Highguard launched final night time as deliberate, and met with large Steam concurrents but additionally a flood of detrimental consumer evaluations.
The free-to-play “PvP raid shooter” was the massive new sport reveal on the finish of final month’s The Recreation Awards, but developer Wildlight then went darkish till the sport’s January 26 launch date. Highguard hit a peak of 97,249 concurrent customers on Steam — a big quantity for any new sport launch on Valve’s platform — but Wildlight will probably be notably involved by its “largely detrimental” consumer evaluation score.
At the moment, simply 32% of the 14,500 consumer evaluations are optimistic. Whereas among the detrimental evaluations revolve round PC efficiency issues, most criticize Highguard’s sport design, and query among the selections made by the builders.
Chief among the many criticisms is that the scale of the map feels too large and empty for a 3v3 aggressive shooter. You’re ready to summon a mount to get about sooner (the mounts are one facet of Highguard that gamers appear to universally like), but some gamers consider a 4v4, 5v5, and even 3v3v3 mode would have been a greater match.
There are complaints concerning the resource-gathering part of every map, too, which entails what some are calling boring mining and loot farming. The gist right here is there may be an excessive amount of downtime and a scarcity of pleasure, though gamers appear to be having fun with the raid part of every match, the place fight is concentrated. There may be additionally criticism of the playable characters, that are differentiated solely by two skills every on a cooldown. Some are calling Highguard’s visuals bland, too.
Certainly, the top post on the Highguard subreddit reinforces this sentiment. “I’m sorry but that is boring as f**okay,” it reads. “Gathering is boring as f**okay, looting is boring as f**okay, 3v3 with brief TTK is boring as f**okay. No PVE is boring as f**okay. The one good factor in this sport is the f***ing horse mount. What have been they considering?”
The Steam portion of Highguard’s launch doesn’t inform the entire story, after all. It additionally launched as a free obtain on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Collection X and S, but neither Sony nor Microsoft make participant numbers public.
Right here’s how Highguard works. You play a Warden in a crew of three, and choose a base to fortify. You then trip out into the map to loot and harvest assets, upgrading your gear alongside the best way.
Groups find yourself combating over what’s known as the Shieldbreaker, which can be utilized to set off a raid of the enemy base. This part — actually essentially the most thrilling in the match — forces groups to assault and defend. Normally, one raid isn’t sufficient to destroy the enemy base, which triggers a brand new loot part, a brand new Shieldbreaker to spawn, and the potential for a brand new raid to lastly finish the match. Try IGN’s Highguard review-in-progress to discover out what we expect.
Yesterday, Wildlight talked about Highguard’s first 12 months of content material already being in the works, and outlined its roadmap for updates. It’s making all the appropriate noises about being in this for the lengthy haul. As a free-to-play sport, Highguard’s success will relaxation on its means to get as many individuals as doable to proceed to play the sport, fueling income from its dwell service. As we’ve seen, dwell service is a very brutal area to be in proper now, so will probably be attention-grabbing to see if Highguard can enhance this launch sentiment and keep curiosity in the months forward.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.