Once Human dev says some recent player feedback 'has been quite demoralizing'

We had a fine time with free-to-play survival MMO Once Human: our review described the PvPvE open world shooter as deep and "surprisingly sticky." We're not alone in liking it, either: Steam review scores are "mostly positive" and two months after its July launch there's still over 100,000 concurrent daily players. Sounds like a well-received hit to me.

But that doesn't mean everything is going swimmingly, and according to developer Starry Studio, player reactions haven't been universally positive—or much fun to read.

"Since the start of Season 2, we've received a lot of feedback,' said the developer in its official Discord channel. "Some of it has been quite demoralizing, but what's important is that it's made us aware of how your experience has been affected by the changes we've made."

According to the post, the complaints boil down to two main issues that have resulted in negative player feedback during Season 2: weapons builds and scenario types.

"We understand that the new season tags have resulted in changes to the meta-game, affecting build and weapon choices, which has caused some players to feel like their previous effort has gone to waste," Starry Studio said. "This was not our intention, so we plan to add a blueprint conversion feature to resolve the issue."

Blueprint conversions will allow players to swap the rating of a weapon or armor blueprint with that of another. The example used in the post: "The Last Valor (3 Stars) and Outer Space (1 Star) can swap blueprint ratings to become The Last Valor (1 Star) and Outer Space Blueprint (3 Stars)." That change will let players keep using the builds they prefer in the new season, kinda like transmog in an RPG where you can apply the properties of one set of armor to another so you can upgrade without sacrificing your personal style.

The second issue is one we see from time to time in multiplayer survival games: some players want a grueling, punishing survival experience, and some don't. That sounds like what's happening with Once Human's scenarios:

"Some players expressed that certain tags were designed poorly," said Starry Studio, "while others complained of having too few scenario servers with high-difficulty tags. Players tended to have conflicting opinions on the ideal number of servers per tag and the pace at which they should be opened."

In hopes of resolving this issue, Starry Studio is requesting, you guessed it, more feedback via a brief survey, where players can weigh in on which gameplay mode they prefer (PvE or PvP), what difficulty experience they're after (easier, harder, or right down the middle Goldilocks-style), and which scenario types they prefer.

I tried to track down some of this "demoralizing" feedback to see what players were saying, but I honestly haven't seen many complaints about the weapon builds or the Season 2 scenarios. That might because the feedback section of the official Discord channel submits messages directly to the devs, rather than displaying it publicly. One thing the most recent negative Steam reviews do mention is that Once Human's servers get wiped regularly—similar to how things work in survival game Rust. That complaint I can get behind, and it's why I don't play Rust, either: even though I understand why servers need to be wiped, I just don't like my base and gear getting reset every month, even if I can keep my blueprints.

Again, it's worth pointing out that despite some instances of negative feedback, Once Human seems to be truckin' along nicely as one of the new games of 2024. There are a few clown emojis reacting to the dev's announcement on Discord, but more than twice as many heart emojis. In my book, that's a pretty good sign.