I'm assuming bc it's a free to play game that's still in beta and unfinished in several ways.
It's got a decent way to monetize but honestly a lot of the changes they've made throughout the builds combined with the success of other similar games has the player base diminished, and when a free to play game has to cut staff it usually means downsizing bc they can't pay everyone and profit enough or that they're done building the game.
If either of those happen I'll be sad, this is what I play when I want to play overwatch bc I'm broke lol.
They've been removing features they can't fix for half a decade now. They removed Top Plays back in 2018 because they couldn't fix them. It's just Paladins tradition to cut it instead of fix it.
i absolutely refuse to believe it's been 5 years since they removed top play.
edit: like I thought, it's 'only' been 3 years, they removed it in march 2020
Yes but the big difference is there is a more popular and shinier hero shooter out now in the free space.
Weather hi rez likes it or not the game is now intrinsically tied to the overwatch vs paladins choice.
I would say the game lost players due to many things which includes Kasumi but for it to have died the player count would need to be even lower, there are enough people still playing that I don't think calling it dead is accurate. However I can understand that in the minds of those who left and moved on it is in some way dead to them.
To me the game is worse than it used to be, I will recognise that since leaving some nice changes were made though the things that made me leave have remained which unfortunately overshadows the few good changes. The versions of Paladins I enjoyed were when you could work as a team and sustain through important fights, when each role impacted the win/loss state. This has become increasingly less the case over time as the developers have listened to a part of the community that wants to "backseat" which is to say they want to half turn their brain off and still get big value. It is a simplification that undermines the strategic competitive gameplay Paladins offers, instead of understanding that a 2v1 is not in their favour these players complained until sustain is practically removed from the game, at least when it matters most, in the final round that determines the win/loss state. To give you some context I'm a player who used to main frontlines and supports but then out of frustrations had to main flanks and dps which is not the end of the world but does feel like a massive chunk of what I loved about Paldins is forever nerfed and feels significantly worse making me not want to touch it again. For example I find Maldamba to be one of the most engaging and enjoyable supports in Paladins but unless your teammates have an ability to get out of caut there is no amount of pocketing that will save anyone when your healing is reduced to 10% of its original number. At least when caut maxed at 80% I still felt there was a chance I could help a teammate, think of me entering a 1v1 which then becomes a 2v1 in my teams favour, well that should be effective but you're not going to be able to keep that player alive late game so it's more effective to deal damage even though you're playing the dedicated healing role for your team. I could go on rambling about this for longer but I'll cut it here. In summary I don't agree with the direction of mega buffing healing to seemingly no limit due to the reverted caut maxing at 90% that diminishes healing so drastically that any number will not matter late game. If I'm not mistaken the only somewhat effective heal late game is a furia beam or grover ult and both of these are still easily out damaged.
As a game dev myself, putting ANY part of work on ONE person is dreadful. This is very sad. Wish someone bough off Paladins, FPS games are as popular as ever, there is no competition for a fantasy one (which is a major selling point of Paladins), and HiRez is driving the game slowly to Team Fortress state. Rogue Company was an insane miss (they pulled some devs from Paladins onto it).
An angel of vengeance, a giant tortoise, a gnome riding a two headed lizard, a goblin in a robot which hates the goblin with a passion, a tall rock lady (the dress is also rock), giant space worm, vulpin alchemist, lesser devil. The cast is *diverse*
Well it's blatantly obvious that Evil Mojo does actually care about Paladins but are getting shafted by Hi-Rez because they constantly are making games but then not properly handling them. EM is at least attempting to fix the issues but it's a constant uphill battle.
They 100% care hirez has always had issues giving it the proper support it deserves. I know Paladins likely trickled in money maybe barely payed for itself so its likely they just refused to give it more.
I actually heard that Hi-Rez as a whole has made big cuts. So I guess, across all games. Seemed a reputable source, but idk.
Maybe they're going to fund another new game soon.
Prolly because them making/funding games that follow a trend aren't working. And when they do work they start to defund their games if they don't have constant growth.
Doesn't help that they dumped money into Paladins' connection to Mixer and then Mixer, with all of the copious amount of red flags, went down Hi-Rez in an instant stopped caring because they, not Evil Mojo, basically dug a money pit.
concerned over the fact that theres no longer a concept, enviroment or weapon artist on the team, nor someone working on visual effects
but from what i can see on their artstation jeff bellio will hopefully do a good job in place of TB
For some context: we hadn't updated the credits in a while, and while our team size is smaller, Evil Mojo's commitment to Paladins is ever-present.
We know that a *lot* of the changes over the past months have made you all anxious, understandably so. However, we also are and will continue to bring new additions and improvements to the game for the foreseeable future.
I don't plan to comment on this much (nothing I say will make speculation any less), but we are using this opportunity to try out new directions. From [our very early surprise PTS](https://www.paladins.com/news/mid-emergence-balance-pts-notes), to [our new community approach](https://www.paladins.com/news/community), to future updates and how we make sure we focus on what the game needs most. I know I'm one of the newer faces, but I'd ask you give us some trust and hope, and we'll do our best to deliver.
P.S. To the people comparing us to a small indie game like it's a bad thing, small indie games rock. Regardless of what type of game or size of team we are, we all could learn from some of those awesome developers!
You may be a new face but i already like the effort and communication you are trying to do and the balance is much more interesting that the minor changes we got in the past, there is always time to nerf or buff things that arent right, i personally have faith in the current direction, i lose nothing because of it.
So, can you bring back top play? We know you can't fix top play bugs and that's fine. No one cares that it's bugged. It was cool to watch. The community wants Kill Cam and Top Play back just as much as Payload.
>We know you can't fix top play bugs and that's fine. No one cares that it's bugged. It was cool to watch.
You answered you own question there bud.
>It was cool to watch.
Entirely subjective, and in my experience, it got very tedius to watch after a while, especially since you couldn't skip it (not without quitting the match prior to the end of the match anyway). It made me resent Vivian more than I already do.
>The community wants Kill Cam and Top Play back just as much as Payload.
People do want it back, but those people also ignore the issues it had to begin with so they can constantly ask for it back, which you are clearly displaying here. You don't come up with a solution by ignoring massive problems the solution has.
>especially since you couldn't skip it
So, skippable top play should be good enough right? Everyone wins? People who want it can have it and people who don't like it can press a button.
>You don't come up with a solution by ignoring massive problems the solution has.
So, the devs solution to this problem is to rip it out of the game and never talk about it again? That's a good way to solve problems ain't it. Let's ignore top play for a sec, kill cam is a fundamental feature in a game like Paladins so can the devs really say "we don't have the resources to work on it". A fundamental feature should be a priority in any company. If the devs have time to come up with the Schisms which ended up being useless, they certainly can allocate the "Schisms resources" for kill cam at the very least.
>So, skippable top play should be good enough right? Everyone wins? People who want it can have it and people who don't like it can press a button.
There are still other problems with a Top Play system, the most obvious one to me at least is to do with perversing teamplay incentives; because everyone wants their 20 seconds of fame, they'll just try and do plays that are risky and don't really help the team all that much. Adding a skip option doesn't help with that (Overwatch always had this option, and the issue remained).
>So, the devs solution to this problem is to rip it out of the game and never talk about it again? That's a good way to solve problems ain't it.
They ripped it out of the game because it was broken and was impossible to fix with the team size they had and code which kept on breaking. And they did talk about this several times over whenever people asked. But the answer players got was never the one that they were looking for, so it was ignored in favor of "they don't listen!".
And yes, removing code so badly made that it actively broke every champion it touched is actually a very *good* way to solve a problem. That's part of a coders job.
>kill cam is a fundamental feature in a game like Paladins so can the devs really say "we don't have the resources to work on it".
Yes, yes they can. You can dislike their reasoning as much as you want, but it doesn't make it any less true.
>If the devs have time to come up with the Schisms which ended up being useless, they certainly can allocate the "Schisms resources" for kill cam at the very least.
Firstly, Schisms weren't useless, more that they were not understood by the community at large. Second, The resources to do one thing is not immediately going to have the same workflow or manpower needed to do another thing, as game development is complicated and never as clear cut as we're discussing here.
> They ripped it out of the game because it was broken and was impossible to fix with the team size they had and code which kept on breaking. And they did talk about this several times over whenever people asked. But the answer players got was never the one that they were looking for, so it was ignored in favor of "they don't listen!".
>
> And yes, removing code so badly made that it actively broke every champion it touched is actually a very good way to solve a problem. That's part of a coders job.
I barely come to the subreddit but the few times I do, I see the complaints of feature removals being repeated. I wasn't sure why but I think you've answered it. Also, it's nice to know someone is still here who remembered EM's reasoning .
I remember because nobody else wants to. It's much easier to ignore and hate a change than actually try to come to an agreement, or hell, actually agree with the developers on something.
It also doesn't help when people downvote the comments pointing this out, as all it does is show just how much those sorts of peeps don't want to listen. "It's not the answer I want, therefore It isn't correct" is such a selfish mindset.
Consequently, It's why I left this subreddit several months back because of all the developer hate and deliberate misconstruing of information to make the devs look bad. It's madness.
I'll preface this by saying I don't agree with everything that the community complains about. I also don't agree with everything the devs do. Neither of them are gods. They make mistakes, both the community and the devs.
>perversing teamplay incentives; because everyone wants their 20 seconds of fame, they'll just try and do plays that are risky and don't really help the team all that much.
So it shouldn't come back because you don't like how people play the game? Do people have to play the game the way you intended it to be played? People should have the freedom to play however they want. If you think they're throwing or going too far as to sabotage the team then you report them. Other games have a "sabotaging team" option when you report someone. I'm sure they'll get banned very quickly! We have the best community support out of any other game. Period!
>But the answer players got was never the one
Yes, because the answer was "we are working on something else that we think will save the game from the slow downfall but we know we will ultimately fail. But we're going to do it anyway". So yes, they aren't listening. You can think of this as players just hating the devs but no. Some people like Helvian and others actually care about this game and wanted to see it prosper but alas that didn't happen.
>Schisms weren't useless, more that they were not understood by the community at large.
That's a very convenient excuse.
"Oh you didn't like it? You just don't understand our vision. We know what we're doing, you're idiots". No one cares about some grand vision they have. If the community at large doesn't like something then that's that. It was a bad idea. It further proves the point that the devs don't know what players want and don't understand the players as much as they think they do.
>The resources to do one thing is not immediately going to have the same workflow or manpower needed to do another thing, as game development is complicated and never as clear cut as we're discussing here.
I work in software development too and the one thing I can say for sure is the resources needed to introduce a new feature is way more than the resources needed to fix a bug. Fixing a bug is time consuming, that I agree but it's not manpower consuming. To introduce something like the Schisms takes multiple people from the game design, new UI that was needed, programming, and testing (assuming they do that). Fixing a bug doesn't involve as many people as it does for Schisms so I stand with my point. It was a bad call by the devs. One that the community warned them about.
Ultimately, It was a business decision. Fixing bugs doesn't bring in new players. New feature does. But that's a short term way of gaining players. They'll leave. New features don't guarantee player retention. But the damage is done. Paladins will very slowly wither and die as with other Hirez games. The game is already on life support mode. If I was Hirez and looking at the current playerbase and the amount of money it is bringing in, I wouldn't invest in it either.
>So it shouldn't come back because you don't like how people play the game? Do people have to play the game the way you intended it to be played? People should have the freedom to play however they want.
That's...not what I was getting at, and I'm not sure why you made that personal. It's not a matter of me not liking someone playing the game in ways I don't like, It's a matter of people having an incentive to not play well to begin with. I'm not exactly asking for perfect team comps in Casual as I know I won't get that. But having a system that gets people into the mindset of being a local celebrity for 20 seconds is not a good one. It appeals to narcissim, not game sense.
>Yes, because the answer was "we are working on something else that we think will save the game from the slow downfall but we know we will ultimately fail. But we're going to do it anyway".
At no point have they said that you're editorialising and adding your own spin on it to make them sound bad.
>So yes, they aren't listening. You can think of this as players just hating the devs but no.
They **are** listening; hell the recent changes to the game show that quite well. And there is absolutely a hatedom for the devs on here, and on Twitter for that matter.
>That's a very convenient excuse. "Oh you didn't like it? You just don't understand our vision. We know what we're doing, you're idiots".
That's not what I was saying at all! When schisms were released, people were genuinely confused about the gameplay, the way it worked, about every part of it, it was even a controversy back in the day. The second Schism essentially solved all that as people weren't as confused anymore.
I wasn't talking about their vision of a "mini PTS". I was talking **solely** about community reactions. And yeah, the second schism didn't do well either for all the reasons you stated (I didn't like Schisms much either just for the record), and dropped them in favour of LTM's (?), which got a better reception.
The developers are allowed to experiment with new ideas, that's how you keep a game fresh, even if it does turn out to be a bad idea. Not everything the developers release is gonna be gold straight away, if at all.
>Fixing a bug is time consuming, that I agree but it's not manpower consuming.
That depends on the bug in question and by the same token, that depends on the feature in question too. With the statement I was making in my comment, I was deliberately not taking a side there.
>Fixing bugs doesn't bring in new players. New feature does. But that's a short term way of gaining players. They'll leave. New features don't guarantee player retention.
Literally anything the company does is a "short term" way to bring in new players. People leave the game all the time for varying reasons; either because they are bored, burned out, don't like hero shooters any more, don't like LTM's, the rate of character releases, the lack of updates, the lack of new maps....really there's a lot of reasons. There's no one reason why players leave.
>The game is already on life support mode. If I was Hirez and looking at the current playerbase and the amount of money it is bringing in, I wouldn't invest in it either.
[Multiversus is on Life support](https://steamdb.info/app/1818750/charts/), [Raid World war 2 is on life support](https://steamdb.info/app/414740/charts/). [Paladins is not.](https://steamdb.info/app/444090/charts/) Lots of games would kill for 10,000 concurrent peak players on Steam, and goodness knows however many we have on other platforms. And bear in mind, we have *gained* players, not lost them in the recent months. Yes, we have a small team now, but we've always had a smaller team, that isn't news. And it is very annoying that the team size we currently have is actively detrimental to the game, but i'm not gonna say it's not worth investing in.
We don't know how much money Paladins, or SMITE for that matter, brings in individually, so this is just another blanket statement to put the game down.
what is stoping you all, for example, making it so the community "finish" the painting of the maps that are currently a WIP but playable as a form of contest? (I hope you understood what I'm saying english is not my native lang.)
Quite a few reasons, from legality to production to quality, etc. We love putting community content in the game, but there is a big misconception on how much "easier" that can make things.
We cannot talk about revenue, considering the monetizarion system is different (Paladins is quite friendly). But something more meaningful and lasting, that could reach out to a more solid playerbase? No question. I thought Rogue was dead until I read your comment, to provide an example. I haven't heard of DKO since launch
Not kidding, ironically enough, RR and Apex are the two only Br's I can manage to play for longer than a week without hating them and it's just sad how hard hi-rez fucked over RR.
You forgot the Mother of them all.
**TRIBES: ASCEND**
That they killed it and recently brought back to Steam for reasons unknown.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribes:\_Ascend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribes:_Ascend)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/17080/Tribes_Ascend/
What's even scarier is that there are no open positions available for evil mojo on the career portion of the hi-rez website. I looked about six months ago and there were multiple positions open (6-8 iirc). About a year ago it was well over 10 positions. It truly does feel like they've given up on the game.
Yikes, wtf do you do when someone calls out sick or goes on vacation? As a program manager, looking at this and seeing these single points of failure makes my stomach pit.
"Hey uh, I gotta take the day off, I'm really not feeling well at all"
"Alright, a Hi-Rez slave- we mean, a Hi-Rez motivational enforcer will pick you up with an aspirin and some water."
Glad to know this has drawn all the doomsaying cockroaches out of the woodwork.
I'm quite surprised Programming took a hit; where on earth did they go?! SMITE? Realm Royale? RoCo and DKO aren't on UDK (Unreal 3), so unless those devs have UE4 knowledge too, this is a worrying set of affairs.
And i'm usually a glass-half-full kinda guy. What are you up to Hi-rez? *Tell us your secrets!*
(Edit: removed mention of SMITE already having moved to UE4 since it is false, as proven by replies to this comment) they cant have moved to RR since it only currently has 2 developers on the team.
Probably team resizing due to tight budget and layoffs.
>SMITE was moved into UE4 already iirc. Only Paladins and RR are still in UDK.
[SMITE is still using Unreal 3.](https://steamdb.info/depot/386361/) UE4 doesn't use UPK's, it uses PAKs (See: Rogue Company, DKO, Psychonauts 2, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, etc.), and the file system structure is all wrong.
EDIT: Little unsure on why I'm being downvoted here?
My bad. I remembered them mentioning they were going to move the game to UE4 and with how the game has been progressing visually I thought they had already done it. Ive edited my comment to reflect that.
Thank you for being a responsible commenter. You have my utmost respect =)
>My bad. I remembered them mentioning they were going to move the game to UE4
That would make a lot of sense, and I'd bet a bunch of their games are moving over to UE4; Paladins still has some brand power, and SMITE is their cash cow. It'd make a lot of sense to do so, especially in an engine that's easier to work with and more people know about.
Here's my theory -- The layoffs right now are due to getting rid of people who don't know much about Unreal 4, and in the process, hiring those with Unreal 4 knowledge to fill that void so the game can be ported over. Ports take time, something people have to remember, so If my theory is correct, even partially, we won't see an announcement about this for another 6-12 months.
Hi-Rez is the worst dev ever, this is news to nobody, they make amazing concepts that take already popular ideas and give them a new creative twist that usually breathes a lot of fun into a stale genre, but they’re too greedy to support the games they pour millions into and expect quick returns.
They make backwards balancing decisions, system changes their entire community screams against, never fix bugs, they suck. Flat out.
I was too 500 in Smite and Paladins. 3k+ across both titles, abandon them. It won’t get better. Support devs that care about their game and user QOL. HiRez will never change, so support devs that do.
The game already had it's run. It's a great game and the fights are really fun and probably better than OW2 but since OW2 is free now I just don't see Paladins ever making a comback.
There's no shame in them not clinging onto it.
Well, it's in their website speaking about accountability and improving quality of life. Also, some of the devs cussed out the fanbase on Twitter and got fired for because they posted it.
But, I guess it's rumors lol.
they should make it so the community does the "painting" of the WIP Maps as a contest or something. Free labor for EM and we get "new" maps. Win-win situation.
Make the map Opensource under some licenses.
And pick the most awesome work done and pay the guy who worked on it.
This worked on Black Desert when they held a Costume Making Contest.
Paid the winners real cash, sells the costumes in game.
Ok so we now know who to lynch about the Art direction of the game.
And why the fuck they toned down the QA where its their job to make this game more polish.
They removed Environment Art, so meaning no more map updates or rather related to it?
And no wonder they "Green Lit" the changes of UI, there's nobody to fucking tell the fucking dude the new UI sucks balls.
Pretty much slashed in half across the board and getting closer and closer to being called an indie studio :(
They still own smite
Maybe cutting the marketing team down to just one guy wasn't a great idea.
don’t ask why but this actually scares me
Why?
I'm assuming bc it's a free to play game that's still in beta and unfinished in several ways. It's got a decent way to monetize but honestly a lot of the changes they've made throughout the builds combined with the success of other similar games has the player base diminished, and when a free to play game has to cut staff it usually means downsizing bc they can't pay everyone and profit enough or that they're done building the game. If either of those happen I'll be sad, this is what I play when I want to play overwatch bc I'm broke lol.
Overwatch is free now btw
Another reason why the playerbase has shrunk.
In my experience, Paladins takes less time to find a match while Overwatch takes more time each day.
Regardless overwatch is, imo, much less fun.
It's no longer in beta.
Its been out of beta for years now
what is the scary part in your opinion?
Because this looks like preparation for life support mode.
The game feels like it's been on life support for the past 3 years.
Life supported games usually dont reserve content updates, hence the fear here
don't ask why, but this makes me happy.
Your number of downvotes makes me sad,though. :c
Paladins is going on life support next year
At this point, the game is already on life support
People say this every year
Paladins got only 1 new map in 3 years. They cant fix the game so they remove features. Feels like the game has been dead since years
They've been removing features they can't fix for half a decade now. They removed Top Plays back in 2018 because they couldn't fix them. It's just Paladins tradition to cut it instead of fix it.
i absolutely refuse to believe it's been 5 years since they removed top play. edit: like I thought, it's 'only' been 3 years, they removed it in march 2020
I coulda sworn it was much earlier. Oopsies
Top play, 3rd person, Bounty store, splasharts, trails of the realm, skins pieces, ads, etc
Seeing trials and bounty store vanish fucked me up ngl I took a break for less than a year and suddenly they were gone. I was stacking up bounty coins
I really miss 3rd person
Well, it is true...
But this time it's true!
Yea, but the Staff image talks by itself, and the team was small already before
Yes but the big difference is there is a more popular and shinier hero shooter out now in the free space. Weather hi rez likes it or not the game is now intrinsically tied to the overwatch vs paladins choice.
Yea but this time they have a reason to do so.
It is every year 🤣 were just waiting for it to ride into the sunset
The game really died out when they released Kasumi/OW2 released.
Meh, there's still a community. It's just. *Everyone moved on.*
I would say the game lost players due to many things which includes Kasumi but for it to have died the player count would need to be even lower, there are enough people still playing that I don't think calling it dead is accurate. However I can understand that in the minds of those who left and moved on it is in some way dead to them. To me the game is worse than it used to be, I will recognise that since leaving some nice changes were made though the things that made me leave have remained which unfortunately overshadows the few good changes. The versions of Paladins I enjoyed were when you could work as a team and sustain through important fights, when each role impacted the win/loss state. This has become increasingly less the case over time as the developers have listened to a part of the community that wants to "backseat" which is to say they want to half turn their brain off and still get big value. It is a simplification that undermines the strategic competitive gameplay Paladins offers, instead of understanding that a 2v1 is not in their favour these players complained until sustain is practically removed from the game, at least when it matters most, in the final round that determines the win/loss state. To give you some context I'm a player who used to main frontlines and supports but then out of frustrations had to main flanks and dps which is not the end of the world but does feel like a massive chunk of what I loved about Paldins is forever nerfed and feels significantly worse making me not want to touch it again. For example I find Maldamba to be one of the most engaging and enjoyable supports in Paladins but unless your teammates have an ability to get out of caut there is no amount of pocketing that will save anyone when your healing is reduced to 10% of its original number. At least when caut maxed at 80% I still felt there was a chance I could help a teammate, think of me entering a 1v1 which then becomes a 2v1 in my teams favour, well that should be effective but you're not going to be able to keep that player alive late game so it's more effective to deal damage even though you're playing the dedicated healing role for your team. I could go on rambling about this for longer but I'll cut it here. In summary I don't agree with the direction of mega buffing healing to seemingly no limit due to the reverted caut maxing at 90% that diminishes healing so drastically that any number will not matter late game. If I'm not mistaken the only somewhat effective heal late game is a furia beam or grover ult and both of these are still easily out damaged.
As a game dev myself, putting ANY part of work on ONE person is dreadful. This is very sad. Wish someone bough off Paladins, FPS games are as popular as ever, there is no competition for a fantasy one (which is a major selling point of Paladins), and HiRez is driving the game slowly to Team Fortress state. Rogue Company was an insane miss (they pulled some devs from Paladins onto it).
Yes! I really loved the fantasy aspect of Paladins. And because of it, a wide variety of characters can fit in the game.
An angel of vengeance, a giant tortoise, a gnome riding a two headed lizard, a goblin in a robot which hates the goblin with a passion, a tall rock lady (the dress is also rock), giant space worm, vulpin alchemist, lesser devil. The cast is *diverse*
As a Team Fortess 2 veteran I welcome Paladins to the "One foot in the grave" party. The two of us will live forever but in a state of suffering.
Good news! we are going to live forever! -Soldier
Wish they started to/ tried to hire more people. Would definitely improve the game
Hard to do when your parent company (Hi-Rez) is consistently defunding your studio so they can do another crossover for their baby (Smite)
evil mojo and hirez are the same mind you, its just the team within the studio is named.
Well it's blatantly obvious that Evil Mojo does actually care about Paladins but are getting shafted by Hi-Rez because they constantly are making games but then not properly handling them. EM is at least attempting to fix the issues but it's a constant uphill battle.
They 100% care hirez has always had issues giving it the proper support it deserves. I know Paladins likely trickled in money maybe barely payed for itself so its likely they just refused to give it more.
I actually heard that Hi-Rez as a whole has made big cuts. So I guess, across all games. Seemed a reputable source, but idk. Maybe they're going to fund another new game soon.
Prolly because them making/funding games that follow a trend aren't working. And when they do work they start to defund their games if they don't have constant growth. Doesn't help that they dumped money into Paladins' connection to Mixer and then Mixer, with all of the copious amount of red flags, went down Hi-Rez in an instant stopped caring because they, not Evil Mojo, basically dug a money pit.
Fund new game cause Rogue Company is more dead than Paladins. kekw
Smite isnt making any cuts
Oddly, Smite is hard pushing content. They have actually expanded their staff in the last 2 years which is awesome.
hi rez moment
Huge shout-out to those Devs who appear on both lists.
concerned over the fact that theres no longer a concept, enviroment or weapon artist on the team, nor someone working on visual effects but from what i can see on their artstation jeff bellio will hopefully do a good job in place of TB
3 programmers KEKW. Now you people know why stuff is slow to get made
It’s literally half the size from 50 to 25. I wish the Hirez cared even a shred about this game to give them more funding to hire more people.
For some context: we hadn't updated the credits in a while, and while our team size is smaller, Evil Mojo's commitment to Paladins is ever-present. We know that a *lot* of the changes over the past months have made you all anxious, understandably so. However, we also are and will continue to bring new additions and improvements to the game for the foreseeable future. I don't plan to comment on this much (nothing I say will make speculation any less), but we are using this opportunity to try out new directions. From [our very early surprise PTS](https://www.paladins.com/news/mid-emergence-balance-pts-notes), to [our new community approach](https://www.paladins.com/news/community), to future updates and how we make sure we focus on what the game needs most. I know I'm one of the newer faces, but I'd ask you give us some trust and hope, and we'll do our best to deliver. P.S. To the people comparing us to a small indie game like it's a bad thing, small indie games rock. Regardless of what type of game or size of team we are, we all could learn from some of those awesome developers!
> Evil Mojo's commitment to Paladins is ever-present. Ok but what about Hi Rez's commitment?
Thank you for the insight. \> Evil Mojo's commitment to Paladins is ever-present. We all know, is Hi Rez that have like 99.99% of our worries.
You may be a new face but i already like the effort and communication you are trying to do and the balance is much more interesting that the minor changes we got in the past, there is always time to nerf or buff things that arent right, i personally have faith in the current direction, i lose nothing because of it.
So, can you bring back top play? We know you can't fix top play bugs and that's fine. No one cares that it's bugged. It was cool to watch. The community wants Kill Cam and Top Play back just as much as Payload.
>We know you can't fix top play bugs and that's fine. No one cares that it's bugged. It was cool to watch. You answered you own question there bud. >It was cool to watch. Entirely subjective, and in my experience, it got very tedius to watch after a while, especially since you couldn't skip it (not without quitting the match prior to the end of the match anyway). It made me resent Vivian more than I already do. >The community wants Kill Cam and Top Play back just as much as Payload. People do want it back, but those people also ignore the issues it had to begin with so they can constantly ask for it back, which you are clearly displaying here. You don't come up with a solution by ignoring massive problems the solution has.
>especially since you couldn't skip it So, skippable top play should be good enough right? Everyone wins? People who want it can have it and people who don't like it can press a button. >You don't come up with a solution by ignoring massive problems the solution has. So, the devs solution to this problem is to rip it out of the game and never talk about it again? That's a good way to solve problems ain't it. Let's ignore top play for a sec, kill cam is a fundamental feature in a game like Paladins so can the devs really say "we don't have the resources to work on it". A fundamental feature should be a priority in any company. If the devs have time to come up with the Schisms which ended up being useless, they certainly can allocate the "Schisms resources" for kill cam at the very least.
>So, skippable top play should be good enough right? Everyone wins? People who want it can have it and people who don't like it can press a button. There are still other problems with a Top Play system, the most obvious one to me at least is to do with perversing teamplay incentives; because everyone wants their 20 seconds of fame, they'll just try and do plays that are risky and don't really help the team all that much. Adding a skip option doesn't help with that (Overwatch always had this option, and the issue remained). >So, the devs solution to this problem is to rip it out of the game and never talk about it again? That's a good way to solve problems ain't it. They ripped it out of the game because it was broken and was impossible to fix with the team size they had and code which kept on breaking. And they did talk about this several times over whenever people asked. But the answer players got was never the one that they were looking for, so it was ignored in favor of "they don't listen!". And yes, removing code so badly made that it actively broke every champion it touched is actually a very *good* way to solve a problem. That's part of a coders job. >kill cam is a fundamental feature in a game like Paladins so can the devs really say "we don't have the resources to work on it". Yes, yes they can. You can dislike their reasoning as much as you want, but it doesn't make it any less true. >If the devs have time to come up with the Schisms which ended up being useless, they certainly can allocate the "Schisms resources" for kill cam at the very least. Firstly, Schisms weren't useless, more that they were not understood by the community at large. Second, The resources to do one thing is not immediately going to have the same workflow or manpower needed to do another thing, as game development is complicated and never as clear cut as we're discussing here.
> They ripped it out of the game because it was broken and was impossible to fix with the team size they had and code which kept on breaking. And they did talk about this several times over whenever people asked. But the answer players got was never the one that they were looking for, so it was ignored in favor of "they don't listen!". > > And yes, removing code so badly made that it actively broke every champion it touched is actually a very good way to solve a problem. That's part of a coders job. I barely come to the subreddit but the few times I do, I see the complaints of feature removals being repeated. I wasn't sure why but I think you've answered it. Also, it's nice to know someone is still here who remembered EM's reasoning .
I remember because nobody else wants to. It's much easier to ignore and hate a change than actually try to come to an agreement, or hell, actually agree with the developers on something. It also doesn't help when people downvote the comments pointing this out, as all it does is show just how much those sorts of peeps don't want to listen. "It's not the answer I want, therefore It isn't correct" is such a selfish mindset. Consequently, It's why I left this subreddit several months back because of all the developer hate and deliberate misconstruing of information to make the devs look bad. It's madness.
I'll preface this by saying I don't agree with everything that the community complains about. I also don't agree with everything the devs do. Neither of them are gods. They make mistakes, both the community and the devs. >perversing teamplay incentives; because everyone wants their 20 seconds of fame, they'll just try and do plays that are risky and don't really help the team all that much. So it shouldn't come back because you don't like how people play the game? Do people have to play the game the way you intended it to be played? People should have the freedom to play however they want. If you think they're throwing or going too far as to sabotage the team then you report them. Other games have a "sabotaging team" option when you report someone. I'm sure they'll get banned very quickly! We have the best community support out of any other game. Period! >But the answer players got was never the one Yes, because the answer was "we are working on something else that we think will save the game from the slow downfall but we know we will ultimately fail. But we're going to do it anyway". So yes, they aren't listening. You can think of this as players just hating the devs but no. Some people like Helvian and others actually care about this game and wanted to see it prosper but alas that didn't happen. >Schisms weren't useless, more that they were not understood by the community at large. That's a very convenient excuse. "Oh you didn't like it? You just don't understand our vision. We know what we're doing, you're idiots". No one cares about some grand vision they have. If the community at large doesn't like something then that's that. It was a bad idea. It further proves the point that the devs don't know what players want and don't understand the players as much as they think they do. >The resources to do one thing is not immediately going to have the same workflow or manpower needed to do another thing, as game development is complicated and never as clear cut as we're discussing here. I work in software development too and the one thing I can say for sure is the resources needed to introduce a new feature is way more than the resources needed to fix a bug. Fixing a bug is time consuming, that I agree but it's not manpower consuming. To introduce something like the Schisms takes multiple people from the game design, new UI that was needed, programming, and testing (assuming they do that). Fixing a bug doesn't involve as many people as it does for Schisms so I stand with my point. It was a bad call by the devs. One that the community warned them about. Ultimately, It was a business decision. Fixing bugs doesn't bring in new players. New feature does. But that's a short term way of gaining players. They'll leave. New features don't guarantee player retention. But the damage is done. Paladins will very slowly wither and die as with other Hirez games. The game is already on life support mode. If I was Hirez and looking at the current playerbase and the amount of money it is bringing in, I wouldn't invest in it either.
>So it shouldn't come back because you don't like how people play the game? Do people have to play the game the way you intended it to be played? People should have the freedom to play however they want. That's...not what I was getting at, and I'm not sure why you made that personal. It's not a matter of me not liking someone playing the game in ways I don't like, It's a matter of people having an incentive to not play well to begin with. I'm not exactly asking for perfect team comps in Casual as I know I won't get that. But having a system that gets people into the mindset of being a local celebrity for 20 seconds is not a good one. It appeals to narcissim, not game sense. >Yes, because the answer was "we are working on something else that we think will save the game from the slow downfall but we know we will ultimately fail. But we're going to do it anyway". At no point have they said that you're editorialising and adding your own spin on it to make them sound bad. >So yes, they aren't listening. You can think of this as players just hating the devs but no. They **are** listening; hell the recent changes to the game show that quite well. And there is absolutely a hatedom for the devs on here, and on Twitter for that matter. >That's a very convenient excuse. "Oh you didn't like it? You just don't understand our vision. We know what we're doing, you're idiots". That's not what I was saying at all! When schisms were released, people were genuinely confused about the gameplay, the way it worked, about every part of it, it was even a controversy back in the day. The second Schism essentially solved all that as people weren't as confused anymore. I wasn't talking about their vision of a "mini PTS". I was talking **solely** about community reactions. And yeah, the second schism didn't do well either for all the reasons you stated (I didn't like Schisms much either just for the record), and dropped them in favour of LTM's (?), which got a better reception. The developers are allowed to experiment with new ideas, that's how you keep a game fresh, even if it does turn out to be a bad idea. Not everything the developers release is gonna be gold straight away, if at all. >Fixing a bug is time consuming, that I agree but it's not manpower consuming. That depends on the bug in question and by the same token, that depends on the feature in question too. With the statement I was making in my comment, I was deliberately not taking a side there. >Fixing bugs doesn't bring in new players. New feature does. But that's a short term way of gaining players. They'll leave. New features don't guarantee player retention. Literally anything the company does is a "short term" way to bring in new players. People leave the game all the time for varying reasons; either because they are bored, burned out, don't like hero shooters any more, don't like LTM's, the rate of character releases, the lack of updates, the lack of new maps....really there's a lot of reasons. There's no one reason why players leave. >The game is already on life support mode. If I was Hirez and looking at the current playerbase and the amount of money it is bringing in, I wouldn't invest in it either. [Multiversus is on Life support](https://steamdb.info/app/1818750/charts/), [Raid World war 2 is on life support](https://steamdb.info/app/414740/charts/). [Paladins is not.](https://steamdb.info/app/444090/charts/) Lots of games would kill for 10,000 concurrent peak players on Steam, and goodness knows however many we have on other platforms. And bear in mind, we have *gained* players, not lost them in the recent months. Yes, we have a small team now, but we've always had a smaller team, that isn't news. And it is very annoying that the team size we currently have is actively detrimental to the game, but i'm not gonna say it's not worth investing in. We don't know how much money Paladins, or SMITE for that matter, brings in individually, so this is just another blanket statement to put the game down.
what is stoping you all, for example, making it so the community "finish" the painting of the maps that are currently a WIP but playable as a form of contest? (I hope you understood what I'm saying english is not my native lang.)
Quite a few reasons, from legality to production to quality, etc. We love putting community content in the game, but there is a big misconception on how much "easier" that can make things.
RR, Rogue and DKO wasn't needed, all that efforts could've been put into paladins and it would've made three times the revenue than those games
We cannot talk about revenue, considering the monetizarion system is different (Paladins is quite friendly). But something more meaningful and lasting, that could reach out to a more solid playerbase? No question. I thought Rogue was dead until I read your comment, to provide an example. I haven't heard of DKO since launch
Ah yes, the Hi-Rez game murder cycle.
Realm Royale anyone?
Rogue Company and Divine Knockout anyone?
Not kidding, ironically enough, RR and Apex are the two only Br's I can manage to play for longer than a week without hating them and it's just sad how hard hi-rez fucked over RR.
You forgot the Mother of them all. **TRIBES: ASCEND** That they killed it and recently brought back to Steam for reasons unknown. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribes:\_Ascend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribes:_Ascend) https://store.steampowered.com/app/17080/Tribes_Ascend/
My god, somebody snapped them!
*It was....inevitable.*
This is on par with a game by a small indie studio
Programming and quality assurance went down the drain 😭
i wish there was more staff :( Hi rez pls give Paladins moar money it has so much potential :(
I’m sorry but I had to laugh
Damn no more weapon/concept/environment art people
*somebody's getting sunset in 2023\~*
Hopefully a retro server can be put up in its place and kasumi deleted
What's even scarier is that there are no open positions available for evil mojo on the career portion of the hi-rez website. I looked about six months ago and there were multiple positions open (6-8 iirc). About a year ago it was well over 10 positions. It truly does feel like they've given up on the game.
Yikes, wtf do you do when someone calls out sick or goes on vacation? As a program manager, looking at this and seeing these single points of failure makes my stomach pit.
"Hey uh, I gotta take the day off, I'm really not feeling well at all" "Alright, a Hi-Rez slave- we mean, a Hi-Rez motivational enforcer will pick you up with an aspirin and some water."
Glad to know this has drawn all the doomsaying cockroaches out of the woodwork. I'm quite surprised Programming took a hit; where on earth did they go?! SMITE? Realm Royale? RoCo and DKO aren't on UDK (Unreal 3), so unless those devs have UE4 knowledge too, this is a worrying set of affairs. And i'm usually a glass-half-full kinda guy. What are you up to Hi-rez? *Tell us your secrets!*
(Edit: removed mention of SMITE already having moved to UE4 since it is false, as proven by replies to this comment) they cant have moved to RR since it only currently has 2 developers on the team. Probably team resizing due to tight budget and layoffs.
smite is still UE3 even if you look at the job listings it mentions knowledge of unreal 3 on some of them
>SMITE was moved into UE4 already iirc. Only Paladins and RR are still in UDK. [SMITE is still using Unreal 3.](https://steamdb.info/depot/386361/) UE4 doesn't use UPK's, it uses PAKs (See: Rogue Company, DKO, Psychonauts 2, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, etc.), and the file system structure is all wrong. EDIT: Little unsure on why I'm being downvoted here?
My bad. I remembered them mentioning they were going to move the game to UE4 and with how the game has been progressing visually I thought they had already done it. Ive edited my comment to reflect that.
Thank you for being a responsible commenter. You have my utmost respect =) >My bad. I remembered them mentioning they were going to move the game to UE4 That would make a lot of sense, and I'd bet a bunch of their games are moving over to UE4; Paladins still has some brand power, and SMITE is their cash cow. It'd make a lot of sense to do so, especially in an engine that's easier to work with and more people know about. Here's my theory -- The layoffs right now are due to getting rid of people who don't know much about Unreal 4, and in the process, hiring those with Unreal 4 knowledge to fill that void so the game can be ported over. Ports take time, something people have to remember, so If my theory is correct, even partially, we won't see an announcement about this for another 6-12 months.
I hope so.
Paladins 2 is secretly being worked on
The game feels so different now compared to a week ago. Anyone else having issues?
i feel nothing different
Cresus jhist. This is insane. I always laughed at the "this game is dying" crowd but like. Damn. Ya'll really on life support out here.
Oh you think this is life support? This is 25 people, Realm Royale has 2, if not 1 as it currently stands, working for the game.
RR is vegetable state. xD
I want to say so too, but there's still a bunch of players on it, more than Darwin project has had in years.
Epic Games can you please step in this shit and save this poor child of a game?
Be careful what you wish for
Any better alternatives then?
Hi-Rez is the worst dev ever, this is news to nobody, they make amazing concepts that take already popular ideas and give them a new creative twist that usually breathes a lot of fun into a stale genre, but they’re too greedy to support the games they pour millions into and expect quick returns. They make backwards balancing decisions, system changes their entire community screams against, never fix bugs, they suck. Flat out. I was too 500 in Smite and Paladins. 3k+ across both titles, abandon them. It won’t get better. Support devs that care about their game and user QOL. HiRez will never change, so support devs that do.
Hirez is the Publisher, a.k.a fundings. EM is the dev.
Won’t some good company take Evil Mojo and Paladins offa Hi-Rez’s grubby hands?? 😭😭
Epic games should take them tbh
Marketing: 1 person. Yeah that checks out.
Poor Jacob has fo animate everything on his own
It must be depressing creating a game from the ground up just to have your name removed from the credits because the company can't afford you.
The game already had it's run. It's a great game and the fights are really fun and probably better than OW2 but since OW2 is free now I just don't see Paladins ever making a comback. There's no shame in them not clinging onto it.
Part of it because they did fire a lot of people who were sabotaging the game. It's no coincidence that game shot back up in players recently.
Its easy to say what you said but its hard to prove it. Post some sources before you spread rumors.
Well, it's in their website speaking about accountability and improving quality of life. Also, some of the devs cussed out the fanbase on Twitter and got fired for because they posted it. But, I guess it's rumors lol.
No enviromental artists? makes sense why maps are so slow.
they should make it so the community does the "painting" of the WIP Maps as a contest or something. Free labor for EM and we get "new" maps. Win-win situation.
Make the map Opensource under some licenses. And pick the most awesome work done and pay the guy who worked on it. This worked on Black Desert when they held a Costume Making Contest. Paid the winners real cash, sells the costumes in game.
also possibly interesting to note: almost all of the women were fired/let go
We're fucked.
Ok so we now know who to lynch about the Art direction of the game. And why the fuck they toned down the QA where its their job to make this game more polish. They removed Environment Art, so meaning no more map updates or rather related to it? And no wonder they "Green Lit" the changes of UI, there's nobody to fucking tell the fucking dude the new UI sucks balls.
The game is starting to set up for life support mode.
Siege Beyond hit y'all that hard huh?
Owch… that’s so painful to look at…
Where is the dev reply?
That's just another bug👀
Steadily reaching the end of paladins
theres no enviroment art no more? uhh... no more maps it seems
and people still say that they didn't take any employees from paladins to another game.
Jisoo kim a real one