The survival game Once Human is facing serious difficulties after a strong start on Steam in July. The developers are receiving rather negative feedback since the launch of Season 2. They are outlining plans to address the issues. However, players believe that the new feature could extend the long-term motivation of the survival game.
This is how Once Human is performing on Steam:
- Once Human launched on Steam on July 9, 2024, with a peak of 231,343 players.
- Throughout August, the game was able to retain a majority of its players. Even now in September, player counts for Once Human still look good and stable.
- However, negative feedback for Season 2 concerns the developers. They are presenting solutions.
Season 2 of Once Human is criticized for 2 issues
This is what the developers say: On Discord, the developers state: Since the launch of Season 2 of Once Human, a lot of feedback has been coming in, some of which has been quite disappointing and discouraging for the team.
But more importantly, it is crucial to understand how players are reacting to the changes in Season 2.
Essentially, there appear to be two main points of criticism that are currently bothering players:
- The weapon builds
- The scenario types.
The developers say:
We understand that the new season tags have led to changes in the meta-game that affect the choice of builds and weapons, which has caused some players to feel that their previous efforts have been in vain. That was not our intent, so we plan to add a blueprint conversion feature to address the problem.
The core criticism is that players feel that with the new Season 2, they need different weapons and armor – and the work they put into farming the old equipment has now become worthless.
The developers have a solution for this.
Developers introduce new feature
This is how old items should become relevant and strong again: The idea is to swap the rating of the blueprint of a weapon or armor with that of another. If you have blueprint A with 3 stars and blueprint B with 1 star, you will soon be able to swap the values so that blueprint A has 1 star and blueprint B has 3 stars.
This way, players can utilize the build they want in a new season.
What about the scenarios? Here, the developers seem unsure about what players want, as there are various opinions within the community. Therefore, they will now launch a survey to determine what players exactly desire (via docs.google).
Players fear that they will have nothing to do with the new feature
What is the reaction? Players are rather skeptical and fear that the ability to swap values could disrupt the long-term motivation of Once Human. That could be too powerful. This sentiment is reflected in comments from Reddit.
One player says: People are already bored after 2 to 3 weeks. If you take away the collecting of blueprints – what will be left?
Another player says he would also prefer new weapons for greater long-term motivation.
Let’s see how it goes. The developers certainly have big plans for their game, which is supposed to be developed for decades to come. For this, it would be important that player motivation remains high: Developers reveal their big plans for the Steam hit Once Human – it is supposed to exist for “decades”
