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Concord’s second free weekend on PS5 sees 8% player drop | Game confirmed to have no Battle Passes

PaintTinJr

Member
....


Seriously though this game is just beyond saving. You’d be better off taking that money and flushing it down the toilet.
I'm still not convinced of that because game development is getting more expensive - meaning there's probably alot of residual value in the studio/tech even without a game - and pivoting a GaaS doesn't seem as risky as a pivot with a failed single player game.

At the end of the day IMO it just seems like a project that wanted to create a fresh IP to be more profitable in the scenario of being successful but management forgot just how hard it is to make mass market likeable IPs and forgot SOPs of the past.

Back at the genesis of home computer gaming IPs created elsewhere (and loved) were shamelessly exploited and draped over any game to bring the sales or interest, to virtually a wired block on a black screen type gaming, and yet here we have a game that's probably cost £500m in dev costs so far and many years in team assembly with good tech and yet management aren't prepared to spend another 10% to buy a successful IP to give it a fighting chance to pivot and turn into something that consumers are interested in just by the name attached and to give time to the existing plan to execute properly before it runs out of oxygen.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Yeah and concord does nothing new in the genre and everyone already consider it a bad overwatch clone, great fucking job letting your pride getting in the way of just making a better game with more gameplay possibilities.

They failed in both department, making concord unique and not being considered an overwatch clone, kinda impressive really.
To say it does nothing new in the genre is wrong. Incentivizing players to move off their preferred hero is certainly new. The story emphasises is new. The short rounds are new.

Are those innovations enough to justify the $40 purchase? Obviously not.

2026 will be interesting. I haven't written the game off yet.
 

GymWolf

Member
To say it does nothing new in the genre is wrong. Incentivizing players to move off their preferred hero is certainly new. The story emphasises is new. The short rounds are new.

Are those innovations enough to justify the $40 purchase? Obviously not.

2026 will be interesting. I haven't written the game off yet.
Overwatch was already pretty heavy on story\lore for a hero shooter (don't even try to negate that), and their character had actual charisma and decent art design so people were more interested, so again, later and worse, great combo.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Overwatch was already pretty heavy on story\lore for a hero shooter (don't even try to negate that), and their character had actual charisma and decent art design so people were more interested, so again, later and worse, great combo.
None of the story was even in the client. It's absurd to say it was "heavy on story" when 99% of the player base never bothered to look it up. Concord putting it right in front of the player is a marked difference. Don't even try to negate that.
 

GymWolf

Member
None of the story was even in the client. It's absurd to say it was "heavy on story" when 99% of the player base never bothered to look it up. Concord putting it right in front of the player is a marked difference. Don't even try to negate that.
Marked difference....please...


If someone is interested in the lore and characters of a hero shooter, clicking on yt or watching the intro ingame is not the big difference that you think...


They should have made less shitty characters if story and lore was one of their strong points, putting the intro inside the game achieved fucking nothing as you can see by the worldwide reaction, and overwatch was kinda famous for his lore and cg character videos even if you had to search them on yt, so once again, maybe a good idea, but terrible execution that basically change nothing from overwatch other than semantics.

Also...what fucking story? the intro of concord was the lukewarmest shit i saw in a while, is that their max effort in storytelling?
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Marked difference....please...


If someone is interested in the lore and characters of a hero shooter, clicking on yt or watching the intro ingame change really nothing.
If this were true, giant companies would spend millions of dollars attaching commercials to your Youtube videos and your TV streaming services. The most expensive billboards are on high traffic areas. Everybody knows seperating content with effort is disasterous.
They should have made less shitty characters if story and lore was one of their strong point, putting the intro inside the game obtained fucking nothing as you can see by the worldwide reaction, and overwatch was kinda famous for his lore and cg character vidoes even if you had to search them on yt, so once again, maybe a good idea, but terrible execution that basically change nothing from overwatch other than semantics.
Nobody in the marketing world from the last 100 years would agree with you, of that I am certain.
 

GymWolf

Member
If this were true, giant companies would spend millions of dollars attaching commercials to your Youtube videos and your TV streaming services. The most expensive billboards are on high traffic areas. Everybody knows seperating content with effort is disasterous.

Nobody in the marketing world from the last 100 years would agree with you, of that I am certain.
But this is not an heavy story genre, it's a fucking hero shooter, they can deal with the story how they want because it's always gonne be secondary compared to other genres that NEED to have the cutscenes and lore inside the game.

I think 95% of gaf is agreeing with me right now, i can take a small win over an imaginary one dude 🕺
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
But this is not an heavy story genre, it's a fucking hero shooter, they can deal with the story how they want because it's always gonne be secondary compared to other genres that NEED to have the cutscenes and lore inside the game.

I think 95% of gaf is agreeing with me right now, i can take a small win over an imaginery one dude 🕺
All I'm saying is your original statement "Concord is doing nothing new" is factually inaccurate. The things it does new just aren't impressive enough to move the needle.
 


This is one of the more genuine & fair takes on Concord I've seen (not making yet another Concord thread tho), from someone who doesn't have to resort to buzzwords to criticize the game.

They think it's DOA and ultimately not worth $40 as-is, but they did say they enjoyed Signal Chase the most (and confused why it was only available on the last day of the open beta). A couple of the characters were okay with them, but they dislike how there's very little to encourage synergy among team members when it comes to their characters working together.

Also this person seems like a genuine PS fan, particularly of the 1P single-player narrative-driven games. So it's not like they're stealth console-warring using Concord as a means to do it.
 
130+ million accounts on Steam doesn't mean they're active or that they have 3D graphics cards. Lol

Well yeah that is true, but reasonably speaking most of them are likely active and have "good enough" integrated graphics to play most games (even if at low settings and 30 FPS).

You take out the inactive accounts or those with piss-poor graphics options and you still have more unique Steam users than unique PS5 users.

Overwatch putting its story on YouTube allows the story and characters to help market the game to people who haven't downloaded it yet.

It did, but Overwatch benefited from having generally much more appealing character designs. So people were interested in learning more about the characters simply thanks to the designs already looking cool.

And characters like Tracer, Mercy, & D.Va became very, ahem, "famous" for R34 videos, which benefited the game overall as well. Concord's got not characters that have that type of sex appeal, so no boost there with fan art, fan films, animations etc.
 
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None of the story was even in the client. It's absurd to say it was "heavy on story" when 99% of the player base never bothered to look it up. Concord putting it right in front of the player is a marked difference. Don't even try to negate that.


d09onk0.png
 

Killjoy-NL

Gold Member
And i didn't understand what you said, english is not my native language so sometimes my brain can't catch even simple stuff :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
If people would die faster, lack of ults wouldn't be problem.

But with the long(er) time to kill in the game right now, ults would almost be necessary to do a lot of damage instantly.
 

GymWolf

Member
If people would die faster, lack of ults wouldn't be problem.

But with the long(er) time to kill in the game right now, ults would almost be necessary to do a lot of damage instantly.
Even leaving tkk aside, don't you just think that ultimate are cool and just add another layer of strategy to the game?

It feel like a missing opportunity to not have an ulti.

P.s. btw all these talks about hero shooter make me want to download ow2...is the game popular on ps5?
 
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Killjoy-NL

Gold Member
Even leaving tkk aside, don't you just think that ultimate are cool and just add another layer of strategy to the game?

It feel like a missing opportunity to not have an ulti.

P.s. btw all these talks about hero shooter make me want to download ow2...is the game popular on ps5?
Ults can be cool, but I dont think they're a necessity.
It would change up gameplay a bit and makes people rely more on actual skills rather than abilities.
But they should reduce TTK then. That's one of the main issues with the game imo.

OW2 should still have an active community. Iirc there's still 10M people playing the game worldwide.

Edit:

According to this, in march 2024, OW2 had an average of 6.5M players a day and 23M players over 30 days.
 
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BlackTron

Member
This. Also, maybe it's a huge hit in a different dimension we don't have numbers for.

According to some theories, anything that can possibly happen has happened in some dimension, which is why the extremely low probability that we exist makes sense.

So Concord is a huge hit in at least one theoretical dimension until you can prove me wrong, I'll wait.
 
Were PS numbers ever revealed? Maybe it did well there? :D

Nope. All we know is it placed #29 in the Most Played charts for the beta (both weekends IIRC), but that isn't a great metric to use since #29 could mean 500K or 50K.

I don't get the argument why TTK could be sole reason why Concord beta failed.

Dunno who's making that argument but TTK is probably among the lesser reasons why the beta didn't do well.

Ults can be cool, but I dont think they're a necessity.
It would change up gameplay a bit and makes people rely more on actual skills rather than abilities.
But they should reduce TTK then. That's one of the main issues with the game imo.

OW2 should still have an active community. Iirc there's still 10M people playing the game worldwide.

Edit:

According to this, in march 2024, OW2 had an average of 6.5M players a day and 23M players over 30 days.

That's not bad; average of ~ 270K per hour across the platforms (PC (Steam, Battle.NET), PS5, Xbox Series, PS4, XBO, Switch....just realized this game is basically on everything xD).

Overwatch 1 probably had quite higher player metrics at its peak though, and on less platforms. So Overwatch 2 still has a ways to go if it wants to catch that game...tho I guess they don't "need" to, either.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
How often has Sony released any kind of F2P game? I dont know. But probably not too many. Helldivers 2 was also $40 and it sold a ton. So their GAAS pricing model seems pegged at $40 lately (unless it's bigger budget legacy game like GT or baseball which are full priced).

Maybe $40 will be their standard starter price for all their new GAAS games?

It depends on the package. I don’t think there’s a $40 mandate.
As a new shooter IP with no Campaign, they’d have struggled with asking for more than $40 for Concord. And prerelease, with a smaller budget than many of the other FPS titles, they weren’t ever going to ask full price for Helldivers 2.

I can imagine a Horizon MP game to be more than $40. TLOU Factions was being touted as Naughty Dog’s most ambitious game ever and would have most likely landed around $70.
 
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