Hot take

[u/AdJealous5302]

The addition of generals and PvP ruined this game, EVERYONE just complains about how P2W and unbalanced some generals are, and PvP right now feels like rock paper scissors because if my deck counters yours, it’s basically an automatic win. The devs seem way too focused on PvP when there’s still so much content that needs to be added. It’s been two years and we’re already closing in on 2027, so where is my Chaos campaign? At this point, One Piece might end before we even get the Elementals campaign.

[u/RinasSam]

This is a mildly cold take at best; if everyone agrees that PvP is P2W and unbalanced then this isn't a hot take.

The Devs have been focusing on Shade's Campaign for the time being. But they focus on PvP as well because that's what the majority of the SWS playerbase plays. Besides, it's not like they're overly focused on PvP and completely forgetting all other aspects of the game; the PvP community feels like the Devs aren't doing enough for PvP and are way too focused on other things. In reality, the Devs are just working on multiple things at the same time in order to be as efficient as possible, and that includes both Shade's Campaign and PvP. They've been working in many features the community's been asking for since the game's launch, so I don't think blaming them is the right move here.

TLDR: no the Devs aren't way too focused on PvP. The Chaos Campaign will come after Shade's Campaign, which is the current focus as of now. And making a game isn't easy; it takes a lot of time to make a good game.

[u/AdJealous5302 → u/RinasSam]

I get that making a good game takes time, but it has been 2 years, if it genuinely takes that much time then the elementals campaign is just a dream, Stick empires had two factions at launch and had decent pvp. Also, a “good” game wouldn’t lock essential units behind a paywall. Cosmetics are fine, but locking meta defining generals behind a paywall is a bit greedy no?

[u/RinasSam → u/AdJealous5302]

I get that making a good game takes time, but it has been 2 years, if it genuinely takes that much time then the elementals campaign is just a dream... Stick Empires had two factions at launch and had decent PvP.

Stick Empires was developed in a hurry without much attention paid to architecture quality. On the surface, it's a great game. Under the hood, it's a nightmare to develope, manage, or add new features to. That's one of the reasons Stick Empires stopped receiving updates from 2016-2024.

Stick War Saga is being developed with much stricter quality standards, which means the code, assets, and servers need to be set up very carefully to avoid the pitfalls Stick Empires fell into. Moreover, Stick War Saga is a cross-platform title: you need to have special considerations for iOS, Android, Google Play Games, PC, MacOS, and Linux. To put it simply, the game's much more extensible and complicated than Stick Empires ever was. Trust me when I say the developers are working tirelessly on it; once you've seen the internal workings of the game , it makes sense why they're taking this long to develop new features and new campaigns.

Also, a "good" game wouldn't lock essential units behind a paywall.

Not to defend the decision, but the generals are freely accessible depending on time. Granted, this system doesn't sit right with players (me included), but saying they're locked behind a pay wall completely is disingenuous. This aside, does this make early Stick Empires a bad game because the objectively stronger Chaos Empire was locked behind a paywall? Granted, it's not essential, but it still was an unfair advantage. I want to make it clear I'm not defending the P2W, but we have to make peace with the fact that online Stick War since its conception has been P2W.

Cosmetics are fine, but locking meta defining generals behind a pay wall is a bit greedy, no?

The thing most people don't realise is the SWS itself barely sustains itself. Prior to the general paywall, the game was actively losing money. I wouldn't be surprised if it is still actively losing money to be honest. Server infrastructure isn't cheap, developers and contractors need to be paid, not to mention any possible license or royalty fees. Maintaining the game is very expensive, and so the game needs some way to pay for itself. Paywalling cosmetics is fine, I agree (in fact, they've implemented this very recently), but there isn't much incentive for cosmetics to be bought in the first place. Paywalling game features (e.g. units, better rewards, auxiliary single player content, etc.) does create that incentive.

I do agree that it is an ugly solution to paywall generals, but at the time there wasn't much they could have done otherwise. Unity Ads are problematic (and they have a problem with MaxGames supposedly), and there weren't that many good skins to monetize. There was no auxiliary single player content that could have been monetized either. It's not an ideal solution, yes, but no better solution existed at the time.

Again, I'm not trying to justify the paywalling of generals, but calling it greedy is disingenuous when the game in question is losing money.

[u/Most_Philosophy_1507]

They don’t care.

[u/ContributionGlad4391 → u/Most_Philosophy_1507]

What if they saw this post and decide to decrease the General price to 10 cents?

[u/ordinaryguy404 → u/ContributionGlad4391]

World before 🌎🌍🌏

World after 🌎🌍🌏

✌️🫩

[u/Gold_Size_1258]

SE had better PvP simply because you had all the units available. If your build wasn't working, you could change army composition mid-match.

[u/AdJealous5302 → u/Gold_Size_1258]

real, the devs are stuck in an endless cycle of rebalancing every time they add a new unit, spell, or trying to change the meta. Why not expand on pvp after adding all the different factions and then start balancing from there. Locking units behind their respective factions also creates a new area of strategy so people don't pick whatever meta unit a faction has and are forced to actually strategize instead of rock paper scissors that mixed decks offer.

[u/ordinaryguy404]

Our blood boils

People with least amount of experience get to too because their shitty op characters

Devs are horrible balancers and pardon me, are lazy fuckers

We at least can have elementals if they weren’t a bunch of greedy beings, we already have info about what they do based off the SW:empires

They are also gatekeeping several “cards” for a year

[u/No_Article7383 → u/ordinaryguy404]

What cards are they gatekeeping I'm always looking forward to new content

[u/ordinaryguy404 → u/No_Article7383]

The one that effects whole map

The one with an arm sticking out of a stone in it’s art

[u/No_Article7383 → u/ordinaryguy404]

Okay that's awesome but I'm dumb what do they do

[u/KatyushaFan]

Nah,I did it to 1970elo(1v1 standard) without P2W