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How Concord can (theoretically) succeed...

So theoretically, they could stop development of it, and go to vegas with the unspent advertising money and put it all on 12 black and hope it lands on it.

The other option is to quickly nuke 80% of that roster and make them into interesting characters you either want to fuck or fight, then double down on their Bungie pedigree and make the weapons and gunplay and moment-to-moment gameplay top tier.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Even you have not faith in the game.

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None have.

And the thing about GAAS - especially PvPs - is that they tend to fail if people aren't interested in them.
I'm referring to your "brand devaluation" comment. This flopping wouldn't hurt any more or less than any other PlayStation Studios flop.
 

SHA

Member
It sounds like what the best of both Activision and Blizzard, even fused together, could ever do. If this is true then the ABK deal is just on paper cause this stuff is what supposed to come from them

I bet it'll take a lot to come close to it like Bungie.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
The Northstar isn't the only ship. In the CG trailer, the competing team's ship was called the "The Rexxus" or something like that.
Yeah, I noticed that but didn't it keep flipping over from The Northstar to The Rexxuss, which suggests to me that every player is on The Northstar and all your opponents will be on The Rexxus. The way they phrased it in the trailer suggested all players are on The Northstar too.
 

Shifty1897

Member
Maybe if Concord went back in time and released before Overwatch, it would be a huge hit. Now though, multiple hero shooters have released and died on arrival at this point. I don't see anything in this trailer that shows this will be different. I'd love to be wrong though.
 

simpatico

Member
How Concord can theoretically succeed:

Start deleting hard drives. Just show up at the studio and go door to door. "what are you doing in here?" deleting your hard drive. "but it's backed up on the server". Nope. Deleted that on the way here. *knock knock* Hey writing team. Delete it. "delete what?" Every byte of data you've created for this project. All of them. Hell I even want your monitor settings turned back to default. Hey art team, you can keep some environmental textures, but everything else..... delete it.

After this is done, Sony tells them to make a cool, story SP FPS with a small to medium sized MP component. They can call that game Concord.
 
Is the beta only accessible through pre-ordering, or was it early access to the open beta for pre-orders?

With all the drama, I'm actually on the fence to pre-order it just to check out the beta when the time comes.
(Couldn't give two fucks about wasting money even at full-price)

Read someone's full post please...
 
How do the PS fans call it? Brand devaluation? Because a monumental live service flop from a Sony studio would cause quite some damage.

Maybe?

But Sony canning this game because of internet gamer rage and dogpiling, when NO ONE has actually played the game would be ridiculous.

The game might be generic but I have faith that Sony is not going to release a complete turd. If they do ill happily eat crow.

If the beta releases and people find legit reasons to hate it then it is what it is.
 
It can succeed because casuals love garbage. It can also fail because those same casuals love familiar garbage so it's hard to get them away from their garbage of choice.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I can't disagree with anything you said, it's pretty reasonable.

I'm just honestly baffled by how boring the characters look... I'm not joking, this game has the most boring character designs I ever seen in any video game, ever.

There's no personality in them whatsoever. Even if the gameplay is good, who will I even play as?


fluxflashor_20240530181119.webp


Like, look at them, dude. Just mind-numbingly boring...

(I won't go on about how 90% of the characters are black, we know, Sweet Baby, their form of diversity is also mind-numbingly boring)
LOL



42zxuunraq3d1.png
 
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I don't really give a fuck about the aesthetics, or woke characters. I care about the gameplay. This looks 3 years too late the party and too slow paced for me to even consider playing it. I know that promo gameplay is usually slow but just character movement speeds etc - this game looks have an incredibly low ceiling in terms of mechanics. Not for me.

It's such a shame modern gamers don't really go for shooters with good mechanics these days. Not counting cs2 as a new game...what even is there that has been successful? Apex is about the only game I can think of.
 

R3EUIL

Member
The game's success will depend on the public's opinion in the open beta. From the trailer, the game seems to have good gameplay, enough to stand out in this saturated genre
 

R3EUIL

Member
I can't disagree with anything you said, it's pretty reasonable.

I'm just honestly baffled by how boring the characters look... I'm not joking, this game has the most boring character designs I ever seen in any video game, ever.

There's no personality in them whatsoever. Even if the gameplay is good, who will I even play as?


fluxflashor_20240530181119.webp


Like, look at them, dude. Just mind-numbingly boring...

(I won't go on about how 90% of the characters are black, we know, Sweet Baby, their form of diversity is also mind-numbingly boring)
This catalog of characters looks like a parody that an anti-Woke would make to mock the Woke
 

Fbh

Member
Reveal it was all a joke and you actually play as some badass space marines hunting down the rainbow bootleg Marvel characters

n0I2HG.gif


You could even have fun crossover events with Helldivers 2
 

Pejo

Gold Member
I admire your dedication to the bit, but I think the gig is up on this one, unless they do massive overhauls. The verdict seems to be out on this one already before it's even released.
 

CamHostage

Member
Interesting thing about this discussion is that it doesn't mean fuck-all what GAF's opinion of the game is... Nobody on this forum would admit on their lives to ever having played Fortnite or GTA Online, yet for a quantity of gamers dwarfing many other game's fanbases (including most of the games we talk about endlessly on this forum,) those are the only games they play. We're old dinosaurs out here hoping this ice melts soon so we can eat again...

That said, I don't know if Concord has it. The visual performance was okay'ish and the gameplay had a few charms, but nothing sold it as compelling to try IMO and everything felt too similar to dominant hits to stand out in any way on its own. Maybe when you control it and get a feel for the battle pacing then it'll reveal unique values, (sometimes a book gets misjudged by its cover,) but I feel like it'd take more effort than we've seen so far to get this into players' hands even for a trial. GaaS players are busy and committed, and I'm not seeing what's in here that would pull their interest to it.
 
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geary

Member
The backlip some of you are doing to justify or ‘give it a chance, maybe is good’ is noteworthy. Hope you have the same faith in the others hero shooters no made by PS, cause until now you shit on all them.
 
That's practically nobody. There's already ~60M PS5 owners.
Think of it like polls work. Because that's basically what a you tube dislike bar is. If people are "voting" in a specific direction, you can generally assume the rest of the people will feel the same.
 

gothmog

Gold Member
The CGI trailer looked awesome but the game looked like shit. Specifically, generic, boring unfun - I did not get any compelling differentiator. The involvement of Sweet Baby is a big no no.
What looked interesting to me was what looked like Destiny inspired powers with grenades and like jump in powers that reminded me of Titans.

I would say they should delay it but I'm not sure that will help as they probably need feedback. . I think a long beta and then a shutdown to action on what they hear from the community could do wonders for it.
 

Killjoy-NL

Banned
Think of it like polls work. Because that's basically what a you tube dislike bar is. If people are "voting" in a specific direction, you can generally assume the rest of the people will feel the same.
I know how it works. But most people won't care and when the next flagship titles release, people will have forgotten about a possible Concord bomb.

It wouldn't even be the first Playstation game to bomb.

Acting like Playstation will be devalued if Concord bombs is utter nonsense.
Especially with GTA VI coming next year.
 
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Robb

Gold Member
Think of it like polls work. Because that's basically what a you tube dislike bar is.
No it’s not, for polls to be able to draw conclusions on population level the sample has to be randomized (or at the very least use probability based sampling).
 
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https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F200128114911-01-space-shuttle-challenger-restricted.jpg

(Photo of Concords reveal at yesterdays State of Play)


The internet has been deservingly rough on Concords debut. Instead of piling on, I thought it might be more interesting to envision a scenario where Concord succeeds and grab a foothold in the market. There's 3 core pillars in what makes a compelling multiplayer title...

PlayStyle asymmetry - We saw gameplay from the perspective of 5 characters. Vale (Sniper, Proxy mine), Lennox (Pistol, Axe), Haymar (Crossbow, Flashbang), Star Child (Grenade launcher, Hulk leap), and 1-Off (Vacuum gun, launch pad). I suspect what they're going with here is a MOBA like setup where each character has specific roles (warden, anchor, ranger, breacher, tactician) as well as a primary, secondary, utility, and movement abilities. From my perspective, they all played relatively similarly and the asymmetry is nothing to write home about. Here's what they have to say about on the PlayStation Blog...

"While our core gunplay will feel familiar to shooter fans, the versatility and variety of each Freegunner and their abilities makes it so aim and thumbskill alone aren’t always enough to come out on top. Each Freegunner’s abilities are designed to make it so that players of a wide range of skill levels and play styles can be effective—even those that are new to the genre—while providing additional challenge and depth for those looking for high-stakes, high-sweat competitive play."

That quote is significantly more interesting than the gameplay we saw. The trailer did not showcase anything special about playstyle asymmetry more than what's already standard in the industry. If Concord is going to launch, the other 11 characters really need to play and feel vastly different than the 5 that were showcased.

Progression - Games that make the player feel like they're progressing from hour 100 to hour 300 have a massive competitive advantage over games that start to feel repetitive at hour 30. At this point, we know nothing about Concords progression. Here's what they mention on the blog...

"The Freegunners roam the stars taking high-stakes jobs on worlds across Wild space, where they face other fiercely competitive Freegunner crews. From match-to-match, you’ll form your team of Freegunners with other players and battle it out with rival crews to take home the reward across a variety of maps and modes."

If Firewalk can legitimately create "high-stakes" jobs, meaning the player will lose a lot if they fail (think Escape from Tarkov), then they could have something interesting. If the stakes boil down to something like Overwatch, where your rank goes up or down slightly after every match, the game will wallow. It's possible that Firewalk is doing something interesting with the ships, though the fact that everyone ship is called "The Northstar" doesn't fill me with confidence.

Social Aspect - Humans are the most social animal on earth. A game that encourages social interactions has a distinct advantage over one that doesn't. The theme of Concord (Guardians of the Galaxy) certainly lends itself to players getting to know one another, and the gameplay is slow enough to encourage teamplay tactics...so they might have something here. It's possible the trailer was meant to be a Michael Bay action movie where the public is supposed to be wowed by chaos and the actual gameplay is much more teamwork oriented.


I also don't think the Sweet Baby Incification will hurt the games chances. Multiplayer gamers are better equipped to ignore that stuff if the gameplay is there. The weekly cutscenes sound lame as hell, but we'll almost certainly be able to ignore them. Still, unless I'm missing something, it seems like a crazy poor use of resources for a PvP multiplayer game. We'll be seeimg more of this at Geoff Keighlys Summer Game Fest so hopefully the debut trailer was just poorly executed.
Look, i ain't going to bash on the game without having seen enough of it.
It pays to be suspicious and wary, especially since the only success Sony's had in this space is HellDivers II, which should be their sign and signal to acquire Arrowhead as they seem to be very good at the genre and could even help Firewalk.

The fact that they acquired Firewalk, without them having released anything successful that gives them a proven track record is concerning. I'll be keeping an eye on Concord, but words alone and fancy blog posts aren't convincing enough for me, i need to see more and we've had enough hero shooters as it is.

This would need to do something different to stand out in the dead sea of hero shooters, otherwise it'll probably be DoA before it even releases. Hopefully the betas provide a clearer picture for what the game does that makes it different from everything else.
 
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FunkMiller

Member
Reveal it was all a joke and you actually play as some badass space marines hunting down the rainbow bootleg Marvel characters

n0I2HG.gif


You could even have fun crossover events with Helldivers 2

Off topic, but if Space Marine 2 is as good as it looks, and the multiplayer is implemented well, it’s going to eat Helldivers 2 for lunch. Helldivers is 40K lite anyway, and the full blown thing should go down very well.
 

ZehDon

Member
Like Suicide Squad, and Redfall before it, Concord reeked from the first frame of its reveal. Something this fundamentally unappealing can't "succeed" because it's just not interesting.
 
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