Greetings Party Animals! Your feedback is super important to us. We'll be regularly picking some of the most common questions and answering them right here on the forums. Hope this helps clear things up and makes your gaming experience even better!

1. "Issues with event rules & communication..."

Two main points of feedback I've been reading regarding the Cats vs. Dogs event are:

  • Rules were too complex and hard to understand.
  • Lack of communication and no thorough explanation for said rules.

To start, I wanted to give some backstory to this event!
The original intent of creating a faction vs. faction event was to make players feel like they were part of a team and had something worth fighting for. We received feedback from many players that this was the case and they enjoyed the event, and we appreciate that! However, for some others, they felt the event missed the mark.
Part of the reason is, it's our first time creating an event like this, and we definitely missed considering a lot of things, so we appreciate everyone's feedback, positive or negative.

How did the current rules come about?
Originally, we created two battle passes, and each team had its own (Team Meow & Team Woof).

  • This created the issue that we thought many players would fear missing out on content of the other team's battle pass, so we considered merging them into one.
  • However, this solution would make the progression line very long, and not everyone has the time for that, so we thought of the idea of spy-in.
  • This inevitably made the rules more complex, as we needed to have spy-in not contribute XP to the other faction.

We also wanted a final reward for finishing at the end. This leads to some questions as well.

  • How would we give rewards out?
  • If both were given directly, it felt like winning or losing did not make much of a difference.
  • Final rewards should have something to do with the final result.

This may sound like an excuse, but we are experimenting with various event formats and are still quite inexperienced.
In the end, on the bright side, we did receive feedback that everyone's sense of participation was indeed stronger and enjoyed the faction war, but the rules were definitely a bit more complex than we'd like. We've gathered feedback and relevant data and hope to improve on this in the future.

Regarding communication - we definitely haven't done well enough. With the updated final reward rules, we created a picture guide. How did everyone feel about that kind of format? If it was helpful, we can create similar graphic guides for future events. We'll also improve on the in-game description to make it easier to understand, or perhaps include a graphic in-game as well. Please let us know your feedback!

TL;DR - A lot of the above text is just backstory, but I would say the TL;DR is, we hope everyone was able to enjoy our first attempt at a faction vs. faction event despite the hiccups! We'll collect feedback and data from this event to improve on future ones, including having better communication.


2. "The two songs in the Cats vs. Dogs battle pass are so well done! Can you add it to the jukebox in Winter Cabin?"

I don't see why not! 😉


3. "Please give level 100+ players more incentives to play / add more rewards beyond level 100!"

We are working through many details for content past level 100, but we hear everyone's feedback and it is definitely in the works. Thank you for your patience so far! We hope to make everyone feel valued. Thanks for sharing this journey with us and enjoying our game!


4. "My Quick Match experience isn't great due to my MMR / ping of the lobbies."

For players experiencing high ping due to being placed in distant servers, we implemented a Ping Priority option that can be toggled on, to limit your matches to low ping servers only. The tradeoff is that you will have a slightly longer queue time.
Regarding the feedback lately about high MMR players not able to find a quality match with a fully lobby - the recent matchmaking overhaul should make this situation a lot better. We made changes to matchmaking rules that should allow the system to sacrifice faster queue times (you should see a slight wait increase of up to one minute) for a better quality match.
We didn't want to make the change too drastic, and this isn't a one-change fixes all for us. We are monitoring and ready to make adjustments as needed! Over the past two weeks, we have made a few adjustments to the matchmaking rules based on data and player feedback since the patch.
This is where we would appreciate input from everyone. Please let us know if you feel an improvement!


5. "Will limited Battle Pass outfits ever return in the future?"

We feel we made a promise to players that these outfits would be limited, and bringing them back would break that promise.
This is especially the case for battle pass outfits, where players invest both time and money, we're very hesitant to break that promise. For limited-time shop events, it's a different story. For example, last year's Halloween outfits are already back in the shop.
However, we could consider bringing back some basic outfits for players to purchase with Cookies, such as Fubao the panda, Fugee the red panda, and Lotus the Loong. Since these are the base characters, we still want everyone to have the opportunity to obtain them.


6. "Why did you change kicking to a vote-based system in Winter Cabin?"

For a long time, custom games were simply a place for players to experience the game on their own terms. You could modify the rules, choose any map you wanted, etc.
However, after we started adding content to Winter Cabin, it's no longer the case that it doesn't matter what the result is (in public lobbies, for the map specifically), as PAWS and Fishy Business had tangible rewards for winning.
If players could be kicked out arbitrarily, we feel there will be a lot of griefing, which will make the game environment in the game mode very toxic.
I do, however, hear everyone's feedback on being unable to kick griefing players due to various reasons causing the kick vote not to pass. We'll see how we can fix this; currently, here are our plans for Winter Cabin:

  • We are planning to add strength to throwable items to help you clear your table

Other solutions we are looking at:

  • We can try to make the kick vote prompt more visible, in terms of positioning and size
  • We are looking into changing the default choice to yes, so if you do not vote, we will assume you have no problem with the kick vote
  • We are considering adding restrictions to throwing objects on the table

Let us know your thoughts on these changes!


7. "Why do I take damage outside the ring in Ring of Garfat? Why are the damage spots inconsistent?"

Safe zones outside the ring have been adjusted to discourage passive gameplay. We've seen too many players camping outside the map, which slows down the pace of the game. While you can still wait outside the ring, the time you can spend out there is limited - you're burning! By making this change, we want to encourage more aggressive play and create a more exciting experience.
In the next patch, we plan to add decals outside so everyone gets a general idea of which areas you take damage from, and it's easier to understand that if you stand on the fire, you'll take damage. The good old "don't stand in the fire!"


8. "Please give us somewhere to spend all our Cookies!"

We plan to add more outfits that cost cookies in the future. For example, (some) new and returning holiday outfits, e.g. Ghost-themed outfits, Magical Girl outfits, etc.


9. "Please add split screen options to SMASH and Nemo Kart!"

Split-screen for these two modes requires significant optimization work, as the amount of resources to load is enormous! We might need our engineers to work some magic, but we'll keep an eye on this request for now.


Nemo
2024/10/26 Edition

Nemo stickied the discussion .

this is a reply to questions from discord, not forum. aside of #5, nothing on this list was discussed here.

i dont care about "mmr", bots in quick match and change in physics, none of those things bother me. the things i wish for is following:

  1. restore shovel damage to how it originally was. it should not be weaker than lollipop. and if lollipop is as powerful as it was, there is no point making shovel weaker. the current shovel is simply not fun to use. it makes the game more fun having powerful weapons like shovel originally was.
  2. remove immunity to electricity caused by stun gun. because even without immunity, players can always escape, and only experienced player can lock them stunned for longer. it feels unnatural seeing electrocuted enemy, who can stun you, but whom you cant stun.
  3. make castleween dark again, because being dark was the whole point of the map. the gameplay of this map was using projectors and lights to see in dark. with castleween being lighter, there is nothing fun happening on this map.
  4. make gator valley bridge back to it's original size. making it larger did not help those people complaining that they die too fast, they still die, except now the map looks ugly. and it's no longer the map that we bought the game with. i will repeat: the base game should not be changed, we payed for it.
  5. return climbing speed to how it originally was. climbing is too fast now and it no longer feels like climbing, but throwing yourself on top instantly. it just doesn't feel good
  6. patch all exploits, allowing players to perform moves, that you should not be able to do ("leaps"). we explained enough time how the problem is not macros, but "combos" themselves. the game does not teach you to do those moves, and it makes the game unfair for regular players. it is clear that such moves are exploits and not something intended by developers. but even if there was a tutorial explaining those moves, it's just too complex for a casual party game, that people play to relax at the end of the day. there's enough of tricks to learn without it.
  7. return disco ball, because there is no flashing to it, the lights are dim and move very slowly, it shouldn't harm anyone, the only "flashing" is using light switch, for which you can make light switch gradually and not instant

this is really all i want, but obviously i'm aware that nothing on this list will be considered by developers

    and regarding #5, i will repeat my position about it. personally i dont need any skins, i use default Sam and that's enough for me, but i do think about all those people, who bought party animals game later and miss so many skins. my position is simple: regardless of when you buy party animals game, all skins you see other players have, you should be able to purchase. no exclusivity ever. i explained here how i would want to see in-game store:

    https://forum.partyanimals.com/d/4884-longer-shelves-for-item-shop

    and one last thing, make throwables stronger to clean table, but please dont add any restrictions to throwing objects on table. people should be able to do what they want and this would be removing fun again. i proposed that there can be a switch in custom room allowing hosts to block throwing objects on table, while we can moderate our rooms without that

    can you add Giraffes? and penguins? and sloths? and flamingo?

    🙁 why? I just want Giraffes, penguins sloths, flamingos, horses, and mice, frogs, and Godzilla! is it to much to ask for? 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁

      BlueOtta Godzilla is already there in the Halloween eggs but with a different design and name

        Igor I agree only with #3 and #5, other demands are outright ridiculous and damaging to the game, there's absolutely no way they should ever be implemented

        • Igor replied to this.

            Drinkly nothing here is "damaging" and you would not be able to prove it is. everything on this list was already implemented, but removed later, aside of exploits, they were just never patched

            but also who are you?

                traisroberts12 dont talk to anyone here terrorist scum. you are only pretending to be regular user, while attacking people for no reason