster). The one most are more familiar with is ninja swaping where pull out your shotty, shoot, swap to your melee and then back to the shotty. Plain swapping you instead hit q twice, this is easier but at the cost of your swap speed being lower so by making this second type of swap be faster you lower the skill floor of the game by making one of the game mechanics easier to pull off.

As for your fear of the game getting shut down because its no longer pay to win, mate have you been playing games in the last couple years ? Skins filled in that gap way better because people now cant complain about the lack of balance. Heres an example, blacklight retribtuion a game that was niche and had a smaller community yet it outlasted microvolts without using pay to win shit. So no the game being balanced wont kill it.

Edited August 24, 2022 by desafinado56

[Slicktor 2]

Let's be real: swapping is just the result of shit programming lmao

[desafinado56 358]

That might be the case but penicillin was also discovered by mistake.

[koof 8]

I couldn't disagree more with most of the things you said.

First of all, the game doesn't need inbalance. Look at the best games out there. None of them are P2W and all rely on skins to make money (CSGO, League of Legends, Valorant and so on). Moreover, all the games that tried to go P2W have been heavily criticised Looking at Microvolts, you can easily see that it could make huge profits from skins and cosmetics. For example I think some of the weapons you mentioned like 'Potato Prime' or the 'Gold Rifle' could become skins that change the looks and sounds of a normal weapon. They also have a 'gem' in the capsule system, because people love to gamble.

Secondly, the CSD tournaments and the players who played with MP only weapons were the players who were trying to push themselves and made Microvolts a very competitive game. I started playing on the beta Microvolts phase, back when the only weapons available were the MP ones and the tutorial weapons were purple. I saw the game evolve and the competitiveness too. At one point (Specially after Surge) it became impossible (and very boring) to play on public rooms with people winning by spamming bazookas and nades nonstop. The problem is that the developers never cared about the competitiveness side of Microvolts and most of the tournaments were community made. Even then, the best players were insanely good. For this reason I also disagree with you when you say that swaping and wavesteping should be removed. It was just a skill that the best players naturally developed to become better and better. 

If this new microvolts reaches a decent amount of players, then they can make a good Ranking System where players only play against similar skilled players.

The only point I agree with you is that it is not beginner friendly, and yes there should be some improvements on that department.

Edited August 24, 2022 by koof