Uncanny parallels: Hawken, an early-access game with issues

F2P is so hard to get right it hurts me to see people say REVOLUTIONARY FREE TO PLAY GAME.

P2P was the way to go. It raises the bar of entry so you get less morons under 15 and more experienced guys over 25.

P2P also means that if you don't have a demo of some sort if someone tries the game out and then finds that they don't like it for x reason, bam, you've just wasted $60.

The problems with F2P tend to be because of implementation rather than concept. I think Airmech has probably done the best job with F2P out of anyone, although Action RTS games in general tend to do better than others.

Yup. Believe me when someone that runs another game company gives me information I PAY ATTENTION. I've learned a ton from other people who actually ship games. Armchair quarterbacks? Not so much. I would bet some of those people would also say they've learned from us. Making games is HARD. There is a lot of second guessing that can happen even within your own team. Believe it or not you can even do a lot of things right and still fail. There is no magic bullet other than having a bigger wallet.

I think it's interesting to go and look at some of the statements from hi-rez about how much they spent on global agenda and tribes and how much they lost on those games. The stakes here are very high and there is literally no room for error. So when we make a decision it is with the full knowledge that we are simply trying our best to find our way in the dark with no flashlight. Trust me, people that ship games wouldn't be nearly as critical of us as some of the community is. I think we make this look too easy

Interestingly enough I know the Airmech guys very well. Like very very well.

I'm not saying it's pointless to try, I'm just saying its GOING to happen.

Even when it doesn't happen "a lot" it tends to feel like it does because blowouts seem to stick out in people's minds more.

Hawken's problem is that it's not a mech game and it's not a quake like arena shooter. It's a CoD clone with a mech skin.

PA problem is that it's an RTS game which isn't popular anymore.

That's not a "problem". It just means you'll make less money. Look at Dark Souls, brutal difficulty is not the most popular thing in the world, but the devs understand that and make a game for their own audience instead of generic crap that appeals to everyone (Battlefield *stare*).

I get what you mean............to a point, It comes down to what exactly IS a "mech game" then? Are there special mechanics that "mech games" use that aren't used anywhere else? What defines this "mech game" Genre like the First Person Perspective defines FPS?

Personally I don't think there is a "Mech Game" per-say, rather that is much more of an Aesthetic choice then a Gamplay one.

Mike

It's not a mech game unless it has a throttle.

Because a mech game is a form of simulator.

And simulators have throttle.

Unless they're goat simulators.

But Goat Simulator is more of a sandbox.

And a sandbox is not a simulator.

So Goat Simulator isn't a simulator.

Wait, what was the topic?

Pretty sure the topic was goats or something.

Personally I think Hawken failed because they made it free to play. It's very very difficult to crack the free to play beast.

On that note, I have no idea how Blacklight: Retribution succeeded.

I do have a theory that F2P games that aren't afraid of being Pay2Win are more likely to succeed, but there are too many F2P games I haven't played to be certain.

That is actually what I was going to say anyway. Hawken does mirror SMNC in many ways. I think you unfortunately found a way not to make a free to play shooter. It doesn't mirror Planetary Annihilation as closely, as funding fuels development as it happens. The player graph does. Many things can change that. It isn't release yet. Want the player graph not to look like that? Just give the player a lot of things to do with the game over time.

Sadly, there is one other flaw in the arguement. SMNC doesn't have nonexistant matchmaking. Matchmaking built into the game makes it pretty rough. Supercross matchmaking works too well, the playerbase doesn't allow it to match anyone at all, nobody is a proper match given the playerbase. Turbocross simply puts players together, no matchmaking at all. Supercross customs technically puts randoms together, people just invite down the list, find some good players and some bad, the game matches them randomly, and absolute hell occurs for at least one team.

SMNC experiences are rough BECAUSE of matchmaking, so yeah, harsh arguement. Generally, this is my arguement against matchmaking automatically. Just give players a number and a list of other competitive players seeking a matchup. Let them decide who they want to wager their ranked match points with.

Free to play really is difficult to do, they often have a pretty hard time making worthwhile of it all. Pay to win is technically more pay than free, which is why if they aren't afraid to do it they benefit more. Similar to how if EA doesn't take any risks and cuts anything that doesn't profit safely, they benefit. It really wreaks.

I can't speak for the other folks participating in the discussion, but I didn't open the thread to talk business. It's obvious that there are massive differences between the games' models. What I was going for primarily was matchmaking, which has thankfully already been adressed elsewhere. Hawken is currently faltering because it offers very little comfort for its players in terms of ranking and fair games, despite having great mechanics and gameplay. I was afraid PA would be going down the same path.

Agreed, the condition for a successful F2P business seems to be a huge player base so you can pile 'em high (cosmetic microtransactions) and sell 'em cheap. Hawken (which I love to bits with over 300 hours of playtime invested) is fading away because a) new players get thrashed by poor matchmaking which requires a large player pool to deliver anything like a fair game, b) the showcase advanced game modes lack a tutorial and hence newbies get shouted at for playing them 'wrong', so the player population stagnates, and c) the cosmetic microtransaction content is expensive for a small team to create, so there's nothing for the existing player base left to buy after a while. What's left is a team FPS with distinctive mechanics where only the most determined progress to the rewarding higher skill levels where the game shines. Huge pity that its fresh identity isn't reaching a wider audience.

Hawken failed because they made it a CoD clone. I've been playing since the Alpha and they just kept changing it to make it less like quake mixed with mechs and more call of duty. It really is a shame how they just tore it apart. You used to be able to customize and tweak just about everything. Then they just kinda threw it all out the window. Even the simple and awesome design of the cockpit was thrown out for a giant, bright floating health bar like every casual shooter now. It's not fun. I don't feel like I'm piloting a mech anymore, just another nameless grunt.

They really just alienated their player base hard. All the people that wanted to play it originally they told to screw off and all the new people they where trying to pull in didn't want to play cause they already own 6 other games like it. From what I've been noticing, if you really want a game to last and to turn a good profit you really need to try and cater to the hardcore people and not the casual crowd.

I signed up just to answer this question. There are two main varieties of mech games, hardcore simulation, and soft simulation. Hardcore, as has been said, involves less intuitive controls, such as the throttle, while the soft simulation is a lot like Hawken in terms of movement. Both, however, involve several options that a shooter does not. The first is customization.

Customization is paramount to a mech game. Players need to be able to swap out parts and tweak performance on parts because that is what it would be like to be a mech pilot/mechanic. Hawken has 3 weapons per mech, none of which can be shared between mechs in spite of several mechs having the same weapons. The same situation with items and internals. Beyond that, customization is cosmetic. Some mech games even offer customizing mobility options between various leg and wheel set ups. SLAI also offered a light Operating System customization. In this aspect, Hawken is comparable to Team Fortress in that it is a class based shooter, and not a mech game.

The next thing that matters is the realization that a mech is a tank. This means that they should all be able to absorb loads of damage. Even the lightest mech should be able to take assault rifle barrages without instant fear. They should be able to stand their ground to a degree before having to flee. In this aspect, Hawken is comparable to COD in that the time to kill is very low, unlike mech games.

Finally, there should be part health. Getting hit on the legs should not be inherently dangerous to a mech. No mech should be killable purely from shooting the appendages with non-explosive rounds. These parts normally suffer damage and eventually fail. This is self explanatory. Hawken doesn't even attempt this aspect of mech games.

These three aspects are core to mech games. These are the differences between being a human soldier, who cannot swap body parts, cannot soak up damage, and cannot loose a leg a live on indefinitely without immediate medical attention.

Examples of mech games would be the Mechwarrior series as a hardcore simulator, MWO being much more fun for me since Hawken's Steam update, and S.L.A.I. as a soft simulator. Both have highly customizeable mechs with over a thousand possible load outs. Both recognize that these are tanks we are "piloting", though certain enemies, and multiple opponents, are capable of massive damage which can totally destroy a full armor mech. Finally, both games recognize part health, even if only slightly in the case of SLAI, which factors in only the health of the weapons.

I didn't find Blacklight very pay2win, it was just pretty grindy.

1) OP's two graphs don't correlate. At ALL. There's like no similarity between the two.

2) As someone who was far too active in SMNC's heyday on the forums, I'd quite like to see PA not fall into the same mess of "the entire forums thinking they have business and game design PhDs". Even as open as Uber are, you don't have their breadth of knowledge of what's working financially and what isn't, what the exact situation is.

3) I didn't know HAWKEN was dying - it was quiet last I played but still fun and varied. One of the better F2P games I've played this year (though I haven't played in a few months sooo..). I also never viewed it as a "mech game" in the way of trad MW titles (especially since MWO was kinda sh*t), but it reminded me a helluva lot of one of my first Xbox games, Phantom Crash. It wasn't CoD-ish either, in any regard. People throw around CoD analogies like mad, but CoD is one-hit-kills, terrible movement, where Hawken had some fairly interesting movement and while a low TTK, enough of one to make retreats and regroups viable. And I main'd in a crappy paper Berserker and still kept alive longer than the tankiest CoD player in games