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Is Concord headed to be Sony's biggest first party flop ever?

Aren't gacha games mostly SP titles? Or at least PvE titles? Again, that type of gamer requires a higher quality of character design than a multiplayer gamer.


But this is not a MP game like COD or Rocket League. There are characters with lore, story, and cinematics. They are supposed to matter. They don't, because they suck.
 

Hunnybun

Member
The character design still look pretty in line with modern times unfortunately.

Yeah but that's just cos it's all still washing through the system. Nobody actually wants more of this shit now, it's over; I guarantee no game like this would be given the go ahead today.
 
Yeah but that's just cos it's all still washing through the system. Nobody actually wants more of this shit now, it's over; I guarantee no game like this would be given the go ahead today.

Yeah, I really would like to hope you are right, but.... yeah...........modern day western game devs will modern day game dev.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
why are you bringing up Rust? Every multiplayer game is different. People go into a survival game expecting different things from a character-focused shooter. For a character focused shooter, people want appealing characters. This isn't hard.
I'm bringing up Rust, as well as a bunch of other uber successful PvP games to illustrate the point that character design doesn't matter at nearly the degree for PvP gamers as it does to single player gamers. PUBG is another good example of a PvP game taking off with generic, aesthetically displeasing characters.

When I play basketball, I don't care what shoes I'm wearing. I don't care what shoes my opponent is wearing. All I care about is strategy and positioning and strengths vs weaknesses. It's the PvP mechanic oriented mindset.

I've been banned from threads at the almighty NeoGAF for being too "anti woke". I can't stand that stuff. My most played characters are tank Lizzo, a gender confused alien, and Daw, a male that I thought was a woman during the lead up to the beta.

I don't play with these characters because I've cooled on wokeness. I play these characters because I feel like I'm most effective with them. I never think about the characters identity during gameplay only what strategic abilities that can help my team win.
Overwatch came out at the same time as Battleborn. Battleborn also would have felt fresh compared to TF2. HHow did it do? OW's characters were a HUGE part of the game's initial success.
It wasn't. Battleborne failed because it wasn't fun to play. It had nothing to do with the characte design. Overwatch succeeded because Blizzard made a game that feels great to play. I've heard this repeatedly echoed in the media this week and it's just flat out wrong. The media is SP oriented. Blizzard leveraged the medias SP orientation to spread the word about Overwatch. PvP gamers heard the word and tried the game out.
The hidden stories, the wide variety, the coomshit for the degenerates, it all played a factor. Unfortunately, it's virtally impossible to find anything on the internet older than 6 months, but here is one example of an article talking about the characters and how they were made.
Overwatches characters are so important they force you to look up their stories on YouTube rather than in the client. PvP players don't care about story because "WE" are playing the game. Multiplayer is our story, not DVAs or Winston's or Reinhardt.

This is going to sound mean, and I'm not trying to sound mean, but you don't seem to have a good grasp on why people play these games and how people behave. Gameplay is one factor, but not the only factor. People go into different games with different expectations. Im not even convinced you necessarily need good gameplay (Again, Modern Warfare 2 sucked ass).
I'm more likely to take your word on things pertaining to single player.

Multiplayer is my zone.
 
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jumpship

Member
I just don't agree

If Devs are on payrolls for years working on a shooter with people who hates guns and their product is a colossal cluster fuck of a flop they don't deserve to be on a pay roll moving forward

How many games like this do you keep giving them before major changes and firings are made

These people made their beds now the professor can go flip burgers

Go buy more concord copies then, bro, thats the only way that failed dev studio doesnt get lay offs/doesnt get closed, i dont wanna touch that woke gaas game with a stick even :D

I get you don't like the game I just find it distasteful to hope people lose their jobs over it and say it's for the good of the industry if the studio were gone.

It's weird, just moving on to another game would take less energy.

Applying the same attitude to other forms of entertainment media to make a point.

Film you watched and didn't enjoy, lay off all film crew involved, close the production studio. It's shit.
Book you read and didn't like, Author should be dropped close the publisher. It's shit.
Song you heard and didn't like, Artist should be dropped, close the studio. It's shit.

No one thinks this way. People are generally quite rational about things they don't like or care for until it comes to gaming.
 

PeteBull

Gold Member
I get you don't like the game I just find it distasteful to hope people lose their jobs over it and say it's for the good of the industry if the studio were gone.

It's weird, just moving on to another game would take less energy.

Applying the same attitude to other forms of entertainment media to make a point.

Film you watched and didn't enjoy, lay off all film crew involved, close the production studio. It's shit.
Book you read and didn't like, Author should be dropped close the publisher. It's shit.
Song you heard and didn't like, Artist should be dropped, close the studio. It's shit.

No one thinks this way. People are generally quite rational about things they don't like or care for until it comes to gaming.
We have capitalism, bro, failure of a game wont be rewarded, in the end my opinion doesnt matter since im ur avg mortal, but even guy like myself can clearly see game was sent to die at the cost of pushing woke agenda- actions have consequences and devs gotta bear them, its real world, not woke bubble of fairy tailes with fat lesbians being heroes :)
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I'm bringing up Rust, as well as a bunch of other uber successful PvP games to illustrate the point that character design doesn't matter at nearly the degree for PvP gamers as it does to single player gamers. PUBG is another good example of a PvP game taking off with generic, aesthetically displeasing characters.

When I play basketball, I don't care what shoes I'm wearing. I don't care what shoes my opponent is wearing. All I care about is strategy and positioning and strengths vs weaknesses. It's the PvP mechanic oriented mindset.

I've been banned from threads at the almighty NeoGAF for being too "anti woke". I can't stand that stuff. My most played characters are tank Lizzo, a gender confused alien, and Daw, a male that I thought was a woman during the lead up to the beta.

I don't play with these characters because I've cooled on wokeness. I play these characters because I feel like I'm most effective with them. I never think about the characters identity during gameplay only what strategic abilities that can help my team win.

It wasn't. Battleborne failed because it wasn't fun to play. It had nothing to do with the characte design. Overwatch succeeded because Blizzard made a game that feels great to play. I've heard this repeatedly echoed in the media this week and it's just flat out wrong. The media is SP oriented. Blizzard leveraged the medias SP orientation to spread the word about Overwatch. PvP gamers heard the word and tried the game out.

Overwatches characters are so important they force you to look up their stories on YouTube rather than in the client. PvP players don't care about story because "WE" are playing the game. Multiplayer is our story, not DVAs or Winston's or Reinhardt.


I'm more likely to take your word on things pertaining to single player.

Multiplayer is my zone.
Wowee, good for you that you don’t care about appearance at all and only care about the gameplay. Most people aren’t like that.

This game’s failure isn’t due to gameplay mechanics. If that were the case, we would’ve seen a large number of players in the beta before dropping off.

The failure was because people were so fucking put off of the game after the initial reveal that they didn’t even give it a try (for free) in the first place.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Wowee, good for you that you don’t care about appearance at all and only care about the gameplay. Most people aren’t like that.

This game’s failure isn’t due to gameplay mechanics. If that were the case, we would’ve seen a large number of players in the beta before dropping off.

The failure was because people were so fucking put off of the game after the initial reveal that they didn’t even give it a try (for free) in the first place.
You don't think it's interesting how the one MP (PvP) oriented gamer is talking to a bunch of SP (PvE) oriented gamers and viewes PvP in a drastically different light? It's almost as crazy as a bunch of dating sim fans are telling a sim racing fan on how Gran Turismo could improve going forward. It's hard to take off our glasses and see the other perspective.
 

clarky

Gold Member
You don't think it's interesting how the one MP (PvP) oriented gamer is talking to a bunch of SP (PvE) oriented gamers and viewes PvP in a drastically different light? It's almost as crazy as a bunch of dating sim fans are telling a sim racing fan on how Gran Turismo could improve going forward. It's hard to take off our glasses and see the other perspective.
I'm play MP games primarily, and the the guy has a point. This game started off on the wrong foot with the shitty aesthetics.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
You don't think it's interesting how the one MP (PvP) oriented gamer is talking to a bunch of SP (PvE) oriented gamers and viewes PvP in a drastically different light? It's almost as crazy as a bunch of dating sim fans are telling a sim racing fan on how Gran Turismo could improve going forward. It's hard to take off our glasses and see the other perspective.

Again, PVP oriented gamers spend billions a year on cosmetic skins. Including in FPS games. If cosmetics, appearances, look of characters didn't matter, then there would be no battlepass and no cosmetic unlocks and no skin stores. Because it wouldn't matter. People would just play using flat shaded squares made of 25 polygons in an empty maze like in Faceball 2000.

You are just wrong. You don't understand how normal people think and behave and play vidya. People don't see games as just a bunch of mechanics, it is a holistic enterprise betwee ngameplay, art, music, character design, progression, everything.
 
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clarky

Gold Member
Again, PVP oriented gamers spend billions a year on cosmetic skins. Including in FPS games. If cosmetics, appearances, look of characters didn't matter, then there would be no battlepass and no cosmetic unlocks and no skin stores. Because it wouldn't matter. People would just play using flat shaded squares made of 25 polygons in an empty maze like in Faceball 2000.

You are just wrong. You don't understand how normal people think and behave and play vidya. People don't see games as just a bunch of mechanics, it is a holistic enterprise betwee ngameplay, art, music, character design, progression, everything.
This. Also not very hard to understand.
 
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HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
I get you don't like the game I just find it distasteful to hope people lose their jobs over it and say it's for the good of the industry if the studio were gone.

It's weird, just moving on to another game would take less energy.

Applying the same attitude to other forms of entertainment media to make a point.

Film you watched and didn't enjoy, lay off all film crew involved, close the production studio. It's shit.
Book you read and didn't like, Author should be dropped close the publisher. It's shit.
Song you heard and didn't like, Artist should be dropped, close the studio. It's shit.

No one thinks this way. People are generally quite rational about things they don't like or care for until it comes to gaming.
There is also a big difference between "Oh I didn't like this" and "Oh wow thats a fucking disaster"

I bet if you did some digging you would find examples of what you said as shut down after a colossal flop
 
Again, PVP oriented gamers spend billions a year on cosmetic skins. Including in FPS games. If cosmetics, appearances, look of characters didn't matter, then there would be no battlepass and no cosmetic unlocks and no skin stores. Because it wouldn't matter. People would just play using flat shaded squares made of 25 polygons in an empty maze like in Faceball 2000.

You are just wrong. You don't understand how normal people think and behave and play vidya. People don't see games as just a bunch of mechanics, it is a holistic enterprise betwee ngameplay, art, music, character design, progression, everything.
Absolutely nailed it
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
You don't think it's interesting how the one MP (PvP) oriented gamer is talking to a bunch of SP (PvE) oriented gamers and viewes PvP in a drastically different light? It's almost as crazy as a bunch of dating sim fans are telling a sim racing fan on how Gran Turismo could improve going forward. It's hard to take off our glasses and see the other perspective.
No, what’s interesting is how you give a bunch of examples of games that are not hero shooters as if they prove that people shouldn’t care about the character designs in a hero shooter.

And what’s also interesting is you still haven’t given an explanation for why so astonishingly few people even tried this game to begin with.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
I'm play MP games primarily, and the the guy has a point. This game started off on the wrong foot with the shitty aesthetics.
It started out on the wrong foot by doing nothing drastically different than it's competitors.
Again, PVP oriented gamers spend billions a year on cosmetic skins. Including in FPS games. If cosmetics, appearances, look of characters didn't matter, then there would be no battlepass and no cosmetic unlocks and no skin stores. Because it wouldn't matter. People would just play using flat shaded squares made of 25 polygons in an empty maze like in Faceball 2000.
I've addressed this one before. I'll do it again.

The basketball sneaker industry makes a ton of money every year as well. Basketball players don't play basketball because of the sneakers. They play basketball because the actual act of playing basketball is enjoyable. The sneaker industry has to work off that base. The foundation is the act of playing basketball...then the tertiary business minds glob on to that foundation.

You are just wrong. You don't understand how normal people think and behave and play vidya. People don't see games as just a bunch of mechanics, it is a holistic enterprise betwee ngameplay, art, music, character design, progression, everything.
I'm not wrong. I've listed a ton of uber successful PvP multiplayer games that have horrendous default characters. Everyone in this thread knows that you can not find the same parallell in SP.

tumblr_mfyipefIgk1r331r3o2_250.gifv


Multiplayer is the province of PvP players diffusionx.
 

Fess

Member
Damn, can I move to where you live? Land whales are the norm where I live.
There are fat people everywhere but I don’t believe there is a single place on the planet where there are NO beautiful people.

Except in some western video games! where classic beauty just aren’t allowed to exist.

It’s the complete absence that is so bizarre. Like why is that even happening? What userbase gets excited about that? A PR for dummies guide would’ve explained that that’s a bad idea, especially for a new IP.

On topic, things aren’t going well… 0 users on right now, 194 is 24h peak, going by steamcharts
Beta is over…
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
No, what’s interesting is how you give a bunch of examples of games that are not hero shooters as if they prove that people shouldn’t care about the character designs in a hero shooter.
You're just awkwardly trying to draw a circle around certain data point to force your point. TF2 is one of the most popular hero shooters on the market today. It has some of the worst character designs. PvP players don't care because we value other things more highly. Gigantic has great character designs...again nobody cares about that stuff in PvP.
And what’s also interesting is you still haven’t given an explanation for why so astonishingly few people even tried this game to begin with.
I call it the Narnia Closet effect. There was no promise of magic, or story, or adventure when you pulled open the doors of Concord. Everyone just looked at it and said "I know what's behind those doors. I've seen it a thousand times."
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
If you're going to be an absolute cunt and insist people call you by a title, then go for something a bit bigger than 'Professor'.

I am now Lord High Inquisitorix Masteronicus Funk Of Miller - Bulwark Of The Western Reaches, Marshal Of The Thirteen Oceans, Grand Executioner Of The Daemonlord Malhorgoroth, and Keeper Of The Rancid Flame Of Pissweasel.

...but you cunts can call me 'Quizzy'.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
You're just awkwardly trying to draw a circle around certain data point to force your point. TF2 is one of the most popular hero shooters on the market today. It has some of the worst character designs. PvP players don't care because we value other things more highly. Gigantic has great character designs...again nobody cares about that stuff in PvP.
Wow dude, I honestly can’t tell if you’re trolling or just stupid. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you are just a very skilled troll pretending to be a clueless moron and basking in the glorious attention.

Either way, you aren’t worth any more of my time. Adios.
 
From here on out I wish to be known as Professor Omega Supreme

I am now Lord High Inquisitorix Masteronicus Funk Of Miller - Bulwark Of The Western Reaches, Marshal Of The Thirteen Oceans, Grand Executioner Of The Daemonlord Malhorgoroth, and Keeper Of The Rancid Flame Of Pissweasel.

...but you cunts can call me 'Quizzy'.

Professor.

Quizzy.
 
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As if the people who play Battle Royale are any different than the people who played Overwatch. PvP players share the same mindset. The competitive spirit applies the same logic everywhere.
Many people treat those games as lifestyle games, a place where they hang with their friends after work or school. A fandom also requires characters that speak to the users and make people want to "be like". That's why live service games make a lot of money, selling skins and other type of cosmetic items. That shit doesn't work when you have the most bland, unappealing cast of characters. And that's a big reason why this game failed.

They'd be much better off having a decent character creation tool and allowing each person to create their character, but when they force specific characters, they better be extremely appealing.

And now this game will sink, perhaps some kind of lesson is learned with it.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Many people treat those games as lifestyle games, a place where they hang with their friends after work or school. A fandom also requires characters that speak to the users and make people want to "be like". That's why live service games make a lot of money, selling skins and other type of cosmetic items. That shit doesn't work when you have the most bland, unappealing cast of characters.
Concord has better default characters than a ton of uber successful multiplayer games. It's not that.

Single player gamers can't read PvP games like PvP gamers can. It's a different code.
 

Nydius

Member
I get you don't like the game I just find it distasteful to hope people lose their jobs over it and say it's for the good of the industry if the studio were gone.

It's weird, just moving on to another game would take less energy.

Applying the same attitude to other forms of entertainment media to make a point.

Film you watched and didn't enjoy, lay off all film crew involved, close the production studio. It's shit.
Book you read and didn't like, Author should be dropped close the publisher. It's shit.
Song you heard and didn't like, Artist should be dropped, close the studio. It's shit.

No one thinks this way. People are generally quite rational about things they don't like or care for until it comes to gaming.

Not that I agree with wishing anyone lose their jobs but I think you're missing a critical point:

Whether or not the game bombs, they already got paid for their work. It's not like they only get paid if the game sells well. None of them get residuals like the other mediums you listed. They were hired for a job, did their job, was paid for it and if the game fails to perform then the studio might go under and people might get laid off or reassigned. That's just the nature of business. They're not guaranteed a job in perpetuity.

[Edit: Noticed you specifically mentioned "film crew" in your movie analogy. They don't get residuals but they also aren't guaranteed work either. They, like game devs, get paid for their work as it happens and once a film project ends, so does their job. Then they have to go find another one. That's why working in the movie industry, even behind the scenes, is ridiculously cutthroat.]
 
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Concord has better default characters than a ton of uber successful multiplayer games. It's not that.

Single player gamers can't read PvP games like PvP gamers can. It's a different code.
I don't know what you're referring to. This game isn't even out and it's already a mega failure. I've shared my reasons why I believe it's the case, several others have as well.
What is your contention exactly about this game? That it's not a complete fail or that the reasons why it is are different ones?
 
Concord has better default characters than a ton of uber successful multiplayer games. It's not that.

Single player gamers can't read PvP games like PvP gamers can. It's a different code.


The thing is, they aim at the SP crowd too. They have advertised the game as "the most narrative MP..." or something along those lines. They went for everyone and came back with no one.
 

Denorion

Member
The thing is, they aim at the SP crowd too. They have advertised the game as "the most narrative MP..." or something along those lines. They went for everyone and came back with no one.

To quote the helldivers dev "a game for everyone is a game to no one"

Hell, what screwed Overwatch was blizzard trying to make a game designed for pvp into a story driven co-op rpg, it just didn't work, dropping the pve side was for the best
 

Doomtrain

Member
I get you don't like the game I just find it distasteful to hope people lose their jobs over it and say it's for the good of the industry if the studio were gone.

It's weird, just moving on to another game would take less energy.

Applying the same attitude to other forms of entertainment media to make a point.

Film you watched and didn't enjoy, lay off all film crew involved, close the production studio. It's shit.
Book you read and didn't like, Author should be dropped close the publisher. It's shit.
Song you heard and didn't like, Artist should be dropped, close the studio. It's shit.

No one thinks this way. People are generally quite rational about things they don't like or care for until it comes to gaming.
100%. It's also a very strange attitude because the people on the ground floor are typically not the ones making the objectionable decisions. For example, I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that huge portions of Firewalk's internal team thought the pronouns-on-the-character-select-screen thing was dumb. But ultimately, the director is the one making the final call.

Another example to put this in context for people: have you ever in your life worked at a job where you had one (or more) annoying coworkers you disagreed with, but you had to work with them anyway? How about a job where you didn't like your boss, or you thought upper management ran things poorly? Video games are no different. This is the nature of working in teams of people. You are literally never going to agree on every single detail with every single other person on the team, and sometimes, you just have to suck it up and do your job anyway.
 
Concord has better default characters than a ton of uber successful multiplayer games. It's not that.

Single player gamers can't read PvP games like PvP gamers can. It's a different code.

Oh for fuck’s sake, you’re not the multiplayer big wig that you for some odd reason seem to think that you are. The Concord characters are clearly not resonating with potential customers, which has to be considered bad fucking news for a hero shooter which, to make matters worse, also parades vignettes around like some genuine USP. Characters matter.
 

simpatico

Gold Member
Such an underrated comment

If character design didn't matter to people no one would be buying skins

Totally side track here but I would farm dungeons over and over again in World of Warcraft for armor sets just for me to look at them in my character select screen because no one else cared what I looked like except me
It’s weird though, the cosmetic business is limited to just a handful of console games. I don’t think it applies to every MP game
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Oh for fuck’s sake, you’re not the multiplayer big wig.
I am.
The Concord characters are clearly not resonating with potential customers, which has to be considered bad fucking news for a hero shooter which, to make matters worse, also parades vignettes around like some genuine USP. Characters matter.
They did a bunch of focus tests on these characters. They tested well. Just because a bunch of 40 year old, anti woke, single player oriented gamers don't like them, doesn't mean they didn't test well with Concords target demo.

And again, why is everyone avoiding my point about the litany of uber successful multiplayer games that have unappealing characters and the lacktherof in the single player space?

It's because when you're the multiplayer big wig, they scurry around your giant feet.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
The notion that a genre literally named "Hero Shooter" doesn't need its heroes to be appealing is absolutely amazing.
Yeah man but TF2 had awful character design and was still successful, therefore the character design/aesthetic wasn’t the true reason that nobody played Concord for free. We must keep digging until we discover the true reason. It’s a complete mystery.
 
I mean, other games manage to be outspokenly diverse and still offer up top of the class character designs... of all colors and body shapes. I’m nowhere near as critical of Concord’s characters as a lot of other people seem to be, but they are just not as good, or interesting, as they probably need to be for the game to have a fighting chance.

apex-legends-vantage_feature.jpg


533f751c-9a6c-4235-b10a-baa5400b61da-qwzzgrxe29udprmfvyqfsi.jpg


Same game
 
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And neither is Concord as determined by the market. That makes two games where they allegedly "tested well", but turned out to be massively tone deaf.

There’s a difference between fun to play and just not having long term hooks

Concord is fun to play over a few hours or a weekend but there’s nothing there telling me I should return to it
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
And neither is Concord as determined by the market. That makes two games where they allegedly "tested well", but turned out to be massively tone deaf.

Redfall didn't test well. It tested "about 10 points higher" than the final Metacritic score.

We have no idea how Concord tested.
 
There’s a difference between fun to play and just not having long term hooks

Concord is fun to play in my opinion over a few hours or a weekend but there’s nothing there telling me I should return to it
You forgot to add that distinction. You are not the market. The market has determined to not be fun to play or otherwise, retention would be much better.

Redfall didn't test well. It tested "about 10 points higher" than the final Metacritic score.

We have no idea how Concord tested.
Ah, so you were talking out your ass.
 
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