Bioware Austin cancels Shadow Realms in favour of bigger SWTOR support

[Heat-Wave]

Customer service based out of India? This explains EVERYTHING about why the customer service for this game is atrocious.

 

EDIT: If they're based out of Ireland, not India, then I am just saddened by how bad the service is.

 

I just reread it... It was in the comments section that the note about India was located, so scratch that...

 

Since it appears to be in Ireland, well, that is sad as you say...

 

"Quality assurance testing takes place in Romania, Argentina and India, while technical operations are run out of Virginia and the customer service center operates in Ireland. "

[MillionsKNives]

I just reread it... It was in the comments section that the note about India was located, so scratch that...

 

Since it appears to be in Ireland, well, that is sad as you say...

 

"Quality assurance testing takes place in Romania, Argentina and India, while technical operations are run out of Virginia and the customer service center operates in Ireland. "

 

Wow, I totally read those two sentences incorrectly from that article. Once I got to where it started listing locations for the voice over recording I think my eyes just glossed down to the second line and included India in there as well. It being QA that was in India instead of voice recording makes much more sense.

[WorldSmasher]

Not only was it moved to Off Topic, but Lord Artemus' and my posts were removed. What's up with that?

[MeNaCe-NZ]

How strange this is getting moved to off topic and seemingly heavily modded considering, imo at least, this is pretty damn positive news for SWToR.

 

Whilst it's always a shame to see people's hard work go down the drain as it has in this case it is nice to see a possible renewed emphasis put back into this game especially since the other games they mentioned are more or less done entirely by BW Edmonton/Montreal ( Bioware Canada more or less )

 

Should be a very interesting year if there is extra talent being pumped back into the game.

[Heat-Wave]

How strange this is getting moved to off topic and seemingly heavily modded considering, imo at least, this is pretty damn positive news for SWToR.

 

Why is this positive news for SWTOR?

 

I see lots of people saying this, but I think it is just a bunch of wishful thinking...

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Why is this positive news for SWTOR?

 

I see lots of people saying this, but I think it is just a bunch of wishful thinking...

 

How can more developers etc. being moved to ( or back to ) SWToR not be a good thing?

 

It might even mean more testing etc. can be done for things like you pet peeve of the slot machine never being introduced in the state it was to cause the issues it did in the first place.

 

Wishful thinking when it comes to QC I know but ya never know heh.

[Heat-Wave]

How can more developers etc. being moved to ( or back to ) SWToR not be a good thing?

 

Where did they say that any developers would be moved to SWTOR?

[MeNaCe-NZ]

But the biggest focus for our team in BioWare Austin will be on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

 

Guess I'm somewhat reading between the lines but the other games mentioned ( and the new IP ) had all been previously announced to being developed by Bioware Edmonton ( with Montreal being a support studio that supports Edmonton ) - DA:I was, the Mass Effects all were and the new IP was.

 

It would be unlikely for them to direct development from those studios down to Austin imo. That means unless there is something new being worked on one would expect a lot of the studio's attention ( and thus the extra developers etc. from SR ) to be redirected to SWToR. I've actually noticed a much more vigorous community presence of late too by Eric n co. About the only major thing they are really ignoring is the slot machine for some reason.

[AshenK]

Guess I'm somewhat reading between the lines but the other games mentioned ( and the new IP ) had all been previously announced to being developed by Bioware Edmonton ( with Montreal being a support studio that supports Edmonton ) - DA:I was, the Mass Effects all were and the new IP was.

 

It would be unlikely for them to direct development from those studios down to Austin imo. That means unless there is something new being worked on one would expect a lot of the studio's attention ( and thus the extra developers etc. from SR ) to be redirected to SWToR. I've actually noticed a much more vigorous community presence of late too by Eric n co. About the only major thing they are really ignoring is the slot machine for some reason.

That had me rolling on the floor after reading that.

 

The SR people are gone, if they said they would be moving them to TOR then they would be moving them to TOR. Also community presence by the Devs? You don't know how hard that made me laugh.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

That had me rolling on the floor after reading that.

 

The SR people are gone, if they said they would be moving them to TOR then they would be moving them to TOR. Also community presence by the Devs? You don't know how hard that made me laugh.

 

From what I gathered in other posts on the topic of that game quite a few of their community were people that used to work on SWToR any way so it's not really that much of a stretch. That and they aren't in the habit of saying who works where, even those that were ex. SWToR who were working on SR was only really picked up by some developer commentary that showed them as ex. SWToR devs etc.

 

Courtney Woods used to do quite a bit around here in the community then seemingly moved to the SR team ( you can see it in their community blog ) and was rather quiet here up until the recent announcement and I believe she would be the Courtney who wrote the recent "Price of Power" implying she moved back here? Again a lot of reading between the lines but one has to be hopeful of something unless one is just plain negative towards EA/BW/SWToR as some of you are ( and if I again read correctly will soon run out of sub so it won't matter anyway ).

[AshlaBoga]

Where did they say that any developers would be moved to SWTOR?

 

^This.

[Elracor]

Guess I'm somewhat reading between the lines

 

I guess most of us do, but I think you're making some mistakes here.

 

According to https://shadowrealms.com/blog/an-update-on-closed-alpha-timing?sf33174433=1 , "...We’ve been running live test sessions around the country for almost a year..." as of Oct 30 2014. With that in mind, I would find it fair to say they've been developing on this game for 1½ years if not more. That means you have developers who have a lot of experience with the Frostbite 3 engine, especially considering how new that game engine is.

 

Now, do you put that kind of developers on other projects we know also use Frostbite 3 (Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect 4) , do you put them on a new IP which might use Frostbite 3, or do you put them on a game that use a completely hacked-to-bits Hero Engine they might not have much/any experience with?

Previous SWTOR devs could make an exception, but generally I doubt we'll see many developers return to SWTOR.

 

but the other games mentioned ( and the new IP ) had all been previously announced to being developed by Bioware Edmonton ( with Montreal being a support studio that supports Edmonton ) - DA:I was, the Mass Effects all were and the new IP was. It would be unlikely for them to direct development from those studios down to Austin imo. That means unless there is something new being worked on one would expect a lot of the studio's attention ( and thus the extra developers etc. from SR ) to be redirected to SWToR.

 

Well, alternatively the developers are 'directed' to the other studios in the "Bioware family" in case they want to keep having a job. It's also a lot easier to say "we're focusing on SWTOR" if the non-SWTOR people leave the building.

(Some of) The 'enhancements' (DLCs?) for Dragonage might also be possible to do within the Bioware Austin studios without too much trouble.

 

I've actually noticed a much more vigorous community presence of late too by Eric n co. About the only major thing they are really ignoring is the slot machine for some reason.

 

Now this I agree with. AFAIK the Community Team was split between SWTOR and SR, which they won't be anymore. This might also explain why Hillary/"Pokket" isn't here anymore?

Edited February 12, 2015 by MFollin

[Jerba]

From what I gathered in other posts on the topic of that game quite a few of their community were people that used to work on SWToR any way so it's not really that much of a stretch. That and they aren't in the habit of saying who works where, even those that were ex. SWToR who were working on SR was only really picked up by some developer commentary that showed them as ex. SWToR devs etc.

 

Courtney Woods used to do quite a bit around here in the community then seemingly moved to the SR team ( you can see it in their community blog ) and was rather quiet here up until the recent announcement and I believe she would be the Courtney who wrote the recent "Price of Power" implying she moved back here? Again a lot of reading between the lines but one has to be hopeful of something unless one is just plain negative towards EA/BW/SWToR as some of you are ( and if I again read correctly will soon run out of sub so it won't matter anyway ).

Yes, a lot of the Shadow Realms developers have previously worked on SWTOR, but you need to put it in perspective:

Basically, they used the heads of all SWTOR teams and moved them over to start building a team for Shadow Realms. They then promoted some of the Junior developers of SWTOR to the team leads. This happened approximately sometime between 2.0 and 2.6, possibly even before then. We have direct confirmation from the Shadow Realm developers that they had no involvement at all in GSF, GSH and SoR, therefore, they haven't worked on SWTOR in a while and if they come back, it will take a while to get them back worked in, and then there's also the problem of how will become the lead. Imagine yourself as one of the Shadow Realm developers. As one of the lead designers of the game, do you want to go back working an older game and get put into a small position just because your previous position has now been taken over by someone else?

Therefore, I have reason to believe that those developers either quit the job or have been moved to other games at Bioware, but I don't see them coming back to SWTOR.

 

Also, they hired many new developers for Shadow Realms. While the studio leads were taken from SWTOR, the "normal" developers were newly hired and have not been working on SWTOR before. There is a chance that they are formed into a new team at SWTOR. Similar to the GSF expansion, it is possible they may be responsible for developing a new expansion with only little ties to the base game that allows them to quickly get into developing without having to learn all of the tools and policies.

I doubt that they'd move them to a game not developed in Austin. On the one hand, it is difficult to coordinate development across several studios, on the other hand, they can't just have 50-100 developers moving to another city just to stay at the company. In fact, since Bioware is based in Canada, they face much bigger issues than just moving to another city.

 

The Community team is a separate thing altogether. Unlike other games like WoW where the community reps are directly responsible for one game, at Bioware, the budget is a little bit smaller and community reps have to oversee all games developed at the studio. So in this case, Bioware Austin developed both SWTOR and Shadow Realms, and the community team represented both games. This had the result that in some games, we would not get any posts for SWTOR but instead a lot of Shadow Realms blog posts, and in other weeks more focus on SWTOR.

Now that Shadow Realms is cancelled, they can fully focus on SWTOR, so we will hopefully get more news on that front.

Edited February 12, 2015 by Jerba

[Jerba]

Now this I agree with. AFAIK the Community Team was split between SWTOR and SR, which they won't be anymore. This might also explain why Hillary/"Pokket" isn't here anymore?

Yes, this is the most likely reason. We know that she wasn't fired because of incompetence or a mistake on her part. She was mostly tasked with bringing in new streamers to test Shadow Realms and build the hype train, but sadly this did not work out as expected.

That being said, don't forget that there have been more people let go in January than Pokket. January has traditionally been the month at Bioware where they trim some of the fat and get rid of redundant positions, this happened in January 2012, 2013 and again this year. I know that Lobosjr, who previously worked on QA and helped a lot with promoting the GSF expansion, has also stopped working at Bioware in January, which leads me to assume that there were more than two people let go.

In any case, such things are necessary at any company and are not too big of a cause for alarm, but we need to keep them in mind when looking at the impact of news like the Shadow Realms cancellation.

Edited February 12, 2015 by Jerba

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I guess most of us do, but I think you're making some mistakes here.

 

According to https://shadowrealms.com/blog/an-update-on-closed-alpha-timing?sf33174433=1 , "...We’ve been running live test sessions around the country for almost a year..." as of Oct 30 2014. With that in mind, I would find it fair to say they've been developing on this game for 1½ years if not more. That means you have developers who have a lot of experience with the Frostbite 3 engine, especially considering how new that game engine is.

 

Now, do you put that kind of developers on other projects we know also use Frostbite 3 (Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect 4) , do you put them on a new IP which might use Frostbite 3, or do you put them on a game that use a completely hacked-to-bits Hero Engine they might not have much/any experience with?

Previous SWTOR devs could make an exception, but generally I doubt we'll see many developers return to SWTOR.

 

 

 

Well, alternatively the developers are 'directed' to the other studios in the "Bioware family" in case they want to keep having a job. It's also a lot easier to say "we're focusing on SWTOR" if the non-SWTOR people leave the building.

(Some of) The 'enhancements' (DLCs?) for Dragonage might also be possible to do within the Bioware Austin studios without too much trouble.

 

 

 

Now this I agree with. AFAIK the Community Team was split between SWTOR and SR, which they won't be anymore. This might also explain why Hillary/"Pokket" isn't here anymore?

 

No doubt any newer developers with experience on Frostbite 3 may indeed be moved to work on those games but generally speaking that may require a move up north. Only on the assumption that Montreal was built to assist Edmonton and that is where all those games are being created so it would be strange for put out any full time development work of it to Austin. Unless of course both northern studios can't keep up with deadlines and they are moving development of one of the titles to Austin, again completely possible.

 

There are ex. SWToR developers on the SR team however. So regardless of any frostbite 3 experience they gain they still have experience that can be used here. Whilst I doubt the entire team was moved to SWToR it is logicaly to assume those with experience here to begin with were.

 

Also interesting the whole comment towards SWToR. Whilst it could all be lip service, it could also be in light of a big focus/push that EA wants towards SWToR if they have no other SW RPG plans in the works for the next few years which would be a shame as I was just thinking I would love to play an action/rpg game again in the SW universe on modern graphics ( akin to JK series or KOTOR ).

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Yes, a lot of the Shadow Realms developers have previously worked on SWTOR, but you need to put it in perspective:

Basically, they used the heads of all SWTOR teams and moved them over to start building a team for Shadow Realms. They then promoted some of the Junior developers of SWTOR to the team leads. This happened approximately sometime between 2.0 and 2.6, possibly even before then. We have direct confirmation from the Shadow Realm developers that they had no involvement at all in GSF, GSH and SoR, therefore, they haven't worked on SWTOR in a while and if they come back, it will take a while to get them back worked in, and then there's also the problem of how will become the lead. Imagine yourself as one of the Shadow Realm developers. As one of the lead designers of the game, do you want to go back working an older game and get put into a small position just because your previous position has now been taken over by someone else?

Therefore, I have reason to believe that those developers either quit the job or have been moved to other games at Bioware, but I don't see them coming back to SWTOR.

 

Also, they hired many new developers for Shadow Realms. While the studio leads were taken from SWTOR, the "normal" developers were newly hired and have not been working on SWTOR before. There is a chance that they are formed into a new team at SWTOR. Similar to the GSF expansion, it is possible they may be responsible for developing a new expansion with only little ties to the base game that allows them to quickly get into developing without having to learn all of the tools and policies.

I doubt that they'd move them to a game not developed in Austin. On the one hand, it is difficult to coordinate development across several studios, on the other hand, they can't just have 50-100 developers moving to another city just to stay at the company. In fact, since Bioware is based in Canada, they face much bigger issues than just moving to another city.

 

The Community team is a separate thing altogether. Unlike other games like WoW where the community reps are directly responsible for one game, at Bioware, the budget is a little bit smaller and community reps have to oversee all games developed at the studio. So in this case, Bioware Austin developed both SWTOR and Shadow Realms, and the community team represented both games. This had the result that in some games, we would not get any posts for SWTOR but instead a lot of Shadow Realms blog posts, and in other weeks more focus on SWTOR.

Now that Shadow Realms is cancelled, they can fully focus on SWTOR, so we will hopefully get more news on that front.

 

I can agree with most of that ( who can't really, it's all opinion and logical thinking as none of us really know what's going on ).

 

What though are your thoughts on what is occurring?

 

As you say you doubt they would move them all to another development house which leaves a few options - one of the 3 games ( ME/DA/New IP ) announced to be all under work up north moving south, the majority of devs moving to SWToR, a new game entirely, a lot of unemployment ( which you may or may not hear about due to NDA etc. but generally a mass exodus of employees the gaming community/media pick up on ).

 

I guess my main point in terms of pure SWToR the cancellation of SR is a good thing as it's more likely than not it will be at least getting more focus by the Austin team who really have something to prove now to EA one would think after SR. I mean to say we have no reason why it was cancelled but purely from an EA financial standpoint that is money down the drain from a studio and they will be looking for improvements there one would think.

 

Thinking on what I just typed though it could be a bad thing as it could be tightening purse strings and lesser quality also I guess though this can lead to poor reputation and less revenue and wahhh heh catch 22, all we know is we don't know and will have to wait n see I guess.

Edited February 12, 2015 by MeNaCe-NZ

[AlrikFassbauer]

I was at the event during the Games Com ... I found the overall concept of

 

- several players playing small characters in some kind of PvP against 1 "big one" player

 

interesting. The term "the big one" gets an new meaning there.

 

I personally found the last incarnation of "the big one" to be far too strong; I've seen more wipes than suceeding against "the big one".

 

I have no idea how it went during the beta, thought, since I had never registered for it ( I'm an PvE type, not an PvP type ).

Edited February 12, 2015 by AlrikFassbauer

[Icebergy]

I hope there will be more SWTOR support, but at this point I will believe it when I see it.

[Heat-Wave]

Whilst I doubt the entire team was moved to SWToR it is logicaly to assume those with experience here to begin with were.

 

In what role? The team leads were moved over to Shadow Realms to build new teams and get it going, over a year ago...

 

They have said they left before GSF. So about 18 months ago.

 

In that time, other people have been promoted and are running SWTOR. So the ex-devs are 18 mounts out of date on the state of the game code, new people have replaced them. Are they going to come back as junior devs?

 

I highly doubt it.

 

I suspect they might be moved to a new project that isn't being announced, just because Shadow Realms is canceled doesn't mean a new unannounced project hasn't been started.

[Elracor]

No doubt any newer developers with experience on Frostbite 3 may indeed be moved to work on those games but generally speaking that may require a move up north. Only on the assumption that Montreal was built to assist Edmonton and that is where all those games are being created so it would be strange for put out any full time development work of it to Austin. Unless of course both northern studios can't keep up with deadlines and they are moving development of one of the titles to Austin, again completely possible.

 

Indeed, and I'd very much expect at least some of those developers to change location to the other studios.

 

There are ex. SWToR developers on the SR team however. So regardless of any frostbite 3 experience they gain they still have experience that can be used here. Whilst I doubt the entire team was moved to SWToR it is logicaly to assume those with experience here to begin with were.

 

I know (lead) writers, (executive) producers and community team members were either moved to SR or worked on SR and SWTOR at the same time. I just haven't seen info about actual developers (I'm mainly thinking of programmers / system architects here) moving from SWTOR to SR.

 

Also interesting the whole comment towards SWToR. Whilst it could all be lip service, it could also be in light of a big focus/push that EA wants towards SWToR if they have no other SW RPG plans in the works for the next few years which would be a shame as I was just thinking I would love to play an action/rpg game again in the SW universe on modern graphics ( akin to JK series or KOTOR ).

 

I really think it's just fluff and PR talk.

Saying you "focus on something" doesn't really promise much in terms of actual end product. Big/massive plans can fail or get abandoned and if "look forward to sharing the news about those plans with our players in the coming weeks." refers to the (IMO extremely disappointing) Roadmap then I highly doubt we'll see much change for the better for SWTOR. I hope the game improves and has a promising future, but I really doubt we will see much improvement.

Edited February 12, 2015 by MFollin

[MeNaCe-NZ]

In what role? The team leads were moved over to Shadow Realms to build new teams and get it going, over a year ago...

 

They have said they left before GSF. So about 18 months ago.

 

In that time, other people have been promoted and are running SWTOR. So the ex-devs are 18 mounts out of date on the state of the game code, new people have replaced them. Are they going to come back as junior devs?

 

I highly doubt it.

 

I suspect they might be moved to a new project that isn't being announced, just because Shadow Realms is canceled doesn't mean a new unannounced project hasn't been started.

 

I guess time will tell however even you ( especially you? ) must be able to admit that bringing back the old leads in a more senior role here ( regardless of how much they've missed ) is hardly outside the realms of possibility considering the utter failure that have gone on as of late that were so easily avoidable.

 

Let's say Ravagers and Slot machine for issues just from the past couple of months and going back further the seemingly huge lack of QC etc. Now I'm not a founder or enough of a veteran to say the old leads were any better at running teams etc. for SWToR but I would certainly think base from a purely business sense some of these stuff ups are rather monumental and come from a complete lack of management and control so I really wouldn't be surprised to see changes in this area.

 

To summarise just those 2 points: Ravagers -

How it got from beta to live with no boss loot drop even though it was reported numerous times in PTS?

 

How then did the fix make it to live without any testing to note the actual ravagers exploit ( semi-forgiveable in the sense they may not have thought to try test the lockout holding anyway since it's not really a usual facet of the game though also not forgiveable as they've previously stated lock out holding is working as intended and thus needs to be incorporated in testing )?

 

Once the bug was realised why did it take week to seal/fix it and allow people to continue exploiting it? ( I won't bother with questions around punishment as that's all eye of the beholder stuff. )

 

Why were slot machines introduced to live with such ridiculous drop rates that would have such a huge effect on the economy ( this is besides what we THINK negative or positive of the change, purely we know now in hindsight Bioware NEVER intended these effects on the economy )?

 

Why was it so heavily nerfed to the point it's forced many customers to leave?

 

Why was no communication given on the nerf?

 

There are all questions to serious failures that need addressing internally and at the management level and take those and everything that has come before one could make assumptions on some serious changes to roles within the SWToR management team. Or not ... we're all just guessing after all

[Jerba]

What though are your thoughts on what is occurring?

Personally, I think the most likeliest thing is that they've moved to work on SWTOR and formed a new department, either to create new content separate from the other teams or a new expansion.

Given how they had to pull the plug on Shadow Realms, I highly doubt the upper management will so quickly give them permission to start working on another brand new IP. Like you say, them working on a Mass Effect/Dragonage game is also unlikely if they stay in Austin and don't move to another city.

We can really only speculate, though I do believe it is close to the truth; I've talked to the developers at the Shadow Realms fan event and read all the articles about the game, so I know everything they want us to know.

 

What impact this has on SWTOR depends purely on what the executives at EA think of the Shadow Realms cancellation. Do they agree that it was necessary to shut down the game, that it was a great idea but did not work out? Or do they find that it was the fault of the developers to not develop the game within the timeline and budget, that Austin is just a bad studio and cannot be trusted with developing new games?

Like someone said in another thread, the bad news is that now Austin has shown it's not possible for them to build up a new game while at the same time keeping the high quality of their other game. And they won't ever get rid of this reputation now, for any future executive decision they will look back and remember what Austin messed up. So the quote of "SWTOR's and Bioware Austin's fate are now intertwined" is 100% accurate IMO.

 

I was at the event during the Games Com ... I found the overall concept of

 

- several players playing small characters in some kind of PvP against 1 "big one" player

 

interesting. The term "the big one" gets an new meaning there.

The concept is definitely interesting, but hard to make right. One of the most asked questions was: How do you balance a single player against 4 players? What challenge does the group (4 players) have if they face a bad dungeon master -- in a bigger group, at least bad players can get carried by the rest and it is a fairer match-up.

Also, roughly at the same time of their announcement, we also got word of another 4v1 game (Evolve) by another developer which has been released this month, so no matter how much work they put into and how much marketing they do, players will compare Shadow Realms to that game and complain if it does not live up to those standards, or won't even bother to try out Shadow Realms if they were disappointed by Evolve.

 

When playing the Shadow Realms beta at the event, I found it enjoyable, but not any different from other shooters. They would have had to sell the game on more than just the 4v1 concept, since even that is now that a unique concept anymore.

 

 

Also, I found this website today, it has been released fairly recently and is somewhat related to this discussion: http://starwars.ea.com/

Basically, it is just a platform for EA's marketing to build hype for Star Wars games, but it also tells us how EA thinks about their games. I find it concerning how they make a lot of promotion for Battlefront, a game that is still nearly a year away from release, while they could just have those visitors spend their money on cartel coins in SWTOR today. Clearly, EA hopes to get much more profit from Battlefront than SWTOR will ever get. Or maybe we are back to the old problem of EA not knowing how to invest into old projects, only thinking about the next game coming up for release...

Or just look at EA's page for SWTOR: http://www.ea.com/star-wars-the-old-republic

They didn't even bother to update it for 3.0 or even GSF/GSH, the newest video still shows the RotHC expansion. This is not comparable to the outdated Holonet pages on SWTOR.com, those take a lot of work to create. Here, they just need to upload one of their videos and it would instantly turn into profit. But SWTOR has been abandoned by EA's marketing. It is still doing its own advertisements of course, I see the SWTOR ad banner on a lot of sites I browse, but those are done by SWTOR directly and not by EA afaik.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Jerba

[MeNaCe-NZ]

All very valid points, nothing to contend with there.

 

One thing I do note with these 4 v 1 or purely multi player games in general is the fact they are purely multi player and really neglect a large part of the gaming market namely single players.

 

Most MMO's are great for this as you can choose if you want to run content with other players or friends or if you just want to go ahead and have some alone time working your way through content.

 

I guess that's my main gripe with these newer games like this and almost worse for these 4 v 1 style games because trolling could utterly kill a game comapred to more forgiving multi player games.

 

It will be interesting to see how the likes of Evolve goes ( just reading the review of it now ) really though personally I don't see a big future in these sorts of games ( 4 v 1 ).

[AshlaBoga]

They're probably moving them to ME4.

 

I doubt they'd move them back to TOR.

[Jerba]

I guess that's my main gripe with these newer games like this and almost worse for these 4 v 1 style games because trolling could utterly kill a game comapred to more forgiving multi player games.

 

It will be interesting to see how the likes of Evolve goes ( just reading the review of it now ) really though personally I don't see a big future in these sorts of games ( 4 v 1 ).

Well, according to the developers, these kind of "asymmetric weapons" is what the players have been asking for. Like in Titanfall, where you can hop in a huge robot and get a massive advantage against the ground players.

I'm not really a big fan of FPS games in the first place, so I couldn't care less, but it'll be interesting to watch how this develops in the future.