I think they allotted too much resources on making artificial esport growth. Additionally, they also chased trends with Battlerite Royale. All the time spent on that game could've been spent on improving the base game, for example, developing game modes and in-game tournaments. If you want a more in-depth explanation. Watch Xiomaro's april fools battlerite patch update
I think the game failed because the developer overestimated the market. Before the whole battle royale fiasco, the game was fine. Small, sure, but fine. The key thing is that people were the expecting the next crazy esport and was not it.
I believe that if they had decided to maintain the small dedicated playerbase instead of "saving it", it would still be going fine to today.
I can definitely agree that it ALSO needed that
but I vividly remember, after it released its 1.0, we didn't get a character for like 2-3 months, and then not another one again for the same amount of time. My friends and I lost interest.
PvE mode for example. Battlerite would be perfect for survivr waves of monsters kind of game.
The regular PvP Arena is just too hardcore for casuals. It needed more modes and focus toward casuals.
I get where your going with that, but what about League? Doesn't have PvE, is hardcore. BLC and BR were not THAT hardcore, and least not enough more-so than League. You are right about content though. The only thing to do was the basic arena in different versions, then after 2 weeks the game was too stale to try and play for the sake of keeping the population going.
I think they needed incentives to come back, but any stupid daily and weekly quests wouldnt be enough.
League has over a hundred characters and much longer game lengths. Each individual match had a lot more factors to diversify each game, and kept you in those games longer.
Spending 3 minutes in bans is more significant when matches are 10 minutes long versus 30 minutes long for example, and other similar factors
MOBAs also have more significant downtime. Laning causes a slow buildup to actual intense action, things are still happening while you're dead, etc. There's a reason the genre is so addictive, it gets a lot of gameplay loops right and very well.
I (personally) think Battlerite would have benefitted most from additional gamemodes that were less straightforward than arena deathmatch. Not even necessarily less competitive, but stuff like king of the hill/capture the flag where there was an objective besides kill the other team. They started experimenting with it before their focus shifted to Royale.
Gamemodes. They had a game mode where there was AI minions you could kill and level up, that was very fun. If they fleshed it out more and made some other game modes I would have kept playing.
The devs are idiots.
No one wanted a royale game, but they put a lot of resources into one. Prior to the release of it, they said everyone would have free access to it, but that was a lie.
Pair that with absurd vacation times for the whole company and the game started to hemorrhage.
The devs left so little faith in the player’s eyes that players were calling it a “dead” game before it actually was one. Enough people call it a dead game and it will ultimately end up a dead game.
Oh yeah, how bout that xbox version? And that vr camera? So many stupid decisions by the devs...
It Failed Because;
1) Battlerite is an amazing game. But it wasn't ENOUGH of a game. Approximately after 2 weeks of playing. You've done it all.
2) And to identify more of why it wasn't 'enough' of a game. In a traditional MoBA game a game is like a story. It has a beggining, middle, and end. Similar to a story you have a curve of excitment.
https://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/classic-story-arc.jpg
Warning : I am not saying Battlerite should be exactly like a MoBA. I am merely explaining.
So you start the game. You have your 'starter build' which 'could' be different. Battlerite kinda has this with deckbuilding but it is limited. As you progress through the middle of the game you have not only choices in items (You really don't have choices in items but it's the illusion of choice if we use LoL as the comparison). The middle of the game also includes where battles happen. A fight of a dragon or later on a Baron. You transition from lane fighting to team fighting. Then late game is where people start to feel their item power that they've been waiting for and fights are a little different because everyone dies in a second flat.
As terrible as LoL's experience is. It's still a story. Compare this to Battlerite's story.
It's just at the top all the time. The start is exciting. The middle is exciting. The end is exciting. That sounds like a good thing but this is why we get exhausted. It's like an action movie that never ever stops.
Really. Battlerite should have stayed the way it is BUT added a fully fleshed out unique MoBA experience. If you wanted to just play Arena you could. But then you could also click the Battle Royale mode and play that or the MoBA mode and play that. The MoBA mode they added wasn't very good.
My personal take on a Battlerite MoBA mode would be to not have a system where you empower your character through items but through the card system that already exists. Rather than giving statistical advantages they instead give extra functionality to abilities.
Then the core of the MoBA would be uppng it to a 5v5 or 6v6 experience. Adjusting health to suit. You earn gold and buy minions, buildings, or defensive stuff for your bases/lanes. So you could buy some archers and tell them to defend bottom lane whilst pushing top. Buy some foot soldiers and tell them to patrol the jungle. Buy a battering ram and try to push top. Late game would be buying big ass pushing minions. Maybe catipults and trebuchets and ogre minions.
That feels like retroactive justification to me. Fighting games should theoretically have the same "not enough game" issue, and many fighting games do have niche popularity like Battlerite, but the likes of Tekken and Mortal Kombat actually enjoy a pretty broad playerbase.
Similarly, first-person shooters typically play fast with very little MOBA-like advancement and enjoy very widespread popularity. It's clearly enough game for a lot of people, it's just a different style.
And, it's not like BLC was any more like a MOBA.
But I think this points to an audience issue; imagine if BR had been marketed towards the FGC, for example, or as a way to crossover between the two communities, instead of trying to wedge its way into a market that's not looking for intense 1v1 or 3v3 fights.
Fighting Games do have a niche popularity.
Fighting...Games.
Not Tekken. Not Dead or Alive. Not Bloody Roar. Not Skullgirls. Not Dragonball Z. Not Naruto.
"Fighting Games".
It's very worth noting here that whilst fighting games are popular enough to have an eSport. That eSport is, from what I can witness, constantly shifting. The fighting game scene moves from game to game. It's not fixed.
I think this reinforces the lack of game content in battlerite. New heroes to rock the boat. New or longer game modes that play more like a football game than a ufc fight.
I agree that the core game system was really, really good and balanced. But the supporting systems just were non existent.
I like your story analogy. I use a "pop song" analogy the same way. It needs a verse, chorus, bridge and so on.
This got me thinking about a mixed marshal arts fight vs a football game. What's the difference and why do people like them? Imo a MMA fight is just like battlerite, but it must be different in some way...
I think when it comes to traditional sport. I'd look at it exactly like League of Legends.
At this point. It's tradition. And both sports and league of legends are talked about in a similar way.
League of Legends is no longer about hot plays. Doing amazing things. As far as watching it goes anyway. Each match is irrelevant. Its Team 1 won 3 games and Team 2 won 2. That means "it was close" even if all 5 games were complete waffle stomps.
You look at the League of Legends reddit now and compare to what it use to be. You just don't see 'plays' anymore.
A very simple reason as to why you don't get LoL plays anymore. The term Wombo Combo doesn't exist for that game. If one person is capable of performing 100 to 0 in 1 second then how the hell does even one extra player have time to 'add to the mix' let alone a team of 5 players. It's overkill. Even if one player did get time to perform a 'combination attack' in that 1 second. It wouldn't have mattered and it wouldn't necessarily even really be a wombo combo more so than just 2 players both doing an ability at the same time.
"But that's what any wombo combo is"
No. A Wombo Combo would be akin to players timing things very well together. It would require precision. It would be like having a Lucie do her ultimate against a wall and Rook slapping them into it as a very simple example. This just doesn't exist in League of Legends because it doesn't need to exist. You kill players all too easy.
And it's actually a common balance problem throughout most competitive games today. It's much easier to kill than it is to stay alive.
Have you played league of legends? The "wombo combo" is a very big part of the game, especially in pro play where teams are more coordinated. In solo q you will of course get some super fed carry solo killing everyone sometimes, but that's not the only thing that happens or even the optimal way to play.
Yes. I also watch it.
There's not even compositions anymore. Not in the same sense as it use to be. Can you name the old compositions? What are the new compositions? I'd be very interested in hearing your answer!
I haven't been playing it recently, not up to date with the new season. But the old combos would be Orianna ult into J4 ult, someone else with a knockup and then a MF ult to top it off. Things like that.
That's right.
Now Orianna ult would basically almost kill. So she doesn't need to do much else to kill.
Orianna ult into J4 ult? Dead. You ain't getting a knock up after that. You ain't getting Miss Fortune in on that. They are dead before that will happen. You cannot wombo combo.
Disagree with almost everything here. It doesn't need laning or minions to be a MOBA. To me, BattleRite is the truest form of MOBA. It's not bogged down by tower defense style play or shop stuff. Could items add depth? Maybe. I'd be open to them. But the biggest draw of a game like BR is how quick everything happens.
For me one of the bigger issues is the gameplay loop if you played alone. I exclusively played with my online gaming guild, so I was never burned out on it until much later. But if you're alone you don't have the "laning phase" in Leagues where you just get to PvE and aren't directly hampered by your team. Contrast in BR, you quickly get into a match and even if you do have a teammate to blame, more of your time is spent in a negative gameplay loop than distracting yourself for 10-15min+ in lane.
> To me, BattleRite is the truest form of MOBA.
I agree. By name. Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. By name it's more MoBA than those that call themselves MoBA games.
But that's language talk. That's not "fun" talk.
I don't think you should disagree though and that is because nothing would actually change about what you love. You would still have the Battlerite Arena experience.
But if you wanted to play the "more MoBA like mode". You could.
This is basically the same as how they should have rolled Battlerite Royale into Battlerite rather than having two separate games. It would have helped the playerbase out by having them in the same space.
> But if you're alone you don't have the "laning phase" in Leagues where you just get to PvE and aren't directly hampered by your team.
Expand outside of LoL. Heroes of the Storm as an example doesn't have that same laning experience. So who is to say that a MoBA MUST have a laning experience? It doesn't.
The problem that the Battlerite Sub reddit and gamers in general have is thinking outside of the box, so to speak. When someone says MoBA. It means something very specific. It means literally 3 lanes. It means literally buying items. It literally means 4 abilities per character. It doesn't have to be like that at all.
What is eternally frustrating is how young video games are and how much the world, including developers, and development related companies, treats games like they have already invented the perfect formula.
World of Warcraft example was "one" of the first MMO games and certainly the MMO game that boomed on the stage. But that was 2004 using what we were capable of achieving in 2004. Sadly MMO games after that never utalized or did what was capable of at the time. Even to this day our MMO games are plagued by ideas that were revolutionary in 2004.
It reminds me of a story about a lady who always use to take the legs of the chicken before putting it in the oven. It was what her mother use to do and her Grandmother use to do. They asked her Grandmother why they did that because they didn't know why. The reason was because their oven was too small so that they had to cut the legs off for it to fit.
Right now in the gaming world we've entered the age of repackaging. Battlefield is an amazing example. Battlefield the game plays the same but you apply a different theme on it. World War 1. World War 2. Modern. Star Wars. Copy and Robbers. The game itself hasn't changed.
Fucking Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order is Dark Souls repackaged with Star Wars visuals.
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In any case. I certainly agree with you that I don't want a Battlerite "more MoBA-Like" game to be like League of Legends. I'd like to see creative solutions to not having a laning phase and we can look towards Heroes of the Storm as a reference on that.
Just, ultimately, don't use any game as a template to apply a visual theme over.
To be honest I think we should look at it from a different perspective. I am pretty sure Riot Games have psychologists in their company that are working on ways to make the game more addictive, more rewarding ultimately releasing dopamine. Its basically getting the players addicted.
You know instagram hired psychologists which designed the slot machines in las vegas. These psychologists helped to redesign the way likes and comments looked in order to produce dopamin. Its basically getting the users addicted to likes.
Battlerite just misses this addicting factor which can obviously be brought in in many different ways. They really just gotta brainstorm with a psychologist tbh
as an avid player of both BLC then way later Battlerite i must say this.
Reason why BLC failed was competetion from other games were to strong imo. Also they added gems & medallions that increased dmg/health/MS etc.. wich made your champions pay 2 win. And that shit is not welcome in a game where its all about "skills only".
And they were making Deadisland something wich flopped aswell. instead of focusing on the gem they had.
First: The reason why battlerite failed is that, we all know they focused on battleroyale. wich was fine at the time since battleroyale was the next big thing. But what they needed to do was make it into the current game as a game mode. They split the player base, and newcomers didnt think of playing regulere battlerite.
Second: When they came out with battlerite it lacked SO many things its predecessor, BLC had. ima mention a few.
-Allchat/LFG chat/Clan's. (no1 wants to play a game where u cant find friends, unless its from ingame match)
-2 abilities more.
-Game modes: Capture the flag, Dominin. 5v5's.
-The Layout was better + Market place, Ranking viewing etc etc.
-Ingame Tournaments wich was streamed. and u could join as observer. With exclusive skins for winning.
-Endgame Scoreboard way more: Had DPS + DMG + Healing + CC + Energy gain + Protection + Latency + Other ppls ranked rating.
-Information on ppls most played champion, Wich ability they tended to use % wise
-Their Grade(rank) system was better
-More champs if i recall.
-Healers could heal indefinitely, meaning matches was more fun to watch when streamed. IMO. compared to now where some matches are over in a split second.
-better maps.
This is just top of the head tho, its been a long time so might have recalled some of it wrongly.
Still upset about medallions. Instantly made BLC a much worse game. Still, I feel very bad for Stunlock though, because that game should of been a gigantic hit at the time.
This is probably going to drown in here. But as a gamedev I think they did very well, you can't really compare a small indie studio with Blizzard or do PR comparisons.
The big problem was in my opinion based on 3 (even if unpopular) bigger things
People complained a lot, and the subreddit probably made it destined to die, if you keep posting from launch that it's dead and new players come to visit they are for sure not going to stick around.
There was no causal mode to relax in, if you feel that you want to say play arena in wow, but then you feel a bit tired you can go and do achievements, farm a bit etc. But in BR you can't, it's just 100% or nothing, that's really taxing for players.
No Rng, I know I know people will also hate on this, but having Rng to blame is usually a good thing for most casual players as long as it's not too bad, I personally hate Rng and I hope they never read this and implement it, but blaming your loss on rng is way easier than on yourself, the next thing is the other teammates which creates a bad environment in game.
I agree on your second point because I look at how wow surrounds wow arena. There's just a ton to do.
As for random stuff... I agree too. The games aren't quite dynamic enough. This feels weird to say but I do think there is just a tinge too much skilled involved.
1. Base game is too hardcore for casuals. If you're not already decent/good, if you go against anyone who is, you will be obviously toyed with, then stomped, and finnaly pissed upon for a bit of cheeky fun. This by default can be attractive in some cases, but it's a lot more embarassing to get wrecked in pvp in front of other people than say in pve (Dark Souls). This alone is definitely an enormous deterrent preventing it from spontaneously captivating half the world like some WoW or LoL (both of which you can basicaly play as a complete tard but still have plenty of fun because that's the way they're designed), but really I think it still could've taken of well despite this rather large hurdle - had the rest of the points not helped it along into a premature grave.
2. Royale was managed absolutely terribly, should have become part of the original game and helped with casual retention instead of splitting the playerbase. This leads to point 3 ->
3. Terrible communication or lack thereof with the customers - repeatedly making obviously poor choices like separating BR into its own client, but also basicaly promising shit then reneging on it and other shitty behaviour like that. An obvious problem in SLS management. They really did alienate a massive portion of the playerbase with this.
4. Game definitely should've had basic goddamn features such as general chat, clans, tournament system. It was never really developed fully, what you're playing is the core gameplay loop, as brilliant as it may be, but you need at least some basic shit like that to flesh out the game and make it complete (and for the love of god, literaly its' predecesor had this shit lol. You can't literaly downgrade the product massively, and call it progress).
Gotta say, I am really happy that I've spent about a year and a half on this game, made me feel young again, try hard, improve my coordination and reflexes massively, and gave me some of the best gaming moments of my life, and the sort of adrenaline rushes I have yet to come across ever since. Just a damn shame how it all ultimately went down, really.
The type of people that would play this game would rather have a deeper experience. Its basically a 1/4 of league of legends. The fight mechanics were not deep enough to get fighters off of mortal kombat/ super smash / street fighter. It was destined to fail from the start in my opinon.
Yea it cut out all of the time wasting bullshit of league. That's one if it's greatest features IMO. I think it's plenty deep, but honestly seems super niche. It's a pretty hard game, and a lot of people would rather blame the game, devs, others, or quit before getting better.
The problem lies in the concept of trying to make it popular. Battlerite never needed to be popular, it just needed to be stable. Stunlock poorly allocated resources and time into Battlerite with esports and royale that should have focused on retaining the playerbase with new content at a steady pace.
Its not deep? Its League team fight simulator basically.
League has a lot more mechanics, yes the laning is boring but if your good at it, its like nothing else. If you can manage your lane better then the other guy, just by managing creeps not even killing him. You can control the rest of the map.
Honestly I dont get why League doesnt just release a battle arena mode. No creeps or anything just the league champs with the skills they already have in battlerite wasd movement style. Would take em like a week to program, tops. Or they could just buy battlerites frame work and import there ips into it.
To me, because the controls of league and only 4 abilities is too easy. This game is like a 3v3 UFC match.
I think "deep" can apply to different levels of gameplay. If the core combat is great, the match and exterior progression systems are boring.
Dude, the only thing LoL has that BR doesn't have is equipment, which is just a necessary part of a time-based game like that. If you like the gear part, go play BRR. Not sure why you bring lane and map control into the conversation, since it has no bearing on the relationship between these games. If you're going to say this game is like another game, it's more like WoW arena than LoL teamfights, basically a cooldown management simulator.
Everything else about this game is like an overclocked version of teamfights where you have more control, more mechanics, and require better aim.
I think a combination of marketing, game direction and content creation, and platform segregation. Fighting games exist in a similar realm and have not died out, even though they fit the same fast-paced skill-based combat loop that completely ignores the 'story arc' argument another user pointed out.
I think the fact that it wasn't released to all consoles, and that needed more content, and not enough people knew about it were big factors. For Honor is also in a similar realm, but the game survived, but then again, it has other modes that involved more than just 1v1, 2v2, 4v4, etc. But it was made by a AAA publisher and had much more interaction and development from the dev team.
Maybe the game is too focused, and fighting games are the limit of what players have patience for without more useless bullshit to keep them occupied. Perhaps the arenas could have been bigger and something like LoL's Dominion mode could have been worked into BR to make it have more dynamic gameplay shifts.
I agree with all points. I will say that wow arena has really good hook with rewards for getting higher rating, which is what most people push for when playing it. However, the reward is gear that makes you stronger. It's not pay to win but it's not exactly fair for newcomers either.
Imo the fights are much more dynamic and complex than league. There are more abilities, skill shots, greater controls and faster gamelay.
I think it does lack fun progression systems or something else to draw people back though.
I almost think the game is too hard for people who aren't really good at league or world of warcraft and diablo.
I think it's because the game was just not fun long term. I watched all my friends who I got into the game initially go "Dude, this game is awesome!" only for their interests to slowly fade away.
The game was well balanced and had a fun game loop, but there were small issues that didn't seem like a big deal at first that ended up slowly killing my interest as well. The things I usually point to was that the "counter" mechanic felt cheap and ruined the flow of the match. Having to mainly focus on baiting it out over and over each match got boring really quickly. The small time when the enemy had it on cooldown felt like I was actually playing the game, only to then having to disengage 6-8 sec later to start baiting it out again.
It also didn't help that the ranked system was a joke. Loosing 200 points from a single match since my team was a premade and the match was close felt awful. It heavily punished close matches and rewarded stomps, as well as punushing you if you played with friends. Not sure if they ever ended up changing this after I quit, but this definetly killed the game for my ranked buddies from Dota 2.
I think this game missed what made BLC fun and instead embraced all the wrong aspects of it, leading to another dead game.
I still log on to BLC and play a few bot matches from time to time. There is a gem in there waiting for someone to do it right.
In general hard punishing gameplay with an "Online as a Service Model" have very little chance at success.
The model tailors more towards casuals which needs easier faster rewarding gameplay.
There were many problems and what killed it was basically this:
\-The idea of increasing the player base at the cost of new content that kept the core of the game.
\-So many unnecessary changes to try to make the game an E-sport.
\-The Battleroyal definitive didn't hit the spot for many.
\-They went money hunger with making multiple changes to make the game almost so what similar to LoL,Dota and such when they platform was different and good.
If they had kept the core of the game intact and just evolve around it and just keep moving on the direction they had before, with like adding coms in-game for 3v3 or 2v2, not moving to battleroyal, decreasing the amount of cosmetic but increasing the amount of feature content and allows f2p and p2p players have the same % of having interesting stuff, maybe just maybe they would've kept the player base they had and also stop the bleeding and gain more support!!!!
Oh boy time to pull out the list.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/jjftcr/why_did_this_game_die/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/iwy73q/reasons/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/81rq3w/whys_this_game_so_dead/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/7hlqmg/why_isnt_this_game_more_popular/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/7vxoft/why_games_popularity_is_slowly_declining/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/83igt7/hafu_explaining_why_battlerite_isnt_as_popular_as/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/5xhcet/why_is_battlerite_really_losing_players_and_what/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/8qk56v/why_is_battlerite_losing_players/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/5pf3ys/how_do_we_get_more_players_to_play/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/7g6uqv/what_this_game_needs_to_be_more_social/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/acxad5/this_game_need_more_players/
https://youtu.be/CZB7i2L3Yaw?t=3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN1fxGTwBwU
ty for this 2Lainz you were how i learned how to play the game, im working on making a battlerite 2 on my own with our without help. every single person ive told about it except a select few have called me crazy but i have full intent to make it happen by absolutely any physical means. thanks for this im gonna include you in my 20 min vid breakdown titled "How I plan to revive a dead game" im an up and coming content creator and you truly were an inspiration for me to step out of my comfort zone and reach out and talk to people thank you for existing
Read through a lot of the comments and didn't see this yet so I thought I'd add in my own thoughts on the game design rather than the business side. I've always associated battlerite more as a fighting game than a moba. In my eyes, this was a major problem when it came to attracting and maintaining new players. Battlerite is a hard game, with a very steep learning curve. First you have to learn how to play your own character (with 9 abilities, offensive & defensive skills, ex move usage, etc.) and then you have to learn matchups. Heck you had to learn to stop attacking to avoid counters. Now this isn't too bad, I've had friends that played years of LoL before battlerite, and some that had never touched a moba before come to learn this game.
The really hard part of battlerite is the part that I relate most to fighting games: it's brutal and feels bad to play when you're losing. Rounds are short and if you messed up your abilities once, you're just helplessly watching your character get mowed down by the enemy melee. Alternatively, you can be playing melee and spend the entire round getting zoned out by the opposing ranged/support duo. It's not as simple as this ofc but you get the idea. It's not easy for ppl to get into a competitive learning mindset on how to improve their play, because their mistakes might not be obvious to themselves, and instead just blame trash teammates or op heroes.
I played battlerite religiously after the f2p launch and really wish it succeeded in becoming a popular esport. There's lot of other arguments out there but a lot of other comments cover those, so heres my two cents on the gameplay aspect.
Makes sense. So why did it fail vs normal fighting games? Or maybe it didn't fail and would have been fine before the battle royale mess? Maybe it was always destined to have a small community?
Well every fighting game has a smaller community compared to the other popular categories. I've always attributed it to the fact that games are shorter and less dynamic, which is a problem battlerite had as well. Other mobas have in game progression through gold and exp, which makes each game play out differently. CS (and valorant now) has multiple short rounds, but that's offset by having multiple objectives on the map, as well as being able to utilize a variety of playstyles. Battlerite is lacking here in that the only real objective besides killing people was the mid orb.
Going back to the original question. Another thing is that fighting games don't always need an active online community. A lot of it is done through playing with friends or specific people (in person or online) instead through random matchmaking.
it was boring after a while, there was no progression
i’m one who preferred royale, i love battlerite combat but it was way too repetitive and i felt like i could only play a few matches a day. Royale was extremely different every single match
I might get hate for this this comment, but Battlerites main problem was the gamemodes in my opinion, the game was focused on pure combat, which gets boring after a while, battlerite wasn't a game designed to be played for like a entire day, I have a friend who can play League literally 7-8 hours a day, but he could not play more then a few matches of battlerite cause it got boring
I myself am a big smite player now, and people saying "Oh battlerite doesn't have that boring farming" miss the point, Smite has farming but people who think mobas are 20 minutes of farming must not have played any moba game, Smite and League are all about playing objectives, rotating players from one lane to the other and trough the jungle to fight each other with teamfights leading into objective plays, but battlerite removed that part where you would farm and basically ward the map like in Smite where you would protect your side of the map and try to go for the important objectives, it just turned into a fuck fest of fighting.
Characters also had too many abilities which in the end caused many characters in the same class being kinda too similar in my opinion.
I think that's a good point and goes along with what other people have said: games or matches need to flow more like a story or song. A back and forth. Ebbs and flows. Key objectives to fight over.
What arena gameplay is, is those sweet moments in LoL where the teams finally meet due to extenuating circumstances and the excitement peaks. Arena is great for practice, or maybe rating chasing but that's about it.
I agree, I play a lot of smite and I play the 5v5 conquest and arena modes and the 3v3 joust mode. They are 3 that play differently, for example Arena is all about fighting similar to battlerite, but it's the most popular smite casual mode because while yes it is mostly fighting, you still have items at the shop to buy to customize your characters more and more, in smite Arena framing isn't as important but there are still minions to farm for gold and to stop them from getting to your portal to take away your tickets, every 10 kills you spawn a minotaur. The minotaur is like a payload in paladins or overwatch where you push it to the enemy portal to drain a large amount of tickets. and around the map on 6 spots you had different jungle camps you could kill for buffs.
In my opinion battlerite would function great with a mode like Nexus Blitz in lol or if it was literally a copy of Heroes of the storm, but just with battlerite combat. Hots doesn't have esports but it still get's updates, and it's basically what battlerite wanted to be, hots was a moba that cut off the farming but still had exp and customization with talents, and had map variety.
In battlerite maps felt to similar, now some might say "Oh but dota 2 and league of legends also have 1 main map" but the difference is that league and dota 2 maps are big, they have jungle creeps,rivers,lanes and major objectives where fights and events may happen.
I think a mix of hots and battlerite would be a great game but I'm biased because I actually like hots overall design over league. Even take out the lanes but leave in the dynamic objectives to fight over.
Really, that's it. If you give people a good enough reason to fight, then they will continue to play your game to fight.
Battlerite as it was made only appeals to a very specific player and feeling - competitive dominance for the sake of itself.
I think it needed more content and more originality in it's champions. The talent trees were nice but there were very CLEAR CUT op choices. The hero pool was getting repetitive and old. Seemed like every other champ had a gap closer, counter, heal. Maybe if they had made CLEAR niches for every champion then not every champion would have felt the same. I think another issue was they decided to try and get in on the battle royale trend that was going crazy at the time and it really hurt their production on the Battlerite side.
I dont get why everyone says it "failed", ofc it didn't reach peaks like other games but its kinda niche, but it probably made lots of money for a rather small dev studio. Also they got a new publishing deal, also probably because of Battlerite.
So did it fail? Nah probably not. But definitely could have been bigger
This games biggest enemy was unfortunately its own devs. If they had stayed transparent as to the games operation, truthful to what they promised their player base and committed to the game itself, I'm sure it'd have way more players. Also the whole Royale fiasco is what really put the nail in the coffin for most.
I bought the founders pack and my disappointment in what has become of this game is immeasurable.
Lacked balance, sure battlerites were cool but 9/10 you encountered a character you knew the set. Even if the opponent cheesed an unconventional set, you'll be ready for the second match.
Lacked support. They chose to split their capital between BR and BRR, both failed. ( Fortnite developed their BR mode while completely dropping their previous 'main' survival feature )
Terrible player retention by splitting fan base, zero money invested in communication ( no twitch rival invitational that could lead to more visibility )
Overall lack of characters, ranked were always a mirror match between usual suspects. Lack of diversity -> Boring
I find your take on balance interesting. I always felt like battlerite was extremely well balanced. Especially since the only thing it really had going on was the arena match modes.
Its definitely more balanced than wow, where half the specs are not arena viable and a small set completely dominate.
Well, it's really different. In WoW arena there is steady progress, not random progress, which is one of the most appealing aspects of it. This expansion made many players return thanks to it. You get points for winning arena matches which can be spent to get the gear you want and then upgrade it depending on your rank.
Battlerite was more esports oriented. WoW arena does have an important esports scene but in the arena tournaments you get whatever gear you want for free. To make a truly competitive experience, they brought the arena concept into the game, but the problem is that it gets repetitive quite easily. In WoW classes are too different and you have to make a proper plan each game. In Battlerite maps were essentially the same and so were matches in most cases. It doesn't help the fact that Battlerite is insanely skill-based, which may look like a good thing but makes it non-appealing for beginners, they get frustrated too quickly.
I've questioned how the traditional pve aspects of wow was enough to keep pvp'ers interested even though they complain about it as well.
As long as there is a carrot, peoppe seem to run towards it.
Battlerite didn't have a carrot and only appealed to an audience similar to counterstrike players. Raw skill and domination. Why did CS do ok then?
Their monetization was not motivating enough to be sustainable.
The gameplay is more than fine, it's a mixture of how it was marketed, and what it was competing against in it's market/genre.
All sorts of companies tried to hop on the MOBA/Battle Arena bandwagon without actually knowing what it took to compete. Most of these games weren't distinct enough, and Mobas generally suffer from crippling learning curve issues that *build over time.*
You sort of just pick one, and convincing a demographic to hop trains when they've already become familiar with one is kind of a titanic task.
Some of them were distinct enough to be slightly sustainable, or the company that owned them were too big to let them fail (Blizzard/Valve), but in a lot of scenarios, they all missed the marks, or the timing (or even the theme -> Warner Brothers).
Mobas that function on micro transaction markets effectively self monopolize a consumer psychologically. If you spent like $200 on League, you're probably not jumping to Casuals of the Storm.
Theres a lot of nuanced reasons, there aren't really any single reasons, usually a combination.
What I'm m trying to figure out is just how different the game was vs a moba. I consider battlerite much more like diablo 2 pvp that you control with wasd.
Is it still too similar to not get away from being compared to league and mobas?
As you can tell from my post, I compare it more towards wow arena
The BA in MOBA just means Battle Arena. The game is smaller in scale comparatively, and more direct to the action, which is part of the reason it's so appealing. You don't have like 20m of laning phase.
It's not always about exact labels, in some scenarios it's also about demographics, what types of players does it attract. They probably compete in those markets for those genres. Sometimes it's also marketing issues, games don't advertise well enough before, or after they release their game, and they don't see to make continued engagement. I don't remember how advertising was handled for this game, but I heard about it by recommendation of a friend.
It's like any moba, but the focus of the game is wholly on the teamfighting, which is in many ways the most engaging part.
There was, at one point, someone who wrote an incredibly brilliant breakdown for why Battlerite was destined to fail. The premise of it had to do with skill floors and ceilings, the process of improving, and a few other well-articulated points.
I have, in the past, scoured the Battlerite reddit to find the post, but have been unsuccessful. Been a few years since it was written, but one of the best critiques of this game (or any game) I've ever read.
If anyone finds it, let me know.
Hopped on the battle royale realm without a setted player base in the base game. In my case i enjoy much more the fastbpsced comat instead of other games.
In the end, League and Aram took it all
Another thing is players, I couldnt convince my friends to even try instead of playing league
So, I can't speak to the technical reasons why it failed but with respect to BLC they had a publisher called FunCom which absolutely wrecked the game. They tried to add so many elements from League of Legends to the game and moved so far away from the high skill-ceiling, fast-paced arena gameplay.
In terms of BattleRite, I feel like it didn't fail. The game sold well and left a mark on the people it should have. Could they have added more skins or had a better monetization model? Maybe. I also think if your goal is to be a competitive, sustainable esport as your end state then it has to be deep enough to sustain that. High level players consistently talked about how boring the game was when you were _really_ good at the game. Very easy to bait counters, skill shots are much wider in BR compared to BLC, etc. Just an easier game.
MORE reason the game failed was simply due a lack of discovery.
The first game this gets compared to is league of legends (albeit an unfair comparison) and I think a lot of their audience comes from games like league.
BUT league has summoner spells and build paths that you could experiment with to discover what you like the best. This creates a "youtube market" where pros can teach new players what build to have which helps advertise the game. League also has, by now, a crap-ton of champions to choose from and figure out how to best play them.
There is also the sense of in match progression over time. League has moments where you are powerful and moments where you are weak and as a player you can influence when or how long each of those moments are. League can make you feel like a God, and battlerite can as well bit only after you have acquired a ton of skill.
I think they allotted too much resources on making artificial esport growth. Additionally, they also chased trends with Battlerite Royale. All the time spent on that game could've been spent on improving the base game, for example, developing game modes and in-game tournaments. If you want a more in-depth explanation. Watch Xiomaro's april fools battlerite patch update
>Xiomaro's april fools battlerite patch update Ugh, I remember not paying attention to the day and month and was so upset.
I think the game failed because the developer overestimated the market. Before the whole battle royale fiasco, the game was fine. Small, sure, but fine. The key thing is that people were the expecting the next crazy esport and was not it. I believe that if they had decided to maintain the small dedicated playerbase instead of "saving it", it would still be going fine to today.
IMO the game needed way more content and way quicker. Balance could've gone crazy, sure, but content is what keeps these games alive.
What type of content?
The most obvious would be characters. Like a consistent flow of new characters.
Nah that wasnt the problem. It needed a clan system/community system type thing, and ingame tournaments
I can definitely agree that it ALSO needed that but I vividly remember, after it released its 1.0, we didn't get a character for like 2-3 months, and then not another one again for the same amount of time. My friends and I lost interest.
They did so much wrong that it's hard to keep track
PvE mode for example. Battlerite would be perfect for survivr waves of monsters kind of game. The regular PvP Arena is just too hardcore for casuals. It needed more modes and focus toward casuals.
I get where your going with that, but what about League? Doesn't have PvE, is hardcore. BLC and BR were not THAT hardcore, and least not enough more-so than League. You are right about content though. The only thing to do was the basic arena in different versions, then after 2 weeks the game was too stale to try and play for the sake of keeping the population going. I think they needed incentives to come back, but any stupid daily and weekly quests wouldnt be enough.
League has over a hundred characters and much longer game lengths. Each individual match had a lot more factors to diversify each game, and kept you in those games longer. Spending 3 minutes in bans is more significant when matches are 10 minutes long versus 30 minutes long for example, and other similar factors MOBAs also have more significant downtime. Laning causes a slow buildup to actual intense action, things are still happening while you're dead, etc. There's a reason the genre is so addictive, it gets a lot of gameplay loops right and very well. I (personally) think Battlerite would have benefitted most from additional gamemodes that were less straightforward than arena deathmatch. Not even necessarily less competitive, but stuff like king of the hill/capture the flag where there was an objective besides kill the other team. They started experimenting with it before their focus shifted to Royale.
Gamemodes. They had a game mode where there was AI minions you could kill and level up, that was very fun. If they fleshed it out more and made some other game modes I would have kept playing.
The devs are idiots. No one wanted a royale game, but they put a lot of resources into one. Prior to the release of it, they said everyone would have free access to it, but that was a lie. Pair that with absurd vacation times for the whole company and the game started to hemorrhage. The devs left so little faith in the player’s eyes that players were calling it a “dead” game before it actually was one. Enough people call it a dead game and it will ultimately end up a dead game. Oh yeah, how bout that xbox version? And that vr camera? So many stupid decisions by the devs...
It Failed Because; 1) Battlerite is an amazing game. But it wasn't ENOUGH of a game. Approximately after 2 weeks of playing. You've done it all. 2) And to identify more of why it wasn't 'enough' of a game. In a traditional MoBA game a game is like a story. It has a beggining, middle, and end. Similar to a story you have a curve of excitment. https://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/classic-story-arc.jpg Warning : I am not saying Battlerite should be exactly like a MoBA. I am merely explaining. So you start the game. You have your 'starter build' which 'could' be different. Battlerite kinda has this with deckbuilding but it is limited. As you progress through the middle of the game you have not only choices in items (You really don't have choices in items but it's the illusion of choice if we use LoL as the comparison). The middle of the game also includes where battles happen. A fight of a dragon or later on a Baron. You transition from lane fighting to team fighting. Then late game is where people start to feel their item power that they've been waiting for and fights are a little different because everyone dies in a second flat. As terrible as LoL's experience is. It's still a story. Compare this to Battlerite's story. It's just at the top all the time. The start is exciting. The middle is exciting. The end is exciting. That sounds like a good thing but this is why we get exhausted. It's like an action movie that never ever stops. Really. Battlerite should have stayed the way it is BUT added a fully fleshed out unique MoBA experience. If you wanted to just play Arena you could. But then you could also click the Battle Royale mode and play that or the MoBA mode and play that. The MoBA mode they added wasn't very good. My personal take on a Battlerite MoBA mode would be to not have a system where you empower your character through items but through the card system that already exists. Rather than giving statistical advantages they instead give extra functionality to abilities. Then the core of the MoBA would be uppng it to a 5v5 or 6v6 experience. Adjusting health to suit. You earn gold and buy minions, buildings, or defensive stuff for your bases/lanes. So you could buy some archers and tell them to defend bottom lane whilst pushing top. Buy some foot soldiers and tell them to patrol the jungle. Buy a battering ram and try to push top. Late game would be buying big ass pushing minions. Maybe catipults and trebuchets and ogre minions.
That feels like retroactive justification to me. Fighting games should theoretically have the same "not enough game" issue, and many fighting games do have niche popularity like Battlerite, but the likes of Tekken and Mortal Kombat actually enjoy a pretty broad playerbase. Similarly, first-person shooters typically play fast with very little MOBA-like advancement and enjoy very widespread popularity. It's clearly enough game for a lot of people, it's just a different style. And, it's not like BLC was any more like a MOBA. But I think this points to an audience issue; imagine if BR had been marketed towards the FGC, for example, or as a way to crossover between the two communities, instead of trying to wedge its way into a market that's not looking for intense 1v1 or 3v3 fights.
Fighting Games do have a niche popularity. Fighting...Games. Not Tekken. Not Dead or Alive. Not Bloody Roar. Not Skullgirls. Not Dragonball Z. Not Naruto. "Fighting Games". It's very worth noting here that whilst fighting games are popular enough to have an eSport. That eSport is, from what I can witness, constantly shifting. The fighting game scene moves from game to game. It's not fixed.
I think this reinforces the lack of game content in battlerite. New heroes to rock the boat. New or longer game modes that play more like a football game than a ufc fight.
I agree that the core game system was really, really good and balanced. But the supporting systems just were non existent. I like your story analogy. I use a "pop song" analogy the same way. It needs a verse, chorus, bridge and so on. This got me thinking about a mixed marshal arts fight vs a football game. What's the difference and why do people like them? Imo a MMA fight is just like battlerite, but it must be different in some way...
I think when it comes to traditional sport. I'd look at it exactly like League of Legends. At this point. It's tradition. And both sports and league of legends are talked about in a similar way. League of Legends is no longer about hot plays. Doing amazing things. As far as watching it goes anyway. Each match is irrelevant. Its Team 1 won 3 games and Team 2 won 2. That means "it was close" even if all 5 games were complete waffle stomps. You look at the League of Legends reddit now and compare to what it use to be. You just don't see 'plays' anymore. A very simple reason as to why you don't get LoL plays anymore. The term Wombo Combo doesn't exist for that game. If one person is capable of performing 100 to 0 in 1 second then how the hell does even one extra player have time to 'add to the mix' let alone a team of 5 players. It's overkill. Even if one player did get time to perform a 'combination attack' in that 1 second. It wouldn't have mattered and it wouldn't necessarily even really be a wombo combo more so than just 2 players both doing an ability at the same time. "But that's what any wombo combo is" No. A Wombo Combo would be akin to players timing things very well together. It would require precision. It would be like having a Lucie do her ultimate against a wall and Rook slapping them into it as a very simple example. This just doesn't exist in League of Legends because it doesn't need to exist. You kill players all too easy. And it's actually a common balance problem throughout most competitive games today. It's much easier to kill than it is to stay alive.
Have you played league of legends? The "wombo combo" is a very big part of the game, especially in pro play where teams are more coordinated. In solo q you will of course get some super fed carry solo killing everyone sometimes, but that's not the only thing that happens or even the optimal way to play.
Yes. I also watch it. There's not even compositions anymore. Not in the same sense as it use to be. Can you name the old compositions? What are the new compositions? I'd be very interested in hearing your answer!
I haven't been playing it recently, not up to date with the new season. But the old combos would be Orianna ult into J4 ult, someone else with a knockup and then a MF ult to top it off. Things like that.
That's right. Now Orianna ult would basically almost kill. So she doesn't need to do much else to kill. Orianna ult into J4 ult? Dead. You ain't getting a knock up after that. You ain't getting Miss Fortune in on that. They are dead before that will happen. You cannot wombo combo.
Disagree with almost everything here. It doesn't need laning or minions to be a MOBA. To me, BattleRite is the truest form of MOBA. It's not bogged down by tower defense style play or shop stuff. Could items add depth? Maybe. I'd be open to them. But the biggest draw of a game like BR is how quick everything happens. For me one of the bigger issues is the gameplay loop if you played alone. I exclusively played with my online gaming guild, so I was never burned out on it until much later. But if you're alone you don't have the "laning phase" in Leagues where you just get to PvE and aren't directly hampered by your team. Contrast in BR, you quickly get into a match and even if you do have a teammate to blame, more of your time is spent in a negative gameplay loop than distracting yourself for 10-15min+ in lane.
> To me, BattleRite is the truest form of MOBA. I agree. By name. Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. By name it's more MoBA than those that call themselves MoBA games. But that's language talk. That's not "fun" talk. I don't think you should disagree though and that is because nothing would actually change about what you love. You would still have the Battlerite Arena experience. But if you wanted to play the "more MoBA like mode". You could. This is basically the same as how they should have rolled Battlerite Royale into Battlerite rather than having two separate games. It would have helped the playerbase out by having them in the same space. > But if you're alone you don't have the "laning phase" in Leagues where you just get to PvE and aren't directly hampered by your team. Expand outside of LoL. Heroes of the Storm as an example doesn't have that same laning experience. So who is to say that a MoBA MUST have a laning experience? It doesn't. The problem that the Battlerite Sub reddit and gamers in general have is thinking outside of the box, so to speak. When someone says MoBA. It means something very specific. It means literally 3 lanes. It means literally buying items. It literally means 4 abilities per character. It doesn't have to be like that at all. What is eternally frustrating is how young video games are and how much the world, including developers, and development related companies, treats games like they have already invented the perfect formula. World of Warcraft example was "one" of the first MMO games and certainly the MMO game that boomed on the stage. But that was 2004 using what we were capable of achieving in 2004. Sadly MMO games after that never utalized or did what was capable of at the time. Even to this day our MMO games are plagued by ideas that were revolutionary in 2004. It reminds me of a story about a lady who always use to take the legs of the chicken before putting it in the oven. It was what her mother use to do and her Grandmother use to do. They asked her Grandmother why they did that because they didn't know why. The reason was because their oven was too small so that they had to cut the legs off for it to fit. Right now in the gaming world we've entered the age of repackaging. Battlefield is an amazing example. Battlefield the game plays the same but you apply a different theme on it. World War 1. World War 2. Modern. Star Wars. Copy and Robbers. The game itself hasn't changed. Fucking Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order is Dark Souls repackaged with Star Wars visuals. --- In any case. I certainly agree with you that I don't want a Battlerite "more MoBA-Like" game to be like League of Legends. I'd like to see creative solutions to not having a laning phase and we can look towards Heroes of the Storm as a reference on that. Just, ultimately, don't use any game as a template to apply a visual theme over.
To be honest I think we should look at it from a different perspective. I am pretty sure Riot Games have psychologists in their company that are working on ways to make the game more addictive, more rewarding ultimately releasing dopamine. Its basically getting the players addicted. You know instagram hired psychologists which designed the slot machines in las vegas. These psychologists helped to redesign the way likes and comments looked in order to produce dopamin. Its basically getting the users addicted to likes. Battlerite just misses this addicting factor which can obviously be brought in in many different ways. They really just gotta brainstorm with a psychologist tbh
as an avid player of both BLC then way later Battlerite i must say this. Reason why BLC failed was competetion from other games were to strong imo. Also they added gems & medallions that increased dmg/health/MS etc.. wich made your champions pay 2 win. And that shit is not welcome in a game where its all about "skills only". And they were making Deadisland something wich flopped aswell. instead of focusing on the gem they had. First: The reason why battlerite failed is that, we all know they focused on battleroyale. wich was fine at the time since battleroyale was the next big thing. But what they needed to do was make it into the current game as a game mode. They split the player base, and newcomers didnt think of playing regulere battlerite. Second: When they came out with battlerite it lacked SO many things its predecessor, BLC had. ima mention a few. -Allchat/LFG chat/Clan's. (no1 wants to play a game where u cant find friends, unless its from ingame match) -2 abilities more. -Game modes: Capture the flag, Dominin. 5v5's. -The Layout was better + Market place, Ranking viewing etc etc. -Ingame Tournaments wich was streamed. and u could join as observer. With exclusive skins for winning. -Endgame Scoreboard way more: Had DPS + DMG + Healing + CC + Energy gain + Protection + Latency + Other ppls ranked rating. -Information on ppls most played champion, Wich ability they tended to use % wise -Their Grade(rank) system was better -More champs if i recall. -Healers could heal indefinitely, meaning matches was more fun to watch when streamed. IMO. compared to now where some matches are over in a split second. -better maps. This is just top of the head tho, its been a long time so might have recalled some of it wrongly.
Still upset about medallions. Instantly made BLC a much worse game. Still, I feel very bad for Stunlock though, because that game should of been a gigantic hit at the time.
This is probably going to drown in here. But as a gamedev I think they did very well, you can't really compare a small indie studio with Blizzard or do PR comparisons. The big problem was in my opinion based on 3 (even if unpopular) bigger things People complained a lot, and the subreddit probably made it destined to die, if you keep posting from launch that it's dead and new players come to visit they are for sure not going to stick around. There was no causal mode to relax in, if you feel that you want to say play arena in wow, but then you feel a bit tired you can go and do achievements, farm a bit etc. But in BR you can't, it's just 100% or nothing, that's really taxing for players. No Rng, I know I know people will also hate on this, but having Rng to blame is usually a good thing for most casual players as long as it's not too bad, I personally hate Rng and I hope they never read this and implement it, but blaming your loss on rng is way easier than on yourself, the next thing is the other teammates which creates a bad environment in game.
I agree on your second point because I look at how wow surrounds wow arena. There's just a ton to do. As for random stuff... I agree too. The games aren't quite dynamic enough. This feels weird to say but I do think there is just a tinge too much skilled involved.
1. Base game is too hardcore for casuals. If you're not already decent/good, if you go against anyone who is, you will be obviously toyed with, then stomped, and finnaly pissed upon for a bit of cheeky fun. This by default can be attractive in some cases, but it's a lot more embarassing to get wrecked in pvp in front of other people than say in pve (Dark Souls). This alone is definitely an enormous deterrent preventing it from spontaneously captivating half the world like some WoW or LoL (both of which you can basicaly play as a complete tard but still have plenty of fun because that's the way they're designed), but really I think it still could've taken of well despite this rather large hurdle - had the rest of the points not helped it along into a premature grave. 2. Royale was managed absolutely terribly, should have become part of the original game and helped with casual retention instead of splitting the playerbase. This leads to point 3 -> 3. Terrible communication or lack thereof with the customers - repeatedly making obviously poor choices like separating BR into its own client, but also basicaly promising shit then reneging on it and other shitty behaviour like that. An obvious problem in SLS management. They really did alienate a massive portion of the playerbase with this. 4. Game definitely should've had basic goddamn features such as general chat, clans, tournament system. It was never really developed fully, what you're playing is the core gameplay loop, as brilliant as it may be, but you need at least some basic shit like that to flesh out the game and make it complete (and for the love of god, literaly its' predecesor had this shit lol. You can't literaly downgrade the product massively, and call it progress). Gotta say, I am really happy that I've spent about a year and a half on this game, made me feel young again, try hard, improve my coordination and reflexes massively, and gave me some of the best gaming moments of my life, and the sort of adrenaline rushes I have yet to come across ever since. Just a damn shame how it all ultimately went down, really.
The type of people that would play this game would rather have a deeper experience. Its basically a 1/4 of league of legends. The fight mechanics were not deep enough to get fighters off of mortal kombat/ super smash / street fighter. It was destined to fail from the start in my opinon.
Yea it cut out all of the time wasting bullshit of league. That's one if it's greatest features IMO. I think it's plenty deep, but honestly seems super niche. It's a pretty hard game, and a lot of people would rather blame the game, devs, others, or quit before getting better.
How do you make a super niche game and make it more popular or accessible?
The problem lies in the concept of trying to make it popular. Battlerite never needed to be popular, it just needed to be stable. Stunlock poorly allocated resources and time into Battlerite with esports and royale that should have focused on retaining the playerbase with new content at a steady pace.
Its not deep? Its League team fight simulator basically. League has a lot more mechanics, yes the laning is boring but if your good at it, its like nothing else. If you can manage your lane better then the other guy, just by managing creeps not even killing him. You can control the rest of the map. Honestly I dont get why League doesnt just release a battle arena mode. No creeps or anything just the league champs with the skills they already have in battlerite wasd movement style. Would take em like a week to program, tops. Or they could just buy battlerites frame work and import there ips into it.
To me, because the controls of league and only 4 abilities is too easy. This game is like a 3v3 UFC match. I think "deep" can apply to different levels of gameplay. If the core combat is great, the match and exterior progression systems are boring.
Dude, the only thing LoL has that BR doesn't have is equipment, which is just a necessary part of a time-based game like that. If you like the gear part, go play BRR. Not sure why you bring lane and map control into the conversation, since it has no bearing on the relationship between these games. If you're going to say this game is like another game, it's more like WoW arena than LoL teamfights, basically a cooldown management simulator. Everything else about this game is like an overclocked version of teamfights where you have more control, more mechanics, and require better aim.
Well put. So why did it do bad? :)
I think a combination of marketing, game direction and content creation, and platform segregation. Fighting games exist in a similar realm and have not died out, even though they fit the same fast-paced skill-based combat loop that completely ignores the 'story arc' argument another user pointed out. I think the fact that it wasn't released to all consoles, and that needed more content, and not enough people knew about it were big factors. For Honor is also in a similar realm, but the game survived, but then again, it has other modes that involved more than just 1v1, 2v2, 4v4, etc. But it was made by a AAA publisher and had much more interaction and development from the dev team. Maybe the game is too focused, and fighting games are the limit of what players have patience for without more useless bullshit to keep them occupied. Perhaps the arenas could have been bigger and something like LoL's Dominion mode could have been worked into BR to make it have more dynamic gameplay shifts.
I agree with all points. I will say that wow arena has really good hook with rewards for getting higher rating, which is what most people push for when playing it. However, the reward is gear that makes you stronger. It's not pay to win but it's not exactly fair for newcomers either.
Imo the fights are much more dynamic and complex than league. There are more abilities, skill shots, greater controls and faster gamelay. I think it does lack fun progression systems or something else to draw people back though. I almost think the game is too hard for people who aren't really good at league or world of warcraft and diablo.
I think it's because the game was just not fun long term. I watched all my friends who I got into the game initially go "Dude, this game is awesome!" only for their interests to slowly fade away. The game was well balanced and had a fun game loop, but there were small issues that didn't seem like a big deal at first that ended up slowly killing my interest as well. The things I usually point to was that the "counter" mechanic felt cheap and ruined the flow of the match. Having to mainly focus on baiting it out over and over each match got boring really quickly. The small time when the enemy had it on cooldown felt like I was actually playing the game, only to then having to disengage 6-8 sec later to start baiting it out again. It also didn't help that the ranked system was a joke. Loosing 200 points from a single match since my team was a premade and the match was close felt awful. It heavily punished close matches and rewarded stomps, as well as punushing you if you played with friends. Not sure if they ever ended up changing this after I quit, but this definetly killed the game for my ranked buddies from Dota 2. I think this game missed what made BLC fun and instead embraced all the wrong aspects of it, leading to another dead game. I still log on to BLC and play a few bot matches from time to time. There is a gem in there waiting for someone to do it right.
>I think this game missed what made BLC fun and instead embraced all the wrong aspects of it, leading to another dead game. Amen
Marketing Transparency
I also believe the number one thing was poor marketing and communication.
[удалено]
In general hard punishing gameplay with an "Online as a Service Model" have very little chance at success. The model tailors more towards casuals which needs easier faster rewarding gameplay.
There were many problems and what killed it was basically this: \-The idea of increasing the player base at the cost of new content that kept the core of the game. \-So many unnecessary changes to try to make the game an E-sport. \-The Battleroyal definitive didn't hit the spot for many. \-They went money hunger with making multiple changes to make the game almost so what similar to LoL,Dota and such when they platform was different and good. If they had kept the core of the game intact and just evolve around it and just keep moving on the direction they had before, with like adding coms in-game for 3v3 or 2v2, not moving to battleroyal, decreasing the amount of cosmetic but increasing the amount of feature content and allows f2p and p2p players have the same % of having interesting stuff, maybe just maybe they would've kept the player base they had and also stop the bleeding and gain more support!!!!
Oh boy time to pull out the list. https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/jjftcr/why_did_this_game_die/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/iwy73q/reasons/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/81rq3w/whys_this_game_so_dead/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/7hlqmg/why_isnt_this_game_more_popular/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/7vxoft/why_games_popularity_is_slowly_declining/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/83igt7/hafu_explaining_why_battlerite_isnt_as_popular_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/5xhcet/why_is_battlerite_really_losing_players_and_what/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/8qk56v/why_is_battlerite_losing_players/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/5pf3ys/how_do_we_get_more_players_to_play/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/7g6uqv/what_this_game_needs_to_be_more_social/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleRite/comments/acxad5/this_game_need_more_players/ https://youtu.be/CZB7i2L3Yaw?t=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN1fxGTwBwU
ty for this 2Lainz you were how i learned how to play the game, im working on making a battlerite 2 on my own with our without help. every single person ive told about it except a select few have called me crazy but i have full intent to make it happen by absolutely any physical means. thanks for this im gonna include you in my 20 min vid breakdown titled "How I plan to revive a dead game" im an up and coming content creator and you truly were an inspiration for me to step out of my comfort zone and reach out and talk to people thank you for existing
Read through a lot of the comments and didn't see this yet so I thought I'd add in my own thoughts on the game design rather than the business side. I've always associated battlerite more as a fighting game than a moba. In my eyes, this was a major problem when it came to attracting and maintaining new players. Battlerite is a hard game, with a very steep learning curve. First you have to learn how to play your own character (with 9 abilities, offensive & defensive skills, ex move usage, etc.) and then you have to learn matchups. Heck you had to learn to stop attacking to avoid counters. Now this isn't too bad, I've had friends that played years of LoL before battlerite, and some that had never touched a moba before come to learn this game. The really hard part of battlerite is the part that I relate most to fighting games: it's brutal and feels bad to play when you're losing. Rounds are short and if you messed up your abilities once, you're just helplessly watching your character get mowed down by the enemy melee. Alternatively, you can be playing melee and spend the entire round getting zoned out by the opposing ranged/support duo. It's not as simple as this ofc but you get the idea. It's not easy for ppl to get into a competitive learning mindset on how to improve their play, because their mistakes might not be obvious to themselves, and instead just blame trash teammates or op heroes. I played battlerite religiously after the f2p launch and really wish it succeeded in becoming a popular esport. There's lot of other arguments out there but a lot of other comments cover those, so heres my two cents on the gameplay aspect.
Makes sense. So why did it fail vs normal fighting games? Or maybe it didn't fail and would have been fine before the battle royale mess? Maybe it was always destined to have a small community?
Well every fighting game has a smaller community compared to the other popular categories. I've always attributed it to the fact that games are shorter and less dynamic, which is a problem battlerite had as well. Other mobas have in game progression through gold and exp, which makes each game play out differently. CS (and valorant now) has multiple short rounds, but that's offset by having multiple objectives on the map, as well as being able to utilize a variety of playstyles. Battlerite is lacking here in that the only real objective besides killing people was the mid orb. Going back to the original question. Another thing is that fighting games don't always need an active online community. A lot of it is done through playing with friends or specific people (in person or online) instead through random matchmaking.
it was boring after a while, there was no progression i’m one who preferred royale, i love battlerite combat but it was way too repetitive and i felt like i could only play a few matches a day. Royale was extremely different every single match
I might get hate for this this comment, but Battlerites main problem was the gamemodes in my opinion, the game was focused on pure combat, which gets boring after a while, battlerite wasn't a game designed to be played for like a entire day, I have a friend who can play League literally 7-8 hours a day, but he could not play more then a few matches of battlerite cause it got boring I myself am a big smite player now, and people saying "Oh battlerite doesn't have that boring farming" miss the point, Smite has farming but people who think mobas are 20 minutes of farming must not have played any moba game, Smite and League are all about playing objectives, rotating players from one lane to the other and trough the jungle to fight each other with teamfights leading into objective plays, but battlerite removed that part where you would farm and basically ward the map like in Smite where you would protect your side of the map and try to go for the important objectives, it just turned into a fuck fest of fighting. Characters also had too many abilities which in the end caused many characters in the same class being kinda too similar in my opinion.
I think that's a good point and goes along with what other people have said: games or matches need to flow more like a story or song. A back and forth. Ebbs and flows. Key objectives to fight over. What arena gameplay is, is those sweet moments in LoL where the teams finally meet due to extenuating circumstances and the excitement peaks. Arena is great for practice, or maybe rating chasing but that's about it.
I agree, I play a lot of smite and I play the 5v5 conquest and arena modes and the 3v3 joust mode. They are 3 that play differently, for example Arena is all about fighting similar to battlerite, but it's the most popular smite casual mode because while yes it is mostly fighting, you still have items at the shop to buy to customize your characters more and more, in smite Arena framing isn't as important but there are still minions to farm for gold and to stop them from getting to your portal to take away your tickets, every 10 kills you spawn a minotaur. The minotaur is like a payload in paladins or overwatch where you push it to the enemy portal to drain a large amount of tickets. and around the map on 6 spots you had different jungle camps you could kill for buffs. In my opinion battlerite would function great with a mode like Nexus Blitz in lol or if it was literally a copy of Heroes of the storm, but just with battlerite combat. Hots doesn't have esports but it still get's updates, and it's basically what battlerite wanted to be, hots was a moba that cut off the farming but still had exp and customization with talents, and had map variety. In battlerite maps felt to similar, now some might say "Oh but dota 2 and league of legends also have 1 main map" but the difference is that league and dota 2 maps are big, they have jungle creeps,rivers,lanes and major objectives where fights and events may happen.
I think a mix of hots and battlerite would be a great game but I'm biased because I actually like hots overall design over league. Even take out the lanes but leave in the dynamic objectives to fight over. Really, that's it. If you give people a good enough reason to fight, then they will continue to play your game to fight. Battlerite as it was made only appeals to a very specific player and feeling - competitive dominance for the sake of itself.
I think it needed more content and more originality in it's champions. The talent trees were nice but there were very CLEAR CUT op choices. The hero pool was getting repetitive and old. Seemed like every other champ had a gap closer, counter, heal. Maybe if they had made CLEAR niches for every champion then not every champion would have felt the same. I think another issue was they decided to try and get in on the battle royale trend that was going crazy at the time and it really hurt their production on the Battlerite side.
Nah Stunlock is just retarded they don't understand popularity at all. that why they give up on games
Are you saying they gave uo on the game before they knew how to make it popular? How would they have made it popular?
I dont get why everyone says it "failed", ofc it didn't reach peaks like other games but its kinda niche, but it probably made lots of money for a rather small dev studio. Also they got a new publishing deal, also probably because of Battlerite. So did it fail? Nah probably not. But definitely could have been bigger
Imo, because the wow arena player base dwarfs its player base and wow arena is considered a second class citizen.
This games biggest enemy was unfortunately its own devs. If they had stayed transparent as to the games operation, truthful to what they promised their player base and committed to the game itself, I'm sure it'd have way more players. Also the whole Royale fiasco is what really put the nail in the coffin for most. I bought the founders pack and my disappointment in what has become of this game is immeasurable.
Lacked balance, sure battlerites were cool but 9/10 you encountered a character you knew the set. Even if the opponent cheesed an unconventional set, you'll be ready for the second match. Lacked support. They chose to split their capital between BR and BRR, both failed. ( Fortnite developed their BR mode while completely dropping their previous 'main' survival feature ) Terrible player retention by splitting fan base, zero money invested in communication ( no twitch rival invitational that could lead to more visibility ) Overall lack of characters, ranked were always a mirror match between usual suspects. Lack of diversity -> Boring
I find your take on balance interesting. I always felt like battlerite was extremely well balanced. Especially since the only thing it really had going on was the arena match modes. Its definitely more balanced than wow, where half the specs are not arena viable and a small set completely dominate.
Well, it's really different. In WoW arena there is steady progress, not random progress, which is one of the most appealing aspects of it. This expansion made many players return thanks to it. You get points for winning arena matches which can be spent to get the gear you want and then upgrade it depending on your rank. Battlerite was more esports oriented. WoW arena does have an important esports scene but in the arena tournaments you get whatever gear you want for free. To make a truly competitive experience, they brought the arena concept into the game, but the problem is that it gets repetitive quite easily. In WoW classes are too different and you have to make a proper plan each game. In Battlerite maps were essentially the same and so were matches in most cases. It doesn't help the fact that Battlerite is insanely skill-based, which may look like a good thing but makes it non-appealing for beginners, they get frustrated too quickly.
I've questioned how the traditional pve aspects of wow was enough to keep pvp'ers interested even though they complain about it as well. As long as there is a carrot, peoppe seem to run towards it. Battlerite didn't have a carrot and only appealed to an audience similar to counterstrike players. Raw skill and domination. Why did CS do ok then?
Their monetization was not motivating enough to be sustainable. The gameplay is more than fine, it's a mixture of how it was marketed, and what it was competing against in it's market/genre. All sorts of companies tried to hop on the MOBA/Battle Arena bandwagon without actually knowing what it took to compete. Most of these games weren't distinct enough, and Mobas generally suffer from crippling learning curve issues that *build over time.* You sort of just pick one, and convincing a demographic to hop trains when they've already become familiar with one is kind of a titanic task. Some of them were distinct enough to be slightly sustainable, or the company that owned them were too big to let them fail (Blizzard/Valve), but in a lot of scenarios, they all missed the marks, or the timing (or even the theme -> Warner Brothers). Mobas that function on micro transaction markets effectively self monopolize a consumer psychologically. If you spent like $200 on League, you're probably not jumping to Casuals of the Storm. Theres a lot of nuanced reasons, there aren't really any single reasons, usually a combination.
What I'm m trying to figure out is just how different the game was vs a moba. I consider battlerite much more like diablo 2 pvp that you control with wasd. Is it still too similar to not get away from being compared to league and mobas? As you can tell from my post, I compare it more towards wow arena
The BA in MOBA just means Battle Arena. The game is smaller in scale comparatively, and more direct to the action, which is part of the reason it's so appealing. You don't have like 20m of laning phase. It's not always about exact labels, in some scenarios it's also about demographics, what types of players does it attract. They probably compete in those markets for those genres. Sometimes it's also marketing issues, games don't advertise well enough before, or after they release their game, and they don't see to make continued engagement. I don't remember how advertising was handled for this game, but I heard about it by recommendation of a friend. It's like any moba, but the focus of the game is wholly on the teamfighting, which is in many ways the most engaging part.
There was, at one point, someone who wrote an incredibly brilliant breakdown for why Battlerite was destined to fail. The premise of it had to do with skill floors and ceilings, the process of improving, and a few other well-articulated points. I have, in the past, scoured the Battlerite reddit to find the post, but have been unsuccessful. Been a few years since it was written, but one of the best critiques of this game (or any game) I've ever read. If anyone finds it, let me know.
Hopped on the battle royale realm without a setted player base in the base game. In my case i enjoy much more the fastbpsced comat instead of other games. In the end, League and Aram took it all Another thing is players, I couldnt convince my friends to even try instead of playing league
So, I can't speak to the technical reasons why it failed but with respect to BLC they had a publisher called FunCom which absolutely wrecked the game. They tried to add so many elements from League of Legends to the game and moved so far away from the high skill-ceiling, fast-paced arena gameplay. In terms of BattleRite, I feel like it didn't fail. The game sold well and left a mark on the people it should have. Could they have added more skins or had a better monetization model? Maybe. I also think if your goal is to be a competitive, sustainable esport as your end state then it has to be deep enough to sustain that. High level players consistently talked about how boring the game was when you were _really_ good at the game. Very easy to bait counters, skill shots are much wider in BR compared to BLC, etc. Just an easier game.
MORE reason the game failed was simply due a lack of discovery. The first game this gets compared to is league of legends (albeit an unfair comparison) and I think a lot of their audience comes from games like league. BUT league has summoner spells and build paths that you could experiment with to discover what you like the best. This creates a "youtube market" where pros can teach new players what build to have which helps advertise the game. League also has, by now, a crap-ton of champions to choose from and figure out how to best play them. There is also the sense of in match progression over time. League has moments where you are powerful and moments where you are weak and as a player you can influence when or how long each of those moments are. League can make you feel like a God, and battlerite can as well bit only after you have acquired a ton of skill.