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PS5 shooter goes from 5 players to bestseller after devs defend game

polygon.com

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Re: PS5 shooter goes from 5 players to bestseller after devs defend game

#41

Post by daheza »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #36
seanalltogether wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shogo had a mod called Squishie where one player was normal size and on a team by themselves, and all the other players were tiny and on the other team. It was the most fun I've ever had at a LAN party in those early 00's. I'm surprised no one ever picked this up and turned it into a real game. https://www.moddb.com/mods/squishie

I assume those asymmetric multiplayer games are hard to maintain an audience. Everyone wants to be the super charged monster, nobody wants to be the squishie. Unless you can shore up the difference with bots, you are going to have to play dramatically more rounds as the less-fun squishie.

I think you could argue that Battlefront 2 allows this kind of asymmetrical multiplayer game.

The heroes on the other side are largely over powered compared to the standard trooper. While everyone wants to play the hero, it takes time to build up points to switch to it. It allows every odd character models, where we have bb8 running around quickly and extremely small hitbox.

I do think there are opportunities in this area. When I play fortnite I get disappointed that everyone has to fit into a specific skeleton. Let games be weird.

Re: PS5 shooter goes from 5 players to bestseller after devs defend game

#42

Post by Arelius »

Aeolun wrote: post #39
Arelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it's probably simpler than this, and the root of the problem often comes down to the Cloud Providers to begin with. It's astounding the frequency I get an email from some cloud provider, or mobile app store that says something to the effect of: "(Version X) of Dependency Y that we convinced you to use 5+ years ago is getting deprecated on August 1st, if you don't upgrade to Version X+5 you're service will g…

Isn’t that just a matter of building your server with PHP or something similar that never deprecates functionality? Absolutely not node.js.

Maybe...

But then, having also lived it, upgrading to newer versions of PHP and it's required modules is also not trivial.

And it's often not just your language, the cloud vendors have a lot of incentives to get you to use their hosted Postgres, or AuroraDB, or GameLift. Or even something as simple as we built all of our deployment scripts/images for our PHP system on Amazon Linux X, and now for reason Y, only Amazon Linux X+2 is supported.

Re: PS5 shooter goes from 5 players to bestseller after devs defend game

#43

Post by DontchaKnowit »

valryon wrote: post #17
CorpOverreach wrote: post #6

I wish more games would prioritize couch co-op modes over online play. Games that are focused on online only play basically have an expiration date from the day that they launch. Some may live longer, some may be dead on arrival. But, make a good game that's playable by friends together at any time on a rainy day? If the game is good, it never dies.

We did a couch coop game (CTHULOOT) and the number 1 refund reason we have is that it doesn’t have online. (It doesn’t because we lacked budget) So I’d say players now really expect online over local.

I mean, you can make both available.

Re: PS5 shooter goes from 5 players to bestseller after devs defend game

#44

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

daheza wrote: post #41
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume those asymmetric multiplayer games are hard to maintain an audience. Everyone wants to be the super charged monster, nobody wants to be the squishie. Unless you can shore up the difference with bots, you are going to have to play dramatically more rounds as the less-fun squishie.

I think you could argue that Battlefront 2 allows this kind of asymmetrical multiplayer game. The heroes on the other side are largely over powered compared to the standard trooper. While everyone wants to play the hero, it takes time to build up points to switch to it. It allows every odd character models, where we have bb8 running around quickly and extremely small hitbox. I do think there are opportunities in this…

Never played Battlefront, but that sounds like a short duration powerup mode?

I was thinking of something like Evolve[0] where it is a 4v1 kind of humans vs monster affair. There are also horror games that follow this formula -one psycho killer vs regular humans. I assume all the fun is being the monster, less amusing to be the weakling running and hiding.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolve_(video_game)

Re: PS5 shooter goes from 5 players to bestseller after devs defend game

#46

Post by pseudo0 »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #36
seanalltogether wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shogo had a mod called Squishie where one player was normal size and on a team by themselves, and all the other players were tiny and on the other team. It was the most fun I've ever had at a LAN party in those early 00's. I'm surprised no one ever picked this up and turned it into a real game. https://www.moddb.com/mods/squishie

I assume those asymmetric multiplayer games are hard to maintain an audience. Everyone wants to be the super charged monster, nobody wants to be the squishie. Unless you can shore up the difference with bots, you are going to have to play dramatically more rounds as the less-fun squishie.

Dead by Daylight has stayed pretty popular. It's an asymmetric multiplayer game where one player plays as a horror movie killer, while the other four try to accomplish objectives and escape. Balancing the game can be a bit tricky though, since when 80% of your population plays as survivors, there's an incentive to keep them happy.

Re: PS5 shooter goes from 5 players to bestseller after devs defend game

#47

Post by ChrisRR »

DontchaKnowit wrote: post #43
valryon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did a couch coop game (CTHULOOT) and the number 1 refund reason we have is that it doesn’t have online. (It doesn’t because we lacked budget) So I’d say players now really expect online over local.

I mean, you can make both available.

If you can afford to develop both. Presumably as an indie dev they chose where to invest their development time

Re: PS5 shooter goes from 5 players to bestseller after devs defend game

#49

Post by haiku2077 »

seanalltogether wrote: post #28
huhtenberg wrote: post #20

I picked up a copy of Hypercharge back in 2020 after spotting it on one of the gaming subs. While it is technically a shooter, it turned out to be a 3D tower defense game - you place your turrets, shields and whatnots to protect against waves of enemies and then run around managing the defence and occasionally shooting at the baddies. It's not PvP. This was a bit of letdown because I was really hoping for a remake of…

Shogo had a mod called Squishie where one player was normal size and on a team by themselves, and all the other players were tiny and on the other team. It was the most fun I've ever had at a LAN party in those early 00's. I'm surprised no one ever picked this up and turned it into a real game. https://www.moddb.com/mods/squishie

There have been various attempts at that type of asymmetric multiplayer over the years and most of them have had serious issues with game balance. I think the most successful has been Dead by Daylight and at high levels of play usually turns into a deadlock.
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