I think there’s a very clear disconnect between players who want a power fantasy, versus players who want a challenging strategy game.
I notice a lot of players fall into the trap of only building for the deck itself, trying to force the kinds of hyperoptimized archetype decks you would see in a constructed TCG. The game allows for a lot of flashy combos that can feel like an unstoppable force, but if their deck only ever does one thing they will encounter some enemy that feels like an immovable object because it counters that one thing.
But then rather than accounting for that enemy’s existence and diversifying their deck to be able to handle it, they rush to the Steam forums to complain that the enemy was unfair. Because the deck was good, it had this cool combo in it, and that combo beat everything else up until this point, so clearly this good deck shouldn’t have lost!
It’s like building a team of all Fire-type Pokemon that only know Fire-type moves, and wondering why you can’t beat the Water gym.
I don’t know that this is why specifically Chinese players are review bombing it, but this is true of StS2. You can build a super OP sly deck for silent only to get roflstomp’d by Doormaker. You can build a Defect deck that drops big attacks to get shutdown by Phrog Parasite. And so on.
If anything, thinning the deck, like one of the article’s quotes suggest, makes the deck more susceptible to curses and status cards. Higher ascension runs need you to be able to build around many scenarios, and not every deck is Status Defect.
I like the direction the devs are going in with making lower ascensions easier and higher ascensions harder.
I am still trying to beat the first level, still seems pretty hard lol
Answer: Chinas gaming culture is toxic, and does not differentiate between indie and corporate pay-to-win live service bullshit. They are used to going straight to review bombs as the only way to make a point to developers.
Not really. As the devs themselves have stated, one of the reasons was that Chinese players don’t have access to most of the established feedback channels like the official discord server and social media accounts so their only option to reliably get the devs‘ attention is through Steam reviews. If I remember correctly, they are (have been?) working on improving communication, for example through an ingame feedback form.
That’s good.
But there is definitely a cultural difference as well.
That said, it’s not like everyone in the west online is nice, but in western culture it has gotten MUCH better.
It wasn’t too long ago that every english speaking person in a video game chat was absolutely horrible. But today I encounter much more people online genuinely trying to be nice a constructive. Especially in games from studios that care.
And you can leave a negative review, and still be respectful. That isn’t what the majority are doing.
I hope that improves. China has a lack of truly wholesome devs that are also as successful as some western indies. Instead it is a hellscape of companies arguably worse than EA, Activision and Ubisoft.
Chinese players don’t have access to most of the established feedback channels like the official discord server and social media accounts so their only option to reliably get the devs‘ attention is through Steam reviews.
But there is definitely a cultural difference as well.
I think these two things might be related. When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything is going to look like a nail. The devs can add all the in-game alternative contact methods they want, if Chinese players are only familiar with using the hammer and that is the only option available to them, that’s what they’re going to use. They’re not going to suddenly try something ad-hoc like finding a feedback button buried somewhere in the game, when the nail is standing tall right there, just begging to be hit with their hammer. They’ve been trained to use the hammer, they’re going to use it first, immediately, and liberally, and the idea of using or even considering an alternative will probably never occur to most of them.
