Battle Royal Games - Why the limited, time exclusive game modes?

[Tears of the Cows 1,206]

I’ll never understand this. Why do they not simply have more modes? Why does it take months after a game is released to offer a larger/smaller squad, which is then time exclusive?

 

Fortnite has added new modes, but it took... what, 4 years to do it?

[Casual 726]

Because their bread and butter is the battle royale and it's generally much easier to focus on having one great mode over multiple. Also helps reduce matchmaking time since you don't have people scattered over a bunch of different modes. 

 

Honestly I can't think of a great long lasting multiplayer game that had more than one mode they really took seriously. 

 

It's actually one place where I think Nintendo had a decent idea when they made the Splatoon 2 modes only available at certain times. Shit execution though. 

 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Casual

[Tears of the Cows 1,206]

16 minutes ago, Casual said:

Because their bread and butter is the battle royale and it's generally much easier to focus on having one great mode over multiple. Also helps reduce matchmaking time since you don't have people scattered over a bunch of different modes. 

 

Honestly I can't think of a great long lasting multiplayer game that had more than one mode they really took seriously. 

 

It's actually one place where I think Nintendo had a decent idea when they made the Splatoon 2 modes only available at certain times. Shit execution though. 

 

There are 30 million players playing COD warzone. There are two modes, singles and squads. 
 

they say 4-5 player squads will be coming in the next few months. 
 

I don’t see how having 3 game types will drastically reduce either pool, especially when there are 10+ million (more than most games) if they were equally split. 

also almost every game has multiple modes. Just not BR. Look at regular cod for example. 

 

Edited April 1, 2020 by ghostz

[Tears of the Cows 1,206]

And (it sucks but has lasted) halo has multiple modes. Battlefield. Etc etc. just not br games, which have more players than BF, COD, and Halo

Edited April 1, 2020 by ghostz

[Casual 726]

37 minutes ago, ghostz said:

There are 30 million players playing COD warzone. There are two modes, singles and squads. 
 

they say 4-5 player squads will be coming in the next few months. 
 

I don’t see how having 3 game types will drastically reduce either pool, especially when there are 10+ million (more than most games) if they were equally split. 

also almost every game has multiple modes. Just not BR. Look at regular cod for example. 

 

Alright well to start I misinterpreted what you meant by modes. I thought you meant something other than BR, not just different sizes.

 

That said...

 

There's 30 million right now. It's still fresh and people are in a quarantine. How will that look 2-3 years down the road? On top of that, adding a couple more players might seem like nothing but it does change the map balance quite a bit...they balanced it around people playing in groups of three. I haven't personally played enough of it to judge but most people seem to be saying that the solo mode isn't good as a result. I think unless you're planning to introduce a new map, or at least tweak the existing one, for each squad size you're just diluting the pool and the quality. 

 

I don't personally think regular cod is a good example. Those games don't have longevity, the player base drops substantially after the first month usually and they basically have to release a new game every year. 

 

I think fortnite found a good balance with throwing in gimmick modes every so often. That way the players get funneled there while it's available but ultimately end up back in the same large pool. 

 

36 minutes ago, ghostz said:

And (it sucks but has lasted) halo has multiple modes. Battlefield. Etc etc. just not br games, which have more players than BF, COD, and Halo

Again, not sure I'd categorize any of those games as "lasting". Most of those games are just holding on by the time the time the next one is released. The pools are always small the months leading up to release.

 

Shit, even when MCC came out on PC, the amount of filters and game modes available resulted in pretty long wait times to get into a game. 

 

Most of the truly long lasting (competitive) multiplayer games have a 1-2 core mode. Counter Strike, League, Dota, Fortnite, Overwatch...those games dwarf Battlefield/Halo/CoD (less so CoD) and they do it with one extremely good mode (I know some of them HAVE other modes, but they all have a clear bread and butter mode). 

[jehurey 3,228]

They won't introduce additional modes unless the number of users start going down.

 

They are all currently satisfied with the current modes, so they'll leave it like that for now, and then if they see popularity wane, they will add more.

 

They probably want to keep user engagement busy throughout the whole year.

[Tears of the Cows 1,206]

I understand what you all are saying but I also think they run a risk of losing players that don’t like BR considering it’s 10 minute game followed by 10 minutes of menus/loading/dropping into the game. 
 

fortnite imo should have always had a death match mode, from day one

[Casual 726]

11 minutes ago, ghostz said:

I understand what you all are saying but I also think they run a risk of losing players that don’t like BR considering it’s 10 minute game followed by 10 minutes of menus/loading/dropping into the game. 
 

fortnite imo should have always had a death match mode, from day one

Well l mean Activision in particular won't give a damn about losing those players because they have another game that meets their exact needs. 

 

For Fortnite. The thing is the BR audience is absolutely massive, and they have that audience locked up. The deathmatch audience is smaller (im guessing at least, obviously no numbers there...but even if it isn't....) and is already captured by other games (CoD, BF, Halo, etc). Why would you dedicate resources to making a mode that isn't even the popular thing right now when it's unlikely to be better to what's already out there and likely wont even get you a new audience. It seems smarter to pour your resources into improving/evolving what got you here and keep that massive audience engaged. I think the people who still play deathmatch are probably the type who think Fortnite is kiddy anyway and even if it was decent (it won't be cause fortnites gun mechanics are trash) they wouldn't play it. 

 

 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Casual

[Casual 726]

Truly great multiplayer games are the hardest thing to make for gaming. There's just so many moving parts that go into a solid multiplayer mode with longevity. There's a reason why there's only a couple handfuls of them over the past 20 years. 

[Hot Sauce 2,727]

A rotating, limited game mode is all the rage nowadays. It's not just battle royale games.

[kaz 2,439]

battle royal = the dubstep of gaming   

 

give or take 5 years from now and some other genre will take over. And I hope it will be better than this boring ass garbo.

 

 

 

[Tears of the Cows 1,206]

52 minutes ago, Casual said:

Well l mean Activision in particular won't give a damn about losing those players because they have another game that meets their exact needs. 

 

For Fortnite. The thing is the BR audience is absolutely massive, and they have that audience locked up. The deathmatch audience is smaller (im guessing at least, obviously no numbers there...but even if it isn't....) and is already captured by other games (CoD, BF, Halo, etc). Why would you dedicate resources to making a mode that isn't even the popular thing right now when it's unlikely to be better to what's already out there and likely wont even get you a new audience. It seems smarter to pour your resources into improving/evolving what got you here and keep that massive audience engaged. I think the people who still play deathmatch are probably the type who think Fortnite is kiddy anyway and even if it was decent (it won't be cause fortnites gun mechanics are trash) they wouldn't play it. 

 

 

I just feel switching the game from 150 players (warzone) into 75 v 75 death match would require minimal work and would attract a lot of ppl. They already basically have it done in the pre game lobby while waiting for the game to connect 

 

Edited April 1, 2020 by ghostz

[JonDnD 2,608]

Does cod have singles 

[kaz 2,439]

51 minutes ago, JONBpc said:

Does cod have singles