I’ve gone back and forth on trying to reach out to the devs with my thoughts on this game because I know a lot of the problems I have with this game are really not easy to solve, but I really really like this game and I want it to be the best it can be, and I seriously think someone needs to say this to whomever is working on this game.
The plaza is BAD.
Tower Unite is clearly inspired by Gmod, Second Life, VR chat and other social apps like that. VR chat is a really great game to meet people and goof off and Gmod is really fun with friends and playing games on. I think Tower Unite tries to do both and honestly I think it exceeds both games in a few aspects. I think condos are brilliant ways to meet people, make your own virtual rooms, and hang out with your friends. I think the game world is a super fun time waster when you’re hanging out with friends and just want to play something but don’t know what to play. My main problem is the plaza, which is a really good idea, but horrible in execution.
I think one problem everyone can agree on is that there are so many multiplayer things to do in the plaza, but there is never ANYONE to do them with. You can join a completely full server and will still see a completely empty board walk, or a laser tag with like 2 people in it. The plaza completely fails as a place to have social interactions and meet new people because it’s so massive that you’ll never find an area in the game with more than 5 people, and most of the time that’s just people watching youtube videos in the night club or the theater. When I talked to a friend about this, he said they should increase server sizes, which I completely disagree on. You should not need more than 64 people in a server to actually hang out with people and have fun. Other social apps have similar server sizes and you’re constantly bombarded by new people and conversations and fun stuff going on. The plaza also just kinda runs like shit a lot of the time if I’m being honest, and I don’t think having more people in it will make it any more bearable. In my opinion, and I know a ton of people are going to disagree with me on this, I think the plaza should be removed and split into 3-4 different areas.
Something like VR chat has worlds, which are a lot smaller than the plaza and are used for people to interact with each other and play games. I think Tower Unite would seriously benefit from abolishing the plaza and turning areas like the arcade, board walk, the casino, and other things into separate servers that people can go into. For one, it leads to more honest server counts. Sure they’ll probably be smaller, but at least if you’re going into the “Arcade Server” you know that you’ll be able to play the arcade and actually be surrounded by people who want to play the arcade too. It’ll also make it easier to actually make friends and meet people, since servers would be full of large groups in the same place. I also think splitting the plaza up into different servers will allow the devs to evaluate the worth of certain areas in the game which is honestly a problem in itself.
This game updates so frequently with gigabytes worth of new shit that NO ONE is using. They’ll spend a month working on an outdoor park where you can play checkers and uno and all this other shit and you’ll never see more than 2-3 people there at a time. Everyone is having so much space on their computers taken up by these updates and I’m convinced most of these people aren’t even experiencing them. This lack of people in these areas also seriously highlights how unfun some of the “games” in this plaza are. Most of the games in the plaza are just “a thing do with your hands” at best, which wouldn’t be a problem if you were with other people, but IS a problem when you’re completely alone.
Condos are the best part of the game for a reason. they’re small areas that can be designed for niche groups where people can hang out and meet friends or strangers. The plaza in comparison is big, bloated, empty, and is eating up the storage on my computer for nothing. I think this game would be so much better as a social app if the plaza was split up and all the chaff was cut from the wheat. The thing is, I know this will never happen. These devs are spending weeks adding a store where you can buy shoes and tennis balls, or a cupcake shop on the pier, or ANOTHER area that’s just another dedicated media player, and I think they’re way too proud of all of that stuff to ever cut it down. But as someone who loves this game and has fun memories playing with friends in between all the boring nothingness, I am sincerely begging that you consider it. With every update adding new things to the plaza, you isolate players further. I’m not asking you to get rid of it, just split it up and scale down every server to make them more social. I know you’d have to sacrifice a lot of hard work but I promise it would make for a better game and an even stronger community. Sorry for being super harsh on your guys work, as an artist I know it sucks to hear all this. But it comes from a place of love, and I really hope a developer reads this. Thank you.