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CrowbCat - LawBreakers in an oversaturated market

I'm not surprised at the Overwatch comparisons at all. Heck, before Overwatch came out people were comparing it to MOBAs, even after it came out some still did. If people can compare an arena shooter to a MOBA they can easily compare one arena shooter to another.

I'm not sure this is really a case of oversaturation so much as it is a case of releasing after the Overwatch juggernaut. Either you still like/love Overwatch or it has managed to sour you on the entire sub-genre.

From watching youtube/twitch video of the game it looks like very small, CoD-sized arenas with gameplay speed similar to the infantry bits of Titanfall II. Just isn't going to do it for me. Wasn't even interesting enough to get me to try the free beta, much less buy it. Not sure even F2P would work at this point.

It's way faster than Titanfall 2 and it plays very differently than any of the games you mentioned.

IMO the marketing team did a terrible job of disabusing people of the notion that it plays like any other game. It's pretty unique, especially on consoles.
 

boinx

Member
Bunny hopping is oldschool, no?

All the characters have different mobility attributes. By definition this design is more contemporary since it doesn't place everyone on the same standing regarding stats, which is the way it used to be where the character you picked didn't matter since it was just a visual thing.
 

PantsuJo

Member
2573057-1369850688-14032.png
Well, damn.
 

Budi

Member
All the characters have different mobility attributes. By definition this design is more contemporary since it doesn't place everyone on the same standing regarding stats, which is the way it used to be where the character you picked didn't matter cuz since it was just a visual thing.
Yeah it has modern twists. It's a game released in 2017 that doesn't rely just on nostalgia. But it evokes plenty of oldschool stuff on the side besides the character design as you kindly put it.
 

CheeseNubs

Neo Member
i actually enjoyed the beta for lawbreakers when i played a few months ago. sad to see it didn't do well. I've always felt like Cliff Bleszinski was a dick and this video didn't change my opinion on him, but I wonder if anything he said turned people off from buying the game.

Either way I hope the game keeps a dedicated fan base, even if it's a small one. I'll probably pick it up on a sale.
 
From the way they talk about the Overwatch's character designs, I think you can take away that nobody on the team actually understood what makes a good one. Cliffy's cringeworthy invocation of Tarantino just makes this funnier.
 
This thread really is something. You have people strutting in on page one and proudly declaring that they are not going to click on the link. I know sometimes people don't click on links or don't read the OP fully but it's rare to see people literally saying that they have no intention at all to engage in the topic at hand and then proceed to derail the discussion. You wonder what would happen if you went into some other thread and posted that you're not interested in the thread topic at all. And I'm guessing this is going to be a thing in every Crowbcat thread going forward? Damn.

It's a shame too because there's an interesting conversation to be had about why Lawbreakers seems to be struggling. It's a well received, well liked game so it's not a Battleborn type situation where the game was garbage and it was easy to see why it flopped. I enjoyed what I played of the Lawbreakers beta and I can't immediately point out anything they did that was 'wrong'. The character art is admittedly a bit plain but I don't know how much that should really matter in the grand scheme of things. I feel like the design is functional and doing it's job as long as characters are instantly distinguishable from each other.

Aside from this I can't really think of any prevalent complaints regarding the game itself. I think one thing the devs should try to focus on is why they are having trouble keeping the people who did buy the game engaged with it. According to Steamspy they have about 60k sales which is a decent enough start but the player population keeps dipping every day. You're not going to get everyone playing all the time but you do want to be growing at all times as you continue to get more owners right? Hopefully they'll be able to figure it out.
 

boinx

Member
Yeah it has modern twists, but it evokes plenty of oldschool stuff on the side besides the character design as you kindly put it.

Also there are no weapon pickups or power ups. Only HP, or regen stations and those are placed quite sparsely. Pickups affected the level design of the older shooters quite heavily where players had to rely more on controlling the entire map, but in my opinion that kind of gameplay doesn't really exist in LB or at least, it's very different where it focuses more on, let's say maybe 1 to at max 3 hot zones on the map where most of the combat occurs.
 

Crzy1

Member
I kind of felt like it was a game I should support, but from what I played in the beta, I just never got into it. The cringey marketing couldn't have helped it any, either.
 
This thread really is something. You have people strutting in on page one and proudly declaring that they are not going to click on the link. I know sometimes people don't click on links or don't read the OP fully but it's rare to see people literally saying that they have no intention at all to engage in the topic at hand and then proceed to derail the discussion. You wonder what would happen if you went into some other thread and posted that you're not interested in the thread topic at all. And I'm guessing this is going to be a thing in every Crowbcat thread going forward? Damn.

It's a shame too because there's an interesting conversation to be had about why Lawbreakers seems to be struggling. It's a well received, well liked game so it's not a Battleborn type situation where the game was garbage and it was easy to see why it flopped. I enjoyed what I played of the Lawbreakers beta and I can't immediately point out anything they did that was 'wrong'. The character art is admittedly a bit plain but I don't know how much that should really matter in the grand scheme of things. I feel like the design is functional and doing it's job as long as characters are instantly distinguishable from each other.

Aside from this I can't really think of any prevalent complaints regarding the game itself. I think one thing the devs should try to focus on is why they are having trouble keeping the people who did buy the game engaged with it. According to Steamspy they have about 60k sales which is a decent enough start but the player population keeps dipping every day. You're not going to get everyone playing all the time but you do want to be growing at all times as you continue to get more owners right? Hopefully they'll be able to figure it out.

Answer this, why didn't you get the game after the beta? After all, this isn't that "$60 multiplayer only bullshit" that CliffyB says :p Your answer might explain why this game didn't get much traction.
 

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
From the way they talk about the Overwatch's character designs, I think you can take away that nobody on the team actually understood what makes a good one. Cliffy's cringeworthy invocation of Tarantino just makes this funnier.

I immediately thought of this:

FuseInsomniacGames.jpg
 
The game is gonna struggle because I don't believe the hero shooter and twitch shooter combine easily.

The reason hero shooters exist is because twitch shooters were too hard for the wider audience so they made hero shooters so everyone can feel like a bad ass.

So lawbreakers is taking that away again and creating a hero shooter where you could feel like a badass. It's not an attractive proposition.
 

Budi

Member
Also there are no weapon pickups or power ups. Only HP, or regen stations and those are placed quite sparsely. Pickups affected the level design of the older shooters quite heavily where players had to rely more on controlling the entire map, but in my opinion that kind of gameplay doesn't really exist in LB or at least, it's very different where it focuses more on, let's say maybe 1 to at max 3 hot zones on the map where most of the combat occurs.
Yeah true it has no power ups, but those health pickups do come in handy even mid-fight and smart use of them and fast movement to pick those up makes a difference. But you are correct that the map control and timings aren't the same. My point was that it has more similarities with old school shooters than just the character design, not that it's built exactly like one. It's good that it's not. It makes the game feel familiar but fresh at the same time.
 
I had no idea what game this is until I heard TB's voice in the video, and then I remembered he did a video on this. Yeah, to the average consumer, it looks like an overwatch clone so there's your main problem right there. Fighting head on against Blizzard is pretty much suicide.

"dark souls of FPS" LOL pls
 

boinx

Member
Yeah true it has no power ups, but those health pickups do come in handy even mid-fight and smart use of them and fast movement to pick those up makes a difference. But you are correct that the map control and timings aren't the same. My point was that it has more similarities with old school shooters than just the character design, not that it's built exactly like one. It's good that it's not. It makes the game feel familiar but fresh at the same time.

I feel ya bro. I definitely think it is it's own thing and that's good.
 
I'm not surprised at the Overwatch comparisons at all. Heck, before Overwatch came out people were comparing it to MOBAs, even after it came out some still did. If people can compare an arena shooter to a MOBA they can easily compare one arena shooter to another.

.

Overwatch an arena shooter? Lmao.

It's much, much closer to a casual, first-person MOBA than an actual arena shooter like Quake.
 
J

JeremyEtcetera

Unconfirmed Member

To be fair, if someone just tweeted 'sold out' to me, I wouldn't know if it was about me, the game, the event, him/herself, or something else. Cliffy made a bad assumption but it was in response to a bad tweet.
 

Budi

Member
To be fair, if someone just tweeted 'sold out' to me, I wouldn't know if it was about me, the game, the event, him/herself, or something else. Cliffy made a bad assumption but it was in response to a bad tweet.
We don't do fair here in Neogaf. We use anything to get back on Cliff for calling us cunts, like how could he even come up with that ridiculous claim?
 

PillarEN

Member
Aw Cliffy. Even if I'm not in the market for such a game I was pulling for you. So many good times spent with some of your games of past.
 

afroguy10

Member
I want to like Crowbs stuff but him referencing the racist "we wuz kangs" thing in a previous video really soured me on him and some of his videos poking fun at young kids at Minecon are a bit tasteless. Some of these kids probably get made fun of day in and day out at school and home they don't need an adult doing it either.
 

Perineum

Member
Lawbreakers in in the running for my GOTY, so fuck that noise.

Easily the best MP experience of 2017, but the real competition for it is in the coming weeks to months.

It has to be a better experience than Star Wars Battle Front, Call of Duty, and Destiny 2. That's a trifecta of games that have big communities that will have massive marketing. Most folks don't play multiple FPS at a time, at least I know I don't.

For me, $30 is a great price for a great game. It's a shame it isn't taking off, and I hoped word of mouth would do it justice because I have a blast everytime I fire it up. However, knowing myself, I may not even touch the game again once Destiny 2 hits...
 

BiGBoSSMk23

A company being excited for their new game is a huge slap in the face to all the fans that liked their old games.
And not just a racist meme, but a meme that is used by and known primarily in /pol/ and other outstandingly hateful communities of the internet. No one would ever "accidentally" use that meme.

Either you know about it because you agree with it or you know about it because you are against it (in which case you wouldn't use it for comedy). Or you don't know about it at all (in which case it wouldn't use it at all).

You guys are talking about "we was kings n shit" line, right?

I remember first seeing it in his AC video, and the backlash it caused. I never heard of it before that.

You come across a lot of stuff on the internet (especially YouTube) that makes no sense and seems somewhat innocuous out of context.

All those Vine compilations people were always sharing were probably unwittingly full of racist shit.

My point is, I don't even know how this Crowbcat fellow presents himself to make a call on whether he's a white supremacist or not.

Kinds seems like jumping the gun...
 

guyssorry

Member
The game actually seems pretty cool, but that guys is (developer?) very cringe-worthy and kinda immature with all of his rants about fanboys and other unnecessary stuff.
 
all this video taught me is that Cliffy B is... kind of a dick.

It's like he can't say a sentence without throwing a fucking punch at somebody. Including the fanbase who loved his title.He needs to fucking chill, damn.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
all this video taught me is that Cliffy B is... kind of a dick.

It's like he can't say a sentence without throwing a fucking punch at somebody. Including the fanbase who loved his title.He needs to fucking chill, damn.

I always thought he'd get more people playing his game if he was nicer. He worked for the same company that made the Unreal Engine ffs.

A lot of people played Gears of War and followed him way before Gears even came out.

He doesn't seem to say good things about the people who are actually interested in buying video games. There's plenty of people out there who don't want to spend a dime on video games and they'd love to see violent video games banned.

I played Demon's Souls as an import before it came outside Japan/Asia. Yeah... maybe I'm saying more than I ever need or needed to say.
 
all this video taught me is that Cliffy B is... kind of a dick.

It's like he can't say a sentence without throwing a fucking punch at somebody. Including the fanbase who loved his title.He needs to fucking chill, damn.

You should probably just be aware that this sort of video is pretty much just cherry picking quotes that makes him sound like a dick.

It's fine to think Cliffy B is a dick (i do!), but videos that (likely) are intentionally using quotes out of context are probably not the best way to gauge someone's public persona.
 
Also there are no weapon pickups or power ups. Only HP, or regen stations and those are placed quite sparsely. Pickups affected the level design of the older shooters quite heavily where players had to rely more on controlling the entire map, but in my opinion that kind of gameplay doesn't really exist in LB or at least, it's very different where it focuses more on, let's say maybe 1 to at max 3 hot zones on the map where most of the combat occurs.

Yeah it has modern twists. It's a game released in 2017 that doesn't rely just on nostalgia. But it evokes plenty of oldschool stuff on the side besides the character design as you kindly put it.

This is kind of a weird argument. The Team Fortress mod came out in 1996 (which I would certainly consider "old school") and had characters with different mobility attributes, no weapon pickups, etc.

I still wouldn't call Lawbreakers old-school, though. It's still very much in the modern "MOBA-FPS" vein, even if the MOBA elements are toned down considerably compared to certain other comparable games.
 

border

Member
Really, I just didn't tell you in what other ways they have made the differences clear? It's just not the art style (as they have stated) but it's definitely part of it. You wan't him to sell his games more in Sean Murray, Randy Pitchford and Peter Molyneux kind of way if honesty doesn't matter to you? Look here for example https://youtu.be/WiW9AiHQ9Nc?t=313 the art style is mentioned, but after that plenty of other differences. Just because people pick up the anime quote and run with it to hate Cliff even more doesn't mean they haven't talked about other differences. It's astonishing that you don't get this.

I don't think Cliffy has to be or should be dishonest, but just that his particular brand of "honesty" is off-putting and did not do his game a lot of favors. If he says something stupid and that stupid thing happens to be true, it doesn't really undo the damage.
 
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