WTF Is... Evolve? (TotalBiscuit) - General

The one thing I disagree with is him saying the later hunters aren't upgrades, at least for one of them. Lazarus is absolutely better than all of the other Medics at the moment. It doesn't matter if he can't heal people, he can revive people without any health penalties EVEN FROM THE DEAD. If they either made the other medics able to revive with no penalties or just removed Laz's bonus then it would be balanced.

[QUOTE=27X;47154097]all that stuff[/QUOTE] Wait, I don't quite get why you harped on about L4D(2)'s flaws, I don't see how it relates to L4D being incomparable to Evolve. The comparison comes from the general concept of an asymmetrical multiplayer mode with 4 cooperating FPS players on one side, a more "special abilities"-focused player opposition on the other side and some relatively harmless NPCs inbetween. But that doesn't mean the games don't have major differences or that they don't have flaws, which is why TB didn't compare them side-by-side but when it a topic like session pacing came up, which in Evolve can differ wildly, which is a stark contrast to L4D2's AI Director that keeps the pacing of most matches fairly consistent. The reason he picked L4D as a comparison at all is because it's one of the more well-known titles with roughly the same concept and was made by the same devs. That makes the connections drawn of particular relevance to the viewer. Also I have no idea why you interpreted itisjuly's and by extension Cpn Crunch21's vague "they" as referring to the devs specifically, in that context it usually refers to the general group of people "behind the game" and doesn't refer to anyone in particular. Sidenote: using "the fact remains" with an opinion like "it's still a decent game" doesn't exactly lend you credibility. Just saying, something to avoid.

I'd say Caira is actually far more valuable than Laz (not saying lazarus isn't lol worthy) because running down the monster early is pretty key for the hunters on most of the current modes. The main issue with Laz is he's equally valuable at every level of the monster, which isn't even kinda the case for the other hunters.

I like the game so far, too bad nobody else on my friends list really plays it. Luckily just rolling monster and doing my own things suits me fine. TB complains a bit about the hunters not having enough tracking options, but I disagree there. Even if you're stealthy, there's a set chance that wildlife you kill attracts birds and thus gives away your position. Smart hunters then use the map to predict your movement. There really isn't that much downtime during the game once you figure out strategies.

[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;47154259]Wait, I don't quite get why you harped on about L4D(2)'s flaws, I don't see how it relates to L4D being incomparable to Evolve. The comparison comes from the general concept of an asymmetrical multiplayer mode with 4 cooperating FPS players on one side, a more "special abilities"-focused player opposition on the other side and some relatively harmless NPCs inbetween. But that doesn't mean the games don't have major differences or that they don't have flaws, which is why TB didn't compare them side-by-side but when it a topic like session pacing came up, which in Evolve can differ wildly, which is a stark contrast to L4D2's AI Director that keeps the pacing of most matches fairly consistent. The reason he picked L4D as a comparison at all is because it's one of the more well-known titles with roughly the same concept and was made by the same devs. That makes the connections drawn of particular relevance to the viewer. Also I have no idea why you interpreted itisjuly's and by extension Cpn Crunch21's vague "they" as referring to the devs specifically, in that context it usually refers to the general group of people "behind the game" and doesn't refer to anyone in particular. Sidenote: using "the fact remains" with an opinion like "it's still a decent game" doesn't exactly lend you credibility. Just saying, something to avoid.[/QUOTE] You're assuming quite a bit there, including that your interpretation of my opinion is more insightful than mine, and moreover itisjuly's posts have been rather consistent in other threads and the reference is to the devs, not the publisher. [quote] fact/opinion [/quote] The game's mechanics and play scheme are not subjective in any aspect. They are absolutely objective and they are absolutely definable in argumentative terms. I could absolutely not care less about my "credibility", I simply countered the addressed points with factual data, that same data that framed my opinion, which is neither more or less correct than anyone elses'. TB's "connections" can be refuted rather summarily anyway, and moreover, since he can't visually tell the difference between a decoy wraith and the real one and I can, I'm further going to disavow that his analysis is complete because he hasn't even spent enough time with the game to know a rather obvious tell that directly changes the balance between one of the monsters and the hunters. It's much the same as any other WTF, he's spent some time the game, he hasn't spent enough get every nuance, yet his opinion is stated as if he has rather authoritatively. Granted he's a busy man with only so much time to spend, but the fact remains (there it is again) he hasn't spent enough time to even get off the surface level of strategy. How do I know that? welp, in the first round, he could have taken rock throw at three and then show completely dumb an idea it was for Maggie to throw up an arena where she did and hem in three hunters with nowhere to jetpack dodge with a pissed off Goliath, and literally ended the match there. He didn't, because he doesn't know the balance model well enough to see that. In the second round, he called out wraith as unbalanced and gave kraken a cursory mention, which is hilarious because wraith is balanced now that she was nerfed and she even has a gigantic weakness against distinct hunter team-ups. Meanwhile Kraken is pretty much the stereotype definition of OP, wherein even his cursory knockdown ability does 800 damage and cannot be countered except by terrain. He hasn't played well or long enough to know these things, and by the amount of time he said he spent, he should have. You know, factual things.

[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;47152179]Mind you he is a bit bias, he has been hired by the company in the past to cast some of their games at least one event. Not saying it makes his argument any less legitimate, just throwing that out there for additional consideration. [editline]16th February 2015[/editline] Personally, I think this games business model is absolute garbage. Not even talking about the day 1 DLC (which is a slap in the face to PC gamers more than anyone, even if it IS all cosmetic), rather I'm talking about the sheer upfront cost of the game. With all the content that comes with the game, it is not worth $60, not by a long shot. I would pay maybe $30 for this game, and that's generous considering I payed only $20 for Natural Selection a long time ago and that game has modding support. And then the $15 monsters. Seriously. It's like Turtle Rock doesn't even know that they used to work with Valve. What were TF2 updates? What were L4D updates (which they actually made)?[/QUOTE] 15$ monsters sounds like a much shittier thing to do than what Valve's ever done [editline]16th February 2015[/editline] minor weapons that you can randomly get and 15$ hats VS an actual core part of the gameplay it'd be like if they had the spy only playable if you bought it for 15$, but maybe not quite as bad not only this but Evolve costs 60$ and acts as if it's some free to play pay to win game. But like you said, it's absolute garbage.

[QUOTE=General J;47153888]I like how he was pointing out the non-DLC badness in it.[/QUOTE] Maybe cause so far the DLC has no impact on the game itself, except the season pass stuff which isn't even in yet

[QUOTE=27X;47154486]He hasn't played well or long enough to know these things, and by the amount of time he said he spent, he should have. You know, factual things.[/QUOTE] Two things, although I could probably think of other statements to make. A.) Every player has different strategies, playstyles, capabilities, reflexes and otherwise. What may be an obvious answer to you, amount of time played or not, may be something someone else doesn't even begin to consider. Being able to have a number of options in how to level your abilities while evolving further creates a large tactical disparity. B.) He's playing the game and recording/commentating at the same time, he's both trying to win or at least demonstrate as well as trying to get out his opinions and TotalBiscuit's made it clear plenty of times before that this can hamper his decision-making skills or alternatively cause him to flub up his commentary - sometimes both. There's no need to act like you're the factual truth about the situation in such a.. strongly pompous way, either.

[QUOTE=RichyZ;47152350]id really like to see cosmetics integrated into 60 dollar games again instead of always being dlc i remember playing through games again to get all the cool costumes and shit and now thats a thing of the past and its bullshit[/QUOTE] God of War III is like the worst example of this God of War I and II had shittons of costumes, the PSP spin offs had shittons of costumes, then III comes out and all but one of the costumes are charged DLC - keep in mind these charged outfits give huge ingame advantages, and that the only drawback to using them is not unlocking achievements, so that's kind of real fucking bullshit.

[quote] strongly pompous [/quote] I'm stating them the way Biscuit's stating his; posting newtonian is kinda what I do. He's stating his opinion in a rather stark and authoritative fashion that leaves little room for debate or discussion. And yes, you're absolutely right; [B]there's no need to.[/B] Yet he has, as he often does, and so my retort is fashioned in rather the same way. hmm. conundrum.

i'm still getting to the gameplay part but i agree with him on the dlc thing, i think the controversy has been blown way out of proportion. would i like the cosmetics to? be free? sure. do i mind that they're not? nah. the monster thing concerns me, and hopefully they make it so the newer creatures are unlockable through playing the game and buying them is only a way to acquire them without having to grind, but otherwise i don't see why so many people are hating on it.

I feel like the only reason people are up in arms about the dlc thing is because we have been seeing so much of it with other games, thus it's very easy for people to go "ohhh look another day 1 dlc, pay to win greedfest", when that isn't the key issue. Other games have much worse pay to win aspects than Evolve, so I don't think we should bother discussing the dlc day 1/skins much further. I'm not saying that it isn't an important issue, but rather when it comes to Evolve, the skin day 1 dlc isn't the problem, its the original price tag. What I feel like we have here is another case of one party who is dedicated to making a good game conflicting with another party who is concerned about profit. Evolve has the potential of being a decent game where you have a constant flow of players (both new players and players playing for a month taking a break then coming back if its still active, like tf2 and such). But without that constant activity it all falls apart. Its like they created a game and dlc system around the idea that this game should be lively for a long time, but instead mixed in a high pay wall and upfront cost that is counter intuitive to the MOBA style pay system/free to play. Imagine paying $60 for Smite/Dota/LoL and [I]then[/I] paying more to unlock characters and skins. You would think it was crazy, and yet Evolve screwed up and did this. Most new titles use the usual up front cost, so you pay once and that's it. With that model you will find that after the first day of launch a games sales will go down dramatically, which is why dlc's need to come out relatively soon before the game is dead and forgotten. You can have sales and price cuts down the line but by that time you spent your money advertising for launch date and you will only get the few people who are interested enough to not buy day 1 but wait for a price drop, or others who just jump on a good deal. So with that model you [B]have[/B] to get as much money as possible those few days or weeks after launch cause afterwords its just pennies. By going free to play you may not get the immediate payoff but you have a better shot at creating a sustainable system where you get high traffic and a longer lifetime out of your game. Basically with free to play system you sacrifice the immediate money (and making investors happy) for the [I]possibility[/I] of having no profit ceiling. The player can spend all the money they desire as long as you put out the skins and content they want (which should be cheap and easy to produce on your part), instead of just paying a one flat rate and getting as much as they want out of it. In the end this game needs to be free to play style. There just isn't enough inherit content to justify paying so much just to gain access to. The core mechanic is that you have 2 teams but huge variability between players. The fun of evolve is that each match should be different and has to be played differently depending on who you are playing [B]with[/B]. If tons of people are going to not play this game because of the price tag then you are shooting yourself in the foot.

just play avp2 instead

I remember having an idea for an Evolve-style game a few weeks back. Basically, it would be a three-sided game with a 5-man Mercenary team, 2 Kaiju who start out smallish but evolve into massive stompy creatures like in a Godzilla movie, and an Army faction that played like an RTS, with each faction pitted against the other two. As each of the three factions go around the map, they'd be fighting over three different resources, with each team specializing in two of said resources. First there would be the Wildlife, whom the Kaiju eat to heal and gain skill points and the Mercenaries trap to fulfil hunting bounties, earning them the money they need to get better equipment for that match. Then there would be the Mineral deposits, which the Army can secure to gain minerals for base-building, while the Mercenaries can raid them to gain more armour. Finally there would be the radioactive Glow meteorites that fall from the sky at random, which the Monsters need in order to mutate into big stompy Kaiju and the Army needs to power their special weapons. While each faction has a resource they don't have a use for (Kaiju can't use Minerals, Mercs have no use for Glow), its presence on the map grants opportunities for conflict, so even the Army can go after the local wildlife if it means they can hunt down the Mercs and Kaiju roaming the "jungle", hopefully avoiding too much downtime. Each faction would also have a "Path to Victory" condition where, after gathering enough of their specialist resources and using them to reach maximum power, they would pose an extreme threat to both of the other factions and be the most likely to achieve victory. The Mercs would have the Decked Out condition, where all of their equipment has become Legendary, the Kaiju would have the Daikaiju condition, where both Kaiju have become massive monsters a'la Godzilla, and the Army would have the Superweapon condition where they have finished building a massive super-unit that can go toe-to-toe with a max level Kaiju. A lot of matches would turn out differently depending not only on the different match-ups of Merc, Kaiju and Army, but also depending on which side dies out first, as eventually one of the factions would be defeated, leaving the remaining two with eachother's undivided attention, by which time one of the two surviving factions may likely have completed their Path to Victory. For instance, with the Mercs suffering a complete wipe and being forced to evacuate, the Army is effectively uncontested in their pursuit of Mineral wealth whilst the Kaiju have the Wildlife all to themselves. Alternatively, once the Army is routed and driven from the map, the Mercs can easily raid the mines and max out their armour whilst the Kaiju no longer need to fight over the precious Glow. It'll probably never happen, but if it did, it would probably be awesome. So long as the pricepoint ends up being sensible.

[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;47152179]Mind you he is a bit bias, he has been hired by the company in the past to cast some of their games at least one event.[/QUOTE] He did casting for Planetside 2 as well, didn't stop him from blasting the game's state on release. TB isn't the kind of person to let his previous relationship with game devs get in the way of criticising their games.

True, though with that said he usually wants to make sure that if he does do a brand deal, he either doesn't critique the game or he has critiqued the game several months prior to the deal, so as to ensure that there isn't a conflict of interest. I mean, if you look at RPS it's hard to take a review seriously when the game in question is plastered in the sidebars to promote it.

This might as well go here as well because it's relevant. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-MQMx-nH4Q[/media]

[QUOTE=J!NX;47154494]15$ monsters sounds like a much shittier thing to do than what Valve's ever done [editline]16th February 2015[/editline] minor weapons that you can randomly get and 15$ hats VS an actual core part of the gameplay it'd be like if they had the spy only playable if you bought it for 15$, but maybe not quite as bad not only this but Evolve costs 60$ and acts as if it's some free to play pay to win game. But like you said, it's absolute garbage.[/QUOTE] It's exactly like making the Spy cost $15. I'd also say it would be like paying $60 for TF2 to start with, because this game seems to have just as much content as release TF2 and that was $20. [editline]17th February 2015[/editline] Mind you TF2 only started to get the random item drop thing for newer items after it had already went F2P. When it was an actual payed-for game, all weapons could be easily unlocked through getting in-game achievements (which were the easiest thing in the universe to get because of servers existing dedicated to getting you achievements). The only way to get this new monster is through [i]paying for it[/i]. And probably the single largest reason why I still consider TF2 as superior to this game entirely is because it came with mod AND map support. [editline]17th February 2015[/editline] You just know there's something wrong when you're comparing a $20 release from 2007 to a $60 release today.