i love forsaken.
i really do. it's a great game that does the asymmetrical genre justice, with fun and challenging kits and dynamics, high replayability, great visuals and maps and models, and well-written characters with interesting stories. i've spent almost three weeks on the game now, and i've spent countless more days and nights creating and consuming fan content. hell, i've been addicted to it for six months - that's a pretty good portion of my life.
but i am so, so tired of it.
forsaken is, as a youtuber once described, a "potentialgame".
to start off lighter, there're the bullshit balancing aspects; of course, i have no hatred for the programmers and developers who remain innocent and unaffiliated with the drama. sure, maybe they don't know how gameplay in a public lobby actually works, but they're trying. a lot of these are high schoolers or college students. they really don't deserve the hate they're getting. and, at the same time, i can't help but feel that some of the current un-playability of the game comes from its original horrible management.
there's so much drama and controversy and toxicity and hatred at the core of everything. apart from the creator being a terrible person who should be behind bars, there's a glaring lack of transparency and competency from the current owners; there's also the fact that some devs are still communicating with soul, and that he still gets money from the game.
this has, 1) intrinsically connected the game to soul; a lot of issues with its development are linked to the work he did on it, and 2) forced not only numerous devs to leave, making the team smaller, but also caused a portion of the playerbase to quit. many of my friends have stopped playing forsaken due to the controversies; i myself have considered it too. and, to be quite frank?
that's sad. that's really sad.
forsaken is a good game. yes, two time's hitbox is still broken. yes, g666 can still catch up no matter what. yes, veeronica can still fly. yes, some loops are still too big to counter in under 3 minutes. yes, 1x can still summon 7 minions in one lms. yes, it could use work - it's not perfect; it's nowhere close. but it has an excellent start, and bugs and imbalances aren't permanent.
i wish we could stop being fucking awful to one another. i wish the players weren't so toxic. i wish the devs could lock the fuck in. i wish we didn't get hatred on twitter and all the other places for simply engaging in the hobby we've put tons of time into. i wish i could just log onto roblox mindlessly and play the game i like, for god's sake, without feeling unbearable guilt for indirectly supporting a liar, a cheat, and a nasty groomer.
i don't want the game to die. i truly don't. i care about it so, so much - but at this point, that might be the direction it's going.
i'll wrap up with a statement: content-wise, forsaken is fixable. yet when it comes to the game's management, reputation, and moreover its legacy, i'm starting to believe it's not.
