Chivalry 2

I love the game, but the "moderator" that runs Chivalry 2 is 0/10 who bans anyone who criticizes him. So if you buy this game, make sure to keep your mouth shut about any criticism, or else you risk getting perma banned from playing the game. Totally innocent players get banned and muted all the time despite having done nothing wrong. It's honestly killing the community.

Chivalry 2 is one of those games that pisses me off to no end. Before I go off on my rant here, the core game is amazing. The devs on the ground floor clearly have passion and experience in their craft. It's not the animators fault the game is designed this way, and that needs to be said. Because what we have here is an insanely fun game with unique level design, wonderful combat, great animation, and great well....everything. A game that I am having a ton of fun playing. But then that awesome core game is wrapped around a greedy, live service, monetize everything, design scheme that really gets under my skin. And in the case of Chivalry 2 there a few details that are INSANELY infuriating with this one, and even though I have fun playing, it still leaves behind a sour aftertaste that doesn't go away. It only took me a few levels ups to realize the progression system is essentially non-existent. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of armor pieces, unlockables, etc. But every single one of them are tied to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ schemes. Chivalry 2 has four factions, or teams, you can end up playing as. Minus a couple side game modes, each match will only have 2 of those teams in play. Depending on the game mode, or certain server circumstances, sometimes you are allowed to switch to the other team. But this isn't always the case, and even still, there are only 2 of the 4 factions you can pick in any given match. So, what team you play on is kinda random for the most part. You can't really have a favorite faction and always play as them, etc. Also, each of the teams share the same identical classes you can pick. (Knight, archer, etc) Why is that important? Because all the items and cusomizations you can buy, are tied to a single class of a single faction. So if your favorite class is the knight, and you mostly play as the knight, you'll then also be unlocking and buying items for the knight. However, you can end up playing as any of the 4 factions randomly. So, if you have a weapon skin you love, you would have to buy that weapon skin four times and equip it to each of the knight classes of each of the factions. Now why wouldn't you design the class progression system to be universal? You could allow players to customize their knight however they like, then depending on what faction they are playing as in a given match, the color scheme and faction emblem would change to match your current team. But, allows you to keep your current set up and look no matter that team you're on. Why you ask? Because if it was universal then you wouldn't have to buy as much, AND WE CAN'T HAVE THAT, NOOOOOOOO SIR! There is no character or account progression, as those items and unlockables are all tied to battle passes. And of course, as you level up a battle pass it makes SURE you know what items you unlocked, that you can't have, because you didn't spend more money. All progression is locked progression. When you level up a class and unlock items for it, you don't actually unlock them. Instead you unlock the privilege of buying them with either of the two in game currencies. One of which being the standard currency you earn. Which is drip fed to you, just enough to buy an armor piece or weapon skin every once in a while. The other being the premium paid currency, because of course. Or I guess you could just take up Chivalry 2 as more of a second job and spend thousands of hours unlocking everything for free. The game is suspiciously missing any kind of real lobby system. You can invite friends to play, but this only allows you to join matches together. There are no private lobbies, no private games, no custom matches, no custom options of any kind. But wait... What's that button there in the server browser? What does it say? "Rent a Server" hmmmm..... And what do you know it's a link to a third party server company where you can buy a server, which is oddly the only way you can set up a private game or custom match..... But I'm SURE the dev/publisher don't have some kind of kickback deal where they get money every time someone buys a server. and I'm SURE that has NOTHING to do with why this multiplayer game is one of the only multiplayer games I have ever played in my entire life that doesn't have any kind of private game option, I'm SURE those two things aren't connected in any way. I'm no professional game developer, but I do know enough that an always online multiplayer game like this, wouldn't need very much effort put in to offer some kind of private game feature. You already have all the netcode implemented and debugged, you've already got all the connection protocols in place, you just need to adjust them for P2P lobbies, and add all the UI elements needed, and that's literally it. So there is absolutely no reason for this game to not have that, other than the money they can make by NOT offering it. What really gets under my skin with Chivalry 2 and it's monetization schemes, is the fact that they also try and pretend they didn't design a purposely manipulative game that is designed to milk every penny it possibly can. When you go into the actual storefront where premium currency is sold, a message pops up from the devs that suggests you should only buy any of this stuff if you can afford it. As though they are the good guys and aren't like all those other terrible greedy game companies out there. But wait... If you really cared about people spending money they can't afford, why did you design a progression system that has you buying the same item 4 times? If being above board and compassionate with your customers is important, why haven't you spent 500 bucks out of all that microtransaction money you got and add a private game feature? If your community and their financial well being are a priority, wouldn't you want them to be able to host their own games without having to pay a monthly server subscription fee to do so?? It's just wild to me that they would have the balls to add a message like that in their premium currency storefront. As though no one would stop for 2 seconds and go... wait... but.... the only reason the game could become unaffordable for someone is because YOU LITERALLY DESIGNED IT TO WORK THAT WAY! Like come on now, are you for real?? It just doesn't add up, and it really does leave a sour taste in my mouth. Because it sucks to find such a fun well made game riddled with greed fueled design choices, all while pretending they care about us spending too much money, in the game THEY designed to cost lots of extra money, no less. you could have just designed a standard P2P multiplayer that doesn't require a live service to support. So even though I'll keep playing because it's fun and I all ready bought it, you really do need to understand that this game wants wayyyyyyy more from you than the cost of entry, and that they pretend they aren't actually doing things that way. So if you do want to play this, buy it with the understanding that you will not have any private custom options, DO NOT buy into the microtransaction BS, and DO NOT support that type of game development, and in not doing so, also accept that the progression systems will be a boring, uninteresting, grindy, mess.