Is it time to brand Nodding Frog's LoTB team the new "Roadhouse?"
We have been through a lot over these last few months and a significant discussion has been tabled because we had a new team come in to take over/fix the old team's issues, and for all the problems, the game was new and exciting... both factors which have given Nodding Frog a pass.
It has easily been 3-4 months since the changing of the guard, and the pure novelty has worn off leaving this issue to be examined once and for all: Since this team at Nodding Frog has taken over, are we truly any better off from the Roadhouse Days? I believe the only fair way to address this is to look at the record.
1. New/Original Content: In 3-4 months, other than a long-defunct 4 day Halloween promo, there has been no new content whatsoever. LoL was unveiled in early August, which would have been a final Roadhouse development, or an initial Nodding Frog development. Since this time the only original expansion/feature proposed was sacrifice, which has no release date and has not been prioritized.
2."Coming Soon" expansions: Arena/PVP, Night City, and Brave New World have all been attractions that were promised with the game's inception. To date, we have not seen so much a single one of these worlds or features.
3. Game stability/bugs. Have we had better days/moments in the past with updates/patches? Yes. However, they have been replaced with new ones and old problems have reappeared with successive updates. People have been locked out for days recently and more issues than one can count have persisted. This appears why we have a BNW character release without the actual expansion. To date, I cannot recall a single substantive update that has not been plagued with a host of problems.
4. Development staff/interaction: Thus far, development staffhave treated the "game and its players" as a "beta and its testers." Since August, there have been no fewer than three character adjustment updates and as many as more than a half-dozen. These are unannounced and are made primarily if not solely for the PVP feature that is not even available to players. Other than some possible staff convenience, these "balancing" measures serve no useful purpose for player and game alike. IF it were necessary, this could/should have happened following the release of PVP, not MONTHS before, and even then this drastic measure is a dubious one given a litany of freely-provided alternatives. Compensation or even a sincere apology is a pipedream for the poorly-executed patches and unilateral decisions made against the wishes of its players.
5. Preservation/Development of Game Philosophy: The whole reason players have suffered this terrible RNG is due to the chance philosophy of the game. The more one grinds, the more one is supposed to earn chances for rare and powerful characters. Staff has opted to circumvent this (after players have committed to this) by neutering the power of these characters, making them rare in appearance, but on roughly-equal footing with common characters. Thus, they have since opted to present players with the worst of both worlds: The rarity aspect has become more cosmetic than functional with each new balancing session, and the RNG continues to be absurd, even with legendary souls that provide arguably common characters with a modest power upgrade. This further includes the choice to effectively eliminate rare souls as reward drops for substantially most/all of the game.
6. Game Store: Roadhouse gave us cash deals for ironite/ironite for souls, XP, and SoT, and trooper badges for the same things available today. The "NF" developers have done nothing to expand trooper badge options. In store, they added similar class/soul packages that people have commented are insultingly expensive during the Roadhouse days. Additionally (and giving the benefit of doubt where it may/may not be due) they have released horribly-timed rune packs sold at an ironite premium during a known and neglected bottleneck. Thus, while the prices of packs are on par with the out-of-touch philosophy of Roadhouse, the selection has become at best, marginally better, while the random drops have become far worse (rare souls/xp runes) putting players in a much worse position overall than the Roadhouse days.
If something is incorrect or missing, I am keen to hear about it, but this is where we are at right now. The net contribution of Nodding Frog in the 4 months of its tenure has been the release of a few character modules and a recent inventory expansion to 125. Otherwise, the game remains stagnant with ZERO added content. The game is no more stable now than it was then, and even if/when new material is released, successive updates/attempts all support the presumption that it (or pre-existing content) will be woefully buggy/unstable. RNG has not improved. If anything, it has worsened with the removal of rare soul drops and bottleneck lf XP runes. Not only has the RNG been worse, but rare characters are but a fraction of their original power making farming harder, new bugs prevalent, and the desire to acquire and develop them diminished.
In short, I believe that the record provided above shows that Nodding Frog has done a piss-poor job in taking this game in a better direction than Roadhouse. In numerous respects, we have fared far worse for the experience. The bottom line is that the grace period is over. This is and has been NF's mess to control and handle for months now, and the game has had NO appreciable improvement since its predacessors ran it. I hope this is a sobering wake-up call to make changes in plans... or if necessary, in staff. This incompetence is no longer acceptable.
