clarky
Gold Member
That's the problem, just "ok" isn't good enough when the game is just a MP hero arena shooter. Especially when most of your competition do it way better and are mostly free to play.
Last edited:
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Concord real open beta is live
- Thread starter HeisenbergFX4
- Start date
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
I don't think the game looked terrible but being ok isn't good enough especially with the good F2P games not even mentioning the woke stuff that turns a group off
havoc00
Member
Def dont disagree its in a bad spot right now, even a hail Mary day one ps plus release wont save it imo.
Sushi_Combo
Member
Based off these numbers already, I wouldn't be shocked if they delayed it by another year.
Dynasty8
Member
I still don't think a delay will solve anything. The game just doesn't appeal to most people. The character design and dialogue is downright atrocious.
ViciousAgenda
Member
The bigger youtubers are covering thr disastrous numbers now.
This negative feedback loop is unending.
This negative feedback loop is unending.
The high TTK makes it play differently than most other games which is refreshing.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Biggest problem with the game watching some vids and images is right away at face value, it looks odd, quirky, and DEI-ish. It's got an ugly pastel kind of colour pallete, but surprisingly good animation and lighting/shading. So I can understand them trying to be their own look, but it's a bad look.
The character select screen is a perfect example. Lousy characters (I dont think I've seen one person say the characters are awesome), he/him politics, but oddly solid animation, lip synch voices, and visual detail.
Last edited:
clarky
Gold Member
The high TTK and slow pace makes it feel anything but refreshing imo.
ViciousAgenda
Member
Aids Skrillex DLC incoming.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
If the game's lucky it might do ~ 50K on Steam around launch, but I can't see it doing much more in launch week than that. Not with these open beta numbers.
It might do a bit better on PS5, but not anywhere to put it near 500K launch week. 200K - 250K launch is best bet and that's with PS5 overwhelmingly carrying the game.
The game's gonna need to go in PS+ and probably go F2P on PC if they hope to reach 1 million within the first year, and grow any semblance of a decently-sized steady community.
The game has a huge focus on tertiary colors, and the palette's heavy on earth tones. Those aren't normally the kind of colors that stand out or feel "inviting" to most players; I guess for many they can have a more isolating, cold feel or come off as too dim.
The color palette might not fit typical expectations for the hero shooter genre; that plus a lot of already iffy/lackluster character designs are working against it having that immediate eye-catching appeal that games like VALORANT, Apex Legends, or the first Overwatch (all of which also have very diverse casts, FWIW) excel at.
EDIT: I'd probably throw Overwatch 2 in there as well but it still looks like Overwatch 1.5 to me. But yes, I'd say it does a better job with the new character designs than Concord seems to have pulled off, too.
It might do a bit better on PS5, but not anywhere to put it near 500K launch week. 200K - 250K launch is best bet and that's with PS5 overwhelmingly carrying the game.
The game's gonna need to go in PS+ and probably go F2P on PC if they hope to reach 1 million within the first year, and grow any semblance of a decently-sized steady community.
The game has a huge focus on tertiary colors, and the palette's heavy on earth tones. Those aren't normally the kind of colors that stand out or feel "inviting" to most players; I guess for many they can have a more isolating, cold feel or come off as too dim.
The color palette might not fit typical expectations for the hero shooter genre; that plus a lot of already iffy/lackluster character designs are working against it having that immediate eye-catching appeal that games like VALORANT, Apex Legends, or the first Overwatch (all of which also have very diverse casts, FWIW) excel at.
EDIT: I'd probably throw Overwatch 2 in there as well but it still looks like Overwatch 1.5 to me. But yes, I'd say it does a better job with the new character designs than Concord seems to have pulled off, too.
Last edited:
ViciousAgenda
Member
50k on steam? It can't even do 5k atm and the beta is free.
fudgybrownie
Member
Even lego horizons will have more players on pc and ps5 than this. Very embarrassing.
ZehDon
Gold Member
Delays are pointless if they can't improve anything. The game's core is a generation behind, and its presentation steals wholesale from a formula audiences have grown tired of. If the game released ten years ago, I imagine it might have done well - but it's simply too late. Delays can't fix that. So, they'll launch, roll out the already created post-launch content, go F2P, and Sony will pull the plug.
clarky
Gold Member
No way this does 50k on steam, its free just now and cant break 3k what makes you think over 50,000 people will put the hands in their pockets?
(it would actually need to be way more than 50k to hit that CCU). Isn't happening.
Last edited:
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Well, I went with a formula based on likely Helldivers 2 Steam sales numbers when they announced 12 million (7.2 million on Steam in a 60:40 split, my guess) compared to the peak player count which was ~ 459K, or a bit under 1/16th of the Steam sales.
So with that, Concord could in theory do close to 50K on Steam during the launch week, which is still disastrous for a game of this type and what the budget likely was. But I'll admit 50K could be overly generous. At this point I'm more interested in what the PS5 numbers look like, not just for sales but also players.
See, SIE have this potentially terrible situation where bad WOM on Steam regarding player counts could actually lead to less sales on PS5 because would-be players there could assume there's no playerbase for the game, and skip buying a game they feel doesn't have a sizable community. Otherwise what's the point, for a GAAS hero shooter? And, SIE don't publish player counts or other player data for PSN outside of ranking positions, but those are relative.
Like say the game holds #1 on PSN for a month for active players; that does mean something significant and would suggest many magnitudes better sales on PS5 vs. PC because being #1 would mean having higher concurrent & overall player counts than known major games like Fortnite and GTAV. We can assume games like those are probably doing like 500K - 1 million+ concurrent on PS5 at peak hours. But those are probably also the exceptions; the gulf between them and the #5 game could be an order of magnitudes, so then what would something like Concord landing at #10 or even lower tell us about its overall health on PS5?
I think unless it does very high placements for player engagement, the likely heavy underperformance on Steam is going to be the focal point from gamers and the media in shaping the narrative around this game. And that's going to be one of failure, because these Steam numbers are looking very bad right now.
Actually, a 1 year delay could really help the game. Most of the dislike seems to be for the character designs; I'd say at most five character designs in the game are decent: the Asian lady with the black lipstick, the big guy with the red face, the green guy with the Irish/Australian-like accent, the black guy with the cowboy-like getup, and the alien girl with purple hair.
Those are the five designs that look at least decent. The others range between unfinished to looking like generic knock-offs (Mega-Man, Futurama, and Halo-like motifs), to looking downright like Tumblr designed them. And you know what that means :/
It's like if a fighting game had a cast of unappealing fighters; doesn't matter how good the gameplay is, if the designs suck the game is dead. Over 2/3 of Concord's designs just plain suck; if they were redesigned to be a lot more appealing that would automatically give the game a major boost.
Last edited:
Nydius
Member
The only reason they should delay it is so they can put in a full fledged PVE or single player mode to give it something that other hero shooters really don’t have. If they’re not willing to add that, might as well stick to their release plans and embrace the failure.
clarky
Gold Member
Steam numbers will be a factor, but in the end the game is incredibly mid and that's no one fault apart from the Dev's.
The steam CCU's are shit for a reason, i doubt PS5 number are much better.
I also stand by my estimate, no way this hits 50k CCU, it'll be lucky if it hits 10k. The numbers have been going down all weekend that means the people who tried it are not sticking around.
I will add, i take no pleasure in seeing something fail and it must be horrible being at Firewalk these last few weeks, but we could all see this coming a mile away after that first reveal. Sony and Firwalk have nobody to blame but themselves and hopefully we see a pivot away from all this sweet baby nonsense after this mess.
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Making it F2P is probably their best hope of creating as big user base push when the game officially launches a month from now.
Problem is the game is already pre-ordered at $40.
So they got 30 days to ether stick with $40 or do a price change like Destruction All Stars. If the game launches at $40, then its not like they'll make it F2P a month later. That would piss off the payers.
So if they need to adjust price to help boost the player base, they got to do it soon before it launches at $40.
They could also do what Destruction All Stars did. I think they made it available as a PS+ download. So that would open it up to 45M subbers pending which tier it is downloadble for.
Problem is the game is already pre-ordered at $40.
So they got 30 days to ether stick with $40 or do a price change like Destruction All Stars. If the game launches at $40, then its not like they'll make it F2P a month later. That would piss off the payers.
So if they need to adjust price to help boost the player base, they got to do it soon before it launches at $40.
They could also do what Destruction All Stars did. I think they made it available as a PS+ download. So that would open it up to 45M subbers pending which tier it is downloadble for.
Last edited:
clarky
Gold Member
Wait a minute maybe im tired but I re-read your post and by you calculations you think this will sell 800k? On Steam? Alone? Behave young man.
Get the fuck outa here, this wont sell 50k total.
Last edited:
Sushi_Combo
Member
I believe the game is very light in features and doesn't offer anything that differentiates itself from the competition. Adding PVE modes would definitely be a good start. But I can understand the sentiment, even after enjoying playing it myself, it's a tough sell in an already stiff market.
Heart_Attack
Member
Why can't people state the obvious. The characters are the main reason why people don't give a shit about this game.
clarky
Gold Member
We discussed this a bit further up in the thread, problem with going free to play is they then need to make money selling cosmetics, going off the designs so far, there's not chance in hell of that either.
They are Snookered.
I think their best option would be to give it a month then stick it on PS+ that way they don't piss of the 6 people that actually bought it and still kinda go free to play.
Then add some actual decent characters.
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Fair enough. I didn't bother reading up on all the pages of stuff in this thread.
It'd be crazy if focus groups egged on this game as awesome in tests so that made the studio keep going with this art. And that assumes they even did private test gaming. As I've said many times on GAF, personally I dont think game studios really do any research tests. They might do Q&A tests, but not market tests. Studios just come up with an idea with an approved budget and just make a game praying it's a success on pure luck.
I swear to god, a typical company that makes food and drinks puts in more dollars and market tests with boring line extensions (that's when a product line gets another flavour or smell where AC Nielsen will help out with focus group tests with prototype samples) vs. game studios creating games with $50M or $100M budgets.
Last edited:
Tal Shiar Agent
Member
Oh another fucking hero shooter, pass.
Just bring back Warhawk and SOCOM Sony, stop trend chasing.
Just bring back Warhawk and SOCOM Sony, stop trend chasing.
havoc00
Member
even a Killzone 2 or 3 online remaster or something
To be fair that is one of the biggest reasons and character skins won't solve that.
People want sexy+cool female characters or cool crazy looking male characters. You don't need to be a genius to know which way they're pushing with these designs.
What's funny is a lot of girls I know that game... love sexy female characters, so it's funny how developers claim they're trying not to sexualize women, yet women WANT sexy characters.
DrMano
Neo Member
I recently played through them, they're absolutely gorgeous and the gameplay and story are still awesome today.
RPCS3 ftw
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I dont think in current day a sci-fi shooter like that would do well. I dont think the online communities for KZ games were even big to begin with and when KZ Shadowfall came out, the KZ online gamer base dropped to almost zero half a year later.
But as perhaps a SP only budget priced remake (like Activision did MW2 2009 SP remake), I can see it moving copies. The ROI on it would probably be huge even if it only sold a couple million copies for $40.
Last edited:
StereoVsn
Member
It’s like in playing Texas Hold’em Poker. Once the money is in the pot, it’s no longer yours and it’s better to drop the hand once someone called your bluff on that broken flush
. As the song says:
“You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done”
But apparently nobody at Sony plays Hold’em.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Since the game has a price tag and is available at stores, who knows how many copies it'll sell. But at this point, might as well just go through with it and make back XXX millions of sales. If this game sells lets say 500,000 copies grand total across PS/PC digital downloads and all the copies stores have as shelf and warehouse inventory, you never know. My random 500,000 sales might even be understated. Some games which sell hardly anything end up selling enough to scrape up 1M sales sometimes when you read about it.It’s like in playing Texas Hold’em Poker. Once the money is in the pot, it’s no longer yours and it’s better to drop the hand once someone called your bluff on that broken flush
As the song says:
“You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done”
But apparently nobody at Sony plays Hold’em.
So at $30-40 revenue per copy sold (Steam/retail sale or direct PS digital sale) x copies sold = it might end up making $10s of millions of revenue. Better than $0. Reap in as much sales as possible and shut down servers if player count is that bad a year later. Done. Also, the game launches in a month. Discs are already pressed and probably at distribution warehouses on skids ready to ship to stores soon anyway. So the sunk cost is already there..... unless they want to do an NBA Elite 2011 and cancel the game and ship back discs.
But if this game was F2P and truly a guaranteed disaster, then ya. Maybe shut it down asap because there's no price tag attached to every copy played.
Last edited:
Killjoy-NL
Member
Killjoy-NL
Member
That's what I've said before, they need to change the color palette of the characters.
Haymar is the only character that looks good, imo.
Not amazing, but not bad either. It's also the only normal looking character without a pastel color palette.
Freerunners like Jabali, Duchess, Lark, Star Child and Lennox wouldn't look bad at all with a different color palette.
Again, they wouldn't look amazing, but not bad either.
The rest is just lame looking, period.
At the very least, different colors on the characters would already make the game look less Woke.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
If character colour changes leads to a boost, it's probably the easiest thing to do fix. Like lots of shooters and fighting games, there's always costume or colour swaps. If costume is too hard to do fast, just add a bunch of more boldly coloured options. Or even the same base colours, but contrast/bold adjusted.
Killjoy-NL
Member
Yh, I think the cosmetic changes are easiest
Change color pallettes, do a sort of re-reveal and hope it gets some interest going.
But that's only a quick-fix for part of the issue.
The first few freerunners need to be non-Woke, if at least to show the community they are listening and aware of the issues irt the Woke nonsense.
PeteBull
Member
bad game is bad even if f2p, if game bombs at 40$ it will not recover ;D
PeteBull
Member
Exactly, delays work when u need to fix some major gamebreaking bugs, add more content and basically iron out product that has solid base, they never do when core of the game is fucked beyond repair like in this case
Killjoy-NL
Member
Bolded especially only goes for non-Gaas titles though.Exactly, delays work when u need to fix some major gamebreaking bugs, add more content and basically iron out product that has solid base, they never do when core of the game is fucked beyond repair like in this case
Live Service games add content all the time, it's the whole concept. Same as making gameplay changes.
Some of the issues people are seeing now might not even be issues anymore within the first year and things could possibly look very different in 2025.
The question is what Firewalk is going to do.
Last edited:
dreamstation
Member
What are the "better F2P games" that everyone keeps mentioning? The only better multiplayer F2P games that I can think of are THE FINALS, Valorant and maybe CS. I've tried most of them and the rest aren't worth mentioning.
Last edited:
AltogetherAndrews
Member
Apex Legends is f2p and packs 4 different competitive modes in addition to three BR variants. I was interested in Concord because, well, something new and I can see the potential if it’s allowed to evolve over the years. But it’s a tough sell.
FunkMiller
Member
The only thing this game is doing that’s good is highlighting how plausible the dead internet theory is becoming.
Have a look over on Elon’s Bullshit Machine at the #concordbeta hashtag, and you’ll see constant and consistent upbeat, positive and hyped up tweets about the game, giving the impression that a shit ton of people are playing it and enjoying it. They must be for it to be getting that much engagement!
Then over at Steam:
Have a look over on Elon’s Bullshit Machine at the #concordbeta hashtag, and you’ll see constant and consistent upbeat, positive and hyped up tweets about the game, giving the impression that a shit ton of people are playing it and enjoying it. They must be for it to be getting that much engagement!
Then over at Steam:
Last edited:
LimanimaPT
Member
Hahaha. What a disaster. Go woke go broke as they say...
Who in their right mind could possible think that the average gamer would like characters like that? And $40 to play this with no SP campaign? Who the fk runs this companies? Average joes on a gamming forum know better then this retards.
Who in their right mind could possible think that the average gamer would like characters like that? And $40 to play this with no SP campaign? Who the fk runs this companies? Average joes on a gamming forum know better then this retards.
dreamstation
Member
I wonder how many people are playing on PS5?
ViciousAgenda
Member
Xdefiant, Apex, Warframe, Warzone, Paladins for a start.