Need help with improving retention in my FPS game

Link to the game:

General Info
The game is a First Person Shooter oriented around fully destructible voxel maps where you can build with blocks and cut down entire structures like its nothing.

The game was in BETA 2.0 for over 4 years and it was more fast paced since it was based on Roblox systems due to lack of coding knowledge.
After 3 years i’ve finished this BETA 3.0 version and released it this February. Its slower paced and more advanced which lets me expand the game on more fronts. The game had almost 600 players at start, but it started to die down, FAST.
It now barely gets 100 players.

Repeating complaints

  • Game is too grindy
  • Players deem the UI too complicated
  • Weapons may be unsatisfying
  • Health regen is too long
  • Respawn times are too long and unpredictable
  • Maps are too flat
  • Lack of weapon scopes

Details and solutions im working on

  • When the game was more fast paced, killing must’ve been more common which resulted in more cash and XP, i tried increasing kill rewards, but that didn’t fix the issue.
  • Some people say that UI is good, some say its not, its based on TF2 ( which rn i believe was a mistake ). I do improve some things here and there, but im not sure what to do and if i should rework it as a whole
  • Weapons are based on headshots which have no fall-off. This made stray bullets quite deadly which turned out to be very bad. I tried to fix this with more recoil and spread, but that was also a mistake.
    Im reworking the weapons to have more unique statistics and be more accurate
  • Health regen is based on the fact if you stand still or not. If you stand still - it regenerates faster. I tried to make it so people don’t run around like maniacs, but that didn’t really work and only caused complaints. Im gonna reduce the time for health regen and add UI that should inform to hide and when the regen starts.
  • Respawn times is a very complicated topic, because i use it as a way to reduce player zergs on control points, but i start to believe it gives more harm than good to the game. As of now i don’t know if i should just reduce the values or do something else about it.
  • Maps are flat, because i have no tools to create smooth terrain. That leads to some maps being too open. I am on my way to make a plugin that should help me with this.
  • BETA 2.0 had weapon scopes, but they were very repetetive to implent which is why i removed them.
    This is the most complained topic about the game. My solution is to just add them back, lol.

My request/TLDR
The game has many flaws which i know and don’t know about. Most complaints are coming from veteran players, but new players don’t tend to tell whats wrong with the game.
Thats why im here, i want to ask you - fellow developers and most likely new players to my game - to try out the game and tell me how does it feel to you, what should be improved/changed or what does it lack that would improve the replayability of it.

Thank you.

7 Likes

Anyone? I would really appreciate some feedback :face_holding_back_tears:

5 Likes

To be genuinely honest the game needs replayability and have people actually stick around.

I’ve mentioned this before, but here’s a few things and theories that actually bug me and I feel like contribute to the issue:

  • Players leaving/not coming back as the game feels “barren” or “contentless” (self explanatory)
  • Players feeling frustrated by getting killed by veteran players who are more likely to be staying and playing the game
  • Players not being interested enough in the game on its’ own (stale gameplay…?)
  • Removed content (sights were a big thing that made quite a few “louder” people leave)

I’m not sure if its’ any of these reasons honestly - I can’t read people’s minds unfortunately.
But I drew up these conclusions from playing and observing other games.

3 Likes

By golly I used to play this game all the time!
It was really fun!

But then things started getting expensive. And I got bored. Cause like I would have to play SO LONG to get an item.

Maybe make stuff like weapons that you get when you are a certain level, instead you can purchase it when you are that level!

I really hope you can figure this out cause this was one of my favorite games!

~Froyo~

2 Likes

I plan to increase kill rewards and add damage rewards so its easier to obtain weapons

3 Likes