alright

Sup anyone here, willing to read a long essay here.

First off, disclaimer. None of what I’ll say is meant to be offensive or hostile in words, it’s up to you if you think it is.

What’s this about? I’ve piled up a large list of what EVERYONE in the surviv.io community can do, as a whole, to improve the game, the community, the conditions, and the future. With things headed the same direction it is right now, we can’t really guarantee a long term plan both for the community and financially for Kongregate. Most of this can be thought to be meant for the Kongregate side of the community, whether it’s the devs or community managr.

Why am I posting this here? Change won’t happen without a large number of people agreeing on things. Posting here will most likely get some recognition by other community members, which will pressure a change even more. A change is most likely needed and WILL happen, so whoever that is willing to change, keep in note of this.


1. Stop demotions, more warns. From what I’ve seen, many people are increasingly getting demoted and getting a role stripped. I get there was a reason behind demoting, but that’s a bit too far. There’s a more similar way to let someone know they’re not following the rules, you WARN them. Now after about three warnings or so, then it’s up to you to demote, but an instant demotion is just going to drive members away from our community. Let demotions be as hard as promotions, and start using warns/mutes instead.

2. Get the Stats Bot right back up. Without any offense to John, the stats bot being down is a major impact in this game. Yes, I get it, it’s a bot run by a volunteer, who’s done so much for our server and we’re very, very grateful for that, but the bot has been down for more than a month and without a way to report hackers, many people are just going to give up reporting AND playing the game, which is not what we want. I understand he is improving the bot, but while it is down, maybe have a carbon copy of the bot with old features to use while the bot is being improved, this way the cheater reporting process won’t be harmed.

3. Encourage more competitiveness. Most of the players that’s left a once-glorious player base of surviv were competitive players. Sure, we still have a few, evident by twitch streamers and YouTube creators, but that’s simply not enough for the game to gain more popularity. Whatever it takes, encourage competitiveness, whether it’s holding dev challenges that once happened back during Justin/Nick’s tenure (which were meant to be a one-time thing, but that did raise a lot of popularity and satisfication in the community). When I first started playing, NA servers had 11000 players at peak time; now I’m used to seeing 3000.

4. Get #concepts back up and running again. Yes, it’s obvious that concepts aren’t the first priority. I get that there’s a long queue of concepts waiting to be approved and posted. But without the channel being alive, many of the former art and concept creators won’t make more in the future. That means more popularity of the game lost, which isn’t what we want at all. But seriously, take time to approve concepts one by one, and then get them posted one by one in maybe a five day interval. No concepts is a heavy dent in the medal for creators and the people that want to see other community creations for the game.

5. Get feedback and art posted quicker. Another situation where it isn’t the top priority and there’s a queue for them, still doesn’t do any better. Take some time to get feedback posted in #feedback, and art posted in #art-gallery. That’s another part of community content and suggestions that contribute to the overall popularity of the game. With these rates, a specific feedback made for one LTM has the potential to get posted a month AFTER the LTM itself has ended.

6. Listen to more suggestions/feedback. Yeah, I understand libby takes note of each and every single feedback and suggestion said and passes them on to the devs. But even if the bridge process is working, that isn’t sufficient if none of the suggestions and feedback are actually getting implemented, right? Sure, a handful of suggestions and feedback are listened to and updated in the game, but most are left forgotten and that won’t excite a community at all, it’ll only lose players. On this topic, I mean getting the very known bugs fixed. A bug like the Silo Shack wall is a VERY notable feature, I’m fine with it, but what needs to happen is the devs showing they care about the community’s opinions and actually getting such a small issue fixed. And maybe take note of the constructive feedback given on things like the home page design, that’s one thing that can be improved. This way relationships between the developer team and the player base will be restored.

7. Get more moderators on this discord server. It’s been pretty evident a five man moderation group hasn’t been working out easily, let’s fix that. A centerpiece to a good community (on discord) starts from the staff team. Yes, the current mods do everything for us and devote time off their lives, but five isn’t simply enough, especially when they’re volunteers. Get more mods in, through a staff application like what happened a year ago. More mods means quicker response time to rule breaking pests, who in some cases will make other community members leave.

8. Report and approve more reports of cheaters. A sequel to the move above, if we want surviv.io restored to a booming player base, let’s start off at the most annoying factors of the game: cheating. Luckily, we’ve been given ways to report, and then gets passed onto the mods to approve them. More mods can approve quicker, especially if one is appointed just for approving reports, which is a good move to make. An efficient reporting system means less hackers, so this is a good step in getting more players back.

9. Get more and better community concepts added in game. Yes, not that every single concept should be added, but some has to be added, otherwise there is no community relationship between the dev teams. Survivr Pass 3 was a start. Very good in terms of acquiring community concepts, but more can be done. Not just loadout items, but buildings and weapons. That’s a cornerstone for a good game progress development. Better standards are what should be aimed of getting added (someone add my hospital concept), but in order to satisfy more of the community, more community concepts should be noted of getting implemented.

10. Developers, join the discord server. I cannot stress this enough. Yes I’m aware of what this might do. Yes I’m aware of troubles this might bring. Yes I’m also aware that there’s a reason they haven’t joined yet. But let’s face it, if developers aren’t there to represent theirselves as a dev team, nothing much good will happen. Using a bridge in libby, the community managr, isn’t a proficient way to connecting with the developers. In my opinion, they should be here for themselves, no matter what the situation. If they join, most of the community will be happier, that’s for sure. The relationship between the dev team and community will improve, which will get more players to play surviv.io. Is there anything much to add if the devs join the server?

11. Remove toxicity. Shifting towards the gameplay, we’ve got toxicity everywhere, it’s ridiculous to see how many kids love to make others feel at the same level as themselves. Toxicity will do nothing but drive players away from the community. What am I suggesting? Remove unwanted needs like the ez emote, greedy face, troll face, etc. Seriously, only immature players would use them, what were the grown up developers thinking when they chose to add such a low-level emote to the game? Again, no offense, but I’m pretty sure 95% of the player base will be happy if the toxic emotes were gone (but keep the default emotes like the joy face and gg still in the game).

12. Improve anticheat and lag. Wow, how many times has this been said? Who knows, who cares. Only thing we would care is if lag and hackers didn’t constantly ruin our games. Yeah, it’s understandable that these problems are a work in progress towards getting fixed, but things should be quicker if we don’t want the player counts to keep decreasing. I get there won’t be a public announcement on anticheat updates, but that’s still fine. Only thing that matters is that these factors are banished, and a few that notice will silently thank the devs.

13. Add a new daily rotation mode. Not the top of the priorities here, but we can all use a new mode that can finally be the seventh mode in the daily mode rotations. A new mode will also bring more popularity for the game since it’ll be a recurring event, the one week long LTMs were great and a good start to this suggestion. The creativeness and the topic of the mode can be up to a community’s concepts OR the likes of the dev team. Either way, I don’t think there’s a downside in doing this.

14. Create a broad, future roadmap. No community likes a game if there isn’t a “coming soon” tip. I’m pretty sure if we had a roadmap to deal with, we’d all be satisfied with being able to see where the game is headed, otherwise who would like it if we have to deal with the “surprise” updates every Tuesday?

15. Bring back leaks/unreleased info. Nothing soothed our community more than leeks and information regarding unreleased gameplay. A weekly dose of a single leek is bound to raise future popularity for the game. If the devs care about the future of the game, I believe leeks are the right way to start, and I don’t think anyone on this server will disagree. Yes, I’ve heard countless times that there are no leeks now for a reason, has something to do with kongregate company policies. Well, I don’t think that’s caring enough for the community. Request a rule to be changed or something, do whatever it takes so we get these beloved png images back from the devs (or community managr).

16. Bring back public test servers. Well this has something to do with kongregate company policies, if I recall correctly. Well get that changed, again. Nothing will help the devs than a public test server, where the PLAYERS themselves can evaluate a future update. This will be a great step to restoring our community, and I don’t see anyone on the face of this world that won’t like this happening again. This will be an opportunity to note and fix bugs as well as feedback. Remember before the v0.8.3 update, Justin and Nick were scheming on what would’ve been the worst update ever, removing the ability to quickswitch snipers with the deploy groups? Well, they did that through a test server. Had they not done that, yeah it’s safe to say half the player base would’ve never played the game again (including me). Nope, the test server got their attention that the community did not like the update, so savannah was released without this feature :)))!

17. Improve the current situation of the modmail. Modmail is a beautiful bot. Sadly at this moment things are pretty slow when dealing with modmail. I get that Libby checks the modmail every day, doesn’t mean nothing has been happening, but the time process is not too good. Get more mods to handle the modmail, make things more efficient. It’s one of those invisible factors that doesn’t look like they change a community, but trust me, it’s a heavy difference having an efficient modmail against having a slow modmail.

18. Improve the current situation of the helpdesk. I don’t mean to be offensive towards Erika, they deal with a lot of helpdesk tickets, but let’s face it, none of the replies are straight to the point, if you know what I mean. I’d expect a more narrow answer to whatever I report to the helpdesk, as well as the helpdesk replies (Erika) knowing the situations of the community, including how #report-players is not available at the moment. Like how would anyone feel when they went ahead to report a hacker on helpdesk because they realized the reporting bot was down, and was told to go to helpdesk, only to get told right back to go to the reporting channel (which doesn’t work)? Again, no offense to Erika, but please don’t make every single answer the same type.

19. Decrease the golden potatoes cost. This suggestion is more towards a #feedback type suggestion, I’ve seen many say that paying 100 bucks just for 53,000 golden potatoes are EXTREMELY unreasonably ridiculous and laughable. Yes, Kongregate is a profitable company. Doesn’t mean you should charge that much for virtual currency. Lowering the cost, however, may let a few gullible players buy them, which will help out kongregate financially. What does this have to do with community relations? Well for starters, this shows that Kongregate doesn’t just care about money and profits, but also that they care about the community.

20. Hey, what up with all these bugs? Simple. 75% of all bugs are paid no attention to. Obviously even the dev teams notice bugs are something nobody wants, they make weekly updates on it, and that’s a good thing. However, there’s A LOT more bugs that should have higher priority. Show the community that the devs care about them and fixing a notable bug, not trying to get the task done for their paycheck. As I have said earlier, a bug like the Silo Shack wall is something everyone would like to see Kongregate paying attention to it and if they want to fix it, then it gets fixed. I think everyone does a great job spotting bugs and reporting them, but no offense to the developers, what percentage of all annoying reported bugs and glitches actually solved? Oh and key word, annoying, heh.

21. Suggesting better time management. Why should this be suggested? I mean time management is a valuable key factor for any human, including the devs. This is a pretty vague suggestion, but better time management means don’t slack on updates, of course they would take time to get done but I’m not so sure a few updates are supposed to come after waiting a long time. Just keep in mind, the developers should think about the future of the game and start investing in it, rather than think about the current situations. My two cents, I’m not criticizing anyone here yet.

22. Three words: Ban. More. Cheaters. Who’s the blame here? Nobody, except the cheaters themselves. But this situation can be improved. Nothing is more frustrating and deflating that having a good game ruined by these moronic assholes (finally first swear word), or maybe getting leaderboards you were rocking in infested with the cheaters. Here’s a solution: Ban. More. Cheaters. The cheaters are so low that they are literally ruining the games of others, which drive many players away. So what can be fixed? Again, ban more cheaters. Well known cheaters like Atomic’s impersonator and CypherDen are STILL roaming the woods (no specific modes), after being reported for dozens of times. If the devs want the community satisfied, they should show that they care about this situation by banning them once and for all.

23. To the community: better style and quality concepts and feedback. Nothing clutters modmail up than useless concepts or feedback. I may be offending people here, no offense meant, but some concepts have no place in surviv.io and that just makes the modmail queues longer. I get it, everyone has opinions, but I also believe there are some feedback that are at the grade where only one or two will think it’s a good feedback. I rightfully respect everyone’s opinions, but sometimes those are the types that don’t help communities. Remember these basic suggestion tips (shoutouts to ithinknotdumbo and Eyyy): Does your suggestion make sense, has a fit in the game, and does it benefit the game?

24. Also to the community: Read the rules. Not implying everyone didn’t. 99% probably have read the rules already, and know common sense. It’s the tiny portion of 1% that doesn’t read the rules or know what common sense is whatsoever. They’re the same type that are idiotic enough to drive players away from a game and a community. Just a simple reminder, I trust and ensure everyone that’s reading this is a rightful and loyal member of this community of the game of surviv.io, and thanks for being a part of this.

25. Game popularity should be the main goal right now. Last but not least, here’s a suggestion straight to the point: The game’s popularity should be the main priority right now. Whatever it takes, bring player counts back up. Let the community and the developers have a better relationship. Whatever it takes, it’s possible. When Justin and Nick sold the game to Kongregate, I’m sure nobody expected or wanted the total player base to be diminished by more than 50%. We need more popularity for the game, and the 24 suggestions I made above, is how we can slowly start to change things around so we are all happy.

Well, that does it, 25 suggestions of what I believe should be done so we can partially restore what was once a glorious community. No offense to anyone, not trying to be hostile. If you took anything the wrong way, don’t blame me. I know Kongregate does their best, does all they can, but with anything, there’s always things to be improved. Now don’t ban or warn or demote me over this (also one thing that’s become a bad norm, assumption that someone can get banned or demoted over a hostilely-taken comment/feedback, that’s another thing to change right there). Anyway, have a good day.