Future of Gunbound (GIS)

[dovoxove]

:huh:
its been 2 years since i started working as a GM for Softnyx.
2 years can be a short period of time or very long.. just depends on how you look at it.

Even i didn't expect Gunbound to grow this much.. It is not a game that i created, but i've furnished it and loved it. And It sure has grown a lot. I've spent countless hours pursuing hacks and those who DOS attacked the servers. Also met great friends that I treasure until this moment.

Now I am thinking of leaving the scene for awhile... I have not decided what to do yet. But if i do decide to leave Gunbound ( Softnyx ) i won't be returning back.

It is entirely true that future of GB lies on the players.
I would like to hear your thoughts on your exprience playing Gunbound.
*i'm not asking you tell me what to improve on, but just your overall impression about Gunbound. Simple answer would do ^^ but if you'd like to get into the details, please do*

PS: During my exam week, i have gotten a lot of PMs.. Sorry i have yet to get back to those who PMed me ^^ I'll get back to you ASAP

http://ruliwebfile.intizen.com/mpeg3/etc/demo.wmv

[CommunistBus]

Simple answer? It's a great addicting game. Far from perfect but still fscking awesome.

[uberbacon]

it's an awesome game. addictive, yet so relaxing. it's better than rpgs cause you can play for 10 minutes then do something else, or just lean back and play a match. the ranking system is awesome, too bad botters are ruining it. I love the idea with avatars, it's smiply a great game.
you meet a lot of nice people through sites like gbgl, if it wasn't for this community I would still think people were idiots and I'd get bored quicker.

I have played for three months now, I wish I started earlier. or do I? after all I was using dialup back then.. *shiver*

I hope that you will go back to playing, if you decide to leave the management, dovo. thanks a lot for the effort you've spent on gbgl

[genty]

awesome game.  im sad i didnt get to know you well before you leave.  im also korean!!! DAE HAN MIN GOOK.  

[Drknecro]

It's cool in the beginning, but eventually once you get high ranked enough with alot of gp, it becomes a drag to keep your rank up (if you play for rank.)
It's alright if you play once in a while.

[Figiri]

Strictly playing the game?  I love it dearly.  Even with a big budget game like World of Warcraft on my desktop I still play GunBound frequently.

It has the charm of a cute puzzle game, but with the superior depth of a strategy game and with enough team play to resemble a sports title.  uberbacon made a good point, it's much easier to pick up a quick game or three than a lot of the current online games.  GunBound definately has a style of it's own, and even if it's a little antiquated and at times barely intelligible.  To be honest with you, that's what caught my attention at first.  It being good was an unexpected bonus.

However customer service is AWFUL.  AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL.  It's bad.
Adventures in Customer Care

This issue was never resolved.  I sent at least 6 e-mails regarding this problem up until the event closed.  At best I would get an automatic responce.  Half the time I got nothing.  Of course there are other continuing problems with the service including turning a blind eye to bad sportsmanship such as botting, hacking, and event wrecking that just kills morale and further invites this sort of behavior.  The in-game messages tell us to make GunBound a clean society.  The community coordinators (if any) are largely responsible for this too.

Hackers and neer-do-wells should not be welcomed.  You should not fear dismissing them because you will lose active players.  Games that practice this like UO and DAoC are doing poorly because of this mindset.

[Metal]

It is entirely true that future of GB lies on the players.

We're screwed.

[Drknecro]

It is entirely true that future of GB lies on the players.

We're screwed.

well said (I didnt even notice that  : )

[Naice_Shoti]

Will be gunbound paid game ?

[Shaft]

Well, if gunbound goes P2P, then I'd better not be more than 20 singapore dollars a month. If it is, then Its not worth my pocket money.

[psiKObox]

My wish is that GIS gets its priorities right. Dont get me wrong, im not saying they suck or anything, just that like everything else on Earth, GIS can improve in these areas:

-Customer service
-Resource allocation (i.e. We all know that Zones 11 and 12 are simply overloaded while the rest are almost always underutilised. It's high time we changed that).

[pointblanket]

Simple answer? It's a great addicting game. Far from perfect but still fscking awesome.

Agreed.

I've had some awesome times playing GB, messing around with friends, idling and chatting, and whatever.  But the community has gotten noticeably crappier since I've started.  I'm glad I started when it still wasn't too bad.

[mauvecow]

It's a pretty good game, although I suspect entirely by accident. It can be played both casually and competitively, although there are significant disincentives to the latter, which is several pluses in my book. There are a lot of "although"s here. The game is flawed in a lot of aspects but manages to be worth playing despite this.

My main problem with the game anymore is that I cannot tolerate random games, because they are almost invariably three out of four of these:

#1: Meta Mine, Death40.
#2: Dual/Dual+ only.
#3: Stacked to hell.
#4: Aduka only.

I suppose it's not Softnyx's fault that the player base is made up of morons, for the most part. But it is their fault for not doing something to provide disincentives to prevent massive amounts of stupidity. Argue it if you want, but in any game people go the path of least possible effort to maximum results, leading to many of those stupidities we have right now.

#1: The Meta Mine thing can't be helped, I figure it's like Cave, only selectable. Maybe you should get more GP if you select random instead of a specific map? I have no solutions here.
#2: Another thing that can't really be helped without modifying the rewards system, or putting a finite limit on how many things you can disable. Are people really playing the game Softnyx made if they disable almost everything which makes the game interesting? (I keep meaning to convince someone to make a power user game that's score with nothing but team teles enabled, on nodeath.)
#3: Regardless of what Creedo thinks, it is a problem because there are absolutely no disincentives to prevent people from doing this. Wands v hammers is commonplace because the hammers don't know any better and there is no real way to both play with friends and randoms that has even teams in any way whatsoever, because there are no incentives to make people stay for such. The best suggestion I can come up with is "tiering" the zones into separated by rank, increased GP incentives for the higher rank zones.
#4: Ice tag v3.0, ho! Technically it gets around the abuse rules because it's not specifically for gold/GP gain, but you may as well face it: That's what they are for.

Add to this that avatar on is fundamentally broken right now thanks to problems both with splash damage mobiles and screwed up avatar configurations, and right now you've got a game I can only tolerate a tiny subset of. Plus, there are still balance issues with some mobiles (Whyyyy does Trico shoot differently based on the way it's facing, whyyy does Sate do such ridiculous damage, why can't we have the old, non-noob Cake back?) that need sorting out.

If nothing else, it would be prudent to reconfigure the way the servers are setup. Obviously you can drop an avatar on zone or two, the way it stands right now. I suspect that Softnyx would be reluctant to do so since that means people would be less likely to actually pay cash for avatars.

[ILoveAlliO]

Dovo... i know that you dont know me very well, but i've been playing gunbound for over a year now... having fun with it... always enjoying every single game that i've played, no matter what person i have to deal with.  I was invited by tooya in the beginning and then i got my own girlfriend to play along with us too.  I've invested so much of my money on gunbound... its not even funny.  

You have always been mentioned in gunbound conversations... regarding how nice you were, or how helpful you were... and things like that, and seeing that you, as a great part of our gunbound community, is leaving... places everything in a different atmosphere.  

Now... when something wrong happens with GB... who are we to go to?  No one.

But i've enjoyed the game... never many complaints with me... nothing that i want to improve... nothing that i want to add... nothing.  I've loved the game... its a great way to relieve stress and a great way to have fun.  

Dovo, Thanks for being there man... i know you dont know me... but thanks.

[RanmaFan]

I like it a little. Its a game i can play for about an hour a day. But no more really, gets boring after long periods of time. Iv been hacked a few times on gb also(damn trojan key loggers). But i know you guys are working hard to stop it, even though no one ever helped me either time >_>


But over all a pretty good game. If i were you i would keep on working for them, but its up to you.