5 replies to this topic

[matey1235]

Greetings, whoever may be reading this topic.

My name is matey1235, although some of you may know me as simply just Matey or matey. I have been playing this game on and off for circa 3 years now, and I have decided to make a rant/review of sorts, about this game, 8BitMMO. I am also now an ex-moderator for the no-longer used unofficial 8BitMMO discord, and the owner/creator of the new unofficial 8BitMMO discord. Warning: this topic may and will get spicy, and contains some language.

 

What is 8BitMMO?

 

First off, how in the name of crap do you not know what 8BitMMO is browsing the forums of said game? 

Second off, 8BitMMO is a retro-style indie sandbox-rpg-weird-combination MMO, where you are free to build, fight, and chat as you like, all while the game has a nice sense of humour. Right?

 

 

 

 

Wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

8BitMMO is not even close to that. The game indeed WANTS to be a retro-style indie sandbox-rpg-weird-combination MMO, but it's far from that. The game is a never-updated boring cash-grab with a dry sense of humour and zero players. That's not a MMO. That's not even close. The game is definitely a good concept, but it's so poorly executed, especially on the developer's part.

 

What happened to the game?

 

RobbyZ/Sim9.

Basically, after Robby released the game on Steam, he completely stopped updating the game. Any updates so far lately have been to the extra big cash-grab 9BitMMO (which I will get into later), or stuff related to password security. That's basically it. Due to this, people lost interest and stopped playing. Especially the only ones who actually provided support for Robby; namely kjh. Basically everyone quit the game, and now the game is deserted and only filled by about 10 new players each day. This is not a MMO. He ruined it in may other ways too, which I will get in to now.

 

RobbyZ/Sim9

 

Robby ruined the game. During the time he did update it, he did so many bad things the list just goes on and on. And here are those bad things that he did.

 

1. Bad game design

I actually do think 8BitMMO as a game is quite a good concept. But as I mentioned, it's poorly executed. One of the worst parts about the game's design is the paywalls. Almost everything is behind a paywall where you have to spend the premium currency. MOST NOTABLY TOWNSTONES. THEY SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN PUT BEHIND A PLAT PAYWALL, EVER. Excuse me right there. As I was saying, almost everything is behind a paywall. Literally everything. Without using cheap gold farms such as /tele megazoo which are hindered by the gold limit anyway, all of the non-premium items end up being expensive as hell, because gold from PvP and dungeons and quests is so scarce that you can barely buy anything, except maybe 200 concrete blocks. The in-game economy was so badly executed, it was genuinely disgusting. Not only this, but the rest of the game was incredibly clunky, especially building, that it was simply frustrating to play. PvP was badly designed, also, with few weapons and strategies it was simply a button mash + run around fest. While this isn't necessarily bad (see RoTMG), it IS bad in 8bitMMO. There were also many missing features, such as block decay (where blocks outside of towns would decay and disappear over time, preventing the hell that is =65), which would have actually freed up so much server space and would have allowed Robby to remove the paywalls for server costs it is physically insane.

 

2. What in the name of f**k is 9BitMMO

9BitMMO was Robby's attempt at making the game even more like Minecraft. It was essentially a 3D viewer for 8BitMMO, where you could see blocks and creations in full 3D. It was pretty neat, but it was so buggy it was insane, and Robby didn't even bat an eye at these major bugs (NOCLIP BUG) which existed in 9BitMMO. The other thing about 9BitMMO is it cost $30 for what was essentially five minutes of enjoyment. You would go to one building, look at it for a few minutes, say "that's pretty cool" and then you're essentially done with the experience. $30, by the way.

 

3. Infrequent/lack of updates

As I mentioned earlier, Robby completely stopped making any content updates for the game after he released it on Steam. Before he did, he had an optimistic outlook and was releasing a lot of content updates, giving the game a steady flow and allowing player interest to soar to an all time high. But this stopped, player count dropped, and Robby quit developing the game. This completely ruined the game, since all players, even veterans who loved the game, stopped playing and never thought to bat an eye back at the game. This is not how you develop a game. If you're going to stop updating a game like this, atleast make it so the game isn't dog sh*t before you leave, and atleast allow modding support. Thanks.

 

4. Robby is an a**hole

Robby has done many bad things. Here are some of them:

• A good friend of mine, going by the name Chris_Ramos back when he did this, translated the entire game into Spanish. And Robby basically gave him nothing except his thanks and left it there.
• Banned people for terrible reasons
• Left the game for dead, not even updating it anymore
• Was a money-loving wh**e, put everything behind paywalls for most likely his own profit (and also to pay for the servers)
• Executed and designed the game incredibly badly
• Questionable engine choices (Java is becoming quickly outdated and afaik loves to eat all your memory)
• Committed many other a**hole moves and ethical crimes
• Made this game in the first place

In general, Robby is not really a great guy, as you can tell. Feel free to ban me for this part, by the way, Robby, if you really want.

 

What he could have done better

Everything. Literally everything. I will now go through a few things that could have been designed much better, and give some ideas.

 

Towns/Townstones

Towns could have been vastly improved and added upon, first of all by not having Townstones behind a goddamn paywall, and maybe expansions too. Many other things could have been added, including things like districts (where you can name the district and allow certain people to build in said district), more advanced ranking systems, etc. There was so much more Robby could have fleshed this out.

 

Combat/PvP

Combat as I mentioned earlier is just literally a huge button mash + run around fest. Nothing else. There are so few weapons with such little variety it's insane. More weapons and expanded mechanics would have been nice, such as throwable weapons such as grenades, a grenade launcher, traps such as bear traps/mines, as well as equippable items such as armor, as well as anti-armor weapons. Again, so many missed opportunities.

 

Improving the Shop

The shop could have been sooo much better. Stuff like Townstones and the like could have been behind an optional paywall, where you can pay an expensive sum of gold or some amount of plat to buy the item. Plat should have just been completely optional for most items (except ones which SHOULD be plat-specific) and should have been a way to support the developer. A good example is Unturned's Gold Upgrade, where you simply get some cosmetics, more character slots, and access to Gold-only servers for $5, and it's completely optional. That's how you do microtransactions. Another thing is, you have to balance paywalls; with too many paywalls, you start to lose players because people start giving negative reviews due to the amount of forced microtransactions. However, if you balance it well, or make them completely optional, you get many less negative reviews on that subject.

 

Building

Building is buggy and clunky, and simply frustrating to do. Robby could have expanded it so, SO goddamn much, as well as fixed many of the bugs related to building. He could have also implemented glitchblocking as a legitimate mechanic in building, instead of a bug/unintended feature.

 

Suggestion box

Almost none of the suggestions from the suggestion box were actually added. It's there for a goddamn reason, you know, Robby.

 

Official discord + more community connection/interaction

Robby interacted with the community a surprisingly low amount of times. Seriously, an official discord or something would have been better than the IRC which is literally an application from the 90s. The twentieth century. God damnit. Plus, as a developer, interacting with the community is always a good idea, because it engages your players.

 

There is so much more he could have done better, but I'm not going to elaborate. Also, remove the f**king gold limit and increase the max level. Thanks. And don't make it $1,000 for a custom item. 

 

What I do like about the game / Conclusion

 

There are actually some things I do like in this game, such as the fact you can build a lot of stuff, like minigames, etc. Towns are also a really neat idea, as well as many other items (buyboxes, safes, etc.). The customization of characters is great also, with multiple skin tones and all of those cosmetics available. There is a lot of freedom in the game as well, with a lot of smaller mechanics being there just adding a lot to the game. The community is also great at some times, and with that line, I shall pitch my thanks to some of my friends for discussing many of the things/ideas I included in this post, and Chris_Ramos and TheGreatOnion for their Steam reviews:

 

http://steamcommunit...mmended/250420/

 

http://steamcommunit...mmended/250420/

 

I shall leave you with this paragraph from TheGreatOnion's review:

"The reason he does not improve the game is not because of a lack of time or budget, it is due to his obstinate and outright refusal to do so. What the developer has committed, and is continuing to commit, is no longer within the moral realm of right or wrong. There are players who have donated thousands of dollars to this game and are taken completely for granted, their doubts met with only trivial responses as they ponder the future of the game. It is no longer a morally questionable demeanor, it an ethical crime. Because nothing categorically imperative in his actions can be considered correct; his actions indicate only a betrayal of the players' loyalty and zeal in favor of a personal agenda. In the past I would ask players to play the game before forming a judgment, and to approach it with an open mind. But with the way the game currently is now, it has no future. Not for as long as the players' loyalties are met with an utter betrayal of expectations."

 

-Matey

 

Edit: before you come b*tching at me, i know 8bitmmo is dead and isn't coming back. i just made this post to hopefully enlighten some people, and really just share my thoughts about 8bit

[bumchin]

You have literally summed up every possible point and flaw with this game and how the community feels. Looking back over the years of this games existence, we the community made the game feel something more. It is us as a whole that gives this game life, and without the community this game would've been long gone and Robby knows that. It would have no goals or no target at all. I just think Robby is a really lazy developer. If he really wanted to change something he would listen to the community as a whole. However, it is his game. He can choose what does and what he wants to do in the future. He isn't obligated to do anything, there might be a lack of commitment, personal issues and things that we the players will never know about him. If he told us I'm pretty sure we would all understand, maybe breaking the constant frustration us players have experienced for the last 4 years. He can read all these comments and not give a single bit of consideration about his game. I think for Robby this game was a phase, he only did it because he enjoyed doing coding and game design. looking back with a more mature attitude (now that I'm 3 years older) i think I can understand that Robby just takes things for granted. With Chris putting so much effort and enthusiasm, kalaris aswell for a Chinese translation and all they get is a thank you. I think that is appalling and not the right way to reward such hard work.

The only way I see anything happening like you said is allowing modding capabilities because vanilla 8bitmmo is disgustingly bugging, and I'm pretty sure alot of people know why and how to code. I have a few people in mind who would certainly know what they would be doing. The thing is Robby could sell his game, or hand it over to a completely new development team who are more capable of listening and who are optimistic. None the less this game does still have great potential.

(Also I want to apologize for my behaviour the previous few years for literally sucking this guys ass.)

Yeah I'd love to come on the discord sometime and see what everyone is up too.

[matey1235]

i fixed the text in onion's review, it's now 110% easier to read

 

also thanks for the feedback my dude

[Thanatos Hades]

I'm not going to agree or disagree on any of this but I don't see ANY mention of a big part of the reason things have got as bad as they have ( according to some people and this post )  and that's the players. Robby did what he could and tryed a lot of things to keep the game updated and good BUT people kept hounding him, saying bad things about him and the game, complained constantly, made posts like this one, while some players were making the community no fun at all from arguing and bad language to out right trolling and threats. If I had to say anything brought the game down it's that and not the developer ( who probably just got too stressed out. ) As for 9bitmmo ... that was an idea from players and we myself included pushed sim to go for it. I still stand by the dicision to do it but it's still incomplete and needs work witch will likely never get done. As it stands it's still a good tool to help build.

For what it's worth I still think Robby has done an incredible job.

[TheGreatOnion]

Grim, you can't honestly expect people to be satisfied with no graphic updates for over a year, all the complaints were entirely reactionary. I could understand if you think the community is being too harsh, but blaming the community as the primary culprit is severely misleading.

[RB67]

a big part of the reason things have got as bad as they have ( according to some people and this post )  and that's the players.

 

Hello everyone. What would a thread like this be without Kyro commenting on it. 

 

Aside from Robby should have done this, he should have done that. He shouldn't have done this, he shouldn't have done that. I think a massive reason (like Grim said) for the game being where it is today is this community. For some reason, everyone felt that they were owed something from Robby because they had x hours on the game or bought x amount of plat. This isn't just exclusive to 8bit, you can find this is communities like Rust or Counter Strike. Even for me now, administrating a Counter Strike server and community we see the same crap there too, and we have more administrators and people on our management team. Everyone wanted so many things from Robby, and the constant badgering and complaining takes a toll. He is one dude making a game. We all should have cut him some slack. 

 

But ma graphics updates! But ma new blocks! But ma this!

 

People forget that the games been in development for well over 10 years at this point. Let that actually sink in for a moment. For over 10 years Robby has made this game by himself and took it to where it is now. So cut him some slack that whatever new blocks or crap weren't added in, in a fast or timely fashion because he's one dude and it takes him a long time to do shit, thats the facts. I'm not going to argue about the plat mechanics affect of the game, but playing a free game where players voluntarily put money into the game to help development and get a couple items in return isn't some new mechanic. People also fail to realize that most of their suggestions about the paywall for plat items are pretty bad, and that goes for quite a lot of suggestions in the suggestion box. A suggestion never meant that something would get added, nor would it mean that it fit within his vision of the game or where he wanted to take it. 

 

So go try and develop a game on your own, and listen to a whiney toxic community like this one for a while. Because I'm in the same position dealing with a community like Robby is and it gets fucking old hearing the same complaint about something or a shitty suggestion over and over again. Its also even more amplified because of the smaller community, and the drama here was immeasurable. 

 

This game peaked about 4-5 years ago now IIRC. Whether or not it had the potential to to escalate and hold players if he did x or y doesn't matter. The game had a good life span for what it was. The game ultimately wasn't made to hold on like long standing games like Minecraft, WOW, DOTA or whatever. Games player bases eventually die off and they move onto the next thing, the cycle of video games continues. I mean, even Club Penguin had to shut down eventually.

 

You know what was good about this game an community, meeting new friends and having some pretty fond memories of me playing the game. I found this game when I was in mid college and would stay up late getting drunk, listening to outrun, and playing with some cool people. I think no matter what your view of the game, or Robby is now we call all agree we've had some good times playing the game and having fun. Like being around when xerp and jimmy had their insanely big town, or the easter safe hunt quest, building some cool shit and playing peoples games we all can reflect on some good memories of the game. Like Grim said, Robbys done a pretty damn good job making this game, all things considered. I'll always have memories of this place, and I think many would agree we've all had a good time playing and have made some good friends. 

 

As for me, Robby, I'm sorry. I was toxic, I was a dick, I was a colossal cunt. I'm sorry for any frustration, or anger I may have caused you and anyone here during my time. I was younger, stupid, and angry. I hope you can accept my apology, and I hope you find your success whether its doing something else or making games. Do something that makes you happy.

 

This concludes my broadcast day, and my last words to the community. I know I'll never be able to play again, and I've accepted that for the past 4 so years now, but if Robby ever makes a stand alone single player of the game well you can count that I'd buy it.