I wholeheartedly endorse the apparently radical idea of selling games, for money, as products.
Still gonna be a fuckin’ miracle if this works. A multiplayer-centric shooter, focused on teamwork? That’s a gamble no matter who you are. Nostalgia gets your foot in the door. But there are no “slow burn” arena shooters. There is no long tail for multiplayer-only games. You succeed wildly, right off the bat, or you die.
There is no long tail for multiplayer-only games. You succeed wildly, right off the bat, or you die.
Now and then a game seems to buck this trend (Among us blew up after 2 years, Goose Goose Duck after 1 year). So there are exceptions to this rule, but I imagine it’s increasingly hard to pull off the larger the studio’s costs are.
Those got lucky because COVID made social-ish gaming popular. I played a lot of both with coworkers when WFH, and haven’t touched it since returning to the office.
Goose Goose Duck released in 2021 and nonetheless didn’t blow up until 2022. Among Us’ explosion also happened only in the second half of the year, when most games experienced “lockdown growth” earlier during March-ish (see TF2, CS:GO, Rocket League).
I’m sure circumstances helped, but imo it seems difficult to attribute the delayed growth of those two titles solely to that. There are surely also other multiplayer-only titles that similarly weren’t runaway hits on release that later became more played – these are just the first two that I could confirm information for quickly.
Interesting. I guess I just assumed GGD got popular because people got bored of Among Us and wanted to try something different, and GGD was familiar, free, and had new features.
Thanks for the info! Now I’m interested to look up more examples and figure out how they got popular.
I didn’t see a single hitscan weapon in the entire trailer. Even the sniper was leading shots. Chaingun seems to be back for all weight classes instead of a dozen different ‘assault rifle’ weapons with short mags. Maybe they actually learned their lesson on how to make a tribes game this time.
Still wish they wouldn’t do the sniper rifle at all, snipers are impossible to balance and destructive to gameplay in nearly every game that has them. The whole reason the laser rifle wasn’t a balance mess in Tribes 1 was because it used up all your energy when you fired. Mobility is life and giving it up for 1 shot is dangerous in the extreme.
The real mistake was abandoning it
the 2nd mistake is believing this studio wont make the same mistakes again
It was severely mismanaged as early as the closed beta. I think they failed the execution so heavily that honestly the best option was to sunset it. The big blue update or whatever was actually a pretty pro-consumer move all things considered.
I might be ready to forgive them if they can execute this time. No f2p seems a little too reactionary especially in the current climate of fortnite, Apex, overwatch 2, Valorant, cs2, etc, but I’m cautiously optimistic for now.
as an OG Tribes player, Tribes 2 was still better. that was part of the problem. they made a Tribes game but seemed to misunderstand what made for a good Tribes game. Ascend was always kind of garbage-y,
Shazzbot!
I think not going free to play is a mistake. It will cost 20 and still will have macro transactions and battle passes and less players because it’s not free to play. Game like this needs to be free to play.
Only 30 and 40 year olds with nostalgia are going to play it if it’s buy to play, why would kids pay for this game when they can play CS, Apex Legends, Fortnite, Valorant etc for free
If they stick the movement people might be interested in it. Buhlitz had some awesome competition frag videos of ascend where they did some wild shit. High-speed flag transfers always look awesome.
It also has a variety of classes and positions - almost like genuine sports teams do.You can play roles to support your flag carriers or stick around by your flag and defend, so even newer players can feel useful.
Buhlitz totally still owes me a Razor Naga. 🤣
I used to play with him every day in the deadstop mumble server! It’s hard keeping up with the best players, but probably the most fun I’ve ever had in my life!
We probably played together, then. I was shit, but they were all so fucking cool and helpful.
I was techno! Usually played offense because that’s the easiest.
I probably played as Nauren. I think I preferred LO.
I remember we had a crazy Texas kind of guy who usually played juggernaut. I couldn’t bother to juggernaut because I didn’t wanna memorize lineups. I also did LO, but usually technician, assassin, and one of the other medium classes I think. Chain gun was technically the fastest ttk, and the technician had the best one weirdly.
All of a sudden I’m excited for this release.
They used to release new weapons putting them on sale in their cash shop for the first week and during this time they would be extremely overpowered ruining gameplay and incentivising everyone to use the new meme gun. The moment the sale ended they released a balance patch nerfing it into obscurity. That was their business model right up until they just abandoned the project entirely to hop on the MOBA bandwagon.
Do not trust this company to do anything beyond what’s best for them especially at the cost of you.
Funny this was also the league model when they were releasing champions practically every month
At east they’re consistent with shitty behavior.
I have low expectations considering its being made by the devs that completely abandoned starsiege deadzone right after it just released.
