After Lackluster Launch, Amazon Pulls 'Crucible' Back Into Closed Beta Weeks After Game's Release (geekwire.com) 27
Little more than a month after a much-hyped entry into big-budget video games, Amazon is pulling back "Crucible," its new free-to-play PC shooter, and moving the title to closed beta. From a report: "Crucible" is developed by Amazon-owned Relentless Studios, and in a blog post on Tuesday, franchise lead Colin Johanson cited the need to "focus on providing the best possible experience for our players as we continue to make the game better." The game has failed to generate much positive traction. The Verge said "lackluster characters, combat, and art style made it largely forgettable" and that "Crucible" also suffered from "a bit of an identity crisis by trying to be a bit of everything at once." According to Business Insider, "Crucible" had around 25,000 concurrent players at peak, the day after its launch. Two days after launch, it had already disappeared from Steam's top 100 -- a list of most-played games on Steam that bottoms out around 5,000 concurrent players. Players who have downloaded the game will still be able to play it through Steam. "One of the biggest changes you'll see is that we're going to schedule dedicated time each week when we as devs will be playing with the community and soliciting feedback," Johanson wrote. "When we exit beta, it will be based on your feedback and the metrics that we see in-game."
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You mean the alien with the purple face?
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That moment when your ideology is so blinding, you can't see the headline picture of black guy with tits, and instead have to scroll down to find a puple alien to deflect.
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That woman at the top?
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Yes, the black guy with big tits that you're desperate to not see because of your bias.
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Looks like a woman to me.
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Give a marketing team and art team a massive budget. Hire competent devs who know how to make the nuts and bolts of a game work well. Forget to make sure you have someone making decisions who actually understands why people buy and play MOBAs or shooters.
Do all that, and you get Crucible. AAA graphics with bargain bin gameplay.
WARFARCE (Score:2)
One has to assume going in that any "free-to-play PC shooter" is going to suck until there is ample evidence to the contrary. Let the hardcore try it first and wait until there are sufficient reviews.
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Could it be (Score:2)
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but as time went on they got idiotic
May I ask what got idiotic about them? You're talking about a complete genre here, one that started with Doom killing monsters.
So what are you missing in the entire genre, a genre that encompasses titles that emphasise realism, emphasise the absurd, emphasise cartoonish violance, promote weapon management, ignore weapon management, promote stealth, promote balls out chaos, have vertical oriented gameplay, have level oriented gameplay, allow deathmatch, capture the flag, battle royals, are grounded in histor
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Each game more different than the next? I enjoyed the original Quake and then Unreal Tournament a bit too. But come on it's the exact same game now with incrementally better graphics each time. You run around and shoot things.
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Has that ever worked? (Score:3)
As they say, "you only get one chance to make a first impression." Has there ever been a game that was bad at launch that was able to successfully close back down and then relaunch? Even with these days of post-launch bug fixes, I can't really think of a game that was actively bad when launched that was later fixed up to become good.
I suppose I should add the caveat "and were successful because of it." I've seen plenty of games that were buggy at launch that have become far more stable over patches. Quality of life patches can fix up games to make them more enjoyable over time. But even if a game that was "bad" becomes "good" - are enough people going to give it a second chance that it has a chance to succeed?
Plus, it's hard to define what makes a game "bad." Is the game inherently bad, and no amount of tweaking can fix it, or does it just have a few fatal flaws that need correcting? If the game design is uninspired and unoriginal, no amount of tweaking can really fix that.
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As they say, "you only get one chance to make a first impression." Has there ever been a game that was bad at launch that was able to successfully close back down and then relaunch? Even with these days of post-launch bug fixes, I can't really think of a game that was actively bad when launched that was later fixed up to become good.
Fallout 76 might approximately fit that description.
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Err no. Fallout 76 was a clusterfuck. It launched with 1.4million copies sold and then player count fell off a metaphorical cliff and smashed headfirst into the double digit thousands below. Hell as of right now it seems the same number of people are playing the far older Fallout 4 as Fallout 76.
Fixing a game doesn't make it a success. It was a major flop and a huge blow Bethesda, the only reason it made money is due to the pathetically small investment in design. It's easy create a game when you have an en
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I would argue that Final Fantasy XIV was such a game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIV#Testing_and_release
Wikipedia glosses over it, but the launch was widely considered to be a failure. With public apologies from the dev team and a major re-release and PR push later.
https://www.pcgamer.com/square-enix-say-sorry-for-final-fantasy-xiv-announce-staff-changes-and-free-trial-extension/
Seems like it did well enough for an MMO afterwards.
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I know a few people who play it and they do love it. It's gotten excellent reviews since the "Realm Reborn" and they have pretty good subscriber numbers. It's actually a positive case of a developer listening to their community and taking a big risk to do it. The fact that Square has the resources to pull a big budget MMO and scrap a large portion of it certainly helps in their case. It's still an MMO though with all the good and bad that comes with the genre.
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No Man's Sky, arguably, however it was THE biggest letdown ever at launch, such as any later improvement would have been a guaranteed success.
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Fails on the caveat. No Mans Sky fixed a lot of things, but ultimately never was successful as a result. People largely lost interest by the time the game became passable.
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Yeah, but most people never heard of that one. The majority of people who made Fortnite the success it became are barely aware that the original mode exists. So in that case, the so-so game made an OK impression, but only a few people even knew it existed. Then the battle royale version made a huge splash, and that was the first impression most people had when they heard of Fortnite.
I feel like the original point still stands. You only get one chance to make a first impression. If most people already b
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