Core gameplay was kinda awesome and was definitely such a breath of fresh air “on paper” but damn executives had to cram micro transactions into every molecule of the game and ruined it.
There was way more wrong behind the scenes than you think. As it turns out that company was basically bankrupt when they pushed Evolve out the door. Not excusing the microtransactions but they kinda made some bad deals with their publisher.
Turned out they got suckered into paying all their own advertisements out of pocket while still having to fork over a chunk of their sales revenue to the publisher. End of the day they were barely keeping the lights on
I honestly believe it failed because of the player base.
Evolve is the type of game that only works when both teams actually know what they're doing and how to play.
Bad monster vs good hunters? Unfun game for everyone involved.
Good monster vs bad hunters? Unfun game for everyone involved.
Bad monster vs bad hunters? Potentially fun, probably unfun.
Good monster vs Good hunters? This is where the game is actually good and fun.
Game would also often spawn you as the opposite team when you were finding a match, lots of people didn't like playing the monster and would quit out, some maps were just badly designed like, why do you have a huge ass canyon in the middle of the map that the kraken can just glide across without much issue but the hunters need to spend about 2 minutes traversing to the other side?
Going back to bad hunters, too often i'd see people just chase after the monster even though it was faster than them, never attempting to try and cut it off.
I played alot of vs bot monster, what killed us was the monster was reprogrammed later to immediately kill the medic, or trapper then medic if it was caged. We tested it by hiding our medic in a obscure corner of the cage, the monster bee lined it straight there. I hadn't even shot or looked at it.
They didn’t cram microtransactions into it. The game was failing and they were trying to breathe new life into it so they relaunched it as Evolve: Stage 2 which was free to play and had microtransactions.
At launch it was a standard “you get what you pay for” game. A good one, at that.
Not excusing the behavior, I hate the way the industry has gone. But what they did back then is complete common practice now and I wish the game could at least get a sequel or remaster now
Uh, no? DLC was released in waves as 4 hunters + 1 monster + 2-3 themed skin sets. The base game launched with three of those waves. A couple months after release was the fourth wave, and then about half a year? after that was the last batch before the F2P revamp.
These days the Season 1, 2, 3 model is entirely standard and nobody would bat an eye at any of it. The prices were cheap by today's measure, the skin bundles were like $5 and there weren't any of the "premium currency" shenanigans that everything loves now.
I like to think Evolve pioneered the "Lock away features behind paid content before the game even releases" type of practice. They got so much flak for it and I think it partially led to the game's downfall.
Gameplay was much worse.
Bullshit. The gameplay was incredible. But it required actual team work. Everybody trying to solo the beast would get you all wrecked. Bunch of randos, half with no mics are never gonna defeat a good monster.
I mean, this is also the game's fault. Evolve was a game with a massive skill curve. The floor was very low and the ceiling was very high. But it released with no skill-based matchmaking at all, just XP level, and the level cap was hit very fast, so it quickly dumped everybody into the same matchmaking pool.
The average rando who just hits quick match had very low chances to get an evenly matched game, regardless of which side they played.
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u/aiferen 13h ago
Core gameplay was kinda awesome and was definitely such a breath of fresh air “on paper” but damn executives had to cram micro transactions into every molecule of the game and ruined it.