Epic Games has released a massive update for its free-to-play title, Paragon. Called the Monolith Update, this update continues the game’s beta period with major changes based on player feedback since the game launched its beta earlier this year.
The update includes a new map, increased speed for faster, more action-oriented gameplay, updates for every Hero in the game, and more.
Epic Games has also released a new video for Paragon in which Cameron Winston and Kevin Abbot from Paragon’s design team take us through the big changes.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Did anybody play this? Judging by Overwatch’s success (and this years GOTY award – goddamn, the gaming industry is on the downward spiral) I’m guessing it’s not particularly popular. Considering the fact that UT4 is also not popular either I wonder if Epic is going to develop any worthwhile games any time soon.
I have played it for a while. If you have played the old map its hard to get into mostly because the old maps gameplay was much slower paced cool downs were higher their was a Health/Tank meta and hour long matches its not really popular mostly because its still in beta and is not advertised as much. But really opinions are divided with this change some absolutely hate the change and want it back to the old some like the change in combat and the lesser match times.
They said they’ve improved the sound. Can you confirm this? Do you find the sound useful now? When I played it you could leave your headphones off and wouldn’t miss out on much.
UT4 isn’t popular because it’s heavily in development. It may look polished already because of the sweet graphics but when you play it yourself you’ll quickly realize it’s an alpha test. You’ll realize it before you even play because the MENUS are the worst part of it. And then while you play you’ll notice the sound effects are completely broken and hopefully placeholders. Arena FPS players tend to stick to their favourite, not wander about playing random unfinished games. It might have to do with the time/skill investment. It takes years to get good in an arena shooter so if it’s unclear whether a game will ever be worth playing you don’t put that effort into it while you could be playing another game where you know what you’re dealing with.
UT4 has been in development for what 3 years now? Going by the UT veterans’ posts on UT message boards all die-hard UT99 fans have abandoned any hopes they had for the game and went away from the scene altogether. I seriously doubt it’s going to take off.
Agreed. The look of the game, even the feel of the game is already known now. It’s no longer “new”. Several years and still no “launch” in sight? Several years and the devs deny that there even will be a traditional “launch” at all? It’s going to take one hell of a marketing push to fix this mess, or it’s already over.
What I would do in retrospect, if I was in charge and could go back in time, is keep the SPECTACULAR, NEAR PHOTO-REALISTIC GRAPHICS out of the public version for as long as possible. The beautiful maps would be unknown to this day if I were in charge, not even a screenshot. I’d keep the public build limited to basic monochrome meshes like they had for all maps initially and really figure out the gameplay including sound and netcode using that version. Then and only then “launch” the game in one big push by revealing all the beautiful versions of maps and officially declare the game to be in beta. This way you would get the wow effect of the graphics at the right time – when you want the masses to start playing.
Epic are doing the exact opposite. They still have NO idea what they’re doing gameplay-wise, removing and adding entire weapons after years of development but the graphics were seemingly finished months ago so anyone wowed by that has already tried the game out in a clunky state…
To make matters worse the supposedly joint or open development where both developers and community members (i.e. players) contribute equally is a huge sham.
They get a few maps built for free. That’s about it. I don’t think any other significant aspect of the game is community-created. Plus, one of the early mappers / modellers got hired by Epic so he gets paid for his work now, all traditionally. I think the dimension we’ve been neglecting here is that UT is to a large extent a vanity project that exists to signal to other devs (potential employees) / studios (potential UE licensees).
“See, this is what you can do with UE”, must be why they showed the graphics off early.
“Learn our tools for free so we can hire fully trained employees”, could be why they opened up the process to modder contribution to begin with. This way someone learns to work on their game for free, they don’t have to pay an employee until he actually becomes useful. Then they hire the best of the best. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s smart.
Great insight into the UT4 situation, much obliged. So basically UT4 is a training ground for future Epic employees, free for both Epic Games and potential recruits. Getting back to UT99 and UT2k4 with UT2341 mod (mod that replaces stock UT2k4 weapons and movement with UT99 weapons and movement).
It’s in beta, no serious marketing has been done. yet.
It’s free just try. and read my full comment with all the info if you do decide to play.
I didn’t even know this game existed until now.