The Cycle Frontier is DEAD...what happened?
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- Опубліковано 28 чер 2023
- The Cycle Frontier servers are closing on September 27th 2023 ending its short early access phase despite thousands of players still playing their game.
To some, this was obvious and to others it's too soon. What happened? In this video I talk about why I feel the Cycle is ending and how the lack of innovation and some poor developer decisions lead to the end of their project.
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I liked that you just spawn into the map and spend as much time as you want before extracting. It was the one thing that kind of set it apart.
me too, I didn't have to rush. I could stay as long as I wanted and explore or crush all my hunt/gather quests. Really was upset when they started making decisions to please only the minority that had pitchforks and torches. Really sad to see it go, I had some really fun times on this game.
Honestly I think that was the best feature they had in the game. Hope it shows up in other games of this type.
Both Betas, S1 and S2 will forever be in my heart, was such fun times everytime I played
Not putting it on console was a huge mistake
It was great the community discord turned sour and the cheaters were rampant and they stopped wiping these 3 things killed the game period played since closed beta 2 and maxed in season 3 before I knew the were gonna close servers. Wasted maybe 1000 hours and spent around 160$ played with friends had a blast sad to see it go truly am but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I saw this coming at the end of season 2
You know what I would wish they would do Is make the game like 15 dollars and make it a Co-op shooter with friends, add maybe some slight survival elements and a couple extra monsters and I think it would be fine. I definitely would boot it up with the homies. The game wasn't bad and I will definitely miss it.
fr, probably my favorite game
@@vSwaGGerMoDz huge mistake was not having price tag on the game ... that alone would help them combat cheaters way more .... and all players would purchase the game me included all my friends as well .
So sad to see that this game is going away, it had incredible potential.
that it never realized or even tried
I had played over 400 hours before I realized how much I hated the design of this looter shooter. Anybody who has played The Cycle - Frontier knows it had (thankfully) big problems. The main problem is there weren't any "No PVP killing" - Servers at all. Every map deployment was met with the #1 hazard, the other Players on your Map. I would (not alone) spend an hour looting, killing creatures and collecting a mass of items, only to have some LZ Sniper shoot me in the back, and steal my loot when trying to extract ! I mean their was no safe zone at the LZ's or anything, just high risk extractions. I have better games to play, that will not leave me feeling cheated or robbed by the PVP interactions. So good riddance to bad rubbish is what I say about this game. Please try to get it right, next time.
@@mulder2400 thats literally any shooter extraction from the division all the way to tarkov so your only complaint is skill gap and situational awareness cool
@@mulder2400 Stick to solo player games where your skill isn't up against other people, just say you can't handle being worse than someone next time
I've been saying their gear tiers were out of balance since season one and they just kept making lower tier gear worse. Tarkov can get away with it because armor doesn't protect every inch of the body like it does in the Cycle and Tarkov has some moderately strong low level guns/ammo. I loved the idea of the Cycle and the general gameplay loop but the pvp almost always felt bad to me because of the mismatches.
Yeah that's the reason I stopped playing. Felt like there was no chance if you were outnumbered/outgeared
There's an inherent issue when you put gear checking into a PVP game with little to no skill expression. MMO can get away with this because you don't lose everything on death. In games like Rust or Tarkov; you can win a fight if you rat and get behind someone with a double barrel shotgun or through skill by hitting someone in the eyes. In Dark and Darker there's a lot of ways to avoid fights with stealth or dance outside someone's swing range (unless you're fighting a 95% phys reduction fighter and all you have is physical damage, but they're so slow you can just run away).
In the cycle you often felt "prim-locked" because good gear was gated behind reputation and quest grinding; and people could gatekeep objectives. Putting 30 bullets into a purple/red armor's head only for them to one-shot you with a basi or a kor felt awful and there was no way to find good gear in raid. Not to mention that 90% of the time I played I got killed by a cheater a mile away through a wall so I just gave up.
As a new player I agree, so often you meet a pair of players working together who have superior weapons and armour and you are there distracted making lots of noise trying to fight off monsters and these guys just ambush you. I think hunting monsters makes it all the easier for exploiter players because of the noise it creates one, and secondly it distracts you from defending yourself from attack from human players. It's really a pity because the game is actually very good in terms of it's build out and content. I would hope someone would take over the cycle, and recycle it so to speak and solve some of these problems lol
Same reason I left after the first day. The game idea and everything is great, drop in to a map that lasts a bit is just awesome. But having RPG tiered style gear (an uncommon gun and a rare gun, same gun just vastly better stats) was a killer for me. Always meant sweatlords would have an edge. That's not fun compared to normal FPS where skill is more important. Ah well. A near miss but someday we'll get there!
this is the exact reason I walked away from the game
I thought the art style was tight, but there wasn’t enough to keep coming back too. But quick dropping into raids was awesome!
I feel like the art style was one of its biggest weaknesses. So generic and "casual" which doesnt fit an extraction shooter at all.
what art style would fit an extraction shooter @@Lornext ?
Man this was a good game too 🤦♂️. There’s so much they could have done with it.
Honestly, I preferred the old version of the cycle. It was different because it didn't require you to be the last person alive and the variety of objectives was nice. Add on the fact you felt like a badass fending off the creatures and the battery thing really helped. I don't like how they just gave up on the game; I can understand if a project is not going well but is that an excuse to give up when you have a few thousand people that enjoy and love what you're doing. Apparently, for them, it's a yes.
the OG cycle on epic was a blast and was my ONLY FPS game i played that was competitive...now i got no competitive shooter....i tried this new version and was immediately put off by the tarkov crap they copied....
@@Scypher0th lol og cycle was trash theres a reason they revamped it, this game still died but it wasnt it
I played for as long as the content/gameplay loop held my interest, also participated in the early tests. It was a nice alternative to other extraction shooters available at the time, though, I was never SUPER into the game like a lot of folk were, so you know there's no emotion in what I say here.
They let themselves fall behind with their development. Worked on season content and cosmetics instead of putting more of their effort into actually improving and adding to the gameplay itself. Then, when they felt like it was getting too difficult to maintain - because of the choices THEY made - they took all the money we gave them and ran, instead of committing to improving the game. This always happens when developers get lazy and fall behind. In a world where 1-3 people can make a game that blows all of its competitors out of the water, there is no excuse for conduct like this.
And for that reason, boycott Yager. I blacklisted that developer studio and I hope they get shut down.
@@theforgeryttv6449 Agreed. The buck has to stop somewhere.
They fucked it, 60k players at one point with the biggest streamers in the world all playing it for weeks. No AC just killed the game quicker imo but the game was doomed from the start we just didn't know it yet. That team was so incompetent, way too egotistical to listen to the community, fell out with the biggest creators like shroud (apparently the worst company he's worked with) and tons of ppl on the creator program said they never listened to them and if they said smth they didn't like they'd genuinely just drop you. They didn't even know how to do simple balancing, it got to a point where white kits were literally equal in pvp whilst being 100x less the price (biggest flaw in an extract shooter), uneven squad queues is also a big no no in a high TTK game especially if you're adding SBMM. They also worked on the wrong things with updates, tharis ended up being an absolute shitshow and pretty much killed the wipe 1 week in because it was so unbalanced so we had to wait 4 months or whatever it was to reset the economy. adding inertia was also dumb, movement was the biggest factor in skill gap which they took away. They tried catering to casuals wayyyy too hard, the genre is naturally a hardcore genre so if you neglate that portion of the playerbase you're going to make both quit at the same time. This game could've had a place in extract shooters but season to season it got worse and worse. The best season was S1 from a gameplay perspective, if S1 had the AC of s2/3 we would've had such a good foundation to build off of with such a higher number of players.
Ill be honest, I wasn't surprised. It had already been hard shifted from a weird BR game to this extraction shooter, and while it definitely seemed to have a good idea of what it wanted to be, it didn't seem like it had much in the terms of goals beyond that. Much like the BR before, it kinda seemed like chasing a trend.
I don't think that their just chasing trend. Apex, warzone and fortnite was on its very peak when they introduce their og BR game at the time and those games killed off pubg. So they already knew that their game has no chance against those giants. EFT and hunt showdown was the only extraction games back then. So the switch makes absolute sense at the time.
@@micoloot2455 "EFT and hunt showdown was the only extraction games back then". Nothing really changed since then. D&D not going back it seems. And Cycle is dead.
@@madzaisa true. but with the announcement of bungie's new game marathon and ubisoft's the division heartland also ark raiders from old dice dev team, beautiful light and mauraders on the horizon. things about change on the extraction genre. Hopefully it will be better this time. Personally Im excited for marathon.
@@micoloot2455 True, but it had likely started development (or at least considered doing so) shortly after Tarkov gained a TON of spotlight back with the patch that added Reserve and the Hideout. Just because other games hadn't popped up yet doesn't mean they weren't following a trend. That's like saying Lords of the Fallen wasn't just chasing the Souls-like popularity just because it was one of the first.
EDIT: Change that, "Trend" might not be the right word. More that they observed a opportunity and poured their resources into it without considering what they were actually needing to make in the long run.
IMO the game had nothing going for it. The movement is janky and the gunplay is trash, both are essential for a shooter. If both are bad i'm not surprised the game died
I really loved this game and sad to see it go. If the game wasn't free to play then I think it would have led to better decisions and management by the developer.
I don’t think so they showed they really don’t know what they’re doing
The game was great and I played it a lot for a while. There just wasn't anything that I wanted to spend money on... Like additional quests, stash space etc. Would have bought a battle pass but they gave it out for free. So no wonder it failed.
For some reason I had no interest in buying cosmetics in this game, can't really put my finger on why not... Not many would see any of that I guess.
The monetization was horrible (Almost 100 dollars for some skins?) and the cheaters and campers drove people away. Then the developers censored and banned people who voiced criticism of the game. Yager had an opportunity to get this game up and going after a strong start but they kept screwing up. No wonder why they got dropped out of Dead Island 2's development.
They fucked it, 60k players at one point with the biggest streamers in the world all playing it for weeks. No AC just killed the game quicker imo but the game was doomed from the start we just didn't know it yet. That team was so incompetent, way too egotistical to listen to the community, fell out with the biggest creators like shroud (apparently the worst company he's worked with) and tons of ppl on the creator program said they never listened to them and if they said smth they didn't like they'd genuinely just drop you. They didn't even know how to do simple balancing, it got to a point where white kits were literally equal in pvp whilst being 100x less the price (biggest flaw in an extract shooter), uneven squad queues is also a big no no in a high TTK game especially if you're adding SBMM. They also worked on the wrong things with updates, tharis ended up being an absolute shitshow and pretty much killed the wipe 1 week in because it was so unbalanced so we had to wait 4 months or whatever it was to reset the economy. adding inertia was also dumb, movement was the biggest factor in skill gap which they took away. They tried catering to casuals wayyyy too hard, the genre is naturally a hardcore genre so if you neglate that portion of the playerbase you're going to make both quit at the same time. This game could've had a place in extract shooters but season to season it got worse and worse. The best season was S1 from a gameplay perspective, if S1 had the AC of s2/3 we would've had such a good foundation to build off of with such a higher number of players. @@CoachBojangles
It had a great start and a good run, I found it difficult to stay intrigued until the late game though. Never even made it to the 3rd map
As someone who often finds Tarkov a little too hardcore for my liking at times - this game was a breath of fresh air. I really enjoyed it, but they just never added new content.
You're right about every point you made. For me, it was seeing that all the hard work they put in against cheaters was not working anymore, and every time I died to a cheater it wouldn't let me report them, in fact I had to restart the game, never got my stuff back. I didn't admit the game was dead though until they held a content creator competition to see who could get the most views on Twitch and UA-cam, and a creator by the name of @ticklemepink CLEARLY won, but they wouldn't add his name to the list for some reason. I LOVED this game, and now the devs have tarnished their name for me forever.
I'd like to see it come back with some lore as a singleplayer game with the multiplayer as a side-benefit. Maybe with more planets to visit or more biomes on the same planet. Sort of a drop-in and hunt monsters/explore game. Some kind of level progression where the gear allows you to go to stronger planets and stronger parts of the weaker planets might be nice. The ability to set up ground bases to auto-mine resources and defend them from monsters that spawn in randomly but increasingly often as the player's base increases in mining power. Maybe even some kind of exo-skeleton that enables special singleplayer-only abilities to fight the equivalent of boss monsters.
They had a solid foundation.
But... the multiplayer being the main focus was bound to make it fail without a top-level anti-cheat system that they just didn't have.
In terms of the base PVP mode, if they could get a better anti-cheat, I think they could have done a server system where servers are resetting every month; maybe two servers with one reset at the start of the month and the other doing a reset at the middle of the month. If the game gets more popular, then four severs with one reset per week.
Maybe even some kind of server with an alternate universe where the factions are actively fighting each other on the planet similar to planet-side but the bases require resources to upgrade the players to direct teams of mining bots or raid enemy mining bot teams to collect THEIR supplies. Basically to give the players something else to enjoy when they're tired of the main extraction PVP and the singleplayer campaign.
2 things killed this game for me: 1. The wildlife AI was so annoying and bullet spongey (for the bigger guys). 2. I've always had lag/stuttering problems at the initiation of combat with another player. That feels so bad. It stinks because I thought it was a unique setting and extraction shooters are neat, but they couldn't quite pull it off
Sincerely hope either the devs themselves or dedicated fans find a way to make this game's equivalent of SPT for tarkov, would be nice to preserve it in some way.
I honestly think the gritty immersive feel of Tarkov is what keeps people coming back to it, and other studios are reluctant to try to capture that vibe, either for fear of being less accessible or being labeled a "tarkov clone" or both. But I think this is why a lot of people bounced off Cycle and came back to Tarkov despite it having so many refined features and high QOL. It's too smooth, shiny, and removed from reality.
Ill miss it for sure even if I'm the only one
No, it was the rampant cheating in S1 and then bad decision after bad decision by Yager from S2 onwards. The game, at the end end of S1, was a really solid extraction shooter experience. Yager killed their own game.
Tarkov has had rampant cheating In some regions, at least according to many. It survived and survives very well. If the game is good enough, people will endure cheating to some extent. The Cycle wasnt.
@@p4nnus As I clearly stated, the downfall of TCF was also due to compounding bad decisions by the developers, not just the cheating. Also, TCF was a F2P game and Tarkov isn’t. I’m sure many more people would’ve quit Tarkov if they didn’t have a financial investment in the game. It was easy for people to leave TCF when they didn’t have a penny invested. This model also helped propagate the cheating issue worse than Tarkov, limited the scope of Yager’s options to keep the game afloat and also contributed to its early sunset. Had TCF been a paid game, things would’ve looked somewhat different.
To say that it’s just down to TCF not being good enough is not only incorrect, but vastly oversimplified the complexities of an early-access game as a business and sustaining its viability, which was the issue here.
I like the aesthetic of the Cycle significantly more than Tarkov. It's much more more stylized, the guns are unique, the atmosphere and sound design is really well done. Tarkov to me is like every other mil sim sort of aesthetic. While they do a pretty good job, I've seen it 100000x before which is uninteresting to me personally. I get that people are really into the "realistic" vibe with guns/attachments and whatnot which is fine, a lot of people like that. It's way more of a risk to develop a unique style, not everyone will vibe with it.
dang been looking for new games to try out and ran into this game, but I guess I'll continue my search now
Really sorry to see this game go. I know it was struggling, but it's really surprising to see them pull the plug on not just development, but the entire game itself. You know, there are 20 year old games with the servers still running, I'm really disappointed they can't even leave the lights on for us. It will be missed.
On a positive note, I'm happy that the extraction-shooter genre is taking off with so many new titles these last few years. Some are going to fail, but I'm glad the market is expanding.
If Shroud plays your game, you better have your anti-cheat squared away
The huge popularity boost from heavy hitters playing the game is going to bring huge waves of cheaters along with it
Same thing happened to Super People.
Same thing happened to tarky tbh, cheating existed but wasnt rly a problem until streamers started diving in en masse around the drops hype when labs was released.
They could of done partial wipes. The only thing that kept my mates from playing was inventory space. If they just let people keep they're inventory upgrades and wipe everything else that would of been better.
I will for sure miss the 10 seconds to enter into a raid, I keep remembering this game during my 5min+ queue times in tarkov
I just discovered this and I’m crying
There was a lot of mismanagement in terms of dev updates and the community management was horrendous. There's a streamer called ticklemepink that had a horror story with them and he highlights how the company behind this game ran it.. into the ground themselves
ticklemepink is an old EFT streamer and he has always been problematic. dudes looking for attention.
@@logfever5100 you clearly haven't heard both sides of the story. He's the one who showed how the community management basically committed fraud to get content creators to stream their game with no chance of winning the contest and continued to have the same streamers win their contests even though those streamers broke the community guidelines.
@@logfever5100He's just edgy and people don't like him because of that. You're not "problematic" for making some edgy jokes lol
@@logfever5100 maybe so but they actually fucked him from the community contest.
They should have done seasons like diablo. You have a permanent character on their equivalent of the eternal realm. You never lose progress there. Then have a seasonal character that wipes each season for people who are into that. Though this probably wouldn't have worked out with the low player numbers. They likely wouldn't have had the population to run eternal realm servers along side seasonal as their normal servers had match making issues.
I remember playing one of the early betas. It used to be a 15-20 minute round of claiming harvesters, killing boss monsters and players. With minor stuff like “collect this for X bonus points to your score at the end”. Near the end couple of minutes you’d go to 1 of 3 extraction zones. Often players would camp there to get the kills to boost their score.
I just used a stealth gear item and ran past over hundreds of players during my games to get onto the ship to save my points. But camping for kills was still a semi viable way to get to the top of your lobby score board. I did too with sniper rifle, AR, shotgun as my combo to fight AI and players.
ALL GEAR had infinite uses. Once you bought it it was yours, you NEVER lost it on death. It was the best version in my opinion.
Talking to my brother about it today as well. I'm not surprised that F2P games not doing well outside of the huge games.
It's sad but hopefully they can come back with a game with upfront costs.
I feel like they knew the end was coming when they gave up on wipes. It just made no sense and felt like the death blow, like you said.
Also, I can't help but think that Tencent had something to do with the decision. Maybe Yager had more long term plans, but Tencent just looked at the numbers and said no.
They did plan to have a new map come every other season like they did on season 2. It looked like they had a lot of ideas and I was really looking forward to seeing this game make it big.
I just redownloaded it on steam today after a while of not playing it and I cant believe I didnt know about this until a year later... that sucks it was really fun
bruh, rip, I was looking forward to this one
I went in on my first raid and killed several players. But more of them just kept dropping in and basically I had no idea what was going on but I had a blast. A shame I forgot about this game as I am sure many other people did.
I enjoyed playing the Cycle. I had mostly hardware issues keeping me away from it. It's about time for me to upgrade my pc but I just haven't had a chance to delve into where I wanna go with it. It was a really fun game before I started having fps issues during gun fights. Made it really hard to continue playing when I had time to.
I played the old version of this game but when they shut it down i didn't want to risk getting into this one encase they did it again and im glad I made that choice. I feell bad for the people who are super invested in this game, I wasn't to invested in the old version but it did happen to me on another game a few years ago called Worlds Adrift and it still hurt to this day that it's gone.
... just planned to come back and see this
My friend and I were playing some alternatives when Tarkov would get on our nerves (you know how it is, die like 4 times in a row to 1 shot headshot scavs, ironsights, 150m out, through a bush you cant see anything on the other side of but he can, player scavs after you finally get through an encounter with bosses or PMCs, the works), and we played a few rounds of The Cycle, and honestly I thought it was cool. There are things that irk me about these kinds of 'Tarkov replicas' (as you said, gear in these style of like "oh this is purple so it's juice, and you have white gear so you're fucked! WOO) and we will see if this happens in Starsiege Deadzone as well, but I am surprised it's shutting down overall to be honest. Will be interested to see what will make the highly anticipated (for me at least) Marathon different.
Saw this on steam yesterday. Had some good times with buddies on this game. Sad
I feel like they were so close to something amazing. Sad to see it go even though I didnt play every wipe either.
The biggest difference I think is that in Tarkov/Hunt the worst loadout can still defeat the strongest loadouts.
I think that's a crucial factor for these games.
Is there any campaign or offline mode so I can play in this game
Thanks for this. I'm bummed bc I found this game this year and loved it but then started getting frustrated with the pvp. No one wanted to play together they would just fight you. So either I got wrecked by ppl with nothing when I was geared and sometimes I would beat ppl who were better than me and I felt I had no business beating but I got lucky and like either way it sucks
I wonder if Yager is going to rework their ideas and approach and come back with a similar extraction shooter in a couple years time or if they're going to move on to newer things
I was waiting for the full release....
Damn, it's sad. Well, I never played it, but I am sure it was fun to watch
I wanted to play right now ,but when i heard this im so sad,it was my favorite open map game😭
Best part about this game is that sweet sweet load into raid time. Please Tarkov
Man thats sad, always wanted to try it out, looks fun
Is it really going ? man this game was pretty fun to play . i wish i had friends to play with , i was doing a lot of solos & i hadn’t been on this game in a few months
all valid points, Hunt had a similar issue they use to have very little content and player base was super low. its kinda blown up over the last few years but it was a super slow burn to start. and the reason its getting popular is consistent content, events and great devs
The cycle burned out for me and my friends during the first beta but I really loved the game. It scratched an itch I had for a scifi fps game. The landscape and the feel of the game was beautiful and I really wished they capitalized on it more.
I know you mentioned that armor made a huge impact in pvp and since I think it was season 2 armor didn't really matter much. For example, for the last two seasons the only difference between green armor and pink/red armor was 2 extra bullets for some guns and 1 bullet for most guns. Not to mention the best armor in the game was a pretty big grind to craft every time you happened to lose it. So I don't really think that was an issue
My main issue with the game is the skins were way to expensive, everything else was mostly fun. Now I think they should look into a service that players can pay to host their own servers for the game while also making it customizable for people hosting. Granted there would have to be some tweaking for this to work but I think it would cool.
Yeah the skins were too expensive and most of them didn't even look very good either lmao
fuck this game was so special. The devs clearly cared, the vibe is unmatched, it was fun. A shame
I used to play it a lot even got to fight pink and his buddy at one point. It had been fun but the devs didnt listen well about the cheating issue at first and because of it many people didnt return. I loved what they were doing artistically. I agree on the last few month issue because i put at least 100+ towards them three months ago and now i dont get to keep the items lol. Fun while it lasted.
What happened: they wanted to be Tarkov №2 on the hypewave
The end
I hope to see some more SC content soon! Loving that game!
I started this game like 3days before they announced the sunset
I used to love this game when it was in its open beta. It was more fast-paced, and you didn't lose your gear when killed. The game became a lot harder, especially for new players since they could encounter pro players with stronger gears and never get a chance to build a decent equipment to be competitive. I probably had to practice more, but I think if they left the game as it was in the open beta, plus the stunning graphic they made and, why not, with the new picaxe mining system instead of drills, this could have been an incredible game.
Having played EFT for almost 5000 hours, the only reason I couldn't get into Cycle is the way pvp worked, since theres is no face hitbox like EFT getting outnumbered usually meant death in this game, on the other hand if you had the gear advantage like full purple armor and good gun going against squad of green armor it was relatively easy to clutch it, content wise I didn't mind it that much
This is sad, ye I play it just few times, but this game is/was wery interesting for me and Free to play.
Thank you for this awesome video.👍
I could never get into the game, but still sad to see a promising game get canned too soon.
I would of liked to seen a bit more complexity in the combat system on the cycle frontier, there was a lot they could of done in that game to make it more interesting and I did respect that they spent time working on a proper anti-cheat system.
Sad to see this go. If enough people start playing it maybe we can save it.
games that have wipes have always put me off, things like Rust or Tarkov that constantly wipe everyone back to the beginning, because it's lost progress. the fact that they were taking wipes away is what brought me back to play, because knowing in a couple months all my progress would be gone made me not want to put any time into the game in the first place
It would be nice if they released a dedicated server for it
I played the Beta, I was somewhat having fun but it's sad to see this game go
I was one of the few people who was a lover of this game, i loved everything about it. It had its rough spots but i knew that it had the potential to be the next tarkov but in a more enjoyable type of way. Sadly i was young, didnt have money and didnt have a pc. Couldnt play the game unless i wanted to look at 40 fps... Still got about 200 hours into the game but could never enjoy it to the full extend...Now i have a pc and dont know what to do with it. Basically waiting for something that is as good as this game
Same here bro. I miss cycle frontier so much😢
Im seeing same kind of problem here as the Dark and Darker is having (its basically tarkov but medieval lol) the friggin armors man, in these kind of extraction shooters they seem to be a really hard thing to balance (weapons too if they have nothing else than tiers, Dark and Darker also has just colors as tiers) The game has plenty of potential, but as of right now its really annoying to headshot enemy multiple times and then they just land bodyhit on you and you are gone just because they had better weapon and armor.
Wtf no this game rocks we need to do something as a community to keep it alive, I just got back into the game and it's been such a good time. This game literally has the best immersion feel in the genre. The no wipe seasons is a perfect fix to the MMR addition and makes the game very skill based.
I'm sad to see it shut down tbh
I assume Marathon getting announced also had something to do with it. This was one of the first games I thought about after that announcement. It's just gonna be The Cycle but bigger and made by Bungie.
Lack of content, new updates taking 5+ months to drop and when they did there was so little new content, constant balance changes continually making the game balance worse and more favored to noobs, didn't fix cheater problem until 5 months after early access, SBMM turning the game into a literal sweat fest (if you were good), and removing wipes from the game all of these things combined is what killed the Cycle Frontier. It had so much potential and the devs kept killing its potential over and over again until it wasn't even worth playing. GG Yaeger, sell the game to a Dev team that's actually capable and competent and can put out big content updates in 2-3 months. Screw Yeager for ruining their own game.
I played and enjoyed The Cycle Frontier from it's initial closed beta all the way through to the end of the first season. After that point i ran into hackers almost every other match and stopped playing. When i came back to it after a wipe and anti-cheat update, i couldn't find very much added content aside from more skins and paid promotions. I'll be it I never paid money after the closed beta, during the beta i paid around $50 and only recieved half the supporter skins i was promised, and haven't been to it since. I am sad to see it go because i had a good time playing it, even the PVP with it's frustrating gear accounts for lack of skill mechanics. Wish they had done more original content, or even just more content. Their "The Cycle" game before the loot shooter change, when it was a battlegrounds style game, was FUN to me, and i was sad when they canceled that in favor of this style. Both their games were fun, but neither had any new content added aside from skins, battle passes, and customizations choices.
Cheaters and terrible solo play were the main reasons the game died, to be honest. Most players are solo players and fighting groups on a game with this huge of a TTK is just bad.
I just notoced this morning as well..pretty sad to hear that..i really enjoyed the betas an such but i couldnt stick with it ive just been too burned out on the genre thanks to tarkov.
Please bring back another series for mount and blade
Man this is so annoying and sad, I was craving something new,and idk how but cycle came to mind again. I played this with a friend before and solo, those were fun times, so I thought Id give the game a try again. Ngl I love it, Im out of my comfort zone unlike before, but hearing it's gonna go down in like what a week is such a bummer
This was my favorite game since Dayz Standalone launches... My friends and I are devastated; RIP TCF
I played in both betas, and a bunch in season one. Cycle frontier had so much potential. I LOVED the drop in and out system with no queuing time.
I stopped playing initially because of the cheaters, but as a solo player in these types of games, it was also very frustrating. As a solo in Hunt Showdown and in Tarkov, you have options to escape and outplay your opponents. The only thing that matters in cycle is your armor and weapon, but even if you went in as a chadded up solo, fighting against a team was an exercise in futility. (For the most part, I get there's really good players out there)
I get they wanted it to be a team game, but there should have been more ways to play the game for different squad sizes, down to solos. Also, the way sound was designed, it was impossible to be stealthy at all, as you could hear someone crouch walking through 20 feet of concrete. As soon as a team detected you as a solo, it was over. Combine that with the armor and weapons systems as mentioned in the video, playing this game as a solo just wasn't fun.
That being said, I went back in season two, after they implemented their anti-cheat and mmr bucket system. There was less cheaters, but the other issues remained. There wasn't really any new content, and it just felt kind of pointless as a solo. The few friends I had that played in season one had all moved on and weren't interested in coming back.
I loved the concept, and certain executions, but the weapon/armor imbalance (especially against solos), bad sound occlusion (Despite feedback since the beta on this by the community), and lack of content and listening to feedback kinda killed the game.
This game could have been so good, for a long time. It seems like it's real difficult for devs to make a good extraction game. Marauders is really tailing off in population too, and its kind of the same thing... cheaters, and lack of refreshing content to retain players.
Somehow that's something that Tarkov has nailed. I keep going back to it, because it scratches an itch no other game can. Yes its repetitive, but really its only the quest system. And nothing forces you to play the quests. Traders can be levelled even without following the quest line. Tarkov is also incredibly rich in lore and content. It dynamically evolves in a personal way every single wipe. The struggle to level and survive a raid is a very personal story line that you can look back on, and remember individual memorable moments, like winning your first boss fights, or wiping a four man squad as a solo for the first time. As you get better at Tarkov, the game gets a lot more fun too. You always have a chance to win a fight in Tarkov, unlike in The Cycle.
Tarkov has its myriad of issues as I'm sure everyone here is already aware of, but it keeps pulling me in regardless.
the change for no wipes was a killer. I enjoyed The Cycle Frontier. in fact I was super excited when they did the "Scav Kits" Scaving is my favorite thing in EFT.
Agreed with the scav kits, but the game was one foot in the grave prior to wipes. People are way too okay with companies arbitrarily wiping their progress. Wipe meta is a sad excuse for balancing and simulated content.
I haven't been able to play the game. Since launch the game will just be black screened after the opening cutscene. And I spent the first 2 months after launch talking with support but I haven't been able to actually play
I was very surprised when I saw that announcement. Tarkov needs a good competitor
Bro it still hits hard. Despite its flaws, it was good game and issues could be fixed... i guess it was too much for free
I didnt play for long buy I got like a good 100 hours in and me and my duo which I found in the discord had so much fun slowly getting over our fear of the jungle and learning the map and how to pvp
They nerfed just about every item. All the shotguns and the armor, then made multiple tiers of grenades. And the GMs were helping streamers cheat.
Nothing will beat the original triple missiles manticore before it went to the extraction game mode. i miss the original :(
I just love the game its one of the most beautiful settings and it leaves me in awe everytime i play it i would gladly pay to get a single player version
I somehow hadn't even heard of this game before.
kind of a shame, this looks like it was really cool.
I loved this game , so sad the direction it took
i did enjoy the game a lot but i was told they were gonna make a console version so i stopped playing on pc to wait for that but unfortunate they will never get to it
Cheating got way out of hand and then they stopped wiping recently which really hurt the game. Wipes in a game like this are so hype and them stopping that hurt it for me. Motivation to play stopped after that for me. And I’ll also add the the combat balance was not good. It was pretty much whoever had that better gear won. Couldn’t really solo a group like you can in Tarkov.
Is it so expensive to just keep the servers running?
That is the same situation that Arc Raiders gonna have for change his pve mode to pvpve
Quite surprised and shocked to hear this. Especially as they had done a lot of things proactively that Tarkov hasn't (countering cheating, etc).
always the cheaters :D
They had all the things to make this a great game and gave up. It’s like pulling all the ingredients to make an awesome sandwich, lay it all out than at the last moment say “I give up. It’s to difficult to make this.” and walk away. (That’s my feelings about this)
ya like i thought thought they were doing a lot right.
100%. They fucked it, 60k players at one point with the biggest streamers in the world all playing it for weeks. No AC just killed the game quicker imo but the game was doomed from the start we just didn't know it yet. That team was so incompetent, way too egotistical to listen to the community, fell out with the biggest creators like shroud (apparently the worst company he's worked with) and tons of ppl on the creator program said they never listened to them and if they said smth they didn't like they'd genuinely just drop you. They didn't even know how to do simple balancing, it got to a point where white kits were literally equal in pvp whilst being 100x less the price (biggest flaw in an extract shooter), uneven squad queues is also a big no no in a high TTK game especially if you're adding SBMM. They also worked on the wrong things with updates, tharis ended up being an absolute shitshow and pretty much killed the wipe 1 week in because it was so unbalanced so we had to wait 4 months or whatever it was to reset the economy. adding inertia was also dumb, movement was the biggest factor in skill gap which they took away. They tried catering to casuals wayyyy too hard, the genre is naturally a hardcore genre so if you neglate that portion of the playerbase you're going to make both quit at the same time. This game could've had a place in extract shooters but season to season it got worse and worse. The best season was S1 from a gameplay perspective, if S1 had the AC of s2/3 we would've had such a good foundation to build off of with such a higher number of players.
The general idea of the Cycle was nothing new to another games, but the PVE and the interactions with other players made the game very fun and enjoyable. In fact, it was a friendly type of game in which you did not need a considerable amount of time to progress. I played the whole BETA and part of season 1 and 2 and I did not see a future for this game since the high tier items, specially some of the weapons, were broken. The game was honestly not designed for PVP, and the wipes were the only aspect of the game that could have kept the game alive. Unfortunately, these type of situations happen when the people who is in charge do not know what to do with their own project. I really hope the devs had learned something from this, but I will never play another game developed by Yager.
they did not learn from it. they already made this mistake. the cycle was a completely different game before it became frontier and they shut down that project too and switched the entire game up. it used to be basically this battle royale that had an insane focus on the pve aspect when it came to winning the mode or whatever and the pvp was just a blessing to go along side that. they did not change the pvp much between the 2 games but the royally fucked up the pve. once i saw the frontier was so different from the cycle I loved so much, I knew this game was just destined to fail. a game just chasing trends will never be successful
You hit the nail on the head on them focusing and just copying other games in the genre instead of developing their own interesting spin on it.
And imo the monetization was abysmal... a simple skin for 20+ dollars?! That's insane... Games like Valorant can do this due to their popularity but the Cycle had no right to have these prices...
I (and I assume many others) would buy some sick cosmetics, if they were 2-5 dollars... With the prices they had I didn't even look at the shop, I avoided it as the plague...
I'm sad now
I don't think it's really the server cost that's making the game unsustainable. Cloud based server hosting is generally priced by usage which scales up and down. More people play, more game servers spin up. Less people play, less servers spin up. They may be using reserved servers in the cloud which have a bit different pricing model (usually cheaper than auto scaling but have contracts). The 3 month fade away is just a graceful exit I think...I don't think the devs want to shut it down really, but it's a financial reality. Anyways, I'm pretty sure the real cost is just keeping the studio afloat and maintaining payroll tbh. That is immensely expensive. If the game is living solely off of microtransactions, it means it needs a ton of traffic to sustain it. My guess is they are pivoting to another project and diverting their resources from sustaining a live service game to developing a new project.
Poor Gunplay/Guns, Poor TTK, Cheaters, and MEH quests and looting. Closed Beta was fun for all of 1 week if that.
I'm glad he touched on the MMR problem. That's what drove me away and back to Tarkov, I hated only seeing sweats or cheaters every game.