[BeeStripes]

Years ago I read about this game in a gaming magazine and said "Wow... what an amazing art style. And the gameplay and level design looks interesting too!" But it must have been a preview of the game pre-release, so I never made any effort to look further into the game back then.

Fast forward to last week, when the Playstation YouTube channel dropped the Identity/Space Shop cinematic trailer, I watched it and said "This looks interesting. But there's something familiar about it..." And that's when I realized this was Raiders of the Broken Planet with a new name (tbh I wish it still kept its original name), and I was so taken aback by how much this game still charmed me years after I first saw it and promptly forgot about it. Then I saw it was free-to-play on PSN, and I hopped on it immediately.

For the past week I've been on a grind with this game. I really appreciate what it offers: the unique approach to the third-person shooter genre, its art-style (this is a big heart-throb for me, as I am a big fan of Jamie Hewlett's work, Mad Max, and anime such as Cowboy Bebop, which all seem to be the inspirations for this game's art-style), its characters (I adore all the pop-culture references portrayed by some of their skins), its lore, its animation, its mission/level design, and its avoidance of political correctness in its writing. It's truly a project to behold, and I am in full support of MSE as they continue development on this game. I've been pitching this game to all my friends so that they can hop on this little wave, and many of them are invested already.

Just today, though, I have entered the forums for the game, and I can't help but feel dismayed. It seems as though a majority of this game's small fanbase (which I hope grows in the future) is up in arms against the developers, who I see are actively responding, and even though I can  understand and sympathize with a lot of the criticism given to the game (such as the teeth-grindingly difficult PvP as an Antagonist and the crazy XP unlock gaps for story missions and such), I question why I haven't been prone to the utter disappointment of other players; all I've been having is fun with this game. I'm guessing it's because I haven't played this game long enough, but that makes me fear that the problems that have been made clear to be littered throughout this gem of a game by the forums will make me sink into  abandoning this game. All of these people only dropping the problems of the game in the YouTube comments or Steam reviews of this game instead of all of its triumphs also makes me dread that this game will never take off in terms of player population.

I may make replies giving specific critiques of the game later... I'm in a very conflicting position as a player of this game right now.

[Cazic-Thule]

The longer you play this game the harder it is to enjoy it, hell, to not hate it. It punishes you for investing time in it, especially beyond level 100, the balance is non-existent, and while the devs do reply to some threads and make promises it's nothing more than empty lip service. The playerbase is still shrinking with every update, not growing, and for two years the small (and always shrinking) group of active dedicated players have been telling the devs exactly how to fix the game and have gone completely and totally ignored. If you want to play this game play it very casually and don't get invested in it, or you're just gonna end up angry. There are all of literally 2 or 3 people on these forums that just act like this is the best game ever and everything is sunshine and rainbows with it, but like you said yourself read virtually any post at all and it's nothing but entirely justified complaints from people who are beyond frustrated at watching the devs continue to completely ruin an idea with so much potential.

[Angeles2099]

Dude, relax. You for one thing have no idea if the player base is growing or shrinking, those are your assumptions. And MS giving lip service? Everything they said they are aiming for they do. They see a problem they try to remedy it as best as they can.

Right now the two major problems in this game that stand out among anything else you can nit-pick on is the MMR and the Antagonist system. The Antag system has already been promised to make a drastic over-haul  on the final stage of the Spacelords Roadmap, as for the MMR....to be honest idk what there doing on that area.

So as a new player I recommend you learn the strengths and weakness of every Raider even if you don't have they by observing others. Doing this you'l know what others can bring to the table. As you win matches consecutively and your MMR reaches higher percentages Grunts will become increasingly more difficult and will no longer be simply cannon fodder.
They'll Surround you
2-shot you
Chase you in packs
Protect Elites with there lives
Etc.
So anyway dont stress too much, its just a game obviously lol, if you get horribly beaten by an Antag, just take a breather and come back later if you want to but try not to rage and instead remember there tactics.

There are Certain stages where an Antagonist wont have to do too much to win easily (A Fistful of Sand & Mind over Matter) while on the other hand there are stages where Antagonist will have a harder time winning than others.
So ill leave off by saying at first its a cake walk on the lowest levels but the game will eventually force you to play smarter and make you realize you are not unstoppable.

[Cazic-Thule]

Angeles you're exactly one of the 2 or 3 people I was talking about. All you have to do to see the objective truth is just scroll the forum, or even the subreddit, it's complaint after complaint after complaint then you jump into every thread one after the other on some righteous crusade and defend the game and MSE to the death. Your opinion represents the absolute smallest minority of the playerbase and that's an unassailable fact, again, just read what nearly every single other post says or is about. Riding the dev's until you're blue in the face isn't how you change a horribly broken game. It's with honest and open complaints, which soooo many people tried giving for so long until most of them gave up and quit forever. Just look at what a ghost town any forum related to this game is, the facts speak for themselves. When the developers actively ignore the vast majority of the players and do the exact opposite of what their paying customers want from them then they deserve to be criticized harshly. Perhaps enough harsh and honest criticism can keep this game from getting any more screwed and force the devs to actually give up on pushing what they want the game to be vs what the actual players want the game to be. People who just blindly dismiss every criticism and praise the devs for making decisions that actively hurt the game like you (and thankfully there's barely anybody else here like you) are part of the real problem and keep positive change from ever being able to occur.

And as far as being aware of the growth/reduction of the playerbase, again, just look at what an absolute ghost town this forum, the discord, the subreddit, and lack of interest in any videos/streams online. This game is driving people away faster than it is bringing people in, and I really hope I don't have to explain to you why that isn't a sustainable model for any service.

[Lancer]

Calm thy tits, Spacelords is doing fine and the forums are full of inciters like yourself. What is the reason of your bickery? We only promote constructive criticism here not personal attacks, trust. Pohthead learnd that. So shut up thy noob and as we like to say. Git gud.

[Angeles2099]

I think your under the impression that I can't see the faults in this game but I have seen what others have to say on the forums and on occasion ill add my voice to it if I see there missing something. But ill let them do them, theirs enough people venting out the issues that there isn't any point in joining the mob. (MMR & Antag system) have been brought up continuously since early "Raiders of the Broken Planet" and sure yes, there sticking to there guns in the name of being unique, do I wish they would bend a little for the sake of there fans, hell yes. But they are at the very least trying to make it work as they and I have already mention (Roadmap).

Is the only form of support you can provide is "constructive" criticisms? I'm mean I get it but there are other ways to help a gaming company than by banning together and going on strike, I've had this same exact argument with Level9Drow in the past.

it's complaint after complaint after complaint then you jump into every thread one after the other on some righteous crusade and defend the game and MSE to the death.

...Riding the dev's until you're blue in the face isn't how you change a horribly broken game. It's with honest and open complaints

Frankly, as far as defending is concerned that's just in my nature, i'm generally optimistic and supportive  but that doesn't mean I don't see things from a realist' perspective.
and second what do you know about changing a game or about being supportive anyway. Find a fault and cram it into there face till your own face is red, very nice. 
And yeah I agree, this forum is rather baron, but that's only cause most people will come to a Forum of any kind to simply do just that, complain.

Can you imagine a player goes out of there way to come to a forum with the aims to seek advice, to share there ideas or give there opinions and tey instead get greeted by a mob that says "don't bother this game is a broken piece of shit"and they leave.

Honestly,...fuck your opinion man, you can see the world as a glass half empty for the rest of your life but your not going to get anymore fucks out of me. You do you and ill do me.

I'm glad you let out your frustrations, hopefully you got most of it out. The complaints will keep coming and ill still be in the minority who will try to offer more than that shit method you call fixing a game.

[Level9Drow]

I think your under the impression that I can't see the faults in this game but I have seen what others have to say on the forums and on occasion ill add my voice to it if I see there missing something. But ill let them do them, theirs enough people venting out the issues that there isn't any point in joining the mob. (MMR & Antag system) have been brought up continuously since early "Raiders of the Broken Planet" and sure yes, there sticking to there guns in the name of being unique, do I wish they would bend a little for the sake of there fans, hell yes. But they are at the very least trying to make it work as they and I have already mention (Roadmap).

Is the only form of support you can provide is "constructive" criticisms? I'm mean I get it but there are other ways to help a gaming company than by banning together and going on strike, I've had this same exact argument with Level9Drow in the past.

it's complaint after complaint after complaint then you jump into every thread one after the other on some righteous crusade and defend the game and MSE to the death.

...Riding the dev's until you're blue in the face isn't how you change a horribly broken game. It's with honest and open complaints

Frankly, as far as defending is concerned that's just in my nature, i'm generally optimistic and supportive  but that doesn't mean I don't see things from a realist' perspective.
and second what do you know about changing a game or about being supportive anyway. Find a fault and cram it into there face till your own face is red, very nice. 
And yeah I agree, this forum is rather baron, but that's only cause most people will come to a Forum of any kind to simply do just that, complain.

Can you imagine a player goes out of there way to come to a forum with the aims to seek advice, to share there ideas or give there opinions and tey instead get greeted by a mob that says "don't bother this game is a broken piece of shit"and they leave.

Honestly,...fuck your opinion man, you can see the world as a glass half empty for the rest of your life but your not going to get anymore fucks out of me. You do you and ill do me.

I'm glad you let out your frustrations, hopefully you got most of it out. The complaints will keep coming and ill still be in the minority who will try to offer more than that shit method you call fixing a game.

Well that's like, you're opinion. I think the point is that the majority can't be wrong. If a newcomer comes here to the forums of the Steam sight and sees a lot of criticism then people have a lot to criticize. That, in and of itself, makes the points we make self evident. You can't be one person and tell a bunch of other people they're wrong. I mean you can, but they won't care.

You're opinion doesn't remove the problems they're having. If someone is having issues with the game you saying, "Everything is fine." doesn't remove those issues for that person.

As far as the new player goes, just let him play the game. He will see for himself.

[Level9Drow]

Years ago I read about this game in a gaming magazine and said "Wow... what an amazing art style. And the gameplay and level design looks interesting too!" But it must have been a preview of the game pre-release, so I never made any effort to look further into the game back then.

Fast forward to last week, when the Playstation YouTube channel dropped the Identity/Space Shop cinematic trailer, I watched it and said "This looks interesting. But there's something familiar about it..." And that's when I realized this was Raiders of the Broken Planet with a new name (tbh I wish it still kept its original name), and I was so taken aback by how much this game still charmed me years after I first saw it and promptly forgot about it. Then I saw it was free-to-play on PSN, and I hopped on it immediately.

For the past week I've been on a grind with this game. I really appreciate what it offers: the unique approach to the third-person shooter genre, its art-style (this is a big heart-throb for me, as I am a big fan of Jamie Hewlett's work, Mad Max, and anime such as Cowboy Bebop, which all seem to be the inspirations for this game's art-style), its characters (I adore all the pop-culture references portrayed by some of their skins), its lore, its animation, its mission/level design, and its avoidance of political correctness in its writing. It's truly a project to behold, and I am in full support of MSE as they continue development on this game. I've been pitching this game to all my friends so that they can hop on this little wave, and many of them are invested already.

Just today, though, I have entered the forums for the game, and I can't help but feel dismayed. It seems as though a majority of this game's small fanbase (which I hope grows in the future) is up in arms against the developers, who I see are actively responding, and even though I can  understand and sympathize with a lot of the criticism given to the game (such as the teeth-grindingly difficult PvP as an Antagonist and the crazy XP unlock gaps for story missions and such), I question why I haven't been prone to the utter disappointment of other players; all I've been having is fun with this game. I'm guessing it's because I haven't played this game long enough, but that makes me fear that the problems that have been made clear to be littered throughout this gem of a game by the forums will make me sink into  abandoning this game. All of these people only dropping the problems of the game in the YouTube comments or Steam reviews of this game instead of all of its triumphs also makes me dread that this game will never take off in terms of player population.

I may make replies giving specific critiques of the game later... I'm in a very conflicting position as a player of this game right now.

Just keep playing. I will not say anything for or against the game. I will not tell you what to expect. I will only tell you that you will see for yourself. Let your experience, especially as you progress, be your evidence. You will discover some undeniable truths.

That being said, yea, this game is pretty awesome. Or at least it has the potential to be and may have some circumstances where it can be sometimes. It all depends on what you are trying to get out of the game and what part of the game you enjoy the most. Since the game has different aspects of it the community can be divided.

Oh, and be careful of the Discord. You can get banned there for saying certain things. It's also run by a particularly toxic clique of people. There are good people there, but there are many who will run you off or pressure the bias mods to pressure you. Unless you fall in line with their echoes.