Evolve lets you skip grinding if you pre-purchase digitally on Xbox One - Polidicks

[url]http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/9/7520561/evolve-pre-order-xbox-one-beta-characters[/url] [quote]2K announced Evolve's open beta last month and said that the recently revealed Wraith monster (screenshot above) wouldn't be playable during it on any platform. Today, 2K said that Wraith will be playable in the beta for Xbox One owners who pre-purchase Evolve from the Xbox Games Store before or during the open beta. Those individuals will get "exclusive instant access" to Wraith and the third tier of hunters (Parnell, Abe, Caira and Cabot). That applies for the duration of the Xbox One beta, which runs Jan. 15-19, and for the final game. The first two tiers of hunters and the first two monsters, Goliath and Kraken, will be playable in the open beta for everyone. Evolve's progression system places different characters into tiers for each class. During the final game, players have to unlock characters by reaching a certain level of "mastery" with the weapons from the previous tier's character - for each of the four hunter classes and the monsters. (Only Goliath and the four first-tier hunters are available at the start.) Many Polygon staffers have played Evolve in its various alpha and beta forms, and we estimate that unlocking the third tier of characters could take 10-15 hours or more. That means that people who pre-order Evolve on Xbox One are saving themselves a whole lot of grinding through the first and second tiers of characters.[/quote] I feel like I'm getting less and less interested in this game as time goes on.

[QUOTE=Swiket;46895808][url]http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/9/7520561/evolve-pre-order-xbox-one-beta-characters[/url] I feel like I'm getting less and less interested in this game as time goes on.[/QUOTE] It's hard to get interested in something clearly not suited for more than casual play but the devs are trying to push Esports so hard that it's the third word out of their mouths every time they say something.

is this not just l4d1/2 but 4 humans fighting a tank but alien? but no special or common infected.?

$80 price tag and DLC unless I pre-order. Oh well, not for me then, shame as the concept looked interesting.

[QUOTE=theevilldeadII;46895831]is this not just l4d1/2 but 4 humans fighting a tank but alien? but no special or common infected.?[/QUOTE] the hunters have classes with different roles. there's more strategy and teamwork involved than just hosing the tank with bullets in left 4 dead

but is it still not 4 vs 1.? [editline]10th January 2015[/editline] either way I will wait for a Steam sale before I buy this game maybe just maybe so far it look's meh to me.

I wouldn't play more than $20 for this honestly. Which is kind of a shame because you can tell they've invested a lot of work into it but I found it kind of boring. I know a lot of this was because everyone was inexperienced but every time I played the monster I just had to crouch jump around, eat stuff for 15mins and then finally come out of hiding to wrap up the game. I have no doubt the hunters found it just as boring as I did.

So wait, playing the game long enough to grind up mastery for the tiers basically gives you a stronger and better tier above that? And for a game like this, where teamwork, capability and abilities are a major factor altogether, players who play longer than others will gain permanent advantages that may push them over new players? Or am I incorrect about this? Because if that's correct, then they've basically fucked the whole thing up unless it's more unlocking variety with different options rather than strictly better tiered monsters/characters.

I found the game fun but not $60 fun

I really liked the beta, it's a shame they have to take this route or I might have bought it. [sp]For like $40 or less[/sp]

Overpriced and underfeatured. I honestly don't know what else to say about the game, even though it plays so interestingly. [editline]10th January 2015[/editline] There's a reason why MOBAs and CS:GO have made a hit in Esports, and that's because of how accessible they are, being free or virtually free (CS:GO has so many sales it might as well be a dollar). Paying so much just to get into a game, before you even know whether or not it's something worth dumping a large investment of time into is going to scare a [i]lot[/i] of people away from playing it competitively. [editline]10th January 2015[/editline] There are some exceptions, like StarCraft, but that's Blizzard and it has also been a mainstay in Esports since it's birth.

I Still have no idea why they are trying to push this game to be competitive despite it being clearly more of an unpredictable mayhem styled game.

Is anyone else feeling that preorder bonuses like these are pretty rapidly becoming actual detriments in the eyes of consumers? A similar thing has happened with me and the upcoming Mortal Kombat installment. I'm a [i]huuuge[/i] fan of that series, but the announcement of Goro being a preorder bonus shifted my opinion from [i]"I can't wait to get this game!"[/i] to [i]"I can't wait for the year-later 'No Piecemeal Hoop-Jumping Bullshit' version of this game!"[/i]

wait GORO IS PRE ORDER DLC THAT'S BULLSHIT He haves been in every game almost if not all Mortal Kombat game since MK1

[QUOTE=Pennywise;46895958]Is anyone else feeling that preorder bonuses like these are pretty rapidly becoming actual detriments in the eyes of consumers? A similar thing has happened with me and the upcoming Mortal Kombat installment. I'm a [i]huuuge[/i] fan of that series, but the announcement of Goro being a preorder bonus shifted my opinion from [i]"I can't wait to get this game!"[/i] to [i]"I can't wait for the year-later 'No Piecemeal Hoop-Jumping Bullshit' version of this game!"[/i][/QUOTE] i would really love to see some real numbers about this, like yeah, everytime i read these comments hating on DLC and preorder shit, but does it really fail on sales? like sometimes i think "maybe people really buy this shit and it really does boost their sales, why would they keep doing something thats counter productive for their business?"

pretty much this if you buy into pre - order DLC there are going still do it.

[QUOTE=Pennywise;46895958]Is anyone else feeling that preorder bonuses like these are pretty rapidly becoming actual detriments in the eyes of consumers? A similar thing has happened with me and the upcoming Mortal Kombat installment. I'm a [i]huuuge[/i] fan of that series, but the announcement of Goro being a preorder bonus shifted my opinion from [i]"I can't wait to get this game!"[/i] to [i]"I can't wait for the year-later 'No Piecemeal Hoop-Jumping Bullshit' version of this game!"[/i][/QUOTE] The worst is retail-specific pre-order DLC. You will not have access to 100% of the content for the game you bought at full price on day one. That's just ridiculous!

[QUOTE=rodent-man;46896156]The worst is retail-specific pre-order DLC. You will not have access to 100% of the content for the game you bought at full price on day one. That's just ridiculous![/QUOTE] And combined with multiple retail-specific pre-ordered DLCs, it's literally just satan. So like, one store has one and another has another. No matter what you'll never have both unless you pre-order two games.

I'm all for removing grind, but not as a pre-order bonus.

[QUOTE=theevilldeadII;46896060]wait GORO IS PRE ORDER DLC THAT'S BULLSHIT He haves been in every game almost if not all Mortal Kombat game since MK1[/QUOTE] Hasn't he been unplayable in most of them, though?

That and no split screen on xbone? Naw.

[QUOTE=Dukov Traboski;46896172]And combined with multiple retail-specific pre-ordered DLCs, it's literally just satan. So like, one store has one and another has another. No matter what you'll never have both unless you pre-order two games.[/QUOTE] It is even better when its only available in america and the only way you can get it by importing it and paying half the games price in shipping fees.

when a dev does this you just know that they rushed the game but still want your money.

[QUOTE=helifreak;46896417]It is even better when its only available in america and the only way you can get it by importing it and paying half the games price in shipping fees.[/QUOTE] at that point I would give up then again I would give up at the 2 different dlc's at different stores.

The quick unlock classes and monsters has been a preordering bonus since it was announced, and it's for every platform. Also this is only for the beta, the dudes and the monster won't be locked on the main game, and they said level locking the last classes was because they were more complex and by the time you unlocked them you would know how to play well. It's still a pretty shitty thing to do but I played the alpha and unlocking the other classes didn't require that much time tbh.

Suddenly they announce microtransactions to revive your player mid co-op game or some shit. 2014 proved to us that developers have killed the art of the pre-order with all the uncertainty in how good a game will be. Adding in a pre-order bonus that makes the game easier and day 1 dlc already spells out bullshit.

[QUOTE=Xubs;46896588]You know, if I was making a big game, I would be [I]super[/I] insulted if the management told me I needed to add preorder bonuses to skip content like grinding. In the best of any art, each piece of the artwork is important in forming the end result and there's little to no extraneous portions of the artwork that would be improved if they were removed. Grinding, while many games out there get it wrong, is not an inherently bad concept. It's simply a tool. In the best of games, grinding would be something you would WANT to do, and it should be made to be fun. Not every game gets grinding right, not even most games, but grinding itself is not at fault, it's game designers who don't know how to use the tools right. I would be insulted at the idea that you can skip it with preorder bonuses because it's just an admission from someone in the studio that the concepts [B][I]I[/I][/B] created and slaved over are shit and a large number of people don't want to play them. I would be fine if I was simply told the ideas were shit, but you're tampering with the cogs in a machine I built and now it's just more broken than before. It's not an improvement. It's just making what is already a shitty situation even shittier. Rather than improve the gameplay by modifying or removing extraneous portions, you're just giving the means of having some people ignore the bad parts and make everyone else not enjoy the game. It would seem [I]so[/I] backhanded to me. It's like "hey, you know all that gameplay stuff you worked on? Let's put stuff in the game so [I]some people[/I] don't have to play that." How about no, let's actually fix why people don't wanna play it. Same idea with preorder bonuses like super duper god items they give you at the start that just wreck absolutely everything.[/QUOTE] I feel insulted as a consumer when companies try to sell me this sort of non-content. Pay money to play less of the game? What? And to me it kinda sends the message that unlocking stuff in this game is a chore... Which may or may not be the case, but that's still a bad first impression. Granted in this case it's a pre-order incentive and not something you can buy (yet), but that still means I'm supposed to perceive skipping parts of the game as additional value.

Ever since they went for the whole esports thing I lost all interest in the game. I'm skipping Evolve for sure now. How long after release will they shoehorn micro transactions in?

This cancer will persist so long as consumers do :(

We need to make 2015 the year we finally stop putting up with this sort of shit and say no.