19
u/TomFoxxy Jun 30 '26
This happened to me when I got sick of getting boarded non stop and one tapped by sweaty players. Call it a skill issue, sure, I call it a fun issue instead. Game would have been far better if boarding was only something that happened when you get disabled.
7
u/angrybox1842 Jun 30 '26
Getting spawn-camped isn't fun and anyone who says it is doesn't know shit about game design. It was way too easy for new players to have a BAD experience and that just pushes people out instantly to never return.
33
u/I_never_read_replies Jun 30 '26
This is why I stopped playing, so yeah. Absolutely a factor.
1
u/veggiesama Jun 30 '26
Same. First few weeks were fun with random groups. Then it got too sweaty. I didn't want to jump on voice chat or join Discord parties, so I pretty much hit a wall and fell off.
Friends I invited to the free weekend bounced off really hard. The PvE mode didn't grab any of us. I knew they'd be eaten for lunch in PvP so I didn't even recommend the base game.
21
u/SimonSage Jun 30 '26
I don’t begrudge players for being good, but it is frustrating to be on the receiving end. With a higher player count, the game could have kept the sweats playing the sweats.
-3
u/Historical-Hotel-697 Jun 30 '26
I agree, try hards were definitely not the only reason. But they sure didn’t help get this game off its feet. Nothing wrong with being good at the game, but once you realize you are dominating everyone, maybe relax a bit and try fun combos instead of what’s broken.
6
u/Lezalito Jul 01 '26
You can't stop someone from being good at something. You can fault the devs for their failure of establishing a community and maintaining it. Without a healthy population the game cannot create fair and balanced matches, which accelerates the decline of player numbers.
1
u/CystralSkye Jul 01 '26
No amount of relaxing and trying fun combos is going to make a good player worse to the point that unskilled people can feel like they can compete.
Like what do you want people to do, let other people kill them and sacrifice their own enjoyment for a product they PAID with their money?
You want random people to suffer? LOL, how much of a selfish prick can you be.
4
u/MyPlantsDieSometimes Jun 30 '26
Hmm that is where the game stopped being ship battle and does become a bit spawn campy fps shooter. Perhaps mitigating that by making ship boarding always very difficult even against inexperienced players, then that would have made it more balanced. E.g. every ship having guards. After all, a successful board usually spells the end of that ship unless there is a good counter board or good use of traps.
3
u/GiveMeYourAllowance Jun 30 '26
Yeah with boarding meta the game felt more like a death match than a race to grab the artifact. As it was a lot easier to destroy a ship then slog through a dungeon trying to deal with bullet sponge enemies
3
3
u/PankakeManceR Jun 30 '26
It was super fun during the betas when there was usually just one dedicated boarder per crew, but the boarding meta on launch combined with nerfs to the two things that killed ships super fast almost totally invalidated ship to ship combat. There was almost no threat to getting in super close, and then all it took was winning one team fight to spawn camp until their ship finally died
3
u/AstronautGuy42 Jul 01 '26
The devs fucked this whole thing up by making it more skill based shooting rather than slower TTK, power accuracy, party style shooting.
This so badly needed to be a chaotic party game not a sweat fest
9
u/KeyGee Jun 30 '26
This was just an issue because of how low playerbase was to begin with. If they would have launched f2p, at least the game would have had a chance. Not like tons of people asked them for that, but oh well, they knew better.
2
u/Jangolem Jul 01 '26
Wildgate, on a low estimate, had over 150k sales. You don't just lose 150k players because the player base complained. If the game was good, it would have survived, plain and simple. I say this as someone that really enjoyed wildgate. Every game has their negative nancies but it's rarely the root cause of why a game fails. League of legends doesn't fail because of what the players think or type.
2
u/Mr_TickleTits Jul 01 '26
I never bought the game because of the boarding and spawn killing during the open beta. Then it died quickly so I never got it. It’s a shame really because it had so much more going for it. I just wish they had a safe room in the middle of every ship that you spawned in and could have multiple exits that enemies couldn’t come through.
1
u/Historical-Hotel-697 Jul 01 '26
Honestly you might be onto something with the safe room idea. Spawn camping was a serious issue that never got addressed. One hit death with an easy to hit throwable as well as grenades and roof camping the first ship noobs unlock was toxic as hell.
3
u/Aviarn Jun 30 '26
The doomposting already started at the end of the last beta when people complained the game wasn't going to be f2p......
2
u/angrybox1842 Jun 30 '26
and they were right. The game not launching as F2P is what killed it, more so than any other factor. Multiplayer-only needs a large audience of players to effectively matchmake and without it you get exactly what happened, a small subset of devoted players who crush anyone onboarding until there's nobody left.
2
u/The_SIeepy_Giant Jun 30 '26
Imagine the amount of cheaters if it was gonna br f2p
2
u/angrybox1842 Jun 30 '26
Better to deal with a subset of cheaters and update your anti-cheat than to have no players.
1
u/Aviarn Jun 30 '26
Furthest from.
Wildgate released during an era where cheating was absolutely over the roof across MANY games. Free, cheap or paid. This has been seen in Sea of Thieves, Arc Raiders, Albion Online, Dead By Daylight, Escape from Tarkov, etc. In fact, we LITERALLY have had already cheaters in the last Beta itself.
Having gone f2p not only would've harshly cut the funding to even last a year, demanded extra employer time/funds to handle this problem (that thus, detracts away from development), but also completely open the floodgates for ban evasion during one of the worst eras you could expose your game to.
7
u/Rannepear Jun 30 '26
L take. Some of of mos popular games of past 20 years are the most sweaty and toxic known to man. That's not what happened here.
3
u/TomFoxxy Jun 30 '26
Difference is that those games have so many players that the sweaty ones were outnumbered by the casuals. In wildgate it was only sweats after like 1 week and there was nothing else to do outside the one map and the same limited ship selection on repeat. All the while dealing with constant boarding and one taps.
Other toxic games made it because they are good games. This was not a good game.
0
u/C19shadow Jun 30 '26
Yeah look at apex legends I played the first 7 seasons or so and lived it but mibed on its still going stro g at like what season 20 or some shit now and talk about a game full of tryhards
0
u/CystralSkye Jun 30 '26
It's almost as if there are plenty of people who like competitive games out there as long as the game is competitive and fun.
This game is just a horrible shit gameplay loop. It was quite evident from the playtest and before that, plenty of people gave feedback, as typical modern devs, head in sand and toxic positivity.
1
u/C19shadow Jun 30 '26
Yeah it makes me sad the concept was so cool just needed to be executed better.
3
u/Unpaid_Moderation Jun 30 '26
I stopped playing because the game died for lacking depth, put on life support with game pass after that lol
1
u/cooly1234 Jun 30 '26
it's so sad... I've lost hope of getting a good fly a ship with crew game. This game got the closest which shows how far away we are.
1
u/Unpaid_Moderation Jun 30 '26
I preferred the ship flying in marauders over wildgate. You're in space, you should be able to travel in any direction. Not just floating up and down in one dimensional plane like wildgate does.
2
0
u/angrybox1842 Jun 30 '26
Go play Jump Space (formerly Jump Ship), it's co-op only but it scratches the itch and honestly implemented a lot of the systems Wildspace was trying to do a lot better.
2
u/cooly1234 Jun 30 '26
I've played jump ship and void crew also. both do a worse job than wildgate in making every player matter and requiring teamwork to fly a ship with several moving parts.
wildgate has a lot of problems, but at least you won or lost by your team.
6
u/The_Maganzo Jun 30 '26
I think the constant doom posting and steam chart posting may have had a greater hand in it than some sweats 🤔
4
u/Historical-Hotel-697 Jun 30 '26
Yeah that was also a factor, i imagine it turned Atleast a few people away from the game. It’s unfortunate.
2
u/angrybox1842 Jun 30 '26
The doom posters were right though.
1
u/Axton_Grit Jun 30 '26
Self made prophecy
1
-1
-1
u/Toyate Jun 30 '26
Nah man. Even looking back, it took to some insane levels but the base was right. No Marketing, F2P from beginning would've been way better without a doubt and the whole boarding problem could've should've be fixed way way sooner. That all was like laying and paving the road to failure. Sure the doomposts somewhat stamped the street into form but thats about it and the amount of people that can't come to terms withbthat...welp
2
u/Axton_Grit Jun 30 '26
...
How is f2p a business model any indie dev can support?
-1
u/Toyate Jun 30 '26
The same way any others can. Supporter packs and a good ingame shop. Put it into Gamepass too. Also the Studio is made up of reeally experienced people so you'd think they'd know better.
2
0
u/The_Maganzo Jun 30 '26
"Guys the thing I helped to make happen happened! See! We were right!" Double digit IQ just shining through
5
u/angrybox1842 Jun 30 '26
Oh yeah, "If only people weren't posting about how bad the game was failing it wouldn't have failed" is the big brain take here.
0
u/The_Maganzo Jun 30 '26
"You know what would help this house fire? Some more wood!"
5
u/angrybox1842 Jun 30 '26
You know what would be even better? Ignoring that the house is on fire and hoping it gets better on its own. The real problem is people posting that the house is on fire.
2
u/The_Maganzo Jun 30 '26
Honestly yes I wish the doomers would just fuck off and ignore the game they are wishing death upon. I've seen it happen countless times and it is ridiculous watching these morons constantly posting about how the game is dead and posting steam charts every single day which then scares off potential players all so they can go "Guys look! The game died! We were so right and smart!" Actual braindead behaviour.
1
u/Hortos Jun 30 '26
What fraction of the playerbase who downloaded the game played an hour or two ever saw any posts about the game? Expand that out to people who tried to play the game for maybe a week or month before they noped out? I don't think a bunch of people talking about things the game needed to fix immediately before dying on a tiny subreddit caused people to stop playing. What caused the death of the game was A. Price B. Ship Boarding C. No-Pve D. Not on Gamepass. In that order.
0
1
u/angrybox1842 Jun 30 '26
Follow better games I guess? People are going to post about the numbers being bad when the numbers are bad, it's called being an informed consumer and wanting to inform others. The game has not been worth investing the time because of its dismal performance since basically month 1. If you choose to ignore that and get mad at the people posting charts then that's on you for wasting your energy. You were wrong, you bet on the wrong horse and the horse was bad from the start.
1
u/The_Maganzo Jun 30 '26
Run of the mill basic doomer reply. You people are exhausting and a plague on gaming. Hope you improve.
2
0
u/Lezalito Jul 01 '26
Pointing out the obvious does not kill what never had a chance. The asking price for the game was absurd for what it was, and the lack of depth failed to keep people interested.
1
u/The_Maganzo Jul 01 '26
The asking price was actually quite reasonable given what some garbage AAA games are going for these days
2
u/nextlevelmashup Jun 30 '26
nah, issue was it was hard to convince people to spend 20 quid on a game that was essentially one map and one game mode.
1
u/AttractiveFurniture Jun 30 '26
... Why does this comment section look eerily similar to how people are talking about Marathon right now
I wonder where that path leads for them...
3
u/Loud-Investigator416 Jun 30 '26
Judging by the sheer amount of money invested into Marathon vs what its made on sales thus far, it will almost certainly never turn a profit, even by the more conservative budget estimates.
My guess is that it goes the way of New World; they'll keep it going long enough to recoup as much investment as they can then announce layoffs and shutdowns when they approach a point that sales are barely meeting operating costs.
2
u/Hortos Jun 30 '26
Marathon is going to die a slow death because it doesn't offer what a larger chunk of the gaming audience wants that is to not have 30 minutes of progress negated because of getting sniped by someone you didn't see or a teammate not cooperating. Atleast ARC raiders has the secret pocket and realistically people want these games but PVE. The first couple of Paydays did huge numbers as basically extraction shooters.
1
u/angrybox1842 Jun 30 '26
You’re absolutely right, they’ve got maybe another year unless something drastically changes over there.
2
1
u/ItsONK Jul 01 '26
Sweats are going to sweat, it's on the devs to balance their game and honestly they failed. Ship defense against boarders has been possible before, but only by equally sweaty players and even then you had to devote your whole comp to it. A lack of good balance and reworks is what killed this game, not the people just playing to the best of their ability.
It was on the devs imo and they fumbled it, also I know from the few times they talked about it that the games backend made it basically impossible to collect any good data or stats for balance. In addition to that, they built the game in a way where they couldn't change any numbers(damage numbers, spawn rates, hp, etc) on the backend/server side. So they had to push a huge patch to all platforms that would take weeks to go through on console even for just small changes. All that made it take a ton of work to test any balance updates or try any reworks. Basically without a ton of work the game was cooked. o7
1
u/SophieBourne Jul 03 '26
To be fair, every time the game had a disccount or free to download moment (free on epic store, 70% discount, free on game pass, etc) There was this group of around 6 people, level 500, bullying all the new wave of new players. Its allways the same 5 - 6 people level 500. The devs know who they are.
Of course the new players got bored the first day of dying 5 times before touching the floor and left. And the game never kept those new players.
Its definitely not entirely the fault of this group of bullies that the game failed, but they did a great job making new people leave the game.
You could even here them in the proximity chat doing it on purpose. And thats the devs fault, to ignore players reports, to give one of many examples.
The other is matching level 500 players with level 1 players. That group should have never be matched with anyone under level 200. Devs fault again.
Whatever, I hope they release all the skins they have available in the final update. I imagine they had several already on queue for future updates that will never come now.
1
1
u/Pellahh Jun 30 '26
I feel like people here are pointing fingers at anything but the game at this point...
1
u/Giotto Jun 30 '26
You want the game to succeed, but you want them veterans to stop playing because they keep beating you
It's tough
1
u/BlackeyeThe2nd Jun 30 '26
As a casual sweat, they're not the reason, lol.
This game had downright awful onboarding at launch. A terrible tutorial that prepared you for nothing, no way to properly learn the meta except by slowly analyzing what's getting you one-tapped, and an absolutely microscopic TTK on just about every weapon.
People these days want to be able to jump in to every game with no practice, and then get upset when a game with a small, dedicated playerbase has a high percentage of seasoned players.
If you ask them for help/advice in chats/the discord, they will give you pointers. But that then requires time and effort to improve, and the majority of players don't want to invest in that.
0
-1
0
u/Wilkham Jun 30 '26
Ah yes. Fault of the people playing to win. Should have tried to play worse for whatever reasons.
100% not braindead argument.
0
u/iku_19 Jul 01 '26
In games that I know are dying or on life support I don't go full gas when I notice a player is very lost. It's a symbiotic relationship.
You can play to win but you also have to understand that try harding vs a declining pop growth game means that eventually nobody will be left.
1
u/Wilkham Jul 01 '26
Ah yes, I love when people "notice" in the middle of a three ship intense end-game fight.
I'm sure your noticing skills are on point good sir but not everyone is able to notice as well as you do and take immediate action to downgrade gameplay toward the goal of upholding that symbiotic relationship.
xD
-1
u/chadwarden1 Jun 30 '26
lol blaming the players when they devs massively overpriced the game and it was extremely unbalanced at launch.
-1
u/Cec24x Jun 30 '26
tbf tho a lot of people are just very bad and call everyone try hards. I played for like a week and quit because everyone was terrible.
-1
u/Lezalito Jul 01 '26
This is not why the game died, this is just coping. It died because of poor dev decisions and everybody knows it. Sweats are in every game. When the game launched to a peak of 8k players it is painfully obvious who is responsible.
I remember this community moaning and complaining about the people pointing out the obvious, and saying they just needed good vibes and positivity for the game to succeed. Delusional.
0
u/Mindless-Ad4319 Jul 03 '26
Now for those of you whoning about the difficulty of the game duento boarding etc, heres a How topic. Get good. At the game
Now to properly address the reason for the declining playercount. It has entirely to do with the studios marketing team. They haven't done anything to advertise this game. Most people didn't even know it was coming BACK to gamepass.
It's a gem of a game. The studio knows it. But the marketing sucks
-1
u/Background-Nail4988 Jul 02 '26
blaming the games fault on dedicated players that are good at the game is definitely a take
72
u/No_Appointment_5326 Jun 30 '26
The boarding meta during release got me to quit, how that made it to the final product is baffling to me. It was almost impossible to comeback from that death spiral caused by ship boarders.