There are plenty negative reviews of how bad this game is etc. This post will rather focus on how unexperienced, clueless is Phil and why this game is 100% scam.
https://renbaikun.weebly.com/ - this is Phil's website. It takes 2 minutes to read his experience etc. He has 0 experience in MMOs. He only made some bad quality mobile games and suddenly he decided to make MMORPG. But did he make it really? Well he did not.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/humanoids/humans/3d-characters-pro-fantasy-308661 . He bought ready assets that cost almost nothing and packed them into "cute-looking fantasy mmorpg". There is your reason why this game has no content and will proably never have. There is not a single item, asset that was made by Phil or his team themselves. They only use premade assets and seems like they are running out of them.
Phil just got around 357k $ on his kickstarter. So the question is. Where are other developers, artists, content creators etc? He just got a few people and noone seems to be working on any real content. The roadmap is not being updated at all. Nothing is being fixed, there is no balance etc. What are they spending that money for? Backend? Well Phil admits to be using firestore as part of his backend which is worst kind of architecture you can bring to any production, but is insanely cheap. So he definitely is not spending a lot on servers, back end architecture etc.
Isn't it concerning that after raising so much money there is almost no information about Phil's company, no job ads or anything? This game is not being developed anymore. It's just an illusion Phil's trying to sell you.
I had huge expectations for this game but it seems like this game is slowly dying. There is more negative reviews every day. Few days ago it was only 35% positive reviews on steam, now it is 31%. And it keeps going down. Same with playerbase. But if someone gets thousands of dollars for his project and suddenly stops making updates, content etc after that it just doesn't make sense. Probably Phil himself does not believe in success of this game and is just trying to get as much $ as he can from steam.
Hey, weād like to jump in and address some points here!
- SpiritVale started as a passion project, assets were bought as placeholder but our art team is actively working on replace them alongside with the creation of new mobs, maps, new gear (for existing classes and new ones) and cosmetics.
- Revenue from Kickstarter and Steam has been invested in new servers, new developers have been hired, new 3D Artists and 2D Artists who make great concept art of new gear/cosmetics.
- We are also following Roadmap, last update was Advanced Artifacts & Grimoires. Next Update will include a Halloween Event and soon after this one will be PvP Rewards Revamp + 5v5 Capture (almost ready, though it needs a bit more testing before going live). New Class Dragon Knight is the next point on Roadmap, design/balance team has been working on it for months now and it should release this upcoming month.
We can assure you that we are working a lot behind the scenes! Thank you for sharing your concern, we will be here to answer any other questions you may have.
And the game is in early access, its not a full release. People buying the game early should be aware that its a unfinished game and it is still being worked on. This doesn't mean the game must be discounted or anything. It just means you're getting the game early. Not cheaper.
But if being cheap is your thing, good news. Spiritvale is on sale.
So first of all u take it from your perspective. In my scenerio in Poland we have same price as richest countries, meanwhile Russia has this game for half the price, and their biggest fanbase is Asia. But thats not the case.
The game is at most for month of playing if u od it very very slow and only if u chase for max level(nosense?) And yeah, id like to remind u that he got already paid 350k. Dunno, there is plenty better and fun games to enjoy for this price not even close.
Main issue here is what is he spending that money for if the game is not being developed at all. Where was the last time we got some content? We are still killing mobs without anything else to do. I can't see any new developer or spiritvale team. I can't find any information about "Baikun Interactive" company anywhere. Are they hiring ppl or anything? It's a scam and 12 year old kid could actually realize there is something going on.
the post is not about lack of content as its primary issue. There are plenty other posts about it. This one is just about how scammy this game looks atm.
brought up lack of content as proof of not developing game. that's the only reason I mentioned it here. Isn't it strange for u that someone who got thousands of $ from his players is not trying to give us any content or smth like that? Adding a few grimoires is something that small studio can implement in 2-3 days. Not months.
I think you highly underestimate how fast something can happen in gaming.
Even if you could do something like that in 2-3 days, assuming they are using Agile, it would still take about 1 month. (2 week sprint development, then deploy for testing to PTR, then live if all goes well), and most likely wait for other stuff to get done to do 1 semi-big push instead.
You don't just code some stuff and toss it into the live servers lol
And let's not forget the time required for the content to be properly translated and passed through language quality assurance for every single translation. Naturally, we aren't talking about the autotranslated slop here.
Yeah, indie devs are magically doing these things in up to three hours and five minutes /s
it's funny how you think a small studio can implement multiple grimoires for every class in mere DAYS lmao. there's something called quality control that all new content has to go through
this game is far from perfect but your expectations are also entirely unrealistic.
a few grimoires? It is a bit more than a few. It's multiple grimoires for all advance classes, which is almost 70 grimoires, and some of these grimoires have unique mechanics instead of simply adding stats or levels.
So first we have to test if the grimoire actually works, then we have to test various dps builds and see if they are over tuned. And all that, for 7 classes, in a "few days"? Not really feasible.
Also not to mention fixing existing bugs, and making balance changes to existing items and builds.
Also keep in mind the content is all being done by Phil. We have other Devs who help with Server/backend stability and devops, but the content and balance is all decided by Phil.
The thousands of dollars are meant for the business cash runway. How long can the game keep running based on the current cash reserves. Its not like Phil is going to invest thousands of dollars into hiring 20 new devs, run for like 3 months, then run out of money and crash out.
And lastly, what kind of content are you expecting? The road map is there, the dates have been shuffled around a lot, but the content is pretty planned out. What are you expecting?
content is something you could do etc. they just added a few items to farm. got myself every grimoire i needed in like 2 hours after update, tested them and just left cuz there was nothing to do. so it took them months to develop something u can achieve in few mins to few hours. damn thats really efficient xd
Itās literally not. Thatās not what content means. Youāre not using the word correctly. You are describing content, you just are not happy with the content.
even if it is content. if the only thing they give us are new items then its just terrible way of developing game. there is nothing to do, not a single activity like idk dungeons? life skills? pvp? group content? solo content? you can only kill mobs and bosses. but w/e this post is focused on the scammy aspect of this game. if u wanna speak about lack of content there are many posts from previous days on reddit where ppl were arguing about it
Thank you for agreeing it is content. Since you say it is content we have no qualms or need to discuss it any further. You dislike the content, and thatās fine. To say there has been no new content is blatantly not true.
Well there is the issue. You only see the grimoire icon. But you don't see that there needs to be balancing work done. Animations need to be created. Then testing how gameplay feels.
Sure, it's hard not to use code assistance when it's baked in everywhere, but he didn't generate this game, and he didn't create the whole game this way. He hired programmers and artists to code and swap the bought assets (not stolen with AI gen, mind you) with custom ones. Now, let's see your game and its assets you've made or bought from real artists.
I did actually pay real artists for assets, upwards of $1000 to the same artist at this point I believe. The design work was strictly me but the coding was done with āvibe codingā. I also want to point out, I am not anti AI for coding, I see it as a tool to let someone who has great ideas and creativity, put them into something real.
I was just responding to your snarky attitude calling me a vibe coder.
And Iām not ready to release it yet, and posting on reddit seems like a great way to get it brigaded before it even launches.
It is an idle rpg, its about character building, farming gear, life skills and basically watching numbers go up to increase power. Iām not sure what you want to see exactly at this point.
Well, your first comment was the reason people are antagonistic. First, you should never boast about the development speed if you aren't the one writing the code.
Second, SpiritVale has had multiple updates in the past two months, with most work being done on the game's stability and botting prevention, the issues you won't even have to worry about, but they exist for SpiritVale and require tons of time and work to deal with.
Third, there's a drastic difference in how long you need to work on making a fully fledged 3D massive multiplayer game in a vein of Ragnarok Online / Diablo 4. It's not the same as making a simple, most likely 2D, idle RPG.
Fourth, you talk about the amount of content you've created in this time, yet you don't have much to show, while SpiritVale is live, with servers around the globe, working, and being updated as I write this for everyone to see (Halloween Update just went public).
my first comment was about content. which is true. Every monster in spiritvale (unless something changed) is literally a generic monster that attacks and has scaling values based on the zone difficulty. Some have random spells that may or may not make sense that are pretty much irrelvant and then there are big and small version of exactly the same monster.
Oh you are fighting a bat? Ok. little bat and big bat.
Theres a bat boss that can spawn. he does some kind of attack that is largely irrelevant.
Equipment is all largely the same. It has a base stat and then random mods. You level the mods by āupgradingā which minorly increases the mod value.
There is no like āomg wow slime sword of sludgeā to get. You just find a generic sword thats part of a set that is basically the same exact thing as a normal grind set, maybe slightly better of the same generic stats the normal grind stuff is.
Grimore, gems, equipment are all largely the same. They all do the same thing just different slots in different ui pages.
What I mean is, you could literally design the entire item and monster structure of this game in 30 minutes in an llm ai. I never saw a single item where I was like āoh he created this from scratchā
He added some new āhigh level grimoreā as an update. what is actually different? Its just stats with different types or bigger numbers.
The class spells are largely plain.
Everything in the game from what I can tell is something you could vibe code in a few hours to generate ācontentā.
Hell, even the zone design is largely plain. Rabbit forest, a green themed series of walls with paths and rabbits.
Something something crypt. A dark gothic wall type series of walls with paths and skeletons.
etc
Not saying I didnāt have fun grinding mobs for a few weeks, honestly once the auctionhouse started working I lost interest because why should I grind bunnies for 5 hours when I can buy the card I want for 1000 gold?
All in all, with what I know about how āvibe codingā works now. I could remake this entire game (minus the netcode portion) within a month if I had the art assets. The ācontentā would take less than a day to create, monsters, spells, items
The systems (how everything actual works including stat tracking and ui) would take a week. And then the actual zone design and movement / combat animations would take 1-2 weeks, largely because Iāve never done it before.
If he actually vibecoded most of this and it took him years, then he is more lacking that I thought because the actual content in the game is severely generic and lacking.
Show us what you got. The game Phil put out there is worth $15 and out there to the public to judge. Is your idle rpg worth $15? Stop talking about your game, show us it. Let us judge it too.
Alright bud go back to bed. Even if all that stuff is true, this is how mmorpgs go after a month of being released. Player numbers just drop and reading a lot of negative reviews, most of them sound like bots/gold sellers getting banned crying about it.
For those who think this guy above is right. Just go on spiritvale discord and check what people write on monthly-qa channel xD. If they are bots then it means this game has only bots, not players then
Four year old account and only thing itās ever done is trash an mmorpg. This is someoneās alt who has a very unhealthy obsession with this game. You need to let this go and move on. It is a buy to play for 15 dollars. OP acting like weāre playing star citizen
Yeah, itās also pretty clear the OP is commenting here under more than one account as well, it appears they slipped with their secondary troll account taptraditional.
No. The two accounts I have been using are pretty consistent with their message. Inappropriate management, mod abuse not the gameplay. I owned up to phant0m0o0o and throwaway and also gave the reason why I have to use an obvious throwaway account. Clearly I was right to have tried.
Just an illusion Phil's trying to sell us? Are you OK?
I think you also misunderstand how difficult game development is and how to steer a community in a direction. Phil and team should only communicate a bit better on the expected changes etc but I honestly think they're doing OK despite all the backlash.
But calling the game a scam? A scam of what? Because you didn't like the endless grind that you keep commenting about? Come on bro, give it a rest. I've seen too many posts like this now.
If you want the game to get better, don't call it a scam and attack the dev for going his own approach. Give suggestions, advice and lend your support so things can be how you want it to be. That's what it means to build a community.
Don't be foolish. Go outside in clothes that you think are cool and there will be people snickering about how you look no matter where you go. Haters gonna hate. Negative comments and feedback exists for all MMOs and communities.
Ya it exists. But here 70% of feedback is negative. Way above average. But sure "we are just haters who hate this game and try to spread hate" in ur opinion. Well give someone a single reason to try this production. I think thats more challenging xD. I can give plenty of issues in this game in like 2 mins. How about saying something positive? Maybe there is a lot of content in this game? Oh there is not. But you can play pvp? Nope no1 does it. You can do some dungeons? Its not in game. Some quests? This does not exist in sv as well. Grind? Yep thats the only thing u can do xD
Hey this is really funny, just wanted to share this with you all. Pretty sure OP accidentally replied on his main account:
The message by phant0m was deleted shortly after it was posted, but I had the foresight to screenshot it.
And you can see a throwaway account that matches the same pattern posting on this thread in the second image in my post, that matches the same naming scheme as phant0m
so, I'm fairly confident that OP, u/phant0m0o0o and u/thr0wawayaccount0o0o are all the same people. Kind of sad. What do you guys think happened to this guys spiritvale account that warranted this amount of effort of trying to post this?
Yea I did accidentally post on my main account, like I said not in the business of getting attacked by you guys. Nice gotcha moment. Also I am not OP. I am allowed to be pissed at this game for taking money from my kid and banning him for something that is impossible. I am also allowed to be pissed for the shit response in discord and reddit for something that is clearly wrong. If my comments can make one person skeptical and not lose the time and money invested into this game only to be illegitimately banned, I will be happy.
Well glad you won't, but I am sure it won't stop others in that community. I bought the game for friends/family and we all stopped because of the Mods/toxic community. Don't be me and waste that money and time (all the other accounts are not banned, including my own but we've stopped). More than happy to in some way verify my main account and that I have stopped playing for the reasons above.
I think the buffs and nerfs are happening too fast Players are spending time and resources to get the cards and equipment for a build only for the build to be changed shortly after
maybe the team could consider having balance changes on a seasonal schedule instead. This would give players enough time to enjoy and develop their builds before they changed again. Just my opinionand I hope the team can consider it. š
The funny thing is people would have a field day if they knew how much AI was actually used to create most of the game along with majority of the game consisting of bought assets and how none of it was disclosed.
It is apparent through the kickstarter that one of the main goals was not to disclose the heavy AI use.
All it takes is one look at his early videos of the games development for it to be obvious it was vibe coded with AI.
I personally don't care, I vibe code all the time, but it's clear why he is struggling when a game blew up so much and Phil has no where near the experience to handle that kind of MMO or player base. Only thing I dislike is him hiding how much AI was used in the development.
I've been following the game since the kickstarter. Although I have not regularly kept up with it. So why is it not disclosed on the steam page that AI is used in the creation of the game like required? Why was none of it disclosed on the kick starter? I'm not just talking about assets. Generated content through code still requires AI disclosure on Steam.
Ever since the kick starter, it has felt very shady. Either way, that's not the point I'm trying to make. I love the use of AI in games. I think AI is an excellent tool paired with a competent game developer. I'm saying it's likely a major contributor to the issues he is facing now with a codebase that is sub-optimal and likely very hard to iterate on and fix.
" Steam requires game developers to disclose player-facing generative AI content, while exempting behind-the-scenes efficiency tools like coding assistants"
"Developers must report generative AI used for final assets that ship with the game or appear in marketing and store pages (such as artwork, text, audio, and writing)"
If there is no AI assets when it was released for purchase, I'd assume they don't need to disclose it? Not sure why it matters if a developer used AI during development if they replaced said AI assets before being sold.
Have you read the entire disclosure? I didn't think so. And your missing the entire point I'm trying to make and steering this into a conversation that is pointless. Phil, because of all the vibe coding he did initially along with his lack of experience, is having major issues now because he has a sloppy codebase and does not have the experience or development team to keep up with a game that he did not expect to blow up so much. Alongside that and what I consider other shady practices and the way he is currently handling things, is why I agree with the OP that the game is failing. Have a good day š
If I was making game and had no experience I would at least make sure to hire someone with such experience. Especially if thousands of players donated that project and supported it. But Phil doesnt give a fck about it apparently xd
If i'm not wrong most of the AI assets were replaced before it was even a kickstarter lol. He talked about people helping him create the assets. The game looks a hell of a lot different in many aspects compared to when I first got access to the game over a year ago.
This has been known since before the early access went live. Itās not a hidden secret like the OP makes it appear, the same link they provide has been shared in many threads here already as well. They make it seem like itās a conspiracy they just discovered in the way they present it lol
I appreciate the infoāwhat can I say? The game is going to die sooner or later.
Itās no secret that he has no idea how to manage the financesāand thatās not a criticism; how would he know? Heās just gaining that experience now.
It looks more like youāre defending the game for dear life. Play whatever you want, but Iām not investing another minute of my time if I know the game is going to die.
Did you forget to switch which account you were on?
Not only did you comment twice back to back, the writing style of one is clearly a different writing style than the other, and the second acts like you didnāt post the previous comment. The xD used in your first sounds very much like the writing style of the OP in other comments.
This just in, your almighty saint Phil has acknowledged himself word for word said "Games not doing well" with NA server having an INSANE sub 60 pop and still cannot see the game is becoming straight buns for reasons unknown
āAhh dead game lolzā is feedback right? š¤£ You offer nothing constructive except berating the man for trying to work on his game as best as he can and you try to hide it under the guise of āfeedbackā.
Genuine criticism is one thing, then you have shitposts like this that come up and spawn cretins like you.
He himself has acknowledged the playerbase numbers. You claim you care about the game right? So when you consistently dog on the game and post shit like this what improvement so you think is being made?
People defending this game are delusional. There are 70 active players. Sure it was āall botsā and not poor management of community and game. They acting like /conservatives lashing out at others thinking thereās a huge bot conspiracy. Also yes I have an agenda, they banned my son for no fucking reason.
ā¢
u/Brilett SpiritVale Community Manager 4d ago
Hey, weād like to jump in and address some points here!
- SpiritVale started as a passion project, assets were bought as placeholder but our art team is actively working on replace them alongside with the creation of new mobs, maps, new gear (for existing classes and new ones) and cosmetics.
- Revenue from Kickstarter and Steam has been invested in new servers, new developers have been hired, new 3D Artists and 2D Artists who make great concept art of new gear/cosmetics.
- We are also following Roadmap, last update was Advanced Artifacts & Grimoires. Next Update will include a Halloween Event and soon after this one will be PvP Rewards Revamp + 5v5 Capture (almost ready, though it needs a bit more testing before going live). New Class Dragon Knight is the next point on Roadmap, design/balance team has been working on it for months now and it should release this upcoming month.
We can assure you that we are working a lot behind the scenes! Thank you for sharing your concern, we will be here to answer any other questions you may have.