Recent Diamond/Eternal Newsletters

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KoTao wrote:

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I noticed this in #24, and found it rather surprising.

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We were very pleased with how the season went, especially Descent, which was definitely worth its development time.

..really? The vast majority of comments/discussion I've seen/heard on Descent has been very negative. It clearly wasn't tested properly, and for most of the feedback points that Chris claimed it was designed on, it actually has the opposite of. The number of characters created per race has also massively plummeted.

Seems like just another huge disconnect between devs/players.

Id like to know where the "very pleased" with descent comes from too.

10,000 players in the first descent event, around 500-750 players in the more recent descent events. Success would have meant an increase in attendance, or at the worst a slight decline, not a 90%~ attrition rate over the first few events.

Presented as a mode with far less randomness than standard races, where a top racer could execute a single highly skilled run and potentially keep the #1 spot for the entire season, descent actually ended up being so random that setting a season record has proven to be all about grinding as many events as possible, as success is almost entirely dependent on finding rare drop-only gems or early damage/life gear since we could no longer use vendors to mitigate poor drops, as well as getting lucky with champion density in specific zones since we could no longer repeat areas to mitigate poor spawns.

Almost a full page of descent feedback threads in the race subforum, mostly critical or negative, with zero dev replies to date. The mode has also been left in its original, unbalanced/untested state for the entire season.

Huge disconnect between devs/players indeed. Or is there some major criteria for descent being considered successful that were missing here?