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Concord real open beta is live

HeisenbergFX4

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
ViciousAgenda said:
The servers are down for maintenance.

During a beta where there was 500 or so people playing today.

🤦‍♂️
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Save Music Video GIF by Taylor Swift
 
M

Moridianae

Member
Going to be interesting considering the player numbers for this are abysmal. Yes, PlayStation isn't represented but I doubt it's much higher, considering the latest thing this week seemed to be College Football being released.

They could go F2P, but to me there's nothing that they can do. It's just not something people want, similar to Suicide Squad.

Does Sony have the balls to actually shitcan it is the question, similar to Hyenas?
 
Men_in_Boxes

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Angry_Megalodon said:
Firing half the staff sounds kind of discriminatory.
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Can't shutter a GAAS studio in the age of GAAS.

Fbh said:
Some of us did. And we were told they don't matter and it's all just about the gameplay and once the beta was out people would forget about the characters.
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They don't matter.

It is all about gameplay & progression, two things Concord fails at. When a game fails, everyone can come out of the woodworks claiming it was for X specific reason.

When people play Chess, nobody cares what the pieces look like, only that all the pieces are in the box.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
clarky said:
People would care if the Queen identified as the King, and the Bishop had been removed from the game for touching pawns.
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Not really. They wouldn't bother picking up the lore book to even learn about that stuff. It's "Do we have all the pieces? We do? Nice. Let's play."

I'm pretty "anti woke" and my 4 mains in Concord were a gender confused alien, Oprah Winfrey the tank, a round Mexican boy that looks like a fat chick, and Cam Newton.

The silly characters didn't help, but I really don't think it's close to the primary reason why it failed.
 
HeisenbergFX4

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
clarky said:
People would care if the Queen identified as the King, and the Bishop had been removed from the game for touching pawns.
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Maybe I am shallow as fuck but (as someone who plays Chess) if I go to sit down at a table and see bright multi colored super ugly set pieces on a rainbow colored board vs a board right next to it that is hand carved medieval themed set on a classic black and white marble "board" I can guarantee I am picking the one most appealing to my eyes
 
FunkMiller

FunkMiller

Member
I know folks want to point to one thing or another for this game's rampant failure, but it's a combination of:

1. Soulless, corporate mandated games design.
2. Overt politicisation.
3. Chasing the GaaS dollar, which can only support so many games.
4. Gameplay and design that we've seen a million times before.

It's a fantastic example of how games by committee is such a bad thing.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Member
clarky said:
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.
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If the game releases as-is, it will definitely force things to change. Whether SBI were specifically involved with this game or not, it's evident a lot of the ideology of that type of consultancy group is present with most of the character designs. SIE are seeing first-hand that the vast majority, even those who are supposedly "represented" by some of the more "modern" designs, don't find them appealing.

Supposing they do send this out to die, hopefully SIE and Haven are looking at Concord reception very carefully, and using this time to fine-tune Fairgame$ character designs so they don't fall into the same trap. Again you can have your diversity: most of the successful GAAS shooters have diverse casts. But no one wants to play as an obese blueberry muffin balloon with an androgynous make-up & haircut. Unless that's in something like Fall Guys where it's played up for laughs, no one really wants it in a serious hero shooter.

Like I don't think most people would even take issue with a gay musclebound dude in this sort of game, but these devs have to still give their core audience what interests them, too. Give the small subset of the player base their gay musclebound hunk, but make sure you give the biggest demographic their hot sexy female and traditional strong straight male lead, too. You can have your black, Latino, Asian characters in there obviously but don't make it seem like you're going out of your way to avoid having white characters in the game, either.

Because that stuff is obvious at this point and most people regardless what they look like or their sexuality, don't really vibe with the blatant agenda stuff.

StreetsofBeige said:
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.
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It's either that or they take the hit & delay the game a year to fix arguably its biggest problem: the character designs.

Not saying the game doesn't have game mechanic problems too. Some really don't like being forced to play as a rotation of characters just to get to the one they actually want, for instance. But those problems would probably be a tad more tolerable if the character designs were awesome.

I'd say the game's got maybe 3 characters whose designs actually look fleshed out and interesting, and a couple of other designs that are about as good. All the rest would either need a lot of specific changes to make them more unique, or just dropped altogether. The designs are the game's biggest, most immediate problem and if those were improved, reception would be a lot more favorable.

clarky said:
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.
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What? Hell no 😂! Was being very generous and saying it could do ~ 50K on Steam in sales in the launch week, but the way things are playing out it might not do that in a month. Maybe even three months.

I do think sales will be better on PS5, but not by a gargantuan amount. Honestly I think between both platforms now, it probably won't do more than 100K in the launch month, most of those copies being on PS5.

Heart_Attack said:
Why can't people state the obvious. The characters are the main reason why people don't give a shit about this game.
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I think most people are stating the obvious :/

Killjoy-NL said:
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.
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Yeah, Haymar's character looks the most fleshed out of the bunch, easily. They also benefit from a color palette that could be called "quasi-goth with pop" where the purple and gold are saturated enough to the design stand out but not so much that it looks pastel-y (which if combined with the heavy use of earth tones would not have been good).

The Duchess design is good but also kind of reminds me of Grandma Mercy for some reason, so considering that Mercy >>>>>>>> Grandma Mercy. Jabali, Star Child and Lennox are probably the three other designs roughly on par with Haymar's but, yeah, the could use some changes in their color palette or maybe exaggerate certain parts of their design for stronger silhouettes.

I'd personally put IT-Z above Lark because Lark gives me Budget Yoshimitsu vibes (and not of the cooler Yoshimitsu versions), but their design could definitely use some edits too. They could probably have a sexier attire showing more midriff; cut out the cut pants with actual shorts and show off more of her legs bug give her kneepads. Bigger/more expressive eyes, maybe pink hair instead of purple, black shirt with pink pattern design....bam! Already a way better version of that particular design, right there.

The other designs? Just gut them and mostly redo them from scratch. They're either too generic or just uninteresting to bother keeping mostly as-is. Especially designs like Roka and Daw.....

Daw....🤣
 
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Killjoy-NL

Killjoy-NL

Member
clarky said:
"Probably won't be happy" wins understatement of the day and its only half five.
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Depends on what their expectations are.

If they anticipated this to some extent, it might not even be as bad as we think it is.
We don't even know if they expected this to be a big title either, because it never seemed like it was supposed to be.

But no doubt that there will be a lot that'll be discussed.
 
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Plague Doctor

Plague Doctor

Gold Member
Killjoy-NL said:
Depends on what their expectations are.

If they anticipated this to some extent, it might not even be as bad as we think it is.
We don't even know if they expected this to be a big title either, because it never seemed like it was supposed to be.

But no doubt that there will be a lot that'll be discussed.
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I wonder if at Sony HQ in Japan if they saw the character models, winced, and then asked, "Are we absolutely sure Westerners like fat bitches? Can we double check that data?"
 
DonkeyPunchJr

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
HeisenbergFX4 said:
Maybe I am shallow as fuck but (as someone who plays Chess) if I go to sit down at a table and see bright multi colored super ugly set pieces on a rainbow colored board vs a board right next to it that is hand carved medieval themed set on a classic black and white marble "board" I can guarantee I am picking the one most appealing to my eyes
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I’m surprised they haven’t “fixed” chess for modern audiences yet. Like maybe you can have 2 queens and 1 of them is a strong BIPOC with poofy hair. And all the pawns can be emasculated straight white men with blond hair.
 
HeisenbergFX4

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
DonkeyPunchJr said:
I’m surprised they haven’t “fixed” chess for modern audiences yet. Like maybe you can have 2 queens and 1 of them is a strong BIPOC with poofy hair. And all the pawns can be emasculated straight white men with blond hair.
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Oh you haven't looked hard enough as I have 100% seen those sets, maybe not with the hair but with dual queens or kings and other "changes"
 
Doomtrain

Doomtrain

Member
I understand the rationale behind wanting diverse casts of characters, and I think “representation” can largely be a good thing, but it’s strange that developers are leaning so far into representing negative traits and stereotypes. Overwatch is a great example of a game with a diverse roster of characters who are still aspirational and appealing. No genuine audience is asking to be “represented” as a series of obese fashion disasters with nonexistent hygiene. Concord feels one small step away from having a character who flicks Cheeto dust on enemies, and I can imagine the designers patting themselves on the back thinking that somehow means they’re owning the chuds.

The recent activist notion that people want to literally play as themselves is a myth, and even if it were true, the designers insinuating that their playerbase is hideous doesn’t feel very progressive.
 
Angry_Megalodon

Angry_Megalodon

Member
Hudo said:
I doubt that the Sony main HQ in Japan even sees stuff like character models. That shit is being greenlit by the Playstation HQ in California.
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Moreover, I doubt that execs at Sony (other than Shuehi Yoshida) have any capacity to see the shitshow this is. They will blame toxic community, the usual grifters YouTubers and move on. Don't expect any form of reflection or self-criticism.

Only when the job of some higher-up is on the line due to poor financial results, they will fire a bunch without tackling the root reasons.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Member
dreamstation said:
I wonder how many people are playing on PS5?
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Well it debuted at #29, which IIRC so did VALORANT. But these positional charts are super-relative and kind of worthless IMO, since they lack hard numbers.

For example VALORANT's #29 debut may've been with 75K players but Concord's #29 debut might have been with just 25K. Timing of debuts, what games are above and below, and player fluctuations in the games around them all make those positional rankings too fluid to be super-substantial.

That's also why so much of the conversation around Concord are with the Steam numbers; they provide more transparency & information by having hard numbers present. Ironically, even if the PS5 numbers are super magnitudes above the Steam ones, most people are going to use Steam numbers as their base of reference so they'll likely compare Concord's #29 on PSN as equivalent to whatever game's #29 on the Steam player charts.

...which right now is Palworld with 50K so.....ironically that wouldn't be too bad if Concord's PS5 player numbers were comparable. But I doubt they are 😂

Killjoy-NL said:
What people should remember is that Jim Ryan stated they know not all 12 would be a success (which would incl possible cancellations).

People acting like Sony is clueless or naive enough to think all those games will sell millions are ignoring that Sony seems pretty realistic on the matter.
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I think my problem with that strategy has always been...if you know a lot of those GAAS are going to fail, why invest the money into a known failure?

Yes I guess they could write the failures off for tax benefits, but there's still sunk costs in dev labor & time that they can't get back. Time is even more limited than money, best to not waste it.

Take Helldivers 2 for instance; yes the first game was niche but I'm pretty sure even early on, there were people at SIE who knew the sequel would be a notably bigger success considering it had great fundamental gameplay, a cool unique concept/premise/theme you don't see in most games, and now it was a full 3D/third-person viewpoint game, opening up its audience.

Even from very early on, it probably should've been discerned that Helldivers 2 had a much bigger potential reach than a game like Concord, to the point where Concord probably didn't need to be developed beyond a certain point of pre-production. SIE's got decades of project potential assessment from non-GAAS and GAAS/multiplayer games dating back to the mid '90s.

So, why do they supposedly suddenly need to bring GAAS they can likely discern will be failures before they release, to the market altogether? Why not just cancel those games before they get too deep. They do this with non-GAAS titles all the time, or cancel versions of them to then significantly revamp. Look at that 'cancelled' Sucker Punch game that eventually got completely revamped into Ghosts of Tsushima.

If they can do it for games like that, why not for GAAS titles too? The reasoning never made sense to me.

Tal Shiar Agent said:
Why did Sony fund this instead of a new Warhawk, SOCOM, or Killzone? Doesn't make any sense.

I mean seriously, a trend chasing hero shooter in 2024? Its like 6 years past the prime of that genre and with the Steam numbers we are seeing this game is DOA (as I expected tbh).

Sony has a rich history of multiplayer games, why wouldn't they fund something in its own niche, where there aren't a half dozen other games like it still around and another two dozen that failed?

Warhawk, a large scale Battlefield-like but with old school arcade shooter mechanics. SOCOM, a small scale hardcore tactical third-person shooter. Killzone, a medium scale traditional FPS. MAG, a very large scale multi-team objective based FPS.

But instead we've got this.
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This is actually a point about SIE's overall GAAS approach I was worried about. Having 12 GAAS is one thing; most of them pushing into heavily saturated segments of that market is a whole other problem. The hero shooter space isn't sparse for options, and the champs in that market are arguably stronger than ever. So even if Concord were the perfect game, it'd likely still struggle to find an audience simply because it doesn't have the brand name or community rapport of a VALORANT, Apex Legends, Overwatch etc. Its best chance would've been if Overwatch 2 were practically dead, but that game seems to have stabilized and rebound some after the disastrous launch. Like its Steam numbers aren't crazy amazing, but PC-wise we know Blizzard's real audience is on Battle.NET. Concord doesn't have any benefit like that.

I'm still perplexed why they haven't brought MLB The Show to mobile, where they could tie in with fantasy league stuff (that's a BIG market btw). Why not try something novel like a GAAS 4x RTS, or a live-service rhythm game? I'm pretty sure they could've pushed for a separate GT Sport 2 that's wholly focused online and on PS5 & PC. That's not even getting into stuff like a new SOCOM or Syphon Filter (which could've probably fit as a GAAS model). The Twisted Metal GAAS was cancelled...why didn't they focus that as a reboot of the original series with a live-service MP component added to it?

And maybe the biggest one...why didn't they remake TLOU1 Factions? Add some TLOU2 content, release it with TLOU1 Remake and offer is as a mode upgrade to TLOU2 owners. Did TLOU2 Factions really need to be its own massive GAAS? Probably not.
 
Nydius

Nydius

Member
Angry_Megalodon said:
The so-called strategy of "let's do 12 GAAS so 2 or 3 succeed" is so full-retard that it amazes me that some people see it as reasonable or as high-level thinking.
Click to expand...

It’s quite literally the same faulty logic of a lottery addict spending their entire paycheck on scratchers saying, “I only need one to hit the jackpot.”

Then none of them do and they can’t pay rent for the month. It’s asinine.
 
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Doomtrain said:
I understand the rationale behind wanting diverse casts of characters, and I think “representation” can largely be a good thing, but it’s strange that developers are leaning so far into representing negative traits and stereotypes.
Click to expand...
Because when it comes to representation, the only way to represent it so everyone can obviously see it is to make it ultra blatant and stereotypical. It's counter intuitive to oppressed groups claiming "we look the same, so treat us the same". But then in media, they got to show it in your face so you cant miss it.

For example, the only they/them character is the one with the helmet who resembles Vasquez in Aliens. So they chose the butchy human that stereotypically probably matches the closest, instead of a character that looks straight up hetero or macho hunk. They could call Star Child they/them too. Why not? It's possible. But they chose the Vasquez one.
 
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BigBeauford

BigBeauford

Member
The overthinking about this games' failure is maximum cope or a gross overestimation of the average person's shallowness. It is absolutely this games' aesthetics. It's why the most popular music artists, actors, streamers, and real estate agents all have one thing in common: mass fuckable appeal.
 
Killjoy-NL

Killjoy-NL

Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
I think my problem with that strategy has always been...if you know a lot of those GAAS are going to fail, why invest the money into a known failure?

Yes I guess they could write the failures off for tax benefits, but there's still sunk costs in dev labor & time that they can't get back. Time is even more limited than money, best to not waste it.

Take Helldivers 2 for instance; yes the first game was niche but I'm pretty sure even early on, there were people at SIE who knew the sequel would be a notably bigger success considering it had great fundamental gameplay, a cool unique concept/premise/theme you don't see in most games, and now it was a full 3D/third-person viewpoint game, opening up its audience.

Even from very early on, it probably should've been discerned that Helldivers 2 had a much bigger potential reach than a game like Concord, to the point where Concord probably didn't need to be developed beyond a certain point of pre-production. SIE's got decades of project potential assessment from non-GAAS and GAAS/multiplayer games dating back to the mid '90s.

So, why do they supposedly suddenly need to bring GAAS they can likely discern will be failures before they release, to the market altogether? Why not just cancel those games before they get too deep. They do this with non-GAAS titles all the time, or cancel versions of them to then significantly revamp. Look at that 'cancelled' Sucker Punch game that eventually got completely revamped into Ghosts of Tsushima.

If they can do it for games like that, why not for GAAS titles too? The reasoning never made sense to me.
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I dunno. My only guess is that Sony sees these projects as long-term investments.
For whatever reason, Sony has seen something in Firewalk and their project.
Same as Bungie and Fairgame$.

Another thing to keep in mind is that MS has started buying up major publishers and Sony made it clear that they want to be less reliant on 3rd party as a result.
For that, they would need Gaas as well. This is on top of various other reasons, mostly related with increasing revenue.

They could have made a wrong call by letting Concord go on, but nobody can deny the production value and level of polish, so maybe that's ultimately what Sony was after.
 
Killjoy-NL

Killjoy-NL

Member
Nydius said:
It’s quite literally the same faulty logic of a lottery addict spending their entire paycheck on scratchers saying, “I only need one to hit the jackpot.”

Then none of them do and they can’t pay rent for the month. It’s asinine.
Click to expand...
Angry_Megalodon said:
The so-called strategy of "let's do 12 GAAS so 2 or 3 succeed" is so full-retard that it amazes me that some people see it as reasonable or as high-level thinking.
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Except Playstation is marketleader, so I'm pretty sure they know how to run a business.
They also have had amazing multiplayer titles before, so all they need is to get some projects going after such a long time of singleplayer focus.
 
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Nydius said:
It’s quite literally the same faulty logic of a lottery addict spending their entire paycheck on scratchers saying, “I only need one to hit the jackpot.”

Then none of them do and they can’t pay rent for the month. It’s asinine.
Click to expand...
Angry_Megalodon said:
The so-called strategy of "let's do 12 GAAS so 2 or 3 succeed" is so full-retard that it amazes me that some people see it as reasonable or as high-level thinking.
Click to expand...
It must be a video game strategy, because I have never ever seen this product line strategy ever in 25 years working. Any marketing or R&D team drumming up ideas telling execs "Hey, we got 10 big budget ideas" and then the exec team replies "great idea, we only need one biggie to rock and roll, so lets do em all" I've never witnessed.

You only release products if they are worthy to stand on their own two feet.
 
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