Surviv.io - Part 2 - Season 3 Update

Introduction: Hello everyone at Gamehag! I'm back with another article and today, we are going to come back and look at the updates that Kongregate (the company that currently owns the game) made for Surviv.io. This is my 5th article on Gamehag though so if you want to leave any feedback (both positive and negative) on my article, please do so I will know what to do next time when I write an article! Now, let's jump right into Surviv.io's latest update and talk about what has changed about the game.

Survivr Pass 3:

Now since I already talked about the game in general in a previous article, I won't be talking about the game or what it's about again. Instead, we are going to be taking a look at the updates that they released. If you don't know, Surviv.io has been recently bought by Kongregate and there has been noticeable changes lately to the game. For instance, pass 3 has been released and it doesn't have any cosmetics that are related to the game at all (before, the passes gave some details about the game's lore). There is a new option to get a Gold Pass but in order to get it, you need to pay 4000 golden potatoes. These potatoes are the new ingame currency for the game and there wasn't even a currency for the game before. The only thing you can buy with these potatoes are crates, which gives players items from previous passes and the golden pass which gives more items from the pass. The worst part of this though is that there are now micro transactions in this browser game which allows you to get golden potatoes with real money. All of these features weren't the things that players wanted and fun updates that the original developers of the game made before the game was bought, such as new buildings and modes, are completely gone.


Caption: One of the things that Kongregate introduced to the game that people disliked, micro transactions.

Why is the Pass Disliked so Much Though? Isn't it Still Free?

Good question. The pass right now isn't as good and original than what it was before. Although it's still techniquely free, before this update was released, there wasn't a Gold Pass and mostly everyone spent their golden potatoes on crates to get a few items that they originally missed in the first pass. By the time this update came out, almost everyone didn't save up on golden potatoes because they weren't aware about this feature and the community got upset by this. Another thing that made people dislike the pass so much was the amount of work Kongregate put into it. For example, instead of doing the work themselves, Kongregate decided to take the designs that people made on discord and put those custom made cosmetics on the pass. About 4/10 of the whole pass is made by the community and not only that, but Kongregate decided to take things up a level and release things that they didn't even get permission from such as the bullet bills (made by Nintendo) that they put in the pass as cosmetics. If you didn't really care about the pass that much though, there was still one more problem that crushed people's hearts when they played the game. The Menu UI got redesigned and now, the pass widget is in the complete middle of the menu and the battle selection buttons have been shoved aside in the bottom right corner. Because of this, many players think that Kongregate now care about the pass more than actual gameplay which seems to be true now with the amount of money-making schemes they tried to unfold into the game (the pass now offers less golden potatoes than the actual price of the golden pass, micro transactions, the fact that you can't get everything in the free pass without getting the golden pass, crates, etc etc).


Caption: What the current UI in Surviv.io looks like (notice the pass widget in the middle).

What About Gameplay? Has Anything Changed Besides the Menu and the Pass?

Like I said before, nothing really changed about the gameplay in this game. Nothing new came out in terms of updates with the exception of holiday events and daily modes that change everyday. The last time we got an actual new building that wasn't in events was actually a year ago despite the fact that the community made a ton of building and mode concepts for future updates. If we are being honest here, the gameplay in Surviv.io did actually change but in a bad way. For example, hackers and teamers were taking over the game and abusing players that were trying to play the game legitimately. Kongregate however, decided to stop this and make an Anti-Cheat, but by the time that was released, hackers were common in the game which made people wonder about their responsibility when it comes to fixing the actual game and not releasing things that people didn't want. Besides that, nothing really changed in this update, or in any update at all when Kongregate came around which upsets me a lot since everyone had hope in them.

Is There Anything We Can do to Fix This?

Despite the amount of issues that Kongregate made in the past year, I still have a little bit of hope in them. Kongregate made many games in the past and they were all great but the things that they were doing to Surviv.io weren't really helpful at all. The community in the game are offering suggestions to the company and they are doing the best that they can to fix the game which sends a little hope to the game's future. Yes, this current update is really bad, but Kongregate still has a chance to redeem themselves and fix it which is what we should be looking forward to. Looking into the past isn't going to change anything but if we help them, maybe just maybe, the next update will improve the game as a whole and more players will come back to the game as it develops and evolves to something better.


Caption: Although this update might have been attractive and good looking, it was the worst one in the game's history.

Conclusion:

Don't get me wrong, this game is still pretty fun, but the game is having a drought of good updates and it's declining which concerns me. Hopefully Kongregate will learn their mistake about trying to make money the harsh way and will improve the game overtime. I made a couple of concepts for the game and they have all gotten pretty popular so maybe Kongregate will read them and take notes about them and what others have been saying about this update. The game community on Discord is also helping out too which should end Kongregate's horrible update streak. Anyway, that's going to be the end of this article so until my next article, thanks for reading this one and happy gaming! :D


Caption: Here lies some Surviv.io art in the game...

Editor's Note: Sorry if this was a short article but if you have feedback on this article about Surviv.io, please let me know so I will know what to improve and remove in my future articles on Gamehag! Have a good day and stay safe at home!