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Has Apex destroyed any chance of smaller dev BR games being a success?

MadMod

MadMod

Member
Dec 4, 2017
2,716
I feel like BR has a much broader scope for evolution than what MOBA had. Look at Tetris 99, BR is already evolving and its only been a couple years since PUBG. Theres defo room for other BR games, especially if they innovate in the potential thats there. People will just need to be more creative once the clones are out, to stand out.
 
ShinUltramanJ

ShinUltramanJ

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,949
I'd say their chances were destroyed before Apex arrived. People only have so much time to devote to this stuff. Only the strong's going to survive.
 
Chrno

Chrno

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,589
there are still some gaps to fill when it comes to the genre (I think)

1. Magic BR (Spellbreak might take this one)
2. Pirate BR
3. Medieval BR (with Dark Souls/For Honor-like combat)

i've said this before, but I really wished Respawn could have balanced a Titanfall BR. We'll prob never see it now.
 
Razgriz417

Razgriz417

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,105
Seeing as BR games require so large groups of players to fill a match, other devs have their work cut out for them (curious how bf5 will do it and will they be able to convince ppl to buy a copy to try it). Before Apex I would have said there's not much room left in the market, but it seems like it has taken over cod's player base now so who know. If an other dev can iterate on the br formula and make it unique and fun, and free they may have a chance
 
Agent 47

Agent 47

Banned
Jun 24, 2018
1,840
Chrno said:
there are still some gaps to fill when it comes to the genre (I think)

1. Magic BR (Spellbreak might take this one)
2. Pirate BR
3. Medieval BR (with Dark Souls/For Honor-like combat)

i've said this before, but I really wished Respawn could have balanced a Titanfall BR. We'll prob never see it now.
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I think the chances are good that Respawn will do a special Titan event within Apex.
 
LiK

LiK

Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,045
There are still plenty of other types of BR to be made. Everyone is still following a similar formula.
 
spineduke

spineduke

Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
8,745
deathsaber

deathsaber

Member
Nov 2, 2017
3,095
BR is a trend, sure, but then again, its basically just another form of FPS/TPS which has been around forever, and as long as the games are good, or have some unique statement to say, its all good.

I do wonder if Activision is regretting how Blackout was packaged. On one end, CoD is always good for like 10-15 million copies sold, and Blackout was surely an attraction in Black ops 4, but I'm sure they got to look at that 25 million downloads in a week for Apex and think how they would have done if they FtP'ed Blackout, given that brand name recognition. Don't get me wrong, the numbers they sold are good (and they are $60 purchases), but if 25 million downloaded the free BR game from the Titanfall devs, imagine how many would have grabbed a FtP Call of Duty BR game, monetized via $10 Battle Passes. They could have legit challenged Fortnite for the BR crown, instead of being a footnote in the craze.
 
ChewbieFR

ChewbieFR

Member
Nov 3, 2018
181
There's always room for creativity. Fortnite's pretty unique with its construction mechanics and 'easy to understand, difficult to master' approach, PUBG shines with its more hardcore design, Blackout has the fun of its multiplayer recipe in a large map, Apex Legends mixes CoD and Overwatch designs and adds some clever communication features. They all coexist. But you can be way more creative than that.
You need to have a solid marketing too, cause Darwin Project was unique but didn't last long.
 
freakybj

freakybj

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,428
The last thing we need is another BR game IMO unless it's a phenomenal one that breaks ground in some new way. While I enjoy Apex, I'd just rather play PUBG. This is because BR games have a steep learning curve and demands a lot of your time for you to be decent. New players will get destroyed. If you take a break and come back, you'll get destroyed. This is why I can't really devote time to more than 1 BR game.
 

SecondNature

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,154
There is nothing left to fill. Games like Islands of Nyne fell hard while trying to appeal to the CSGO crowd. Paladins BR tried to bring RPG mechanics but fizzled out despite being f2p. Idk whats happening with counterstrike's br

We have a fast paced hero team shooter, a third person cartoony game focused on build battles, a heavy grounded hardcore game, and a lite military shooter game in COD. Then we have a WWII vehicle and destruction based BR in Battlefield.

Unless its F2P, I dont see what else can be done
 
spineduke

spineduke

Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
8,745
SecondNature said:
There is nothing left to fill. Games like Islands of Nyne fell hard while trying to appeal to the CSGO crowd. Paladins BR tried to bring RPG mechanics but fizzled out despite being f2p. Idk whats happening with counterstrike's br

We have a fast paced hero team shooter, a third person cartoony game focused on build battles, a heavy grounded hardcore game, and a lite military shooter game in COD. Then we have a WWII vehicle and destruction based BR in Battlefield.

Unless its F2P, I dont see what else can be done
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PUBG is such a technical mess, I find it hard to believe that noone seems to be willing to capitalize and make something more polished. Like you said, all of the major BRs don't really interesect with one another (with the exception of BLOPs and Apex) so I'd expect most of them to survive in the long run.
 

Deleted member 8468

User requested account closure
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Oct 26, 2017
9,109
I'm sure plenty of others have tried, but I don't know if we're giving respawn enough credit here. They are far from a 'small' team and have made industry defining games before.

If anything I think it showed that maybe you need a well polished AAA experience for free to compete with fortnite. From the launch to the polish to the fun Apex is more of a white whale than an expectation of what's to come.
 
VariantX

VariantX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,880
Columbia, SC
Hrothgar said:
The same trend happened with the MOBA games, where a huge oversaturation of the market started to happen. I hope devs remember this and don't fall for the same trap twice.
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They'll fall for it every time because everyone wants to get in on whats popular and no one knows what the next big thing is going to be until its already here and its blown up.
 
AcademicSaucer

AcademicSaucer

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,662
EA paid the top twitch streamers to play the game but that would have been for nothing if the game wasn't good.
 
Whompa

Whompa

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Oct 26, 2017
4,254
BR framework still has a lot of life in it. This just forces devs to get creative.
 

CrashFaster

Member
Oct 28, 2017
114
Nah, if there's something Apex (and Tetris 99 btw...) show is that there's always room for a fresh take on a genre to get things moving again. I certainly hope to see the excellent and intuitive ping system back in other games as well.
 
Rickenslacker

Rickenslacker

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Oct 25, 2017
8,415
Iztok Mravlja said:
No, but COD players will and they'll get a quality BR mode with their purchase.

What's wrong with that?
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The problem from my experience with Blackout on PC is that even COD can not support competing between the other BRs along with its own game modes splitting players to where it's harder and harder to get a match reliably. Also we're months out at this point and Apex came out of the gate better polished and less buggy.
 
exodus

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,943
The very nature of the genre has already done that. You need a healthy population to support quick matchmaking in a game with up to 100 players.
 
Young Liar

Young Liar

Member
Nov 30, 2017
3,407
The more apparent problem that devs have is the concept, which isn't actually as big of a problem considering how relatively new the battle royale genre is. As plenty of other posters have said, there are so many ways it can be expressed as that's not just as a shooter. A melee- focused battle royale could be wild. There could be a platformer battle royale. A racing or a kart-based battle royale seems obvious.

Unless you have a completely bare-bones presentation like Tetris 99, I don't think just any dev team that's not bankrolled by a major publisher can really sustain on a purely technical level the player population necessary to keep any battle royale game alive, much less make it a genuine hit.

The network infrastructure to handle a gigantic playerbase and the constant content and balancing updates expected of a good battle royale all require a ton of resources that smaller dev studios don't have immediate access to.
 
tusharngf

tusharngf

Member
Oct 29, 2017
2,288
Lordran
I think the game is gonna die soon. Nothing can replace the fun of an actual military shooter that is PUBG. I have played APEX for a week it's kinda okay in my book. Started playing pubg again after that. Maybe COD MW4 has a better chance of beating PUBG/fortnite.
 
Iztok

Iztok

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,133
Rickenslacker said:
The problem from my experience with Blackout on PC is that even COD can not support competing between the other BRs along with its own game modes splitting players to where it's harder and harder to get a match reliably. Also we're months out at this point and Apex came out of the gate better polished and less buggy.
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Maybe on PC, yeah, I can see that, COD hasn't done well on PC since maybe MW2? Dont know the numbers.
I get instant Blackout queues on PS4, however.
Still, Apex isn't really a Blackout substitute, now without solo queues anyway. I see them as complementary.

The people I play with don't care about BR progression *at all*, so it's easy to bounce between the various offerings as we please.
 
Shoreu

Shoreu

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Oct 25, 2017
1,010
Not true, make it free make it good and worth someone's time and you'll have a chance at least Apex can't hold everyone
 
I KILL PXLS

I KILL PXLS

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Oct 25, 2017
11,520
Not if it has a significantly differentiating hook. Spellbreak for instance still interests me because the actual gameplay and look is way different from any other BR out there right now.
 
tok9

tok9

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Nov 2, 2017
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TheGreenArrow said:
They're lucky that testers are under NDA
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Over the last month or so they had test sessions that people in the beta were allowed to stream so whatever was streamed or impressions from that session aren't under NDA.

I played a few rounds and as a fan of housemarque and after really getting into Apex, I'm pretty worried.
 
komaruR

komaruR

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Oct 28, 2017
3,045
http://www.twitch.tv/komarur
think apex build a new baseline in term of qol feature that other br should follow. as for killing br competition, i wouldnt think so.
only recently i was watching some of the spellbreak videos and i think the spell combo in it makes the game unique and should be able to generate some audience.
br games now need to find their own unique twist in order to find or hold new audience
 
Daniel Westlake

Daniel Westlake

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
19,165
There's definitely space for more BR games they just to have have what every other successful product needs to have decent marketing, word of mouth, and some hook to keep people engaged.

There are other BR games than obvious ones that are actually trucking along just fine they just don't get much mainstream attention.
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the only thing I really hope for is that the impossibly bad takes about pubg being some dead or dying game never go away because they're too funny.
 
StallionDan

StallionDan

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,705
Plenty of room for different art styles and such. Is there a isometric camera BR game? What about anime artstyle? Etc etc.
 
I KILL PXLS

I KILL PXLS

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Oct 25, 2017
11,520
Also while playing Apex with friends the other day, they expressed wanting an all melee BR. They'd kill for a Dark Souls type BR game or a Chivalry BR game. There's still a lot of room to innovate, just not so much in the straight up shooter area.
 
Kill3r7

Kill3r7

Member
Oct 25, 2017
24,397
I don't think so. If anything Apex shows that BR fans will jump to the newest game if it is compelling. Apex just shows that the stakes have increased exponentially as to what players expect day one and basically makes BR a F2P battleground unless you are COD.
 
Leviathan

Leviathan

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Oct 28, 2017
2,065
Hopefully they stop trying. BR has been damn near the death of variety streaming on Twitch and I'd very much like to see this cash cow butchered so that more streamers go back to mixing up what they play every so often.
 

Deleted member 41638

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The more releases like Apex we get the less willing gamers will be to suffer through months or years of early access shit. We can handle bugs here and there but the threshold is getting lower and lower, especially if there's a price tag on your game.

I wouldn't count indie games out though, if there's one thing they've proved it's that the right indie game can go toe to toe with the triplest of AAA titles.
 
carlsojo

carlsojo

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Oct 28, 2017
33,755
San Francisco
As long as smaller devs come up with something clever, I don't think so

Stardew Valley Royale - 100 farmers enter, one farmer leaves.

Binding of Isaac Battlegrounds - 100 Isaacs in one room with random power ups.

Hollow Knight 99 - Random starting points throughout the map, hunt other bug-players.
 
GodofWine

GodofWine

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Oct 26, 2017
2,775
JCH! said:
I feel so bad for the Planetside: Arena team. Apex stole their lunch, big time.
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PuyoPypo said:
I feel bad for Housemarque. Stormdivers is going to have quick death.
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Stormdivers felt a ways away when I played it last month, it had a lot of cool ideas, but it also now just looks like a knock off version, of Apex. I just don't see how it survives. The 'storm' in it is by far, the coolest storm/circle of any BR yet though, and the 'eclipse' that happens and it gets dark out, and you use flashlights, it also really unique.

Both these games would probably be smart to launch in like 9-12 months, try to find a soft spot in the BR market when people are looking for something new, but not in sync with the usual big release dates. And they HAVE to be free, Island of Nyne proved that (it also proved to not listen to people bitching about what to change on reddit)
 
Plinkerton

Plinkerton

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Nov 4, 2017
6,058
I feel like the reason you'll definitely see more, especially from smaller devs, is that its such an easy sell to investors: "look how successful Epic has been, that will be us if we have the money to do it".

It's much easier to pitch a known (and successful) quantity than something more abstract, so if you're a stuggling dev in desperate need of investment, why wouldn't you pitch a BR game at the moment. Even if you know the markets already saturated.
 
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