And you thought being banned for an hour was bad!
Today was a rough launch day for the PC version of Mobile Suit Gundam Battle Operation 2, and that’s being nice about it all. If the game wasn’t crashing on me, it was the servers being unresponsive or offline while attempting to get a match that would drop me and everyone else back to the match selection screen. Yeah, a rough launch way is a good way to summarize it all. But it gets worse, I’m afraid.
Despite the busted servers and matchmaking, I was totally in and ready to play and wait and wait for whatever matches would eventually come my way. I’m a Gundam guy, and I love Gundam and everything that is about it. Except, everything came tumbling down after the game crashed on me during a match. It’s bad enough to get disconnected or have your game crash when you’re losing, but when you’re winning, it’s much worse. We were about to finish the game, and just like that, my game crashed.
Ok., no big deal, I thought. Most games like this give you some leeway to log back in. I’d just log back in, and …. wait… something’s wrong. I attempted to get back to that session, which wasn’t possible. Not to mention that I’ve now found out that the game has an insane penalty system.
I am now forbidden to play ANY of the modes for an entire day. And when I say all the modes, I mean that. I can’t do ranked or quick matches, nor can I create custom rooms, but I can enter them. Even then, because of this penalty, any rewards I get are also affected. I’m basically stuck without the ability to do anything worthwhile outside of the battle simulator and practices. Yep, this is definitely harsh. But this highlights an underlying issue and concern.
I’m not the only person who is dealing with this, as a number of players have been complaining about this happening to them on the Steam community for the game. Multiple players have been discussing amongst each other how they ended up suspended and for how long, with one saying now they ended up with a five-day suspension. But they all ended in the same place, and seemingly by the same method, the game either disconnected on them or it crashed on them.
There are also lots of complaints over on the /r/GBO2 subreddit. Many of them echo what’s been seen on the Steam Community for the game.
To put it simply, these GBO2 bans are simply out of control. But that’s not the worse part. It would seem that those who actually provided feedback from the network tests have stated that they told Bandai Namco that this long of a suspension was way too long. But as we’re seeing, that feedback was ignored.
It feels that this game should have been delayed even longer, as indicated by the issues that are plaguing the game. But what’s really concerning is if people are being banned due such as the game crashing or disconnecting, this is eventually going to affect everyone. That is until Bandai Namco addresses the issues. But if they don’t do so soon, there likely won’t be anyone available to play the game, as they’ll all be banned. Which is a surefire way to ensure that the game dies on the PC before it even gets started.
I’m not even going to even bother talking about rage quits, since I haven’t even seen any. Many because I haven’t been able to get into more than a handful of games as it stands. I’m sure others have experienced them, but then again, who knows with the state of this game.
Now, I’m not saying remove the ban, but I am definitely saying that it needs to be shortened. Maybe 30 minutes for the first, an hour for the next, and then increments until they reach the point of no return. And even then, perhaps just remove the penalty until the servers and matchmaking are fixed.
Of course, these bans are also compounding the other issues with the game, such as the lack of a real communication tool while you’re on the battlefield and the terrible KB support.
C’mon Bandai Namco. All you have to do is read the Gundam Battle Operation 2 forums to see that people want this game to succeed, but you also have to care about this as much as they do. Don’t let this become another Gundam Evolution – a game that is practically dead on the PC.
Until my ban is up, I’ll be sitting here in the corner and wishing I could be playing.
**I’ve forward this to my Bandai Namco rep, so hopefully, we can get some eyes on this behavior.**
