Fatigue – MMO Fallout

This may come as a shock, but one aspect of games that gamers don’t take too kindly to these days is the idea of developers purposely stopping them from playing. Such is the case with Closers, epic anime RPG published by En Masse Entertainment. Turns out players weren’t too happy about the fatigue system preventing them from playing as much as they would like, and after hearing their feedback En Masse has decided to remove the system come July.

We heard you loud and clear. As of July 3, we’ll remove the fatigue system from the NA and EU versions of Closers. We’ve been watching, observing, and listening to all of your comments in regard to this system. It became obvious the system wasn’t good and took away the fun for a majority of players in our regions. Naddic is a very player focused developer and aligns with our En Masse mission to create great Player Experiences. So, we are very happy to announce the implementation of this change in the next update!

The update notes that existing energy potions will be converted into credits, however this has not been finalized. In addition, starter packs will be altered in what benefits they give as said potions will no longer have a use once the update goes into effect.

(Source: Steam)

As I work on this piece, my character is toiling away semi-afk balancing on Tuska’s spine for agility experience and Tuska fragments that can be turned in for points. At 8:44 am, more than halfway through the day in server-time, the overall contribution isn’t at 50%. It isn’t even close.

RuneScape’s third world event is only three days in and already players are getting discouraged and seemingly dropping out. Tuska has won the first two days, leading players to speculate whether or not the event has been rigged to give Tuska an early lead and raise the tension, or whether Jagex overestimated the abilities of the community and made the event too hard by accident.

One major issue brought up is that since the Tuska daily event can be easily capped in one run, players don’t have any incentive to return other than for the good of the fight. As I’ve said numerous times before, Jagex has long nurtured RuneScape into a game centered around efficiency, and as a result (whether they like it or not) if it isn’t on the higher end of the reward/time spectrum, players will simply ignore it. This is the culture that Jagex created, and one that will guide development.

In the long run, rewards will beat lore every time. If it isn’t rewarding, players won’t do it. If something else exists that is more rewarding, they’ll spend their time doing that. If the event is being purposely designed for players to lose, they’ll get discouraged and stop participating completely, because they have no real participation in the event.

I’d like to see a response from Jagex about how this event is going to play out, because we haven’t even reached the end of day 3 and people are already worn out.