Now i'm not posting this here to complain, create drama, point fingers etc. I'm merely pointing out that Build initiating more transparency and accountability would largely prevent toxicity and feelings of unfairness from infecting portions the player-base. For example i'm beginning to hear discouraged murmurings about things like:
- - a secret OAD area added with the update that wasnt announced like the other 3 new areas were
- changes made to OAD difficulty (to make them easier to complete) occuring just after the embargo on builders participating in new OADs ended
- the new secret OAD area being almost immediately run and completed on the first attempt by a guild that has many builders inside once the embargo had ended and the changes were made to enable it to be more easily completed
Now perhaps none of these murmurings are true. And my point is not to accuse that they are or are not true. People are always going to talk in any game about perceived unfairness. But all of this is discouraging stuff for the player-base to even hear about and all of this could have been easily avoided if Build had been transparently posting development logs like Nitehawk does.
Its unfortunate enough that we have a system of super-guild factionalism vying for game domination and that several builders have largely vested interests in running these super-guilds. I think that while such a system exists, more transparency and accountability is helpful for the morale of the overall player-base. The last thing i'd want to see is a repeat of the discouragement surrounding the illegal chat-bot fiasco. That kind of thing is discouraging enough to want to make me walk away, despite Nitehawk being such a awesome and fair developer.
Anyway - my suggestion is that Build begins to log all significant development changes as soon as they are implemented. Now i know there should be certain scope for 'surprises' so that players can discover interesting/exciting stuff for themselves but i dont think that a simple non-descriptive line like "added new secret OAD area somewhere in Ciruin" or "reduced overall difficulty of OAD X, Y and Z for these reasons" is asking too much. Happy for NH or Lat to push back if they think it is. Peace all