Irreversible?

[dos]

I saw this thread pop-up the other day and forgot to post so im gonna jump in here a little.

I consider Era's development to be pretty loose and maintained by the player base.

There is a development flow and loose management when it comes to developing for Era's holiday events, themed releases, etc. The main thing being that these 'developers', be it gani artists (animations), pixel artists, programmers, level designers, and so on, all come with a varied level of experience and knowledge of game development, let alone Era's development. It's also important to know that most the people who come into these positions are typically passionate about the game in the first place and are willing to spend their free time working to create content for the game. There is a level of compensation for said work, but it is still something that I'd assume most, unless they have lots of free time or very good time management skills, are not capable of doing. With that said, it's expected for people to learn to use certain tools on their own. There is a decent amount of information out there but lacking platform support and updates for the software in some cases which makes learning to do something harder or impossible for some. Scripting is one that is very hard because the documentation is so lacking that you really need and to find someone who knows it and is willing to teach you.

Assuming you have programming knowledge you likely know that it's harder to understand something that someone else wrote and what it does without good documentation or comments. It's totally possible to look at the program and break down what it does but it comes back to Era, someone is going to have to spend a whole lot of time breaking down the game just to document it. Era is like many older games that is just running its course and aging in said process. It's an entirely different story when you look at a AAA game that has tons of paid developers and likely well documented code with and a game like Era that was, in a way, handed to the players and allowed to grow on its own. On that same note, it's a game with a development team who's maturity / skill level(s) vary heavily, so the likelihood of mistakes and their ability to fix or change those mistakes varies with it.

I believe that the developers and players want to do things that the system just isn't capable of doing, and that fixing those issues can't and or won't happen because it could possibly require you to build the game from scratch again or having knowledge of all the systems that could be affected by said change.

Overall though, I'd say it's just a case of the game is getting older and with it the players and its systems in place (code). I personally only found the game when I was browsing the Facebook games in 2013 and I don't know of any other way to really discover it other than by chance of search terms in the App / Play Store. Even after all that time it became like many other games I played where I was really only logging in to chat with friends until I stopped doing even that. Games like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Call of Duty and so on aren't capable of making everyone happy with everything they do and it's just as hard if not harder for Era's team to do the same.

So... the clash began when players wanted more. A revival. All that was needed were a few simple things; hats, furniture, melees. Instead, they've added weird things that don't suit the game. These new graphics, although somewhat pleasing to the eye, do not fit Era in any way possible. Era is dark, not contrastive. Now there's a lot of confusion between the tiles and the NPCs around the map. The game was very simple 8 years ago. Players made fun with what they had, and now it doesn't seem possible. It's the same idea of adding too much technology into the world. The difference is, that these updates make Era ugly.

In the addition of VIP, it was made very simple with a(as I remember) modified police outfit. Then we moved onto bicycles(kind of odd), broomsticks(mimicking PC Era), instruments(also mimicking PC Era), and now butterfly wings rather than discontinuing VIP. Again, confusing and ugly. Era now looks like you put 5 year-old stickers onto a rusted out brown '93 Honda Del Sol. Prove me wrong.

The collision of new players having hardly any street activity happened at the point where the amount of guns surpassed 30. The issue wasn't that there were too many, but they were totally out of the job working ratio per their prices. Instead of adjustment, the team kept on trucking with a few gun balances here and there. This was in the reluctancy of hurting feelings of those who spent cash for gralats. It's been around 7 years since I've seen any job updates, besides fishing. Mind you, I've played on and off throughout the years; I wouldn't know of every single update.

For some reason, there's always been the tendency of the manager, and most of the teams, to have no player communication. Not because of swarms. If Era is run on our own platform of listening to the players, there is no excuse. I have no control on whether they acknowledge any feedback, but it sure would be thoughtful of them since the playerbase will continue at a decline. I don't mean the feedback of additional items, but the feedback of their current formula on how the game should be updated and continued. There's too many bandaids attempted to be put over a gaping 30' hole.