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LawBreakers' peak concurrent Steam playerbase dropped to 431 today [Up2: Down to 302]

Megatron

Member
I'm still getting instant (think under 5 seconds) matchmaking on PS4, with full matches. It's really weird. Their server infrastructure is insane, you just instantly get games.

This is on PS4? I always thought it was pc only. Nice marketing effort.
 

AaronMT86

Member
This also guarantees that the community driven Unreal Tournament project is dead given what they're watching with this game.
 
"We want to be like Warframe that grows and grows without you even noticing it."

vlskbmu.png

This blows my mind.

I was so heavy into Warframe in 2012. I think I had almost 600 hours into that game over 18ish months and then just dropped it cold turkey.

I never would have imagined that graph of ever increasing popularity.

I loved it though, just other stuff came along to play.

As an aside I really wish these games that go forever and ever would provide some sort of reintroduction tutorials. I'd prolly still play warframe today, but last time I logged in I was completely and entirely overwhelmed by everything I was looking at. Hardly even looked like the same game anymore.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
Should have been F2P.

Overwatch got lucky, I expected that one to be F2P also. Loot boxes are making them a ton of money, and the popularity of it ensured sales even though it's just PVP on a slim amount of maps, and a slow output of new characters over the year too. While I like the shorts, that loot box money could have been better used for actual gameplay stuff.
 
I feel bad for Cliff and the rest of the developers. It's got to be very tough seeing the game you poured blood, sweat and tears into fail in such horrible fashion. The multiplayer shooter market is brutal.
 

dugdug

Banned
I'm still getting instant (think under 5 seconds) matchmaking on PS4, with full matches. It's really weird. Their server infrastructure is insane, you just instantly get games.

Same, takes literally seconds to get into a game on PS4.
 

Kill3r7

Member
Still the biggest mistake this game will ever make was listening to "fans" that it needed to be a paid have instead of the original f2p model

I don't think it would have made a difference in the grand scheme of things. Terrible timing between the PUBG phenomenon, Overwatch releasing Doomfist, a plethora of other popular shooters and that is before considering the onslaught this fall. The MP FPS market is the most crowded it has been in a long time with people investing hundreds and hundreds of hours in various franchises.
 
Expected. I hope the people still playing are able to get some enjoyment from it, and I look forward to the post-mortem (should one be done). I think there are a lot of lessons that can be learned from what happened with this game, given how many mistakes were made.
 

Gator86

Member
I don't think it would have made a difference in the grand scheme of things. Terrible timing between the PUBG phenomenon, Overwatch releasing Doomfist, a plethora of other popular shooters and that is before considering the onslaught this fall. The MP FPS market is the most crowded it has been in a long time with people investing hundreds and hundreds of hours in various franchises.

Is there good timing now? It kind of seems like the market condition we used to call "bad timing" is now just the default market in gaming. 2017 has been a ridiculous year of releases. There seems to be very few times the release calendar isn't absolutely stacked, and this isn't even counting games already out that are dropping new DLC or free content. The industry is just crazy competitive right now.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
This idea would probably be laughed at, but they could add a single player campaign to it. Tell us the events before and after the Shattering.

Unreal Tournament did it.

I'm not that competitive with shooters. I'm more of a Destiny player than I am an Overwatch player. I was following this game for a long time, but I fell out of the loop.

I think it needs something else. Granted UT was always MP. The guy got most of his public recognition from Gears of War. A game that was heavily drenched in single player as well as multiplayer. To me, it's like going straight to the tap without mingling with everybody in the room.

Do cutscene character backgrounds/bios like Twisted Metal Black.
 

edgefusion

Member
That game seems good, it needed more appealing characters

This was it for me. I played the beta but there wasn't a character I clicked with, they all seemed sort of the same in a dudebro, generic kind of way. Even then you can only play as a character if you happen to load into a match on their team, either 'law' or 'breaker', granted they share identical abilities but it doesn't feel the same.
 
Nothing about this game looked unique or interesting. It looked like a Unreal Tournament remake. I loved Gears of War and I would have bought almost any single player game Cliffy B made but this game just seems downright boring. I had zero interest when it was announced, zero interest when it was previewed, and zero interest now. Cliffy made the game he wanted but holy shit he should have consulted some other people to see if anyone wanted to play this game. I can guarantee you nobody in Cliffy's company thought this was going to make any money.
 

EL CUCO

Member
Expected with D2 beta hitting PC this week. Someone posted this in the OT from steam forums in regards to new content.
To answer the original question "when", I can only say "soon". We had roadmap meetings with Boss Key last week on what they have planned for the rest of the year. We're working out a marketing plan to support that new content and reach out to more people. We're also doing regular updates to the game based on player feedback, so we are listening and acting on the issues that come up.

We are committed to the long-term success of the game. And no, we are not discussing F2P.
 

Deadstar

Member
Battlegrounds is hot right now. What do you expect? I've never played anything like Battlegrounds before and I'm loving it. Lawbreakers looks fun, but it looks like a pretty safe arena shooter. I wish the scale was bigger like Tribes or Unreal or they would have gone for something more unique.
 

Budi

Member
Battlegrounds is hot right now. What do you expect? I've never played anything like Battlegrounds before and I'm loving it. Lawbreakers looks fun, but it looks like a pretty safe arena shooter. I wish the scale was bigger like Tribes or Unreal or they would have gone for something more unique.
I'd argue that the zero gravity areas are quite unique. Paired up with the blindfire mechanics you can use to not only shoot at the enemies chasing you, but boost your speed while flying through.
 

Deadstar

Member
I'd argue that the zero gravity areas are quite unique. Paired up with the blindfire mechanics you can use to not only shoot at the enemies chasing you, but boost your speed while flying through.

That sounds unique and fun, but more fun than Battlegrounds? Not for me. If they were the only new shooter then yes that's great, but there's something else pushing the envelope on what shooters can be.
 
Marketing for this game was poor. Picked it up on pc this weekend after hearing about it. Played for a while and it was fun. Didn't have issue getting into matches although it sometimes matches you into a generic unbalanced death match for a bit while it fills out teams on both sides (great feature by the way).

It's definitely not an easy game to master though. I watched some videos on YouTube for techniques and found out about stuff like bunny hopping which I didn't know about. Some of the experienced players seemed to be able to move about the map really fast.

This game should have been on Xbox to take advantage of CliffyB's work on gears, which was Xbox only and has its loyal fans still on Xbox. Although maybe the player base on PS4 is better than steam.

Also the game doesn't seem a good fit for f2p right now, as the heroes are really just classes and there aren't that many of them.
 

mas8705

Member
Did Battleborn suffer as high of a drop as LawBreakers is right now? Hate to think if the comparisons to Overwatch caused another game's playerbase to plummet.
 

Budi

Member
That sounds unique and fun, but more fun than Battlegrounds? Not for me. If they were the only new shooter then yes that's great, but there's something else pushing the envelope on what shooters can be.
Well yeah it comes up to what people are currently looking for. No matter how popular and probably even fun it is, it's not what I'm after. If I was I'd be playing the Survival DLC in Division that I actually paid for =D But I really didn't have interest in Battle Royale before PUBG nor do I after. I don't think it has actually brought any new big additions or changes to the genre? It's just the most polished from the ones we got.
Marketing for this game was poor. Picked it up on pc this weekend after hearing about it. Played for a while and it was fun. Didn't have issue getting into matches although it sometimes matches you into a generic unbalanced death match for a bit while it fills out teams on both sides (great feature by the way).
Yeah the warm up you are talking about is actually really fun too, it's nice to just get into the killing without having to worry about objectives yet.
 
Did Battleborn suffer as high of a drop as LawBreakers is right now? Hate to think if the comparisons to Overwatch caused another game's playerbase to plummet.

We're entering the age where any new shooter coming out will be badged as an Overwatch-killer like back in the WoW days. There's just no escaping it.
 
Part of the problem was that the game didn't have the marketing push it needed. This thing was just always playing second fiddle to bigger, better marketed games.

I also think the whole aesthetic was probably an issue. One look at it, and it just screamed early aughts, Rob Liefeld.

Say what you want about Overwatch, but the art direction is fresh, distinct, and modern.

Clifford Blezinski is an incredible game designer. Art director...not so much.

Godspeed Lawbreakers.
 

renzolama

Member
This blows my mind.

I was so heavy into Warframe in 2012. I think I had almost 600 hours into that game over 18ish months and then just dropped it cold turkey.

I never would have imagined that graph of ever increasing popularity.

I loved it though, just other stuff came along to play.

As an aside I really wish these games that go forever and ever would provide some sort of reintroduction tutorials. I'd prolly still play warframe today, but last time I logged in I was completely and entirely overwhelmed by everything I was looking at. Hardly even looked like the same game anymore.

The development studio has done a tremendous amount of work and continually reinvested the game profits back into the technology/content in a way that very few F2P games have accomplished. I don't think it's a perfect game by any means, but it's really fascinating as an example of a game that should continually fail according to most of the complaints you hear about multiplayer games on the internet (too much grind, pay to win, co-op focus, weird lore, etc) but it someone continues growing each year without the mainstream gaming press paying any attention to it.

Edit: I forgot that it's also incredibly dense and stat heavy with (these are much improved now versus years ago) a terrible UI and confusing/frustrating progression structure. Somehow people keep digging through all that and picking it up though, which is fascinating.
 
Should have been F2P.

Overwatch got lucky, I expected that one to be F2P also. Loot boxes are making them a ton of money, and the popularity of it ensured sales even though it's just PVP on a slim amount of maps, and a slow output of new characters over the year too. While I like the shorts, that loot box money could have been better used for actual gameplay stuff.

Overwatch was not lucky. It was made by Blizzard that has been around in PC gaming almost since the beginning.

Meanwhile lawbreakers is a new IP from a company that has not made any other products.

Going free to play didn't save Evolve, no point in doing it.

Really incomparable situations imo. Sure, it's not guaranteed but to assume there is no point in trying is just plain wrong. Paladins is a f2p in this sort of team based, character, fps space and is doing great.
 

Kill3r7

Member
Is there good timing now? It kind of seems like the market condition we used to call "bad timing" is now just the default market in gaming. 2017 has been a ridiculous year of releases. There seems to be very few times the release calendar isn't absolutely stacked, and this isn't even counting games already out that are dropping new DLC or free content. The industry is just crazy competitive right now.

Agreed but there was a slight lull for FPS/shooters after Wildlands and when PUBG was still in its infancy. Once PUBG started building momentum it was over.
 
Did Battleborn suffer as high of a drop as LawBreakers is right now? Hate to think if the comparisons to Overwatch caused another game's playerbase to plummet.

It had a higher peak and maintained month or so longer, coincidentally dropping off massively in August. Lawbreakers is now setting the bar.
 

mas8705

Member
We're entering the age where any new shooter coming out will be badged as an Overwatch-killer like back in the WoW days. There's just no escaping it.

Well it was more specific to the idea that Lawbreakers launched on August 8th. You know what else launched on August 8th? Overwatch's Summer Games 2017.

If anything else, the launch window placed it right as the latest event went live and could have easily turned people to one or the other (not to mention that today is the last day of Summer Games if I recall correctly).

---

Back on topic though, you are right about "no escape." Kind of sucks that it seems like Overwatch now has established a monopoly to where any games compared to it is going to get pushed off to the side hard it seems. It will be hard to compete against Overwatch and anyone who tries to make a game similar to it is most likely going to run into issues.
 

gogojira

Member
I know Cliffy wants to believe it can happen, but this was never going to be the slow-out-the-gate word-of-mouth success LawBreaker's is desperate to be post release. It looks like a quality game to me and it sucks that it's bombing, but it's going to do just that: bomb. It's pretty damn discouraging, but whether or not it wants to escape the Overwatch overlap, it can't/won't.
 

tensuke

Member
If he really wants another billion dollar franchise, he should make it f2p, none of that $30 multiplayer only bullshit, and then add hats and shark law cards.
 
This blows my mind.

I was so heavy into Warframe in 2012. I think I had almost 600 hours into that game over 18ish months and then just dropped it cold turkey.

I never would have imagined that graph of ever increasing popularity.

I loved it though, just other stuff came along to play.

As an aside I really wish these games that go forever and ever would provide some sort of reintroduction tutorials. I'd prolly still play warframe today, but last time I logged in I was completely and entirely overwhelmed by everything I was looking at. Hardly even looked like the same game anymore.

I really like Warframe but it does a terrible job explaining how anything works.
 
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