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Concord does something brilliant that I've heard exactly 0 people mention...

SyberWolf

Member
1. The hit boxes in Concord are unbelievably generous. If your cursor is anywhere close to the opponent, you're hitting them. This was a conscious design choice.

2. Concord provides players with a number of low skill floor heroes. Lark, Daw, Jabali, Emari, and Kyps can be played relatively effectively by players who can't aim.

3. The game doesn't punish teams for losing. You rank up and unlock cosmetics at exactly the same rate whether you win or lose. This means high skill players don't feel held back by their low skill teammates to the same degree.

4. The game leans heavily on Rock, Paper, Scissors design philosophy. That means low skill scissors players can beat high skill paper players when they bump into them in a 1v1.

Concord might be a commercial flop but this particular design philosopher should not go by unnoticed. SBMM is a poor solution to a very real problem and it's awesome that Firewalk attempted to address it with Concord. I hope we see more games tackle the issue going forward.

this pretty much confirms that i should not buy and play this game. it is against everything i want from a multiplayer shooter.
 

near

Gold Member
None of the points mentioned in OP are new or exclusive to Concord, pretty much everything you see in its game design is copy and paste. It might be polished mechanically, but that doesn't make it brilliant. Get a grip.
 

Robb

Gold Member
Concord threads are never enough.
sMW58kh.jpeg
 

Kindjal

Member
3. The game doesn't punish teams for losing. You rank up and unlock cosmetics at exactly the same rate whether you win or lose. This means high skill players don't feel held back by their low skill teammates to the same degree.

Just playing the game is enough punishment, and the mere fact of buying this crap equals to instantly losing (money and time).
 

nkarafo

Member
All four points you mention sound like horrible game design to me.

Might as well let the game play by itself.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Only good things about the game is whichever devs worked on the character select screen, animations, and lip synching did a solid job. The art style, colours and DEI focus are terrible (complete with dev ranting on Twitter). The gameplay seems meh and so are the modes. But the character select screen and animations are actually rock solid. Heck, they even got YT vignettes as a bonus.

The game is similar to Suicide Squad. That game had lousy gameplay, and a weird focus on superheroes shooting guns jumping from rooftops. But oddly, then the game has fantastic high quality cut scenes.

So it goes to show they put too much focus on certain things that arent essential to the game.... like gameplay and in-game graphics during play.
 
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Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
I just think the game needed to make a few design changes to be better received. Namely, they should have gotten rid of the hero shooter concept and focused on variations on deathmatch, added weapons like a cannon that shoots shrapnel (flak, if you will), had better map designs with names like "Deck 17" or "Facing Worlds", and renamed it Unreal Tournament 2k4.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
How us all of this good in a competitive shooter? Apart from point 4 the others are exactly why I only play Hunt Showdown those days.
Addressed in the OP.

There’s something excellent about taking on a challenge with your closest friends. Firewalk identified the very real problem of games splitting friend groups up and tried to address it. They just didn’t offer up a compelling enough challenge to get friend groups together in the first place.
 

K' Dash

Member
There is a huge problem in multiplayer gaming that very few (no one?) talks about...

PROBLEM: Great multiplayer games are horrendous at keeping friend groups together.

If you have 3 friends that play a certain multiplayer game on the regular, it is essentially a certainty that this group splits up due to the skill level of the group shredding. I have experienced this phenomenon in literally every MP game I've ever enjoyed. There's always one or two players that advance in skill level to such a degree that it causes friction with the low skill friends. Either the low skill players don't want to play with the high skill players because going 2 - 14 (KD) isn't fun for 2 hours, or the high skill players find other high skill friends to group up with, leaving their real friends behind.

Concord doesn't have SBMM because Concord was designed specifically to keep friend groups intact. Consider the following four points...

1. The hit boxes in Concord are unbelievably generous. If your cursor is anywhere close to the opponent, you're hitting them. This was a conscious design choice.

2. Concord provides players with a number of low skill floor heroes. Lark, Daw, Jabali, Emari, and Kyps can be played relatively effectively by players who can't aim.

3. The game doesn't punish teams for losing. You rank up and unlock cosmetics at exactly the same rate whether you win or lose. This means high skill players don't feel held back by their low skill teammates to the same degree.

4. The game leans heavily on Rock, Paper, Scissors design philosophy. That means low skill scissors players can beat high skill paper players when they bump into them in a 1v1.

Concord might be a commercial flop but this particular design philosopher should not go by unnoticed. SBMM is a poor solution to a very real problem and it's awesome that Firewalk attempted to address it with Concord. I hope we see more games tackle the issue going forward.

I hope you get perma-banned soon.

Welcome back.
 

MarkMe2525

Gold Member
Nothing wrong with recognizing what you believe they did right. There are enough threads centered around shitting on the game. I see that is lost on many in here.
 

MayauMiao

Member

Concord does something brilliant that I've heard exactly 0 people mention...​


You are sending a message telling us that Concord bombs because of horrible, ugly, uninspiring, corporate mandate, woke driven, DEI approved, modern audience pleasing character designs alone.

I absolutely agree with you on that.
 
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HoodWinked

Member
the funny thing is that Concord NOT having SBMM actually accelerates the game's death.

what happens is in a multiplayer game without SBMM the newbies get farmed by better and more experienced players. So any new players quickly quit so the population gets smaller, then as it gets smaller the worse players get farmed even harder so they also quit.

6YzG9jf.png
 
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peek

Member
Wait why everyone bashing OP? I actually enjoyed my time in this thread. Imagine if we didnt get this thread.

🧠
 

KaiserBecks

Member
Always Sunny Shut Up GIF


If you love something, set it free. If it comes back it’s yours. Concord won’t come back though because it’s fucking dead.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
You are sending a message telling us that Concord bombs because of horrible, ugly, uninspiring, corporate mandate, woke driven, DEI approved, modern audience pleasing character designs alone.

I absolutely agree with you on that.
That played a part, though likely a significantly smaller part than the discourse would have you believe.
 

wipeout364

Member
Concord doesn't have SBMM because Concord was designed specifically to keep friend groups intact. Consider the following four points...

4. The game leans heavily on Rock, Paper, Scissors design philosophy. That means low skill scissors players can beat high skill paper players when they bump into them in a 1v1.
I disagree with the idea that these aspects are necessarily positives. High skill players will not be interested in a game that designs around a hard rock paper scissors philosophy as the skill ceiling is too flat.

SBMM is a very sophisticated way to drive engagement and works. The only people that don’t like SBMM are people who like to pub stomp and those that have been brainwashed by the streamers who can no longer get quality videos because every second game they are getting their ass handed to them; which is the experience most people have.

The rapid fall off of Xdefiant should be a warning to those who do not put some form of SBMM in their game.

 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
I just think the game needed to make a few design changes to be better received. Namely, they should have gotten rid of the hero shooter concept and focused on variations on deathmatch, added weapons like a cannon that shoots shrapnel (flak, if you will), had better map designs with names like "Deck 17" or "Facing Worlds", and renamed it Unreal Tournament 2k4.
A bad game is a bad game forever, but a bad game with a Flak Cannon just cannot be a bad game anymore.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
No, to me it plays a significant role especially when many of the reviewers are saying Concord has a solid gameplay. What else could it be?
The gameplay is solid, but it’s solid at $40 in a market filled with solid to great F2P competitors.

The sense of progression is by far the worst in the genre. We can see the player drop off rate over the last week has been abysmal because there’s not much new to see after 10 hours of gameplay.

It’s just a very lukewarm (not bad) game that is priced way too high for what you get.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
I disagree with the idea that these aspects are necessarily positives. High skill players will not be interested in a game that designs around a hard rock paper scissors philosophy as the skill ceiling is too flat.
It’s not a “hard RPS philosophy”. Obviously bad scissors will still lose out to good paper, but it leans in that direction to increase variety and alleviate high skill dominance.

If you look at the history of PvP multiplayer games, we seem to moving in this direction.
SBMM is a very sophisticated way to drive engagement and works. The only people that don’t like SBMM are people who like to pub stomp and those that have been brainwashed by the streamers who can no longer get quality videos because every second game they are getting their ass handed to them; which is the experience most people have.
I actually think SBMM is a crude way to drive engagement as it splits friend groups apart. It was simply the first workable solution to a real problem. I don’t think it’s the long term answer though.
The rapid fall off of Xdefiant should be a warning to those who do not put some form of SBMM in their game.

Games fail all the time. If you look at the first 30FPS games ever made, the vast majority did nothing on the market. Industries often need to iterate many times on a problem before it’s solved.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
The gameplay is solid, but it’s solid at $40 in a market filled with solid to great F2P competitors.

The sense of progression is by far the worst in the genre. We can see the player drop off rate over the last week has been abysmal because there’s not much new to see after 10 hours of gameplay.

It’s just a very lukewarm (not bad) game that is priced way too high for what you get.

It amazes me that no one saw the lack of progression as a serious problem

People don’t play games just to play them, without progression of some sort you’re done with it in a weekend
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
It amazes me that no one saw the lack of progression as a serious problem

People don’t play games just to play them, without progression of some sort you’re done with it in a weekend
Depends on the gamer.

When I played COD a lot back in the day with buddies, all we cared about was winning. Prestiging and trying to unlock every knick knack or max out gun levels was the last thing we cared about. Most of us just had fun with a handful of class set ups and thats it. In most CODs I have just two class set ups with the same gear and loadout. Except one has stun grenades and the other has smoke bomb.

In every COD game I've played, I've never prestiged. I prefer just being max level 50 or 60 with all things unlocked so I dont have to relevel up to get back my fav gear.
 
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Bitstream

Member
Thank god concord has a $40 paywall, don’t want to risk getting exposed to that shit for free
reelasing this terrible game at this terrible price is a 4D chess move by sony, releasing a massive GAAS flop to serve as a warning for all future devs, don't be like us, don't waste millions on a game that 12 people will play. If Men in boxes is the only person on a forum promoting your game, you've done something wrong.
 
reelasing this terrible game at this terrible price is a 4D chess move by sony, releasing a massive GAAS flop to serve as a warning for all future devs, don't be like us, don't waste millions on a game that 12 people will play. If Men in boxes is the only person on a forum promoting your game, you've done something wrong.
Bingo
 
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I like the idea of just paying $40 up front to get it all for a MP only game. I just hope the pricing model doesn’t die with this dead game.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Depends on the gamer.

When I played COD a lot back in the day with buddies, all we cared about was winning. Prestiging and trying to unlock every knick knack or max out gun levels was the last thing we cared about. Most of us just had fun with a handful of class set ups and thats it. In most CODs I have just two class set ups with the same gear and loadout. Except one has stun grenades and the other has smoke bomb.

In every COD game I've played, I've never prestiged. I prefer just being max level 50 or 60 with all things unlocked so I dont have to relevel up to get back my fav gear.

Most gamers need some progression to keep them hooked
 

MrMephistoX

Gold Member
I like the idea of just paying $40 up front to get it all for a MP only game. I just hope the pricing model doesn’t die with this dead game.
Agree with OP I really like the game but I also suck at COD and therefore hate it. More games should launch with F2P and a $40 all in price tag as an option I fucking hate the loot box gambling shit. If this goes F2P it should be with a free roster of rotating characters and keep the $40 for the base content: ie the Killer Instinct biz model.
 

MayauMiao

Member
The gameplay is solid, but it’s solid at $40 in a market filled with solid to great F2P competitors.

The sense of progression is by far the worst in the genre. We can see the player drop off rate over the last week has been abysmal because there’s not much new to see after 10 hours of gameplay.

It’s just a very lukewarm (not bad) game that is priced way too high for what you get.

People didn't even gave it a chance with the free beta weekend, so how was $40 to blame? They simply see the ugly characters, and immediately gave it the finger.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
People didn't even gave it a chance with the free beta weekend, so how was $40 to blame? They simply see the ugly characters, and immediately gave it the finger.
Exactly.

Gamers took one look of the character set and oddly muted pastel colours said forget it. I dont think I've ever seen a high budget game (esp a shooter) that used a faded colour palette. In life, most products dont have those shades because it's soft and ugly for most things. Maybe for indie games, a women's blouse or wall art you got at Ikea it works, but faded pink and green tones dont work for most things.

Makes no difference if it's a free beta, a familiar kind of game to understand (hero shooter), or that the game might get a brownie point for a GotG vibe which is a superhero movie that gets big sales. Add these factors up and at least you should had got tons of gamers at least trying it for free. But the first impression was so bad, people avoided like the plague.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
People didn't even gave it a chance with the free beta weekend, so how was $40 to blame? They simply see the ugly characters, and immediately gave it the finger.
It didn’t look or play differently enough to justify the time investment.
 
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