[Help] Diagnosing high dislikes & low retention in Battle Cars (Vehicular Combat)

Help and Feedback Creations Feedback
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Hi everyone,

I’m looking for constructive feedback on my game, Battle Cars. We’ve been reviewing our metrics on the Creator Dashboard and noticing two main challenges: a higher-than-expected dislike ratio and low player retention.

I want to pinpoint exactly where players are getting frustrated, confused, or bored so we can overhaul the onboarding and core experience.

About Battle Cars

  • Genre: Vehicular Combat / Action
  • Core Loop: Spawn into the arena with your vehicle $\rightarrow$ Battle other players/AI and destroy vehicles $\rightarrow$ Earn rewards $\rightarrow$ Upgrade parts, weapons, and customize your build in the garage
  • Target Audience: Fans of vehicle action, driving physics, and arena combat

Link & Gameplay

Specific Areas I Need Feedback On

  1. First-Time User Experience (FTUE) & Onboarding:
  • When you first spawn into the arena, is it immediately obvious what you should do?
  • Is the vehicle control scheme intuitive from the start?
  1. Vehicle Physics & Combat Feel:
  • How do driving dynamics, drifting, and vehicle weight feel?
  • Does weapon aiming, impact, and collision feel punchy and satisfying, or floaty/clunky?
  1. Performance & Optimization (PC, Mobile, Console):
  • Did you experience lag, frame drops, or physics stuttering during combat—especially when multiple cars collide or use abilities? (Please mention what device you tested on!)
  1. UI & Customization Flow:
  • Is navigating vehicle parts, weapons, and upgrades easy, or does the UI feel cluttered?
  1. Monetization & Pacing:
  • Do progression rewards feel fair, or does the game feel pay-to-win or too grindy early on?

How You Can Help

Feel free to drop into a match for 3–5 minutes and share your raw thoughts below. Don’t hold back on criticism—I want to know what frustrates you or what would make a new player quit and leave a dislike.

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to test it out!

2 Likes
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Hi

Few things:

  1. I noticed an AI driver in the wall
  2. The UI is not scaled properly and is all mismatched, loads of different colours and styles
  3. Also the map is a weird mix of ultra high poly and super low poly

Also did you write this post with AI?

I’ve included a few pictures below

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Best of luck!

2 Likes
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Hey @Olinator21 thanks for your reply. Yes AI helped with the description to make sure I don’t forget anything but I reviewed it.

I’ll take a look at those points, thanks! In your experience with Roblox do you think those problems are enough to lead to dislikes, bad retention and 0 impressions from the RFY algorithm ?

The game is dead when I don’t run ads. I have tried a lot of different stuff, different UIs, AI drivers, no AI drivers, different game modes, tutorials, new cars, customizations, ADS but nothing seems to work

I know the game is not perfect, it still have some bugs and I’m addressing them but I often see games with A LOT of bugs performing better and that’s what’s making me confused

At this point I don’t know if it worth to keep evolving the game or it’s simply not fun and I should leave it

1 Like
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the concept is cool, a ton of bugs though. I spawned a car while i was in a car, so the car landed on my car. I noticed the new car had a gunner spot, so i entered. Then when i escaped the gunner seat, i still had all the car effects while i was walking around, and the camera was jacked up. The image below, however, is just a skill issue. I was stuck here for a good minute or so before someone blew it up. I couldn’t even leave the vehicle xD

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2 Likes
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Hey @SneezyBadger thanks for your feedback and for playing the game. I’m glad you like the concept

As a solo developer I tested the game a lot and fixed all major bugs I found but I’m probably very biased to think those minor bugs don’t bother the player as I know how to avoid them when I test

You perception is very valuable for me! May be some of the dislikes comes from those problems. I’m adding them to my list to fix them

Thank you !

1 Like
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Essentially a game is ranked of 3 main metrics. D1-D7 Retention, Average Playtime and the CTR/Play through rate.

Now a bad like ratio will affect the CTR/PTR

However the problem is with the game is it lacks long term goals, it looks fun to play for a few minutes but the main loop is very repetitive. This is the D1/D7

In my honest opinion this game 5 years ago would’ve performed very well however now the platform has completely shifted so my honest advice would be to leave it

Best of luck mate

2 Likes
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Thanks @Olinator21 I’ll think about that. I agree that the core loop is repetitive right now. I have other game modes in the game but nobody goes there since the servers are empty. The main deathmatch fells like “ok I’ve seen it all” after 5 minutes. I see that games like battlefield relies on progression and unlocking items and customizations to get the player to play another round but my problem with that is that it takes a lot of time to create new cars, itens and customizations. To create the model, textures and then integrate in the game is a lot of work for one person
I’ve tried some AI models but the models needs a lot of fix to get to a usable state after AI generated it

Thanks again for your feedback I’ll try to find a solution to that problem before I put more effort on the game