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If there weren't already enough titles vying for esports audience supremacy, we have a new game coming out from... Amazon? Amazon makes games now? Yes, they do! Or, rather, they've been making games about 10 years now, just releasing phone game shovelware up until 2019. It was then that their first AAA title came out for consoles, The Grand Tour Game! To decidedly crap reviews, and then everyone forgot Amazon made games again and all was right in the world. Until today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmculE9KWGI What the gently caress is this poo poo? Crucible is a new esports focused title aiming to take down League of Legends, Overwatch, Fortnite, and basically every other title you can think of as well. You have the main game mode, Heart of the Hives, which is a 4v4 PvEvP where your team must combat the other while attempting to destroy randomly placed hives around the map that spawn enemies that try to murder you both. A successful hive takedown spawns a heart, which you either need to snag from underneath your enemies like a ninja defusal in Counter-Strike or eliminate them before capturing. Alpha Hunters is their new battle royale, where you and a friend kill other duos until one of you dies. Instead of respawning them like in Apex or just ragequitting and requeueing like PUBG, though, you can now find a new friend out of similarly divorced teammates and forge an alliance with them until you get to the endgame. The last and most likely to be played least game mode, Harvester Command, is an 8v8 king of the hill game mode where you try to control miners of the main XP source in this game, Essence. Doesn't this seem generic and just a mishmash of whatever else is popular now? Incredibly so! Is this game any good? It's made by Amazon, what do you expect? Kidding, kidding. (Mostly.) As of writing, this game is expected to release tomorrow, May 20th on Steam and some Amazon client no one is going to bother downloading until it is the only platform their games are on. As for quality, I'll reserve full judgment until I actually play the game, but maybe we can look at the dev's history and see what their track record is so far. Oh. Well, I'm sure the Buzz! series must have been good quiz games, considering they made about a million of them before doing a few Kinect games and being bought by Amazon. (Editor's Note: Relentless Software and Relentless Studios actually seem to be two different companies xd. It looks like Reflexive Entertainment was who they were in their previous life.) But, the game was shown off at TwitchCon 2016, so it has been in development for a while and the devs might have learned a thing or two about netcode since beginning their first PvP game. Who can I play as in this supremely cool video game bestowed upon us by our future trillionaire overlord, the benevolent and mighty Jeff Bezos? please don't kill my family Don't worry, if nothing else, Crucible has a line-up of 100% Original Do Not Steal characters designed by all your favorite DeviantArt tracers! We got: -Soldier 76 (Captain Mendoza) -Raze (Summer) -Slark with an axe (Drakahl) -Rocket Raccoon (Tosca) -Imperator Furiosa (Sazan) -The Zora from The Legend of Zelda (Ajonah) -Wall-E but he pollutes instead of cleans (Bugg) -The one that's gonna be called Bangalore by the community because they too find it funny to make comparisons between these characters and other media but in this instance, it's also racism (Shakirri) -Earl (Earl) -That cool dude at the restaurant the devs ate at who always chats with you and gives you extra falafel so you put him in the game with a rad robot sidekick (Rahi and Brother) Should someone who seems pessimistic about the future of a game write the OP for it? Probably not. I'll give it the fairest shake I can muster along with everyone else who is gonna discover it once they start paying Summit or whoever to stream it tomorrow, but I can't say given what I know about Amazon as a game studio and as a company in general that I hold out much hope in this game being the best of all worlds. More along the lines of Battleborn, I'd reckon. Who knows for sure anymore in this crazy world we live in! I mostly wanted to write the OP ahead of the launch, and also to title the thread. demostars fucked around with this message at 06:53 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 00:03
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What if we made Monday Night Combat but bad.
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May 20, 2020 01:10
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Groovelord Neato posted:What if we made Monday Night Combat but bad. So, Super Monday Night Combat 
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May 20, 2020 01:19
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The trailer comment, "I swear I have been seeing this same game announced over and over for the past 10 years," is spot on. This looks painfully generic, and the inclusion of so many modes makes me tremendously skeptical of the game's long-term viability. I don't think the developers understand just how badly having multiple modes can split either your playerbase or your development resources to the detriment of the whole.
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May 20, 2020 01:41
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demostars posted:So, Super Monday Night Combat MODS?
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May 20, 2020 01:49
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demostars posted:So, Super Monday Night Combat Actually thought that when I made my post haha
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May 20, 2020 02:21
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Crucible Status: key acquired for beta, open game. Uses EAC for anti-cheat. Ok, seems fine.  Getting to main menu, and...  Beta keys are for accessing the game three hours before launch, and not today. 
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May 20, 2020 02:53
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RPS has a preview article up. Its 100% Amazon marketing with no actual gameplay impressions and no real surprises.
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May 20, 2020 03:09
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quote:“Bugg’s actor is a real robot,” they told us. “We actually sent out a lot of auditions. We did our same audition process for Bugg that we did with all of our characters. We got adults, children, men, women, you know, all auditioning for this character, and in the end we decided that the Amazon poly voice that we had been using for prototyping had more character than any of them, so we ended up just sticking with it ’til the end.” rofl check out this very real and not made up story from that article used to plug the amazon voice synths that will soon be used to deepfake everyone's voice who has ever spoken into an alexa enabled device
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May 20, 2020 03:17
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Hello. This humble goon is a designer at Relentless working on Crucible. Been waiting for this thread to pop up. I'm happy to answer any questions I can, pretty much everything about pre-season is public now. Understandable that goons will be skeptical of a game coming from Amazon that fits this bill. I'm here to assure you, biased as I may be, that this game is not generic. It's fresh and you should give it a shot. PS: Summer is more of a Rumble than a Raze.
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May 20, 2020 04:43
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Vino posted:Hello. This humble goon is a designer at Relentless working on Crucible. Been waiting for this thread to pop up. I'm happy to answer any questions I can, pretty much everything about pre-season is public now. when are you adding voice chat
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May 20, 2020 05:09
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Vino posted:Hello. This humble goon is a designer at Relentless working on Crucible. Been waiting for this thread to pop up. I'm happy to answer any questions I can, pretty much everything about pre-season is public now. friend i got some bad news about the aesthetics of your game
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May 20, 2020 05:10
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I'm willing to check this out and give it a fair shake but I have *a lot* of questions generated by various media. I don't actually hate the character designs. I have nitpicks, but I don't actually find them offensive. What I do find offensive is the ultra hard-edge lighting that makes every scene look blown out on the lightside and way too dark on the unlit side. While not as bad as the visuals, audio is pretty unremarkable in the available media. Hard to make that kind of a judgement though without running it locally 3rd person seems weird for this. One of the things I did like about Battleborn was the characters. At least, I played Benedict a lot and if he spoke less and had a larger variety of lines, I think I could find myself falling for that big bird, but I'm not really seeing that kind of flare here and I'm hoping that that is present here because this game is not going to be carried by its visuals. E: What I am interested in here is the much higher TTK. I think the market does need something that occupies the space a bit above 'Paladins', so I think if it can find a way to lean into that tactical game play well, it might find an audiance. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 05:47 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 05:42
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:E: What I am interested in here is the much higher TTK. I think the market does need something that occupies the space a bit above 'Paladins', so I think if it can find a way to lean into that tactical game play well, it might find an audiance. See despite everything that turns me off about this game, when I was watching some Overwatch player play this earlier and they commented that the ttk is "much, much slower than Overwatch," I think I threw up in my mouth a bit. Different strokes for different folks, but I don't even register that I'm playing an FPS/TPS unless I'm killing something in less than two seconds.
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May 20, 2020 05:56
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demostars posted:See despite everything that turns me off about this game, when I was watching some Overwatch player play this earlier and they commented that the ttk is "much, much slower than Overwatch," I think I threw up in my mouth a bit. Different strokes for different folks, but I don't even register that I'm playing an FPS/TPS unless I'm killing something in less than two seconds. I think that makes sense for most people. The genre has been dominated by games with low TTKs since its inception, and I do think it makes for a solid foundation of a exciting game, but I do wish a games with lower TTKs existed. They are rare, relatively speaking (for a good reason), but it's a different game and I'd like to see more 'different' games these days.
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May 20, 2020 06:11
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:I think that makes sense for most people. The genre has been dominated by games with low TTKs since its inception, and I do think it makes for a solid foundation of a exciting game, but I do wish a games with lower TTKs existed. They are rare, relatively speaking (for a good reason), but it's a different game and I'd like to see more 'different' games these days. I'd speculate it's the main reason that this game is a TPS, because while ability-based FPS games are all the rage these days, I think them going first-person would have exacerbated the issue I normally have. If I approach it as if I'm just playing Smite but with more shooting, I might like this game more than Smite (I never tried Paladins like you mentioned or Realm Royale). Also, is it just me/us, or does it feel like despite everything I know about esports, Amazon decided the main competition they wanted to have wasn't Riot or Blizzard, but Hi-Rez Studios? E: And maybe the issue of slow player ttk is "supposed" to be alleviated by fast mob ttk? Again, I don't know how much this satisfies a traditional FPS player like me, but maybe the PvE and PvP manages to be tightly integrated enough that one or the other isn't fun on it's own, but it works somehow together. demostars fucked around with this message at 07:18 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 06:18
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demostars posted:when are you adding voice chat It's a pretty high priority for us, we're working on it now. The REAL Goobusters posted:friend i got some bad news about the aesthetics of your game I'd love to hear more specific thoughts. 
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May 20, 2020 07:34
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Vino posted:It's a pretty high priority for us, we're working on it now. Ok, I actually have a more earnest question to ask you, since I wasn't expecting that concern to be addressed. If you've been around on the dev team for a bit, what exactly happened with the game over its development cycle? Looking at the Rock Paper Shotgun article from 2016, it looks like the battle royale mode that initially was the primary game concept predates even the release of PUBG, despite me clowning on the fact there's a BR mode a bit in the OP. Did PUBG, Fortnite, and Apex just gently caress you out of having this completely unique game by beating you to market and forcing you to add the other game modes to stand out more? I looked back at the Breakaway game and despite it being cancelled (presumably because it wasn't good), what was shown off looks way more stylized and appealing than Crucible. I thought for a second that sort of style was also preempted by this Rocket Arena game I heard about and played in the closed beta, but I guess that's not even out yet. Breakaway, at worst, would have been called Rocket League with humans instead of cars (so I guess soccer with shooting/an alternate universe American football), and I think that's better suited to create an audience for your first multiplayer game than the buzzword overload approach Crucible has. It just gives off the sense that Amazon is trying desperately hard to create an audience for this, come hell or high water, and I think that will put people who aren't already on board before release off. e: FWIW I'll see if I don't want to rouse from my bed before work a little early to try a game of the BR mode at least before I watch any more streamers play it and potentially echo my concerns. Basically every streamer I saw said they really enjoyed it, but who knows about the consensus Wednesday or if the servers are fireproof. demostars fucked around with this message at 08:32 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 08:07
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demostars posted:I'd speculate it's the main reason that this game is a TPS, because while ability-based FPS games are all the rage these days, I think them going first-person would have exacerbated the issue I normally have. If I approach it as if I'm just playing Smite but with more shooting, I might like this game more than Smite (I never tried Paladins like you mentioned or Realm Royale). Also, is it just me/us, or does it feel like despite everything I know about esports, Amazon decided the main competition they wanted to have wasn't Riot or Blizzard, but Hi-Rez Studios? There doesn't appear nearly enough fanservice for Crucible to compete with Paladins
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May 20, 2020 12:05
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FairyNuff posted:There doesn't appear nearly enough fanservice for Crucible to compete with Paladins The size of all the boobs in Paladins really made me question what I was doing with my time. That, and the terrible writing for the heroes, announcers, just the whole vibe was "irritating streamer culture". But seemingly less self aware than Borderlands 3 tried to be. Aaaand paladins just looked like recycled WoW assets, worse than I thought Overwatch did when I first started playing that. Glad to see someone else found that all unsettling
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May 20, 2020 15:00
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rockinsaki posted:The size of all the boobs in Paladins really made me question what I was doing with my time. That, and the terrible writing for the heroes, announcers, just the whole vibe was "irritating streamer culture". But seemingly less self aware than Borderlands 3 tried to be. Aaaand paladins just looked like recycled WoW assets, worse than I thought Overwatch did when I first started playing that. Glad to see someone else found that all unsettling Also just look at any of Ying/Skye skins in particular. I did used to play it loads a while back but left just after the community got upset about the devs "censoring" the newest hero (at the time) Furia by covering her thighs in the default skin.
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May 20, 2020 15:07
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demostars posted:Ok, I actually have a more earnest question to ask you, since I wasn't expecting that concern to be addressed. If you've been around on the dev team for a bit, what exactly happened with the game over its development cycle? Looking at the Rock Paper Shotgun article from 2016, it looks like the battle royale mode that initially was the primary game concept predates even the release of PUBG, despite me clowning on the fact there's a BR mode a bit in the OP. Did PUBG, Fortnite, and Apex just gently caress you out of having this completely unique game by beating you to market and forcing you to add the other game modes to stand out more? I looked back at the Breakaway game and despite it being cancelled (presumably because it wasn't good), what was shown off looks way more stylized and appealing than Crucible. I thought for a second that sort of style was also preempted by this Rocket Arena game I heard about and played in the closed beta, but I guess that's not even out yet. Breakaway, at worst, would have been called Rocket League with humans instead of cars (so I guess soccer with shooting/an alternate universe American football), and I think that's better suited to create an audience for your first multiplayer game than the buzzword overload approach Crucible has. It just gives off the sense that Amazon is trying desperately hard to create an audience for this, come hell or high water, and I think that will put people who aren't already on board before release off. I'd love to tell you the whole story but I can't actually, I have to reserve that information for press interviews or I'll break exclusivity agreements. But there's a very long and weird story. Buy me a beer if you want the whole thing. Let's just say that Amazon had a few things to figure out before they could make games. When I started on Crucible, PUBG Fortnite Overwatch Paladins Gigantic Valorant and Paragon didn't exist. Seeing all these games coming out while ours was still cooking definitely worried me, but each time one did we took a look at it and (I can't speak for the rest of the team but I personally) said, "This game isn't close enough to Crucible for us to be worried."
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May 20, 2020 16:09
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Vino posted:It's a pretty high priority for us, we're working on it now. I think the aesthetics and graphical style just scream generic third person shooter. There’s nothing really about it that jumps out as unique or that inspired. Sorry I can go into it more later (at work rn) but it looks like evolve with a brighter color palette. I’m happy that you believe in the game and I hope you guys find success but the only reason why it’s on the radar is because “Amazon made a video game”
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May 20, 2020 16:28
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Willing to take a crack at this game even if it's an amazon game. I need something to fill the overwatch void
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May 20, 2020 16:32
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The REAL Goobusters posted:I think the aesthetics and graphical style just scream generic third person shooter. There’s nothing really about it that jumps out as unique or that inspired. Sorry I can go into it more later (at work rn) but it looks like evolve with a brighter color palette. Caveat: I don't speak for the creative director/design director/art director, who made the decisions I'm about to talk about and not me. My take on this is we wanted to make a game that first and foremost is fun and competitive, and also has a diverse character roster (mechanically and aesthetically) that appeals to a broad audience. You won't hear me admit that it's generic even if I understand why people would say that. Honestly give it a shot though, we find that we convert most people once they sit down and actually play the game.
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May 20, 2020 17:02
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FairyNuff posted:There doesn't appear nearly enough fanservice for Crucible to compete with Paladins Speak for yourself, I'm about to tap Earl's rear end  Also, only got to play the tutorial so far, but there being weird UI bugs in that (like being told to use "Ability 4" when the game wants you to scope in with your rifle) scares me to see what the final product of the gameplay feels like.
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May 20, 2020 17:49
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I'm going to try this to see if it scratches the Paragon itch and I'm excited to be completely disappointed that it doesn't. I really like the idea of mashing up MOBA stuff with FPS controls because I have a hard time with mechanics for league and such but love the overall gameplay loop.
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May 20, 2020 18:27
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So the game is struggling I guess. There are some Streamers who have gotten in to the game client(https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Crucible?sort=VIEWER_COUNT), but it looks like most people can't get into the game, and even the streamers are having a hard time finding games. Steam went from a countdown to Noon to a generic "Coming Soon" timeframe.
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May 20, 2020 20:09
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Discospawn posted:So the game is struggling I guess. There are some Streamers who have gotten in to the game client(https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Crucible?sort=VIEWER_COUNT), but it looks like most people can't get into the game, and even the streamers are having a hard time finding games. Steam went from a countdown to Noon to a generic "Coming Soon" timeframe. Always a good sign!!!
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May 20, 2020 20:16
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Harvester Command sounds cool and is the mode I am most interested in playing. I really hope this game works out to be good, but my expectations is that this title will shut down quickly. I just really don't like the current big offerings and maybe that is just because this genre is really bad.
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May 20, 2020 20:19
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Discospawn posted:So the game is struggling I guess. There are some Streamers who have gotten in to the game client(https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Crucible?sort=VIEWER_COUNT), but it looks like most people can't get into the game, and even the streamers are having a hard time finding games. Steam went from a countdown to Noon to a generic "Coming Soon" timeframe. 1 trillion dollar software / retail company, their entire thing is smooth fast delivery, and this is the best they can do lol
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May 20, 2020 20:21
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I said come in! posted:1 trillion dollar software / retail company, their entire thing is smooth fast delivery, and this is the best they can do lol is AWS actually a bloated mess that barely works?
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May 20, 2020 20:23
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ZionestLord posted:is AWS actually a bloated mess that barely works? It hosts like 60 - 70% of the internet is about all I know about it.
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May 20, 2020 20:24
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Vino posted:Hello. This humble goon is a designer at Relentless working on Crucible. Been waiting for this thread to pop up. I'm happy to answer any questions I can, pretty much everything about pre-season is public now. Edit: I didn't mean for this to be a troll post, I just can't imagine what an event like that is like with everybody working remotely. If you're on the design team, I could imagine you aren't even impacted by the real-time issues they're having atm. But also, you still can't download the game on Steam but now they added multiple purchase options for the game. $15-$50 for skins, battle pass, in-game currency, and more. 
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May 20, 2020 20:39
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Pretty crazy. The war room is working on these issues, NA should be fixed soon, other regions soon as they can afterwards.
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May 20, 2020 21:29
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I watched a few streams and the gameplay reminds me a ton of Battleborn while the asthetic looks a lot like Firefall. Neither of those are good things.
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May 20, 2020 21:57
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Vino posted:Caveat: I don't speak for the creative director/design director/art director, who made the decisions I'm about to talk about and not me. My take on this is we wanted to make a game that first and foremost is fun and competitive, and also has a diverse character roster (mechanically and aesthetically) that appeals to a broad audience. You won't hear me admit that it's generic even if I understand why people would say that. I respect that man. I think our group of friends will give this a shot. Just waiting for the final pieces of my pc to arrive.
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May 20, 2020 21:58
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Welp I've had to do the tutorial twice and it still doesn't detect it to let me play normal games.
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May 20, 2020 22:05
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I played a match and enjoyed it but it also just made me wish that Gigantic hadn't shut down.
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May 20, 2020 22:36
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Frustrated posted:I watched a few streams and the gameplay reminds me a ton of Battleborn while the asthetic looks a lot like Firefall. Neither of those are good things. I actually liked a lot of Battleborn  . I also will swear up and down that Lawbreakers had great fundamentals as a game, so maybe my opinions just suck.
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May 20, 2020 22:41
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