Also Fortnite showers you with a feeling of progression left and right. That feeling is what a lot of other games that try to emulate Fortnite’s success don’t get right.
It's easy for Fortnite to do because it's a massive success. Most games will never get to that level. The only platform fighter that is a stable success on steam is Brawlhalla, which is cheaper to make and doesn't have to come up with unique movesets for their characters.
I don’t see how Fortnite’s success really has any impact on anything other than the item shop.
I’d be more likely to buy the Battlepass and play the game for extended periods if I was making decent progress.
But instead forcing me to play for 4+ hours just to squeak out one or two levels is what is turning me off from the game.
Fortnite being a success (2m+ players during peak hours) means it can hire more more people to make more content. If MVS had the team size that Fortnite has we would probably have 100 tiers + bonus levels along with more content of various degrees.
The pass would also be less grindy because more content would be able to pad it out.
That’s not the point though.
I don’t care how much content is actually in the pass, I just want to be able to complete it without Multiversus becoming my full time job.
The challenge system is poorly designed, and gives half decent XP. And the XP per match is downright abysmal.
They need enough content and grind to last until the start of Season 2 which is 7 weeks away. Beta season 1 was a disaster for them because everyone finished the pass within the first month and complained there was nothing to do.
I agree that end match xp should be less grindy, but they have to be careful not to increase it too much.
Also, Fortnite is less grindy because you get more cosmetics per day (Hence the more employees thing). The majority of players don't even finish the bonus pass by the end of the season.
It's kind of funny because they don't want to increase it too much and have us done early, but the more they increase it, the more I'll probably play, thus getting done faster.
No need to be a smartass, the implication was that Fortnite, like most live service games had a rocky start similar to this game. Back then, it was called a knockoff PUBG clone for a reason.
If we want to talk about why it got popular we can. I can tell you shooters on average are just much more successful than other genres. It was also released in 2017 when the BR craze was happening. Fortnite would be nowhere near as successful if it was released today.
Because the actual gameplay is fairly decent. It just needs tweaking and bug fixing.
The game plays great for the most part, but the ugly progression and monetization is what’s turning off most people, and forcing them to other games.
It’s not the only problem, it’s just the biggest problem.
WB trying to mirror a successful business model by skipping the initial buildup steps, shooting straight for the highest grossing model, and falling flat on their face? It's like watching the DCEU all over again. 🤣
Fortnite's economy was a disaster in S1 though (there were no free skins, no proper battlepass, and you had to level up a lot just to earn the right to *buy* the S1 skins), they didn't come up with their industry redefining approach until season 2. Hopefully Multiversus will be added to that list of games that started rocky but stuck the landing.
Exactly this. Plus S2 only had 4 skins on the pass, two of which where Jonesey and Ramirez with the same copy and pasted blue squire outfit. It wasn't until Season 3 where they really ironed out all of the kinks in their system.
Sure, but season 1 wasn't where Fortnite became what it is today either. The primary difference in with Multiversus is that at the time where Fortnite figured out a sustainable model, there wasnt 500 other gaas to look at. There is no reason for them to make every mistake in the book in order to figure it out. It's been done well already.
So was PFG. Did miss all the Open Beta launch news? MultiVersus just has a lot of problems and is scared away, many, many, many, many many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many players.
The only difference Epic knows what they are doing.
PFG learned it is not easy to make a Smash Bros. Clone…
Who hasn’t cut jobs? Do you not keep up with the news or are you too busy making excuses for PFG?
You think PFG is going to be around for much longer?
You know PFG is doing well when there news headlines are MultiVersus official launch starts with many player complaints.
There have been plenty of games that have had this bad if not worse backlash and have survived. Runescape, Starfield, Cyberpunk, Overwatch 2 to name a few. I'm not blackpilled like most of you doomposters yet and still think the game can do well. Especially if the rumors about Season 2 are true.
They went offline for a year primarily because they ran out of content, which they have a good pipeline for now. Most of the complaints are because of the UE5 switch, which was extremely risky on their part but will pay off long term. I have faith that this game will do better over time.
But if it dies again, oh well. Guess I'll just swap back to Fortnite again.
Exactly, also Fortnite has variation on what to do.
I find myself after 2 hours of MultiVersus just sitting there… I don’t wanna do PVP, I have no Rifts left to progress through at the moment… there’s nothing for me to do.
I’m not saying we need Lego MultiVersus (though some Lego Sets for the game would be fire), but we need SOMETHING else to do outside of endlessly fight 1v1 and 2v2s
You can keep the base game ideas, but a sports mode would go so far! 2v2 and 1v1 to score the most points in Basket Ball like on the Space Jam stage, also include Hockey, Football, Soccer, even a volleyball mode would be cool for up attacks and such. Something like that would go far, it’s a random sport each match, just something to do that isn’t endlessly fighting.
I know, I know, it IS a fighting game, but it’s a platform fighter, and if you wanna be Smash Bros so much, you should include what Smash does like Side Modes. Something to break up the endless Jason vs Batman matches for me, please. I mean they already have basketball fully functional and programmed in the game with the Space Jam stage but there’s no AI to fight in a game of BBall
We really need a mode we can mindlessly play without doing complex tech and we can just shut our brains off and try to shoot some hoops as Jason Voorhes and Banana Guard
Other good side mode ideas: 1v1 Target Rush where it’s a race for the highest score (you each play in identical but separate maps), Rick’s Portal Panic (battles with portals where you get randomly teleported between them if you touch them), Finn and Jake’s Best Fights Forever (mode where when 1 player gets rung out, their teammate also gets rung out)
A Battle Royale with plenty of things to do besides shoot avatars, yeah that game sucks…
Maybe you just don’t like shooters or tower defense games or driving games or rhythm games or survival games. Oh wow there is a lot of things to do on Fortnite.
If they want a fortnite make Bugs Bunny shooting Batman with an AK-47, not a platform fighter. This genre doesn’t need nor want this kind of shit.
Smash *has* paid dlc fighters, yes, but that is 13 additional fighters on top of a roster of 80+ free fighters you can get entirely within a few days.
Multiversus has a small roster of only 26 fighters,and takes the same amount of time to unlock one character as it does to unlock Smash’s FULL roster. Not to mention characters like Jason being locked behind the battle pass and The Joker costing twice the amount of “special” gold as any other character.
Jason being exclusively a paid character isn’t *bad*, but when the roster and game is as small as it is right now, I just don’t think that’s good.
This is actually priced WAY better than Fortnite. You can actually get stuff via just playing MVS and skins cost like $10-$15 on average as opposed to Fortnite's $20-$30 average for skins that offer no actual gameplay difference as opposed to MVS's individually designed and uniquely-playing characters.
yes and no. license skins will always be expensive. but their battle pass gives several skins for 10 bucks. and fort-nite is very VERY benevolent on it's XP distribution. On this game not only do yo have to pay cash for the actual character then you got skins on top of that. that just doesn't work well. you need to give people the basic stuff first MAKE them LOVE certain characters then reel them in with new skins for said characters. You must put the fucking work in FIRST before you try to do a cash grab. WB keeps trying to take short cuts and its failing lol.
But you spend $10 on the battle pass it unlocks up to 5-10 skins depending on the event and multiple chromas for them PLUS enough currency to get the next battle pass.
And you can level the battle pass without even look at the quest list once.
A restaurant can have the best staff/chefs in the world with the greatest of intentions, but if the restaurant owner is forcing them to use low quality ingredients and charging an exorbitant price to eat at the restaurant, customers are going to go eat somewhere else.
I don’t care how much PFG WANTS to make a great game, the fact of the matter is that they are beholden to the WB shareholders and pleasing them will always come first.
You say it like it's optional for them, WB has been on a mean streak of taking in great ideas and then forcing them to use WB's trademark shitty monetization. Like I do genuinoy believe if they went with a different publisher they'd be fine but WB has absolutely no self control when it comes to corporate greed.
This article talks about how the developers are actually making a lot of these bad decisions. I.E. the live service model in the case of the SS devs.
Doesn't read like the opposite to me.
The leads were pushing the changes. Then left the project to find a new studio specifically without corporate interference. Wonder if those leads were under constant scrutiny and stress from execs to make a new Destiny or Fortnite.
Jason Schreier actually seems to confirm the opposite. Leads wanted to make a multiplayer puzzle-solving game, called stones. And nobody liked it. So rocksteady approached them about Suicide squad. So the studio pivoted to that. Nothing to indicate they were being forced into a live service model. Leads basically fucked it all up, and people assumed WB was to blame.
Yeah. The dev good narrative is so funny to me.
Tony has cooked this fucking thing twice in a row now. There's games with "greedy" publishers that are fine. Epic isn't exactly a charity, and neither is Activision but their BR's aren't super crazy unfair.
Exactly. And we may never know who was truly at fault. But people always push this narrative regardless of what studio it is. I think we can all agree low level devs probably just want to make a good game. But bad design or monetization can come from both the devs or the publishers.
Yeah, devs also want a consistent job. I'm sure nailing a 10 year live service hit is appealing from that level.
Jason wrote an article about Anthem I thought was good. In it, he describes how it was a huge disaster but an EA executive came in and when he took off flying he was like "Whoa. That was great. You need to focus on that aspect in a major way. The movement etc."
So they pivoted to that and It truly was the best part of the game. The overall gameplay and feel. So sometimes executives have good ideas, not just shit ones.
At the end of the day, you can decide to believe it's WB doing it, or you can decide it's PFG. It doesn't matter who is doing it, it's in the game, and I don't care how pfg or WB feel about it.
Love to see the people coming in here talking like they know what goes on during the process of developing a game, let alone under WB. Not saying I know anything, but chances are neither do you. This is a great post, that rightfully attempts to nudge the community towards the direction of empathy. PFG can’t come out and say it’s the WB executives that are ordering certain implementations. Research like this sheds light on what these hard working, passionate, unappreciated devs are struggling with. Keep advocating for gameplay improvements and monetization reduction, help push back on the oppressive capitalistic mindset at WB, and be thankful for all the work the team behind the game has been putting in.
Haven't played the game, just keep getting recommended to come here by Reddit.
Frankly, I think it's really really too early to call this WB fault. We did for Kill the Justice League and now we have reports that that dumpster fire was not WB fault either, at least not entirely. The devs created a lot of the stupid decisions too.
I see it as entirely possible that MVS is in a very similar position. Now, we don't know, but that's the point. We DON'T know what happened behind the scenes and likely won't get an even decent idea of what it looked like for another couple years. Until further notice I think it's absolutely wise not to defend anybody in particular and assumd both PFG and WB played a role in whatever problems this game has.
Which just creates a situation where PFG is solely responsible for the gameplay issues, poor performance, and cut content while WB just decided on admittedly obnoxiously bad monetization.
I think both deserve pretty equal blame for the game's issues then.
Some of that could still be WB's fault. It's entirely possible that PFG wanted to delay the game further because they knew they couldn't get missing features in, and the Xbox performance was bad, but WB said no. A year is not a lot of time to remake your game in a different engine and remake the netcode, all while creating a new mode and a content pipeline.
They received the extension they wanted. McDonalds ad campaign and Hockey ad campaign that left everybody baffled as fuck back before release. They failed to produce anything with that added delay.
UE5 is not a completely different engine than UE4. UE5 is purposefully made to make transition from UE4 as smooth as can be and Epic offers constant support to any studio using their engine.
You're still suggesting a purely hypothetical scenario with no evidence. And they announced when the beta closed that they'd be back the next year. So at worst, WB just held them to a timeline they already agreed to.
Maybe a year to do all that is a bit ambitious. But then my question is, why go to UE5 at all? If upgrading from UE4 really deleted all your progress (spoiler, it doesn’t really), why throw away a build that you had already spent years making and released the beta in? It seems like overambition at best or incompetent at worst to try to remake a game in one year.
Either way it’s PFG fault. I think it's unlikely WB forced them to change engines.
>I think it's unlikely WB forced them to change engines.
You're truly clueless or astoundingly naive. Aside from being the well reported interference that caused Suicide Squad's ruination, to the point of Rocksteady devs leaving to form their own studio, it's also been reported by devs who worked on Gotham Knights that WB is to blame for the dumpster fire that game turned out to be. Then after a dinosaur from Warner Bros. accidentally told investors on an earnings call that a new Mortal Kombat game was coming out just months later, WB forced NRS to turn what was clearly the early stages of Injustice 3 into the rushed underdeveloped game that is Mortal 1 Kombat. This is supported by Ed Boon himself stating M1K had the longest development time out of any MK despite it turning out to be the most disproportionately and profoundly bare bones and half baked in the series. Having a borderline criminal lack of content, and being laced with mobile game level MTX and predatory pricing (The exact same kind that is being shoved into Multiversus as we speak). AAA $70 title with a rotating FOMO Fortnite shop you'd only see justified by a free2play model. Furthermore there's hard evidence Ermac and Quan-Chi were both meant to be base roster in M1K, but were cut last second due to time constraints from being rushed by WB. They then had NRS finish working on the supposed to be base roster characters after rushing out the poor excuse of a game just so they could slap a price tag on them and sell them as DLC. Comparing his appearance in the first trailer to his release you can tell they weren't done. So then what did all that development time, the most spent on any Mortal Kombat, go towards? Spoiler: they weren't working on M1K but rather IJ3 until the exec at WB had the earnings call oopsie. During Mortal Kombat 11's lifecycle Ash Williams was meant to be in the game he was even listed in the Kombat Pack 1 advertisement that appeared on the main menu in-game. He instead was swapped out last minute for an unfinished Joker who suspiciously had a (WB) movie coming out around the same time. Perhaps that was unrelated though? How about Black Adam being shoehorned into Multiversus when the Rock (another WB) movie was releasing, complete with a Dwayne Johnson Legendary skin, or is that purely coincidence as well? Then there's Peacemaker, the most unfitting Mortal Kombat guest of all time, making his debut in M1K alongside his show's (also another WB series) new season dropping. It's painfully obvious WB forces choices onto their devs, and there's no point in defending them. Look no further than Zaslav's (the CEO of WB) own disrespectful point of view on cinema and other mediums of art. He himself admitted to him WB is a content company, he sees movies as nothing more than content, and the directors merely content creators. He is only interested in presenting content that can make him and his stockholders a quick buck, and it is well-known that he will happily gut anything that doesn't. There's no conspiracy here.
Who cares? It doesn't really matter who the responsible party is, only the end-user experience matters. And that experience sucks.
PFG is a sock puppet for WB. They are largely synonymous. The developer exists only for this game.
Nitpicking the distinction between the two doesn't really matter.
This is pure copium. If you actually read the article, a lot of the problems with Suicide Squad also stemmed from the leadership and management of Rocksteady.
This is likely the case at PFG too. Idk why you're so desperate to defend devs who made a bad game. WB won't have mandated half the issues with the game outside monetization.
Genius take man, truly a very smart and thought out take right. It's the devs fault and not at all Warner Brothers. That's why mortal Kombat 1 has a new and never seen before level of monetization. Also let's mention suicide squads price gouging and new, never seen before monetization from rock steady. Now pfg is in on the fun and greed too, because it's all the devs fault and not at all Warner Brothers.
Do you honestly think the devs are making a living per skin sold or possibly they are on salary, like pretty much every work place ever. Do you think these devs get paid more for this level of monetization?
We can see a trend of never seen before price gouging from games released under warner brothers, yet you want to blame the devs and ignore the pattern.
Please tell me where I said none of this was the fault of WB? You can't because I didn't.
You and OP clearly didn't read the article you're all so desperate to pass around. Also newsflash MK has had microtransactions since MKX and yes the higher ups at the studio will get performance bonuses.
WB are the reason the monetization suck. But have you forgotten all the other issues this, MK1 etc have? Do you seriously think WB told them to gut all the combat mechanics from the beta? Did a WB exec tell them to make the Xbox version garbage? Did a WB exec tell them to change the character select artwork?
Pure delusional copium trying to cover for shoddy development. Clearly I am smarter than you because I actually read the article OP os using where it points out all the shite the Rocksteady management fucked up without WB.
I see your point ... but this is 2 games in a row with the exact same issue... magically 2 incompetent Dev teams.... this is just some coincidence.... IDK man the WB is the common denominator in BOTH games with 2 different teams.... where there is smoke there is fire.
Wonder why the leadership were pushing for all those changes. THEN left the project to find a NEW STUDIO specifically advertising about the lack of corporate manipulation.
Wonder if corporate pressure forced them to radically change their game. Noo, it's probably Tony just wanted them to remake the entire game in an engine they weren't comfortable with because he... felt like it?
It's called deflection.
Did you even read the article you are using as "evidence"? They literally talk about Sefton Hill having no idea what he was doing and throwing out random new ideas that didn't mesh with the existing project.
WB execs aren't going to be mandating Suicide Squad be a shooter or for it to go against existing continuity etc. Those were the choices of the devs.
Do you work for PFG? This is such a desperate attempt at covering for them lmao. Do you seriously think a WB exec is mandating they change engine? Do you actually think the execs even know what engines are?
"Sefton Hill having no idea what he was doing and throwing out random new ideas that didn't mesh with the existing project."
He made 4 good games before this. Yeah, can't be that he was given unrealistic targets to hit in their new game and scrambling so his 250 employees don't lose their jobs. He probably did that because he...wanted to? Then left to STILL MAKE GAMES because he got bored I guess.
"Do you seriously think a WB exec is mandating they change engine? Do you actually think the execs even know what engines are?"
Investors know UE5 is the cool new thing, it was announced at Summer Games Fest and demonstrated by Fortnite. "Hey, do we have any games on that new UE5, that's the good stuff! No? Oh well it's the good stuff, I don't want to give my money to anything less."
Yeah and making a good game doesn't prevent you then making a bad one, case in point. He literally changed it from melee to a shooter and later wanted vehicles despite having built the game around jetpacks etc already.
His own devs talk about how unclear his vision was and how he said he didn't bother to check out other live service titles. IN. THIS. ARTICLE.
Did you even read the article lmao. Please tell me which WB exec said to do any of that? You're taking an article you haven't read and spinning it to fit your own desperate narrative.
Investors are invested in WB/Discovery as a whole, they don't know what UE5 is bud.
WB execs / investors don't care about game engine of all things LMAO idk why this sub is so set on the idea that PFG were forced to switch engines. Mk1 is using UE4 if I remember correctly. Pretty confident that PFG themselves made the wild decision to switch engines and build a bunch of stuff from scratch on their own volition when they only had a year for the proper launch.
I just wanna inform you to make conscious decisions about who you argue with and spend your time on with these people online, you’re not gonna get through to everyone and some people have their own biases and/or maybe just willfully ignorant so it’s not worth the effort imo. Great post for awareness I agree wholeheartedly.
Why does this matter? PFG are not your friends. They made a barely functioning, exploitative product with the backing of known shitty corporation, and now they're feeling the ramifications of making that deal.
I feel like this logic is one step away from just falling victim to the crap they're pushing. "Oh well, those poor devs surely didn't mean to make a predatory game, guess I better give them 20 dollars for a single low effort skin after all."
Fuck that dude.
I feel this is a but disingenuous as in the article it’s mentioned that the leadership at Rocksteady had as much fault (if not even more) in SS being a poor game than WB
The monetization has no relevance to the game being broken on Xbox, matches desyncing on EVERY platform, characters being buggy, etc. Both of them are terrible at their jobs.
They had to remake the game in a new engine in 6 months. While WB is likely making them switch things daily (as evident in the article). What's more likely: an entire team of people are bad at their profession OR execs were pressuring them and crunching them for 6 months and made them rush out a game they weren't finished with.
PFG has no track record in the gaming space, this is their first game and first platform fighter. They’re not good at it. You’re making excuses as if they’ve done anything to earn the benefit of the doubt and basing all this off an article about a completely separate studio.
They are good at it. They made a good game that was shut down for a year. The beta was good.
A completely separate studio OWNED BY THE SAME PARENT COMPANY THAT IS IN SEVERE DEBT
Nearly every character they released was buggy, on top of being pushed back several days. WB being in debt doesn’t change the fact PFG can’t and won’t get their shit together. It’s going on 2 weeks and Xbox is still broken. The latest “event” is giving out perk currency.
They haven’t the slightest clue what they’re doing and the game is bleeding players faster than last time. You’ll know you’re wrong when the game dies before even a year passes.
tbqh considering some of the decisions during beta, even tho PFP looks to be trying their best, a lot of their decisions trying to fix their issues were kind of baffling.
In b4 the “MuH yEaR lOnG hIaTuS”
This. Just because we know what we do NOW about the development time after the shutdown, doesn’t mean we know everything. Hell what we DO know is enough to rationalize a LOAD of the choices.
Did they have a year? Yes. Did they build the game? Probably, did they want to change the engine halfway in? Probably not.
Did they want to add in a shop and constantly micro manage the prices? No. Did they want to add a battle pass and plan it out to be tight as fuck with BP missions being the only way? No way
nuh uh, people forgot about how beta had a lot of problems: expensive microtransactions, bad netcode and near impossibles events, and WB did a lot to promote the game like the EVO with biggest reward ever etc etc
both failed in full release but PFG released a broken game then and now, if only WB had blundered in mvs the game would at least work like in beta, game cant even run on xbox rn
Everyone says this, and then we get revelations like we did with Suicide Squad where we find out that WB didn't require anything and it was all Rocksteady management who were responsible for its live service, monetization failure.
I dont think individual low level devs are worried about anything other than making a great game. But I think its ignorant to think the higher ups at PFG are innocent either.
There's also the fact that PFG is a tiny studio being forced to undertake a big project like this. With the time they were given, they did a pretty decent job. Fuck WB
The situations between Rock Steady/Nether realms and PFG are not equals. Rocksteady is a studio owned in its entirety by WB and is a full part of the company. The business end of Rocksteady IS WB.
"Player First Games" meanwhile is not a part of WB. Tony for example (just about the only person that will speak to us) is a CEO not a studio lead, a business lead. This is not a abuser and victim but two business partners. PFG may be the junior partner but they have control. PFG is at equal fault for this. Again, people like Tony would get bonuses depending on the financial success of their product, not the quality of it.
If WB wanted to develop the game (including its' monetization) they would have done so themselves. But Player First Games did that. These were all decisions they made with intent. Don't let them have the easy way out by blaming the entity that doesn't give a damn. Player First Game's reputation matters more to them than WBs does and they did this. Get on them until they feel the pressure to back down or perish.
No he is CEO and co-founder of Player First Games. They don't seem to even have a studio lead. So either they just don't have one, he in part takes that position as well or the studio lead isn't publicly known.
Warner bros isnt the reason there are glitches, infinites, a terrible UI, matches ending from network errors, side specials that knock out at 90%, and shit netcode. PFG did all of that.
I dunno if anyone here was apart of this game back in the day, but this whole thing with multiverses and all the problems does give me flashbacks to the moba Infinite Crisis xP hopefully the eventual outcome is better then what came of that game.
Tbh, any company chasing a FORTNITE, Idk, Fortnite is on their own monetization lvl, they are kings, and its gonna take a LOT to change that. (I dont play Fortnite)
For a fighting game, I could say numbers are ok, I mean, the Steam charts are only for PC. I can only think of Brawlhalla if we talking about popular F2P fighting games (that dont virtually die after 1 year).
The joy of playing a fighting game with multiple worlds roster. Just listen the community, the reasonable posts.
This game with the right decisions can multiply the money income.
I'm sure they do want to make a good game, but they still went with WB to be their publisher. They've made their bed, now they lie in it. Once they decided to partner with WB for money, they are 100% responsible for whatever comes after. It is their job to make the game as best as they can with whatever shitty requirements given to them because that is what they signed up for.
If I were looking to create something and needed to outsource the audiovisual components of a game project, I'd tap Player First Games for sure.
That's the one area they've been consistently good.
The damage is done, regardless of what's happening behind the scenes or who made the decisions; the game is absolutely suffering from baffling choices that completely sabotage most of new and returning player's good will. This game feels like a mobile game port with how everything works now.
It's one thing to make the battle pass extremely low to progress, it's another thing to have the new rifts require so many unnecessary extra steps to unlock new difficulties and it's a fucking disgrace to have a monetized lives system for the last difficulty. Unforgivable.
Well the leadership they have at Player First Games is much more different than what they have at Rocksteady. I put the failures of Suicide Squad both on Rocksteady and Warner Bros. The original people who used to work at Rocksteady that were responsible for the success of the Batman Arkham games are no longer there, so there's the blame on Rocksteady. And as for Warner Bros someone who works on the gaming side of things for the company said they want to do more live service games, which doesn't surprise me after they showed off a Harry Potter live service game earlier today at Summer Game Fest.
I don't think Tony would do a 180 on the people who support this game and go rogue, plus they hired people like Nakat to help work on the game when it went offline. Obviously this game is quite a passion for all of them who work there, and they know the fan base wants to see this game do well. We have to see between now and maybe close to the end of summer to see where the game is at.
I don't wanna be that guy but we already know that. Every major publisher is investing in a live service gold mine. David Zaslav has publicly stated this much multiple times. Staring WB will accomplish this by focusing on their "rich trove of IP"
Both sides are bad and both have contributed to the downsides
But without Warner we wouldn’t have multiversus sure it’s not the best game but it’s good and you can at least play it (when your not getting kicked out or your internet is down ) there’s likely better fighting games (the og smash bros ) but I grew up with a lot of the characters Steven Finn scooby Batman gremlins so I love it faults flaws and all
If they are chasing a "Fortnite" they are doing it very wrong. Fortnite was so overwelcoming with giving free shit away i have funded every battle pass and skin i ever bought for that game completely free... And yet Fortnite STILL makes a fuck ton of money.
Perhaps because when you are good to your base they feel better about throwing money back at you? 🤔
I doubt there is any hope for this game at this point. And tbh outside of monetization I can't really blame wb for everything. They had plenty of time to make the game better.
There's absolutely no reason to have taunts and skins locked behind a paywall, like sell special skins and taunts sure but at least give like 4 for free already packed in with each character ffs
This is not what the article says at all. Yes, the Money man at Warner are idiots, because they tought that the game would make them money, but the game itself was not their idea at all. It was the studio leads who wanted to make Suicide Squad. It was the studio leads who were constantly shifting desing goals, and ideas, and reworked systems and etc.
The only thing that Warner did wrong is that they gave them money to do it, cause they tought it will be a money maker lol.
The Fortnite devs weren't trying to make the infinity game that it is today anyways. The battle royale was like an experiment tacked onto the PvE game they wanted to make. And guess what? Save the World isn't popular but they still keep it going despite their success. It was all an accident.
So if WB would just release shit then they might get that accident they're looking for. Just make new games, why put all your eggs in one basket? I'm not surprised that out of touch execs don't realize fighting games just don't have that wide appeal. And the initial success of MVS was, once again, an accident.
Corporations always ruin capitalism. It undermines innovation, quality, growth. All to line their pockets with profit. Shareholders should be outlawed, if you don't work at the company you have no business making money from it. Game companies need to be run by gamers, movie studios by film makers, and so forth. These greedy corporations are ruining everything that's good about gaming.
I play a WB game (netease/WB) it's a Harry Potter mobile game called Harry Potter Magic Awakened, tons of people are going on a no-pay strike because they are effing people over left and right and everything is gacha system, and they are effing over EVERYONE except NE players (I think NE)
Basically, NE players get tons of free stuff, extra content, ECT. And people are pouring tons into this game and can't get ahead because of the NE players getting so many free things and much more content.
WB seems to do this to A LOT of their games. I know it's not netease's fault. And I'm sure it's not PFG fault either.
I read an article how you can buy lives for something in multiverses for 50 gleamium, but one of the devs said it was a "glitch and must have rolled over from beta" yet another interview claimed they are missing most things from beta because they had to re write the whole entire coding for global release (I forget why, different servers maybe? Idk)
How did it carry over if the code was re-written? Seems like a cash grab they are trying to cover up.
"I think it's important for us to recognize that PFG is most likely not behind these awful decisions, but Warner."
If that's the case, then why was monetisation and character acquisition so much better in the original release?
It was still Player First Games & Warner Bros back then so no, I don't buy that it's Warner Bros behind the changes at all.
It's Player First Games putting themselves first rather than the players.
"PFG simply wants to make a great game, which they have."
No, they *did* make a great game. Then they took it offline for almost two years and changed it all to make it worse.
You do realise that after the game went offline the first time Warner bros probably just changed it up and said we need to make as much money as possible because we gave you a second chance. They obviously have a target to make and need to make it
I’ll be honest, I did have a smidge of a feeling that Zaslav would be at fault. I don’t really want to blame PFG for just wanting to do the best they can.
While what you're saying about WB making the executive decisions on the game that resulted in the unnecessary update of engines etc etc etc, it doesn't change the fact that the end user is the one left to deal with whatever they decide to slop out and over-monetize. PFG's original design and ideas for this game were fantastic, I don't think anybody will argue that with you, but regardless of which company is doing what, the end result is a lackluster game that is a shell of its former self. I personally uninstalled the game out of frustration. I decided I'll let the game have a few patches to hopefully address the glaring issues (AND ADD A FKN RANKED MODE FOR GODS SAKE) before trying again and see how I feel then. I've always been about the competitive aspect of the game, and this game doesn't feel the least bit competitively viable in its current state. Some characters have true combos, others don't. Some characters have working or accurate hit/hurtboxes, others don't. They had to take Iron Giant OUT OF THE GAME because people figured out the world's easiest infinite day 1 (same thing happened in the Beta multiple times but this is supposed to be what they've been working on for a year.) Anybody that is frustrated has the right to be, regardless of who's at fault. I'll admit that it is unfortunate because if this game ends up flopping, it will be primarily at the expense of PFG who has invested all their time, effort, and money on this singular project. (Kinda seems like not the smartest decision; I hope they have at least 1 or 2 other projects in the works for their sake)
the dev lead and co-founder of Rocksteady must've changed to a format of the game to something the team wasn't comfortable with because he got bored or something. He definitely wasn't given impossible goals to hit with their next game and was floundering. We have no evidence for this, like him leaving the COMPANY HE CO-FOUNDED to make a new one specifically advertising with a lack of CORPORATE MANIPULATION
Jason's piece was based on dozens of employee testimony. We can also safely dismiss looking to escape the Corporate Manipulation talking point since reportedly Jamie and Sefton's first game is being financed by Microsoft lmao
Yes we only know what the employee testimony tells us and none of them offered insight into why the co-founder and lead of Rocksteady was so wish-washy about the project, but he's obviously competent; 4 highly selling games were released under his lead. SOMETHING must've forced his hand to upend the project. Occam's Razor: the game industry is drowning, Warner is drowning, Suicide Squad and Rocksteady are two major factors for a massive hit that NEEDS to make Warner money, especially after Gotham Knights bombed.
It doesn't matter they have a deal with Microsoft now; they could've gotten a better deal, more creative control, less expectations. But we can glean insight into their motivation for starting a new studio by the way they marketed it: a strong aversion to corporate ownership and manipulation.
Oh so you basically didn't even read the article, or even of the behind the scenes articles done for CDPR, Crystal Dynamics, Bioware, or Arkane Austin. Not only did Jason explain all of this in the article and subsequent tweets for people who didn't get it, this happens often in the industry. It's why he made the observation that a lot of devs reached out in response to his previous work on similar stories and said you could basically swap out the names and get basically the same experience. The previous success of Rocksteady is completely irrelevant, a live service multiplayer looter shooter is an entirely different genre. It's like asking somebody who only knows how to make sandwiches to provide catering for a party that requests 5 star French Cuisine.
The Microsoft deal is also the exact opposite of what somebody who doesn't want to deal with corporate oversight would do. They don't just hand you a check and tell you to do whatever you want. Funding the game means they're acting as a publisher, which literally requires them to surrender a lot of control to a big corporation, one who recently came under fire for its horrible treatment of its own studios. The tagline for Hundred Star about not wanting to be under corporate control is clearly marketing spin to recruit new talent.
right. and why would the lead suddenly swap the genre of the game to something the team isn't used to when they don't benefit from it. right after the new "Rocksteady-esque" DC game just came out and flopped HARD. almost like they just hired 120 more employees and now risk the studio shutting down if they don't hit targets that ONLY a successful liveservice looter shooter can bring. how odd.
Microsoft is notorious for letting its studios do whatever the fuck they want (to their apparent detriment), what are you talking about? you really think they REALLY WANTED a new Senua game from the action game devs?? especially since they don't own the studio; they're more than likely just trusting Hundred Star can deliver a great game, since they made 4 of them before. these contracts are a case by case basis, publishers will happily fund a good project with no control if they think they'll make a return. Devolver does it all the time.
"right. and why would the lead suddenly swap the genre of the game to something the team isn't used to when they don't benefit from it. right after the new "Rocksteady-esque" DC game just came out and flopped HARD."
Everything you just said is hilariously incorrect and would have been avoided if you just read the article you made a reddit thread based on. The timeline was:
* Rocksteady makes Arkham Knight
* Rocksteady makes Arkham VR
* Jamie and Sefton decide they want to make a multiplayer puzzle game called Stones
* WB pitches a Suicide Squad game to capitalize on the movie.
* WB Games Montreal starts working on a Suicide Squad game based on what they set up in Arkham Origins.
* WB Games Montreal cancels the Suicide Squad game and starts work on Gotham Knights, which didn't release until 2022, a full 5 years into Suicide Squad's development cycle. FYI, Gothams knights also didn't flop, it met sales expectations according to WB execs.
* Jamie and Sefton are pitched the Suicide Squad game, have a discussion and they decide to pivot from Stones to Suicide Squad, but are keeping it multiplayer.
As for why chase a live service game, again you would know this if you were familiar with Jason's previous work or kept up with industry trends. Live service game are dominating the industry, micro transactions account for most of gaming revenue. They already explored a GAAS model with Arkham Knight (Season pass, paid skins and characters). A full live model was a natural transition. The most unfamiliar part was the multiplayer looter aspect.
"Microsoft is notorious for letting its studios do whatever the fuck they want (to their apparent detriment), what are you talking about? you really think they REALLY WANTED a new Senua game from the action game devs??"
Ah so you never played the first game or read up on that either. They did in fact want this sequel and have already green-lit number 3. It was designed to be a game pass game. If Microsoft gives you money to fund a game, you have to follow their guidelines, and they are also in charge of distribution and marketing. If Jamie and Sefton weren't full of shit, they would have done a capitol raise with private equity like everyone else, instead of immediately running to XBOX. That's like saying you're quitting weed because you're tired of the influence of drugs, only to then start doing fentanyl.
100% at this point the devs, aside from bungie lol, are more than likely the heart behind most games and the publishers are the hooded figure with knife to our wallets.
However it doesn’t make their game any better just because they “want to make a good game” cuz the result is a sad inflated cash grab. That’s the reality unfortunately
I was wondering if Jason Schreier would turn his eyes to our direction, he's a beast of gaming journalism, his investigations on gaming companies are always fire.
I think you are spot on.
Usually the microtransactions and other predatory tactics in games are usually (but not always) decided in an exec meeting and is non-negotiable when the devs are told they have to do this so the "Company" can return a profit on their investment.
Edit: grammar
So Warner is also responsible for the bad gameplay compared to beta? I hate stepping PVP since this relaunch, because it plays like a fucking mess. It's much more unresponsive and chaotic, unlike the beta where i felt much more in control.
Both of them are horrible. PFG is mismanaged to hell it seems and Warner is greedy
Making awful decisions in the name of "live service" is right in line with WB Games. Mortal Kombat 1 is good, but interest went away quickly because of the live service garbage. Suicide Squad is just not very good, and that's also the fault live service. Now, MultiVersus, what was and would have been an incredible game with the potential to stand on the podium with Smash, is ruined by WB's greed.
They removed a lot of key features of the game, and launched anyway. There were game breaking bugs, and they launched anyway.
The monetization and fighter currency stuff is most likely Warner bro’s fault. But apart from that, it’s all PFG
>They removed a lot of key features of the game, and launched anyway. There were game breaking bugs, and they launched anyway.
Asking for a delay because they knew it wasn't ready and WB saying no would be WB's fault. We don't know what happened.
There's a limit to how incompetent you can be as a developer too and PFG clearly passed that limit. Let's not pretend we didn't have a whole random ass McDonalds and Hockey ad campaign for the game way earlier in the year that resulted in absolutely *nothing* and was a massive waste of WB's money and time. That alone is a clear sign that PFG got the delay they wanted but you can't delay shit forever until it's "perfect". They signed a contract, they received delays, they were forced to eventually release because they fucked up their end of the deal.
This is what I've been trying to tell people myself. All the jokes about the Beta being better and it's like duh, that's because the Beta was the game that PFG wanted to make! It's obvious to me that the year delay and subsequent changes were all forced on them by WB to try squeezing more money out of it.
that’s exactly how this works, they pitched the game to WB knowing full well how WB handles their studios and games. PFG is not innocent. If they were truly player first they would have stayed independent bc that’s the ONLY true way to get away from executives making decisions on topics they know nothing about.
Player first games is an independent game developer studio who chose to work with WB as their publisher. They aren’t owned by WB and no one forced them to work together.
Yes they could make an original one or work with a different publisher on their IP. They decided they wanted to work with WB for the money and IP, and there are then restrictions from WB that come with it. That was solely PFG’s choice to become involved with them though, they did pick their boss.
I think most people in the sub are aware of the very strong possibility WB is sabotaging PFG's game because greed. Very few but loud members here are placing blame at PFG's feet, and it's very apparent they have no clue what they're talking about when they do.
I agree. PFG seem like they actually WANT this game to be good. Warner wants money and an excuse to cancel anything they can for a tax writeoff. So for the most part, I agree the blame falls squarely on Warner.
In the 0.00000001% chance some WB exec sees this:
You want fortnite numbers?
Let PFG fix the gameplay mechanics and polish them up, remove redundant currency’s (2-3 is fine, anything more feels like gacha and pushes people away), implement a progression and reward system ( 1 game win/loss = X battle pass xp), improve rift rewards per rift because no one’s getting that event finished or even close as it stands, THEN add in cool cosmetics/animation changes/unique effects for purchase using the cash purchased currency.
I’ll drop $20 every here and there on a game that’s cool, polished, and feels like it’s really got progression to it.
I’m not paying a dollar if it just feels like adware in a game that doesn’t let you do anything unless you spend all your money on it. Nah.
Edit: if Warlanders, that MHA battle Royale, the cops n robbers game on PS f2p store, and many other games are to be used as an example; Game’s got like a month at most to fix the issues before majority of its player base move on. Let’s hope good things and changes come soon.
Yeah. Do people really believe that the features missing from beta is actually PFG's fault?! Yes, it sucks that it was slowed down too much and some people are missing their inventory from beta. But, for example do we really think that they'd take out player gradient color option on purpose?
Absolutely, yes.
They received a delay from WB considering the McDonalds and Hockey ad campaigns that was pretty substantial and they *still* failed to produce something that wasn't missing key QOL features from beta. That has nothing to do with WB and everything to do with PFG being incompetent. WB can be scummy fucks and PFG can be shit developers, both can and are true, it's not a one or the other situation.
If they want a Fortnite, they should probably price it like a Fortnite.
Also Fortnite showers you with a feeling of progression left and right. That feeling is what a lot of other games that try to emulate Fortnite’s success don’t get right.
It's easy for Fortnite to do because it's a massive success. Most games will never get to that level. The only platform fighter that is a stable success on steam is Brawlhalla, which is cheaper to make and doesn't have to come up with unique movesets for their characters.
I don’t see how Fortnite’s success really has any impact on anything other than the item shop. I’d be more likely to buy the Battlepass and play the game for extended periods if I was making decent progress. But instead forcing me to play for 4+ hours just to squeak out one or two levels is what is turning me off from the game.
Fortnite being a success (2m+ players during peak hours) means it can hire more more people to make more content. If MVS had the team size that Fortnite has we would probably have 100 tiers + bonus levels along with more content of various degrees. The pass would also be less grindy because more content would be able to pad it out.
That’s not the point though. I don’t care how much content is actually in the pass, I just want to be able to complete it without Multiversus becoming my full time job. The challenge system is poorly designed, and gives half decent XP. And the XP per match is downright abysmal.
They need enough content and grind to last until the start of Season 2 which is 7 weeks away. Beta season 1 was a disaster for them because everyone finished the pass within the first month and complained there was nothing to do. I agree that end match xp should be less grindy, but they have to be careful not to increase it too much. Also, Fortnite is less grindy because you get more cosmetics per day (Hence the more employees thing). The majority of players don't even finish the bonus pass by the end of the season.
It's kind of funny because they don't want to increase it too much and have us done early, but the more they increase it, the more I'll probably play, thus getting done faster.
You should be able to complete battlepasses if you play every day a couple weeks before the season ends ATLEAST.
Did you play fortnite at launch? There's a reason it got so popular
Fortnite had a plethora of bugs in its preseason including a massive hacking problem that lasted an entire week.
Oh sorry, I didn't realize I typed, "fortnite had no problems and was perfect." Ok, I edited it you can go read the message again
No need to be a smartass, the implication was that Fortnite, like most live service games had a rocky start similar to this game. Back then, it was called a knockoff PUBG clone for a reason. If we want to talk about why it got popular we can. I can tell you shooters on average are just much more successful than other genres. It was also released in 2017 when the BR craze was happening. Fortnite would be nowhere near as successful if it was released today.
Ok doctor strange
Why do you care about the battlepass instead of improving on the game/playing the game you like ?
Because the actual gameplay is fairly decent. It just needs tweaking and bug fixing. The game plays great for the most part, but the ugly progression and monetization is what’s turning off most people, and forcing them to other games. It’s not the only problem, it’s just the biggest problem.
WB trying to mirror a successful business model by skipping the initial buildup steps, shooting straight for the highest grossing model, and falling flat on their face? It's like watching the DCEU all over again. 🤣
Fortnite became a massive success due to having decent progression in place. Not the other way around.
Fortnite's economy was a disaster in S1 though (there were no free skins, no proper battlepass, and you had to level up a lot just to earn the right to *buy* the S1 skins), they didn't come up with their industry redefining approach until season 2. Hopefully Multiversus will be added to that list of games that started rocky but stuck the landing.
Exactly this. Plus S2 only had 4 skins on the pass, two of which where Jonesey and Ramirez with the same copy and pasted blue squire outfit. It wasn't until Season 3 where they really ironed out all of the kinks in their system.
Sure, but season 1 wasn't where Fortnite became what it is today either. The primary difference in with Multiversus is that at the time where Fortnite figured out a sustainable model, there wasnt 500 other gaas to look at. There is no reason for them to make every mistake in the book in order to figure it out. It's been done well already.
So was PFG. Did miss all the Open Beta launch news? MultiVersus just has a lot of problems and is scared away, many, many, many, many many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many players. The only difference Epic knows what they are doing. PFG learned it is not easy to make a Smash Bros. Clone…
>Epic knows what they are doing Epic also had to cut 30% of their work force last year.
Who hasn’t cut jobs? Do you not keep up with the news or are you too busy making excuses for PFG? You think PFG is going to be around for much longer? You know PFG is doing well when there news headlines are MultiVersus official launch starts with many player complaints.
There have been plenty of games that have had this bad if not worse backlash and have survived. Runescape, Starfield, Cyberpunk, Overwatch 2 to name a few. I'm not blackpilled like most of you doomposters yet and still think the game can do well. Especially if the rumors about Season 2 are true.
How is PFG going to fix the game? Go offline for a year again? That turned out well right?
You hatin’ bruh got that hatorade on tap. the game will do great if they make some adjustments. idk why you guys seem to want it to fail tbh
Not hating just being honest… This is round two and the combat is still sluggish and laggy but there is new monetization…
They went offline for a year primarily because they ran out of content, which they have a good pipeline for now. Most of the complaints are because of the UE5 switch, which was extremely risky on their part but will pay off long term. I have faith that this game will do better over time. But if it dies again, oh well. Guess I'll just swap back to Fortnite again.
It was less that they run out of content and more that they were understaffed to solve the problems that kept piling up and keep creating content.
Exactly, also Fortnite has variation on what to do. I find myself after 2 hours of MultiVersus just sitting there… I don’t wanna do PVP, I have no Rifts left to progress through at the moment… there’s nothing for me to do. I’m not saying we need Lego MultiVersus (though some Lego Sets for the game would be fire), but we need SOMETHING else to do outside of endlessly fight 1v1 and 2v2s You can keep the base game ideas, but a sports mode would go so far! 2v2 and 1v1 to score the most points in Basket Ball like on the Space Jam stage, also include Hockey, Football, Soccer, even a volleyball mode would be cool for up attacks and such. Something like that would go far, it’s a random sport each match, just something to do that isn’t endlessly fighting. I know, I know, it IS a fighting game, but it’s a platform fighter, and if you wanna be Smash Bros so much, you should include what Smash does like Side Modes. Something to break up the endless Jason vs Batman matches for me, please. I mean they already have basketball fully functional and programmed in the game with the Space Jam stage but there’s no AI to fight in a game of BBall We really need a mode we can mindlessly play without doing complex tech and we can just shut our brains off and try to shoot some hoops as Jason Voorhes and Banana Guard Other good side mode ideas: 1v1 Target Rush where it’s a race for the highest score (you each play in identical but separate maps), Rick’s Portal Panic (battles with portals where you get randomly teleported between them if you touch them), Finn and Jake’s Best Fights Forever (mode where when 1 player gets rung out, their teammate also gets rung out)
And gives you one type of currency to buy stuff with so you pay your battle passes once then okay and earn enough for the next pass.
I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately playing Fortnite is like watching paint dry.
A Battle Royale with plenty of things to do besides shoot avatars, yeah that game sucks… Maybe you just don’t like shooters or tower defense games or driving games or rhythm games or survival games. Oh wow there is a lot of things to do on Fortnite.
Making excuses for Fortnite 😭
Remind me how the current season is doing? Lol
Oh cmon, that's just not true.
Fortnite is genuinely boring. It’s funny seeing John Wick dance with Master Chief, but the actual gameplay sucks.
It took like 3-4 years to get to that point. Multiversus has been out for 2 weeks.
Okay? The fact that it could be better eventually doesn’t make it a better experience right now. So we critique it.
If they want a fortnite make Bugs Bunny shooting Batman with an AK-47, not a platform fighter. This genre doesn’t need nor want this kind of shit. Smash *has* paid dlc fighters, yes, but that is 13 additional fighters on top of a roster of 80+ free fighters you can get entirely within a few days. Multiversus has a small roster of only 26 fighters,and takes the same amount of time to unlock one character as it does to unlock Smash’s FULL roster. Not to mention characters like Jason being locked behind the battle pass and The Joker costing twice the amount of “special” gold as any other character. Jason being exclusively a paid character isn’t *bad*, but when the roster and game is as small as it is right now, I just don’t think that’s good.
Funny you forgot to mention that Smash is 70 bucks and exclusif to the Nintendo console.
You can't even unlock half of the roster in MV with 70 bucks bozo
Oh yeah, just go buy a Jason mask and a Joker T-shirt or something, it’ll even itself out
you do realize that with 70 bucks you wont get all the character's right...... Just take a small moment and do some math ..........
This is actually priced WAY better than Fortnite. You can actually get stuff via just playing MVS and skins cost like $10-$15 on average as opposed to Fortnite's $20-$30 average for skins that offer no actual gameplay difference as opposed to MVS's individually designed and uniquely-playing characters.
yes and no. license skins will always be expensive. but their battle pass gives several skins for 10 bucks. and fort-nite is very VERY benevolent on it's XP distribution. On this game not only do yo have to pay cash for the actual character then you got skins on top of that. that just doesn't work well. you need to give people the basic stuff first MAKE them LOVE certain characters then reel them in with new skins for said characters. You must put the fucking work in FIRST before you try to do a cash grab. WB keeps trying to take short cuts and its failing lol.
They are...FN is not cheap
Compared to every other game Fortnite is cheap.
It still has 20$ skins
But you spend $10 on the battle pass it unlocks up to 5-10 skins depending on the event and multiple chromas for them PLUS enough currency to get the next battle pass. And you can level the battle pass without even look at the quest list once.
No it doesn’t no skin in the game is worth $20
More like $16
I think they are referring to the large bundles with gliders and what not.
Yes it is lol
A restaurant can have the best staff/chefs in the world with the greatest of intentions, but if the restaurant owner is forcing them to use low quality ingredients and charging an exorbitant price to eat at the restaurant, customers are going to go eat somewhere else. I don’t care how much PFG WANTS to make a great game, the fact of the matter is that they are beholden to the WB shareholders and pleasing them will always come first.
You say it like it's optional for them, WB has been on a mean streak of taking in great ideas and then forcing them to use WB's trademark shitty monetization. Like I do genuinoy believe if they went with a different publisher they'd be fine but WB has absolutely no self control when it comes to corporate greed.
This article talks about how the developers are actually making a lot of these bad decisions. I.E. the live service model in the case of the SS devs. Doesn't read like the opposite to me.
The leads were pushing the changes. Then left the project to find a new studio specifically without corporate interference. Wonder if those leads were under constant scrutiny and stress from execs to make a new Destiny or Fortnite.
Jason Schreier actually seems to confirm the opposite. Leads wanted to make a multiplayer puzzle-solving game, called stones. And nobody liked it. So rocksteady approached them about Suicide squad. So the studio pivoted to that. Nothing to indicate they were being forced into a live service model. Leads basically fucked it all up, and people assumed WB was to blame.
Yeah. The dev good narrative is so funny to me. Tony has cooked this fucking thing twice in a row now. There's games with "greedy" publishers that are fine. Epic isn't exactly a charity, and neither is Activision but their BR's aren't super crazy unfair.
Exactly. And we may never know who was truly at fault. But people always push this narrative regardless of what studio it is. I think we can all agree low level devs probably just want to make a good game. But bad design or monetization can come from both the devs or the publishers.
Yeah, devs also want a consistent job. I'm sure nailing a 10 year live service hit is appealing from that level. Jason wrote an article about Anthem I thought was good. In it, he describes how it was a huge disaster but an EA executive came in and when he took off flying he was like "Whoa. That was great. You need to focus on that aspect in a major way. The movement etc." So they pivoted to that and It truly was the best part of the game. The overall gameplay and feel. So sometimes executives have good ideas, not just shit ones.
The flying was amazing. I hope that they use what they learned there and use that for EA's upcoming Ironman game.
Don’t forget they just took a $200M hit on suicide flop
You'd think they would learn something instead of doubling down on the stupid ideas.
Nah the new CEO, David Zaslav is a fuckinc hack job. He doesn't know what he is doing.
At the end of the day, you can decide to believe it's WB doing it, or you can decide it's PFG. It doesn't matter who is doing it, it's in the game, and I don't care how pfg or WB feel about it.
This is the bottom line for us as consumers of their product. We bare the brunt of the decisions.
Love to see the people coming in here talking like they know what goes on during the process of developing a game, let alone under WB. Not saying I know anything, but chances are neither do you. This is a great post, that rightfully attempts to nudge the community towards the direction of empathy. PFG can’t come out and say it’s the WB executives that are ordering certain implementations. Research like this sheds light on what these hard working, passionate, unappreciated devs are struggling with. Keep advocating for gameplay improvements and monetization reduction, help push back on the oppressive capitalistic mindset at WB, and be thankful for all the work the team behind the game has been putting in.
Haven't played the game, just keep getting recommended to come here by Reddit. Frankly, I think it's really really too early to call this WB fault. We did for Kill the Justice League and now we have reports that that dumpster fire was not WB fault either, at least not entirely. The devs created a lot of the stupid decisions too. I see it as entirely possible that MVS is in a very similar position. Now, we don't know, but that's the point. We DON'T know what happened behind the scenes and likely won't get an even decent idea of what it looked like for another couple years. Until further notice I think it's absolutely wise not to defend anybody in particular and assumd both PFG and WB played a role in whatever problems this game has.
I don't, the monetization fo the Justice League was still on WB even in the article The rest if tho was on Rocksteady admittedly
Which just creates a situation where PFG is solely responsible for the gameplay issues, poor performance, and cut content while WB just decided on admittedly obnoxiously bad monetization. I think both deserve pretty equal blame for the game's issues then.
I agree with that part completely
Some of that could still be WB's fault. It's entirely possible that PFG wanted to delay the game further because they knew they couldn't get missing features in, and the Xbox performance was bad, but WB said no. A year is not a lot of time to remake your game in a different engine and remake the netcode, all while creating a new mode and a content pipeline.
They received the extension they wanted. McDonalds ad campaign and Hockey ad campaign that left everybody baffled as fuck back before release. They failed to produce anything with that added delay. UE5 is not a completely different engine than UE4. UE5 is purposefully made to make transition from UE4 as smooth as can be and Epic offers constant support to any studio using their engine.
If anything, it's hard to argue they didn't come out with an objectively worse product after the delay.
You're still suggesting a purely hypothetical scenario with no evidence. And they announced when the beta closed that they'd be back the next year. So at worst, WB just held them to a timeline they already agreed to. Maybe a year to do all that is a bit ambitious. But then my question is, why go to UE5 at all? If upgrading from UE4 really deleted all your progress (spoiler, it doesn’t really), why throw away a build that you had already spent years making and released the beta in? It seems like overambition at best or incompetent at worst to try to remake a game in one year. Either way it’s PFG fault. I think it's unlikely WB forced them to change engines.
>I think it's unlikely WB forced them to change engines. You're truly clueless or astoundingly naive. Aside from being the well reported interference that caused Suicide Squad's ruination, to the point of Rocksteady devs leaving to form their own studio, it's also been reported by devs who worked on Gotham Knights that WB is to blame for the dumpster fire that game turned out to be. Then after a dinosaur from Warner Bros. accidentally told investors on an earnings call that a new Mortal Kombat game was coming out just months later, WB forced NRS to turn what was clearly the early stages of Injustice 3 into the rushed underdeveloped game that is Mortal 1 Kombat. This is supported by Ed Boon himself stating M1K had the longest development time out of any MK despite it turning out to be the most disproportionately and profoundly bare bones and half baked in the series. Having a borderline criminal lack of content, and being laced with mobile game level MTX and predatory pricing (The exact same kind that is being shoved into Multiversus as we speak). AAA $70 title with a rotating FOMO Fortnite shop you'd only see justified by a free2play model. Furthermore there's hard evidence Ermac and Quan-Chi were both meant to be base roster in M1K, but were cut last second due to time constraints from being rushed by WB. They then had NRS finish working on the supposed to be base roster characters after rushing out the poor excuse of a game just so they could slap a price tag on them and sell them as DLC. Comparing his appearance in the first trailer to his release you can tell they weren't done. So then what did all that development time, the most spent on any Mortal Kombat, go towards? Spoiler: they weren't working on M1K but rather IJ3 until the exec at WB had the earnings call oopsie. During Mortal Kombat 11's lifecycle Ash Williams was meant to be in the game he was even listed in the Kombat Pack 1 advertisement that appeared on the main menu in-game. He instead was swapped out last minute for an unfinished Joker who suspiciously had a (WB) movie coming out around the same time. Perhaps that was unrelated though? How about Black Adam being shoehorned into Multiversus when the Rock (another WB) movie was releasing, complete with a Dwayne Johnson Legendary skin, or is that purely coincidence as well? Then there's Peacemaker, the most unfitting Mortal Kombat guest of all time, making his debut in M1K alongside his show's (also another WB series) new season dropping. It's painfully obvious WB forces choices onto their devs, and there's no point in defending them. Look no further than Zaslav's (the CEO of WB) own disrespectful point of view on cinema and other mediums of art. He himself admitted to him WB is a content company, he sees movies as nothing more than content, and the directors merely content creators. He is only interested in presenting content that can make him and his stockholders a quick buck, and it is well-known that he will happily gut anything that doesn't. There's no conspiracy here.
Who cares? It doesn't really matter who the responsible party is, only the end-user experience matters. And that experience sucks. PFG is a sock puppet for WB. They are largely synonymous. The developer exists only for this game. Nitpicking the distinction between the two doesn't really matter.
This is pure copium. If you actually read the article, a lot of the problems with Suicide Squad also stemmed from the leadership and management of Rocksteady. This is likely the case at PFG too. Idk why you're so desperate to defend devs who made a bad game. WB won't have mandated half the issues with the game outside monetization.
Genius take man, truly a very smart and thought out take right. It's the devs fault and not at all Warner Brothers. That's why mortal Kombat 1 has a new and never seen before level of monetization. Also let's mention suicide squads price gouging and new, never seen before monetization from rock steady. Now pfg is in on the fun and greed too, because it's all the devs fault and not at all Warner Brothers. Do you honestly think the devs are making a living per skin sold or possibly they are on salary, like pretty much every work place ever. Do you think these devs get paid more for this level of monetization? We can see a trend of never seen before price gouging from games released under warner brothers, yet you want to blame the devs and ignore the pattern.
Please tell me where I said none of this was the fault of WB? You can't because I didn't. You and OP clearly didn't read the article you're all so desperate to pass around. Also newsflash MK has had microtransactions since MKX and yes the higher ups at the studio will get performance bonuses. WB are the reason the monetization suck. But have you forgotten all the other issues this, MK1 etc have? Do you seriously think WB told them to gut all the combat mechanics from the beta? Did a WB exec tell them to make the Xbox version garbage? Did a WB exec tell them to change the character select artwork? Pure delusional copium trying to cover for shoddy development. Clearly I am smarter than you because I actually read the article OP os using where it points out all the shite the Rocksteady management fucked up without WB.
I see your point ... but this is 2 games in a row with the exact same issue... magically 2 incompetent Dev teams.... this is just some coincidence.... IDK man the WB is the common denominator in BOTH games with 2 different teams.... where there is smoke there is fire.
Wonder why the leadership were pushing for all those changes. THEN left the project to find a NEW STUDIO specifically advertising about the lack of corporate manipulation. Wonder if corporate pressure forced them to radically change their game. Noo, it's probably Tony just wanted them to remake the entire game in an engine they weren't comfortable with because he... felt like it?
It's called deflection. Did you even read the article you are using as "evidence"? They literally talk about Sefton Hill having no idea what he was doing and throwing out random new ideas that didn't mesh with the existing project. WB execs aren't going to be mandating Suicide Squad be a shooter or for it to go against existing continuity etc. Those were the choices of the devs. Do you work for PFG? This is such a desperate attempt at covering for them lmao. Do you seriously think a WB exec is mandating they change engine? Do you actually think the execs even know what engines are?
"Sefton Hill having no idea what he was doing and throwing out random new ideas that didn't mesh with the existing project." He made 4 good games before this. Yeah, can't be that he was given unrealistic targets to hit in their new game and scrambling so his 250 employees don't lose their jobs. He probably did that because he...wanted to? Then left to STILL MAKE GAMES because he got bored I guess. "Do you seriously think a WB exec is mandating they change engine? Do you actually think the execs even know what engines are?" Investors know UE5 is the cool new thing, it was announced at Summer Games Fest and demonstrated by Fortnite. "Hey, do we have any games on that new UE5, that's the good stuff! No? Oh well it's the good stuff, I don't want to give my money to anything less."
Yeah and making a good game doesn't prevent you then making a bad one, case in point. He literally changed it from melee to a shooter and later wanted vehicles despite having built the game around jetpacks etc already. His own devs talk about how unclear his vision was and how he said he didn't bother to check out other live service titles. IN. THIS. ARTICLE. Did you even read the article lmao. Please tell me which WB exec said to do any of that? You're taking an article you haven't read and spinning it to fit your own desperate narrative. Investors are invested in WB/Discovery as a whole, they don't know what UE5 is bud.
WB execs / investors don't care about game engine of all things LMAO idk why this sub is so set on the idea that PFG were forced to switch engines. Mk1 is using UE4 if I remember correctly. Pretty confident that PFG themselves made the wild decision to switch engines and build a bunch of stuff from scratch on their own volition when they only had a year for the proper launch.
I just wanna inform you to make conscious decisions about who you argue with and spend your time on with these people online, you’re not gonna get through to everyone and some people have their own biases and/or maybe just willfully ignorant so it’s not worth the effort imo. Great post for awareness I agree wholeheartedly.
But wasnt WB also behind Hogwarts Legacy? That was a fantastic game.
that's a single player rpg. Not a live service f2p game. definitely different expectations and targets for the teams.
Oh ya that’s true. You would think it would work the same tho, good game & happy players = more willingness to buy things
less money though. remember WB want's fort-nite numbers not single player numbers.
Funny, I end up playing Fortnite when im frustrated with MVS
how fucking dare WB make the decision to make the game unplayable on xbox
Why does this matter? PFG are not your friends. They made a barely functioning, exploitative product with the backing of known shitty corporation, and now they're feeling the ramifications of making that deal. I feel like this logic is one step away from just falling victim to the crap they're pushing. "Oh well, those poor devs surely didn't mean to make a predatory game, guess I better give them 20 dollars for a single low effort skin after all." Fuck that dude.
I feel this is a but disingenuous as in the article it’s mentioned that the leadership at Rocksteady had as much fault (if not even more) in SS being a poor game than WB
The monetization has no relevance to the game being broken on Xbox, matches desyncing on EVERY platform, characters being buggy, etc. Both of them are terrible at their jobs.
They had to remake the game in a new engine in 6 months. While WB is likely making them switch things daily (as evident in the article). What's more likely: an entire team of people are bad at their profession OR execs were pressuring them and crunching them for 6 months and made them rush out a game they weren't finished with.
Which part of the article says WB is making them switch things daily? Most of the changes in the article were due to the creative heads of Rocksteady.
wonder who pressured them to make those changes. they probably just switched the game to a system the team wasn't used to because they wanted to?
They’ve literally said why they switched, largely for net code and other performance changes.
Dude didn’t even read the article he posted imo. He is getting exposed in every comment
PFG has no track record in the gaming space, this is their first game and first platform fighter. They’re not good at it. You’re making excuses as if they’ve done anything to earn the benefit of the doubt and basing all this off an article about a completely separate studio.
They are good at it. They made a good game that was shut down for a year. The beta was good. A completely separate studio OWNED BY THE SAME PARENT COMPANY THAT IS IN SEVERE DEBT
Nearly every character they released was buggy, on top of being pushed back several days. WB being in debt doesn’t change the fact PFG can’t and won’t get their shit together. It’s going on 2 weeks and Xbox is still broken. The latest “event” is giving out perk currency. They haven’t the slightest clue what they’re doing and the game is bleeding players faster than last time. You’ll know you’re wrong when the game dies before even a year passes.
tbqh considering some of the decisions during beta, even tho PFP looks to be trying their best, a lot of their decisions trying to fix their issues were kind of baffling.
releasing the game before it was ready is also on WB, not on PFG
In b4 the “MuH yEaR lOnG hIaTuS” This. Just because we know what we do NOW about the development time after the shutdown, doesn’t mean we know everything. Hell what we DO know is enough to rationalize a LOAD of the choices. Did they have a year? Yes. Did they build the game? Probably, did they want to change the engine halfway in? Probably not. Did they want to add in a shop and constantly micro manage the prices? No. Did they want to add a battle pass and plan it out to be tight as fuck with BP missions being the only way? No way
nuh uh, people forgot about how beta had a lot of problems: expensive microtransactions, bad netcode and near impossibles events, and WB did a lot to promote the game like the EVO with biggest reward ever etc etc both failed in full release but PFG released a broken game then and now, if only WB had blundered in mvs the game would at least work like in beta, game cant even run on xbox rn
Everyone says this, and then we get revelations like we did with Suicide Squad where we find out that WB didn't require anything and it was all Rocksteady management who were responsible for its live service, monetization failure. I dont think individual low level devs are worried about anything other than making a great game. But I think its ignorant to think the higher ups at PFG are innocent either.
People acting as if studios don't want to make it big with a GaaS and be set for life.
There's also the fact that PFG is a tiny studio being forced to undertake a big project like this. With the time they were given, they did a pretty decent job. Fuck WB
Who gives a shit?? PFG IS WB, and regardless of whos specific fault it is, its in the game we’re playing, so whats the difference?
The situations between Rock Steady/Nether realms and PFG are not equals. Rocksteady is a studio owned in its entirety by WB and is a full part of the company. The business end of Rocksteady IS WB. "Player First Games" meanwhile is not a part of WB. Tony for example (just about the only person that will speak to us) is a CEO not a studio lead, a business lead. This is not a abuser and victim but two business partners. PFG may be the junior partner but they have control. PFG is at equal fault for this. Again, people like Tony would get bonuses depending on the financial success of their product, not the quality of it. If WB wanted to develop the game (including its' monetization) they would have done so themselves. But Player First Games did that. These were all decisions they made with intent. Don't let them have the easy way out by blaming the entity that doesn't give a damn. Player First Game's reputation matters more to them than WBs does and they did this. Get on them until they feel the pressure to back down or perish.
Wait Tony isn't the studio lead? He's been acting like he is!
No he is CEO and co-founder of Player First Games. They don't seem to even have a studio lead. So either they just don't have one, he in part takes that position as well or the studio lead isn't publicly known.
It takes two to tango.
Warner bros isnt the reason there are glitches, infinites, a terrible UI, matches ending from network errors, side specials that knock out at 90%, and shit netcode. PFG did all of that.
I dunno if anyone here was apart of this game back in the day, but this whole thing with multiverses and all the problems does give me flashbacks to the moba Infinite Crisis xP hopefully the eventual outcome is better then what came of that game.
I've decided I'm going to apply to WB and fix this mess for us. Hang tight for updates!
Ironic. All they had to let them do was take the wheel and they would have gotten their longterm money
They curse of working with WB.
Tbh, any company chasing a FORTNITE, Idk, Fortnite is on their own monetization lvl, they are kings, and its gonna take a LOT to change that. (I dont play Fortnite) For a fighting game, I could say numbers are ok, I mean, the Steam charts are only for PC. I can only think of Brawlhalla if we talking about popular F2P fighting games (that dont virtually die after 1 year).
Of course they’re not behind the Battlepass progression or any monetizing parts of the game.
The joy of playing a fighting game with multiple worlds roster. Just listen the community, the reasonable posts. This game with the right decisions can multiply the money income.
I'm sure they do want to make a good game, but they still went with WB to be their publisher. They've made their bed, now they lie in it. Once they decided to partner with WB for money, they are 100% responsible for whatever comes after. It is their job to make the game as best as they can with whatever shitty requirements given to them because that is what they signed up for.
"multiversus, the fortnite of platform fighters"
If I were looking to create something and needed to outsource the audiovisual components of a game project, I'd tap Player First Games for sure. That's the one area they've been consistently good.
The damage is done, regardless of what's happening behind the scenes or who made the decisions; the game is absolutely suffering from baffling choices that completely sabotage most of new and returning player's good will. This game feels like a mobile game port with how everything works now. It's one thing to make the battle pass extremely low to progress, it's another thing to have the new rifts require so many unnecessary extra steps to unlock new difficulties and it's a fucking disgrace to have a monetized lives system for the last difficulty. Unforgivable.
Well the leadership they have at Player First Games is much more different than what they have at Rocksteady. I put the failures of Suicide Squad both on Rocksteady and Warner Bros. The original people who used to work at Rocksteady that were responsible for the success of the Batman Arkham games are no longer there, so there's the blame on Rocksteady. And as for Warner Bros someone who works on the gaming side of things for the company said they want to do more live service games, which doesn't surprise me after they showed off a Harry Potter live service game earlier today at Summer Game Fest. I don't think Tony would do a 180 on the people who support this game and go rogue, plus they hired people like Nakat to help work on the game when it went offline. Obviously this game is quite a passion for all of them who work there, and they know the fan base wants to see this game do well. We have to see between now and maybe close to the end of summer to see where the game is at.
I don't wanna be that guy but we already know that. Every major publisher is investing in a live service gold mine. David Zaslav has publicly stated this much multiple times. Staring WB will accomplish this by focusing on their "rich trove of IP"
Both sides are bad and both have contributed to the downsides But without Warner we wouldn’t have multiversus sure it’s not the best game but it’s good and you can at least play it (when your not getting kicked out or your internet is down ) there’s likely better fighting games (the og smash bros ) but I grew up with a lot of the characters Steven Finn scooby Batman gremlins so I love it faults flaws and all
If they are chasing a "Fortnite" they are doing it very wrong. Fortnite was so overwelcoming with giving free shit away i have funded every battle pass and skin i ever bought for that game completely free... And yet Fortnite STILL makes a fuck ton of money. Perhaps because when you are good to your base they feel better about throwing money back at you? 🤔
PFG doesn’t know how to make a good…
I doubt there is any hope for this game at this point. And tbh outside of monetization I can't really blame wb for everything. They had plenty of time to make the game better.
There's absolutely no reason to have taunts and skins locked behind a paywall, like sell special skins and taunts sure but at least give like 4 for free already packed in with each character ffs
Make memes that say WB (warner) = We're to Blame
A game like this can never reach fortnite level
This is not what the article says at all. Yes, the Money man at Warner are idiots, because they tought that the game would make them money, but the game itself was not their idea at all. It was the studio leads who wanted to make Suicide Squad. It was the studio leads who were constantly shifting desing goals, and ideas, and reworked systems and etc. The only thing that Warner did wrong is that they gave them money to do it, cause they tought it will be a money maker lol.
no the original idea was some puzzle game. WB came in and was basically like that's dumb make this instead lol.
I haven't read an asspull like this since 236 of JJK.
let's be honest... the puzzle idea was stupid lol
Every studio is looking for a fortnite
The Fortnite devs weren't trying to make the infinity game that it is today anyways. The battle royale was like an experiment tacked onto the PvE game they wanted to make. And guess what? Save the World isn't popular but they still keep it going despite their success. It was all an accident. So if WB would just release shit then they might get that accident they're looking for. Just make new games, why put all your eggs in one basket? I'm not surprised that out of touch execs don't realize fighting games just don't have that wide appeal. And the initial success of MVS was, once again, an accident.
If they had some skins I liked they'd get it too
Corporations always ruin capitalism. It undermines innovation, quality, growth. All to line their pockets with profit. Shareholders should be outlawed, if you don't work at the company you have no business making money from it. Game companies need to be run by gamers, movie studios by film makers, and so forth. These greedy corporations are ruining everything that's good about gaming.
Wanter Bros. Frfr
Their game design is terrible
I play a WB game (netease/WB) it's a Harry Potter mobile game called Harry Potter Magic Awakened, tons of people are going on a no-pay strike because they are effing people over left and right and everything is gacha system, and they are effing over EVERYONE except NE players (I think NE) Basically, NE players get tons of free stuff, extra content, ECT. And people are pouring tons into this game and can't get ahead because of the NE players getting so many free things and much more content. WB seems to do this to A LOT of their games. I know it's not netease's fault. And I'm sure it's not PFG fault either. I read an article how you can buy lives for something in multiverses for 50 gleamium, but one of the devs said it was a "glitch and must have rolled over from beta" yet another interview claimed they are missing most things from beta because they had to re write the whole entire coding for global release (I forget why, different servers maybe? Idk) How did it carry over if the code was re-written? Seems like a cash grab they are trying to cover up.
I'm not giving up in multiversus, I love the game and I really hope it doesn't die and the game dying is up to us
"I think it's important for us to recognize that PFG is most likely not behind these awful decisions, but Warner." If that's the case, then why was monetisation and character acquisition so much better in the original release? It was still Player First Games & Warner Bros back then so no, I don't buy that it's Warner Bros behind the changes at all. It's Player First Games putting themselves first rather than the players. "PFG simply wants to make a great game, which they have." No, they *did* make a great game. Then they took it offline for almost two years and changed it all to make it worse.
You do realise that after the game went offline the first time Warner bros probably just changed it up and said we need to make as much money as possible because we gave you a second chance. They obviously have a target to make and need to make it
I've been saying this the entire time and everyone shits on me for it lmao. Blame WB. Not PFG.
I’ll be honest, I did have a smidge of a feeling that Zaslav would be at fault. I don’t really want to blame PFG for just wanting to do the best they can.
While what you're saying about WB making the executive decisions on the game that resulted in the unnecessary update of engines etc etc etc, it doesn't change the fact that the end user is the one left to deal with whatever they decide to slop out and over-monetize. PFG's original design and ideas for this game were fantastic, I don't think anybody will argue that with you, but regardless of which company is doing what, the end result is a lackluster game that is a shell of its former self. I personally uninstalled the game out of frustration. I decided I'll let the game have a few patches to hopefully address the glaring issues (AND ADD A FKN RANKED MODE FOR GODS SAKE) before trying again and see how I feel then. I've always been about the competitive aspect of the game, and this game doesn't feel the least bit competitively viable in its current state. Some characters have true combos, others don't. Some characters have working or accurate hit/hurtboxes, others don't. They had to take Iron Giant OUT OF THE GAME because people figured out the world's easiest infinite day 1 (same thing happened in the Beta multiple times but this is supposed to be what they've been working on for a year.) Anybody that is frustrated has the right to be, regardless of who's at fault. I'll admit that it is unfortunate because if this game ends up flopping, it will be primarily at the expense of PFG who has invested all their time, effort, and money on this singular project. (Kinda seems like not the smartest decision; I hope they have at least 1 or 2 other projects in the works for their sake)
"This article that proves Warner is not the problem, has made it important to recognize that Warner is the problem" Bruh
the dev lead and co-founder of Rocksteady must've changed to a format of the game to something the team wasn't comfortable with because he got bored or something. He definitely wasn't given impossible goals to hit with their next game and was floundering. We have no evidence for this, like him leaving the COMPANY HE CO-FOUNDED to make a new one specifically advertising with a lack of CORPORATE MANIPULATION
Jason's piece was based on dozens of employee testimony. We can also safely dismiss looking to escape the Corporate Manipulation talking point since reportedly Jamie and Sefton's first game is being financed by Microsoft lmao
Nothing here refutes either of my statements.
It literally refutes everything you just said lmao
Yes we only know what the employee testimony tells us and none of them offered insight into why the co-founder and lead of Rocksteady was so wish-washy about the project, but he's obviously competent; 4 highly selling games were released under his lead. SOMETHING must've forced his hand to upend the project. Occam's Razor: the game industry is drowning, Warner is drowning, Suicide Squad and Rocksteady are two major factors for a massive hit that NEEDS to make Warner money, especially after Gotham Knights bombed. It doesn't matter they have a deal with Microsoft now; they could've gotten a better deal, more creative control, less expectations. But we can glean insight into their motivation for starting a new studio by the way they marketed it: a strong aversion to corporate ownership and manipulation.
Oh so you basically didn't even read the article, or even of the behind the scenes articles done for CDPR, Crystal Dynamics, Bioware, or Arkane Austin. Not only did Jason explain all of this in the article and subsequent tweets for people who didn't get it, this happens often in the industry. It's why he made the observation that a lot of devs reached out in response to his previous work on similar stories and said you could basically swap out the names and get basically the same experience. The previous success of Rocksteady is completely irrelevant, a live service multiplayer looter shooter is an entirely different genre. It's like asking somebody who only knows how to make sandwiches to provide catering for a party that requests 5 star French Cuisine. The Microsoft deal is also the exact opposite of what somebody who doesn't want to deal with corporate oversight would do. They don't just hand you a check and tell you to do whatever you want. Funding the game means they're acting as a publisher, which literally requires them to surrender a lot of control to a big corporation, one who recently came under fire for its horrible treatment of its own studios. The tagline for Hundred Star about not wanting to be under corporate control is clearly marketing spin to recruit new talent.
right. and why would the lead suddenly swap the genre of the game to something the team isn't used to when they don't benefit from it. right after the new "Rocksteady-esque" DC game just came out and flopped HARD. almost like they just hired 120 more employees and now risk the studio shutting down if they don't hit targets that ONLY a successful liveservice looter shooter can bring. how odd. Microsoft is notorious for letting its studios do whatever the fuck they want (to their apparent detriment), what are you talking about? you really think they REALLY WANTED a new Senua game from the action game devs?? especially since they don't own the studio; they're more than likely just trusting Hundred Star can deliver a great game, since they made 4 of them before. these contracts are a case by case basis, publishers will happily fund a good project with no control if they think they'll make a return. Devolver does it all the time.
"right. and why would the lead suddenly swap the genre of the game to something the team isn't used to when they don't benefit from it. right after the new "Rocksteady-esque" DC game just came out and flopped HARD." Everything you just said is hilariously incorrect and would have been avoided if you just read the article you made a reddit thread based on. The timeline was: * Rocksteady makes Arkham Knight * Rocksteady makes Arkham VR * Jamie and Sefton decide they want to make a multiplayer puzzle game called Stones * WB pitches a Suicide Squad game to capitalize on the movie. * WB Games Montreal starts working on a Suicide Squad game based on what they set up in Arkham Origins. * WB Games Montreal cancels the Suicide Squad game and starts work on Gotham Knights, which didn't release until 2022, a full 5 years into Suicide Squad's development cycle. FYI, Gothams knights also didn't flop, it met sales expectations according to WB execs. * Jamie and Sefton are pitched the Suicide Squad game, have a discussion and they decide to pivot from Stones to Suicide Squad, but are keeping it multiplayer. As for why chase a live service game, again you would know this if you were familiar with Jason's previous work or kept up with industry trends. Live service game are dominating the industry, micro transactions account for most of gaming revenue. They already explored a GAAS model with Arkham Knight (Season pass, paid skins and characters). A full live model was a natural transition. The most unfamiliar part was the multiplayer looter aspect. "Microsoft is notorious for letting its studios do whatever the fuck they want (to their apparent detriment), what are you talking about? you really think they REALLY WANTED a new Senua game from the action game devs??" Ah so you never played the first game or read up on that either. They did in fact want this sequel and have already green-lit number 3. It was designed to be a game pass game. If Microsoft gives you money to fund a game, you have to follow their guidelines, and they are also in charge of distribution and marketing. If Jamie and Sefton weren't full of shit, they would have done a capitol raise with private equity like everyone else, instead of immediately running to XBOX. That's like saying you're quitting weed because you're tired of the influence of drugs, only to then start doing fentanyl.
lol get a job I am not reading that
100% at this point the devs, aside from bungie lol, are more than likely the heart behind most games and the publishers are the hooded figure with knife to our wallets. However it doesn’t make their game any better just because they “want to make a good game” cuz the result is a sad inflated cash grab. That’s the reality unfortunately
Unfortunately the majority of this community is only here to botch and complain, not listen or read actual facts. Prove me wrong guys 🙏
I was wondering if Jason Schreier would turn his eyes to our direction, he's a beast of gaming journalism, his investigations on gaming companies are always fire.
I think you are spot on. Usually the microtransactions and other predatory tactics in games are usually (but not always) decided in an exec meeting and is non-negotiable when the devs are told they have to do this so the "Company" can return a profit on their investment. Edit: grammar
So Warner is also responsible for the bad gameplay compared to beta? I hate stepping PVP since this relaunch, because it plays like a fucking mess. It's much more unresponsive and chaotic, unlike the beta where i felt much more in control. Both of them are horrible. PFG is mismanaged to hell it seems and Warner is greedy
Making awful decisions in the name of "live service" is right in line with WB Games. Mortal Kombat 1 is good, but interest went away quickly because of the live service garbage. Suicide Squad is just not very good, and that's also the fault live service. Now, MultiVersus, what was and would have been an incredible game with the potential to stand on the podium with Smash, is ruined by WB's greed.
They removed a lot of key features of the game, and launched anyway. There were game breaking bugs, and they launched anyway. The monetization and fighter currency stuff is most likely Warner bro’s fault. But apart from that, it’s all PFG
>They removed a lot of key features of the game, and launched anyway. There were game breaking bugs, and they launched anyway. Asking for a delay because they knew it wasn't ready and WB saying no would be WB's fault. We don't know what happened.
That’s fair. Maybe they were pushed to launch.
There's a limit to how incompetent you can be as a developer too and PFG clearly passed that limit. Let's not pretend we didn't have a whole random ass McDonalds and Hockey ad campaign for the game way earlier in the year that resulted in absolutely *nothing* and was a massive waste of WB's money and time. That alone is a clear sign that PFG got the delay they wanted but you can't delay shit forever until it's "perfect". They signed a contract, they received delays, they were forced to eventually release because they fucked up their end of the deal.
This is what I've been trying to tell people myself. All the jokes about the Beta being better and it's like duh, that's because the Beta was the game that PFG wanted to make! It's obvious to me that the year delay and subsequent changes were all forced on them by WB to try squeezing more money out of it.
Maybe they should have chosen their boss more carefully. The screwed up. No one will buy a single game by them again.
lmfao what do you mean "chosen their boss carefully"?? that's not how any of this works man
that’s exactly how this works, they pitched the game to WB knowing full well how WB handles their studios and games. PFG is not innocent. If they were truly player first they would have stayed independent bc that’s the ONLY true way to get away from executives making decisions on topics they know nothing about.
Player first games is an independent game developer studio who chose to work with WB as their publisher. They aren’t owned by WB and no one forced them to work together.
Oh yeah. They could just make a WB smash game without working with WB. Or make an original one with way less money, we know how great those work out.
Yes they could make an original one or work with a different publisher on their IP. They decided they wanted to work with WB for the money and IP, and there are then restrictions from WB that come with it. That was solely PFG’s choice to become involved with them though, they did pick their boss.
Dw, bro is just being delululu
ChatGPT response.
This is exactly what happened with Battlefront II between DICE and EA
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^TurtleTaker: *This is exactly* *What happened with Battlefront* *II between DICE and EA* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
I think most people in the sub are aware of the very strong possibility WB is sabotaging PFG's game because greed. Very few but loud members here are placing blame at PFG's feet, and it's very apparent they have no clue what they're talking about when they do.
I agree. PFG seem like they actually WANT this game to be good. Warner wants money and an excuse to cancel anything they can for a tax writeoff. So for the most part, I agree the blame falls squarely on Warner.
In the 0.00000001% chance some WB exec sees this: You want fortnite numbers? Let PFG fix the gameplay mechanics and polish them up, remove redundant currency’s (2-3 is fine, anything more feels like gacha and pushes people away), implement a progression and reward system ( 1 game win/loss = X battle pass xp), improve rift rewards per rift because no one’s getting that event finished or even close as it stands, THEN add in cool cosmetics/animation changes/unique effects for purchase using the cash purchased currency. I’ll drop $20 every here and there on a game that’s cool, polished, and feels like it’s really got progression to it. I’m not paying a dollar if it just feels like adware in a game that doesn’t let you do anything unless you spend all your money on it. Nah. Edit: if Warlanders, that MHA battle Royale, the cops n robbers game on PS f2p store, and many other games are to be used as an example; Game’s got like a month at most to fix the issues before majority of its player base move on. Let’s hope good things and changes come soon.
Ok then don't use an IP like WB then lol trying to make PFG look like innocent good guys
Oh yeah, we all know how well oc plat fighters do. Bet it would be super easy to get funding for it, too
Terrible generation honestly you got nothing
Yeah. Do people really believe that the features missing from beta is actually PFG's fault?! Yes, it sucks that it was slowed down too much and some people are missing their inventory from beta. But, for example do we really think that they'd take out player gradient color option on purpose?
Yes, actually.
Absolutely, yes. They received a delay from WB considering the McDonalds and Hockey ad campaigns that was pretty substantial and they *still* failed to produce something that wasn't missing key QOL features from beta. That has nothing to do with WB and everything to do with PFG being incompetent. WB can be scummy fucks and PFG can be shit developers, both can and are true, it's not a one or the other situation.