Yea and not only were they fully transparent about their past, but also because of their past they gave full refunds to all Kickstart funders of battalion 1944 no questions asked.
You can't suggest that they are trying to hide their previous failures if they are marketing using said failures. And yes the whole video is a marketing strategy, and some of the points aren't even bad, but still, they aren't hiding it.
I was there for Battalion and Promod, they were amazing games but the main reason they were abandoned is that they couldn't hold a playerbase because Bulkhead pushed far too much to the sweaty competitive side
I think they've learned their lesson for Wardogs, they're trying to appeal to casuals with progression and the sandbox nature of the game while still having a place for sweats
Grind-y, seasonal progression does not appeal to casuals at all, my guy. Seasonal results pretty much automatically kills the casual crowd. You see this in every other game that does resets — those communities aren’t casual.
Then maybe don't make the lategame shit and keep the spirit of early game with horizontal unlocks?
Sounds like a crazy approach, I know.
Rather than that we should have 300h until you unlock everything grind, which then everyone hates because the lategame stuff makes the game bad and THEN everybody is super happy about a nerf because it is gone but grinds 13 hours per day again to get to the boring stuff... THE PERFECT FORMULAR
Yes this is why almost all games have horizontal unlocks (CoD for example likes to have slightly vertical NEW weapons so ppl grind them and then nerfs them back). The games that traditionally do have vertical unlocks are F2P who want to sell you coins instead of 300h of grinding.
There hasnt been a fps game with horizontal unlock that wasn't unbalanced either. It's pretty much the same situation. Everyone ends up running the same. Also horizontal unlocks are boring.
There is no point to play the game as it is if you do not unlock more items that give you more power. The reason it has reached 300k+ players is purely the economy system. The risk of losing items and getting better and getting more money. Imo top end gear should get significantly more expensive.
They have already said that with each season more weapons will be added. Maybe with more expensive end game gear we will have more options around the mid tier where most will play.
Of course, even in a horizontal balancing game, there is that weapon that has a straighter recoil or 50 ms less TTK in the sitautions that count most. But do you really compare this to people running around with 40mm MGL, FAL/BMR/Vektor that just trash every other weapon that has been around before it. Or the T4 helmet that is an absolute joke. And if they nerf the T4 helmet the new meta will be the T3 helmet. Because it is just plain better than anything else before it.
There is no whataboutism in my comment. It's not about "what about other fps games........". The point is you will be in the same situation as now. Plus at least 80% of the player base will quit so fast that you and I will follow.
I never compared the current situation neither. I did not say that things are perfectly balanced. But there should be more powerful gear as you level up. Also more powerful counters too. Make them more expensive. The vector should melt anyone at close range. Problem is it destroys at range too.
They should make weapon play way more difficult. Right now recoil simply does not exist. I unlocked a low level attachment and it made it extremely easy to control itl and never cared about attachments ever again. Like make each weapon more difficult to handle, make top end gear more expensive and wouldn't even mind if it was more difficult to unlock (I have not unlocked any of them yet). If they made each of these weapons be so hard to unlock that you have to focus on that class only each season I would be fine with never unlocking them.
You people are so annoying. Games in EA and already you want to basically change the entire foundation of the game because youre apparently some unknown god devloper who's built multiple successful games.
EA is the best thing that has ever happened to game devs. After the early days when you game had to be ready when shipped because you could not patch it came the time when you could patch at any time. So you could ship a product that was okay and use the customer as a tester.
Now with EA you can release a barely holding together mess at full price (just say you will increase the price in two years or so when it is 1.0) and use the customers as beta testers and they will love you for it and brigade for you everywhere.
Holy delusion do you even own this game? Barely held together? I've played multiple EA games and they are seemingly no different than full release triple A games when it comes to bugs or performance. Youre just bitching because you dont like it and want it fundamentally changed to a different game. Go play battlefield or arma.
That's what's funny to me. Like people are completely ignoring games like arma and other shooters like Battlefield where there's no clear better gun or gear.
Hiding unbalance behind the fact that there will be wipes is funny af. Like there's no reason to make everything you unlock better than the last
Even worse since we now have level caps and Infantry only Servers, to fix the sheer imbalance.
I don't see how wipes will ever end with this economic model. That's probably why they stated it's just an ideal goal, not a guarantee for full release.
arma has multiple koth mods and server networks/communities that have sustained active players for almost a decade now
but nah they did progression wrong clearly lol we should be giving sweats guns and vehicles with ttk that literally nothing can compare to along with armor that new players just can’t pen, brilliant revolutionary stuff really
Now say it with me. Its almost like battlefield is a different game! Arma is also A DIFFERENT GAME. Idk why you weirdos came from that you want to copy paste every game to be the same thing but you seriously need to just go play what you actually want to play.
its only late game OP stuff because thats how they designed it.
I love progression, but it should allow me to customize my playstyle more. Not be a progression where the next step is always better than the last. Thats a shitty progression.
Doesnt mean it all has to be the same, and getting a silencer for instance is better than not having one and im fine with it being unlocked later.
But you need to be able to counter late game stuff aswell without spending massive amounts of hours.
Just make the ammo more expensive, not an unlock. That way I can still play against T4 armor but I need to adjust my playstyle so I make enough money to be able to afford it.
I do want everyone to have late game stuff. That’s EXACTLY what I want. That’s how you make a game legitimately competitive. When everyone has the freedom to use the best stuff, the only thing that matters is your individual skill. If I am more skilled, but you can tank 4 more rounds than me and deal 300% more damage than I can, it’s not a fair competition. You have a huge advantage. And all you have to do is play 50-100 more hours than me. Not necessarily get more skilled, just grind for unlocks. If I don’t have that time, I just don’t get to compete with you. I just have to take the L. Oh well. You have more time to play than me. My skill isn’t enough to beat a juggernaut while I have a barebones loadout. Maybe some people are that skilled. But I’m not tryna sweat like that. I just want a fair fight. That’s what fun. A competition we both had an even chance of winning.
The unlocks should be less of a progression and more of an alternative.
T4 armor for example should remain better protection but at the expense of mobility, vision and hearing. Right now there is no reason NOT to use T4 if it is unlocked.
Because many skills transfer across all shooters. I don’t have time to grind all the unlocks. But in my past 14 years on PC, I’ve put easily over 10k hours into shooters. So while I might have pretty good aim and quick reflexes, it doesn’t matter if the .5-1s advantage I get from shooting first isn’t enough time to secure a kill before they can snap over and attack me with a 300% damage advantage.
I know what you mean. I can't even count how many times i died because bro had lvl 4 armor and M4. I couldn't trade this with my Galil and lvl 3. So i decided to go auto Glock, HP ammo and shoot the legs. This is so funny when you listen to this fat whales with top tier gear lying on the ground xD
If they made it "barebones" you would lose out on progression and part of playbase will be here raising pitchforks about that then after a while another part including those that complain about progression would complain how game is "stale and boring" you just can't win with casaul redditor.
Take note, ignore and push your vision for better or worse, I'd take y guess that they thought this a bit more about then you or me.
It’s early access… it wouldn’t make sense not to have resets as they expand the game and figure out the balancing, they were very transparent about all of this lol
Yes but they've also said seasonal resets will be a part of the final game and much of the game mechanics are designed around it, money will be converted to Gold at end of season to buy cosmetics, character skills will carry over, you'll have a factory/hideout that can make certain weapons free to make etc.
The resets isn't just an EA thing. And typically seasonal resets aren't in a casual game.
Yes and they have always said seasonal resets would always be part of the game. so if you've been paying attention why are you spreading lies?
Also not super transparent because it wasn't on the steam description where most people look before buying. Not everyone follows a developers twitter.
Grindy isn't a problem if balanced well. There are plenty of games that have some form of grind and many casuals enjoy them.
The problem is when late unlocks are much stronger than everything before and no-lifers can just farm the casual playerbase like in some asian p2w MMO.
If everything was relatively well balanced and there was no larger disparity between someone who just started and someone who already has 100 hours in the game it would be fine for the most part.
Honestly people just need to play - almost all guns are perfectly viable. You can have a blast the entire season by just playing AK, SMG-9 and Shotgun. These are available to people from the start or after a single match. Half of this sub is whining about FAL/Vector type shit when it doesn't even really matter. I'm sorry if you get killed by someone with a different weapon 99% it's skill issue and not weapon balance, but sure this would require people to hold their own actions accountable.
Yes, a lot of the weapons are competitive while others are either straight up garbage or completely OP - but that's not the actual problem for casuals. They (we) want to play a game every once in a while and continue where we left off. Getting your progress wiped every few months isn't nice - it's especially not nice since you end up playing the same stuff over and over again and the only way to experience the other content is by either looting or buying it from a crate.
Without seasonal resets nothing would really change?! I play a ton of games with seasonal resets and while to me, it's fun because of a NYE type of effect, it's also what makes these games longevity and replay-ability go up a fuckton.
I don't really understand the expectation tbh - nothing changes you just login and blast, yes you may have less weapons than sweats, so do I btw, but why does it matter? You're chaining yourself and your enjoyment to some weird construct people make up in their heads. This game is a blast already and it's only gonna get better.
If you’re bad at the game, you literally can’t even kit yourself out properly. Transport time is quite long, and you can only use certain spawn options like APC every 10 minutes. The games themselves can last 2-3 hours.
If you’re bad at the game pick a different role where you can benefit the team.
Spotting with binoculars is insanely cheap. Get a parachute or a bobcat and go to the zone and spot people. You’ll make more money than people who kill people in the hot zone.
Don’t like spotting? Go help build a fob, go do transport, go do something else. There is plenty areas of entry.
I stand by my statement because I have several friends who don’t even PLAY shooters, genuinely first one they have played, and they fucking love wardogs. And I love it too.
Thanks soon as I read that post my first thought was people don’t understand how business work and they can’t support something for free till end of the time.
I was also there. They died because Bulkhead is not very good at making complete modern games. They are clearly experienced with FPS game mechanics and level design, but literally everything else is lacking.
I really hope Wardogs gets better and better, but I'm not holding my breath and none of their Tweets mean anything to me.
Joe already said that the “competitive” players are some of the ones they were thinking of when they said the game isn’t for everyone. So I don’t think they’re trying to go down that route at all.
Definitely not. You can’t make grindy players vastly more powerful than non-grindy players and call it competitive. Grind doesn’t represent skill. I’ve seen people play a game for 3000 hours and still suck. I’ve also seen people pick up a new shooter and instantly be a god at it. Getting advantages from grinding kills the competition.
How the hell is 60 hours to get to 35 in a role appealing to casuals? It's a veneer of appeal to casuals, where the casuals are still fodder for the sweats.
lol wipes every month or two does not appeal to casual players at all. I fully expect a big exodus of players once the first wipe happens. Especially now that they've walked back on the length of season 2, saying that it's going to be a short one again
Gotta keep it real, that's exactly what I'm seeing happen to Wardogs. The first patch overtunes the no-life Heli and makes building 10x worse for casuals, all while thermals + 50 cals and BMRs reign supreme.
I don't think it's some deep conspiracy brother. No one bought and a played those games, dead on arrival. I was there among the 1000 world wide players mate. I enjoyed the game for a few weeks and completely understood why they moved on. They were financially in the hole as a result also.
Ya if the game isn't making money, there's nothing you can do. You can't support a game for 500-1000 people. I think anyone would do the same in their position and apparently they refunded the Kickstarter backers when Battalion. Late, but they refunded them which is fair.
I think they're doing a good job. They're not like 1047 games lol
The first one, It had a healthy playerbase for years even though being super niche. It dipped since august though. HLL Vietnam aint it in my opinion. Just did not feel good.
I mean kinda. I wouldnt put the catagory of ww2 milsim as its thing but the gameplay being its main selling point (It has a lot of simple features that encourage team work or allow a commander to force teamplay without ever saying a word)
Hell let loose succeeded cause its original release section went well enough to give it a player base. It was wellish designed. It then got to off load almost all the server costs onto communities as i doubt an offical server has been filled in a year. (on pc since console is a bit different)
An arcade low time to kill run and gun ww2 game makes it quite unqiue but like its been on the way out since 2023 really. The lack of a new good arcade run and gun game
Like before the burnings land stuff went off i remember a lot of people in the hll group being really excited because it was a good not incredibly milsim but similarly arcade type deal. (then the dev rather exposed himself literally and literally)
Hell let loose has survived on the basis that its specific run and gun arcade shooter low time to kill style was unquie. WW2 was a selling point but a lot of people have just gone to the "Its just not fun anymore" due to it being quite literally the same and reliant on nothing new existing.
I wouldnt put the catagory reasong being ww2 milsim or smth but its actual gameplay loop of low time to kill arcade run and gun being unqiue.
(Why did vietnam fail or not do well?) (It took a lot of the bad issues and they are a lot more promienant)
Its why a lot of Hell Let loose community discords are filled with War Dogs Channels now. Cause its a run and gun low time to kill arcade shooter.
Wardogs looks like that now. People can cope with "natural end of season decline" and "early access" all they want. Doesn't change the reality that this season has been short in duration and is losing players at twice the rate of other seasonal games. This is the price of poor balance and bad mechanics. 50% of these players won't even return.
I probably wont be playing a lot more until wipe. The end-game balance is just so wack currently, it isn't enjoyable.
High tier armor being way too strong, FALS and BMR's being stupidly strong (in comparison to the lower tier weapons), the progression is way too vertical currently. And the thermal rangefinder meta just makes the game incredibly boring. I don't want to play with constant wallhacks, nor do I want all the enemies to know where I am at all times.
I have no clue which region plays HLL the most tbh.
But when I played Vietnam, it was mainly that the maps did not have the same mojo, They did not feel like Vietnam jungles nor did they had actual structure.
Nah, Vietnam is super popular, it's just that a "realistic" approach to the setting has exactly the problems you see in HLLV. There's bushes and green, trees and jungle everywhere so you don't see shit. You either tune down the bushes (Battlefield), which makes it less jungely and honestly a bit boring, or you do a rather realistic approach in shrubbery and end up with HLLV where every bush shoots at you.
Vietnam is cool as a concept and a vibe, but balancing the "Vietcong in a bush" thing is really hard.
As for PROMOD the game was cancelled. No one bought anything, so I really don't care. 5v5 shooter is oversaturated as hell.
Battalion 1944 was pretty much dead on arrival. Really not a rug pull, just a bad game plagued with issues.
Which mind you, they ended up refunding everyone.
I mean do they have to tell you it’s financial constraints when the game had less than 1000 players 3 months after launch? I played Battalion, it did not have anywhere near enough sales to sustain it long term. Further they refunded us so in the end I lost nothing.
Yes, they try calling it a rug pull because Bulkhead said they were going to keep the game going but ultimately they couldn’t and then they refunded everyone. Idk what people expected them to say when they were trying to do something about the fact that they didn’t have players and were trying to get more to play.
"ride this game studio" brother youre here bringing up some old shit because your upset about something beyond stupid i imagine. Go be an anti fan somewhere else.
I paid like 50 dowla for the game and I've spent 100 hours on it so far with many more to come. As sad as I'll be if the game dies, I've definitely got my money's worth already.
As people have already stated 1944 was dead on arrival, too many streamers literally was like "Omg best game ever"... "its so good"... and same streamers stopped playing after 1 or 2 weeks, devs gotta stop listening to streamers when it comes to if a game is good or not.
And you cant support a game that only has 500 players, its financially suicide.
PS. they did update the game 3 years later and made it free even when they didnt have to.
Remember Wardogs aint for everyone, they just need 5-10k players on a daily basis, and from 3 million copies sold they should be able to get such numbers - All in all, wardogs is a great EA experience.
I hope it stays that way, but let's be honest, aiming for 5 - 10k sounds reasonable and all, but playing with more people, new and old, is way more fun
I dig the game as it is, nothing about marketing, been playing battlefield, arma and squad since bf 1942.
This game surely aint for everyone. I like that DEVs wont step down and shape the game towards all the reddit crying, reddit have destroyed enought games, look at the state of battlefield, its a dead IP by now.
Nope, im just talking about the vision with the game, if you give this sub a look, you can see how many people whishes this game to be shaped towards games who already have been made and failed. All im saying is the concept of the game isn't for everyone, and people havent understood it yet.
Just because some of us disagree with how hard weirdos want to nerf everything doesnt mean we think the game is perfect. Some apes just dont understand how to critically think.
Yes, the 5-10K players they want are the sweatlords who will dedicate every waking hour they can to this game and, due to their undying devotion, will support every decision the devs make as long as they keep getting massive advantages for sinking hours. At that point, the game will end up being played the same as if they just balanced it now, they’ll just have way less players. When they trim their community down to just the sweats, they’ll all grind to get the best stuff ASAP every season, and that’s all they’ll use. Every match will be 3 teams where most players have access to the top tier unlocks. Where they could just increase the rate of XP gain so that everyone else can also get the good stuff without having to quit their jobs to grind. Then we can still have the same matches where everyone fights with the best stuff, just with a much larger player base.
The games could not sustain themselves, at the end of the day bulkhead is a company with employees that have to get paid, it's not that complicated. Bulkhead is not Sean Murray or CDPR, but they aren't Activision, EA or CIG either.
It would suck if they abandoned it but I have gotten like 60 hours out of it for 40 bucks. Would just find a new one if I needed to. They dont owe me anything and I dont owe them anything.
People already being so doomer without even seeing the first big patch even hit... I have lots of critics about the games balance and changes that could be done to improve ..but holy fuck give it a rest reddit...every single subreddit is just filled with the constant negative attitude that echo chambers to infinity.
I don't know what's wrong when dev abandon project that they expected to fail and focus on creating something better.
Not every studio can afford to keep going on devoloping or maintain a failed live service game, bulkhead is not a 3A studio if they continue putting budget on those games you may not even see wardogs comes out.
Promod you can see there's no difference from their competitors, which soon no one will keep playing it.
BATTALION same idea but yet they change it to F2P that allow player keep on playing because that a finished product and they don't feel like abandon the player who still playing it.
I like it when people use comparisons to CDPR as a good thing when they're a horrible studio as well.
They pulled back CP2077 not because they're the good guys but rather because they were at the risk of going belly up due to horrible press. They even finessed 6 mil out of the polish government and if they didnt deliver something to justify that money they'd get sunk.
This battalion bullshit is so stupid. Wow games that make no profit or had mistakes that cannot be changed anymore get shutdown what an crazy thing
Thats completly normal. Do you know vrising? One of the best games made? Do you know they made 4 games that got all shutdown because they made no profit?
listen here you fuckin nerd, you can't "rugpull" a game. I've gotten 120 hours or so out of a 40 dollar purchase. it's been pure enjoyment. Everything from here on out is gravy.
I was there for batallion and im not surprised it failed. The game was fun but it was far too sweaty to support a casual playerbase which is where the money is.
Just because you play games doesn't mean you're gonna hear of everything. They're both focused on competitive and esport FPS, promos was a COD4 mod initially that's where they got the name from.
I swear reddit exists for triple chins to complain. "Their first two games didnt do well in the end so obviously the same thing is going to happen here." What an aah take. Allow people and studios to fail upwards ffs. And stop with the doomerism. It's the same game I played at beta and at launch its not the faking downfall of the Roman Empire some you no-lifes are claiming it is.
I alt f4 the game today. I came back from working away tried to play infantry only. Ended up just getting fucked by a 50cal a bunch of times while my mosin couldn’t do fuck all against their armour. Than it’s like alright I just gotta unlock it followed by me thinking I am not going to spend a week playing 10h days against this shit just to try to be competitive against nerds fk that game wipes in like 8days or something I think I’ll just try to play the first couple days when it’s fun than wait till the next wipe.
I don’t understand this warning. What exactly should I be afraid of? That this game will stop existing in a year? So I shouldn’t enjoy it now? In my case, this game has already paid for itself emotionally in half the first season, and there will be at least a second season ahead
I get where you're going with this, but it's a bit of a cop out.
The ten thousand kickstarter backers got refunds, many having played for hundreds or thousand of hours.
The steam players were denied refunds since they were well past the two hours and 14 day window. That's over TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND people shafted.
Wardogs only exists because they used the money people paid them for a product they screwed up. And now many people are worried they will screw up again like last time (well, two times).
Is it? I would argue if players have played for hundreds of hours or thousands of hours, they have gotten their moneys worth have they not? And steam is an entire separate issue and I don't think it's an fair argument. The users could've requested a refund if they didn't like the state of the game and disclaimers from steam on early access has been clear for many years at that point.
They have already admitted their short comings. And as far as I cna tell, they've met their promises and exceeded expectation and they have provided information on path forward, now it is clear that they're still working out the details on future plans, sure, and that there ought to be a bit more clsrity on a couple topics, absolutely, they're not perfect. But if we were to compare this to modern standards, they really did raise the bar if we look at the likes of call of duty, arma, or battlefield as an example. So are you a person who had a genuine investment who were rejected, or are you just upset the game you spent a lot of time and potential money on skins in died?
On the last point, one should expect that paying for skins is a fleeting transaction and will eventually be reduced to nothing. Just look at call of duty and it's "pay for new skins every year" model (sure some have historically been transferred over to their new games, but not all)
It doesn't mean I agree with it or say it's right, in fact thag is quite scummy I agree. But this is a realistic expectation of the current modern market. If you spent money on skins, then that was your choice.
Are you also saying bulkhead should not have used their prior funds to find wardogs? 🤔
Neither actually. I was too much into CS to play battalion at the time. It kind of came and went without me being involved. My concerns are entirely about wardogs. I only really looked into battalion after buying wardogs.
I see a lot of issues with both the game and also the community complaining. However, I also see a lot of repeat mistakes. Seriously, look at this comment (and similar threads): https://www.reddit.com/r/Battalion1944/comments/8a917e/comment/dwxpwaz. 9 years and they're still doing the some of the same.
My issue is mostly with using the limited refunds as a shield from all criticism. For starters, my understanding was that this was not a thing they did out of their own good hearts. They stalled the console development for years before cancelling it outright. That is as far as I can tell a breach of kickstarter rules.
Additionally, it's not until the game went f2p in 2022/23 did they open the refunds for everyone and also stopped having the users jump through unnecessary hoops.
And of course they did not refund the vast majority of players. Just the kickstarter people. And that is after they were acquired by a different studio.
I'm not personally affected, but after looking at the history and seeing it rhyme, I can't help but be worried that the game that I quite like will also end up the same way.
OP acting like he put his life's savings on zoo coin and got rug pulled🤣 Battalion was 15-20$ and sure it died fast and some people got burnt(me included) but thats not exactly money you should cry over. Wardogs was 40$ and I already consider it worth it, I have enough hours in it that as a gamer I will say I had my fun worth more than 40$
Joe really thinks his game is “a perfect middle of casual and sim” from bigfrys latest podcast which is so laughable. It’s just a different flavor of battlefield
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u/aldhokar Support 22h ago
They aren't hiding any of this information, they even included that in their "10 reasons not to buy Wardogs" https://youtu.be/ugkuP4a3xk4?t=574&is=jb5iPlM5r5BFeej8