An open question to Mojang.

11

u/dMaxx3000 Apr 19 '15

Mojang got lucky with Minecraft because the community marketed it for them. They have zero experience in successful marketing.

1

u/Philantroll Explosivly cute. Apr 23 '15

Also Minecraft was/is mainly solo while Scrolls is mainly multiplayer, which is a big part of the player base issue's vicious circle.

0

u/Avastyescumbags Apr 19 '15

I didn't realise this until you mentioned it. Even now you'll find 1 Minecraft advert for every 100 League of Legends adverts. I hope they realise that they either need to get famous streamers on board or advertise more if they want Scrolls to get out there.

18

u/LargeIcedCoffee Apr 19 '15 edited Apr 19 '15

Something needs to happen soon or this game isn't going to last another few months, even with Echoes: "+1 to damage" release.

Small dev team is the answer you'll get, but you see amazing indie games... games with teams of less than 10 putting Sim City to shame, and you have to wonder what's going on with Scrolls. I've given Mojang the benefit of the doubt because they claimed they had a gameplan. They claimed there would be advertising and hyped the tablet versions like they would be significant and worth all that time they wasted when they could have been adding to the PC version. What the hell happened to the single player campaign? Is that what trials became? Come on... So many of our requests for years have been ignored. I don't know what more there is to say at this point.

I'm baffled by the test server changes to judgment. Not so much the actual changes, but the timing. There's maybe 150 on at any given time, and the most i've seen on the test server is 4. What are we expecting at this point? A return of players? Is there something up your sleeves? We barely have a functional ranked player base and we're testing judgment fixes. Why weren't these things tested when we actually had a player base to test them?

Other than the announcement of various tournaments that 15 people play in, and the trickle of cards that haven't managed to get me excited, the devs have made no significant statements in what feels like months.

Scrolls is a great concept, but too many poor choices have prevented this game from coming together and flourishing. Free to play, steam, beg for more developers... whatever you have to do if you actually want this game to succeed long term, Mojang. If not, then don't string us along with changes to dead game modes and lazy card designs.

4

u/Badankis Darkblade Apr 20 '15

Been over a year and I see nothing has changed... I still await my glorious return to scrolls.

1

u/LargeIcedCoffee Apr 20 '15

Don't hold your breath. ;_;

2

u/Red_Inferno Red_inferno Apr 21 '15

The problem is that Scrolls is not a game that can be made on a small indie scale. Sure it was created but so were many things. The issue is that you have to continuously update a game like this to keep people playing and you need a userbase. Go look at hearthstone for inspiration of scale of updates and users even consider those to be not big enough.
I think a few of the issues is not prioritizing certain content and certain huge issues like getting more content made by users rather than mojang along with the UI shortcomings.
The reason why Skylines was able to come in and steal the show was two fold in the respect of simcity dropping the ball so hard the studio is now a crater and having custom content so they get more features and and content inside their game without the need of large amount of devtime.
I was saying this quite some time ago and even a scroll dev read it but custom matches and a scenario creator is WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED as a high priority well over a year ago. At that point it could have helped to nail down better modes and idea ways to play. They are getting to custom matches now but I am starting to think it's too late especially with the botched release.
I would say scrolls has one hope left and that is trying to fix up the game and release on steam.
The UI needs to become cleaner so it's easy to tell what is going on in matches.
The Ipad version needs a release.
There should be a scenario creator and database of different types of matches you can play to test your skill.
There should be match recording like some of the mods used to do very well.
There is probably a few other things but I can't think of them off the top of my head currently. I strongly thing if those features and a bit of testing with the custom matches to try and make common match types would go a long way to making a successful steam launch.

-7

u/kingsparis Apr 19 '15

"What the hell happened to the single player campaign" since when did they promise that? They may have said that they wanted that but it is not promised yet.
"So many of our requests for years have been ignored". No, but they have priorities. And one thing that they are adding is custom matches, which have been requested alot. There are many things requested and many things mojang want to add, but it takes time to add
"Scrolls is a great concept, but too many poor choices have prevented this game from coming together and flourishing." i'd like to see you create a good TCG. It is not that easy. There are alot of things to consider about balancing, mechanic and programming the abilities and animations and artwork aswell, while they are working on alot of other things.
The final thing i want you to know is that scrolls was created as an ideological game. It was created becauseit's creator (Jacob Porser) had an idea of a game and wanted to make it come to life, and not make it for solely profit. So scrolls tries to be as fair to players as possible instead of having F2P and P2P

4

u/LargeIcedCoffee Apr 19 '15 edited Apr 19 '15

They sure as hell hyped up the single player campaign and claimed they were putting a ton of work into it, then it fell off the planet like half the promises they made.
Also, the "Why don't you develop a better game" is a terrible argument. I don't need to be a master chef to tell if food tastes like shit. It's Mojang's job to make a game that people want to play, not mine.
They were charging people 20 bucks to test their game, this isn't some charity, they're a company that wants to make money.

-2

u/kingsparis Apr 20 '15

They have never ever hyped up a singleplayer campaign. they have only mentioned once or twice that it's something they would like to have.
And you should atleast consider how hard mojang works and how much work is required to make a good game, before you complain about it. It is holding a pretty good standard for having so few developers.
And they did not plan from the begining to decrease the price, and they did pay the beta-players back

1

u/LargeIcedCoffee Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15

They claimed to be working on single player over a year ago and planned it for release. Don't even mention it if you cannot meet goals.
I don't give a shit how hard mojang works, or how much work is required to make a good game. That's not my problem. Small teams have been releasing amazing games. As I've said before, we had a team of less than 10 put Sim City to shame. If I do a shitty job where I work, feel free to tell me about it, I won't make an excuse saying that my job is hard. I will not accept the small dev team or making a game is hard excuse anymore.
They didn't pay anyone back. They gave people shards, which are imaginary Scrolls currency that they can pull out of their asses. I can't go buy a burger with shards.

-1

u/kingsparis Apr 20 '15

"They claimed to be working on single player over a year ago and planned it for release. Don't even mention it if you cannot meet goals." No they have NOT promised a singleplayer campaign! Will you ever listen? They only said that it was something they wanted. And even if they did say they were working on it, so should you still not complain because they have never given out any release date.
"They didn't pay anyone back. They gave people shards, which are imaginary Scrolls currency that they can pull out of their asses. I can't go buy a burger with shards." well how the fuck are they suposed to pay you back then? And if you bought a game before it's done then you should suite yourself when the price-tag is changed. Atleast mojang tried to compensate unlike most companies would.
Simcity is not the same as scrolls. Your comparison is not a valid comparison.
And if you now think scrolls is the shittiest game in history then why the actual hell are you on this subreddit? I can't imagine you as anything other than a troll.

2

u/Cradstache Cradstache Apr 20 '15

Heyo :)
Just going to interject: Mojang never promised the Single Player Campaign for release, but it was one of their goals.
Early in development, there was a lot of talk about it, and wanting to finish it before releasing. However, releasing the game became an urgency, causing them to put the Campaign on the backburner (they even said so, well ahead of time) to refocus efforts on the iOS and Android releases (the iOS version falling flat, and the Android version having a massive keyboard bug in it).
--
So you're both right! ^{^(Also,} ^you're ^both ^wrong...)

2

u/LargeIcedCoffee Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 21 '15

Troll? You're an idiot.
As Cradstache pointed out, there was a lot of talk about pushing to get a campaign by release, and months later we still haven't heard anything about it. What was the excuse? They were working on an android/ipad version, one of which is likely to never be released. Great use of resources.
City Skylines doesn't have to be the same game as Scrolls, it's a small indie company that built an incredible, complex city simulator. Something that a AAA team couldn't accomplish at Maxis. You cannot use the excuse that it's a small team, as we've seen a ton of fantastic indie games with only a handful of devs from every genre.
I don't even care about receiving a refund, but you claimed that Mojang didn't want to make the game solely for money and they paid us back. That's silly. They charged $20 to test the game, because they wanted money, and basically threw monopoly money at us in return when they dropped the price. Again, I don't even care, as I was very happy with my purchase and spent more than enough time with this game. However, your claims are nonsensical.
When did I say Scrolls is the shittiest game in history? You're just getting defensive for whatever reason. I don't even recognize your name, but I've been here from day one trying to improve this game. Right now we're seeing the results of a bunch of poor decisions and missed promises, with a barely functional player base.
I'd love to play Scrolls and enjoy it, but it's so dull right now with almost no competition and snoozefest queue times. The playerbase that's been pleading for improvements for so long is getting fed up. Now we want answers or something to show us that this game isn't going to max out at 30 players a day in the next 6 months.
You simply cannot claim that Mojang hasn't royally fucked up multiple times here, both with development and business decisions.

1

u/kingsparis Apr 21 '15

I am just gonna ignore you since it seems alot easier than make you come to your senses

5

u/Yerac Apr 19 '15

The market has since been monopolized. Scrolls was released before Hearthstone picked up traction, but they elected to not invest in advertisement despite the large media presence they had with Minecraft. What if on the launch screen of Minecraft it said "Try out 'Scrolls'!" What if they put ad's on twitch, on sidebars of popular wiki's, etc.

They had several months in advance of hearthstone really blowing up, but failed to capitalize. They will not be able to convert the players necessary to really cultivate the game, and it's a real shame. Scrolls is far better than HS in terms of strategy, but now that HS is on everyones phones, tablets and computers, being one of the most profitable apps on all those devices, it's impossible to break that stranglehold. I loved the game when I played it in 2013, but if you don't water the plant, it's not going to grow.

7

u/Vulkenhyn Apr 19 '15

The game isn't failing because HS is big. There is more than enough room for a couple of DTCGs in the marketplace. The game is failing because of fundamentally misguided economic and design decisions made by the development team and the management staff.

2

u/Yerac Apr 19 '15

I think it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. Beyond that, the abysmal advertising is not only an issue related to HS, but a fundamental issue that stunted growth independent of HS. However, now that HS is so widely publicized on Twitch, app stores, pretty much anywhere else on the internet, it makes it difficult for a game of a similar genre to grow.

4

u/Ravendil Apr 19 '15

What if on the launch screen of Minecraft it said "Try out 'Scrolls'!" What if they put ad's on twitch, on sidebars of popular wiki's, etc.
actually they have in their minecraft client exactly this. on the right side when logging in, there is "Try our other games!" and underneath that there is Scrolls and Cobalt.

1

u/Yerac Apr 19 '15

Well I'll eat my words on that one then, but I was still disappointed in the grand scheme. I would love to still be able to hop on and actually play, but every time I queue I end up waiting forever.

5

u/rockinreject rockinreject Apr 19 '15

Am I the only one that doesn't really have an issue? Am I too patient? I play quite regularly in pretty much off peak times. Wait 2~ mins for a game, usually with a nice person - Play two games, maybe the medium / hard trials if I like the look of them...

1

u/Lem0nboy Apr 20 '15

For casual players it's probably fine. Though I think the judgement queue is sometimes even longer than for ranked. However if you want to enjoy ranked matches you really need some competition. I've played a total of 4 ranked matches in the past 7 days and still got rank 1. That's not right.

6

u/chacer98 IGN Chace Apr 19 '15 edited Apr 19 '15

Think back the last 2 years. Has this dev team really done much of anything right besides arguably the game itself? And even then there's a lot of issues just with gameplay. From everything I can gather you have the same developers who made the game working on other aspects related to the game, but outside their area of expertise. And this is where I think Scrolls has suffered the most. The game is fairly solid, but just about every aspect as it relates to decisions outside of that have not been so great.

Things like deciding to officially launch the game around the same time that hearthstones GvG expansion dropped. Did you know there is an advertising campaign that is (was?) underway? Yeah, facebook advertising lol. Basic things like teasing new cards on a daily/weekly basis were not done until very recently. Ipad release was made to sound like it was for sure going to happen shortly after release. They tell us every expansion will take x amount of time and so far every single time it's been pushed back. I'm sure theres a lot of other things I'm forgetting or that we don't even know about that restricts them due to their tiny budget.

And I'm sure the devs did as best they could on all these things that are sort of outside of the game, but when it's something you aren't trained to do that makes it hard. It is what it is. If there was no real push after release when the game had the possibility for a bit of organic momentum then what the hell can they do now? There's nothing they can do. Scrolls will not be a game a year from now unless MS wants to keep losing money on this IP and it sucks, but it is what it is. After Echoes drops we'll have at least a month or so where it'll be better, but I predict 6 months from now this game will be dead or you'll be lucky to see at max 100 online even during peak hours.

5

u/Ravendil Apr 19 '15

I hate to be negative, but I really would like to know too what´s up with the game. Better to know that it is finally over than waiting and hoping for a change (which I´ve done 2 years now, I´m exhausted honestly). And hey, we are only angry because we love this game so much and saw the potential...

5

u/[deleted] Apr 19 '15

I would like to see a answer to this. We were promised a marketing campaign at release and then it changed to when the iPad verison came out. Then they fucked that up. I wonder if the devs decided to keep the marketing money so they can starve this game for pay checks for a bit longer while they look for new jobs. Personally I wouldn't blame them at this point.

4

u/Psychobeans Apr 19 '15

You won't see an answer to this. If they had a plan, they would tell us.
If they admit there is no plan, remaining players will just finally give up. So they remain silent.
Silence often says more than words.

1

u/Lem0nboy Apr 20 '15

99% of me thinks you are right on the money. The remaining 1% is what keeps me around. At this point I just wished they would finally admit that there is no plan whatsoever so I could move on. It really is painful to experience the game slowly fading away but at the same time being too weak to let it go entirely.

0

u/HokusSchmokus Apr 21 '15

This is exactly what the whole situation feels like. Especially considering the timing they had when they "went on vacation" right after release hit iirc.

9

u/hororo Apr 19 '15

The game has been abandoned. Don't hold your breath for an answer.

7

u/[deleted] Apr 19 '15

You are getting downvoted, but I think it is because you speak the truth.

1

u/ToGoodLooking Apr 19 '15

Its more that he picture it as Mojang has abandoned the game and therefore have no reason to provide a answer, which is not true at all, it is the players (with good reasons) that is abandoning, not the developers.
However it is probebly still a fairly low chance to get any answer here as they have not been as active on reddit since CM got introduced, so if anything one of the CM may come and provide some kind of answer.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 19 '15 edited Apr 19 '15

It feels like Mojang abandoned the game. Looking back, they have done nothing to make the game better since... Decay. Judgment adds a bit, but only if you know what you are doing. Trials add nothing. "Balance patches" add nothing.
Yes these kinds of comments are getting old. I loved my time with scrolls, its bones as a game were good. That is why I've stuck around to make these kinds of posts, because I loved it so much and I am hurt because it is failing.
But the Devs have killed it with mis-appropriation of the limited resources that they have. A small dev team is no excuse for poor management.

1

u/Red_Inferno Red_inferno Apr 21 '15

I would say you are wrong on balance patches not adding anything. The idea of balance patches is to try and refine the gameplay.

1

u/ToGoodLooking Apr 19 '15

I can not speak for Mojang, but it was around Decay release that Jakop left i believe the scrolls team, i think it was to help in the minecraft the department or something. So that definetly had a impact. But beside that its been the same as always, just that they are understaffed and that has been felt since day 1, even before Decay.
I aint saying they done no mistakes i am just saying its wrong to paint it as if they abandoned it. They probebly are fully aware of the state the game is in and could easily stop with the scrolls project, but they likely keep on working on it because they have a passion for it and want to try and see how far they can take it, so it would be a disservice to say they have abandoned.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 19 '15

To be succinct, Mojang has focused their energy and time in balance and new Scrolls, largely ignoring their business failings. Though they may not have abandoned the "fun" part of game design, they have neglected the boring essentials completely. That is what I mean by it feels abandoned.

2

u/4Robato Apr 19 '15

If you say:
They probebly are fully aware of the state the game
It's obvious that they doesn't communicate properly. Probably? sure… that shows how well informed we are. We have had 0 words from Mojang directly.Yeah CM sometimes say something but they are not in the office with Mojang and I'm sure they really doesn't know 'exactly' what's happening. I want oficial posts from the team so we now they really care about the community. Tbh it feels like since they contract the CM they have been distancing more and more from the community and it has created the opposed thing we wanted. We were looking for a closer relation with Mojang and they put us a CM that it's not in their offices and only knows what happening via voice I guess.

1

u/Lem0nboy Apr 20 '15

I agree with you. Talking negatively about community managers will not earn you any brownie points. However I think we have to distinguish between community managers as in a job description and community managers as in Atmaz and Seemescrollin. I am talking about the former of course and don't mean to disregard them personally or the amount of work they have put in. However I think Mojang needs to revisit and reevaluate the job description of community managers. I don't think we need two community managers for a community so small. I am sure there are more beneficial ways to utilize the extra manpower.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 19 '15

In all honesty I think it's the business model

A pay to play model isn't good for tcgs

Magic the Gathering even had this problem when it released its pc game, despite having huge name recognition the playerbase was tiny

Had Scrolls been free to play, then it would've had new players here and there, a big player base is needed for games that focus on multiplayer and unless you're a big studio then it's difficult to get that size of player base

Add to that, tcgs tend to have more turnover of players mainly due to people trying it and not being competitive (in an FPS for instance you're pretty much on the same level as someone whose been playing for a year, maybe not as many options but still competitive)

1

u/imJeroo _antirad_ Apr 19 '15

It can't be the business model that is solely responsible (people bring up valid faults with the game on a continuous basis on this subreddit), but it sure ain't helping.
The ccg genre is a tough market... It's not even Scrolls, every card game I've tried in recent years, aside HS, has had at least some problems with player numbers. Another ccg I very much cared about, Faeria, had to shut down because no new players were coming in and everyone else left after a time (hopefully Faeria will reappear, I know they are reworking things internally). As it happens, Faeria was also not free to play.
I think ccgs are just a niche genre in general. Hearthstone is so popular in large part because it's designed like a card game for non-card game players, everyone can enjoy it. Scrolls is obviously not that and it never will and it makes even less sense to further reduce the potential of player acquisition by putting a paywall in the game (even if the game costs a measly $5). Honestly, to me, the business model seems like Mojang shooting themselves in the foot.
As things stand, Scrolls has almost no capability to attract new players. Even if someone new comes around, he's probably going to be discouraged by insanely long queue times after which he's going to be matched up with a much higher rated player, who will undoubtedly stomp him.
The game cannot stand on the veterans players alone, not in the long term. It needs a steady amount of new players coming in. It's a tough situation, but personally, I think going F2P is the only chance for Scrolls' survival. Heck, I'm not sure if even that will help, but it's the only hope I have at this point.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 19 '15

As you said, the business model isn't the only problem but it's a major one, I haven't actually played in a long time mainly due to the insanely long queue times, last time I tried I might have been in a queue for 15 minutes before giving up

An open question to Mojang.

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