First email: I absolutely love Splitgate. I joined in Splitgate 1, and have been eagerly anticipating the sequel. Now it's here, I'm very much let down I'm sad to say. You had everything to lose, and I think you're losing it.

Looking past the infinite loading screen problem, there's a huge problem with progression. There are all these ridiculous in game currencies that are intrusive and pointless and unclear. There's nothing I can do as I level up my characters. The classes and weapon unlocks are minimal, there's no prestige option to motivate play after maxing them out, and there's no cosmetics I can get just for playing the game. Everything is a super invasive microtransaction.

I think if this game were to go back to how Splitgate 1 did things - all about the gameplay - you'd stand a far better chance of retaining a player-base. Add support for esports into the game, get rid of the battle royale nobody asked for and absolutely get rid of these awful battle passes and in game shop garbage. If you play games yourselves, you know that gamers hate the battle passes and micro-transaction b*******. They're predatory and pointless.

I don't want to end my feedback on a downer, so I'll end by saying again how much fun I've had when I'm in the game and playing Splitgate. There's nothing better than popping up behind an opponent, through a portal and bonking them on the head with a splitball. Try to keep the focus on the gameplay, trim the bloatware and get back to the good stuff. <3

Support reply: I appreciate that you've been supporting us since Splitgate 1 and for sharing all these feedback. Bummer that your expectations are not met with Splitgate 2, but I assure you that our team working on a fix for issues (Challenges are one of them) that our players experience. I'm gonna need your help to tackle the loading screen problem you're experiencing, though! It would help if you can try reinstalling Splitgate 2 as the first step.

For our in-game currencies, can you elaborate on what feels intrusive, pointless, and unclear in our feedback channel? Specifically, how you think all items are a microtransaction. It would also help if you can add what you wish to see apart from leveling up your factions and the weapons you wish to see added in the game. In terms of E-Sports, personally, I would also love to see Splitgate 2 on that stage, so I suggest adding this as feedback as well. 🙂

For the Battle Pass, just wanted to clarify that each player has the choice to purchase it or not. Even without purchasing it, some items can still be claimed for free as long as the required Battle Pass Tokens are earned; however, I do get where you're coming from. I would also hate it if it affected how I play the game. For example, when purchasing a Battle Pass, the items I earn will give a significant boost to how I play or win as compared to not purchasing it.

You can still earn cosmetics while playing, so keep an eye out on future Events. The Tagging Tactics event has just ended (so it's not displaying in the in-game Events tab anymore) where our players earned Sprays, a Charm, a Gun Skin, a Title, and Emote, just by hitting the required points from our game modes.

Don't think of this as a downer, fam! Your feedbacks are important to us, and I appreciate that you've been straight on how you feel.

Let me know if I can help you with anything else. In the meantime, happy gaming, and keep those bonks going with a Splitball!

Follow up:

First up, the loading screen problem isn’t a bug, it’s a problem with how the game is made. Every single hop between a round, a game, matchmaking into a game involves a loading screen. Loading up the game itself arguably has too many different loading screens (I think there are the splash screens for the devs and publisher, and then a login screen, then a loading screen before finally arriving at the menu. Just have stuff load in the background, while you play a loading video maybe? As for the screens when you hop into a game, I can understand needing one then, but maybe you don’t need them between every round? Plenty of other games even feature a shared space where you can run around in a level/dummy level and much about while things load. Why not have that?

Next up, currencies. What feels intrusive is that there are so many things to pay for. I know they are optional, but if you fill your game 95% full of paid for c***, it’s going to feel intrusive and predatory. The 5% free stuff doesn’t outweigh this. A better balance would be 75% free stuff earned through achievements, events, and challenges, and maybe 25% optional paid stuff, which you get to save the really cool things for.

What feels pointless is having three different types of currency. It is absolutely not clear what they are, what they’re called or how they work. I get one type from just playing and getting XP, I’ve managed to work that out. The other two, no idea, but they seem to only be useful to people who pay for stuff, which is not me. If I want to play free-to-play, it would be better if these other pointless currencies weren’t rammed down my throat all the time. And better if the currency I do earn from playing and getting XP was actually more useful. I seem to spend some time building it up, but there’s barely anything to spend it on. On top of that, it appears to get reset as well? Is that a seasonal thing? Maybe make that more clear when that happens and what to do when it’s upcoming.

As a suggestion, maybe make the class and weapon unlocks cost an amount of this currency, allowing players to redeem the ones they want, in the order they want, giving us something to spend on. Some can be more expensive than others if there’s a balancing concern. Or perhaps a combination of the current system as well as this suggestion.

eSports: If you have enough players, then one way to include this would be to add better lobby tools for setting up custom lobbies, teams and opponent teams. Full control over what happens if a connection drops (e.g. pause rules) for a player involved in a tournament match etc. so that proper tournaments can be run in game, without the need for additional tools to record the admin. What would be absolutely awesome (though I don’t know the legal implications) would be to allow tournament admins to load prize funds into their accounts in Splitgate 2, and chose how the tournament will work from a prize perspective, and then advertise that tournament int he game somewhere. Then we can all see if a tournament is worth joining and get into the action all from within the game!

Battle Pass: Yup you’re absolutely right, it is completely optional, and I’ve managed to work out vaguely how it’s supposed to work and find the free stuff contained within. The general problem here is that Battle Passes themselves are an outdated concept and generally hated and ridiculed by gamers. They make devs money, because they feed into the worst parts of human behaviour and people feel obliged to keep pace with releases. As with the above points about currency, this either needs a wholesale re-balancing, or scrapping all together in favour of a Prestige style unlock system and challenge/achievement unlock system. Events are great too, as you’ve suggested. As an aside, the UI for navigating the battle pass is awful. It’s clunky, hard to move across the tiles and pages, and not clear what is unlocked, but paid for or unlocked and free, vs locked.

I’m very glad the battle pass doesn’t affect gameplay, but I’d argue that’s not a claim to success, that’s just not a massive failure. If it DID unlock powerful abilities, people would very quickly move on from this game. It’s not a case FOR a battle pass however, and the above points still stand. I will also add that items like sprays, charms, titles and player cards are also a bit of a joke. Most gamers consider this a “filler” item and not really coveted. The most desirable items are Weapon skins and Player skins. Maybe focus more on those and remove/reduce the other c***.

What people tend to find, is that we set out on a project with good prospects and good ethics, and a good design, then somewhere along the line, publisher pressure or the desire for more profit muddy the waters and spoil the experience. What’s interesting about this, is that this isn’t a revelation, any gamer who’s spent a year or more as a gamer will know this and will know what good looks like. Everyone just needs the courage to stick to the important stuff and not be swayed away from that path. Don’t build for profit, build for a good game and be proud of what you make. Nobody is proud of building a money grabbing battle pass and hiring some artists to churn out crappy cosmetics every week, because that’s not hard, and not wanted. What is hard, is making a great game - and the splitgate 2 team should be proud of the gameplay they’ve created. Focus on that.

Speaking of gameplay, Battle Royale: I imagine people are playing it, but in my opinion, you’re at risk of diluting the matchmaking experience at this stage of the game’s growth. Arena is already perfect. 24 player onslaught is a bit crazy, but it’s an option for people who want that large player count experience. What is battle royale trying to do? You’e competing with Fortnite, or PUBG. There are already better battle Royale games out there, and the portal mechanic isn’t really something that genre needs or benefits from, which is what sets Splitgate apart. If you split your player base between Arena, 24 player onslaught AND battle royale, then the experience is going to be worse for all of them.

Final thoughts: I could be wrong about a lot of the above (I’m not wrong about battle pass and spending though). I hope you have the tools to use data to your advantage and make good decisions for the community, not for profit. Profit always follows a good game, it always loses out from a bad game. If you want to keep players engaged, eSports is your best option in my opinion. Offering tournament supporting tools in-game is the best way to give this game a platform and show it off on more streams and events. Without this, it’s too much external admin to run a tournament and makes it hard to happen. I’ve always thought of Splitgate as Halo meets Portal. Fun rocket launchers and snipers if you’re lucky enough to get them, great levels and movement thanks to portals and jetpacks and just all round good gunplay. Keep this up! Some more game modes to add to the arena playlist maybe? King of the hill is a good classic. What about bringing some of the splitgate 1 maps into splitgate 2? There were some excellent maps, and splitgate 1 wasn’t around for long enough to enjoy them. Bring em back. Better control over what we matchmake into? Tools for selecting maps and modes to include in our matchmaking or exclude?

Look to some of the Call of Duty games for Prestige inspiration, they did that very well. Look to Halo and Portal for gunplay and movement (you’ve already nailed this). Look at all the failed games ever, for reasons to not have a battle pass… Or just search for your favourite game reviewer on YouTube and watch a few videos about games that have had a battle pass, and listen to how it’s discussed in the video and the communities.

I’m happy to discuss anything more if that’s useful. I’ve played far too many games in my life, and don’t plan to stop any time soon :D