Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
I played one round of 5v5. Game DEFINITELY wasn't built for that.
3v3 is way more tactical and satisfying.
3v3 is way more tactical and satisfying.
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Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Highguard Debuts on Steam with a peak CCU of 97k and 21% positive reviews
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Luipadre
Member
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
3v3 is like playing an intense pickup basketball game at the park. It's elegant competition.
5v5 is like when the hippie teacher says the rest of the class can go on the court with their hula hoops and you have to play around everybody.
Damn you people go back to your shanties!
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
They shoulda had both 3 vs 3 and 5 vs 5 from the start.
Faltherion
Member
I disagree with this. 5v5 feels better to me imo. A lot of it is also team dependant.
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CityHunter1981
An Absolute Desaster
I don't think 15k are good numbers for the first weekend after the game releases. Of course most people will give it a try. But with the much better options out there, I am sure it's basically dead in 3 or 4 weeks.
icecold1983
Member
The majority of us don't think GASS is a bubble that will pop. Its just incredibly obvious upon viewing a gameplay trailer when a game has no chance at taking people away from the established titles. Percentage wise, a single player game with multiplayer as a possible option has a much higher chance of success. Its also cheaper to develop. Given the extreme dearth of truly knowledgeable engineers at the overwhelming majority of studios, GAAS is not the best fit. Harder technical problems to solve and performance issues affect the experience to a greater degree.
How many legitimately good singe player games have failed over the generation? And no, something like AC Shadows is not a good game.
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Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Well, the 5v5 patch might have at least stemmed the bleed. It will be interesting to see if the CCU rises any as the word of 5v5 spreads.
Maybe, if they iterate fast and make improvements, they can pull of a No Man's Sky of sorts?
Moridianae
Member
Pulling a No Man's Sky is very difficult to do, imo. Only a few games in history have pulled that off(Cyberpunk, FF14 are two more known, there are a couple more).
It's feasible they can add things and refine fast enough to grow the playerbase, but time is of the essence.
ByWatterson
Member
NMS isn't really a service game, though. It has updates and multiplayer, but the primary experience is still wandering alone. And both it and Cyberpunk made enough money on Day 1 to have functionally infinite improvement runway.
So the only actual analog is FFXIV, which had the backing of a major publisher.
Hard to see how Highguard bounces back strongly while the competitors keep coming.
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Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
What is the psychological phenomenon when people who have no experience making strategic decisions in an industry think they know better than the leadership groups at all the most successful companies in an industry?
What is that called?
It's one thing if half of the top companies rejected GAAS but none of them are. I don't understand this phenomenon of believing you're smarter than the top minds in the field.
Why would you ever swing the bat when bunts are a higher percent play?
Because value isn't derived in such simplistic terms.
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
Speaking from firsthand knowledge, I don't think you realize how clueless the execs who greenlight these games tend to be. Typically, they understand broad strokes of "this genre is popular" or "people like co-op", but I genuinely think the average GAF user has a better grasp of a game's potential to flop or not than the people making decisions at a lot of publishers.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
This is still an appeal to the bunt when analytics show swinging hard is the more valuable strategy. NeoGAF understands the bunt but not grand strategy
I'd also say that the average NeoGAF user has been so demonstrably wrong on GAAS over the last 7 or 8 years that your claim is inarguably false.
-Fortnite and BR were supposedly fads.
-The Extraction genre was tapped out in 2025.
-GAAS was a saturated market by 2018 or 2019.
These are legendarily bad takes that would get Michael Pachter to blush.
The reason you think NeoGAF has a better track record than all of the most successful companies in gaming is because faceless mobs are exponentially more difficult to track than massive companies like EA or PlayStation. The mob doesn't track its own failures in market forecasts.
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
I think GAF tends to be more accurate about gauging the potential of an individual game; less so with broader trends. I would hardly suggest PlayStation Studios, for example, is placing smarter bets. It looks like a great strategy to swing for the fences when something connects... less so when you've struck out every single time since the game started. There's just not enough room in these subgenres to support many winners, so it's basically just seeing how much pain your pocketbook can take until you give up. The market's only getting more prohibitive.
Glad Arc Raiders worked out for you, though.
PeteBull
Member
Look bro, we understand publishers still wanna go all in on GAAS, for the simple reason to make mediocre GAAS game u dont need talent, vision nor any passions, so its perfect target for many western dev studios filled with DEI hires to the brink, its obvious choice for them to do it.
What we saying is- thats stupid strategy coz they should fire all those activist parasite devs, then hire actual passionate hardworking and skilled ppl, and then take on what they want(which hopefully isnt GAAS).
Talentless bunch of clowns can only try to make GAAS indeed, and 90% of them fail hard anyways, the difference is they cant make proper good singleplayer game at all, they make stuff like ME: Andromeda, Saints Row reboot, Veilguard or other shitty avoved/outerworlds2 that bomb like crazy while wasting long years of devtime and hundreds of milions of usd budget, often burning wellknown IP's to the ground
TLDR Pubs, u and all of us agree- GAAS is like lowest common denominator that even brainless monkeys can make, ofc it will be of low quality but thats beside the point, thats limit of talentless devteams so its not like they can go for zelda clone or any other ambitious genre instead
Its like avg female highschool dropout makes onlyfans account at 18yo(and there are thousands of those in the US alone nowadays), there is very slim chance she becomes multimilionare selling her kitty online but its still some chance, she for sure has 0 chance becoming multimilionare doing any honest work coz has no skillset nor mental displine to learn it so goes with easiest possible path, path full of shame
And thats what those devstudios making GAAS games are in our eyes
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Even this is a misnomer. NeoGAF, who has never predicted a GAAS hit in their life, gets the benefit of judging a games potential once it's near release. They can read the market 5 years after games get greenlit.
All of these companies have to make bets at the seed level. Concord got the go ahead in 2020 when PlayStation leadership had to fill in a lot of the blanks. There's no chance in hell the amorphous NeoGAF blob would run PlayStation better than the people already running the company.
Just look at PlayStations 30 year history. They've made great bets up until they started chasing games NeoGAF didn't like.
That's not a bit suspicious to you?
Helldivers 2 was pretty massive and is almost certainly generating more money today for PlayStation than any other PlayStation Studios title. Marathon looks like it'll be a hit despite the DOA chants back in April. "Every single time" is sounding more and more like "Fortnite is a fad" to me.
Every company has analyzed these points incessantly over the last number of years. They've all reached the same conclusion...
Swings are better than bunts.
A forecast of mine that came from me playing an hour of Vigor. The framework was obvious.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Down to 12,800 now. It'll drop back below 10,000 tonight.
Since tanking days after launch the game will often settle on page 3 of Steam charts at rank 200+. Somewhere between 200-250 (100 games/page). It's currently upped it a bit better at rank 130th now.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Looking at H2's peaks and valleys, that 55k peak is sustained even on weekdays. In fact, the past couple weeks, H2 daily usage has actually crept up a bit.
HG's 15k peak today is a weekend peak on week 1. When the weekday's come back on Monday, it'll roughly cut in half all week.
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Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
The Thursday to Saturday growth trend line has far out performed the Steam average during that time frame.
We are witnessing a turnaround the likes of which we've rarely seen!
We are witnessing a turnaround the likes of which we've rarely seen!
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It's the first weekend. Nobody knows if the 5v5 had any effect on the game or it is just because of the weekend. The next weeks will tell the full story.
struggler_guts
Member
5v5 got me back in for a few matches, but I feel the boredom creeping back in. There's not enough weapons or items to keep the looting phase interesting, and the fights can easily become frustrating if your teammates aren't paying attention
ChorizoPicozo
Member
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Yo Tommy! HIGHGUARD didn't hear no bell!
It better surpass 20K by tomorrow then
Plague Doctor
Member
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Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Ya. It's not even gaining.
If you look at some of the other top played games just to see 24-48hr tracking the games trend up because it's the weekend. HG is around the same number.
Knight of the Round
Member
Highguard has whales?
HRK69
Member
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Is it doing fine? I don't give a shit about it but wish the devs a lot of success and for them to make Furi 2 already FUCKMeanwhile, this climbing banger makes it look tiny lol
HRK69
Member
Yeah, I think it's doing great for this kind of game. It's still only a few days old so views are obviously boosted
Still, SteamDB shows it beating its all-time peak every single day
I've played about 10 hours and I'm still nowhere near the top.
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For a climbing game this is like having 100k people in other games.Yeah, I think it's doing great for this kind of game. It's still only a few days old so views are obviously boosted
Still, SteamDB shows it beating its all-time peak every single day
I've played about 10 hours and I'm still nowhere near the top.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
I tried a bit, and really love it. Been on the Highguard pipe but plan to get back into Cairn soon.
struggler_guts
Member
Currently it has even less players than yesterday
Yeahhh the 5v5 was enough to get some of us back in but the gameplay loop is still stale and there's no good progression rewards to aim for.
Once again for 100th time:
They would have known all this if they had just done public tests
PeteBull
Member
Just as an update, to see how well our current favourite GAAS slop is doing:
11573 last 24h ccu peak, current ccu 4864 (understandably coz US is asleep, Europe at work/school).
Compared to arcraiders we see how terrible those numbers are after all, same time:
375294 24h ccu peak and 118548 current, and thats still not being f2p but 40€/$
11573 last 24h ccu peak, current ccu 4864 (understandably coz US is asleep, Europe at work/school).
Compared to arcraiders we see how terrible those numbers are after all, same time:
375294 24h ccu peak and 118548 current, and thats still not being f2p but 40€/$
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Cyberpunkd
Member
That's because Arc Raiders is actually a very good game.Just as an update, to see how well our current favourite GAAS slop is doing:
11573 last 24h ccu peak, current ccu 4864 (understandably coz US is asleep, Europe at work/school).
Compared to arcraiders we see how terrible those numbers are after all, same time:
375294 24h ccu peak and 118548 current, and thats still not being f2p but 40€/$
PeteBull
Member
Personally i got no skin in the game, i despise all moba/minecraft/battleroyale/extractionshooters etc, all those new genres, but gotta acknowledge some sold extremly well and managed to not only attract but more importantly retain huge playerbase.
In genres/games im emotionally invested like last example being diablo4(preordered that shit, played 2 betas even tho i knew/suspected its nothing compared to peak diablo series like d1/d2/d2lod) its easy to make mistake for me too so its not like im some brilliant genius who predicts every game's success or failure, same way with my beloved football club, deep down i know they suck but its my first and only love, so i blindly support them only to get disseapointed like always
- im sane enough to never go to the bookies/bet on sports at least, i know where my weakness is F2p game like highguard boasting about huge playerbase on launch is like a chick boasting about being able to attract(not even gonna say fuck, coz its a guy thats fucking her, she is getting fucked/dominated
) any man she wants- there is 0 skill in that, retain man u want/big playerbase and then boast about it, thats a thing thats hard to do 
mdkirby
Gold Member
Not interested in either, but this is why it definitely feels like marathon stands a far better chance of success
Negotiator101
Member
Yes it is but the developer has to get more maps, otherwise the community will get bored.
Toots
Member
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Signalis
Member
Emmy Ator Best
Member
You would have to believe that everyone in gaming is dumb as fuck!
And guess what? That's exactly it. There are 2 well run companies in gaming, Nintendo and Valve everyone else they don't know shit.