Player Feedback is the King of Life is Feudal: MMO

There’s no shortage of relaunch and/or redemption success stories. Games like No Man’s Sky, Final Fantasy 14, and Fallout 76 went from total disasters to titans of their genres. It’s a long road to reach those heights, but Life is Feudal: MMO is setting out to follow that path.

After a buggy, rough initial release that ended in 2021, Life is Feudal: MMO shut down. Switching from publisher Xsolla to a new team at Long Tale Games in 2022, the game began a redemption arc. That arc wasn’t nearly as direct or meteoric as some of its peers, however, as Long Tale’s Life is Feudal: MMO relaunch drew intense criticism for a high subscription fee for the previously free-to-play title. That was a mistake on Long Tale’s part, producer Mikhail Goshkadera told The Best War Games in an interview. He said in the same interview that Long Tale Games is focused on improving Life is Feudal: MMO and making sure its audience has some say in that.

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By  Peter Grimm

Putting Life is Feudal: MMO in Players Hands Again

The process of relaunching a game is a unique experience, said Goshkadera. Long Tale used its own platform, LTG Multiverse, to test and develop toward a version of the game that could return to Stream in a state far better than when it shut down. Across over 30 patches, Life is Feudal: MMO was fine-tuned, bugs were squashed, and the high subscription fee was reduced. Throughout this experience, Life is Feudal: MMO focused on keeping an open line of communication with its community and a willingness to admit when missteps were made. Meanwhile, the new team comprises some from the original team from before the game was shut down, as well as fresh-faced experts on MMOs. As Goshkadera explained,

When it came to the revisions that we made to the game's mechanics and balance, the changes came from two sources. First, the game's community with whom we've been closely collaborating since we first announced the game's revival, and secondly, out of necessity due to our transition to a subscription model. That said, all of the changes that we made and will make in the future have a simple objective, to make the game more intuitive, rewarding, and fairer.

The community has been deeply passionate about the game, so the communication between developers and players has been largely effective since the LTG Multiverse relaunch in 2023. As a result, the entire roadmap for the game going forward has been a collaborative effort, but that’s not to say there hasn’t been some worries from Life is Feudal: MMO fans about the game’s rerelease.

Though that communication has been a top priority since the outset of the game’s revival and despite some astounding successes in game revivals like the continuing Neopets renaissance, those successes are far from a given. For every Cyberpunk 2077 there are so many flash-in-the-pan relaunch attempts that make the rise of Life is Feudal: MMO anything but a guarantee. Goshkadera said he understands the trepidation players had at the announcement of the game’s re-debut.

When the original revival announcement was made, we were met with, understandably. A lot of skepticism. However, we noticed that the early work we did to include the community in our plans, and our subsequent actions, have started to prove our intentions to the community and so we've noticed the mood has improved and, the quality of the feedback that we're getting has grown. We like to see that as an indication that the players see us as worth their time, and we will keep on doing our best to not betray that trust.

And that communication is a priority for Long Tale Games going forward even after Life is Feudal: MMO’s return to Steam. The team has set a goal of continuing to ensure the players feel heard and that their feedback is considered as the game goes forward. They also plan to tailor future versions and variations of the game to particular player desires, experiences, and expectations.

How Fan Response Forges Life is Feudal’s Future

Those future versions include ones focused more on the PvE or PvP aspects of the basic Life is Feudal: MMO experience. The team is also considering a Free-to-Play variation of the game returning in the future that would be separate from the primary Life is Feudal: MMO gameplay experience. While each version and variant of the game will be independent and tailored to specific user experiences, they all will be still, essentially, the same game.

There are also plans to revisit the game’s notorious “Newbie Island” tutorial in the future. Some of the broader changes made to the game’s systems should improve the tutorial experience already, and there have been specific adjustments made to clarify expectations and better reward tutorial quests, but Goshkadera acknowledged there’s a lot of work left to do there.

But, importantly, Goshkadera says that the interactions between the studio and the players show that a broad revolution in the game isn’t a wise decision. Instead, this relaunch follows a road of refinement. This, he said, is in response to players’ dedication to return to the game after years of being shut down. In some ways, that might’ve been easier than trying to work with the codebase of the original game, but it was important for Long Tale to navigate that for the fans of the original release.

The fact that the community for Life is Feudal: MMO remained alive even two years after the game shut down, and is still this passionate, shows that the previous team did a lot right, so it would be foolish for us to disregard it. As such, we've made it a point to study the game's legacy and use that to build our vision for the game … Thankfully, I'm happy to write that we have managed to unravel its complexities and are confident in our ability to enhance the game, hand in hand with our players.

In this way, Life is Feudal: MMO is using the greatest tool in the most successful game relaunches: its community. The greatest successes in game redemptions have all been able to acknowledge their failings and work with their players to address concerns the community has, and that puts the sandbox MMO on a good path.