Can someone explain to me what happen with Evolve? I never play that game but i read everytime that the predator hunting grounds Will end like evolve and it making me nervous :p
Whats the deal? Why evolve died?
Evolve informations.
Misinformation.
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But what i remember from some reviews:
-4 players (Hunters) have ONE objective âŚhunt monster controlled by player and that was it no secondary objectives, no killing some AIâs. You only running to kill monster
-a lot of cosmetics to buy with real money where a lot of cosmetics were like blue red etc and cost was about 3$ to 5$âŚ
-game had some game modes which one was about closing some rifts (hunters have even have to kill little monsters controlled by AI) but too many players played one game mode which is hunt monster
-some bugs
-players who bought ammm Deluxe edition they have early access to one monster class which was OP âŚ
-somekind coop campaign where ending was the same for Hunters (spaceship leaving hunters to die if they win or lose)
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Evolve died because of 2 reasons
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It was a too simplistic of a game. Make no mistake, it was insanely fun, but the Hunter team only had 1 objective - hunt the monster. Itâs a great idea and was a ton of fun, but matches only went one way. Find, track, kill. There was very minimal variation.
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It was aggressively monetized by 2K. The lack of content variety made most gamers cry out that there was very little content, which caused further ire when people realized skins for guns could only be bought. When the first monster released at 1/3 of the games price people slammed the game into the ground.
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I honestly think Evolve, for all its failings, pushed the Asymmetrical genre forward. More and more started including rotating objectives for one team which has really expanded creativity.
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Will probably end like Evolve if devâs wonât do anything about it.
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From what I recall the gist of it was they put a huge amount of the game behind a pay wall and people were pissed.
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Yea thats true
Other game developes saw mistakes of Evolve and they go ways to avoid that mistakes
Predator HG have my attetion because Marines have own objectives and AI which is let say âguardingâ objectives and Predator have his one objective which is hunt down Marines
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OK guys thank all of you very much for informations.
2K tried making everything cost money and then shut down its revival (Evolve Stage 2) for basically no good reason. It would have done better if it came out today with more people buying up crazy microtransactions and not batting an eye.
In any assymetric game youâre going to have a much harder time balancing it, and my guess is that Illfonic didnât even bother to test it out with pro players.
Evolve had a pro testing team, but they still have hard time balancing it. Iâm guessing they donât want to spend the money on at least 5 pro players.
I played Evolve on ESL levels (pro league) right up until the end.
There were a few really important happenings that truly damaged the game:
On release a dozen of Youtubers absolutely trashed the game because of a few things, a few of them have been named already:
- Publisher altering the vision of the developers asking a lot of money for skins on top of the already expensive game.
- A very monotone âhunter experienceâ people referred to as the running simulator.
Now, this is something a lot of people donât know, but the developer didnât have a very high budget for the game, in fact, they had too little. Updates on console (xbox for example) would cost them ~15.000 dollar per update (number could be off, but a LOT). This forced Turtle Rock (the devs) to make a hard choice and only update the game every 3 months. Evolve had a LOT of balancing issues at launch and it didnât fully grasp the impact of random players with AND without microphones.
This led to a very steep shift in the playerbase between beginners, the average players and the proâs. The pro scene defined the balance changes and a few compositions were âmetaâ which meant that 60% of the roster wasnât meta, and would never be picked. Now, to come back to the random players, this meant that random matches where ârandomsâ wouldnât pick meta comps would absolutely be trashed by the average monster player, and have no chance against proâs.
This scared off any new player trying the game out, because they generally didnât use their mics, or refused to stick to the meta. Combine this with the fact that the game would only be updated every 3 monthsâŚ
So the playerbase dropped from - again âI believeâ - 80.000 players playing at the same time at release, towards 4000 after a single month. Then when each DLC got released, every single time these new characters/monsters would start out being completely overpowered to the point it would break the game. Which meant⌠that you had to wait 3 more months for a balance patch, that would either make the character âbalancedâ or completely under-powered in some cases.
Now the pro scene were figuring out minor exploits, how some mechanics were completely overpowered (a healer being able to outheal a monsters damage for example, the heal also had a radius healing others nearby) in the right situations. And in the ESL these âexploitsâ and tricks werenât looked down upon, as people generally believed they were part of the gameplay.
Until 3 months later⌠and the playerbase realized the developers definitely didnât want to include it.
After 9 months one of the developers was a little too transparant (very likely frustrated to the bone) and told that the publisher was basically in control of Evolve. And after a year, that contract would end. Finally Turtle Rock would be free of 2K and then THEY could decide where the game would be heading.
Now I remember making a post about Evolve going Free To Play, and the developers pinned my forum post quite high. The idea was quite substantial, loads of ways to make it work, and for them to make money of of it. My idea was to keep the game the same, but make it free (keep the expensive skins) and earn money by speeding up unlocks, buying skins etc. Because EVERYONE I knew who still played Evolve, bought skins. Mind you: weapon skins. There were no skins for the Hunters, but there were skins for the monsters.
This post got very popular and eventually Turtle Rock announced Evolve: Stage 2. The Free to Play version.
But that failed as well.
Stage 2 was Free to Play yes. But you couldnât spend a single cent to support the developer. Besides that, everyone who paid for the game (actually owned the original) had their entire game file transfered into Stage 2. But it wiped their progression, their character unlocks. Basically everything. They gained like 30% of the ingame currency to unlock some characters faster. It was a mess.
Not only that, they changed to core game design to make the game more appealing for a greater audience killing EVERYTHING that made Evolve great. There was no more point in playing 1 of the 4 required classes: the trapper. The trapper in Legacy Evolve had 2 jobs. Slow down the monster and throw a giant dome to capture the monster in a arena. But in Stage 2, everyone could throw that dome. So the trapper role because close to obsolete. Stealth was a thing in Legacy for the monster. Stage 2 you didnât have time to stealth around.
What happened - in short - was that Evolve turned into an Arcade Brawler with some minor gameplay elements from the original. But the people who paid for Evolve, could not play the original. And the old pro-scene hated Stage 2 because it lost everything that made the game great.
And unknown to most, Stage 2 did try to create a pro-scene again, but the people playing found out that Stage 2 wasnât close to ready for ESL, while the playerbase dwindled.
The publisher basically strangled the developers when it came to monetary design choices and the developers had no idea how to turn their passion project into a workable free to play model.
So if people compare Predator: Hunting Grounds to Evolve, they are basically saying that the publisher/developers are not taking enough steps to inform the community and build enough trust that they are capable to fix the game.
And in two dayâs we will find out if the comparison has a foundation. Because P:HG was released in a broken state.
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Another one of its issues came from balancing. At the end there were 5+3 Monsters, and 4 classes, each with 5+2 options, but it quickly became too big a balancing issue. You think this game has balancing problems? Trying to balance out the predator without making berzerker op or useless? Yeah, 5+3 monsters, so anytime a side got a buff or nerf, it was felt to varying degrees by each side. Youâd need to balance things out monster by monster, but then again, with the 20+7 hunters on the other side, changing one small thing on the monster was a buff or nerf to all those hunters.
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A lot of great answers that sum up why the game did poorly.
Personally I always felt that Turtle Rock could have shifted directions on game balance significantly earlier than Stage 2 to help the public lobbies. For example Wraith was never fun to play against in a random lobby but it wasnât a problem at high-level play. The equivalent in Hunting Grounds would be if skilled players learned to punish Scout Slam so it never gets balanced properly and it always gets abused in low-level play.
Ultimately I have always felt Turtle Rock and 2kâs vision for Evolve was that it was going to be the next big e-sports thing and set development and marketing priorities to that vision. It wasnât a bad vision. I actually enjoyed the prospect of such a game at pro-levels. But when the winds shifted and the player base started rotting from the bottom up it only seemed like they (2k, Turtle Rock) double-downed on their vision.
Still even after saying all of this the biggest thing I blame on the death of the game was partly on 2k and partly on the media for aggressively leaning into the micro-transactions just before the gameâs release. The media made it out like the game was going to sell everything including the paint on the walls for some value after you bought the game. Which wasnât true. In fact the sad irony is that modern profit schemes for games are significantly more predatory today than Evolve ever envisioned. The game was dead on arrival at this point.
I would say if Evolve had launched today in the state that it was years ago it not only would have been a good release I believe the game would have gone on to do incredibly well. I stand to believe the Evolve is still one of the most fun and polished games out there (for the time frame it was released) but it was completely mishandled by the media, 2k, and even Turtle Rock.
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Good read. Curious what you think the fixes are for P:HG now.
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Micro transactions and it was a game where you hunt giant monsters, with a surprisingly small amount of monsters (5 in total. That includes DLC)
I adore Evolve. But, I got super frustrated with the character abilities which seemed overpowered.
Those parts about 2K giving TRS a small budget and that year-long contract were interesting. I thought the only incident with a contract was when Stage 2 development got shut down.
I take it the second part of your name comes from the Evolve Reavers then. They were annoying little bastards lol.
I can see PHG going the way of Evolve. Not because itâs not fun (it is) but because the devs donât seem very good at implementing changes that the community wants. The total lack of communication has dwindled my faith in Illfonic to almost zero, and them charging money for DLC even for those who bought the deluxe edition says the core of the game is rotten. At this point, we donât even know if the devs are aware of the fanbaseâs problems with the game.
I still play, but not nearly as much anymore. Weâll see if anything changes when the DLC drops or when it goes on sale on PSN, but Iâm not holding my breath.
No, my original (xbox) gamertag was D Reaver. Which was based on the Soul Reaver franchise. But people went awol with what that âDâ was standing for. In essence, beating others to get stronger. Because I was a cocky little shit when I was in the Top 100 of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, I chose to downgrade my ego a little and turn it into: SilverbornReaver, but generally (most games) youâll find me as Silverborn.
On the Evolve forums I had the Xenomorph picture. Played support 80% of the time, loads of Sunny posts. Played in the first team that called itself nDG, but our team fell apart after I fell in love with our healer. She didnât feel the same way after a couple of months, so I chose to drop the team.
They went to Poland after that to play the finals, my old team came in 3rd. I still wonder how high we could have gotten if me and our healer didnât start teasing each other because we were both lonely as fuck around that time.
Good memories though.
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