Concord Review Thread

[Yurinka]

Refunds for sure, heck PS players should get 5$ in PS stars points, Along with a statement they will have better quality control for future GaaS games (no more lazy trend chasing)

Shutting down firewalk will be another PR nightmare, they are better of putting a skeleton crew on concord with the rest of them on destiny support for a year and quietly layoff the whole character design team in batches over the course of the year.

The gane isn't broken for those who buy it, there's no reason to refund.

Regarding to shutting the game down, the initial game budget pretty likely included the content and server cost for -at least- the 3 announced seasons. Beyond that, since the game apparently will tank hard, they may announce after the 3 seasons (or after the 6th) that will no longer continue developing new content for it. And then maybe a year after that shut it down.

Regarding the studio, in game companies there are post mostems: after a project is completed, they analize what went well, what went wrong and how could have been improved. As a result, actions are taken to fix what went wrong.

In this case, it could result on firing the people in charge of deciding that the game didn't need to differentiate more from its references, and also whoever was in charge of the woke propaganda, and may also shake up whoever was in charge of the game's marketing, PR and if they consider it was an issue, also whoever from their portfolio/editorial team deciced it was a good idea to release it in this part of the year soon after Helldivers 2/Destiny TFS/First Descendant/ZZZ.

But the rest of the people whose area did work very well because their department did a great job (combat designers, coders, artists, animators, composers etc.) should be fine and will continue there in the studio, and if at some point ends shutting down, they'd be moved to other SIE studio. Because the game may have tanked but they did a good job doing what they were asked to do, so it wasn't their fault.

These postmortem lessons aren't leaned only for their studio and other PS Studios teams who may have been involved on it, they also are shared with the other decision makers of the other teams to apply the leanings (good and bad news) in other projects made elsewhere.

 

[Sircaw]

they will lose even more as they want to support it.

They are probably tied to some content drops; after that, I think they will be moved around to different projects.

With such a small user base, will it even be worth keeping the servers on?

 

[Kokoloko]

I think Sony's failure to understand who their capture audience is is a massive blunder; no one wants to admit it, but shoving woke characters with pronouns at what is essentially a base of hetero-sexual males market is not going to end well.

I also scratched my head when I read a comment from one of the lead designers about white people needing to acknowledge their privilege. Things like that really put me off wanting to support this game; I was on the fence about whether I was going to get it or not, but in the end, I decided not to.

This forced diversity stuff really needs to end and end soon; people don't want it.

Just look at that Dustborn game; it is precisely the same thing and that has flopped even harder.

Couple that with the 40-buck asking price; it's just a failure on so many levels.

I think Sony should ultimately take all the blame. They bought this studio, and they are the ones that oked it.

The sad truth is, we probably would not be talking about this game if the studio had not been bought and released it under its own tag.

It would not of gotten half the flack and who knows, might of even sold ok with out all the negativity.

I agree with all the issues for sure. I just think its get that extra attention because its PS and there are always people waiting to shit on them every game.

If someone from Playstation stepped in about the characters designs and pronouns etc when they bought them, it wouldnt get nearly half the hate.

And yeah as much as I dont like FP2, I wrong about that. I guess thats what PVP fans want whereas I normally play SP games and prefer not to pay bits and bobs all the time.

If it was advertised as a normal game, like a story driven campaign and PVP as a plus for the story to continue, it would of cleared alot of the gaas doomers too and brought in extra people to try it

 

[ethomaz]

I don’t know.

But I feel this game will survive the hate narrative around it.

 

[Sircaw]

I don’t know.

But I feel this game will survive the hate narrative around it.

I like your positivity, but I just can not see that happening.

 

[quest4441]

The gane isn't broken for those who buy it, there's no reason to refund.

I was suggesting refunds to gain goodwill and show that they care, frankly 40$ is not much in the grand scheme of things but a refund would show that they care about the results and their paying customers.

Regarding to shutting the game down, the initial game budget pretty likely included the content and server cost for -at least- the 3 announced seasons. Beyond that, since the game apparently will tank hard, they may announce after the 3 seasons (or after the 6th) that will no longer continue developing new content for it.

Churning out the planned content for those 3 seasons will just lead to the quarterly humiliation articles and PR about low player numbers, the juice is not worth the squeeze in this case. The sooner this game is forgotten the better.

In this case, it could result on firing the people in charge of deciding that the game didn't need to differentiate more from its references, and also whoever was in charge of the woke propaganda, and may also shake up whoever was in charge of the game's marketing, PR and if they consider it was an issue, also whoever from their portfolio/editorial team deciced it was a good idea to release it in this part of the year soon after Helldivers 2/Destiny TFS/First Descendant/ZZZ.

Completely agree on this but they don't even need to layoff people all at once, they can boot people in batches off based on quarterly performance and do a major house cleaning during the annual reviews, But they have to get started now, A bomb like this should ring the alarm bells.

 

[Kokoloko]

With such a small user base, will it even be worth keeping the servers on?

That would be a bigger problem. Even if its 10k people who have bought the game, they cant just turn it off. Lots of complaints would happen including from me. Sony can afford to keep a server on for awhile until people get bored lol.

Atm people who are playing are not having issues match making so, I doubt they would close it so soon.

It can go a few ways.

-They abandon ship now, which I doubt they do before FP2 attempt just to save face
-They close it before or after the 3 seasons, but I think they would put it on FP2/ PS+ before closing it off.
-Keep it on for a year or longer if FP2/PS+ brings in a small number
-Or repackage it as FP2 after season 3, Change the character designs everyone is complaining about, add new modes etc. They have a good shooter, just got all the issues you mentioned before

 

[Gediminas]

I like your positivity, but I just can not see that happening.

i can see it rising, from 700 to 800 ccu

 

[Kokoloko]

i can see it rising, from 700 to 800 ccu

Lol I dont think the Steam numbers are gonna go up ever. Luckily the majority of people I see are on PS

 

[John Elden Ring]

 

[Gediminas]

 

[Savagefrogdemon]

For these type of games to survive I think you have to go the division route strong single player narrative,loot,level up power progression,clans,pvp dark zones and raids all bases have to be covered.

 

[Would_you_kindly]

Indian wouldn't have bombed.

Not sure about that

 

[Would_you_kindly]

I don’t think an outsourced Indian have the skills to reach the quality of this game…

You racist bigot

 

[Yurinka]

I was suggesting refunds to gain goodwill and show that they care, frankly 40$ is not much in the grand scheme of things but a refund would show that they care about the results and their paying customers.

Pretty likely they will lose somewhere betweeen $100M and $200M with this game without refunds. Who paid them already given away a huge amount of millions, won't be happy and won't want to give away more, specially when there's no reason to do it.

They already did what they could and invested a lot of time, effort and money in the game.

Churning out the planned content for those 3 seasons will just lead to the quarterly humiliation articles and PR about low player numbers, the juice is not worth the squeeze in this case. The sooner this game is forgotten the better.

The media apparently didn't even want to review the game, very likely there has been some big issue with their PR team that we still haven't figured out. Because a Sony game not getting reviewed by most of the media is very rare, even if some in EU could be in vacations or in Gamescom. I'll ask about it to a handful relevant gaming press folks I know to see if I get what happened.

I don't see why the game getting more content would create negative press. If gaming media ignored its release, pretty likely also will ignore the updates.

Completely agree on this but they don't even need to layoff people all at once, they can boot people in batches off based on quarterly performance and do a major house cleaning during the annual reviews, But they have to get started now, A bomb like this should ring the alarm bells.

Yes. In fact normally in big gaming companies there are personal yearly appraisals (plus a mid-year update), which is when normally underperforming people gets fired (normally just a few/handful guys every year).

But depends on the mess each one has created. If it's let's say a character designer whose characters have been hated because he wanted to make them too woke. That one can wait, it's a relatively minor issue and can wait for the review or even not being fired.

But if someone made some market research saying a year or two ago that this was going to be a huge sucess bla bla... and that was a good idea to invest a lot etc. may get be kicked quickly. Not Hermen, because even if this project seems to be a big fail, many other ones are super successful and when combining everything, globally he's getting great numbers. But make sure he'll be asked to make firings and reduce costs to compensate the fail.

 

[Muddasar]

a lot of reviewers are swayed by popular discourse. That's why nintendo games all get 90+ despite some of them being quite mid - because the narrative is that nintendo games are all incredibly high quality and fun. This game isn't nearly as bad as a 6.4.

That’s what Sony deserve for chucking this game Day 1 on PC.

The PC influencers and their sheep have shat on this game and it has trickled down to Playstation gamers.

Coupled that with Steam numbers and more people simply not buying the game.

People really underestimate the influence Steam numbers has on gamers.

It helped positively for Helldivers 2. Heres the opposite effect.

 

[anonpuffs]

while i don't disagree, but other areas in the game should support gameplay too and how it is looking, it lacks in quality in other areas.


this game is perfect for gaming media and their virtue signalling. even they aren't bothered to support it.

that's because game journalists are cowards. Do you actually think they believe any of the shit they spew? They say it because that's what the "in-crowd" is saying, they are basically the poster child of groupthink.

 

[Yurinka]

I don’t think an outsourced Indian have the skills to reach the quality of this game…

There are Indian outsourcing teams who work with Fortnite, Sony, Take 2 etc. plus there are also studios from companies like Ubisoft.

I worked with two studios from there, and even made friends. They are talented, but obviously not like the makers of Halo or Destiny.

 

[quest4441]

There are Indian outsourcing teams who work with Fortnite, Sony, Take 2 etc. plus there are also studios from companies like Ubisoft.

I worked with two studios from there, and even made friends. They are talented, but obviously not like the makers of Halo or Destiny.

True that I worked with a few indians who are from their iit's , holy shit they run circles around 99% of the people in any engineering field lol. I don't even think the Indian game dev scene even gets the average talent of that country, whoever cracks that market will have a ready made base of consumers and employees

 

[Evilnemesis8]

that's because game journalists are cowards. Do you actually think they believe any of the shit they spew? They say it because that's what the "in-crowd" is saying, they are basically the poster child of groupthink.

this game is perfect for gaming media and their virtue signalling. even they aren't bothered to support it.

Journalists disdain for multiplayer games overcomes everything else, especially if they view it as: "Not this again?"
Think about how many highly rated MP only games there are at the top in terms of review score?.
I can't even recall a single 90+ MP games in recent times(besides FFXIV, but MMOs are a slightly special case).

Apex Legends, one of the bigger success stories, and much loved at launch in 2019 by pretty much everyone, has a 89 on Metacritic. I legit think the last time MP-only game got 90+ was actually... The reason why Concord exists, Overwatch in 2016 with a 91MC. Of course, it's entirely possible I could might be missing one I can't think on the top of my head. But my main point is that it's not something that happens very frequently.

Concord, a hero shooter coming coming out in 2024, never had a chance.
Nobody was excited for this, certainly not people who have to play the game in a professional capacity to write about it.