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Hiya everybody.
Allow me to start off by saying that I've probably only played around thirty or so games of Hyper Scape and I've only got half a dozen or so wins. I'm not approaching this as a noob or a pro and I'm most likely not going to be spending too much more time around these parts, not because I dislike the game or anything but rather because I'm someone that likes to hop around from game to game. I bring this up to make it clear that by making this post I've got nothing to gain. These are simply my observations...
Is HYPER SCAPE any good?
It's fine... Bordering on fairly decent actually. It's got its unique selling point, it can feel pretty nice to play (providing you don't suffer from the myriad of performance issues) and it's free! YAY!
So, What's the problem?
Why... I'm glad you asked!
There's numerous issues at play that almost guarantee that Hyper Scape will fail to grow a sizeable or even stable player base. Some of these are game related, others are "arena shooter" related and the rest are community/player related.
Often, these issues intertwine and it can be difficult to see the wood through the trees.
Problems with the game itself.
These are the "simple/easy" things to fix, meaning that pretty much everybody from all sides would be happy to see them improved. Stuff like basic polish, performance increases and lore.
Performance on midrange systems is not great and needs to be improved. Ubisoft seem to have a massive problem when it comes to CPU optimisation on all their games (including the ones they just publish). I don't know what it is... It's awful and inexcusable! PLZ FIX.
Identity wise, the game feels super generic. The map is boring and lacks diversity. Control wise, there's a lot of clunk that could be ironed out. All super basic stuff that should be improved. They're safe quality of life kinda things. I'm sure we can all agree right?
Where things get much more complicated are when we look at why people would still leave even if those things were fixed/improved...
More or Less an Arena Shooter BR game.
Gamers love to hold up Arena Shooters as the holy grail of FPS design and there's certainly an argument to be made to that end. However, their actions rarely reflect their words. Arena shooter design is brutal. It's certainly respected but not embraced.
Now before I get a bunch of people jumping to defence of Arena Shooters by claiming that people are either just bad or that the developers have failed to make a good Arena Shooter which is why nobody plays them... Let me stop you right there.
"ARENA SHOOTERS HAVE NEVER BEEN POPULAR!" - (Yeah... I said it...)
Sure they appeared to be popular, heck, they pretty much dominated PC gaming in the early years! However, that's mostly due to them being the only option available. As soon as viable alternatives hit the market (Counter Strike, Medal of Honour, Call of Duty, Battlefield) players abandoned the genre and PC gaming started to expand its reach. What this shows, and what the numbers even to this very day prove, is that Arena Shooters always have and maybe always will, be a niche genre.
As a result, the people that love the genre have a choice to make...
A) Stick with purity, enjoy yourself and accept that it's never gonna be huge.
B) Compromise and have a more popular game.
There is no option for having the "pure" experience and a massively popular game at the same time. It's not going to happen. No matter how much you try to convince yourself that it's due to the developers not making the perfect arena shooter or players not being willing to "git gud".
To be clear... YES! One of the biggest reasons that people dislike playing arena shooters is because they're bad at arena shooters. (Spoiler alert, most people hate competitive games/genres they're bad at.)
Let's talk about skill baby.... let's talk about you and me. Let's talk about all the good things and all the bad things that maybe... Let's talk about skill!
Do you like winning? I like winning! I like winning a lot! Hence why I do it so often... You know, the biggest problem with BR games? You're chance of winning a full solo is what? around 1/100. However that's not true is it. I wouldn't be surprised if the top 5% of gamers are winning 99% of overall games. So, if there's no SBMM (Skill based matchmaking) then the average gamer would have like a 0.01% chance of winning a game. I know there's plenty of people that fall into that category and are fine with it but... Would you play a thousand rounds without winning a game? Then, why do we expect other people to?
"BUT BUT PIXEL..." I hear you cry... "EVERY POPULAR BR GAME IS IN THE SAME BOAT!"
Hmm... Kinda, but not really.
Fortnite, Warzone and Apex succeed by being multiple different games at the same time.
As crazy as this may sound on the surface, it's undeniable that while the vast majority of the "super hardcore" gamers play these games to win; as a competitive game. The reality is that the real silent majority of overall players, play these games as survival games. And there's a massive distinction between the two camps.
Fortnite in particular does a great job catering to both. The objectives/missions, the farming for materials, the building and even the battle pass all do a great job of providing incentive for lesser skilled players to keep playing. Warzone does the same via its unlocks, its intel missions and even its per match contracts. Apex is/was the weakest of the tree in this respect, which likely explains why it haemorrhaged players shortly after launch, however it has thankfully stabilised (I hate to see any game die).
If you're not going to give players the ability to win, you need to give them at least something else to compensate. Something that Hyper Scape fails miserably at. But, even if it succeeded, the massive skill differential would likely still drive more players away than these elements would be able to retain.
So what can be done?
Hyper Scape needs to find a way of retaining what the competitive players want while also serving the much larger and ultimately much more valuable ($$$) casual player base.
This could be achieved by providing the more casual players much more to do during an average match. For Squads and Duos there should also be number of revive points around the match so that passive players are not forced into combat areas to revive team members. The current system purely rewards aggressive teams while punishing passive play. It's possible that a special single use hack could be added that would allow players to revive a single team member. Good players/teams are unlikely to take this but would be valuable for more casual players.
Reward placements per season "Get 5x top 10 finishes to receive X skin" kinda thing. This would lead to a few more campers per match but would also give players a feeling of achievement if this is something they that struggle to do normally. Consolation prize kinda thing.
In depth missions like seen in most other BR games would also go a long way to keeping people busy.
There's no magic bullet that's going to "save" the game and make it super popular. People are either going to like it or not, and so far, it appears not. The thing is, a games never a million miles away from turning its fortunes around, so hope is not lost. It's just gonna require Ubisoft to either perform a magic or unfortunately ignore the hardcore in order to protect the casual.
The reality is...
The vast majority of the people that see this post (which is unlikely to be all that many) are not going to be playing this game in a few months time, regardless of what changes come. It's very easy for us as players to point towards certain aspects of a game and claim "that's the problem", "fix that and everything will all be good". It's just, that's rarely the case... We've got a nasty habit of pointing out symptoms and thinking their the cause and game developers do this to. If not, we'd have solved the arena shooter problem by now.
I suppose what I'm really saying is that... I don't have the answer...
Even if the developers made it so that the skill differential was tiny and bad players could frequently kill good players, the bad players are still not gonna stick around and that would most certainly cause good players to drop off. So it's incredibly unlikely that this is what should be being focused on.
On the flip side, even if the developers did put in all this other stuff so that the casual crowed had something to aim for other then winning, the skill requirement is still going to be far too high for most players. Because of the movement, speed and map, it's not like a bad player can hide or escape good players and... that needs to change.
There needs to be compromise...
Devs... This is NOT only a skill based problem. No amount of balance changes is going to massively help player retention. At least not before the core issue of retention is sorted out.
Gamers... You need to accept compromise! If you want this game to be popular, it needs to change. Be respectful to the devs, no matter what it may feel like, the developers DO want this game to do well (their jobs likely depend on it). They're not stupid, they know they're gonna get backlash for certain changes but they're here to make a successful game, not to please you. It's not about good/bad design, it's about finding that balance between hardcore and casual. There's nothing wrong with wishing the game was super hardcore and niche! It's just if you want it super hardcore, you need to accept it's not going to be big.
No TLDR?
Naa... Just rambling.
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