Wildlight’s free-to-play shooter Highguard was not the success that the studio wished to see, and now senior stage designer Alex Graner has mentioned he thinks the gameplay being so intense did not assist.
He mentioned on the Quad Damage podcast that Highguard releasing as a 3v3-only sport required “such a excessive depth of communication” with teammates. “It would not depart a lot room for casualness. I feel that was the largest factor that turned quite a lot of gamers off Highguard,” he mentioned, as reported by Kotaku.
“3v3 duos is all the time the sweatiest model of something like battle royale, goal modes, wingman, you already know it, you title it,” Graner added.
Graner went on to say that Highguard’s multi-stage setup additionally didn’t assist as regards to welcoming in new gamers. “It has all these guidelines, which I feel works at a extremely excessive stage, however when gamers are first coming in it is so much to know,” he defined.
The 3v3 setup requires “high-skill motion and taking pictures,” which additionally didn’t assist Highguard attraction to everybody, Graner mentioned. “So when you simply have a couple of unhealthy video games or your teammates aren’t sticking collectively, you are simply going to get rolled, and it’s extremely laborious to 1v2 in our sport,” he mentioned.
Wildlight later added a 5v5 mode, and one other mode that eliminated the sport’s looting section solely, however these efforts haven’t introduced gamers again in any significant manner, not less than not on Steam.
Lastly, Graner mentioned Highguard’s setup as a team-based shooter was the “largest factor” with reference to why the sport got here up quick. “Folks simply form of turned it off as a result of they did not have the workforce,” he mentioned.
Stories mentioned Wildlight was funded partly by Chinese language gaming big Tencent, and the corporate reportedly pulled funding after Highguard’s launch got here up quick. This, in flip, led Wildlight to put off the vast majority of its employees, with solely a reported 20 individuals or so remaining on the firm.
Past the problems talked about by Graner above, nameless sources mentioned Highguard’s struggles additionally got here right down to the workforce feeling overconfident.
Highguard stays on-line and playable throughout PC, PS5, and Xbox Collection X|S. For extra, try GameSpot’s Highguard evaluation, by which we known as the sport “unoriginal.”