Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: entertainment, epic games, Fortnite, games, paragon, video games

Epic Developer Admits Fortnite's Success Could Be Trouble For Paragon's Future

Published Thu, 18 Jan 2018 08:45:38 -0600

Paragon community coordinator Edgar Diaz has taken to Reddit to talk about the game's future in a frank, and ultimately worrying way.

For a couple weeks, I got into Paragon. Epic Games' third-person MOBA certainly has some depth, looks great and could be pretty fun to play. For someone who likes the idea of MOBAs conceptually, but hateed contending with the baggage of League of Legends or Dota 2, it seemed like a good fit. However, the game has failed to really find its audience. There certainly is a core there, but it doesn't seem to be able to retain too many players at the moment.

Speaking on Reddit, Diaz laid out the situation for Paragon and it does look a little worrying. Surprisingly, he's attributed the bleak outlook for the game on the explosion of popularity of Fortnite. He said:

Going from Legacy to Monolith to a new card system and all of the changes in-between, our efforts have always been focused on growing the game. While each of these incarnations has been beloved by a core community, none has been large enough to achieve mainstream success. This, combined with the humbling success of Fortnite has caused us to question if we have a good path to grow Paragon and make it thrive […]

First, the team's time is split between immediate improvements and longer-term efforts, so there's less visible progress. Second, a number of Paragon team members jumped onto Fortnite to help sustain the game as it has grown far larger than anything in Epic's past.

On the central challenge of the game, he added:

Here inside Epic, we're talking about the future of Paragon in pretty much the same terms as you're talking about it. The core challenge is that, of new players who try Paragon, only a small number continue to play regularly after a month. Though Paragon has evolved, no iteration has yet achieved that magical combination of ingredients that make for a sustainable game.

He notes that the future of the game will likely be decided in the coming weeks as the team brainstorms if and how it can grow the audience. If Paragon did go down, it would be a shame. A lot of work has clearly gone into it, and there is definitely something there. That being said, even though I liked it, I'm never too compelled to keep playing past a couple days at a time. If Epic could figure out how to keep people coming back long term, then I'm sure something could be salvaged here.

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