---
title: Japanese contributors’ opinion about this game - January 2019
tags: Robocraft, 2019Q1
robots: noindex, nofollow
lang: en
---

# Japanese contributors' opinion about this game - January 2019

This document consists with an inquiry on one assertion that obtained certain consensus among Japanese players (Article No.1), and several analysis and considerations (Article No.2-11). Therefore, this document will be extremely long.

At the very end of this text, you will see signatures of 113 people who wanted to post the player name out of the 122 Japanese players who concurred with the purpose of this document.

1. Back to a casual game
2. How MMR did fail
3. Whether the platoon contribute to the current situation
4. Consideration about the BA2.0 - Continued
5. Pointing out about the connection lag
6. Pointing out about the UI
7. Pointing out about the player feedbacks
8. Pointing out about the system of debugging and support desk
9. Pointing out about the information sharing
10. Insufficiency of beginners support
11. Pointing out about the instability of the game

[日本語版](https://hackmd.io/s/Hke9UWP7E)

---

## Introduction

[original size](https://i.imgur.com/gHQCWwV.png)

A series of challenges made was a failure. Since the introduction of MMR to before Infinity update, the population trend never turned into a long-term rising, and average player count on Steam has decreased by about 70%.

This means that an attempts to gain competitiveness in the game (make the game e-Sports) which intensifies the influence (≒responsibility) of individual players and the importance of player skill such as aiming, manoeuvre and decision skill was not accepted by community anyway, although there was a complicated intertwining of various circumstances such as system imperfection, population, player’s preference.

Now that we know, at least all elements introduced to make the game e-Sports should be liquidated completely and thoroughly.

Furthermore, besides the state of the game, we will be comprehensively pointing out about problems frequently appearing in the Japanese community, also for the purpose of sharing the recognition of Japanese community, which they are usually isolated by the language barrier.

## 1. Back to a casual game

We thought that FJ has decided to “cut-loss” at the time MMR (Rating) has been abolished in Infinity update. Because it is impossible to enhance the competitiveness without the rating system.

However, in reality, only the rating system has been removed, and all other elements and changes introduced to enhance the competitiveness are left untouched.

Why is the dependence on aiming skill still strong? Why has the speed boost still remained? Why is the game size still at 5vs5? Why is the map still small? Why you have reduced the TTK?

It is clearly obvious that the situation will get worse if only the ratings gets removed from the game mode designed to work with properly working ratings.

[original size](https://i.imgur.com/VPU3Wlw.png)

It seems to us that FJ is losing the vision – what kind of the game for who Robocraft should be. At least the “Highly competitive Robocraft for Competitive players” is now failed. If you are not willing to just sit and wait for a death, then you need to change the policy immediately.

And we believe the only way left is to restore.

The fact that we had more than 10 times of the current players in the era when Elimination was only the game mode, proves the high potential as a casual game. Now in a crisis situation that each single move may directly result “checkmate”, and if there is even a little possibility, there is no choice not to choose that.

Now, we have greatly increased variation of the parts, and the game stability has somewhat improved compared with how it was at that time. We believe that Robocraft can regain the radiance of its former years, once the grand design gets correctly redefined.

If [Mark's statement that "We are responding to the voice to bring back Robocraft in 2014"](https://twitter.com/MarkDJammer/status/1075491757943599106) is true, at least the number of participating players cannot remain at 5vs5. New challenges such as [F=ma](https://twitter.com/MarkDJammer/status/1082741079282253825) and [counter pick system](https://twitter.com/MarkDJammer/status/1082741723800002561) should be done after the situation settled down.

### Reduce the importance of player skill

The matching system has reverted back to a random match with the abolishment of the MMR system.

In random matchmaking, players from all skills levels will be thrown into the same game. As the player skill in Robocraft also includes the quality of the robot, each player's strength has an extremely large difference. Of course, the highly skilled players tend to have better understandings of the game and often uses more refined robots.

If you adopt random matchmaking and aim for casual game style, you must make the game enjoyable for both high and low skilled players. And if the importance of skill is big, lower skilled players will continuously lose against higher skilled players.

Currently, elements introduced to gain competitiveness in the game has still remained, making the importance of the player skill too big as a casual game.

#### Reduce the agility

As the speed of the robot increase and more agile the movements become, more aiming skill will be required to hit the target. And it also increases the importance of the player skill.

At least the current speed boost that can be added unlimitedly needs to be reconsidered. Diminishing returns which existed before is one of the solutions. It may be necessary to readjust the hover and wheel speed which has been increased right after the introduction of the MMR system at the same time.

Also, for the incoming F=ma system, you should not make the lighter bot be more agile than it is now, instead make the heavier bot be more bovine than it is now. Of course, the addition of an adjustment corresponding to the disadvantage is the premise.

For reference, as a typical example of the fast agile bot before the speed boost introduction, the maximum speed of the mega hover tesla which dominated the battlefield at the end of BA1.0(8vs8) was about 270mph at OC1 and about 350mph at OC15.

At this point, there were already some complaints on forums about the "lag tesla" which is caused by a connection lag described later.

Currently, 270mph is the speed of the standard hovers, and 500mph or more for some of the fastest practical bots such as thruster tesla and agile plasma bomber. (Currently, the unit is in kph but values are unchanged)

The agility is probably the most influential parameter from the viewpoint of interaction.

The range that one player can cover, relative strength and weakness of weapons due to difference in effective range and projectile speed, dependence on aiming skill, advantages of area effects such as EMP and Mortar, effectiveness of deployable object such as DSM, usability of BLM, advantages of tracking weapons such as LOML, propotion of various actions in game time, influence of connection lag, etc.
The agility could affect in every single elements.

Unless you reduce the agility to the same level before the speed boost implementation or lower, it is basically impossible to bring back the experiences before 2016.

#### Increase the number of participating players

The smaller the number of players participating, the larger the proportion of one player in total strength, which causes a situation where a small number of strong or weak players deciding the superiority in the game. Games with a few excessively strong or weak players are common in random matchmaking.

Also, if the number of participating players is small, there will be a fewer combination of players participating in individual combat that occur during the game, which makes the game monotonous. For example, when the combat involving 3 players from each team occurs, possible combinations of the players will be 100 patterns for 5vs5, 3136 patterns for 8vs8. If 4 players from each team are involved in combat, combinations will be 25 patterns for 5vs5 and 4900 patterns for 8vs8.

If the combat patterns are limited, the inferior side of the team tends to get pushed all the time without getting a local dominance. Even if it's the same losing game, players should feel different if they can get a blow into the enemy even once, rather than getting tortured by the enemy.

Monotony due to this smaller number of participants won't be a problem if players can cooperate with each other and utilize a variety of tactics. However each player needs to have appropriate knowledge and experience in order for players to cooperate with each other, and it can be said that it is difficult to expect that for the random matched casual game.

Considering the pace of current population declining, now it is the last chance to increase the number of participating players in one game. You will not even be able to try out after when more players left the game.

Also, from the experience of the solo league competition, there won't be a much difference with the degree increasing like 6vs6.

#### Enlarge the map

BA1.0(8vs8) proves that a larger amount of participating players and a bigger map provides local combat with high randomness.

If the variation of the participating players in the local combat, the number of it, and the combination of the robots are abundant, the dominance of the local combat tends to have a weaker correlation with the overall game dominance, making hard to become just a one-sided defeat even in losing games.

However even if the number of participating players in the game become large, if the map is still smaller, the dominant side of the team as a whole can quickly send reinforcements, so we can't expect the effect as above.

Also, increasing the speed of the robot is practically same as narrowing the map.

#### Lengthen the TTK

Online games where players can craft their own robot by themselves are not very unusual these days, however, Robocraft is still probably the only game that you can make up the structure of the robot with its detail.

As the TTK(Time-To-Kill) gets shorter, an advanced crafting element unique to Robocraft, such as the redundant design of weapons and movements, and structural damage controlling will lose the opportunity to show its ability. Even the pretentious moulding and colouring will evaporate in a flash without touching peoples eye.

Unfortunately, the average TTK has become shorter than ever before since the RoboPass update.

If TTK is longer, players can take their opponent’s time by just standing there. This will raise the floor of the contribution of the lower skilled players.

In addition to that, the measures we proposed this time also requires longer TTK from the viewpoint of interaction.

Lowering the speed will increase the ratio of travel time to game time, and this tendency tends to enlarge as the map gets wider. Especially the travel time after the respawn will greatly increase, but if the ratio of travel time gets too long by leaving this problem, it will hurt the enjoyment of battle.

To solve this, it is necessary to increase the chance of getting back to the frontline without respawning. Doesn’t matter whether we use nano or auto-regen, we have to be able to go back to the safety zone from a conflict zone, which requires longer TTK.

On the other hand, in BA2.0 which has shorter respawn time, the battle may get muddy if the TTK gets too long, and the balancing of this seems to be the area where the game designers’ skills will be reflected.

#### Be careful with the introduction of a counter pick

The combination of the robots may overcome the differences in player skill and the ability of the robot, but the counter pick system deprives that opportunity.

As we mentioned many times, in Robocraft, players will be making robots, and the degree of influence with the counter pick will be overwhelmingly higher than a game that uses pre-made characters or vehicles designed by developers.

If the counter pick system is introduced in Robocraft, only the players who can determine the meta environment and the game situation appropriately, and has a variety of high-performance robots can take the biggest advantage of this system. Meaning that stronger players will be even stronger.

### Diversity is the source of the fun in Robocraft

The Robocraft before 2016 was randomly matched, the winning practically depends on luck(whether you can get strong players in the team and whether the combination of the bot is advantageous), the movement was slow, the map was few, the server was unstable. Yet, why are there many players who feel that Robocraft before 2016 was more enjoyable than now?

- An overwhelming variety of robots which the players make them from scratch
- A rule permits various types of robots
- Random matchmaking with many players
- A mutual balance which was frequently changed

We think that the "variousness of experiences" exponentially increased by these synergistic effects is the reason why.

In that respect, we think that the [concept to make "ALL WEAPONS VIABLE"](https://web.archive.org/web/20171128170142/https://robocraftgame.com/epic-loot-0-13-1540/) was a great policy. (Although the plasma didn't work out even at once)

We don't want a degraded copy of many TPS games. Please aim for something that only Robocraft can do.

---

## 2. How MMR did fail

MMR did function limitedly, however we percept that it was malfunctioning as a whole, and analyzed the cause as below.

- As the performance of the bot will greatly depend on the design, the strength of individual player also substantially change depending on the bot they use. But because those change won't be reflected in the rating, their rating and strength do not necessarily match
- This indicates that there is a fundamental problem in the accuracy of the rating
- For example, when a player who gained a high rating with a strong bot started using a weaker bot, the rating would be higher than the player's strength
- The matchmaker is not considering the bots
- Each robot is not only different in the performance, but also in the roles that can be fulfilled
- However, as matchmaker does not care about the performance and role of the bot at all, "luck" of each player's choice of robot often influences victory or defeat
- Which lowers the accuracy of the rating and creates a negative spiral
- Player shortage
- Matchmaker was unable to establish matching with players with close rating due to the player shortage
- It was especially noticeable on higher rating, and absurd change raising MMR increase of low MMR players to increase the number of high MMR players was made eventually
- With these kind of symptomatic treatment, the design of the system became distorted and the accuracy of the rating has decreased
- In the solo league competition in March 2017, even at the end of the competition, players who differed in MMR to nearly 2000 were thrown into the same match
- When there are variations in the skills of the players in the game, a behaviour of the stronger players will tend to affect victory or defeat, and the rating of the weaker players goes up and down irrespective of their actual skills, which also lowers the accuracy of the rating
- Due to these complex factors, victory or defeat is being influenced by the luck "whether your teammates' skill is higher than their rating", and "whether the compatibility of robot formation is good"
- Of course, the rating will not accurately reflect the player's strength if luck is the main factor determining the game
- As a result, rating accuracy was too low to provide fair matching
- At least it was able to barely separate the beginners and veterans, but that was the end

---

## 3. Whether the platoon contribute to the current situation

At the time of October 2016 when the 5-man platoons were also released to non-premium players, there were a complains that the unbalanced matching with the platoon was unfair in BA1.0(8vs8) and even in Elimination(10vs10).

Thereafter in December 2016, the system to prioritize platoons to be matched each other was introduced, however as the population declined, this system eventually has been removed as it became "a mechanism which a strong platoon extincts other platoons that are simultaneously active".

Now, who will be the one to get extinct by a platoon if the opponent does not include a platoon even you went match as a platoon?

As a general rule, the outcome of the game is decided by "whether your teammates are strong" and "whether a combination of robots is favourable". Because the platoon strongly affects these variables, the competitive platoon aiming for a victory will be extremely powerful. Especially since the current 5-man platoon can occupy one whole team, it is nearly invincible against the same level of solo players.

In order to turn the population to increase tendency, it is important to prevent the loss of the existing majority solo players and establish the new players.

Does the platoon conduct to the current situation? We think that it is necessary to reconsider without setting preconditions.

|Max. platoon size|Participating players|Occupation ratio in team|
|---|---|---:|
|3 people|ELI(10vs10)|30%|
|3 people|BA1.0(8vs8)|37.5%|
|5 people|ELI(10vs10), BA2.0(10vs10)|50%|
|5 people|BA1.0(8vs8)|62.5%|
|5 people|BA2.0(5vs5), TDM(5vs5)|100%|

\* The maximum platoon size for non-premium players before October 2016 was limited to 3 people

---

## 4. Consideration about the BA2.0 - Continued

In August 2017, we Japanese contributors posted a "document expressing a negative opinion to BA2.0(5vs5)([Japanese version](https://hackmd.io/s/S1A9AXeP-)/[English version](https://hackmd.io/s/ryNcdMeDb))" to the former official forum.

We cannot refer that post as [the story to leave an archive of the former forum](https://forums.freejamgames.com/showthread.php?213-Anyone-know-where-all-the-content-on-the-old-forums-went&p=966&viewfull=1#post966) has been forgotten, but the document included the signature of over 80 Japanese players who agree with the content.

In short, this document was all about saying that BA2.0(5vs5) is "monotonous and boring".

Although many changes in the game have been made since then, basically there is still no change in the conclusion that BA2.0(5vs5) is "monotonous and boring". However, we have a few things to supplement.

### Knowledge obtained from Robocraft World Cup

It is obvious that the reason, why that BA2.0(5vs5) is monotonous and boring, is because there are few variables. The team size is small, lacks the variation of the robot, the map size is small, and the combat only occurs around the capture point.

However, the things will change when the "cooperation between players" will take part in this.

In a game of strong teams who are considering tactics from day to day, players will need to quickly select appropriate tactics according to the situation and execute them properly while cooperating with teammates, which creates an incredible match far beyond the monotony or the boredom. This is obvious if you watch the game of the higher rank teams of RCWC.

The problem here is that such a situation will never happen unless there is a custom game held between 5-man platoons like RCWC, or similar situations.

The cooperation done in atmosphere between the randoms are far behind this in both the variation and the complexity. Even though the rating exists and functioning properly, only a handful of tops can reach that point.

### Knowledge obtained from Big Battle Arena BRAWL

An experience of the BA2.0(10vs10) which was held at BRAWL in February 2018 was very impressive.

Despite the fact that the differences between the regular BA2.0(5vs5) are only the number of participants and the map, the game experience was closer to BA1.0(8vs8) and Elimination(10vs10) than BA2.0(5vs5).

And most of all, there were many impressions that people enjoyed this mode as far as we've heard.

[original tweet](https://twitter.com/nefilm_rc/status/979291817752461312)

And there seems to be not a few players who also felt so not only in Japanese communities.

- [I didn't expect 10v10 BA to be more popular than 10v10 Elim. - Cluly](https://twitter.com/_ClulY_/status/960147481312014336)

I left a note analyzing the differences between BA2.0(5vs5) and BA2.0(10vs10) at the time.

1. Surrounding players will keep change because there are many people
1. The combat occurs everywhere because it is saturated
1. Even there is a difference in a team's strength, local superiority or inferiority depends on the number of people on that place, and it keeps changing
1. The hate of the team wouldn't focus on a certain player who is less contributing to the team because it is difficult to see everyone's behaviour
1. There is room for a specialized robot because of the wide range of organization
1. You can sometimes win against the team with competitive platoon even you are playing solo depending on your teammates
1. There will be no apparent difference between the teams dominance because the protonite core get destroyed almost surely (\*This is due to the characteristic of the map)
6. You don't really care about losing as the game itself is enjoyable

From this experience, I started to think that monotony and boredom of BA2.0(5vs5) are due to the small number of participants, and the relevance with the rules of BA2.0 itself is not that high.

---

## 5. Pointing out about the connection lag

First, here are some of the premises about the connection lag.

- Your behaviour during the match is always delayed to other players, while other player's behaviour also delayed to yourself, due to the delay while processing and connecting
- Judging of whether projectile hit to the enemy or not is done by a client of the player who attacked
- The degree of the lag heavily depends on each player's ping rate
- We must accommodate at least around 500ms(including both back and forth) of the latency just with transmitting data if we will be using single location global server

The latency in the game due to this connection lag causes absurdities like below.

- Getting damaged by a Tesla or a Shotgun from a far distance or by an enemy which is still invisible
- Enemy projectiles going through the map objects
- Getting hit by a projectile that you dodged or avoided


1. Your position
2. Opponent's position
3. Your position in opponent's screen
4. The bigger the lag will be, and the faster the bot will be, the more distance between the actual location

The faster speed the bot will be, and the higher damage of a weapon with intensive single-shot firepower, the effect of this absurdities will get worse and will give a sense of unfairness to a player.
These should be recognized as a matter that must be carefully considered when deciding a standard bot speed and the single-shot firepower of weapons.

### Occurrence mechanism of penetration

We will be explaining with diagram.

[original size](https://i.imgur.com/NuC6GxK.png)

1. A comes out from the behind of object
2. B attacks A 500ms after that
3. A hides behind the object again 1000ms after coming out from behind of object

When the delay is 300ms, the situation that the order of (2) and (3) is reversed on the timeline of A is a so-called penetration.

What's happening on the timeline of B is the same regardless of the delay, however, on A's screen, B's attack is hitting after hiding behind the object only when the delay is 300ms. Like this situation, as the delay gets larger, more often the penetration will occur.

The delay in here is a total of processing and networking of BOTH A and B, meaning that the result will be the same regardless of whether A or B's ping is high.

As the higher ping players always have a larger delay, their attack often gets penetrated, while the enemy's attack also often gets penetrated.

The combat in the situation when both side of the players recognizing each other or an equivalent situation, there is almost no difference in advantageous as the delay affects each other equally.

### Advantages at surprise attack

[original size](https://i.imgur.com/gOjDDan.png)

1. B sneaks behind A and attacks
2. A tries to evade 400ms after getting hit
3. A attacks B 300ms after he started evading

In the event of a surprise attack, as the delay gets larger, the nonresistant time of the opponent will be longer in the timeline on the surprising side. In the example in the diagram, despite the fact that surprised A copes exactly the same, there is a difference of 200ms in nonresistant time on B’s timeline.

As explained in the previous section, the results are the same regardless of whether A or B's ping is higher. Players with higher ping are advantageous if they are surprising, while it is disadvantageous if they are being surprised.

Usually, attacking and defending are constantly exchanging, so the temporal advantageous and disadvantages due to the amount of the ping are almost being offset.

---

## 6. Pointing out about the UI

There are at least 3 major defects in the new UI which have been introduced with the Infinity update.

### Scalings

Since the Infinity update, the proportion of the UI to the display area is always scaling constantly, so the size of UI will get excessive especially on larger screen displays.

Unlike the devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops, which has strong limitations to its physical size, it is common sense in UI designing that desktops tend to have larger display size as the resolution scales.

In the recent years that we have more varieties in display devices, it is nearly impossible to perfectly accommodate with all environments with a single display rule. It is best to make it able for users to select the scaling option as desired.

#### Comparison

The image below is the ratio of the UI size when on 23.8 inches Full HD display(1920x1080) is taken as 100%.

[original size](https://i.imgur.com/n7FGtrp.png)

- Fixed Size（Before Infinity Update）
- The UI is too small in an extremely small dot pitch environment
- Fixed Ratio（After Infinity Update）
- The UI is too large on displays with more than 30 inches
- The advantage of a large screen can not make full use at all

### Inventories

In the previous interface, users were able to display about 100 different parts at the same time in Edit mode inventory with full HD display(1920x1080). Even the display size for each part was smaller, it was never too small for a 24inch full HD display and equivalent dot pitch display (Low visibility on a display with substantially smaller dot pitch display is not a matter only in inventory screen but its another problem).
Except for the new players with less unlocked parts, the position of each part is almost fixed, making veteran players to quickly select the frequently used parts without looking for it.


After the infinity update, the amount of the elements displayed in one screen are fixed to 30 in many resolutions, and often requiring users to scroll down when selecting items, making the time and labour (clicks and gaze movements) to reach the desired parts dramatically increased.


The current usability of the inventory screen is very poor that hinders concentration of crafting, and it takes strong stress to use.

### CRF

Previous CRF displayed both filter interface and search results at complete state and both were always operational at the same time.

However, in new CRF, the filter interface got split and filtering options are only editable while the filter panel is opened while browsing and interacting with the search results is only possible while closing filter panel (search result while showing filter panel is darkened and also clipped). Also because the indicator for search option is not displayed in search results, you always have to open filter panel to see current search options. This is obviously a deterioration.

We understand that [the current CRF interface is just temporal, and will going to improve based on the previous interface](https://steamcommunity.com/games/301520/announcements/detail/1729840463393938236), however, we are pointing this out anyway as many promises made in past DevJams(\*) have been broken so far. We expect to have improved CRF interface as soon as possible.

\* Remaining Custom Game options/features, Clan Leaderboards, and Cosmetic variant of radar/jammer/receiver

---

## 7. Pointing out about the player feedbacks

Player feedbacks are always biased as each player have different feelings and opinions depending on their player skills, game knowledge, preference and favours.

In the first place, as player feedbacks are basically a “feedback from a player”, those are usually just a part of the opinion by “a player who want to expresses their opinions to developers”.

Do beginners and casual players aggressively state their opinion to developers? Can they deeply discuss the rules and weapon balances?

The opposite side of that will be a noisy minority, and it is needless to explain about them.

Feedback from players in a completely different group of the attribute may sometime have a conflicting assertion. For example, the “Nerf Fuckin Drones Chorus” have never stopped squealing on forums even when competitive players not putting emphasis on drones.

Player feedbacks must be prioritised and evaluated by the vision of the game considering the speakers attribute. The game won’t step forward by randomly adopting opinions with various vectors.

Player feedback is just a part of the information that can be considered and can not be all.

---

## 8. Pointing out about the system of debugging and support desk

The bugs in game development are inevitable, however, FJ's efforts in suppressing and counter measuring the bugs feel inadequate.

### Lack of debugging

In almost every major update includes many amounts of bugs, however, some of them are very obvious at first glance, which I suspect that there is a fundamental problem in debugging structure.

The most notable example is [Reconnect update on April 5 2018](https://steamcommunity.com/games/301520/announcements/detail/1675777608240318302) and below are the bugs occurred at the same time (and the update has been rolled back afterwards).

- A fatal problem occurred in Reconnecting function
- All in-battle chat combined to one
- The speed boost of the thruster doubled(and there was also doubt in other movements)
- Fusion shield healing/damage ability disabled
- Destroyed rotor keeps functioning
- An account will be unable to log in when trying to show the new "T-Rex Cosmetic Mask"

Also in addition to the inaccurate description of patch notes which is described later, there are cases that players cannot determine whether it is a bug or not.

### Lack of number and quality of support desk

More than 150 support request is newly created in one week by counting backwards the support request ID, however [the corresponding is done by a just one person](https://forums.freejamgames.com/showthread.php?1373-Freejam-Support-is-ignoring-us) according to the forum moderator.


Also, because the game understanding of the support team is poor, there are some cases which the content of the report didn't get understood quickly.

I'm not sure whether over capacity or whether its due to a problem in the workflow, but there were also the cases which issue is left unresolved for several months.

- In the report that the new Strut's CPU to weight ratio falls apart by type, there was a reply that the Mass is accurate and its based on the CPU, and the answer to this additional question was also ambiguous
- In the report that [the 20% reduction of speed boost described in the patch note](https://steamcommunity.com/games/301520/announcements/detail/2521351362636161003) is not reflected, there was a reply that asking which patch note actually describes that
- When reporting dozens of bugs at the same time, there was a reply about one of the bug, and the reply for the rest was 2 months after that

\*Such situation is now somewhat improved at the point of late January 2019 (Added at February 5 2019)

### Carry out the duty if you ask players for the help

Under these circumstances, even the capacity of the support team is limited, as the unnecessary interaction increases between players and support team, and between the support team and developers, the efficiency get worse and be caught in a vicious circle which the bugs already knew during debugging getting followed up by a report about the same bug.

If you [ask players for the help to submit the bug report](https://robocraftgame.com/devblog/infinity-update-out-now/), you should at least improve the circumstances that inspections and reports made by players being left without getting considered.

- Improve the quality of debugging
- Add a staff who understands the game system and the updates to the support team or make it possible to work closely with the support team
- Do not leave support request for a long period of time
- If the personnel is insufficient, take measures in some way

---

## 9. Pointing out about the information sharing

### Unreliable news distribution

It is a common sense in many online services not only in games, that the quick and accurate announcement of information such as update content, maintenance date/time, and failure occurrence/progress is important.

Freejam was not very enthusiastic in information sharing with players from the beginning. But it seems that this tendency has become particularly noticeable since late November 2018.

Currently, four different channels(OHP/Steam/Discord/Twitter) are mainly used to distribute Robocraft's news. However, it is hard to say that these are operated consistently.

Here is an example:

- Maintenance on December 21, 2018, was only announced at official Discord server on that day, which caused the confusion among players who could not receive the information in advance. It is ordinary that the unsaved changes while editing the robot will be lost when the server shuts down.
- In the update which introduced the feature for AI to participate in BA/TDM battle, that change was not written in the first [release note](https://steamcommunity.com/games/301520/announcements/detail/1729840463423633241). The line says *"AI-controlled robots will fill empty seats if players are queuing for battle for an extended period of time"* was added afterwards.
- Ultimate case is the [increase of laser and rail projectile speed which has been announced only in CEO’s twitter](https://twitter.com/MarkDJammer/status/1082916745545953280). This change is still not yet notified in any other news channels.

### Silent updates and masked data

Other than the cases above, silent updates that have not been announced before and after is made more than a few times.

In online games, there are cases which developers intentionally do not announce the change due to circumstances of the game design. However in Robocraft, since the usual announcement is slipshod, it is hard to distinguish whether a change is intentional or it's just a mistake.

If there were cases which Freejam intentionally did not announce the changes, we can't see the rational reason to limit the information given to players in the situation where the problems are accumulated as below.

- Changes are not always implemented according to specifications regardless of public disclosure
- Displayed information in-game are not always accurate
- There is a problem with the accuracy of release notes
- New bugs frequently occur
- Fixed bugs are often gets revived
- Developers asking players for the help with feedback and bug reports due to insufficient development resources

To be plain, the completeness of the game has not yet reached to the point of adding a silent update to the option.

Same applies to masked data such as "projectile concentration rate", "projectile speed" and "weapon range". If you want detailed feedback from players about the weapon balance, these parameters should be as open as possible.

Even without that, it's not very welcomed to hide the specifications of parts parameters and movement in crafting games.

Also as another problem, analyzing masked data requires some inspections and especially the existence of the masked data relates to the advantage or disadvantage in battle will expand the disparity among players.

### Japanese usage trend of news distribution channels

Prior to writing this document, we conducted the following questionnaires with Japanese in RJPW-Discord(a community of Japanese players) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LEoREo_2247/status/1086161464115621888).

> "Which of the following two for A and B respectively do you check for the official Robocraft news?"
> - A:
> 1. Official Discord server
> 2. Official Twitter account
> - B:
> 1. Official home page
> 2. Steam news

Here are the results.


There is no surprise in this result as the number of official Discord server members and official Twitter account followers has about six times difference in January 2019.

Recently, news such as update information is mainly distributed in Steam, and the distribution to the official home page tends to be delayed. However, at least among Japanese players, it seems that official websites are more commonly seen than Steam.

---

## 10. Insufficiency of beginners support

In a sandbox game which is a typical genre of the game with crafting elements, it is an important experience to be a babe in a woods when a player started playing the game. However, in an interpersonal online game like Robocraft, we think that the basic learning needs to be finished quickly.

Because in an interpersonal online game, low proficiency means that they “cannot win”. If the period that player cannot win last for too long, the motivation of the player would run out before reaching to the essential experience of the game.

The game is overwhelmingly complicated than games using pre-made characters or vehicles, because of the fact players have to create their own robot by themselves. Moreover, unlike a problem-solving game, players won’t just need to fulfil its function, but they will be exposed to competition with the robot created by other players, so the player must optimize their robot. Even they can purchase robots from CRF, players will need a reasonable knowledge to judge the quality of the robot.

Considering that the robot design greatly affects the manoeuvrability of robot, we can say that the hurdles to get out from the beginner, in general, are very high.

Although, the official beginner support in Robocraft is only the incomplete tutorial covering a fraction of the elements in combat and edit modes.

Also regarding the resurrected Tier system, the current low tier, in reality, is full of AIs. And because their behaviour is not refined, beginners "learning" by looking at other player's robot and behaviour, and piling up the number of a multiplayer game will not be successful.

Now that the number of players is at a critical level, the obtaining and maintaining of new players should be more important than anything else.

Yet, there should be many players who willing to cooperate if FJ cannot solve within their company, like a case that a YouTuber offered to provide a tutorial (Source: Robostream on February 2, 2018).

---

## 11. Pointing out about the instability of the game

Although it is a frequent topic that we don't even need to mention, instability of the servers and clients still seems to be the primary cause of damaging the game experience.

The situation that players can easily disconnect due to the negligible penalty which cannot be heavier because of game instability has been neglected over many years.

Other than the improvement of the net code, there should be many things you can do such as amending the specification that disconnected players automatically votes for “No” in surrender voting (due to timeout), giving the warning to a habitual player by counting the number of times disconnected in a long span.

---

## Signatures (Alphabetical)

13turn
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Authors: Nefilm, LEoREo_2247, omiwatari1.3billion, shunohara
Acknowledgement: cerasus, kimoikoala
English Translation: LEoREo_2247, yamikara