Ludia Report Card 2022 2.0

It’s the end of the school year, and well this is kind of a throwback but last year around this time I did something similar to this and it’s kind of how I got my start with writing for Gamepress, for which I am extremely grateful for. However, I did tell myself I would come back and do another one of these the following year, and here we are. It’s report card time, and I’ll keep it to the 5 biggest aspects of the game: Designs, Quality of Life Features and General Gameplay, Customer Service and Community Feedback, the Arena, and Tournaments. This is also taking a look at everything since the last report card, which starts back at the beginning of June 2021 up to today (including 2.16). So, let’s start off the report card.

Designs: A

This was an easy A. When I look at the designs released since the last card, I see no drop in quality. Starting off with the Scorpios Rex patch, we have some cool creatures with cool animations. In know some aren’t a fan of the Scorpios animations, but I really like them. We then have some nice designs following up with creatures like Megalotops, Sinokotaraptor, Troodaboa, and Ankylos Lux. The whole Indotaurus debacle was unfortunate, but it still looks cool. I love it’s face when it walks into battle. And then you have the ugly hybrids. Unfortunately, everything cannot look cool, but that is OK. However, Thylaconyx would probably look that way if you did cross Baryonyx with Marsupial Lion, so it is spot on in accuracy. As for the most recent creatures, I like them all. I like the Giganotosaurus. I love the Lystrosaurus animations. They are low effort, but in a good way where I find it funny. And the icing on the cake? Skins! We’ve wanted these for a long time. Now we have some cool ways to customize some creatures and this opens the door for skins like the tiger raptors, the Dominion Pyroraptor, the dominion Quetz, or the Buck from the Lost World. This is the category that I expect the most from, and unfortunately, it’s the only one that gets an A.

Quality of Life Features and General Gameplay: C

There are definitely mixed things when it comes to this category. For example, the battle pass and the mission revamps were cool, but there are some aspects of the pass that I am not a fan of. I will give you the benefit of the doubt when I say that the Mortem skin may be accessible to free to play people eventually, but you’re on a thin wire. Creature markers were a nice touch to make my life easier when trying to find something with all these creatures nowadays. There is very little to say when it comes to negativity on daily gifts. They were a nice touch that motivates me to play every day (So close to that Indominus Rex DNA!). Also, while it does suck for new players, eliminating hardcore carry strats that could allow a person with a level 10 Marsupial Lion to unlock Mortem Rex is a good thing overall in the long run. I loved the campaign revamp. That was desperately needed, and I think it was one of the best quality of life features added in a long while. I like new tournament formats as the same things now aren’t shoved down our throats. And all the alliance improvements are always welcome. And stat boost refund tokens are arguably the best addition they’ve done all year. Now, the issues. Stat boost tokens are amazing, but they have kept them away from us and we have only had the opportunity to use them a handful of times. I feel that we should get what you advertised as the new stat boost resets. Another issue is about gameplay itself. When open the game for the first time, Claire teaches you how to dart creatures. Then you learn that you need to go out and find these creatures, dart them, and then collect their DNA to level them up and create hybrids. This is how the game SHOULD be played. However, event exclusives have taken over the game almost. While there are only 19 event exclusives compared to the 160 nonhybrids, the issue is that these event exclusives make up the best creatures. While not the end-all-be-all, I will pull up the 2.15 Gamepress Tier list to better show what I mean.

This is the Tyrant Tier. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, we rank every creature by tier with the best being Tyrant. When you look at this list, the 5 fusable creatures in mid and high tyrant all contain an event exclusive creature, with Arctovasilas at one point containing 2. And in low tyrant, 3 more creatures have an event exclusive component, with Thylaconyx on top of that having a component that is arena exclusive. And on top of all that, there are 5 apexes that can be obtained only via raids. So with all that being said and done, only 4 of those 18 creatures can be obtained fully through hunting alone. And then when you look at the next tier, the same thing is also true with the tier below: high elite

14 of these creatures have an event exclusive component or can only be obtained in raids. Fukuimimus makes it 15 for players not in Europe. But even excluding Fukuimimus, that’s still over half of the creatures in here. And now we have Giganyx, which is looking promising as well as Therezinosaurus, which while not amazing, has good hybrid potential. What I am trying to get at is that a game that was designed around going out and hunting should be that. Not FIPing in the sanctuary or raiding. That should be second. Yes, if a hybrid has an event exclusive component, it should be good. But it shouldn’t be so polarizing. I feel like you are losing your way, and with that, I can only give out a C at best.

Customer Service and Community Feedback: F

You haven’t improved. At all. In fact, I feel like you guys almost got worse. You’re lucky there isn’t such thing as an “F-“ because that’s what I want to give you, but I can’t. Why the low score. First up, I was talking with Dadjokes, who brought something to my attention. He needed help with something in game, and this is what he was met with (just as a note, Dadjokes had given me permission prior to sharing these 2 images):

I would like to know how the 1.12 release notes could help him in the situation he has described. If that isn’t enough, here is another incident:

This is annoying for some players, but it does get worse for sure. But before we get into the biggest issue they have probably ever had, let’s talk with TigerPlayz for a second.

“Back in November-December when I was hunting for Parasaur Lux, I was out darting. After like 2 or so hours I finally found a Parasaur Lux and I darted it, I got around 160 DNA which I was pleased about and as the drone thing was about to give me my DNA the game crashed and I got scammed out of the DNA. Even after checking my current Parasaur Lux DNA I had nothing. So, I took to the Customer Service, emails, and forums to see if this had happened to anyone after darting something and if there was a way to get my DNA back. It's been 7 months and yet no reply back from Ludia or CS regarding my lost DNA. And the 2nd instance happened 4 months prior, I had gotten an epic incubator from pvp and I went to open the incubator it never gave me my epic DNA and again, I reached out to Ludia regarding this and yet no word. And it's been a year. To an extent I feel like the Plux case could be justified, but the epic inc one is unacceptable.”

This is again showing of their lack of customer service. While it is a bit harder to give back some DNA on a singular creature you darted, losing out on an epic incubator shouldn’t be that hard to replace, and obviously they showed no interest. These interactions are just as important as large-scale interactions. Showing that you do not care for the individual player is a very poor way to go about things. However, let’s look at something that didn’t hinder one player, but a large portion of the playerbase. Let’s rewind all the way back to the tiny flyer update. For those who don’t know what happened, a large portion of the playerbase after getting the update was locked out of the game. While this may happen for a little bit after the update, they were locked out for a week. That was a week with no raids, no hunting, no event creatures, no pursuit, and no battling. After the issue was solved, EVERYONE was given a premium incubator as a form of compensation. So, let’s break everything down. First up, the incubator. It was kind of a slap to the face that everyone got one, basically not fixing the issue at all. Second up, the DNA was random, so while someone may have gotten lucky with something good like Carnotaurus or Compsognathus, others may have been stuck with useless DNA like Ouranosaurus or Edmontosaurus. If you were to give out epic scents equal to the value of the premium incubator, that would give the player control as to what they want instead of leaving it to chance. Now, let’s look at what you missed out when it comes to raids. First up, all those players who were locked out got no apex DNA. They also missed out on unique, legendary, epic, and rare boss DNA too. So, when you add up the maximum DNA you can get from these raids alone, you end up with a minimum of 818 rare DNA a day. Over a the week we get a grand total of 3438 rare DNA minimum. That’s also 480 epic, 144 legendary, 120 unique, and 60 apex minimum as well, with the last of the bunch being unobtainable outside of the rare purchase or the raids themselves. Then there was the weekly events. I can’t remember exactly which event it was, but it had either 3 or 4 commons, 3 rares, and 3 epics to choose from. That’s a good amount of DNA. If you got say 250 minimum on your rares, that’s 4500 DNA in which you had control over. Not to mention you also had the strike events to battle against. At the end of the day, the weekly events alone are far more valuable than a premium incubator, not to mention you have better control over what you want. Then you also missed out on a tournament, thus hindering not only yourself, but your alliance in the process when it comes to the championships. The more and more you look at this, the more and more it looks like a punch in the gut to those who were locked out. So contrary to what Taylor Swift said, Ludia tried to fix a bullet hole by slapping a band aide on it. And what’s worse was how long it took them to fix the issue. At Gamepress, we do have some dataminers, and whether you like what they do or not, they know the JWA code quite well. One of our dataminers, jimbohi, went into the code and played around with some things and then managed to find the source of the issue. Not only did it work for him, but many other players who had the trouble to. Now, I know you don’t support this, and that is fine, but I am upset that he told you what the issue was, and you still took over a week to fix the problem. And what’s worse is that Ludia took the weekend off during this. How would you like it if you went to a store, asked an employee to go to the back to get something, and they go back, look a bit, then go on lunch, and then finally go back to find the product you had asked for. No one in their right mind would do that, except Ludia. The consumer is the most important part of the game, and treating them like that is a terrible way to go about things. And what’s worse is that communication was pretty lackluster to the point where I felt bad for the mods because people would purposely break forum rules to try and get the attention of someone. It was absolutely horrendous what Ludia did. For those looking to start a business one day, learn from this. Treating your consumers like this is a great way to file for bankruptcy. While writing this, I thought back to the open letter from Gamepress written by Pierre back in 2020 and the response Ludia gave, and right now am looking at the state of the game, and it doesn’t take Scooby Doo and the rest of Mystery Inc. to figure out that there is a very disgruntled community and a bunch of empty promises.

The Arena: D

Battling is the reason why you go out and hunt. You want to find creatures to level up, throw on your team, and battle other people to win resources. However, as stated previously, there are many issues with the arena, mostly revolving around powercreep. What is that? Well, creatures just seem to keep getting better and better as time goes on and more creatures are released. The new ones stand on top of the old ones, and then the newer creatures stand on top of those, and the cycle continues. Many creatures that were once top tiers are now falling off teams. Take Arctovasilas. At the start of the year, it was a top 3 creature, if not the best in the game. Nowadays, it’s falling off most teams despite receiving no major changes. Ankylos Lux was the same story. Arguably the best creature when it was released a few months ago, it’s now fallen a bit despite no changes. These creatures just keep getting stronger and stronger and players are having a hard time even keeping up to the point where many have very sour opinions on the arena. My opinions on the arena are mixed. I personally do not mind it, but there is one major difference between me and many other players: my team. My team is focused on tournaments, and I do not really care about uniques or apexes. I just play with my Concavenator, Sinoceratops, and Scorpios Rex and enjoy myself. Now, I do not represent the entire playerbase. However, in statistics, there is usually a minimal sample size, which is usually around 30 data points. So, I went out and got 30 points of data and let this portion of the community speak for themselves. I asked them “how do you feel about the arena”, and these were the responses (some responses have been edited due to strong language. I wish I could keep it in to get the point across, but I will follow Gamepress guidelines and edit them to be more in line with what they want).

Tournaments: C

When it comes to battling these days, most people focus on tournaments. Tournaments provide good DNA that can go towards the unique of the championship or be used in another hybrid or the nonhybrid itself. I myself have given up on uniques and apexes and the arena and have put my efforts here. However, similarly to the arena, tournaments have been affected by powercreep, but not to the extreme the arena has faced. There have been some big moments in epic tournaments where creatures like Megalotops and Argenteryx ruled, but there are still solid counters that aren’t new creatures. Creatures from the start of 2.0 or buffed by 2.0 are still good like Sarcorixis, Ankylodicurus, as well as some old creatures that got buffed like Dimodactylus. Rare formats are similar with creatures like Suchotator being strong, but nothing is really dominant. The legendary format however is where things get shaky, and Rexy has made this format possibly collapse. If my calculations are correct, there are no guaranteed counters in a legendary format that can win apart from Ankylodactylus. That makes the format whoever draws Roberta will win. Not to mention poor creatures like Pyrritator, who are struggling to make any sort of presence in the game, now gets 1-shot, as well as many flocks like Coelhaast and Tarbognathus can all get 1-shot because she has a 45% critical hit chance. If you go back to the arena, you’ll see that many people are disgruntled with RNG, and this is not making things any better. Now back to powercreep. Let’s look at 2 legendaries who were staples when released to now mere niche picks: Megistocurus and Enteloceros. Both of these creatures were incredibly good when they were released. Megistocurus was a terrifying swapper while Enteloceros was a powerhouse. Last legendary tournament, they were basically reduced to 8th slot members, with Roberta pushing them out entirely. What happened? Well, let’s look at the 3 creatures that did them in. First up, is Fukuimimus. This thing never dies and could swap in on Enteloceros and just kill it. Megistocurus didn’t do too badly against it, but that was with the help of our next creature, Thylaconyx. Thylaconyx not only kicked Megistocurus out of the swapper role (while also completely invalidating Dracoceratops), but it also did what Enteloceros did, but better. When you look at the movesets of both creatures, they are actually pretty similar. They have a ferocity move, a swap in, a healing move, and a rampage that can bypass absorb. It’s just that apart from revenge, Skirmish is a strictly better move. For ferocity, while it does increase your speed, Thylaconyx does gain dodge so there is that tradeoff, however crushing prowl can be used to soak up hits with priority. With the healing move, you can argue which is better, but both are still really good moves. For the swaps, Thylaconyx’s is more useful. The only real leg up that Enteloceros has is with its basic attack and some resistances and bulk. Other than that, Thylaconyx is just better. And this is powercreep in its purest form. A new creature comes in and just invalidates anther. Tarbognathus is the last one, and again does something similar. Big damage, a flock, good speed, priority, and an on escape impact that also pins, so why use any other trapper like Scutophicyon or Megistocurus? And now you throw in Roberta, and those 2, which aren’t even a year old, went from top tier to an afterthought. When you fold laundry and put it away, you try to make everything fit in your dresser. You don’t just throw things on top and call it a day. And going back to powercreep, let’s look at the newest legendaries this patch, with Lystrosuchus in particular. It’s the newest swap in damage creature with swap in stunning strike, so let’s compare it with the other creature in the rarity with this move: Monostegotops. Lystrosuchus has 150 more attack, 150 more hp, 7 more speed, 15% less armor, and 5% higher critical hit chance. The only benefit Monostegotops has is a turn 1 impact and a turn 1 healing option. Other than that, Lystrosuchus blows it out of the water. It has a strictly better basic attack, a stunning move that allows it to run, a bunch of resistances while Monostegotops has none, and an on escape. How is Monostegotops supposed to compete with that? Again, things keep getting stronger and stronger, and like with the arena, it’s incredibly hard to keep up. The only benefit is that these creatures aren’t that subject to change and many of the older solid picks like Scorpios Rex and Indominus Rex still are usable at higher levels in the advantage formats. My last gripe about tournaments are that while there are good formats, there are also some really bad ones that I feel like you did not test at all. For example, with Ailioarctodus and Megalotops, you can swap in the panda and just run out the clock. Same thing goes with Fukuimimus vs Fukuimimus. I feel like when you do introduce these new creatures, you have to go through all the popular picks in these tournaments and see how they interact with each other as well as a mirror matchup. You thankfully fixed Argenteryx vs Argenteryx, but even then it still took you some time. No one wants to sit down for 15 minues, with 2 kills on both sides, and play out a Fukuimimus mirror matchup. And lastly, when it comes to not testing out things, I don’t think you tested out the 1 takedown format, because if you did and enjoyed it, you’re crazy. That is probably the worst format ever. And the 1.1 format wasn’t that forgiving either. So, while there are some really bad things about these tournaments, there are also some really good qualities about them and the fact that many players have just started to focus on this part of battling warrants a C for tournaments.

Recap

Design: A

I not only see effort and time put into these designs, I also see a job well done.

Quality of Life Features and General Gameplay: C

There are some really good features and aspects of the game, but you guys keep locking so much behind walls of some kind.

Customer Service and Community Feedback: F

The feedback and response time in insanely poor as well as the fact that you just disregard what the community wants and power through with your own agenda.

The Arena: D

Too much RNG as well as stale teams and for lower players insane level differences make the arena not that enjoyable with powercreep making it even harder for people to keep up

Tournaments: C

There are some definite flaws (Like Roberta), but also some good redeeming qualities of tournaments that make them the more enjoyable aspect of battling, and I cannot justify giving them the same grade as the arena.

So, with all that, what is the final grade?

The final game is.......................

Well, it is between a C and a D, so I went back and looked at what the most important category was. For any business, no matter what your product is, you need good customer relations, and well if you look at the customer relations here, the final grade tips and becomes a D. Now let me ask you Ludia/Jamcity, do you want your game to fail? Do want to just milk everything dry and leave it for something new? Because based off your actions and customer service, I get the vibe that you do not care about this game or its community. I see almost zero effort in many important aspects of the game. You can do better. And if you don’t, well then kiss JWA goodbye.