u/Lluluien

I’ve enjoyed the game for the past couple of months and dont begrudge the $90-100 I’ve spent on it, but it’s time for us to part ways.

I have some constructive criticism about the things that are making me go, because I did like the game while I was playing it. Even if BSide doesn’t address these issues in Star Savior, they’re things to think about in the Counterside sequel.

If I leave with just one thought, it’s this: there are too many “minor” grievances. Almost everything I say here is not enough to leave on its own - it’s the sum of all these things that are the problem. There’s a lesson in that somewhere. If the dev backlog is only addressed on a single case by case basis, it would be easy to deprioritize all these things, but taken together, they are why I am leaving the game.

None of this is to say anyone else is “wrong” for liking the game and staying around. In fact, I hope this feedback helps improve the game for the people that stay.

I‘m simply stating why I won’t spend any more time or money

• Journey mode is fun… the first time you’re seeing new stories. The mode also has good underlying game mechanics for repetition for team building, and we already knew this because of Umamusume’s success. The problem is, when I am repeating the mode, I feel like I spend half my time NOT playing, because of all the stop-and-go load screens and scene switches. I only have the stomach for these now maybe 1-2 times a week because of that, and I have a ton of units that I consider “behind“ on Journey development due to this, in spite of being in 4th place in my battlegroup in terms of operation progression. The min-maxing is fun and I have reasons to do it, but I just can’t pay the UI tax anymore.
• That feeling of “I drew this unit and can’t play with it” phenomenon people talk about isn’t a bogeyman. The CP penalties for having 6/6/6 vs 7/10/10 skills or 25 vs 50+ affinity are not trivial at all, never mind the journey badge, never mind the gear.
• RTA seems to be the mode that Bside thought would carry the game, but the previous point is at direct odds with this. RTA wants an expansive roster, and it’s difficult to build that, especially if you’re concentrating resources for characters to play PvE or “strategy mode” PvP. Note that gear presets does NOT solve the gear problem for a wide roster unless you can choose among your gear presets after drafting, which is something I’ve never seen done in a game like this (admittedly, just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean there hasn’t been one).
• The “stall to lightning” meta in strategy mode is boring, and the lightning needs to be less aggressive to dissuade this. This isn’t the first game that’s had this problem either, so plenty of players will have been exhausted with it before ever even arriving here.
• If you’re someone like me that doesn’t play RTA because of its problem and is getting tired of strategy mode because of its problems, then the game only has any replayability enjoyment from Journey mode… but that also has problems. The sum of all this means daily play has just gotten boring. The rewards are good, but I don’t have any interest in chasing them anymore.
• Speaking of rewards, the 4% rates look really good on paper but still have plenty of variability for repeated ”feel bad” problems. I‘ve had runs of 200-300 pulls three different times now where I only got 4-5 total SSR, and they were all useless junk. The amount of useless units and arcana in the drop table already is a problem and will only get worse when the character-specific arcana from the roadmap start coming out. I’ve also had a string of 10-11 SSR in a row where I only hit the banner rate up once, and that was on arcana draws where there’s no 1% cosmic vs 2% rgb problem. This game desperately needs pity in addition to “spark”, because it is so dupe dependent (especially because of CP penalties) that the spark being 1 guarantee in 200 draws isn’t enough to offset bad luck when you should be getting 8 SSR in those 200 draws. Basically, the “safety net” isn’t strong enough. I’ve broken my tailbone on the ground many times even with the safety net there, and this was a common complaint in my guild.
• I actually DON’T see the slow operations progression as a problem, especially with the current buffs they put in place for stalling. However, since the major barrier to PVE progression has more to do with resources over time and credit card swiping than it does with strategic play, there needs to be another gameplay mode for which this the CP barrier isn’t constantly an issue. Flash point doesn’t work for this because it’s more of a resources-over-time mode. once you’ve completed the quests, there’s nothing to do but sweep. The insidious thing about this problem where CP gating obviates progression in many modes is that EVERYONE will hit it. Any individual player may be few stages ahead or behind the pack, but wherever you land is where you’ll be stuck, and in that sense, everyone is stuck in exactly the same way. For leveling up your idle resources over time, this isn’t necessarily a problem. The problem is it means the associated modes are rare progression gates and not entertaining gameplay. If operations and interstellar gate are the daily entertainment modes, and journey + pvp also have problems… where am I going to be entertained? Cosmic gate and guild defense are fairly entertaining, but they don’t happen often enough, and cosmic gate doesn’t have much replayability either - slow progression means the score you can get one day 1 isn’t functionally different than the score you get on day 6.
• The development speed is another “feels bad” moment made worse by the other problems. We’ve been told several times that things were coming and then delayed. We’ve watched Counterside get canceled and then watched Bside promise a sequel is coming. There has been many complaints about the event format being boring because it keeps being repeated. Are we just never going to get any updates that require code? Several of the problems in this game are going to require new code, so if the content teams are the only ones working on the game while the devs are working on Counterside 2, then a lot of problems I have aren’t going to be fixed - namely the Journey issues.
• The dev roadmap is another “feels bad” for me because it reinforces the previous point - we have the roadmap til September, and we have lots of evidence that the update targets are aggressive. That means the Journey updates I want to see won’t happen until October at the earliest and might not be until 2027 realistically.

The three biggest changes that I think they need to drop everything for and make in the game:

• Find a way to deal with PVE stagnation. The knee jerk response is to ask for CP penalties to be less aggressive, but that’s a temporary fix. Players will simply reach a new stagnation threshold and then stagnate again. There needs to be an entirely different new PvE game mode to deal with this issue, in my opinion. I don’t immediately know how to advise Bside on what that should be, and I won’t speculate further because I’ve already spent a lot of time here for a game I’m parting ways with. The key observation here isn’t that I’m offering a solution, it’s that I have carefully outlined the problem - the fix can’t just be something that changes the ceiling once and then stalls everyone again.
• Deal with the Journey mode UI. This should’ve been done months ago. The mechanical gameplay is fine, the min maxing is fun, and the progression/reward motivation is sufficient. Repeating the mode would help with the endgame stagnation, but it’s exhausting that half the time you spend in the mode is waiting on stoplights to change.
• Consider adding a pity system for the rate up banner. A very basic expected value calculation says you should get a copy of the rate up reward once every 50 draws, but I have had runs of hundreds where I only got one. Since dupes are so important and 200 spark vs 50 expected value is so drastically different, the current safety net doesn’t work. Furthermore, whether Bside likes it or not, their 1% rate up means that the spark currency is used for those units, and since this is mathematically sound strategy, it means many players don’t get to engage in the safety net at all for bad luck runs. Make whatever arguments you will about whether or not that observation is fair; the opposite side of that coin is the 1% drop rate and the new arcana pool dilution that is coming. The point here is about stopping problematic player retention “feel bad“ moments. Figuring out how to deal with that while maintaining monetization needs is a studio problem, not a player problem. Whether they like it or not, the game industry is extremely competitive - I know, because I tried game dev for about 3 years myself and failed at it.