[UPDATE 2.0] Evolve closes its doors once and for all

The world of video games is a place where the concept of the end appears often and willingly but remains tangible in strange ways. In the perspective of a gamer single player the end can be framed within the action of removing the disk / uninstalling the application from your device; in the world multiplayer the end is closer to a small computer apocalypse that culminates in a simple event: shutdown of servers.

A Evolve just this is about to happen, as the last descending act of the parable that characterized the success of the title. The shutdown of dedicated servers will take place after the summer, the 3 September 2018.

Evolve, a divisive title.

Evolve, for those unfamiliar with it, a video game multiplayer cooperative / competitive for groups from five players; four of these interpret the good, of the hunters who have the task of eliminating the fifth player, the beast.

The title, developed by Turtle Rock Studios (authors of Left 4 Dead , not exactly rookies) and released in 2015 per Windows, PS4 and XBOX One is about to die for good. This is the latest chapter in a dwindling success that turned the title from stand-alone to video game free to play; this last transformation was the result of a great attempt to save the title from the clutches of oblivion, an attempt which unfortunately seems to have failed in the worst way.

Evolve, despite the compliments of the press of the time, he always had problems of a technical and playful nature: server problems and a largely imperfect balance were important reasons for shame for the title towards its audience; in addition to the public, the Publisher 2K Games also ended up despising the title during 2016 as not in line with company standards.

The closure of dedicated servers will transform the world of Evolve into a barren desert with no players; users will be left with the option to play through the mode peer-to-peer multiplayer di Legacy evolve; the rest will be abandoned tooblivion of time, free to play version included.

Why did Evolve collapse?

Evolve, despite its gameplay merits, has been stigmatized over the years due to a marketing model management that put too much pressure on DLCs and extra paid content. Starting as a paid title and then becoming free-to-play, with also important changes to the gameplay, has certainly greatly dissatisfied the first pool of users that had been created over time.

Diventato free to play,  Evolve, to beat cash, he had to focus on a fragmentation of the extra contents, be they playful or aesthetic, in DLC and extra packages. The price and quantity of these DLCs has definitively dissatisfied the public which ended up decreasing more and more, already going to thin the narrow playerbase that had remained in the title.

Evolve thus dies, amidst marketing and balancing problems, loved and hated, the son of an increasingly competitive market that leaves less and less space for experiments and minor titles.

Below, the list of contents that will remain accessible to the public through Legacy Evolve.

 

• Multiplayer –
  • Peer-to-peer multiplayer: Players will be able to team up and play against each other through peer-to-peer matchmaking. Players are also able to use the party-up feature to create games.
    • Quick Play
      • Hunt
      • Nest
      • Rescue
      • Defend
      • Sand
    • Evacuation
    • Custom games
  • Single Player (solo vs. AI) –
    • Evacuation
    • Quick Play
    • Custom games
  • My2K login access
  • Access to all hunters, monsters, purchased DLC, skins & player badges

[UPDATE 2.0] What did the developers of Evolve think?

The statements of some developers on the reasons why the title did not work are very recent. Up reddit A long series of posts and comments appeared, led by the designer and writer Matt Colville, designed to explain and motivate some of Evolve's backstories that have led him to where he is now.

“We believed we were working on an alien world full of exploration, we believed we had to make it beautiful to make it attractive to the players. There were more artists than programmers, and during pre-production we watched nature documentaries and studied anatomy and biology, all to try and create this alien world in the best possible way.

The team we had during the very first phase of development hoped to create a cooperative video game where four players would join forces to explore an alien world; in my original idea this title would have brought home some recognition, like the game of the decade! Nobody finances the project, in any way. ”He began Matt Colville.

To bring Evolvand to a publisher Turtle Rock Studios had to focus on something particular, a unique gameplay feature that guided the title in some way. Colville and associates decided to focus on asymmetrical multiplayer, a 4vs1 in which they firmly believed.

During the early stages of development the various prototypes pulled out of the studio, although they still suffered from a certain instability were fun and functional; enough to believe in the future of the project without much hesitation.

“A friend of mine said, very early in the development of the title, that the magic of the title lay in the ability that players had to apply the typical identification of the RPG to the gameplay of Evolve; this magic, however, was in danger of being supplanted by competitiveness and the desire to win. This precarious equilibrium was broken very soon and we could no longer recover it in any way. " continuous Colvin.

The biggest problem of Evolvand lies precisely in its characteristic feature, the asymmetrical multiplayer 4vs1, according to Matt Colvin himself.

“All the heroes and monsters in the title had unique and different mechanics; this huge variety made the balance of the title a real hell as soon as we thought about the inclusion of new monsters and heroes. We had to continually weaken the things we had in mind: take Lazarus, for example, who in his original version broke practically all the rules of the game and was heavily neutered; the same goes for the traps of Maggie who often and willingly combined real messes within the games during the testing phase.

The absence of clearly visible skills, levels or statistics helped to underline the huge disparity between monsters and heroes and the consequent balancing difficulties. This imbalance has always been unsolvable and we brought it update by update, until the collapse of the title. Every time we put in new content we found something that completely broke the game.

We never completely solved and balanced the asymmetrical multiplayer we sold our title for, it created more problems than we have ever been able to solve; we didn't have the right staff to create a shooter competitive, the people who worked on Evolve were intent on creating an unforgettable world. "

Matt Colvin then he also talked about the policies related to prices and the various flaws due to marketing very much based on the additional content of the title.

“The fact that Evolve was a game to play with friends for the modest sum of $ 60 at launch didn't help the title's growth; to play the title in a decent way you had to shell out $ 240, not really something simple. And to think that right from the start, both Turtle Rock and THQ had in mind to propose the title as free to play with paid cosmetics; The last word was from THQ and it was also terribly unexpected.

Among other things, we in Turtle Rock had to comply with a curious rule that did not allow the title to be updated in a constant and timely manner: we could consistently update Evolve only once every three months despite having fixes and solutions to problems in less than twenty-four hours. This thing has generated a real spiral of discontent and chatter on the web that has constantly worsened the image of the title. "

Matt Colville does not clearly spell out the problem related to updates but, according to the comments on Reddit, the problem seems to be related to one of the main financiers of the game; unable to finance the latter through money. Even the policies related to DLC and pre-order do not come directly from the original ideas of Turtle Rock but have been forced in to get as much profit as possible; this turned the title into a real scapegoat for such policies, a negative example from which everyone had to flee.