I played it in the “open beta” two years ago. Sad that it’s come to this, the game had a lot going for it but… having all characters locked on start then weirdly shutting the game down for an extended time then coming back with everything somehow worse… everyone saw this coming.
At least it will stil be playable.
Well, that’s the problem of GaaS. It used to be games cost however much to make and you were recouping expenses after. These days games cost money to run, on account of all the centralized backend and dedicated server cost to keep everything locked down and enable matchmaking and microtransactions.
The bizarre thing is this zombie state where pieces of the game work, but only if you bought stuff ahead of time. The idea of F2P fighting games makes some sense on the surface, but with the way audiences work in the genre it may not be feasible because… who the hell is going to buy into a fighting game that poofs into the ether the moment someone else gets a Mai Shiranui DLC again?
Looking at you, 2XKO. I played Rising Thunder. I remember.
Rising Thunder was eventually released for free, server binaries and all, years later, but I don’t have the same faith in 2XKO.
Wasn’t Rising Thunder the one that at least handled part of shutdown right by semi-open sourcing?
But yeah, it’s all part of a wider problem. Personally I don’t want an invasive devloper over-tuning fighting games all the time, and I don’t want any microtransactions. But unless you keep dangling new shiny, very few players will stick with a given game, making it hard to find matches on-demand.
It’s fine and natural for populations of an online game to wane over time. Trying to cheat that comes with too many negative consequences.
Right, I don’t even know how you would cheat it. Down at this point, I guess I’m just lamenting that more games aren’t able to keep healthy communities after dev support ends.
At that point, you go to Discord, either with friends or the game’s community. It’s pretty much mathematically impossible to sustain the kinds of populations you find at a game’s launch.