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A comprehensive overview of Hawken's "pre-acquisition" decline

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#1
Xacius

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I made this post on reddit a while back and figured I'd copypasta here for those that haven't had a chance to read it.  
 
The decline of Hawken was multifaceted, and is detailed as follows: 
 
  • They took too long to figure out the game's mechanics (especially movement).  Halfway through open beta, they made sweeping changes to   every gameplay element from UI to "progression" and named this build "Ascension" (probably in reference to the absurd grind that was introduced).  What was once an enjoyable Arena Shooter with a mild grind for items and gear, became a tedious adventure to even become playable.  During Ascension, new players were at a major disadvantage to anyone with gear/levels (to the point where a fully leveled mech could shoot 10% faster, move 15% faster, have 20% more armor, etc...).  Leveling and grinding for gear is a terrible component to tack onto an Arena Shooter.  
  • They kept changing their design focus.  One month, they were attempting to cater to Arena Shooter fans.  The next, they slowed the game down and tried to make it more "mechwarrior-like."   Similar to the first issue, they constantly changed their core mechanics to cater to different crowds.  Roughly half a year after introducing Ascension, they scrapped most of the progression (but kept the ridiculous grind for new mechs, items, and internals), lowered TTK(time to kill) to near insta-gib level, and overbuffed sustained weapons and heavy mechs.  Minor changes here or there are understandable, but back-to-back major changes don't make for a very consistent gameplay experience.  I'd wager that's why a lot of players stopped playing.
  • Free-to-play.  They tried to model the game after League of Legends. This was basically the reason for the grind and late OB economy changes.  They needed to generate money, and cosmetics alone apparently weren't enough.  Development studios like EA that have resources can sustain a F2P title.  Small indie companies that have taken on loans/investors to produce a product usually cannot.  League (LoL) got lucky, and attempting to apply that model to a graphically-demanding UE3 pseudo Mech/FPS proved to be a detrimental error.  
  • Unreliable hosting provider.  The game wasn't extremely fast, but it was fast enough to warrant decent servers.  Their primary hosting provider was AWS (Amazon Web Services).  Unbearable tickrates and general lag plagued the game for the majority of open beta.  Dodges would consume fuel, but nothing would happen.  Missiles would fire and "ghost," going on cooldown and generating heat but not actually firing.  It took them roughly 14 months to even start using new providers.  By that time, it was too late.  
  • They took too long to release new content/fix old errors.  Even something as simple as a hotfix for a widespread bug would take 2 weeks, if not more.  Patches were often 3-4 months apart.  On open beta release, they had 4 game modes.  1.5 years later, all they added was two co-op player vs. AI modes.  
  • They spent way too much time on technological gimmicks that never released publicly.  Oculus Rift support and Nvidia PhysX seemed tacked on, rather than designed with the game from the ground up, and neither amounted to much.  Remember the PAX PhysX destruction demo from 2013?  Yeah, that never came about.  
  • Late into development, they realized that they needed to make some core changes to existing mechs, mostly for balance reasons.  Unfortunately, the foundation for their database was, and still is, all fuzzy bunnyed up.  For example, the Flak Cannon (ridiculous shotgun with incredible burst and sustained damage) was available on both the fastest mech (Scout), and the slowest mech (Brawler).  Don't ask me who thought that one up.  Regardless, late into the game they tried to remove it from the Scout, but because of their poorly-constructed database, any changes made to the Flak on the Scout would also affect the Flak on the Brawler.  
 
TL;DR - They took too long to figure everything out, and made far too many sweeping changes throughout the game's open beta lifespan.  
 

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#2
Nightfirebolt

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Any idea what the part the aborted live action series played into all of this? Not to mention the alleged movie deal.



#3
Zhoyzu

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XACIUS!!!!! its good to hear from you again buddy! and yea good post. pretty much sums it all up.

 

Hoping that this time around hawken does better.


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#4
Superkamikazee

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Hurts reading that, so sad.

Sweet avatar xacius.

No crew


#5
Interrobang87

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this probably belongs in nept's post

 

https://community.pl...on-development/



#6
RED_FIVE

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Geez, I didn't realize how much of a mess it was until I saw the list.

It's a shame too. The staff seemed like a friendly bunch for the most part.

 

Hopefully things turn around.


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#7
comic_sans

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Any idea what the part the aborted live action series played into all of this? Not to mention the alleged movie deal.

 

My understanding was it took focus off the one concrete and existing aspect of the hawken universe (the game), funneling dollars (lots), time, and personnel into the drain.  The only anecdotal evidence I remember reading was that an enormous amount of the initial investment was squandered on things that aren't the game, ostensibly to make a whole immersiveand engaging world, but that didn't work out so well in the long run for that one syfy series/game either, I don't think.

 

I don't think we can really get any productive discussion aside from more anecdote sharing about (now moot) business deals from what I posted just now, so I'ma just leave it at that and hope we focus on really nailing down development mistakes as unanimously as possible.


Edited by comic_sans, 23 March 2015 - 05:08 PM.

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#8
Nov8tr

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Xacius nice to see you back mate. Wondered when you come back and post up. Been waiting. Lot of other peeps here too mate. Nept made a good post about this subject too. I agree with both of you. I think there were many factors involved in the fall of Hawken. I think Nept has why it fell financially and yours is a lot of why people left. Believe me I tried to warn them many times. We had a lot of private conversations. I said look 44 yrs doing this stuff and they pretended to listen. But they did nothing. I told them this would not end well. Many people did but the pretty much ignored us. The beta testers tried to warn them and they didn't even listen to them. I am so glad to see people who are willing to listen and have already begun to make things better. This is a niche game. Realizing that they can do very well. It will not garner 10 million users. It's just not that kind of game. But it can be more then sustainable because it is unique. I have gamed online for over 19 years and never saw anything like this. If they can change most of the users who left minds about what this game is they will be fine. They will never change everyone's. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's hard to  put it back. (yes a intended pun on DerMax :P) I WANT this to stay this time. I LIKE this game. I wish them the best of luck. They have a hard road ahead of them (devs) figuring out what to fix, what to change and what not to. I have no magic answers for them. But I think enough good ideas from people that were here might help them along. Good luck to them and to all the players here. Thanks for being here. See you in game!


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#9
Xacius

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Xacius nice to see you back mate. Wondered when you come back and post up. Been waiting. Lot of other peeps here too mate. Nept made a good post about this subject too. I agree with both of you. I think there were many factors involved in the fall of Hawken. I think Nept has why it fell financially and yours is a lot of why people left. Believe me I tried to warn them many times. We had a lot of private conversations. I said look 44 yrs doing this stuff and they pretended to listen. But they did nothing. I told them this would not end well. Many people did but the pretty much ignored us. The beta testers tried to warn them and they didn't even listen to them. I am so glad to see people who are willing to listen and have already begun to make things better. This is a niche game. Realizing that they can do very well. It will not garner 10 million users. It's just not that kind of game. But it can be more then sustainable because it is unique. I have gamed online for over 19 years and never saw anything like this. If they can change most of the users who left minds about what this game is they will be fine. They will never change everyone's. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's hard to  put it back. (yes a intended pun on DerMax :P) I WANT this to stay this time. I LIKE this game. I wish them the best of luck. They have a hard road ahead of them (devs) figuring out what to fix, what to change and what not to. I have no magic answers for them. But I think enough good ideas from people that were here might help them along. Good luck to them and to all the players here. Thanks for being here. See you in game!

 

Well said.

 

In addition to your stance on the old devs, I believe that their biggest faults were a mixture of inexperience and overconfidence.  "Look at what we've done so far, we can't possibly be wrong about this next feature..."

 

Yet, time and time again, they made the wrong choices and it came back to bite them in the ass.  



#10
deidarall

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It is something that AHD had massive issues, changing core game-play ideals randomly and in a unneeded fashion. Stuff like changes to core movement mechanics after 12/12/12, while debated, were not needed as the old movement system worked rather well. Ofc if you look at pre-alpha stuff you can see the game did play with wind walking, and so the changed there minds, even on core game-play that were already solid. This sort of thing is bad bad bad, as it moves away from what you have built well already, and just leaves it behind or at least blunts those features. There are many examples of this happening. From the focus on TTK to how the G2 mechs were put in the game and so on. 

 

 

Ofc air dodge is one example. They would scrap and leave ideas all the time. Then bring them back randomly later, when no one really was thinking the game needed it. Wind walking, tuning/skill trees, how internals worked and still do in some ways. It is not even that the concepts are bad, it is just how slap dash they were with em.

 

Wind walking changed the pacing of a game that did not need pace changes overall , and I bet these pacing issues pre-alpha are why it was removed as a core way to play before open beta hit. Tuning just brought back the old issues with the original skill trees, and internals as always when they effect movement, or cool downs, are a bad idea. 


Edited by deidarall, 24 March 2015 - 07:20 PM.





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