In a year absolutely packed with survival games, Once Human is the latest to rise up the Steam charts following its launch on Tuesday July 9. Treading in the footsteps of Palworld and Soulmask, and aiming to challenge the likes of Valheim, Rust, and Ark, the Starry Studio game has so far reached a peak concurrent player count just shy of 150,000, putting it among the most-played games on the Valve platform. Yet with a mixed user review score of 62%, there's still work to be done. In a new update, the studio addresses some of the biggest concerns so far, making a key change to purchased cosmetics.
The team at Starry Studio thanks players for their extensive feedback on Once Human since launch. In particular, the team says it held an hour-long meeting with game developer, Twitch streamer, and former Blizzard employee Jason Thor Hall, best known as 'PirateSoftware,' where he raised concerns about the seasonal character reset in the survival game and "how it felt bad as a player," along with other issues including itemization, cosmetics, and world balance.
"When playing an MMO, item drops carry weight for me, as does my character's level and statistics," Hall writes in a post discussing the concerns he shared during the meeting. "Anything that takes away from that feels like loss of progression and always feels bad. Each item or level carries a memory: the cool mount drop, that time we beat the boss, when I finally hit level 60, etc. Taking [those] away diminishes that memory for me and makes me less attached to the game."
"We understand Metas' concerns about the mandatory seasonal resets and how they can affect your sense of progression and attachment to your character," Starry Studio says in a response to the discussion. "We also recognize that cosmetics being tied to individual characters can be frustrating."
As such, the team announces that, by August, all purchased cosmetics will be accessible across multiple characters within the same account. "If you have already purchased the same cosmetic on different characters within the same account, we will refund the consumed Crystgin or other in-game currency for the additional purchases once the cosmetics are account-wide," it confirms.
Hall responds to the post with a simple 'W,' indicating his approval of the change. Whether the Once Human team will implement further changes based on his other concerns, including the inability to repair item drops or a lack of appeal to make use of crafted weapons and armor, remains to be seen.
For now, Starry Studio asks players who have feedback to "please leave a message in the comments section or on our official Discord. We will carefully review every piece of feedback. If Metas have any concerns, confusions or uncertainties, we will promptly respond. Once again, thank you for your support and love for Once Human. We look forward to making it better with your company!"
If you've been exploring its apocalyptic open world, be sure you don't miss out on the Once Human Twitch drops, along with the latest active Once Human codes, for plenty more free items and gear to help you out. You can also find more of the best free Steam games to play right now.
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