Highguard and After Battle Royale
There's a funny bit where during the dawn of Battle Royale pundits asked if it was a genre or a mode. Nearly ten years after PUBG launched, it has not only become a genre but also the dominant force in the shooter market. But it's also clear that, as with Match 3, the market has reached equilibrium: PUBG, Apex Legends, and Warzone have solidified the genre, and Battlefield's repeated failure to gain market share is instructive beyond the corpses of titles like Hyperscape.
When castle walls have been fortified, the answer isn't to build a stronger siege weapon. It's to build a more innovative weapon, and that's what Extraction shooters have represented. Highguard, by contrast, represents an alternative path.
Whereas extraction shooters completely pivot to out-of-round progression - players earn items and gear that persist between runs - Highguard emphasizes in-round progression, wherein progress ramps during in-round, but does not persist between rounds. Battleborn (RIP), played with these elements, and Overwatch 2 has brought them back in Stadium.
It's a complete counter-thesis to the direction Extraction wants to take the shooter genre and instead doubles down on what many are beginning to uncover about battle royale: it's a roguelike packed with RNG.
Practically, Highguard's core loop:
- Select and secure based on the map; each base has +/-
- Fortify the location (Cannot move outside your base) [R6:Siege]
- Walls drop and scavenge phase begins [BR]
- Summon mounts and fight for Vesper [BR]
- Use Vesper to purchase in-round upgrades [MOBA]
- Converge on the Shieldbreaker
- Team who captures it then tries to siege the other player's base, in which the Shieldbreaker reduces the base's energy shields [Capture the Flag]
- Kill the anchor stone, which is located deep within the base (if fail, fight for Shieldbreaker again) [MOBA]
It's a valiant attempt to blend several elements into something fresh, but it needs another year of development. The spacing of the maps leads to periods of downtime, and PvE elements, which should give players a sense of satisfaction and mitigate zero-sum PvP combat, are empty. The power race, which MOBAs are infamous for, feels hollowed out. The power scaling and pacing aren't strong enough, and the missing key out-of-round horizontal progression is a damper on retention.
Highguard is dead. While every small developer hangs on to Warframe and R6 Siege as games that were able to grow over time and ultimately reverse the U-curve, those stories are the exception, not the rule. On Steam, it's already catered to 4,000 CCU, and with Western developers' stubbornness about adopting not just any sort of gameplay-affecting monetization, but RNG associated with it too. Its ARP DAOs will not be strong enough to persist.
There's a whole lot more to talk about this game, including its launch. In Shooter Monthly #4 next week, we will!