Once a man does it hit all the sweet spots to earn the usual 15 minutes of fame on Steam. It’s a free-to-play survival MMO about fighting in a world infected by a strange alien life form called Stardust, and the first week has already been full of ups and downs.
Produced by NetEase Games’ Starry Studio and released on PC on July 9, Once a man it is currently the seventh most played game on Steam and the fourth best selling. While the game revolves around killing things and building things, there is also a lot of exploration as players roam the open world and encounter each other. But for all the initial hype around the game, it’s also racked up a lot of problems since launch week.
The issue started with a bang NetEase Privacy Policy which states that the company collects personal data from players, including “first and last name, title, prefix, email address, phone number, (instant) messaging account, postal address, date of birth, age, gender, country/region and government-issued identification, such as passport information, as required by applicable laws to verify age and correct personal information.”
The proposal for overly broad data monitoring coming from Chinese company guided Once a manThe Steam review rating plunged into the negative before hardly anyone had played it. However, former Blizzard developer Jason “Thor” Hall repulsed, arguing that there is nothing unusual about the policy, with many other games containing similar language. Starry Studios itself also answered stating, “Once a man takes the privacy of our users’ data very seriously. We will only use personal data if we have a legitimate legal basis, such as providing requested services or acting with your express consent.”
The game’s rating has since improved to “mixed” with thousands of players praising it as a combination of The division and Rust with many different levels of play. In the words of one Steam reviewer, “Pros: It’s fun. Cons: It’s clunky. there is piano mini-game. There is a motorcycle that makes it feel more than a little reminiscent of Gone are the days. And of course, no survival game is complete without fishing. To be able make your own aquarium. The players are already working hard making cool homes at the end of the world.
However, there were many game design decisions that also affected players. You can unlock rare blueprints from the Wish Machine which is actually a glorified gacha device. It requires an in-game currency called Starchrom, which, as some advocates point out, must be earned and cannot simply be purchased with real money. Once a man also initially limits players to one character locked to one server which could not be deleted. However, this decision was quickly overturned.
Starry Studios also went back to another controversial aspect of the game: limiting cosmetics to a single character. Once a man players were shocked to find that microtransaction content was initially only unlocked on a single character instead of being available to the entire account. The developers announced on July 12 that a the fix for this is scheduled to arrive in Augusta turnaround that helped the team regain goodwill from the existing player base.
The most divisive of all is how Once a man handles seasonal resets. Basically, every six weeks, the game will erase a large portion of the players’ progress, restarting the maps and sending the characters back to level one. As an MMO centered around grinding, this struck some fans as a raw deal. In response, the studio has tried to clarify exactly what will and won’t change each time one of these resets happens, and the thinking behind them.
“In the new season, your character will be reset to Lv.1 and the world map exploration progress will also be reset,” read an explainer that marked players will retain blueprints, different currencies and some other materials between seasons. “This ensures that all players start the new season on an equal footing and can enjoy the game together. New scenario types often offer different map designs, providing a new experience for exploration and rewards. Each seasonal server will also offer new seasonal challenges for you to earn new rewards.”
At the end of the first week, Once a man now faces the most difficult challenge: maintaining server capacity for everyone who wants to play. Characters are locked to a specific server once they are created, and servers max out at around 6,000 to 8,000 players, at which point people are forced to wait in queues before they can start playing. This has to do with the developers’ desire to protect open-world MMO instances from overcrowding.
Meanwhile, however, Starry Studio says it has raised these server limits and added more capacity to alleviate some of the issues, with more fixes coming in August. Once a manThe next patch on July 18 will also add “compensation” for players who spend too much time waiting in queues, presumably rewarding them for time spent idling instead of grinding. For now, the studio gives players lists of servers that are too crowded to avoid. The worst fate in Once a man it is not killed: it is built great base your friends can never visit you.
