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[jiggles]

It's a shame, because it's a very good game.

I got about 10 hours out of it, so I'm not too upset. I'm more happy that I didn't miss it.

 

[dinoroar]

This makes me sad. I bought it on PS4 and played it a lot in the first week, have slowly slid off. I wanted other people to keep at it though in case I wanted to go back and play! Cor.

 

[lazerfox]

The 24 hour peak is right in the screenshot. That's a perfectly playable number but lets not pretend its setting the world on fire.

You are forgetting that there are a lot of players who play Quake Champions on the bethesda.net launcher for free.

That said it's stupid to compare the two since Quake is going to be F2P.

 

[Majukun]

when will developers learn not to target overcrowed markets?

 

[Card Boy]

The 24 hour peak is right in the screenshot. That's a perfectly playable number but lets not pretend its setting the world on fire.

Ok once Quake Champions is out of beta and it's still doing shit then you can gloat.

Unless Lawbreakers does something drastic like make it F2P and/or gives it Valve/Rainbow 6 Ubisoft levels of support it's going to have less than 100 peak players in 2 months time. They need to make smart and quick business decisions unless they want a Tribes: Ascend situation where it's too late to get the community back.

 

[SMG]

when will developers learn not to target overcrowed markets?

When will gamers learn games take a long time to make.
Quake Champions and OW. Didn't exist when this was put into full production.

 

[JOKERACN7]

"Overwatch feels like it's kinda skewed to, you know, like..an anime-type vibe, right?"

That's pretty much the exact quote he used. In a separate interview he was talking about the whole "mature" thing. Two separate interviews, two contexts that are pretty much removed when you put them together. I think it's disingenuous and kind of pointless, but whatever.

As someone that doesn't care for anime but likes the character designs in Overwatch, I just don't see how that's derogatory. Isn't it entirely possible that maybe there are people out there that don't care for that aesthetic and dont necessarily have to shit on that aesthetic just because they don't like it? I just think it's weak to think that, just because maybe that's not the style he likes and the style he's going for, that automatically means he's shitting on people that like it.

What is so offensive about people thinking a game caters towards an anime audience? Unless you are making assumptions about anime audiences, I don't see how that's offensive in the slightest.

Which is an absolute BS, I know a lotta ppl who hate anime yet love Overwatch, Cliffy B was kinda downplaying Overwatch (his tone is crystal clear) and hyping up his own game by calling it "mature", which is a pretty nonsensical thing to say, who defines "mature"?
Is Bayonetta not mature? or The Last of Us is mature? That's such a dumb label.

Overwatch has done a way better job with its aesthetics and character design and you can not downplay it by saying it's not mature

 

[SmokedMeat]

I feel like there's this dark cloud hanging over the gaming landscape. If your game doesn't explode out of the gate with a huge player count, it's going to be held up in a negative light until it's killed. Especially if there's a well known name behind it.

 

[leng jai]

It's a shame, because it's a very good game.

I got about 10 hours out of it, so I'm not too upset. I'm more happy that I didn't miss it.

10 hours for a multiplayer only title is pretty dreadful.

 

[Ushay]

Damn Cliffy going from Gears to this is a tough break. I hear mechanically it's an excellent game too.

 

[Visualante2]

I wanted to add a poll but I was worried people would blame Nirolak.

So just to be clear:

Question: F2P?

Choice 1: Before December 31st, 2017

Choice 2: After December 31st, 2017

Choice 3: On November 21st, 2023

 

[Snoopycat]

I tried the beta but I never played more than a few matches because I didn't understand the controls and I died all the time. It looked like a good game but no proper tutorial and being placed in games with guys way above my rank was no fun for me, so I went back to Overwatch.

 

[Imp the Dimp]

This thread has more replies than the game has concurrent players at the moment. I feel a bit for Cliff because Gears of War 1 was excellent.

 

[spindoctor]

It's dropping players really fast

The PS4 version doesn't seem to be doing all that well either according to this chart from a dev

 

[RossoneR]

Liked style more than ow on videos than checked it on store. 25 pounds with bunch of dlc. Sorry but no. Way too much quality games on market. Also bought ow for cheap and didnt like it. Too much risk for me lol.

 

[Wegelius]

Another game in this genre that flopped was Reflex arena, an arena shooter. I only heard about the game recently after playing Quake Champions, but unfortunately the population didn't hold or grow. I am worried for other arena shooters other than QC, such as diabotical.

 

[JOKERACN7]

Another game in this genre that flopped was Reflex arena, an arena shooter. I only heard about the game recently after playing Quake Champions, but unfortunately the population didn't hold or grow. I am worried for other arena shooters other than QC, such as diabotical.

Which is a great game, it deserves way more than this current player count

 

[Forerunner]

Dirty Bomb is still doing well. About a 5k peak in the last 24h, however it came out a year before OW. So the market wasn't as crowded.

 

[Rodelero]

I feel like there's this dark cloud hanging over the gaming landscape. If your game doesn't explode out of the gate with a huge player count, it's going to be held up in a negative light until it's killed. Especially if there's a well known name behind it.

Multiplayer only games need to explode out of the gate, particularly if they're not free to play. This game isn't failing because people are holding up in a negative light, Hell, if it wasn't for all of the negative light the title would be getting no light at all. It's failing because it doesn't offer anything people particularly want at a moment that there are loads of better alternatives. The sad reality is that anyone thinking of buying LawBreakers right now should know that they'll soon have no-one to play with. The rot set in a long time ago with this one, and sadly I'm not sure there is any precedent for coming back from a launch like this.

 

[Iokis]

I still play Awesomenauts now and then, which is a 5-year-old game with a pretty dire player count which couldn't even be bolstered by a transition to F2P. It got a spike of interest just after the switch, and then the numbers more or less settled back to pre-F2P levels.

And yet even that game has (at the time of writing) a 24-hour peak of 873. LawBreakers is doing worse than a 5-year old niche title. Ouch.

It also makes me feel that a switch to F2P may also not do much for LawBreakers, either.

 

[wipeout364]

Hopefully it will rebound, it is incredibly polished and feels like a modern unreal tournament. It doesn't feel anything like overwatch to me, it is much smoother and feels so much faster. I have been playing most days on PC and haven't had huge waits for a game yet. Interestingly i started playing quake champions yesterday as well and really enjoyed it, really captures the feel of a modern take on quake. Not sure how I am gonna find the time for Quake Champions, DOOM, Lawbreakers and Rainbow Six Siege.

 

[grandwizard]

You are forgetting that there are a lot of players who play Quake Champions on the bethesda.net launcher for free.

That said it's stupid to compare the two since Quake is going to be F2P.

I already addressed that. If you actually played the game you'd know that before the Steam launch the matchmaking queue times were awful especially on not prime time hours. The idea that there is thousands of bethesda.net launcher players out there is absurd, it's probably even less than Steam. It's nice they have that as a shield for low player count alarmism though.

Ok once Quake Champions is out of beta and it's still doing shit then you can gloat.

Unless Lawbreakers does something drastic like make it F2P and/or gives it Valve/Rainbow 6 Ubisoft levels of support it's going to have less than 100 peak players in 2 months time. They need to make smart and quick business decisions unless they want a Tribes: Ascend situation where it's too late to get the community back.

Who is gloating? I posted the Quake numbers in response to the people in this thread acting like it's some huge success to shove in Lawbreaker's face. They are both not doing well. Just like Reflex they are both good games that struggle to find an audience. The reasons for this need to be examined beyond the hot takes of 'lmao cliffy b said *quote*'.

 

[E92 M3]

when will developers learn not to target overcrowed markets?

I don't think it did. It's nothing like Overwatch.

 

[dickroach]

i think there's a lot of "but it's actually a good game" in this thread. and no one's not saying it's a cool game. it's a dead game.
the fact that F2P seems like the obvious way to go 3 weeks in....

 

[Kai Dracon]

Awesomenauts has always let players co-op against bots. In fact I've noticed that bot co-op is popular in most any game that supports it; people like playing together against AI for practice and to grind things.

Didn't LawBreakers not have the sandbox practice mode on PS4 at launch? That can't have helped either.

I think LB can be saved by virtue of the core game being so good. It just feels as if it launched under the worst circumstances possible. Bad timing, lack of features, no awareness. It needs more features, bots, and content fast, along with a good marketing opportunity.

 

[Forerunner]

I don't think it did. It's nothing like Overwatch.

It's true that it play nothing like OW, but people will still compare it to it. All they see are different heroes in an objective based fps game. So the first thing that runs through their minds is, so this is just an OW clone. They'll just dismiss it without understanding how it plays.

 

[dickroach]

none of that $60 multiplayer only bullshit

 

[Chairmanchuck]

I don't think it did. It's nothing like Overwatch.

I think he meant the whole "PC FPS market".

I would argue that the market for OW, Lawbreakers, CS:Go or even PUBG overlap. I played UT, Quake, CS, Action Half Life and Sven Coop in the early 00s and they are all different FPS.
Now people might not even have enough time for more than 2. They started OW and just play that besides maybe PUBG or CS.

It's true that it play nothing like OW, but people will still compare it to it. All they see are different heroes in an objective based fps game. So the first thing that runs through their minds is, so this is just an OW clone. They'll just dismiss it without understanding how it plays.

Thats why that CrowbCat video was actually on point because it pointed out that even "game journalists" compared it to OW while playing it. TB said something along the lines "Its a faster OW." All the other Streamers compared it to OW. Other game journalists said "It feels like OW" (even though it doesnt).

 

[Kayant]

That's fine and all. I know why they couldn't support 3 platforms. I'm just saying they chose the wrong 2 platforms.

I'm aware of what their business reasons were. I just think their market analysis failed them.

Xbox has experiencing a drought of new quality, the playerbase has an affinity towards shooters, the playerbase has a history with Cliffy and I think they would have been more receptive to this game than the PC community has shown to be be.

Xbox is probably the only platform where arena style shooters have maintained any sort of relevance, thanks to Halo.

In general, shooters do really well on Xbox- disproportionately well incomparison to its installed base and lack of marketing partnerships compared to PS4, for example.

My comment was not about MS missing their chance- more like Lawbreakers missing it's chance on MS' platform. Of course this is all speculative - we have no proof of what would have happened in my alternate reality - but this is what I suspect.

Fair enough I see your viewpoint now. Definitely agree with some things there.

 

[Budi]

none of that $60 multiplayer only bullshit

You said this already.

 

[-MD-]

hey, at least it's none of that $60 multiplayer only bullshit

none of that $60 multiplayer only bullshit

You said this already.

lmao

 

[The1Ski]

They need to go F2P fast and offer compensation to those who bought it imo

Why? Under what premise are people who bought the game owed anything? The games not broke.

 

[N3DS]

Shame because the gameplay is actually decent.

 

[yukimeans_snow]

Give it a heavy discount and the ability to play with bots, and I'm down

 

[Asd202]

More people are discussing these numbers than people actually playing the game lol

 

[JDB]

Sure the FPS market isn't exactly starving for another shooter, but let's not pretend that Lawbreakers doesn't have a lot of things working against it that make it hard for players to get into it. Compared to most other shooters it's a very hard to game to read. From environment art to character design to UI design; it's all very busy. These issues are only compounded by the very fast pace of the game making it even harder to follow what's going on. Even Overwatch can be overwhelming at times and that's while having basically none of the issues I mentioned above so I'm not too surprised that LB didn't catch on. That's without even looking at whether people even want to play arena shooters anymore these days.

 

[E92 M3]

It’s true that it play nothing like OW, but people will still compare it to it. All they see are different heroes in an objective based fps game. So the first thing that runs through their minds is, so this is just an OW clone. They’ll just dismiss it without understanding how it plays.

Exactly, it's a horrible mindset to have.

I think he meant the whole "PC FPS market".

I would argue that the market for OW, Lawbreakers, CS:Go or even PUBG overlap. I played UT, Quake, CS, Action Half Life and Sven Coop in the early 00s and they are all different FPS.
Now people might not even have enough time for more than 2. They started OW and just play that besides maybe PUBG or CS.



Thats why that CrowbCat video was actually on point because it pointed out that even "game journalists" compared it to OW while playing it. TB said something along the lines "Its a faster OW." All the other Streamers compared it to OW. Other game journalists said "It feels like OW" (even though it doesnt).

I just think the "PC FPS market" is the antithesis of promoting original games if it truly exists.

You said this already.

Bad trolls aren't the best at baiting so they repeat themselves.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Multiplayer only games need to explode out of the gate, particularly if they're not free to play. This game isn't failing because people are holding up in a negative light, Hell, if it wasn't for all of the negative light the title would be getting no light at all. It's failing because it doesn't offer anything people particularly want at a moment that there are loads of better alternatives. The sad reality is that anyone thinking of buying LawBreakers right now should know that they'll soon have no-one to play with. The rot set in a long time ago with this one, and sadly I'm not sure there is any precedent for coming back from a launch like this.

No, the moment you start running stories online about player counts, the pile on begins, and there's nowhere to go but down.

I heard nothing but positivity about the gameplay from people who were playing Lawbreakers. But all of the negative press online told everyone who might've taken a chance on the game, to stay away.

 

[adversarial]

Why do people seem to get a hard-on when a game fails? Utterly confusing behavior.

 

[Marcel]

There was no reason to believe it would get better. Cliffy should have been smart and just made his unappealing game F2P instead of listening to his fans who clearly didn't know jack about business decisions.

 

[Frostburn]

I saw this coming before the game came out, unfortunately on PC there are a bunch of shooters already taking up people's time. It isn't a bad game by any means but there isn't enough there to draw people away from the shooters they are already playing.

 

[Stop It]

It’s true that it play nothing like OW, but people will still compare it to it. All they see are different heroes in an objective based fps game. So the first thing that runs through their minds is, so this is just an OW clone. They’ll just dismiss it without understanding how it plays.

Exactly, it's a horrible mindset to have.

You know what, I'm sick of people (and companies) blaming players for a game not selling.

If you can't convince people that the game is a worthwhile alternative to Overwatch, or anything else, then you fucked up, not the players who remain unconvinced.

It's all too easy to say "well if only people have it a chance". Sure, but it is clear that Cliff didn't earn that chance. People don't have infinite money and they're not going to buy any game like this without confidence in it.

This won't be the first decent game to die because it couldn't get the messaging right. To blame people for not being interested is never going to convince anyone other than the hardcore who already are on board.

 

[SimpleCRIPPLE]

Why do people seem to get a hard-on when a game fails? Utterly confusing behavior.

In this case specifically, Cliff being a douche put a target on the game.

 

[Budi]

In this case specifically, Cliff being a douche put a target on the game.

Is he really more of a douche than your average Gaffer? Some self-awareness would be appreciated.

 

[E92 M3]

In this case specifically, Cliff being a douche put a target on the game.

How was he a douche???

Some really dumb reasoning. "Person X said something I don't agree with - he's a douche!!!!"

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Why do people seem to get a hard-on when a game fails? Utterly confusing behavior.

there will always be a segment of people that get a hard-on when something fails. you see how small this thread is? most people don't give enough of a fuck to even open the thread, much less comment.

 

[Zeneric]

The Lawbreakers gameplay really is amazing. Too bad the game is broken (matchmaking, too few maps, low population, etc) that made me lose interest in it (no motivation - no care). Maybe when Lawbreakers' patched a lot with tweaks, added with more maps, better matchmaking, etc - I'll start to care. But for now, yea.

 

[Stabby McSter]

How was he a douche???

Some really dumb reasoning. "Person X said something I don't agree with - he's a douche!!!!"

i dunno, his defense on the writing was kinda off-putting

 

[Nesmaster75]

In this case specifically, Cliff being a douche put a target on the game.

I'll never understand people like you who like to jump on the bandwagon of hating popular game designers. What exactly did he do?

 

[Deleted member 325805]

I played the beta and was just left thinking "why would I buy this?", there are better shooters on the market that I'm already invested in.