An open letter to Glu
MDOZ
Registered Users 29 Posts
An open letter to Glu
Dear Glu
What happened?
You had an excellent, evolving, engaging and popular product with DH14 that kept getting better and better, with many, many loyal followers.
Then you released DH16, which to any rational mind - given the advanced technology available over a two (plus) year gap between the games - should be a far superior product. But it is far from an improvement. It's gone backwards in so many ways.
If you put these games (DH14 and DH16) side by side in front of a bunch of pre-school kids and asked them which came first - guess what? Your 14 product wins hands down every time.
These two games are not a succession of improvement. They are two totally different offerings. Let's put aside the intricacies of DH14 such as energy drinks, rare animal calls, infra-red batteries and hollow points. And focus on the game play - DH14 has superiority over 16 in many other areas such as graphics, rendering, detail, scenery, movement and overall look and feel of the landscape and animals involved in the hunts.
And don't get me started on the prices you are trying to charge for weapons to complete special events! I can go and buy a top shelf X-Box game for what it would cost me to finish your special hunt series that takes about 20 minutes.
Glu, what I'm upset about most is that the loyal, dedicated players of DH14 have been let down. How can you put out a product that is, by any test, a poor imitation of its predecessor. It beggars belief. DH16 should be called DH2001 in comparison to DH14. And you can't play it off line? *** This is an app!
Glu - please re-think DH16. You've got it very wrong so far. And you could have got it so right!...
Quote - "There is no shame in failing quickly. Better to learn early and readjust." I said that.
Dear Glu
What happened?
You had an excellent, evolving, engaging and popular product with DH14 that kept getting better and better, with many, many loyal followers.
Then you released DH16, which to any rational mind - given the advanced technology available over a two (plus) year gap between the games - should be a far superior product. But it is far from an improvement. It's gone backwards in so many ways.
If you put these games (DH14 and DH16) side by side in front of a bunch of pre-school kids and asked them which came first - guess what? Your 14 product wins hands down every time.
These two games are not a succession of improvement. They are two totally different offerings. Let's put aside the intricacies of DH14 such as energy drinks, rare animal calls, infra-red batteries and hollow points. And focus on the game play - DH14 has superiority over 16 in many other areas such as graphics, rendering, detail, scenery, movement and overall look and feel of the landscape and animals involved in the hunts.
And don't get me started on the prices you are trying to charge for weapons to complete special events! I can go and buy a top shelf X-Box game for what it would cost me to finish your special hunt series that takes about 20 minutes.
Glu, what I'm upset about most is that the loyal, dedicated players of DH14 have been let down. How can you put out a product that is, by any test, a poor imitation of its predecessor. It beggars belief. DH16 should be called DH2001 in comparison to DH14. And you can't play it off line? *** This is an app!
Glu - please re-think DH16. You've got it very wrong so far. And you could have got it so right!...
Quote - "There is no shame in failing quickly. Better to learn early and readjust." I said that.
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Also, does anyone know if you can reliably transfer your data to another device? I see that this game has a data code and a player ID. So I assume you can transfer your progress to another device. It really made me upset when I lost all of my progress on DH14 when I got a new phone.
{counting dark hairs because its easier than counting gray ones} me too.
On another note, to those of you that remember me, I'm just stopping by to see what's new and what you guys think about the game. It's nice to see all of you as well, but sadly, don't expect me to come by often (as you can tell by my previous hiatus). Think of this as a friendly visit that I may do from time to time.
Also to Glu, hopefully you will get your act together and straighten up the game to be what it was meant to be.
I have spent real money on this game. I need to get that out of the way. I spent enough of my actual dollars to complete the Nature's Fury event.
First and foremost, DH16 isn't a BAD game. In fact, I have enjoyed the time I've been spending with it. But the deeper mechanics are very shallow, and the way the game is presented and laid out is such that it can feel too much like a money grab at times. This is evident by the fact that the inaugural event required you to spend money in order to finish it. That should NOT have been the case, but it was. In order to hook older AND newer players, that first event should have been effectively free. Instead, it required you to spend a good chunk of change in order to afford each gun that was necessary to move forward. What's worse is that there were no OTO's to make that impulse purchase on. I can understand keeping the cost a bit higher for those who decide later that they DO want to participate...But forcing you to spend full gold just to start up felt unfair and anti-consumer.
Glu has already stated that some base tweaks are coming. I'm happy about that. The blood in DH14 is great simply because it provides you with visual feedback on a successful shot. I love that faux tactile feedback DH14 provides (especially nice in shotgun and AR contract hunts). But they haven't addressed some of the deeper concerns that I can finally understand.
DH16 has an interesting setup in that you have access to main region hunts, 2x contract hunts, and trophy hunts. There are no rare hunts, elite hunts, or weapon special hunts (yet?). The main hunts are fine and feel very similar to 14. The contract hunts, however, do NOT reward the player in a smart or meaningful way. Instead, they reward those who spend money. It's a very gross reward structure to get into. Instead of allowing you to do both sets of contract hunts to change up the weapon use and break up the monotony of killing 4 giraffes over and over and over, you're required to either settle with less payout and do shotgun hunts until your eyes bleed, or spend real money to get a region locked AR to increase your HB gain slightly AND provide you with some variety.
BUT! Once you start doing AR hunts, it seems silly to do shotgun hunts because the payout is less. So once you DO have an AR, it feels confining in that you have no incentive to run the shotgun hunts. It's an odd design choice that's clearly motivated by money - give people better rewards because they spend real money. On top of that, if you buy an AR for R4, you can only use it in R1-4. You are unable to even attempt later AR hunts because the game artificially locks you out saying that your AR is inadequate. In DH14, I have only made it to R8. But I am using a R5 or R6 shotgun perfectly fine (it was a nice OTO shotty that proved to be a great decision). I like being able to spend my money how I want to still make fair and enjoyable progress. The way DH16 is currently structured, spending money on R4 stuff isn't worth it because you won't be able to make use of it in R5.
The lack of "extra stuff to do" will hopefully be fixed over time. Who knows - the October update may fix all of these problems. But currently, DH16 appears to not have the core structure in place to provide the same experience that DH14 fans have been so happy with. Making the same game is obviously not the right way to go; but making a SIMILAR game with tweaked and updated mechanics is. Instead, DH16 is looking more and more like a proof of concept instead of an actual game.
I hope that the coming updates improve upon some of the core issues DH16 has. The structure of the hunts needs a new coat of paint - don't penalize people for buying new stuff. Give us variety to keep interest up. Add new ways to play and new things to pursue (both of these will come in time I hope). Rethink the entire gold market you have in place (OTO's will help, but the AR issue strikes a very deep chord with many people, too). In my honest opinion, an overall reassessment of DH16 as a whole would benefit the future of this game.