I’m almost certain the only reason Concord has players is because of social media incessantly talking about it. The only reason I know of the game is because of social media.
Price plays a role too, only 17,55 Euros for Squirrel here and Concord 40 Euros, plus 20 for Deluxe.
I was interested into Concord, not gonna lie. But even if I wanted to buy and play the game, accept their terms of usage and create a Sony account, its not playable on Linux. And to be honest, I’m thankful for not being able to waste my money and time.
That’s what happens when you mix a pile of abusive industry practices with an overall bad and iterative game that doesn’t bring anything new to the genre
The gameplay doesn’t look bad to me, I am interested into it. It has way bigger problems, like the unpopular character styles and looks. But what do you mean by “abusive industry practices”? I like the idea of paying upfront and getting the whole game, way better than a Free to play model to me. But I guess that approach isn’t working in today’s world.
Paying for it is not the problem at all, in fact it’s preferred over a freemium model.
The practices I mostly refer to are:
microtransactions in any context;
requiring additional software (PSN overlay) that doesn’t support all platforms;
PSN account requirement for a game that’s sold on Steam (have they forgotten about the shitshow that was Helldivers II?).
EDIT: history has also told us that paying upfront for a hero shooter doesn’t work out in the long term if the game wants any shot at being popular, just look at Overwatch’s failure to capitalize on it’s momentum by not becoming free-to-play earlier (and everything else wrong with Blizzard and their management).
But those points are not the reason this game flopped. Lot of games have micro transactions and are popular. Other games require additional account (and even launcher in some cases) and are still popular. While these arguments are in fact negative, they are not the reason the game failed. If Sony comes to this conclusion too, then they will not learn anything from it. So I hope they analyze it better.
In example the initial trailer reveal wasn’t good. Then the characters and the universe it is in isn’t very interesting, huge problem for a hero shooter. Sony completely ignored the critics from beta test phase. The marketing in general was terrible. Game is not playable on Linux either, which would have gave them some marketing push too. And the timing of the launch day was badly chosen too lot of people and news was focusing on Wukong and Deadlock.
There are lot of reasons that are well orchestrated together to fail the game. It’s not as simple as the list you gave (in my opinion). Games with worse industry standards get more popular.
I play a lot of board games. And I own a lot of board games. Not all of my games get played very much, so I like to track each play and over time see which games are forgotten gems or which games I’d be best to just trade away.
In the board game community, you might come across people talking about the “Friendless” metric of their collection. It’s a totally made up measurement, invented by a person with the user name Friendless. In that way, it’s like the Elo rating in chess and other games. I find it’s useful to know when I’m “done” with something that doesn’t really have an end, like playing board games. You can always play one more game.
Friendless hypothesized that if you play a game 10 times, you’ve gained 90% of its remaining utility. So after 10 plays, you consumed 90% of the game play that game provides. After another 10 plays, you’re at 99%. By the time you reach 30 plays, you’ve consumed 99.9% of the game.
You can do the same with games. Maybe the number of plays changes a bit. Maybe it’s not the number of plays, but the number of hours. I would say that games of Civ are like games of any other board game: 10 = 90% utility gained. Matches in COD, probably not the same.
Thank you! I also have a big board game collection, and that sounds genius and fun, I will start doing that with board games. And I can also see it being applied to some games.
Got into the beta before this one, like a week 1/2 ago, and it’s so addicting. Can’t wait for combat and other stuff but I’m having a blast in just the traveling/jobs/crafting I can do already.
Thank you so much, and awesome to hear you’ve been enjoying it! We’re moving to combat and trading after we ship the next update (Quality of Life update)!
Since there is a server with this, will there eventually have a list of other players in locations, and will there be trading/selling items in private shops? A player economy here would be awesome
List of players at a location was supposed to ship already in this update, but we didn’t have enough time for it. Trading is planned to be added before the end of the year (our second dev, myzozoz, will start working on it after Party system is completed)
Sweet, is there anyway for me to submit bugs? I walk around 15-20k steps a day but a lot of the times it’ll not register my steps, no clue why. This morning alone I’ve walked a few miles, checking fences, and I get inside to make breakfast and check the game and…no steps registered :( even though the game was on in the background. I’m guessing it’s my older phones (note10+).
Especially on some older devices, it’s best to shut down the game entirely while walking. There’s some issue if it’s on the background where steps might get lost if your internet connection changes (for instance, from wi-fi to cellular).
Bugs can be reported either on our Discord (which has a dedicated channel for step recording issues) and on Portal to the bugs category.
Walked another 2 miles and it registered all steps with the game completely closed out. Seems this is the way to go.
Also for whatever reason trying to join the discord doesn’t work from the link in the profile. It just brings up discord in mobile but then never registers the server in my list.
The Discord link is sometimes quite buggy, and I don’t know why exactly. I think our channel can now be searched for in the communities, maybe give that a shot? Or try this one: discord.com/invite/8F5CWpUc
What’s the logic behind saved steps? I figured I could use them whenever like they’re banked, but it seems I have to walk and then they are spent. So if I forget to periodically get my character to do something, then they build up but might max out and then I’m not able to use them until I’m walking again. Is this by design or am I bugged?
This is by design. You don’t lose your steps, but you’ll need to walk to consume them. When you walk with saved steps, you gain 2 steps every step you take, taking one out from the saved steps.
I’m whole-heartedly impressed with what you are presenting here. I wish I’d seen your booth at gamescom, since I am sincerely excited by the non-predatory design philosophy you’re describing in your blog posty on your website.
I have already set up an account and written an application. Hopefully I’ll have the chance to try this out. :)
Just to add some even longer time goals to the other replies: you could get all achievements for games that have them. Though some of those, like the ones for Civ 6, are excessive. It could give you ideas or shorter term goals to work towards, then you can decide if you’ve had enough at any point before 100% if things get too BS.
You’re right, achievements are excessive in some games, that’s why I don’t rely on them too much. I like the idea of short term goals though, and if those goals seem “fulfilling” then I can use them as my completion milestones.
I tried it out a while ago and didn’t mesh with it at all. Like the options I had was gather things, minor crafting and traveling. But zero goals or combat (as far as I could tell at the beginning). So after going around, gathering and crafting a bit I got bored and gave up.
Hell, I even traveled around to just find if there are any encounters or places with more happening and I didn’t find anything.
So it felt meaningless to grind with nothing to grind for.
Combat is coming, and so are quests, which will give more direction and goals for new players.
There are a lot of goals already available inside the game, but because it’s very open ended at the beginning, it might seen like there aren’t anything to grind for. It’s one of the games where players usually make their own goals, and then try to achieve those.
First goals usually could be to unlock the other two realms in the game, complete enough achievements to unlock the first guild in the game (Adventurers’ Guild), get some good starting tools to become more efficient at it, and so forth.
If you’re more combat focused usually in games, I recommend to wait until that’s added, as it sounds like that might be the main thing you’re missing!
Ah yeah, I’m not a big mobile game fan and heavily play PC games. I just missed the draw of it, but had wrong expectations probably. In my head it was more of a sandbox combat game with gathering/crafting, so I kept trying to get to the actual game part :)
While I’m not motivated at all by just achievements or grinding for grinding sake (incremental games are a slight exception there, but progress is much faster / you do have some goals dangled in front of your face). You’re probably aiming more for a classic fitness tracker, but instead of step counts, graphs and so on you present it in game form. Which is valid, but just not what I was after.
As it gets brought up in this thread: When it came out I actually liked Pokemon GO, because the gameplay was interesting. Originally it only showed Pokemon near you and how far they are away (with 1, 2 or 3 foot steps). Which meant you wandered around and actually met people back in the city, grouped up to search or they knew where it was. That all got dumbed down until everyone was just sitting at the same spot and farming unfortunately :-/
Combat in the game is going to require active play, and it’s meant to be played at home. It’s a turn based combat system with its own progression systems, but you’ll need to walk in order to gain combat points, which work as an energy to engage in the combat. So it’s not possible to endlessly grind it without going for a walk, but something you’ll be able to do when you’ve got the time for it. There are a few interviews on Youtube where I’m explaining it if you’re interested to hear more about it.
Also there’s already a ton of depth on the game, so I’m not sure how far you got in there if you think it only represents your steps in a different way than graphs. I recommend to check wiki to get a good idea!
I think I’m too jaded in this regard. Reading the wiki I don’t really see depth. Sure, there are activities with fun names, but they are all the same (you start the activity, you walk to finish it, you get random rewards). And all the items seem to be either for selling, basic crafting or just giving you a boost percentage for the activities you’re already doing.
What the activities are missing are risk/reward, decision making, surprises, etc. Or as you’d say in game design “meaningful choices”.
Sure, you have the choice on what skill you work on, but besides skill go up, items to make the activity faster and gold (not sure what it’s for, besides buying mats/items again?) that seems to be it.
I guess combat could help if there’s actual resource investment and risk there. Like are you going to tackle this level 10 monster for higher rewards, with more likelihood to either fail (or spend extra resources on healing potions or whatever)? Or play it save and go against weaker monsters? There should also be extra gold sinks to work for / use the money you accumulated, be it limited use items, cosmetics and so on. And of course ways to play the game differently from other players, like classes, masteries, skill trees or whatever (and no, clicking an activity that says “Sandcastle Building” vs clicking “Ship repair” aren’t really choices).
Just from someone who values gameplay a lot, I don’t see much difference in playing the game for an hour or 100 hours, in the end it keeps boiling down to the same actions with no depth attached. Personally I didn’t see the game value of it, compared to a step tracker (just that the step tracker doesn’t stop counting when it’s “full”, I didn’t like the step mechanic either where you get bonus steps only. If I’ve done my walking for the day I want to spend the steps, not select an activity and I get double steps for it next time I walk).
Until there’s combat, I don’t think there’s going to be any significant risk/reward choices. Basically you choose the right gear loadout and head to an activity; you can try to optimize by planning a route, trying to keep your inventory from getting full, etc. There’s also low drop rate collectables, so it’s a risk to try to find it vs. spending your time on some guaranteed progression.
But at the end of the day, it’s a super lightweight step tracking game that gives me some cute in-game progress for when I have to run to the grocery store, or I can make sure I queue up something good before I run a 10k.
If you have problems with signing up, please send email to contact@walkscape.app and I can help you out. Tell me the email you signed up with and I can help!
Really interested in this but would rather wait for a full release - just wanted to thank you for posting on Lemmy as well as Reddit. Everything about this project seems so sincere and I’m not used to that with new apps
For something like Civ or Stellaris, I’d count “completion” once I’ve won at least one game. Because, ideally, I’ve shown some mastery of knowledge, skills, and mechanics that allowed me to win. I don’t need to play and win as each leader in Civ or every race/trait and combo in Stellaris to say I’ve completed it.
This is similar to how I’d view “completion” in open-ended games like Cities:Skylines or Banished. Having played a city or town for several hours, was I able to keep the residents alive, stabilize the city if there were any issues, and also grow and develop the settlement for a significant, though arbitrary, length of in-game time? If the answer is Yes to all of these, then I’ve “completed” the game. I’ve understood how things work in the game. Doesn’t mean I have to understand every nuance or know every little trick. But I know enough that things are going well and largely continue to go well. And every time I start a new map, things tend to always go well.
Earlier this year, I stopped playing Eve Online for the nth time after mostly playing straight through since 2019. Because I viewed my time during this last 4-5yr stint as “complete.” I achieved practically all the goals I set out to do: join a major alliance, join massive PVP fights, engage in smaller PVP fights, make money that I ever had before, buy and fly ships I’d never used before, learn how to explore and navigate wormholes, try out specific types of industry, play with IRL friends, own and run my/our own station, and more.
In all of these, “completion” obviously doesn’t mean I’ll never go back. There’s always more to do, new things to see. But for now, I am satisfied with my progress, experience, and understanding. I’m no longer a noob.
As others have said, the best answer is “whenever you want”, though obviously sometimes you don’t know when that is! If you need a little more structure you can see what the game presents to you as all the things you can do, for instance by completing all the achievements. Remember that sometimes the final achievements are ludicrously difficult, so if you’re not enjoying it just call it a day!
Been using this since the start of the year i think and it’s been really fun! Just the right amount of activity needed, for me atleast! Thanks a lot for the awesome game, and i can’t wait for more updates!
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