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How long does it take to find a match in Concord right now? The problem Sony’s new first-person shooter is facing is that it’s an online-only experience, designed to be played in games of up to ten players. This is all well and good when a title has a huge community, but with Steam figures totalling in the hundreds and speculation suggesting the release has only sold around 25k copies, it means matchmaking times are increasing.
Your experience will vary, of course, and it’ll depend on your location and the time of day you’re trying to play. Still, we decided to run a match in each of the game’s main playlists and stopwatch the matchmaking times just to get an indication. For transparency, we started our test a little after 2PM on a Sunday in the UK, so it was still early morning in New York and Los Angeles. Nevertheless, these were our findings with crossplay enabled:
- Brawl
- 1:01
- Overrun
- 0:58
- Rivalry
- 8:18
While one minute is a little on the high side, it’s perfectly playable and ultimately not much longer than it takes to setup a match on Fortnite, although obviously you’re talking about 100 player battles and longer rounds in that case, so the scales aren’t anywhere near the same. Rivalry is, in our opinion, unplayable at this point, though – we even experienced a server time out during one attempt.
So, what’s the solution here? Well, Sony needs to find a way to get more players involved first and foremost, whether that’s a free weekend or a PS Plus giveaway. Developer Firewalk may also have to consider adding bots, because that would at least fill out servers and help get players into the game quicker. Considering we’re only a couple of weeks removed from release, this is desperate stuff but needs must.
Comments 71
Holy hell, an 8 minute wait time! That's like waiting for a dungeon queue in WoW.
The other two modes aren't too bad but that's kinda crazy.
Perhaps we just need to accept that this just isn't a game people wanted, for various legitimate reasons and stop trying to save it.
It's dead Jim, let it go.
The fact they didn't Rocket League release this thing is bonkers to me. You'd think after the horrendous beta tests they would have seen the writing on the wall.
Shame this stuff is going to cost low level employees their jobs, more than likely, while the people who made the decisions will skate by with barely a mark on their resume.
I don't think going F2P would even be enough.
theres going to be big consequences for this failure because of the hundreds of millions spent on this and buying the studio
what will happen to Firewalk ?
I can find matches very easily for Factions, tyvm. A game from Sony's golden era, back when they made stellar games!
@trev666
Good. I hope the consequences are absolutely severe
If you've ever queued DPS in Overwatch, you'd wish for a wait time of only 8 minutes.
At this point I'd say the game is already finished as it is. It could make sense to actually pull it from sale to make changes, whether that be a f2p model and perhaps redesign the characters, assuming the core gameplay is actually half decent and then try a relaunch.
Games like this do highlight a major problem with paying to play online, as it makes little sense that free games such as Fortnite and Overwatch don't require PS Plus but a game you pay for, then requires a perpetual subscription to even function
I’ve honestly never seen a disaster this dire, there’s no other path other than change the entire business model and make it free to play, and I actually don’t want that but otherwise it’ll always remain dead, however even being F2P it’ll have to compete with Overwatch, Valorant, soon Marvel’s Rivals and tbh Concord isn’t nearly as appealing as any of those games just by the visuals and characters alone.
Eight years to develop, eight minutes to matchmake, on the eighth day of release.
It's like poetry, it rhymes.
At this point the articles are flogging a dead horse.
You could figure out that it’s going to take age due to the fact no one bought it or is playing it.
Even gamers aren’t that stupid.
@trev666 They'll be sent to the Shadow realm
Imagine being the people working at the live service games still coming through the development pipeline.
Live service? Dead service more like!
I for one am glad this game failed but now even I am sick of seeing concord articles. Everything that can be said about this game has already been said 10 times over, just move on
Don't know how they thought charging just to play this was a good idea....I don't know if I'd even of tried it if it was free to play nvm £40 or however much it costs
Looks like the only ones who makes the money on Concord are the youtubers and journalists.
And I suspect these times will only get worse till it’s inevitable addition to PS+
If I was a Fairgame$ developer I would be paying close attention to the whole Concord situation. And making changes while I still had the chance.
I suppose one fix is to just drop NPC bots into matches to speed up wait times for finding a match. Of course, then I’m not really sure what the difference is between just having a single player campaign if you’re just going to fill it out with bots. I do wonder if Concord would have benefitted from a fully fleshed out SP campaign. I think it probably would have helped sell some people on it and make the game feel less like a waste of money if you can’t find a match and if eventually the servers have to be closed.
So basically play, overrun and brawl and you'll get matches? Got it.
@kungfumongoose agreed. Way too many articles about a game no one is playing. It’s time to let it go.
@AdamNovice Against the same 15 people. Hoo wee! I am salivating at the thought already.
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@Cambrius If I was a Fairgame$ developer I'd be flashing my CV at any opportunity.
Sony bought Haven for that game that so far looks like generic Payday, which is eerily reminiscent of Firewall here: no games, live service title, seems generic as hell.
Plus with Jade Raymond at the helm, who hasn't released a game in over a decade, is ex Unisoft and Google Stadia...yeah I'd probably be job hunting.
Looking forward to the next article about concord must be minutes away by now 🤞
I played 16 matches yesterday and only 1 took longer than a minute.
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At this point the number or articles telling me it's flopped exceeds the entire player base. Everyone knows it failed, we don't need hourly reminders.
I can’t even be bothered to embed the “stop stop he’s already dead” Simpson meme at this point. 😩
Hooeully this takes us one step closer to live service games dying out. There can only be one Fortnite and a few runners up. Everyone else...STOP trying!
I checked on Steam the other day and the original Tom Clancy's The Division has more players on Steam than this. That's bonkers.
Easy solution. Employ game testers to play the game and charge gamers microtransactions to 'buy' a team of game tester to play with.
Balls, I shouldn't have put this thought out there for them to see.
There are more articles about this game on this site than there are active players
spent more time reading articles about this game than I ever will actually play it
Looking forward to the next article:
Top Ten Concord players
1. PSXlover
2. Overwatch_killed_my_mum_27
3.
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9. J.Ryan
10.
Quick matches is all great but I see on the Reddit of this game lots of complaints that matchmaking is ignoring skill (MMR), latency (ping) and solo's vs stacks, leading in to horrible experience.
Solo players are talking about stomps and a 90 percent loss rate.
That is the other side of the coin if they only prioritize matchmaking speed instead of quality.
These articles are basically kicking the game while it's down after stabbing it in the back 30 times. PushSqaure really doesnt like this game! Can't they add bots to cover off the lack of people like fZero on switch?
Don't forget to purchase Astro Bot next week to tell Sony that Single Player is where we're spending our money.
To you people complaining about Push Square still covering this game, it's the biggest game disaster for under PlayStation. It still drives clicks and engagements even when you complained about it.
Just move on if you don't want to read about it as this game will still be covered all through the end of the month. it's like some of you really struggled to understand how online media works.
Only 1238 people currently have the first trophy which is acquired by killing ONE person. This means that at absolute best, there are only 1238 people playing this game on PlayStation.
You can barely even find the game on the store unless you directly search for it either
If they go F2P it won't cost much to refund the 25000 who bought it I guess. Has the game actually got much in the way of microtransactions to make money though?
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@invictus4000 runner up or not Helldivers II became Sony's fastest selling game ever selling 12m copies in just a few months.
It's not that simple.
@LifeGirl Matches are still matches.
Redesign the characters so they look appealing and go f2p or do a free weekend
F2P won’t save it. It was already a flop when it was free to try out at the beta weekends, and now all anyone knows is that it’s a flop.
If Sony only cared about the money, I’d pull it from sale, give everyone a refund, and cancel the whole thing for the tax write off at this point.
In the US, it typically takes 30 seconds for brawl. 1-2 minutes for the other.
@Enigk It had ZERO.
It’s a traditional game. You paid 40$ and you got everything.
The only thing Sony will learn from this are that nimrods prefer F2P titles with most of it’s content is locked away for 10-20$ a piece and it takes 100s of dollars to actually unlock it all. Don’t forget to buy the battle pass with a heavy dose of FOMO.
@trev666 best case scenario is that Firewalk becomes a support studio for Sony to help with the development of other first party games from a pure busy work perspective. The game doesn’t have any bugs or technical issues so the developers could be helpful when another studio needs extra hands on a big project. I just don’t see them ever being allowed to make a game on their own anymore. This is arguably one of the worst video game flops of all time, on par to the Atari ET game being so bad they had to bury it in the desert.
Sounds to me like they need to implement bots to fill out matches if this game is going to have any hope of staying alive for the few that seem to want to play it.
@OmegaStriver much as I detest Concord I do fear you're completely right there...
@OmegaStriver Concord has always planned to have micro transactions. The developers stated that the cosmetic store would launch I. October. This is similar to how the new Tekken game didn’t launch with micro transactions so it wouldn’t be in the official game description.
@AdamNovice And my face is still a face. Doesn't mean that it'll sell magazines.
at this point they should have turn the game f2p, there is no point anymore after those disappointing numbers, what they're waiting for? Maybe people who payed for it will be wrathful but it is what it is.
I couldn't find a Rivalry match on PS5 (with crossplay on) during peak EU time on weekend.
Game is almost dead...
@jrt87 What counts as "most games journalists"? Because the best I've seen from 'people paid in some way to talk about games' on Concord was cautious optimism. And I didn't even know of Dustborn until I saw people celebrating the allegedly woke game's failure.
@Deadlyblack yeah except you can actually work on other things while waiting in WoW
Literally nobody cares.
Either make it free next month in PSPLUS (give cosmetics to people that bought the game) or it's dead and buried.
I feel bad for all the developers that poured their heart and soul into this game. I really hope nothing bad comes of this. With that being said, this game is DOA. What amazes me is that the tech press is so sympathetic towards this game in general. If this was a game published and funded by MS, the fitchforks would have been relentless. I just wish there was more balance and less bias.
I live in Japan, and the average queue times are at least double this. Rivalry queue time times out because it takes too long
I find the entire ordeal with Concord fascinating, I actually would like more articles covering the different aspects of how the project leads got it so wrong. Besides, these articles seem way more interesting and fun than playing the game.
Fun game. Really enjoy it.
@QiaraIris this is interesting. Push Square is getting fundings from Sony through advertising so they need to promote Concord the best they can while staying honest about the flop status. But the more you talk about it the less it incites people to play it. Something like an inverse Barbara Streisand phenomena.
@QiaraIris no, we want killzone, resistance, twisted metal, and factions back too
I'll buy that for a dollar.
@OmegaStriver Then that hypothetical game will fail too.
Concorde would be just as dead as a F2P. The open beta proved as much. If Sony can't understand that they can suffer another mega flop.
Adding the game to PSPlus Extra would probably help the numbers as the main issue is paying $40 (AU$59), it will at least get more players saying good things about it, because everyone that has played it says the game is really good gameplay wise. So are the graphics.
Who cares, game had no promo's worth a diddly, I didn't even know about it until Push posted it....And the next post I see says it's trash, and the last post say's servers going down....
LMFAO! Good, one less trash FPS out there....
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