Hi Wicked Witch team,
Firstly, the game is very close to being the best AFL game yet and I appreciate how difficult game development can be and cost and also bringing our beloved sport to game format probably would cause countless headaches during development. I am not one of those people who expect FIFA after 3 iterations from you guys.
Having said that, I don't want to have to adjust sliders and change graphics quality etc all so the game will work properly when I paid $99.95 for it. I want that stuff to work by default and it should work at that price.
Player experience should be important to you guys and I am not interested in adjusting settings and testing them until I'm happy with it. That's frustrating as I just want it to work. It's so close to being a great game.
The patch has fixed a lot of things and you guys have done some great work to get those fixed. Though now having to play with no crowd on low graphics quality to get the best performance from the game has really killed my motivation to even bother playing the game any more.
Surely there are other ways to maximise performance. I don't think expecting us to play with no crowds is a fair ask for a $99.95 game.
Just my thoughts guys thanks for reading.
I personally think the reduced graphics options are a great addition. Don’t really care that much for how good the crowd looks... I just want a good game.
The AFL played without crowds for Round 1 this year anyway... so not having them in a game is fine by me.
This is a patch, that provides a great way to make the game more playable... it’s a quick update, not a full graphics overhaul... so it’s a fantastic temp solution (and one I hope sticks around for future games too).
The point is not against the graphics options themselves but the need to even use them in the first place. A $99.95 game should not need to have basic graphic options turned off to make the game playable. The graphics are fine in this game. I don't care about having better graphics.
Yes the AFL played without crowds this year. And it was absolute shit to watch. Crowds matter and in an AFL sim game, there should be crowds or at least have the ability to play a match with crowds on and optimisation not be as big if an issue as it is. Otherwise sell it as Australian Football: COVID-19 Edition.
But are you comparing to the likes of FIFA?
Yeah, we’ve all gone through that debate... and yeah, I could reel off things like smaller budget, smaller dev team, smaller market, less years of established development, etc.... which you’ve probably heard before...
But directly on the graphics...
The thing is, AFL has 36 players on the field, not 22 like FIFA, there are 3 field umpires, not 1 like FIFA, so already there’s additional rendering being done.
So yeah, trying to also render 100,000 randoms in the crowd that I’m not focusing on, doesn’t really bother me.
Turn them off and get better gameplay performance? Absolutely.
I‘m happy to pay my $79.95 (JB HiFi) or evening $99.95 (PSN Store) for it.
I love the sport, I really enjoy this game, and I would love for my money to go towards supporting the developers, and the future versions of the game.
@SaintSkeeta am I comparing FIFA? 🤦♂️Dude you really aren't listening to me. You are missing my point by a mile. Forget it.
@mar_cuz2003 Ah, you’re right. I think I did miss your point.
I skimmed over you saying ’The graphics are fine in this game. I don’t care about having better graphics.’
My bad. I apologize if I went off on a tangent with the whole FIFA thing.
In that case... I am absolutely missing your point.
Are you saying ‘don’t have options to alter the graphics, just have poor graphics in the first place so the game can be playable’???
I’m not trying to fight with you about it. I’m trying to understand what the issue is... and that will be something the dev team could work on for the next game or patch or whatever.
If you can't even be bothered to mess around with gameplay sliders then why even spend $99 on the game in the first place? I get that you would prefer the default settings to be better, that's reasonable. But if you care enough about a game to spend that much of your hard earned money on it, surely tweaking sliders to improve your own experience isn't that big a deal.
Fair point I agree the gameplay sliders are good for customisation and personal preference but surely at that price tag it is not unreasonable to want an optimised experience without disabling the crowd?
I think the game is awesome and the best AFL sim I've played but optimisation is an issue and playing with no crowd just ruins the experience imo
Hi @mar_cuz2003 Thanks for the feedback. You're quite right and our goal for the game is for you to not have to adjust sliders or reduce graphical quality in order to enjoy the game. We decided to provide these options because different players enjoy the game in different ways. Some players care about the game looking as close to real life as possible, while others are more interested in having as smooth a gameplay experience as possible. Our aim with the default settings is to provide the best balanced experience for the majority of players. In the 1.02 patch we've made improvements to the framerate for players at the default performance setting and we're going to continue to aim to improve this. If you do decide to adjust the settings, please feel free to let us know how you prefer to enjoy the game as we use this feedback to tweak both the default sliders and the performance/visuals to a spot that the majority of players find the best.