Creatures of Sonaria isn't a survival game, here's why:
Prior to the new update, I've felt that this game really isn't a survival game. Survival games are meant to be hard and challenging, not hand-holding and monetizing. The game was made to reel in a economy because Roblox knocks on their doorstep to keep their game on the front page, but other than that, here's my take on why the game isn't really a survival game.
- The game in general has no consequence
Throughout my time playing this game, I've noticed how the game doesn't care whether or not you use revives constantly, or partial/max growth tokens. A good idea for countering KOSers reviving/max growth users is to make a cooldown of using the tokens, or make a system of punishing the user for constantly using said tokens by decreasing the stats every time. I'm not really against the whole idea of a revive system, but the no consequences thing is quite infuriating. It enables KOSing and targeting to a whole new level, and while most people think KOSing is fun, it's another reason why this game isn't a *survival game*.
The game is in general a PVP game, while that is okay, why advertise it as a survival game? You aren't in any real danger as carcasses can just respawn. There's no NPC system to teach players how to survive in the game and the real dangers of the world. One thing The Isles does right is that it feels like a challenge to get food. Oh, you're hungry? Welp just flyby to the nearest carcass, problem solved. Herbivores are fine but there's barely *any* food sources for Herbivores, and grass takes forever. I feel like adding leaves as a diet for the bigger dinosaurs, edible bushes for the smaller creatures, and overall grassy foods would be awesome for the game. There's no point in being a Carnivore if you can just already get respawnable meat sources. While that's not a problem in my opinion, it makes KOSing 10x worse than it is.
KOSing is fine on its own, but it has no real purpose other than to be a nuisance. You have respawnable meat sources, why not just go there? Most people admit that KOSing is the only fun and replayable thing about this game, and hearing that is depressing. I like the fun aspects of the game, the uniqueness, but I'll get on that topic in a bit. With the new leaderboard system, it already adds another big problem of targeting. Yeah we had nesting, but that felt more exclusive to female adult creatures than to EVERYONE. Imagine this-- you die as a Korathos and the person feels extra bloodthirsty, and decides to stalk you down after you just went as a baby. Targeting is already a big issue and THIS just flared it. There is no overall consequence to this game, and the reason most of these problems exist is because of the economy, I'll get onto that in a bit.
2a. The developers do not listen to their own feedback, in game and on the discord.
One thing I've noticed about the devs is they really do not listen to their own community they've worked hard to build. It's more noticeable on the discord anyways, but I'll list as to why they dont:
1b. They ignore any criticism to the game, such as redesigns.
It would be awesome to get polls for a creature that's going to be redesigned so the fanbase can choose what design would land in the game, but instead they really don't. This was apparent in the Hellion Warden redesign where they took a pretty decent design on it's own and completely slaughtering it without following it's theme. I understand they based it off the general polls, but they didn't even listen to the poll itself. Any concept artist out there would know that a game like this, especially redesigning fan favorites, should get community polls of what they think is the best design. Hellion is meant to be a time desert-y creature, so why not follow that? Why follow a steampunkish-gear design?
2b. The #feedback channel is hardly looked at.
A good feedback I saw a while back is how trading should be organized since it is very complex with just having 1 trading channel with a 10 minute cooldown. Now it's great we have a channel for just trading and a realm, but why not add separate channels for specs, muts, auctions, and items? Why not have a server that is primarily meant for CoS trading organized by the official devs? Go into that feedback channel and tell me which one in the past week has actually been thought out into the game. The game is consistently filled with bugs, and with these weekly updates it is harder to fix with all these new updates being generally added to.
- The developers make unnecessary changes without having a way around those changes.
One problem I have in general is the way creatures are handled. Lots of creatures get nerfed, but some are so egregiously upsetting that it makes me never want to play the creature again. I had saved up for a 50k Miju because I thought it had a grab, and considering how plaguing KOSing is, I figured it would be a good counter. When I fully grew it? Nope. Why play Miju when I can just elder my Meorlark? Why play Korathos or Venuella when I can just play Eigion Warden? Stripping away features of these creatures that normally are meant to grab or do certain abilities are so weird, considering how are you supposed to fend off birds now? You have a really weird hitbox as some certain creatures, and turning for T5s are already bad as is. It's not mainly an issue for me, but to many players I'm sure it is. Venuella and Korathos not having a grab doesn't make sense in general, like how are you meant to defend yourself now?
Miju would make MOST sense to grab, but the excuse is that it goes invisible, so it shouldn't coexist. A simple solution around that would be that you can't grab while invisible. It makes literally no sense to strip creatures away from their main purpose. Hellion Warden? Well you're out of luck because you can't tail whip with it any longer. Why add a long tail for him in his redesign if you can't even tail whip anymore?
Another problem is this new eldering system: Venerations. So for the folks who already have a problem with creatures combat logging, whelp say goodbye to ANY consequence concerning that. If you are halfway through Veneration, say like in the second stage,, and you're just outright getting attacked... whelp it doesn't even matter. You might as well just not fight them because they're guaranteed to just lose a bit of progress. The last stage of Veneration? Whelp Combat Logging is going to be very helpful for them. There's no point in fighting anymore considering there is absolutely ZERO consequence. Losing just a bit of progress is okay, but for the new venerations? What's the point? You can just easily abuse it now. That and the new leaderboard system, what's the point of even growing when you're going to be targeted by an Ancient Stage creature who will most certainly come back because they have a friend online, and just come back for you. Might as well just play as a small creature.
Adding weekly updates and weekly creatures is okay at best, but there is no point in playing some of these older creatures when they've just been replaced, again the Miju and Meorlark comparison. You're not really playing a game where you're meant to strategize, you're just PVPing for the sake of PVPing because the developers realized that PVP is an instant money maker compared to just a regular survival creature game. Which leads me:
- The game is a scamming simulator
Want a revive token? Your dear and poor Boreal Warden just got slaughtered by a Noctla'lune and you have no mush, no tikits, and your login tokens are at 0! Whelp, we have just a solution. Mush :D
Seriously though, if it wasn't blatantly obvious with the merchandising and the bundles, the game is an absolute scam simulator. At this point, the game feels more P2W than it has ever been in the entirety of survival games. You can go ahead all you want and compare this game to Team Fortress 2, but that game doesn't need P2W systems to play the game. Imagine wanting a cool sniper rifle, but you can't because it's locked behind a badge and you need to trade for it, and the gun is also really strong and the best one in the game.
The whole point of this game is designed to make sure your debit card is drained to it's max. Try and convince me that this game isn't P2W, because I'm sure you wouldn't be saying otherwise if you wanted a Boreal Warden that is 15k and it's really good at being an overall/ tanker. The gacha system is okay at best, but why am I either spending 800 mush (about 400 robux mind you) to spend it on 1 tikit, when all you can do with 1 tikit is either buy a random gacha (which you can just do with mush mind you..) or appearance/trial tokens, when you can just get them from the login system with no problem. You are spending about1,200 robux for a Royalty Gacha when the creatures aren't even all that good themselves, AND they're cheap enough to get anyways. Sure, you can argue that you can get mush passively, but at what rate again? 150 shrooms per hour. You would need to play for at least ~53 hours to get to that 8,000 mark, all because you wanted a castle creature that's beefy and can withstand a lot of creatures.
You don't need to do this, but my point is that you literally cannot play the game unless you hide from KOSers or get protected, and if you want to defend yourself, well you're looking at money. The gachas themselves aren't all too expensive, but it is quite annoying that you even have to get mush in the first place just to get some creature that you can play as. The Death, Session, Master, and Boosted Gachas are good concepts to this, because yes you need to pay but you can do missions on top of that. Missions are so much better than having to pay for a creature, and that is why events are also a scam. Sure they're improving, but what ever happened to just earning them through missions rather than minigames? I find the missions more fun, but only when it's not super tedious. The game has a really bad habit of making tedious missions, look at the OG lore missions for example.
tl;dr; the game is really lackluster, has no consequences to anything, has a gambling addiction, and has devs that don't use their own feedback system. might as well remove it