Anyone playing this? Is it even released? I keep seeing an occasional tweet from them with a new feature, but it doesn’t seem to have reached version 1.0 yet …
It’s still in the beta phase, unfortunately. There are the regular updates like you sorta mentioned and they have been improving it gradually to the point where it feels mostly finished, but there’s still absolutely no news on when it’s actually releasing. The game is still pretty good, but that said, it isn’t the most active tbh. The discord isn’t really that lively and matches usually have bots. Tho that’s probably bc there’s not much incentive to play when there isn’t much progression outside of gear grinding and fresher/weaker geared players can get completely stomped by those that have grinded.
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Is it playable? I haven’t seen it anywhere to download it.
It’s not on the US App Store, at least. Maybe it’s on the Play Store for those on Android devices, though.
IMHO they didn’t really learn from their past mistakes and that game is kinda dead on arrival. I know it sounds harsh, but it’s really my honest opinion.
I believe the folks that ran marketing for VG are still with SEMC, which would explain the inscrutable approach to promoting Catalyst Black …
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Looks like it, yeah… quite sad, instead of letting devs quit when things didn’t look good after 5vs5 release, they should had optimized the marketing+monetisation teams. Because instead of the new system they came up with, they should had taken example from those who do it right - riot and PC league. Changing to that type of monetisation and keeping the experience premium was going to lead to a lot more income to the point that they didn’t have to do what they did (letting basically most of the devs behind VG leave, dropping entirely esports, stopping developing the game, giving it to another company, etc).
At the very least no matter how catalyst black turns out, it will not be even near what Vainglory achieved and was - as polished premium experience, revolutionary visuals for mobile, decent controls, unique MOBA single lane 3vs3 gameplay, great lore, esports before mobile gaming was a thing and so on.
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I’d have to agree on how I see the game turning out tbh. The game is fun in short bursts like intended, but it definitely doesn’t come close to VG at all. Whereas VG was rlly unique for mobile game/MOBA standards and was super memorable, CB feels a bit more like a run-of-the-mill mobile game, albeit with a lot of polish bc it’s SEMC.
At it’s current state, I don’t see CB doing too well. Marketing for now is still pretty much the bare minimum with stuff like content reveals on social media and not much else and a lot of the draw towards it seems to be aimed at people who have brand loyalty to VG/SEMC which isn’t exactly gonna be effective anymore. Monetization doesn’t seem too good in its current state either tbh. It’s mostly based around speeding up the process of acquiring and upgrading gear that’s otherwise extremely grindy f2p. It’ll more than likely make some money off whales, but with how super costly it is to get a full maxed build, I feel like it’ll probably push away more casual players that the game seems to be aimed at. I also feel like the inherent p2w nature of it is gonna push away casual players from even playing at all when they’ll just get completely stomped by a whale without even being able to stand a chance against them.
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Yeah, that type of monetisation classifies under the pay to win category. It’s not like WR for example, where you have equal playing field and pay for basically cosmetics. It’s even not that grindy to unlock heroes really as they give plenty blue notes.
Just noticed this in my timeline … 3 whole views of the video so far …
Good thing they abandoned VG for this highly anticipated title 
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I honestly keep forgetting I even have this game. The views on that vid now while higher still don’t really seem great, I don’t see how this will do any better when it one day gets fully released
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Yep, I am pretty sure by now they know they are f’ed with their last number of “great” decisions. No matter how bad VG was going to do rn it was going to be hundred of times better than that game/project.
Especially if they didn’t give their game to another publisher and simply changed the monetisation to PC league style + continue to pump high quality skins. And even more if they didn’t blow up 3vs3 while doing 5vs5 as then it was not going to even compete that directly with WR as it was going to be unique/different.
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I see SEMC as the Research in Motion* of mobile MOBAs: they had first mover status and were considered the gold standard of serious multiplayer gaming on mobile. But they were done in by hubris: they misunderstood their market (believing it was like the PC market), didn’t listen to what their core player base wanted, and wildly underestimated the ability of emerging competitors to catch up (remember Kristian mocking Tencent when Arena of Valor was released earlier than anticipated? I mean, come on ).
Of course, it would have been possible to fix VG had it not been for two massive mistakes, both of which you pointed out: they didn’t know how to monetize the game properly, and they destroyed the mode that had made them successful in the first place and in its place, offered a buggy, less-enjoyable 5v5 mode – leading much of their core audience to leave the game.
* Research in Motion were the makers of the Blackberry. A good summary of the story of their downfall is here.
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While I had my fair share of good games/moments in 5vs5, I can’t stress enough how much more pure fun I had in 3vs3 before they destroyed it with the first HP changes in preparation for 5vs5 and then continue to destroy it more and more with new changes. Seriously, I REALLY enjoyed every second with 3vs3 + the monetisation was atleast not filled with lootboxes and gatcha RNG (tho even then I felt mirroring PC league was the better choice) + lags/desync were nonexistent + the game was actually bug free for the most part - overall great experience and so much fun to play + actually not that much toxicity back then.
Sadly, sadly… then did all you mentioned and more to make players leave and turn the game into generic MOBA experience. Vainglory was not just the first mobile game that took mobile gaming seriously + esports + first serious mobile MOBA, but also a unique experience with 3vs3 that fits great on mobile.
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This, I don’t get why they threw this away, they were in a good spot with being well made around 3v3 format. I thought they intended to deliver a new experience for moba on mobile platform, not just be more of the same.
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Ugh, I can’t stand 5v5, even after so many updates since it’s release. It just feels bad, nothing compared with the good ald 3v3.
SEMC made a huge mistake, but it’s not the only one. All reddit wanted 5v5 and thought it was better than 3v3, some redditors even wanted veterans to leave because it was time for a new generation to take over. Well, in the end they were wrong too, they understimate the 3v3 player base and expected a lot more players to switch to 5v5.
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Do we have a release date yet? Just curiosity.
I don’t think so, tho I did essentially forget I had this game, the most recent news I’ve seen was the pic hazel posted. I’m surprised they’re making a new game mode when there’s already like around 4 I think and two get rotated out
So I’ve updated the game and the ability to get the premium currency now is up which means the prices are available, so I’ll just give a bit of an idea of premium currency. Store is mostly empty of weapons rn so can’t use that to show prices to in game items, there is still chests tho so I’ll use these.
So these chests there’s 2 of em, quest earned currency and the premium, the quest currency chest gives a small set amount of upgrade/weapon currency and 1 item, premium chest gives 10x more the upgrade/weapon currency and 5 items with increased drop rates on all possible items. A premium chest cost $20 plus, probably about $25, that’s quite the price.
Game visuals need to be updated as there’s conflicting info on how much quest currency I’ll actually get so I cant say how many of the quest currency chests you could actually get within a day/week.
Yeah … with that model, it’s clear I’m not ever going to play this game.
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