While I imagine there is a lot going on at the “offices” right now, somebody does need to reassure the community on the aspect ratio issue. Even if you just say “we are aware of the issues this has created for some and are working to fix it” it would go a long way toward your player base.
Community response has seemed about on par with shardpocalypse. Just let us know that you guys know, you know?
Some changes they make, they expect negative responses on. There was a podcast interview where they admitted that.
I have to assume they are willing to take the complaints which are mostly coming from ipad users (phone users are supposed to be unaffected, and Android tablets are getting much smaller reductions in screen real estate).
My guess is they are committed to this course of action for reasons they don’t want to detail. Maybe to pave the way for UI changes, maybe just to save time and money on a relatively small segment of users.
Demiurge is targeting game development on the new consoles so they are probably looking for ways to reduce the MPQ team size/effort wherever possible.
As mentioned in Discord, support for the iPad screen ratio has been discontinued. Anyone who was there can come in to verify this
The forum update notes specifically listed they would no longer support a 2:3 ratio:
• Devices with 2:3 screen aspect ratio now display the game in 9:16
Now - I know what people are thinking - “The iPad has a 3:4 ratio!”
I have to assume that the devs writing up the notes didn’t know that or weren’t overly concerned with listing both 2:3 and 3:4 or something. Apparently there are a few devices (Surface Pro, etc) that do have a 2:3 ratio but basically there are only 3 aspect ratios on mobile devices: 3:4, 9:16 and 10:16.
I seems like everyone is being forced into using a 9:16 ratio.
If I were to guess, most of the players are using phones where 9:16 seems to be the general standard ratio. None of them will care about this, once they fix the issue with some of the iPhones that they claim to be working on.
Android tablets are much more common (presumably due to cost) than iPads, and use either 9:16 or 10:16 where the screen reduction is much easier to deal with. iPad users are getting the short end of this stick.
The devs have confirmed on Discord that the tablet screen shrinkage is fully intended.
They don’t care. The changes make something better on there end, so it’s something we have to live with.
We wont get a reason
We wont get a fix
They don’t comment on anything anymore. Its been like this since the Community Manger left.
I play on a phone & as such, it really doesn’t have any direct impact on me. All I’m saying is that if ever there was a need to do damage control, now is the time. The indirect impact this will have on me (assuming it is too much for those who have mentioned as much) will be an even smaller pond still dominated by whales and much older rosters.
since they know what device you are running, one LT for every 1% of loss of usable screen area. Totally reasonable suggestion B)
I rather them making the game mobile only (for iOS) and let iOS scale 2x to fill the iPad screens. That would be even less work for them since they will be dropping the tablet version entirely (for iOS).