could be the view. Instead of first person they went with an odd third person that is squished up way too close to the character. Took me a bit to get used to.
I think that might be it exactly.
Hilariously, the criticism that Paladins is just a “cheap version of Overwatch” is enough of a thing that Hi-Rez actually posted something about it on Reddit.
[quote]
In 2012 we started another project named Aurum (AU), it was a Fantasy based Global Agenda PvP like game and the first inspiration for Paladins. You can see from the video link below how the style is cartoony fantasy.
In Paladins (code name Chaos) pre-production, we experimented with both the Global Agenda Sci-Fi theme and the Aurum Fantasy theme. After a lot of testing the project team decided to go with the Fantasy theme.
Overwatch was announced. We were shocked and not sure what direction to take. We were already so far along with Paladins, but we didn’t want to compete directly against Blizzard.
We initially tried to find different ways to differentiate on game-play (different TTK, different style maps and game modes, different theme, etc), but the feedback from our tests, stats, and surveys showed that only a small part of our population was enjoying that style of game. In the end we said screw it and just made what we thought best, and closest to our original vision, even if people would think it’s too close to Overwatch.
We created almost all the Paladins classes and abilities using Global Agenda and Smite as our template. We used our Aurum fantasy theme from 2012 and Smite characters as placeholders (although some like Grover the tree just stayed).
As a last point, it would be almost impossible for a studio of our size to ‘clone’ Overwatch in a year, but Overwatch did have some nice features that we decided to incorporate into Paladins (Kill Cam, Improved Lag comp, some verbiage like ‘eliminations’)[/quote]
That has to be a pretty sickening feeling when you realize you’re going to be running right up against a Blizzard title. Especially one that has a head start on you.
There should be a word or phrase for this. “Getting Blizzed” or something.
Blizzkrieged?
This game is off to a good start. Over 750,000 downloads and is currently in Steam’s top 10 stats of concurrent players.
I’m going to try it out in the next few days. I really disliked Overwatch so this might work better for me.
Because Blizzard is making a lot of Money at it. Just like the WoW success led to the over saturation of MMO’s.
All these games are not only TF2 clones, they all come from the same idea: “hey these MOBA games are very popular, and have some good ideas on them, but there are lots of people who still don’t play them because they aren’t so interested in super complex games or games that look like a RTS. What would happen if we take the good elements and put them in the already popular genre of FPS? We could be rich!”
Cue Paragon, Battleborn, Gigantic, Overwatch, Paladins, Lawbreakers etc. Some of them are real MOBAS but with normal direct controls (Paragon), some are more like 50% Moba (Battleborn), the rest are normal TPS/FPS that take the idea of putting lots of different heroes with different abilities, instead of having just 4-5 generic classes.
The core idea is that instead of making a multiplayer game with 25 maps and 4 normal classes (soldier, medic, engineer, etc), it makes more sense to put less emphasis on map variety (just 6-8 maps is good enough) and more emphasis on having distinct characters that play all different. Map variety in a FPS only reaches so far in giving the game more hours of play before I’m tired of it and I uninstall it, it’s more effective to invest on character variety, as if you do it right every character can be a different experience, it can give 2-3x more play time to the same game.
Making 20 classes doesn’t make it more interesting to me, that gives me more choices of characters I likely don’t want to play. TF2 already had classes I never played.
So this is just a bit lost on me. I just assumed this must be fun to players who are younger and haven’t been around for the entire ride that is PC MP games. When you’ve been on a PC since 81 it’s hard not to view the ketchup bottle that spins by for the 8th time on the lazy susan as still just the same ketchup bottle.
For me, I look for MP games that introduce something I want that makes pub MP work, like L4D and RTCW, game designed collaboration in L4D, properly implemented multi-staged objectives in RTCW. In each case enforcing that a pub game would, in as much as game design can cause this to happen, result in cooperative play among a group of strangers.
All these games have been in production before Overwatch was announced.
In a world where Overwatch doesn’t exist maybe this game could find an audience but after messing around with it some I don’t see it. I think this just gets pretty quickly forgotten about like Battleborne was.
On a whim I installed this again and it has improved. It’s a mix of better map design, better game modes, more champions to choose from, and me judging it in a bit more open-minded way.
I really enjoy everything about this game except the third person camera
Battleborn never hit 15k players on Steam, even right after launch. This game is hovering around 50k and growing.
I guess this goes to show if you’re going to copy Blizzard, just copy Blizzard. Don’t get cute like Battleborn did.
Being free helps.
In a way, they haven’t been punished by the comments of the type “this is a Overwatch ripoff!”. I suppose lots of people have been trying the game thinking “a game like Overwatch, but free? cool!”.
Yup. At a glance, the game actually looks more like Battleborn than Overwatch in many respects (character loadout customization, cartoony look, higher ttk, inability to switch characters mid-match, etc).
God, the casual players are so… uh… casual. They totally ignore the objective and just pick whatever class that is better at killing enemies. There are four types of characters, front liners, support, damage dealers and flankers, and in most matches my 4 teammates choose the last two types, as they have the highest damage (and less health pool of course), leaving me with the ‘obligation’ of picking a front liner or support character. And from what I’ve seen, the team that usually wins is the one with one front liner and one support, if the other team just focused in damage.