So I happened to check up on VGAS yesterday and learned that they were up to version 1.7 
And even more interesting, they’ve announced version 2.0 for later this year. Tbqh, I’m kind of shocked – anyone here playing this?
Oh I completely forgot this was even a thing, I looked at it in the AppStore and just checked some recent vids of it, honestly it really doesn’t look too good. I might give it a try at some point tho since I don’t mind brawl stars gameplay
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I find it weird that SEMC gave up VG to build a Brawl Stars clone and an arena battler … two much shallower games with what (to me) seems like limited potential for growth.
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It looks very much like they just gave up on vainglory since they saw too many mistakes and that it wasn’t worth fixing anymore. So instead they decided to copy something successful and popular on the same platform, making a carbon copy of brawl stars with vg characters.
With catalyst black it’s still a strange game, I play it occasionally and it could be good but also it feels strange too. Pay 2 win is still very much there too and that’s rather sad how much they keep going with that, almost everything in this game can actually be obtained or at least boosted by what is their premium currency. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle promotion of this when it gets close to its release date eventually.
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I still feel that if they pushed forward with VG and changed again the monetisation to mimic PC league/WR while pumping high quality content - they were going to be in A LOT better place than they currently are + VG was going to be alive and kicking. Honest opinion.
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I agree, but I still don’t understand that decision: they essentially abandoned a large fan base who would have jumped on a rewritten (or entirely new) “Vainglory 2” in favor of changing genres entirely to make a game about as unlike VG as possible. Did they think that their existing fans would just follow them into the new game? That seems extremely naive, since diehard VG fans = MOBA fans. Or did they think that they’d be able to duplicate VG’s initial success with the new game? That also seems extremely naive, since with VG they had a number of advantages that CB doesn’t have: first mover status, major boost by Apple during a keynote, no real competition for almost 2 years, etc.
This is precisely why I have no interest in trying that game.
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I think this is exactly right.
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It is a strange decision, with vg brawl stars I dunno how that’s getting advertised if at all, it very much seems as you said that they’re just hoping their existing fans would just follow them endlessly with both vg brawls stars and cb despite being quite different from what they developed that fan base from.
I dunno how successful they saw vg brawl stars would be if it’s just gonna be a rather bad looking copy running on nostalgia off those still around, or even if it’s trying to just be a quick buck thing, it’s just a very strange and rather poor looking decision.
And with cb, this is why it’ll be interesting as well how they’ll handle the release eventually of cb. Advertising always seemed to be a problem that floated around vg that I wouldn’t surprised it’s a problem they may have with can and the initial success of vg will most likely not happen with cb. I doubt they’ll score advertising from apple like they did with vg as you said with them being in a keynote. Plus now they have an image and aren’t new so their history can be bad for this project as it’s really not a great history they have. I doubt many fans have stayed to see cb as they develop it and I don’t think many would return, so it doesn’t seem like it will have a decent sized player base for the pvp size it is which actually oddly seems like they’ve prepared for this sort of case.
Something I’ve thought for quite awhile once I tried it, it can be a good game, if not made solely by them.
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Last I heard, SEMC’s marketing team was the same as back in the VG days. Don’t know if that’s still true, but if it is … 
At least they aren’t hampered by some of their self-important (and destructive, as far as community relations go) “community managers” these days.
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I’m assuming some of those more well known “community managers” have left, I honestly can’t remember anymore the people that have since left them
That is rather hmmm not so great if it is still the same people in the marketing team, I don’t expect them to change much how they’d advertise and such
The only team that they should had released long time ago.
Such hope is insanely without any touch to reality that I am mind blowed, tho I believe it’s kinda true and they expected the player base whom loved game was killed to wait months/years to jump on a new game just because it carry VG lore or is created by the company that killed our favourite game + we spend so many hours and thousand of dollars on it + they even leaved a bug that prevents us to play the skins we paid for lol.
Is it hard to understand that VG playerbase were fans of the MOBA genre foremost + Vainglory game itself and secondarily they liked the universe (till SEMC killed that one too… 
). The only game VG players would had transitioned is Vainglory 2 and 5vs5 should had been just that with totally reimagined heroes with abilities that are keeping their spirit while making sense for 5vs5 + maybe 4th active ability for more depth + dynamic and interesting map instead of copy-paste that took them so much time + PC league monetisation + social features + ofc updated engine on the edge of technology again + etc, etc.
Sadly they basically took a year and more to create just a single copy-paste map and played with numbers for the heroes gimping ofc in the process 3vs3 that had a huge player base loving it before the changes for 5vs5 started and changed 3vs3 in a bad way. From there they milked the trusted players (who remembers the early access fiasco?) and on top of that when things didn’t go as planned they gave up literally in what? A year? Seriously… instead of aggressively improving their game and change their monetisation to PC LOL one, they just abandoned it to create a copy of brawl stars and some p2w arena shooter that is nothing that special at all imho and surely will fail (already did).
On top of that all bs they didn’t even decide to take back their game that is VASTLY superior to their planned future titles and if they put the effort was still reversible to the point of stabilising the studio and expand it’s player base. They decided it’s not worth the effort… well, ok.
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Yup, this. 
The decision to bet everything on 5v5 was what killed VG. There were a lot of folks (myself included) who were deeply invested in VG who were shouting at SEMC not to sacrifice 3v3 on the altar of 5v5, but as everyone knows, they destroyed 3v3’s carefully crafted balance to push out the giant 
that was the initial release of 5v5.
I have lots of graphs and internal data showing how the game began to fall off after the initial hype of the 5v5 release. It was maddening to watch, because it was predictable and preventable.
That period has Kristian Segerstrale written all over it. Just my opinion, but … 
My personal belief is that the VG code is a spaghettified mess. I heard from several devs that SEMC’s approach to coding was “better to do it fast than right” in order to ship a feature quickly. As anyone who has ever coded (or worked on ANY project, really), this is a recipe for disaster down the road – and we saw the results in things like bugs that never got fixed, features that barely worked (looking at you, chat), obvious enhancements that were never implemented (custom builds, anyone?), and so forth.
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That’s just not how you should do things if you, ya know, want it working right.
I wonder if this work fast approach is how they’re still going with catalyst black, honestly wouldn’t be surprised actually
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They really did kill 3vs3 for 5vs5 and was not just balance, the changes were so massive that it basically went beyond balance to the point of… not fun to play mode. Stupid decision is kinda polite way to describe it, because they literally kicked out half the player base - there were a lot lot of players that actually preferred for mobile 3vs3 + the map and didn’t want to touch 5vs5 League type of game on their phones. 5vs5 should had been a separate game, period + with the same heroes ok, but with reimagined abilities fitting 5vs5 + maybe 4th ability, interesting dynamic map and imho around kraken + new engine with even better gfx. What they did was sloppy to say the least and also in the process they bet all on 5vs5 killing 3vs3
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Leadership issue for sure, sorry but those are the facts - most/all decision came from them and a lot of those were so absurd that even inexperienced person can see the issues with them
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I am working rn as a sys/network admin + cybersecurity, but I have my fair share coding - I am quite sure this is the reason why 5vs5 took them that much time given it’s just a copy-paste League map. The code was so bad that they had issues with the new map… release it fast fast + no # + their intention to stick to 3vs3 leading to hardcoded stuff for the original map (btw, that was going to be the best bet if they stick to it. That way they even didn’t had to directly compete with WR as it was going to be a different and arguably better fitting mobile game while still carrying more than enough depth. Just changing to PC league monetisation + keep releasing high quality content was going to be enough).
Yep, this is a quite sad story actually with multiple obvious mistakes and sorry, but most of them I would not took and not like I am that good at creating business. It really looks like kinda luck + talented people to end up with a great game/idea without really knowing how to move things forward and ofc blowing up the opportunity.
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