Duelyst Forums

On the shutdown of the servers

#1

I joined the game back when it was officially released out of the beta. I played it a lot, but mostly left about a year ago, playing it off and on every once in a while. I finally felt like getting back into the game about a week ago, and now this announcement drops.

I understand why you stopped developing the game and I understand why you’ll have to shut it down.
But here’s what I don’t understand;

  • why did you guys keep up radio silence for so long, to then break it with about as vague of a statement you could muster, the only useful part was about the servers staying up, only to then enter radio silence again until now, to once again come out with a very brief statement that gives us no info outside of a shutdown date.
  • why did you tell us “There are no plans for future expansions until Godfall is released.”? did you really plan to come back to the game, and if so, what made you change your mind? it’s not like there have been unforseen events and costs attached to maintaining it so you would’ve been able to make the financial calculations 2 years ago
  • again, why is even your goodbye statement so terrible? it doesn’t give us anything to go with. no info, no explanations, no nothing.
  • why make orbs cheap instead of free, or just unlocking everyone’s collections? you’re not selling diamonds anymore, you’re not earning any money off the game and you’re not going to ruin future prospects, since those aren’t there anymore. I don’t have any diamonds on my account because I spent all the ones I bought ages ago and I’m sure the majority of people are like this.
  • I’m not an expert on this, but I’m pretty sure it’d be relatively easy to just dump all assets,code and licences into the public domain in a somewhat coherent way that allows for people to start really going to town on the game. you never know when someone decides to set up a private server for it to run on, make mods for it and other such things. it’s not like you have anything to lose from this since you’re probably never booting up duelyst again or making a follow-up card game (you know that would incite a mob of rightfully angry people whose card collections you will have deleted)

Basically, the usual. why have you become so fucking horrible at communicating? you used to be very open about things, but then you seem to have decided that we weren’t worthy of discussing your higher purpose with anymore.
You keep us in the dark for months, the few statements that you do put out range from little-to-no substance to full on misleading future prospects, you decide to make orbs cheap instead of just giving people all the cards (which would actually make for a very enjoyable last month for a lot of people and would probably convince many people to come back just to screw around with fun decks for the last month) and to top it all off, the game will just be gone, there’ll be no way to ever play it again unless someone invests years of his time to rebuild it from scratch. no mods, no private servers, no local playing, no nothing.

Piss off

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#2

I get that you are upset, but what we were given is the Bandai namco corporate speech goodbye. They entered radio silence becouse they had to completely focus on the project that would keep the company afloat - Godfall. I doubt they even could make the orbs free, even if they wanted to. There are bigger things afoot here. ThanatosNoa said in another thread that the decision was taken out of CPGs hands since Bamco was paying the server costs to begin with and that he and some other devs are fighting to keep the IP so that maybe Dooly can have some sort of future.

Duelyst’s devs are not perfect, but they developed an incredible FREE game, gave it support for as long as they could and built an incredible community.

I don’t think they deserve this.

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#3

radio silence means they kept us in the dark and stopped sharing info. I doubt that they were so busy with godfall that they couldn’t spare one hour of one person’s time every few months to give us a slight update. also I understand that it isn’t their decision to shut down the server,

  • but bamco knew the game would be dead until after the release of godfall and quite possibly slightly longer because that game would’ve needed more attention to iron out on-release problems
  • there hasn’t been anything happening to duelyst since may 2018 so bamco had the complete picture of the server costs at that time and would’ve been able to calculate them over any time period from that moment onwards

either bamco suddenly decided that they were going to drop duelyst
or cpg recently decided that they’d never come back to the game
or bamco were always planning to drop duelyst around this time and cpg either never asked about that or didn’t tell us even though they knew

either way, cpg should’ve been way more transparent about all of this, we haven’t even been given a reason. just a “goodbye, btw you can now buy orbs for pretty much nothing” but no sensible person will have bought diamonds in the past year and no sensible person would buy them, even if they were still available. and if they can’t make orbs free, just unlock people’s collection by giving them a gift crate with infinite spirit. it’s not like you’re stealing from bamco this way since diamonds have already been purchased and you can’t buy anything anymore

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#4

I absolutely agree with you on the transparency part. I wish more studios learned from Digital Extremes (Warframe devs). They have a stream every friday or so and talk about future plans.

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#5

Obviously, I can’t give answers but I can give some insight.

From the sounds of it, this wasn’t CLG’s dev’s decision. For one, we all knew they had moved on to a new project, and we also knew that Bamco was given control of the game’s direction. ThanatosNoa even quoted that he and the other devs do not have direct control of Duelyst’s future and the decision to shut it down was not theirs to make.

They didn’t tell us there were plans to add additional content after Godfall. They said there would not be any further consideration about adding content until Godfall released. In other words, it wasn’t ‘we’re going to add content after Godfall, we promise’, it was ‘we aren’t even thinking about what to do with Duelyst until after Godfall’. When people got the impression this was confirming content, they even doubled down and said this was not the case.

I imagine there’s a little bit of legal red tape here. Crystals are a paid for in game currency. If they gave the content away for free, it may constitute fraud (charging money for free content). They provided this option purely as a sink for any crystals players may still be holding. After all, any crystals lose their value completely when the game shuts down, which is another problem in and of itself. Giving a 99% discount helps to ensure they get used completely, without any substantial leftovers from purchases.

Absolutely not. A product like this is no longer solely owned by CLG, given their cooperation with Bamco. Even if it were, putting it into public domain is a pretty bad idea for an IP when they could put it in their back pocket and draw from it in the future. Letting it go public (assuming they even could), would allow others to potentially ruin the IP and prevents CLG from monetizing their hard work. It’s much easier for a tiny indie dev to decide to throw something into public domain when it’s a very tiny project with an extremely small foundation. This is not the case.

Either way, I’m 99% sure there’s a ton of legal problems with this idea. It’s really just wishful thinking anyhow.

I’m sorry it upsets you so much. I’m know a lot of us are upset about it. I don’t think this is the best way to make your feelings known, however. I’m sure many, including the devs, are sympathetic to your frustration, but this isn’t going to help anything.

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#6

Just saying that Namco and CPG are two different companies which are also not really communicating with each other anymore. Noone on Namco’s side was working on Duelyst, which was the reason we didn’t get any patches anymore. While CPG can develop a patch, they can’t implement it in the servers on their own.

So CPG came and said what they said months ago.
And now Namco announced the shutdown.

What we don’t know how it came to happen but to me it seemed Thanatos was surprised by it too and admitted they have no direct control, so it could be Namco decided on that. The servers are their responsibility anyways.

The wording in the farewell article also seems suspicious:

BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment accounts will continue to be active and may be used for our other titles.

Our titles? Seems like written by Namco.

I would love to hear the story about that decision making, the whos and wheres. Won’t happen though I guess.

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#7

(emphasis added)

This is conjecture but…

What if there actually had been new content coming ? If I look at my gold and spirit - around 30k each - for any new content, existing players would probably have a full playset on release day without spending any cash. Given the time between expansions, the same would hold true for at least one or two (or even more) more expansions, considering that in-game resources would continue to amass in between them.

Many current long-time players, I’d guess, have similar stockpiles of IG-currency because at a certain point, there is nothing to spend that on.

Coupled with Duelyst being somewhat of a niche game (that hasn’t received any real publicity even at its high points) would make any future money being spent on it… doubtful.

So… why keep the servers on a game - that currently isn’t and most likely not going to for quite some time generate any cash - running, if you look at it from a publisher’s, economic point of view ?

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#8

In order for any adding of new content to be worth it duelyst would first need to massively enlarge it’s player base. Even if all the gold and spirit are deleted, it wouldn’t be worth it for the devs.

How many players have complete collections anyway? Can’t be that many, that they would stand out too much if a lot of new players joined …

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#9

Sure that was always the crux, which made me believe in a Duelyst 2 more than new expansions for Duelyst (if anything happens). But we will see what happens after Godfall in 2021. Maybe they will do something with the Duelyst IP or maybe not.

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#10

I am one. Have all the cosmetics, too.
:weary:

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#11

I don’t, but I mostly have everything I want. And 13k gold. And some spirit, also.

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#12

I have the things I need, full cosmetics, full vanar, full Songhai and neutrals.

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#13

I can see how CPG had little say in any of this, but they could’ve talked to us way more. this approach of near non-communication had been happening since before they decided to put the game in a freezer

I know that that statement wasn’t a promise for more content, I knew that back then as well, but if they really had no plans yet they would’ve told us “There are no plans for future expansions” without the “until Godfall is released” part. This doesn’t promise more content, but indicates that they are still considering this as an option, but, like I said, at this point in time CPG and namco already knew all the financial strain that the game would cause until godfall’s release and so if they knew they were going to shut it down anyways this is just giving people false hope.

they could just give everyone a “farewell gift” crate with 999.999 spirit in it, that way you can still spend your diamonds on the cosmetics and on orbs if you like opening card packs. problem solved.

I’m pretty sure they’ve always said that they still own the game and that it’s namco who owns the publishing rights. and how exactly is it a bad idea to allow people to make fan games, mods and other such things with their IP? they could still use it and it’s not like people can’t differentiate between a fan game within a universe and a game published by the original creators. I don’t understand how you think it would “allow others to potentially ruin the IP”? you don’t see people bashing games over a bunch of bad mods and fan games people have made from them. hell, some of the most long lasting games are that way because the devs made a good game, which was then kept alive by the modding community because they have infinite more unpayed man hours to spend on developing expansions and fixes.

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#14

That’s what I’m thinking as well

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#15

I have a complete collection but who needs that anyways :slight_smile:

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#16

they won’t release dueslyst 2 (or at least I woudn’t if I was them)

  • card games are under a lot of scrutiny nowadays so that will give potential legal trouble in certain countries
  • gamers in general have turned away from card games since they’re seen as a shady business practise
  • with MtgA being a thing, there’s even moe competition in the market than ever before
  • Dueyst didn’t work out so I don’t see how a similar game would, since duelyst was already way above almost any other card game out there imo so clearly quality wasn’t the issue

and most importantly: think about the reaction they’d get from their previous players if they cancel duelyst, delete the servers, consequently delete everyone’s card collection and anything they ever purchased in the game, only to bring the game back in a 2.0. that’d piss me off so much I’d fucking never touch anything they’d make ever again and would advise others to do the same considering they might just do it again

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#17

I don’t have a complete collection, but I have almost everything I’d want to have and would’ve had a full collection had I not mostly stopped playing abut a year ago

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#18

ThanatosNoa said in another thread that BNEA was handling all communications. That is why we never heard from them, because we actually haven’t heard from them since the partnership with Namco. And I am pretty sure that the “allow others to potentially ruin their IP” bit was referring to your suggestion they just release the IP, not the mod stuff.

As far as the other things you are in the dark about, I am there with you.

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#19

I disagree on the quality aspect, there were a lot of quality issues with Duelyst. Doesn’t change that the game is amazing but it is not polished at all. And a lot of that has to do with the way it is programmed.

If I have the choice between no Duelyst and Duelyst 2, I would love playing Duelyst 2. All the stuff they could improve on with a totally new client too. Is it likely? Don’t think so but seems more likely than new expansions. I mean a 5 years old game will have big trouble attracting new people when it is already as low as Duelyst is. So a new start is needed.
It is also not like developing a new game which gets announced years in advance will surprise people. Even with a 1 year development time people can adjust well enough to the reality, stop spending money in Duelyst to prepare for the successor.

I don’t understand your rage. Of course they will do it again. Every game will get replaced at some point. And it is an online game, you own nothing.
I spent a lot of money for Duelyst and I would do that all over again. I got so much enjoyment and fun out of this game, was worth every cent I spent and more.
I would strongly advise people to get into Duelyst 2 because it is a fresh start and they don’t need to fear meeting only veterans with huge collections etc. etc. etc. (insert any argument new players are unhappy with).

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#20

I am one of those 100% collection. course I have spent hundreds, played since the start, and got lots of streamer rewards to.

Rage is quite justified. I would be absolutely pissed at D2, but I would probably play it anyways. It would feel similar to out of beta 2 draw change / forum deletion phase all over again. I would be pissed, I would never get over it, but I would still play because any duelyst is better than no duelyst…particularly since there is still ZERO ALTERNATIVE. Faeria seems to be all that’s left of the genere and even it is not doing so hot.

I really had hopes this did not have to be true. I wanted a timeless classic.

I think I agree, but my judgement is clouded.

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