Unfinished: Paladins 10/06/2016

Really wish the guys would bother doing some research before slinging accusations. This game was in development before Overwatch was announced and no, they didn't change the look and ability of their characters after playing Overwatch.

Just heard Jason on the latest Bombcast talking about how this is "gross" and when I saw this unfinished I was hoping they'd done some research but clearly they didn't feel like it.

Must suck to be a dev getting called out because your game shares similarities to a more popular game - especially by people in the industry who you'd hope would do some double checking.

Is this Monday Night Combat 3?

This was kind of hard to watch, it does seem like a case of needing to study up a bit more on the origins of the assets. This isn't just some random Chinese rip-off like Box Maker.

The main gripe i have with the game just comes from how early in development it is, a lot of the design and art feels half finished and i hope they can polish a lot of it up in the future.

I mean, straight up copy paste designs from Overwatch. Which, I agree with what they said Blizzards takes ELEMENTS of other games and tries to make em bettter (and generally succeeds), which is how games evovle. But damn it must suck to be a designed on a game like this. Somone mentions generic art, I agree very generic. But maybe not the art, more the heroes. I mean what overwatch does well is set a story with the world and the players. This game has none of that heart.

Looks fine. I don't like Overwatch or that genre, really, but seems like a fine game to jump into.

I couldn't say it better myself. I really hope the rectify the error if they every get around to bringing this game up in the future.

I'm surprised by how much more I like this game than Overwatch. For me, the card customization system does what I feel Overwatch is sorely lacking, a way to tune characters to your particular playstyle or strategy.

It also doesn't hurt that the supports in Paladins are actually fun and as satisfying as the other character archetypes.

Paladins has been playable for over a year. I remember getting my Alpha invite in about October.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the Team Fortress 2 skin(s) are an official tie-in. Team Fortress 2 pops up all over the place in other games.

Kinda like herpes.

@thecynicaldave: I HIGHLY doubt Blizzard ripped of Global Agenda of all games. I think this was simply the CEO trying to deflect, since it also doesn't explain the numerous examples that go in the opposite direction, as well as their suspicious use of both a mount (Heroes of the Storm) and cards (Hearthstone, even though I know Paladins isn't a CCG, its just something else that raises my eyebrow).

I've heard this argument many times but it just doesn't bear out. Overwatch was revealed at BlizzCon 2014. Paladins was supposedly "in development" during this period, but didn't enter closed beta until November 2015, a full month after Overwatch did. Since "in development" is vague, it doesn't mean they had anything done before Overwatch was revealed. So many of the characters are so close to their Overwatch counterparts its hard to sit there with a straight face and say they absolutely didn't copy them.

Yeah just to echo some of what others have said here, I remember the alpha for paladins long before ever hearing about Overwatch. If anything both games took inspiration from TF2, but even the game these guys made before Paladins (global agenda) had half the stuff people think they stole from overwatch.

Overwatch was revealed in late 2014 but you seem to be forgetting how much was revealed. We saw a teaser and a small snippet of gameplay. Most of the actual information was in 2015 and Paladins had an alpha in 2015 with a lot of the same characters that are in the final game. If you think they had nothing before the Overwatch reveal then you vastly underestimate how long it takes to make modes, maps and characters. I'm sure they were inspired partially by Overwatch but I find it ridiculous that guy with jetpack and rocket launcher or guy with gun somehow show they just lifted characters straight from Overwatch.

Honestly one of the few things I'd say is very similar to Overwatch is the overtime system for when time is up but there are still people pushing the cart which we saw in the video.

Seems like this game's sin is having a roster of varied characters with different abilities which Overwatch now has a monopoly on based on people's reactions.

And I haven't even played Paladins since the alpha so it's not like I'm defending it because I'm a die hard fan - I'm just annoyed that in situations like these, where 2 games have similarities the only logical conclusion is that one must have copied from the other.

The copying is gross. Was it really necessary to blatantly copy Overwatch's in-game point system? The slo-mo when you win? The Match Type select screen? Not to mention some of the costumes that are also blatant ripoffs of TF2.

@deckard: Well I mean, the TF2 engineer skin is an actual steam promotion, but there's no denying this game hasn't taken more than a few generous bites

Personally I couldn't afford overwatch just yet and have been having a surprisingly great time with the game, it's more fun than it should be, though I'd switch to Overwatch in a heartbeat.

To those of you talking about how this game's Overwatchiness predates Overwatch: We're all eyes and ears here. Enlighten us. I'd love to see video of pre-Overwatch Paladins looking just as 'inspired' as it does now. No sarcasm. It'd be genuinely interesting to see.

the loading screen for the vs screen is a rip off from heroes of the storm

it doesn't matter if some of these ideas were theres in the first place they tweaked them to be EXACTLY like other games

and thats what sucks

although what I think is real funny is how every game like paragon tries to shoe horn characters in to make you like them but I just dont see us ever having another "Tracer" or "D VA" purely based on the fact that sometimes lightning strikes twice and thats what happened with those two there are some other chars in overwatch that are kinda alright but they basically make that game what it is

I don't care one way or another about the "Overwatch-ness" of this game, but I do think it's amusing that Pip's ult apparently turns enemies into chickens, and the first thing I thought when I saw him was "Oh! That's kind of Ratchet!" I don't think it's actionably close or anything, just funny.

Hard to give a pass to something that is such a blatant, uninspired rip off. The way it so directly copies the various UI elements of recent Blizzard games—Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, D3, WoW and Overwatch—really makes it untenable. Also, the art makes it look like just another Clash of Clans clone.

Blizzard is a company that takes an existing idea that someone else has done, and polishes it to such a fine sheen that you forget the original idea even existed before they stepped in. Hi-Rez is doing the exact opposite, taking ideas that already exist, except doing it worse. Which makes it stand out as such a rip off. This game might as well be a mobile game version of Overwatch.

Just want to point out that there's a character called Bomb King. That is all.

Really love to see someone pull a Blizzard on Blizzard. Hi-rez has done some solid work, even if their FTP stuff in Tribes started a little gross.

seeing as how you got all the points in that game... quiting would have been ok.

My biggest problem is false equivalency. Paladins very clearly has several characters who are clearly inspired by Overwatch heroes. There is no denying this fact. There are some people who for some reason look at this and rather than acknowledging it, just dodge the issue with "well OW ripped off TF2!" or Overwatch fans thinking they have a monopoly on a varied character roster. It's disingenuous to say something like "Overwatch is a TF2 clone" since although it was inspired by TF2, its very different in a lot of significant ways. Paladins isn't just SIMILAR to Overwatch, some characters are almost exactly the same.

While I don't think this is ripping off Overwatch as some people claim, it certainly seems to draw from a similar set of archetypes for some of its character classes.

It may have been influenced to go in a certain direction by Overwatch, I couldn't say. But to think Blizzard's character roster was wholly original and not similarly influenced by other. games that came before is silly.

The game looks alright, but I'd have to see how tiresome the free to play trappings were.

The group I play Overwatch with is already too large for all of us to play in the same party if we all came online at once, so the smaller party size here might be an issue.

Yeah, sorry but you are reaching pretty far there. Blizzard didn't invent mounts nor travel mode for MOBA likes. Smite already had a travel mode for the heroes way before HotS got released, using your logic Blizzard ripped them off.

The card thing is even more of a reach, you might as well claim that Titanfall "ripped of" Hearthstone with the addition of burn cards, see how stupid that sounds? Blizzard didn't "invent" CCG or cards in video games. Paladins card system looks way more comparable to that of Paragon and imho it's something that Overwatch is really missing (ability customization).

Btw: Blizzard is ripping of from anything that has worthwhile mechanics just like every, at least, half-decent developer. It's not like Blizzard developers live in some kind of culture vacuum where they don't get influenced by what's popular and new in gaming. Even WoW wasn't really "original" it also just borrowed from a lot of other MMO's that came before it and managed to put a lot of that together in a rather polished package (a first for MMO's back then), the whole Warcraft universe started out as Warhammer game without the license.

In the end I couldn't care less, because when you boil it down everything is a remix of something that already came before.

First of all, I don't think calling something I said "stupid" really helps anything. Second of all, I acknowledged that the HotS/Hearthstone stuff was a reach when I said it. Its not that they directly ripped off either game, its just that combined with the stuff they ripped off from Overwatch it kinda adds to this feeling of them looking at what Blizzard has been up to and cribbing as much as they can from them. Isn't it a bit strange that Blizzard has a popular shooter, MOBA, and card game and HiRez happens to make a shooter MOBA with card game elements? And as I said in a previous comment, I don't like the false equivalency here. Blizzard has been inspired by other things, sure, but can you point to a single source that Blizzard copied almost wholesale for any game they made? Even Heroes of the Storm, based on the DotA mod for Warcraft 3, has meaningful differences from League of Legends and Dota 2. It's not ok in my opinion to give this game a pass because "Blizzard steals too!" There is a fine line between inspiration and cloning.

@president_barackbar: Reaching for the sole sake of reaching neither doesn't help anybody, because at some point the comparisons are so far off that they end up sounding stupid.

Isn't it a bit strange that Blizzard has a popular shooter, MOBA, and card game and HiRez happens to make a shooter MOBA with card game elements?

Blizzard has a game with mounts, Blizzard has another game with cards, Blizzard has a MOBA like. Thus any game form now on that features cards, mounts and MOBA elements is ripping off Blizzard? Really?

Seriously, by your own admission the game is "more" than Overwatch, because it combines elements from different games, it's a derivation on a concept using other concepts, just like Overwatch is a derivation on class based objective shooters.

I would understand all this outrage if Paladin would be a straight up clone, but it ain't. It shares a couple of character archetypes with Overwatch, but Overwatch didn't "invent" those, they pretty much "evolved" over time. It shares a gamemode with Overwatch that Overwatch didn't "invent" either, it's all just derivations of things that came before.

Even Heroes of the Storm, based on the DotA mod for Warcraft 3, has meaningful differences from League of Legends and Dota 2.

That really depends on your definition of "meaningful", another way to look at it would be that HotS is a "dumped down" version of DotA, when in all actuality it's just another derivation on the MOBA concept.

What matters is if a game can actually offer something new with it's take on a concept. To me Paladin looks like it does a couple of things different than Overwatch does them, that's enough for me to get me curious and give it a try. The ability customization is something I've been missing in Overwatch since day one, just like some variety in game modes, because the brawls don't really cut it.

I feel like "free" is the right amount of money to ask for this game.

The borrowing in this game wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't combined with gross sounding microtransactions.

If there are any game devs reading these comments I would like to let them know that card packs are stupid and I don't want them in my games.

A lot of the comparisons to Overwatch I've seen feel incredibly disingenuous. People seem more than willing to jump all over the game if something even remotely lines up with the most broad stroke description of an Overwatch character, as if it's some damning evidence of copycatting. It's ridiculous the lengths people will go to express indignation and outrage. I'm not so delusional as to think Paladins doesn't draw some design inspiration from Overwatch (Hi-Rez has even said so themselves), but it's nothing on the level some people believe it to be. Some of the "stolen" skills are things that have existed in games since long before Overwatch was even a concept. I suppose this isn't an all too uncommon phenomena though. Fans of popular games often convince themselves that their favorite titles were the originators of any and all concepts and themes they utilize. Some even go so far as to accuse older games of copying the newer ones! This usually results from a misunderstanding of chronology (likely because a lot of these people probably learned about the "copying" game minutes before expressing their disgust), but just illustrates the extremes people can go to.

I mean, I get it. I get why people act that way and I can see where they're coming from. Paladins and Overwatch share similar aspects, especially when evaluated on a surface level. Overwatch is also still fresh in gaming's collective mind. It's hard not draw some comparisons. I'm guilty of that myself. So I get why people think that way. However, having now played and enjoyed both, I can't get fully on board with the amount of ire Paladins is drawing. It seems unfair to Hi-Rez. It seems, as some have said about Paladins itself, "gross" and "disgusting" to be so biased about these comparisons. People go into this looking for things to draw lines between. It feels like blatant favoritism with no perspective.

Admittedly though, I'm a bit more defensive than I'd likely normally be. I've been a casual fan of Hi-Rez's titles since Global Agenda (which I'm surprised to find so many people dislike, I thought it was fun). They aren't my favorite developer or the best out there, but they make solid, enjoyable titles. So perhaps I'm a bit biased. That said, I had no idea Paladins even existed until all this nonsense, so it's not like I'm defending my baby. It's a fun game with enough differences to scratch an itch that Overwatch doesn't. They have a shared legacy, but they are not one in the same.

As an aside, I find the microtransactions to be pretty nominal. The only content locked behind money are the champions themselves, something that nearly every character based F2P game does. Beyond this it's literally just cosmetics such as voice packs and skins. It's monetized exactly the same way Smite is, another title of theirs. I do find it a bit funny though that people get upset about paying 20 dollars for all current and future champs with potential cosmetic/chest microtransactions, but don't realize that Overwatch is a game you pay 40 dollars for to get all current and future champs with potential chest microtranactions. Now that's a similarity I'll get behind.

Man, a lot of aggressively ignorant people in these comments.

@focant: Your first paragraph was all that really needed to be said. That applies to anything. It is hilarious what people will justify, witch hunt, and argue over. Also, sudo-research and research that only supports their line of thinking. That stems into a bigger problem humanity has in general. But, for me it is entertaining watching that train wreck occur in an internet capacity over and over again until humanity as a whole is just a spec of dust in time.

I think people should have just actually listened to Brad during this video rather than throw their doritos and mountain dew in the air in disgust. But, whatever.

I'm not even touching the "Who Made Who" here, but man I've been burned by Hi-Rez in the past, since they tend to drop games like a hot potato once they aren't making as much money.

Blizzard invented these ideas because they are the most popular.

OMFG is this Chinese?

TF2 skin on the Dwarf

Drogoz is those demon dragonfolk from Wildstar.

And the music is generic.

@chillicothe: You get the TF2 skin by playing the Steam version of the game, it's a colab between Valve and Hi-Rez, it literally takes less than a minute to google that.

Wildstar didn't invent Draconic Humanoids and has in no way a exclusive claim to that fantasy species, that's another thing Google could have helped you with in under a minute. But why spend barely 2 minutes checking the facts, when you can instead write a "generic" comment in less than 30 seconds?

Now bitter nitpicky rebuttals, though lemme tell ya!

But yah, split hairs, jump on them grenades, get some battle lines drawn, yada yada.

Hi-Rez are an awful company and I think they are the only people I ever feel comfortable saying I hope their game fails.

@focant I had to stop when I saw the not-Torbjorn's gun, it even has the little fiddly part on the side that wiggles around like on Torb's gun. It's more than just a passing resemblance. An homage is one thing, but that's way, way, too close to copying something.

PS

As someone who played and loved Tribes: Ascend, ~*fuck hi-rez*~

I actually quite like the card system. I think there's room for this and Overwatch, thought the similarities in characters are a little close for comfort.

@chillicothe: Sorry that you consider pointing out facts as "nitpicking" and "splitting hairs". Imho it's way more "nitpicky" to look for any resemblances to other games, regardless of how far fetched they are, for the sole sake of going "ZOMG this so Chinese clone!".

I can live with the GB duders getting something wrong about a game from time to time, it's hard to keep up with everything "gaming" these days, usually this amazing community is there to correct them. In this case I'm actually shocked that the GB community seems to have turned into another version of the Battle.net forums or YouTube comments.

Hi-Rez didn't make Killing Floor. I think the big one that Brad was thinking of is Smite.

I'm sorry, but this just killed me.

Sudo is a UNIX command that lets you execute a different command as another user. I haven't regularly used UNIX in years, so seeing it made me weirdly nostalgic. OTOH, the word you're looking for is "pseudo".

Needs more boxes...j/k.

I can't decide who is dumber: the people who think that Overwatch has very much original to "steal" besides Blizzard's usual polish, or the people who think that you can steal ideas and then implement them in your 3D multiplayer shooter being developed simultaneously and then release 4 months later.

Hi-Rez is getting a raw deal from a community that used to be a lot savvier about what goes into these things. (Now, people pissed about Tribes on the other hand have reason to be scornful...)

The bomb king was holding a GIANT bomb... I'll let myself out.

I'd be a lot less :T about the whole thing until I saw the weapon models were designed to look like the Overwatch variants. That's...uh...something.

Lol why does Dan have to bang the mouse button so loud.