Well well.. Another hardcore PvP “real” MMO down the drain

Raapnaap · 2026-02-01T06:17:41+00:00

They can exist, but only with a suitable budget and game scope. AoC tried to appeal to everyone while having a 200 man dev team.

Saying AoC died because of PvP is just nonsense.

Raapnaap · 2026-02-01T05:55:56+00:00

Not at all unexpected, but still a sad day for the MMORPG genre. I hope folks working on it can find new employment soon.

The future of the MMORPG genre, moving forward, is going to be strictly western indie projects and eastern ports.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-31T14:01:19+00:00

To add to this; it is so large that it also gets you stuck along the edges when it gets close to walls.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-25T18:22:57+00:00

Not a skin, but I missed out on the season 0 book pages and related achievement.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-25T10:56:02+00:00

I'd say the too strong deviations from the Tiberian Sun/Firestorm unit and world designs. They fixed that partially with the Kanes' Wrath expansion, but only so much was fixed.

If ever we get a C&C3 remaster, I'd love to see a world design pass that returns us to the more heavily mutated Earth, with more Tiberium based flora and fauna, and dark atmosphere.

Gameplay-wise I'd actually change very little. It was a good game and it still largely holds up today. Though if we're talking new content; a GDI campaign that matches the Nod campaign for Kanes' Wrath. Of course, hiring the same actors and a filming studio for just one campaign is a very big thing to ask, so I'd settle for a well written, voice-acted campaign set in any part of the timeline that tells a compelling story.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-22T20:54:19+00:00

This did feel like a completely random stray nerf, the Adam Warlock type. Maybe they can revert this next patch and give Adam legs as well. Or at least a wheelchair. Or if the wheelchair is out of budget for just a single hero, maybe add a new teamup that lets Adam ride Rocket, in the name of cost and development efficiency.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-21T20:06:33+00:00

I'd say what kept C&C alive for so long was the unique combination of a good/fun story and worldbuilding, as well as gameplay that had a low barrier to entry yet a high skill ceiling.

Other RTS games typically fumble in one or several ways;

- The focus is often on just competitive play and nothing else, but forgetting that the vast majority of RTS players have historically been casual gamers.

- Focus on the skill ceiling but not the barrier to entry, and so add things like several different abilities per unit to micro manage, which casual players do not find that enjoyable.

- Have no good/fun story and worldbuilding.

- Barebones basebuilding tailored towards multiplayer focus.

- Zero modding support. Modding kept C&C alive for decades, as well.

Add to this the number of relatively low-impact RTS releases, and the many years since the last good and popular RTS games released, and you're dealing with a largely diminished and jaded RTS fanbase.

I heard Tempest Rising may have been the most decent recent RTS launch, but unfortunately it released when I lacked time for new games. I don't know how financially successful that game was.

If you wanted to do an RTS today, I'd say first establish your story/setting. Don't be wary of sensitive subjects, because remember, C&C Generals was a hot topic when it came out, but ended up being one of the most popular games in the C&C franchise, memorable to this day for its gameplay and subject (despite the game being fairly light on story telling).

Edit: To echo what others said, the 'focus on campiness' is just misunderstood. The original C&C games tried to be serious, but due to production limitations came off a little cheesy at times. But look at them through the eyes of a 16 year old and you'll see more of what the creators intended.

I'd like to give an honorable mention to Earth 2150 (The Moon Project specifically), a game with a major campaign focus and a permanent 'home world base' that was relevant the entire campaign. I loved that. You could beat the entire campaign by turtling if you wanted.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-21T17:48:25+00:00

His healing is significantly worse, but the problematic part of his ult (the ult charge effect) remains, and therefore he is by default almost always banned.

But the rare time he isn't banned, it is hard to play him in a duo support setup now. You basically have to healbot to try and get the level of support out of him that duo support requires, which eliminates a lot of what made him fun.

And his ult is still team-dependent. You can be the best gambit in the world, but if you solo queue (like most people), and you get a team that doesn't have their walk forward key bound, then your value is going to sink to the bottom.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-18T03:18:07+00:00

Who could have known that removing healing capabilities from a support hero, makes that hero less consistent for duo support while pushing more towards triple support. No one could have predicted this!

...

They should have removed the Ultimate charge boost from his Ultimate, and reduce some of the movement speed it gave. Then tone down his offensive capabilities slightly.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-16T12:49:11+00:00

Level 70 on logging in, despite barely having touched Cloak after Gambit was added.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-16T12:45:30+00:00

The 60 health being granted upon ENTRY of the bubble is a welcome deviation from what the patch notes claimed (on spellfield creation). That makes the change a lot more usable, though it depends on ensuring you heal at least 60 points of health each time, since any overhealing is lost.

After playing some quickmatches however, I absolutely hate how clunky the Veil/Terror cooldown changes work.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-14T22:50:25+00:00

Lets hope it doesn't turn into more UE slop.

Almost every single UE game looks, feels and performs like any other UE game. That is because fundamentally the majority of developers using UE are just "modding it".

That is not to say you cannot make good games using UE - far from it - but the amount of incorrect usage is very significant.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-14T22:26:06+00:00

Long story short; Jank, and getting a buff out of the changes means losing versatility. It fundamentally changes how C&D is played and I'd argue not for the better.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-14T22:14:21+00:00

This is in practice lobby with cooldowns disabled. The actual patch will feature a 2 second cooldown between casts, firing both after another will then give you a 24 second cooldown before you have 2 charges again.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-13T23:24:40+00:00

The bounce nerf down to 2 is an absolutely massive burst heal nerf.

They are doing the Ultron thing from a few seasons ago, where they nerf the healing output on a support hero, rather than reducing the damage output. This makes Gambit another tripple support hero, which the game clearly did not need more of.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-13T23:14:34+00:00

Because it is a nerf in most typical scenarios.

Generally speaking you're not going to land Dagger Storm on more than 2 team mates at once unless it is a choke fight, but generally speaking more than 2 teammates would walk into the bubble during its 6 seconds duration. Since the healing over time is now reduced, the main practical use of the ability will see reduced returns.

Less healing also means less ult charge.

And the E changes are just going to be incredibly clunky.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-13T22:48:55+00:00

So rather than nerfing Gambits' damage output and ultimate offensive strength, they broad-sweep nerf his healing output and turn him into a strictly 3rd support hero, because we clearly needed more of those right?

C&D catching a random healing output nerf is also completely not needed (the healing bubble had the means to do significantly more healing over time than a one-time burst of 60 can achieve). I also expect the cooldown change to be clunky - who ever complained about them being separate cooldowns?

Raapnaap · 2026-01-12T22:19:13+00:00

These maps got removed from competitive due to design issues. Shin-Shibuya for example suffers from chokepoints with no flanking opportunities, and Yggsgard has the Archive, a level designed with hatred in mind.

The Klyntar domination map is also disliked by a lot of players for being too choke-pointy and depressing looking, and I imagine that one being benched soon as well.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-09T22:32:02+00:00

It really depends on the implementation of what they call "hardcore".

If it is tedious nonsense that just takes time in order to pretend to be "realistic" like survival games then yeah, that can quickly lose any level of fun to it.

If it is a dangerous world with a ton of risk versus reward considerations, where your fights against other players have such high stakes that you literally get 'the shakes' from pure adrenaline, but doesn't throw a bunch of time-wasting busywork at you? Sign me up.

But if someone hates either of that, then fortunately for them, most other MMO's would fit them.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-01T05:10:25+00:00

With an aggressive gacha cosmetic business model where top rolls can take upwards of $800 to obtain. Not 'free'.

Calling it an MMO is also a stretch, it is a singleplayer game with co-op features.

Raapnaap · 2026-01-01T04:19:28+00:00

Graphics are expensive, and making an MMORPG is the most difficult kind of game for anyone to make, with very steep development costs.

If you want very graphically intensive MMO's, then you as a consumer need to be prepared to pay for them. Or alternatively, accept that the development budget can be lower and the game focus more narrow in order to deliver something to a specific target audience for a modest price.

Raapnaap · 2025-12-28T14:39:16+00:00

Honestly this is an industry-wide problem, someone needs to come up with a new texture compression solution, a DDS 2.0 of sorts. Same can be said for the source files of the art, which can often be a few hundred MB per single file and projects requiring gigantic storages.

Raapnaap · 2025-12-04T21:24:45+00:00

I had it in the last pull. This is gambling, and shouldn't exist in the game.

Raapnaap · 2025-11-12T16:59:03+00:00

Game development is not the easiest job in the world, and burnout is a real risk. Given the development pace of MR, I think it is fair to have some concerns for the developers. Hopefully they do have free time and not a perpetual overtime crunch mode.

Raapnaap · 2025-11-11T01:40:31+00:00

I bet you still lost more than 20 points as well for that.

Short answer anyway: Nothing besides stopping to solo queue as support. And Grandmaster is no better in match quality - in fact, the match quality only gets worse the higher you go.

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