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Thing is, I really liked Artifact I hadn't played the first version, but it seemed okay enough, and the changes they made for the rerelease were certainly a step in a good direction, so I signed up for the closed beta I didn't get in HOWEVER When the game came out into open beta, I never got an e-mail telling me that it did- THE logical thing to do. I instead found out that it was in open beta when I RANDOMLY saw on twitter that it was going into maintenance mode
The Artifact was The moneymaker game, thats why it failed. Imagine paying $1 just to play a single ranked game. That was how greedy Valve was on their card game take
yeah the powerful old veteran employee in valve do be like that the only reason why TF2 got a contractor (not even a valve employee lol) to do small incremental update is because they might get a bad PR if they didnt do anything after the #savetf2 movement
@@steberdeber6223 They were trying to make a digital card game as expensive as physical card games. So dumb. The reason people play digital card games is to avoid paying hundreds of dollar for a competitive deck.
In a way Valve experienced what Blizzard did when they missed out on Dota 2. They had a really popular mod that spawned a new genre and lost to a competitor that made it better. I liked Underlords but TFT was leagues better than it.
The thing that keeps TFT feeling better is that it just completelly resets every few months, with new units and synergies Coming back to Underlords after months was just "... oh so this strat is still THE thing, huh?"
You missed one important thing about the Underlords' death. It is Adrian Finol, the gamedesigner and the leader of the project. For all the development cycle he and the team was very communicative (as his bio in twitter said it was 30 peoples to develop the game). But it all almost immediatly stopped after the "official launch" in February. By May he deleted any mention of Underlords in his twitter bio and likely stopped working on the game. And with it all the updates stopped. The last two updates were done by a contracted community members with little support from Valve. As it seems to me, the game on release did not became as popular as he though it might, and seeing his failure, he decided to abandon the game. And without Adrian Finol as the leader of the team, there were no people who wanted to continue to develop the game. Do not forget that there is a flat structure in Valve and nobody can be forced to develop a game if the person do not want to develop it. So if the passion is gone, the game is automaticaly dead, if there are no other employees with passion to continue the support for the project.
@@JK-gm6kk Yeah the problem is Valve isnt really even a game company at this point. Making games doesn't make or break them ad a company. You see the same things with the titles Amazon has been shitting out.
I have heard reports of this, as people confessed the game was in a better state before when he was around. But I will say I did indirectly cover him, as one of my biggest pieces of criticism is technically for him.
I don't think this is the biggest reason. Underlords was already losing population pretty fast when he was here. As a player and a redditor, I have my idea why the game died so fast. Basically, the gamedesigner didn't know what he was doing, I don't think he had any clue on how to improve on the game. Every patch made the game worse because they were really badly designed and/or badly balanced. Firstly, the underlords were horribly designed and made the game undeniably worse, then every subsequent patch looked just like the bad reddit suggestions that I had read a few weeks before. This is not the first time I had seen community feedback destroy a game, but this is the best example I know. The team had clearly no idea on how to handle feedback and just did whatever the community asked in majority, this never goes well. There were actual good ideas that didn't come from the community like the jail and the "talent" thing (don't remember the name) that is just like tft augments, but they removed them instead of refining them. Tft augments are the proof that it could have worked if they knew what they were doing. In the end, it the same as artifact, it was badly designed because Valve just doesn't seem to have good game designer for this kind of games. Dota 2 would have died the same way if they didn't manage to recruit icefrog. Here they didn't manage to recruit the original creators, so underlords died. In my opinion, it's really only about competence here, when they stopped updating the game, it was already dead. And it was impossible to fix since they basically broke every systems over one year of patches.
One of the best things about TFT is that it has a passionate dev team. If you keep with TFT you'll probably know the lead designer Mortdog who also streams on twitch. He puts himself out there communicating with the community even though he gets a lot of criticism sometimes. He did become a meme in the community which shows how close he is with the players. It shows that devs care about their game and it's probably one of the best things you can ask for as a player. Also, TFT gets a new set every 6 months or so which turn the game into the completely different game which helps a lot to retain the players.
Its still the same game but different theme and new world to explore. The TFT devs were actually genius when they made new sets. The genre can only survive with new sets because no one wants to play an already solved puzzle over and over again. Underlords dev were just clueless
Strange thing is I played "auto chess" 15 years ago in w3 maps like "pokemon defense". It's so strange that so many games like DotA that launched moba genre, TDs like Element TD and quite a few other Warcraft maps that become actual games and not just few MB maps but no one actually gives it credit or acknowledgement.
Some other key differences between TFT and Underlords around launch is that TFT has the item carousels where you jockey with the other players to get your preferred item. Additionally rather than matches being against clones of other players each match is head to head. Seems minor but the emphasis of the multiplayer element made the matches more interesting. Additionally Riot was far more invested in giving the TFT team time and resources to figure out how to make the game viable long term, then figure out how to make it profitable once it had cemented itself as the undisputed genre leader.
Love them or hate them. The one thing you need to give credit for Riot is that they always have passion with their game. Even their card game LoR despite not doing so well still get support instead of outright being abandon
@@dieptrieu6564 I think LoR not being abandoned is because technically LoR is the backbone of their upcoming League MMO. If they keep working on LoR despite not being popular than other competitors (Hearthstone, MTG and recently Marvel Snap), they are also working for the world building in their League MMO and other projects that needs lore.
@@gaiko804 Nah. People hype up the importantness of LoR way too much. The game barely tell you any story. And Riot already rebuild their universe with all the short stories, novel, etc... they have been doing. They don't need a card game to build the universe for them.
@@dieptrieu6564 If you keep up news in the game, yes they do. A lot of info that is not in the official website is only available in LoR. There is also a single player gamemode there that has stories of some characters. Yes, LoR is not popular but the evidence are there. Also, the art they make in there that is not available anywhere are fantastic so there's that.
While quality definitely played a huge part in each autobattler out competing each other. Something has to be said that for TFT all league of legends players have it installed on their PC automatically. It shares a kin almost to pet battling on WoW. Underlords - especially due to being early access - was never pushed to the Dota audience. If you didn't look at custom games on the Dota client during autochess' hype or look at steam rather than the Dota client, you would never have a similar amount of raw access that TFT has.
Yeah, TFT being in the League client was definitely a factor. It also means Riot can keep people who are burned out on League within their ecosystem, since TFT is a very different experience.
Honestly I think its an absolutely massive factor. Me and my entire friend group play a crap ton of tft and I we never would have thought to even try it if it wasnt inbuilt in the league client
I have put like 700 hour in the game from beta to the release of the Underlords, I was top10 on the ladder. After the release of the Underlords the game never felt the same and I have almost quit immediately. To this day, after more time spent in HS Battlegrounds and TFT, no game felt like the beta of Underlords, one of my biggest heartbreak in the gaming genre and I still get nostalgic when seeing old footage. Thank you for covering this story.
Very true. The sudden change just sucked... Like it was a very different game when they introduced the underlords. The healthbars... It was so confusing to read unlike it was on release. And also the duos mode sucked. I was so eager to wait for it... Thought that me and my friend could share a board and battle other enemy's boards. But they did that in a very lazy way...
*"They're gonna keep constantly updating and balancing the game, something they weren't keen on doing"* TF2, L4D2 : *"Hello there!"* Guess by this time Valve should have learned just following the "hype" and what's popular instead of creating their own masterpieces has very low chance of success
yep.... half life might have been a shooter on the Quake 2 engine but the changes to the engine they made created a game far deeper than Quake was..Valve made the Quake killer not Epic! valve made a quake killer by not making a Quake clone but adding story and making it unique..... left 4 dead might just be another zombo game but it's gameplay, heroes and story structure make it stand out Portal....is too unique to classify it's a rare case of valve and their teams inventing a whole new game and tying it into the half life universe simply copying MOBA's and card games and shit don't cut it, there's to many games like that but not enough viable newer shooters like half life....hell where's left 4 dead 3? you'd think the shooter with the least amount of writing could be replicated to infinity or what did their dev team all leave?? i know about the writer situation but what artists, designers, 3D modelers and programmers left? their best talent? if so ouch, sucks to be them..... I loved Valve back in the day but OMFG have they become such a joke.... eww let's never finish half life kewel.....eww let's just do 2 ludacrisly short friggin L4D games and leave it at that....that port game 1 over to game 2's engine yeah.....ugh and let's bang out this new puzzler and dazzle people then end everything on such a high that when people notice we'll have wasted away to nothing....great legacy there GabeN a spurt of creativity then nothing cash grabs on pipe dreams....no, I'm not bitter, no.....naww man [walks away] and just one more thing [door slams in face] i deserve that!
@@jinn194 the entertainment business in general simply sucks! since people hate explanations draw your own conclusion! do not bitch about the simpler comment!
what's interesting about this series is how many of these games I've never heard of. Some of them seemed so interesting Its a shame I never got to try them out for myself.
@@breadbaskets2772 especially recommend TFT, since it's the one that aged the best. New set is coming out too, so you won't feel too lost since everyone is also going to be experiencing it for the first time.
@@daegon1985 on the other hand, This is also valid. Wildstar, rift, and The Secret World are all games I loved to play at one point and they have all had videos.
Nah minecraft is different... Every once in a while i feel that playing minecraft is boring, but sometimes ill just install mc and go for weeks playing it single player, then quit again... Rinse and repeat...
You should really dig deep into that, it's so real, it usually starts as venture capital, they usually hire marketing/PR firm and pretend to be customers liking the product. Another say form of artificial hype is vertical slices, it's basically very detailed trailers of games but actually doesn't look nearly as good when it's in your hands or PC.
10:37 TFT was always 8 players as well, the background footage also shows that. Probably a simple script slipup, but it felt weird to be in there ^^ Also another factor that made TFT dominate the market over Underlords was the crossplay mobile client running acceptably on most potato mobile devices. Underlords had a mobile client too, but it was much worse optimized. I remember Underlords almost frying my then still new 2018 iPad Pro. Just one more reason why I personally stuck to TFT over Underlords, on both PC and Mobile.
Thank you for the amazing video once more. And this time also on a game I happened to be there for. Still sad it's getting no updates, but the game is in such a state that it's gonna keep me playing for a year or two at least still
Underlords was awesome. I played Dota Auto Chess a fair bit, then Underlords released and I racked up 1k hours in it's brief period of upkeep, cruising up the ranks to the highest of "Lord of White spire". I really do miss it, the updates were so much fun.
Thanks for another great case study! Underlords does seem like one it was mishandled from the management's side; despite the desire to chase the trend the game just didn't get enough support. As you rightly pointed out, passion can be a very valuable resource, and the lack of it could be costly. This does remind me of Artifact, another Valve game that felt like it was simply chasing the current live-service trend. Outside of technical innovations, Valve does seem to mainly be driven by massive, constant revenue streams nowadays.
Recently got hooked on your Death of a Game series! One game I am interested in seeing you covering is the old Cartoon Network MMORPG FusionFall! It seems to be a quite forgotten game since it released and was going on around the same time Free Realms was active
Add this to the list of games I probably would have gotten addicted to, if I managed to hear of them before they were featured on “Death of a Game”. The way you often have large groups clash together reminds me loosely of Brigandine.
Teamfight Tactics is still alive and absolutely kicking, and we're getting a new set (aka champion/mechanics overhaul) in a few weeks. If you want to give it a try, it's there on both mobile and (through the League of Legends client) PC.
If this game looked interesting to you, definitely check out Teamfight Tactics. Much, much better auto battler than DU, and gets patches every 2 weeks.
The auto-battler genre is a weird one. It showed up, everyone went bonkers over it and then it was gone. It seems like it only took a couple months for it to go from "the next big thing" to "whats an auto battler?
Man I miss good days of Crowfall so much. Sieges were such a blast and being able to harass big groups with a single assassin was so fun for even solo players. Also combat while looking floaty is possibly the best PvP combat I've played, at least in smaller scale fights. Hope they do something with it.
One thing that helped (and still does) TFT is that it is in the same client as league of legends, so some people tried it even is out of curiosity since if was already there. Riot keeps sneaking into the competition by "copying" what they have or do and changing enough (league to dota, LOR to heartstone, even a shooter with valorant and of course TFT which still see a lot of play and constant updates)
At around 10:30 you say either TFT or DOTA Underlords was 6 players. But the footage of DOTA Underlords played after that shows 8 players not 6. And the language you use implies TFT is the one with 6 players when in fact it has always been 8. Just a bit of video feedback!
I think one point worth mentioning is that, or DU, the main target audience were people who already played dota2. Those are the people who know the heroes and feel most comfortable with playing with them. But the problem with dota2 players is that once the international battle pass comes out, they're far more likely to spend what time the have, playing dota2, both to experience the bp content, and to level it up. That was certainly my experience with it. I though it was the solid game, and played it a bunch early on. But when the TI10 battle pass came out, I simply had no time for it. And by the time the bp was over, it was already clear that it was going to be abandoned, so I had no reason to return to it.
I have 1800 hours in underlords and its sad to see how valve treated it. When autochess came out in the dota arcade it was like a storm and took over all other custom games there. The game was never balanced at the time but because of frequent updates it never felt bad. When underlords came out it was like a godsent. Underlords fixed a lot of the clunky mechanics that were inherent of custom games - combining units became easier, using the shop became easier, items were improved - in autochess you put an item on a hero and you are stuck with that (still is the case today i think in tft too) underlords removed that and made items not upgradeable which imo was a good idea etc etc. The jail system was a really good idea, because even if there were some stale metas it didn't feel so bad. The updates to the game after release felt interesting, since they experimented with new ideas. If you look at autochess today and 3 years ago the game hasnt changed as much as underlords in its first year after release. The underlords themselves are hit or miss but make the game more interesting, although drawing them in the 9th round kinda sucks since certain builds require specific underlord and its a coin flip if you get it or not, when you've already committed to a build. The community feedback in the early days was amazing. The biggest problem with the game was not the game itself but it was because it was a different client. That meant that it was never going to be as big as tft since you cant just funnel all of the existing playerbase of dota 2 in a separate client as easy ( you can with give skins in dota 2 if you played underlords as valve has done years ago with tf2). When underlords died i tried tft a couple of times but it didn't feel as fluid and since ive played dota since 2007 and have never played lol, learning new heroes and what they do was a barrier i never crossed. A dota player would rarely go to play tft. And here i am playing a dead game even now, playing the same few alliances with a dwindling playerbase that was never given a proper chance by a simple mistake. Im pretty sure the autochess custom game in dota 2 has a bigger playerbase then underlords even though it is inferior imo.
I loved Auto Chess when it was a mod. I gave Underlords a chance but it just didn't have the same appeal. And when they brought in the namesake, it felt overwhelming. The turns didn't feel like they were long enough and I wasn't as invested and just dropped it. Battlegrounds has been great for the most part. They managed to create various additions like prizes, buddies, and quests and they made turns longer so you had more time (usually) to do everything you want. There are so many failed online CCGs and TCGs to cover as well. Scrolls, Shadow Era, and Champions (forget the full name).
It's one of the songs for the Detective Conan anime. I forget what it's called but you can probably look up "Detective Conan saxophone music" and find it.
This is genuinely the first time I've heard of the standalone game Auto Chess. I remember hearing about the mod pre-Underlords and the genre being called by that name before Auto-Battler or whatever took over, but I'd always just assumed that Underlords was the evolved form of the original mod rather than it going on as another title entirely. Huh.
Me and all my friends are playing this game intensively around 2018. It's a great game with good experience, I'm sad there's no further update. I still play this game recently and still got the vibe.
I will admit sometimes it is entertaining to watch AI battles just to see how they work, I'd prefer to be able to PLAY my game. But in the era of LIVE SERVICES it is the games that are playing the "payers" and the High Scores is the amount of money the whales spent.
I actually thought Auto Chess was also a Warcraft 3 mod cause back in 2018 I used to play a Pokemon mod where you capture Pokemons, upgrade them and after a few minutes they battle it out with other player's Pokemons and you also loses hp based on how much of the other player's Pokemon are alive.
StarCraft 2 had a mod called desert strike that used essentially all the same mechanics as far back as 2016 to this day its one of the most popular mods
Don't forget Tencent also put TFT into the league of legends client, with a constantly flashing yellow dot to get people to click on it just to make it go away for a couple days before it inevitably comes back.
Ah, Underlords. The game that absolutely ruled my life for a couple of months before I suddenly lost the urge to play. I still can't explain it. I put 245 hours in, and tbh I have very found memories of it.
The only thing I'm sad about, is Pokemon TD a Warcraft 3 Mod was the first Auto Chess game. Pretty sure it came out before or around the same time as Legion TD.
First problem. They made it a 2nd client. Second Problem. They didn't just hire the auto chess team, and make it a mini game inside of Dota you could either play, or play against a bot while you were waiting in queue. They could have also offered in game rewards with the above option, built it into the battlepass, ect ect. Almost as big of a misfire as Artifact lol
Minor note, but doesn't LoL still dwarf Dota 2 in player numbers by a huge margin? It sounded like the video implied the opposite? Or maybe I misunderstood that part.
I feel like Valve is in a lazy comfortable position that their priorities are in other places. They don't want to keep the competition with other companies over a genre nor want to create new games/genres nor patch the games they already have. I think one of the reasons for that is clearly that they are uncontested in distributing digital games rather than making them through Steam. Like even though i have GOG i would always open my Steam and let it run in the background waiting for a friend to ask for a party game or check a steam summer sale for those sweet $0.99 henta... errr... video games offers. The saddest part is that when they really try and get passionate they deliver masterpieces.
I am mixed with current valve, i do acknowledge how they still fund and support other aspect of gaming like linux viability and hardware development, Steam is still the best launcher and marketplace without any competition as modders and amateur projects wouldnt thrive in the authoritarian esque nature of most launcher and marketplace atleast those within the big publisher (GOG and Paradox not windstanding). Source though outdated is still free game for developers and the sheer amount of feature focused on community building is something only valve will even consider or even let in their platform
But valve go in and go out system might enable some creative freedom and passion but it actively encourage stagnation as no one who isnt entirely focused on that project will slowly burn out and move to another one, alyx is a good example, Index was most of valve focus went with the alyx dev team having to hire a third party team to keep things even in schedule.
I played this game for around 15 hours when it launched, hoping to have jumped on the next big thing. Although I tried Dota Underlords because I first learn of auto-chess through some LoL cc I still watch but I didnt want to install the LoL client back
tft has an app on mobile. if you're in SEA like I am then it's region locked because of garena. it will be available on january once riot cuts their deal with garena.
This reminds me of the recurring Fire Emblem Heroes Event Pawns Of Loki. But there they'll sometimes shake things up by offering bonus points for using certain kinds of units. Also just thought of another mobile game for this series. Sonic Runners (I know a TH-camr named Patmac did a just over hour-long video on it. But I would still like to see a DOAG episode on it)
I literally never heard of any of this or the whole genre until today because TMV talked about valves hostory and how the new game Deadlock is in alpha testing.
The thing is that GaaS is also the model of the other Autobattler competitors (TFT loves their skins). The biggest thing is that they had a content stream that made sense for GaaS. TFT is the easiest example. While the Set model initially had some kinks (Set 2 nearly killed the game because that Set had some design problems), the Set model provided a strong promise that the game would be changing every few months radically. This was huge for a game that a) was incredibly reliant on novelty as its main draw and b) also gave people set times to come back and retry the game, even if a Set was not to their taste.
One things you nailed on the head. My perception of valve changed significantly for the worse when the just abandoned this. Imo their auto battler was much better than the competition imo.
Biggest thing that kill Underlord is undoubtedly TFT, as someone who is ingrained in the TFT community, it dominates a very substantial part of the twitch community and a very passion head game designer
Without finishing the video, so I don't know if it comes up, but Riot's TFT is in the same launcer as Lol, and Battlegrounds is just a gamemode inside Hearthstone. They are not completely separate from their base game, and so are much easier to jump into.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss well it was the first, and made by the original modders so they had a headstart AND the heart so no wonder if it's popular. It basically has the seven figure audience of the original mod.
it was fun while it lasted. the duo mode was really good, me and my buddy played a LOT till we finally reached top 10. sadly you cant find a game anymore in duos in a decent time. you have to search for half an hour at minimum now :(
I remember getting this game shortly after early access launch, and having fun with it...for a week or two...and then I got bored and moved on pretty soon after.
Makes me sad since i actually loved this game, but it def felt that it had a lot of balance and improvement to be done, specially on the balance of the underlods themselfs
I think the most telling thing for why TFT had more energy and innovation behind it is how it came to be according to the devs. It was riot devs that simply loved auto-chess who said "Can't we do this in League?" and then they did. It feels like Valve missed that spark and without it the success needed was dying down too quickly leading to corporate decision to shelf it.
I originally discovered your channel from death of a game: overwatch due to being a fan of the game. Seeing what happened to this one I really hope that "Ow2" doesn't die until the real part of the sequel, being PvE, releases. If that happens, PvE might be too little, too late.
I used to play Underlords until relatively recently. The issue is less that there are no updates to keep things interesting and more that there are some outright broken characters/combos (cough Slark cough) that can make the game frustratingly unplayable
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i love u , nerd
Like to see Biomutant in the near future.
I am sorry but Dota 2 is IN FACT NOT!!!! the biggest Interenational MOBA
Pls update your death of a game playlist.
I can't see what are my heroes - too small fonts and images
the unfortunate thing with Valve is that if a multiplayer game isn't a moneymaker, it gets abandoned
Artifact got abandoned TWICE
Thing is, I really liked Artifact
I hadn't played the first version, but it seemed okay enough, and the changes they made for the rerelease were certainly a step in a good direction, so I signed up for the closed beta
I didn't get in
HOWEVER
When the game came out into open beta, I never got an e-mail telling me that it did- THE logical thing to do. I instead found out that it was in open beta when I RANDOMLY saw on twitter that it was going into maintenance mode
The Artifact was The moneymaker game, thats why it failed. Imagine paying $1 just to play a single ranked game. That was how greedy Valve was on their card game take
@@steberdeber6223 it's ironic that it being designed as THE moneymaker is also the reason it didn't make any money
yeah the powerful old veteran employee in valve do be like that
the only reason why TF2 got a contractor (not even a valve employee lol) to do small incremental update is because they might get a bad PR if they didnt do anything after the #savetf2 movement
@@steberdeber6223 They were trying to make a digital card game as expensive as physical card games. So dumb. The reason people play digital card games is to avoid paying hundreds of dollar for a competitive deck.
In a way Valve experienced what Blizzard did when they missed out on Dota 2. They had a really popular mod that spawned a new genre and lost to a competitor that made it better. I liked Underlords but TFT was leagues better than it.
The thing that keeps TFT feeling better is that it just completelly resets every few months, with new units and synergies
Coming back to Underlords after months was just "... oh so this strat is still THE thing, huh?"
"leagues" I see what you did there
Thats what happens when the devs love their game then make money, not love money then make a game
And the fun fact is both lost to league haha
In blizzard case they had a reaction speed of several years and it was too late to make billions off dota 2. They got stuck with a bootleg instead.
You missed one important thing about the Underlords' death. It is Adrian Finol, the gamedesigner and the leader of the project. For all the development cycle he and the team was very communicative (as his bio in twitter said it was 30 peoples to develop the game). But it all almost immediatly stopped after the "official launch" in February. By May he deleted any mention of Underlords in his twitter bio and likely stopped working on the game. And with it all the updates stopped. The last two updates were done by a contracted community members with little support from Valve. As it seems to me, the game on release did not became as popular as he though it might, and seeing his failure, he decided to abandon the game. And without Adrian Finol as the leader of the team, there were no people who wanted to continue to develop the game. Do not forget that there is a flat structure in Valve and nobody can be forced to develop a game if the person do not want to develop it. So if the passion is gone, the game is automaticaly dead, if there are no other employees with passion to continue the support for the project.
This is wild to me from a business perspective, but I guess valve has unlimited funds like that
@@JK-gm6kk Yeah the problem is Valve isnt really even a game company at this point. Making games doesn't make or break them ad a company. You see the same things with the titles Amazon has been shitting out.
That kinda explains why they make a game and a sequel then move on. The interest just dies if its not a story driven game etc
I have heard reports of this, as people confessed the game was in a better state before when he was around. But I will say I did indirectly cover him, as one of my biggest pieces of criticism is technically for him.
I don't think this is the biggest reason. Underlords was already losing population pretty fast when he was here. As a player and a redditor, I have my idea why the game died so fast. Basically, the gamedesigner didn't know what he was doing, I don't think he had any clue on how to improve on the game. Every patch made the game worse because they were really badly designed and/or badly balanced. Firstly, the underlords were horribly designed and made the game undeniably worse, then every subsequent patch looked just like the bad reddit suggestions that I had read a few weeks before. This is not the first time I had seen community feedback destroy a game, but this is the best example I know. The team had clearly no idea on how to handle feedback and just did whatever the community asked in majority, this never goes well. There were actual good ideas that didn't come from the community like the jail and the "talent" thing (don't remember the name) that is just like tft augments, but they removed them instead of refining them. Tft augments are the proof that it could have worked if they knew what they were doing. In the end, it the same as artifact, it was badly designed because Valve just doesn't seem to have good game designer for this kind of games. Dota 2 would have died the same way if they didn't manage to recruit icefrog. Here they didn't manage to recruit the original creators, so underlords died. In my opinion, it's really only about competence here, when they stopped updating the game, it was already dead. And it was impossible to fix since they basically broke every systems over one year of patches.
Ironically the game went downhill after they introduced the Underlords. Game was such a blast up to this point.
YESSSS. The underlords made the game too complicated. It had the perfect balance before they were introduced
Yeah i just went back to regular dota 2 auto chess and it's way more fun than underlords
Exactly. The game was gone after the underlords were introduced
One of the best things about TFT is that it has a passionate dev team. If you keep with TFT you'll probably know the lead designer Mortdog who also streams on twitch. He puts himself out there communicating with the community even though he gets a lot of criticism sometimes. He did become a meme in the community which shows how close he is with the players. It shows that devs care about their game and it's probably one of the best things you can ask for as a player. Also, TFT gets a new set every 6 months or so which turn the game into the completely different game which helps a lot to retain the players.
Its still the same game but different theme and new world to explore. The TFT devs were actually genius when they made new sets. The genre can only survive with new sets because no one wants to play an already solved puzzle over and over again. Underlords dev were just clueless
Get Mortdogged
Strange thing is I played "auto chess" 15 years ago in w3 maps like "pokemon defense". It's so strange that so many games like DotA that launched moba genre, TDs like Element TD and quite a few other Warcraft maps that become actual games and not just few MB maps but no one actually gives it credit or acknowledgement.
Some other key differences between TFT and Underlords around launch is that TFT has the item carousels where you jockey with the other players to get your preferred item. Additionally rather than matches being against clones of other players each match is head to head. Seems minor but the emphasis of the multiplayer element made the matches more interesting. Additionally Riot was far more invested in giving the TFT team time and resources to figure out how to make the game viable long term, then figure out how to make it profitable once it had cemented itself as the undisputed genre leader.
Love them or hate them. The one thing you need to give credit for Riot is that they always have passion with their game. Even their card game LoR despite not doing so well still get support instead of outright being abandon
TFT also mixes things up each season with new set mechanics, different units and different traits. That's something that keeps me coming back.
@@dieptrieu6564 I think LoR not being abandoned is because technically LoR is the backbone of their upcoming League MMO. If they keep working on LoR despite not being popular than other competitors (Hearthstone, MTG and recently Marvel Snap), they are also working for the world building in their League MMO and other projects that needs lore.
@@gaiko804 Nah. People hype up the importantness of LoR way too much. The game barely tell you any story. And Riot already rebuild their universe with all the short stories, novel, etc... they have been doing. They don't need a card game to build the universe for them.
@@dieptrieu6564 If you keep up news in the game, yes they do. A lot of info that is not in the official website is only available in LoR. There is also a single player gamemode there that has stories of some characters. Yes, LoR is not popular but the evidence are there. Also, the art they make in there that is not available anywhere are fantastic so there's that.
While quality definitely played a huge part in each autobattler out competing each other.
Something has to be said that for TFT all league of legends players have it installed on their PC automatically. It shares a kin almost to pet battling on WoW.
Underlords - especially due to being early access - was never pushed to the Dota audience. If you didn't look at custom games on the Dota client during autochess' hype or look at steam rather than the Dota client, you would never have a similar amount of raw access that TFT has.
Yeah, TFT being in the League client was definitely a factor. It also means Riot can keep people who are burned out on League within their ecosystem, since TFT is a very different experience.
Battlegrounds thats also doing pretty well is also built into the Hearthstone client.
Honestly I think its an absolutely massive factor. Me and my entire friend group play a crap ton of tft and I we never would have thought to even try it if it wasnt inbuilt in the league client
I have put like 700 hour in the game from beta to the release of the Underlords, I was top10 on the ladder.
After the release of the Underlords the game never felt the same and I have almost quit immediately.
To this day, after more time spent in HS Battlegrounds and TFT, no game felt like the beta of Underlords, one of my biggest heartbreak in the gaming genre and I still get nostalgic when seeing old footage. Thank you for covering this story.
Very true. The sudden change just sucked... Like it was a very different game when they introduced the underlords. The healthbars... It was so confusing to read unlike it was on release.
And also the duos mode sucked. I was so eager to wait for it... Thought that me and my friend could share a board and battle other enemy's boards. But they did that in a very lazy way...
*"They're gonna keep constantly updating and balancing the game, something they weren't keen on doing"*
TF2, L4D2 : *"Hello there!"*
Guess by this time Valve should have learned just following the "hype" and what's popular instead of creating their own masterpieces has very low chance of success
yep....
half life might have been a shooter on the Quake 2 engine but the changes to the engine they made created a game far deeper than Quake was..Valve made the Quake killer not Epic! valve made a quake killer by not making a Quake clone but adding story and making it unique.....
left 4 dead might just be another zombo game but it's gameplay, heroes and story structure make it stand out
Portal....is too unique to classify it's a rare case of valve and their teams inventing a whole new game and tying it into the half life universe
simply copying MOBA's and card games and shit don't cut it, there's to many games like that but not enough viable newer shooters like half life....hell where's left 4 dead 3? you'd think the shooter with the least amount of writing could be replicated to infinity or what did their dev team all leave?? i know about the writer situation but what artists, designers, 3D modelers and programmers left? their best talent? if so ouch, sucks to be them.....
I loved Valve back in the day but OMFG have they become such a joke....
eww let's never finish half life kewel.....eww let's just do 2 ludacrisly short friggin L4D games and leave it at that....that port game 1 over to game 2's engine yeah.....ugh
and let's bang out this new puzzler and dazzle people then end everything on such a high that when people notice we'll have wasted away to nothing....great legacy there GabeN
a spurt of creativity then nothing cash grabs on pipe dreams....no, I'm not bitter, no.....naww man [walks away] and just one more thing [door slams in face] i deserve that!
@@darthXreven are you having a schiz episode?
@@jinn194 the entertainment business in general simply sucks! since people hate explanations draw your own conclusion! do not bitch about the simpler comment!
@@darthXreven my conclusion is that you should take your meds before writing your manifesto online in the youtube comments section
I missed this game I used to play this all the time with my friends
what's interesting about this series is how many of these games I've never heard of. Some of them seemed so interesting Its a shame I never got to try them out for myself.
all of the other auto battlers mentioned in the video are still alive so you should try one
@@breadbaskets2772 especially recommend TFT, since it's the one that aged the best. New set is coming out too, so you won't feel too lost since everyone is also going to be experiencing it for the first time.
Facts
I feel the exact opposite. Like half my game library ends up on these lists.
@@daegon1985 on the other hand, This is also valid. Wildstar, rift, and The Secret World are all games I loved to play at one point and they have all had videos.
Thank you. Your point about "artificial hype" made me realize why I hate modern Minecraft but still want to play it sometimes.
Nah minecraft is different... Every once in a while i feel that playing minecraft is boring, but sometimes ill just install mc and go for weeks playing it single player, then quit again... Rinse and repeat...
You should really dig deep into that, it's so real, it usually starts as venture capital, they usually hire marketing/PR firm and pretend to be customers liking the product.
Another say form of artificial hype is vertical slices, it's basically very detailed trailers of games but actually doesn't look nearly as good when it's in your hands or PC.
10:37 TFT was always 8 players as well, the background footage also shows that. Probably a simple script slipup, but it felt weird to be in there ^^
Also another factor that made TFT dominate the market over Underlords was the crossplay mobile client running acceptably on most potato mobile devices. Underlords had a mobile client too, but it was much worse optimized. I remember Underlords almost frying my then still new 2018 iPad Pro. Just one more reason why I personally stuck to TFT over Underlords, on both PC and Mobile.
Your opening is the only one I don't skip through. Love the laid back jazz.
Thank you for the amazing video once more. And this time also on a game I happened to be there for.
Still sad it's getting no updates, but the game is in such a state that it's gonna keep me playing for a year or two at least still
Underlords was awesome. I played Dota Auto Chess a fair bit, then Underlords released and I racked up 1k hours in it's brief period of upkeep, cruising up the ranks to the highest of "Lord of White spire". I really do miss it, the updates were so much fun.
I think it's time we stop calling Valve a game developer and start thinking of them exclusively as a digital retailer.
Exactly my thoughts
I mean there's Counter-Strike
Thanks for another great case study! Underlords does seem like one it was mishandled from the management's side; despite the desire to chase the trend the game just didn't get enough support. As you rightly pointed out, passion can be a very valuable resource, and the lack of it could be costly. This does remind me of Artifact, another Valve game that felt like it was simply chasing the current live-service trend. Outside of technical innovations, Valve does seem to mainly be driven by massive, constant revenue streams nowadays.
Recently got hooked on your Death of a Game series! One game I am interested in seeing you covering is the old Cartoon Network MMORPG FusionFall! It seems to be a quite forgotten game since it released and was going on around the same time Free Realms was active
Its an amazing series
Add this to the list of games I probably would have gotten addicted to, if I managed to hear of them before they were featured on “Death of a Game”. The way you often have large groups clash together reminds me loosely of Brigandine.
Teamfight Tactics is still alive and absolutely kicking, and we're getting a new set (aka champion/mechanics overhaul) in a few weeks. If you want to give it a try, it's there on both mobile and (through the League of Legends client) PC.
If this game looked interesting to you, definitely check out Teamfight Tactics. Much, much better auto battler than DU, and gets patches every 2 weeks.
Happy thanks giving NS, thanks for the drop!
DOTA: HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!!
Leauge: 😏
Leauge: 😏
Great Video. I was waiting for this one.
Love your breakdown of this game in this video.
I love videos like this when I suddenly learn about an entire genre I somehow completely missed the existence of.
The auto-battler genre is a weird one. It showed up, everyone went bonkers over it and then it was gone. It seems like it only took a couple months for it to go from "the next big thing" to "whats an auto battler?
Please go easy on Crowfall. 😔
Man I miss good days of Crowfall so much. Sieges were such a blast and being able to harass big groups with a single assassin was so fun for even solo players.
Also combat while looking floaty is possibly the best PvP combat I've played, at least in smaller scale fights. Hope they do something with it.
Man, wish I could have talked to you on this video some. I ran UPL Esports which ran a bunch of high tier tournaments for underlords. Great video.
i loved underlords, played a game or two with lads on our phones every time we met irl
I was looking for such a video 🙂
One thing that helped (and still does) TFT is that it is in the same client as league of legends, so some people tried it even is out of curiosity since if was already there.
Riot keeps sneaking into the competition by "copying" what they have or do and changing enough (league to dota, LOR to heartstone, even a shooter with valorant and of course TFT which still see a lot of play and constant updates)
At around 10:30 you say either TFT or DOTA Underlords was 6 players.
But the footage of DOTA Underlords played after that shows 8 players not 6.
And the language you use implies TFT is the one with 6 players when in fact it has always been 8.
Just a bit of video feedback!
I think one point worth mentioning is that, or DU, the main target audience were people who already played dota2. Those are the people who know the heroes and feel most comfortable with playing with them. But the problem with dota2 players is that once the international battle pass comes out, they're far more likely to spend what time the have, playing dota2, both to experience the bp content, and to level it up. That was certainly my experience with it. I though it was the solid game, and played it a bunch early on. But when the TI10 battle pass came out, I simply had no time for it. And by the time the bp was over, it was already clear that it was going to be abandoned, so I had no reason to return to it.
I have 1800 hours in underlords and its sad to see how valve treated it. When autochess came out in the dota arcade it was like a storm and took over all other custom games there. The game was never balanced at the time but because of frequent updates it never felt bad. When underlords came out it was like a godsent. Underlords fixed a lot of the clunky mechanics that were inherent of custom games - combining units became easier, using the shop became easier, items were improved - in autochess you put an item on a hero and you are stuck with that (still is the case today i think in tft too) underlords removed that and made items not upgradeable which imo was a good idea etc etc. The jail system was a really good idea, because even if there were some stale metas it didn't feel so bad. The updates to the game after release felt interesting, since they experimented with new ideas. If you look at autochess today and 3 years ago the game hasnt changed as much as underlords in its first year after release. The underlords themselves are hit or miss but make the game more interesting, although drawing them in the 9th round kinda sucks since certain builds require specific underlord and its a coin flip if you get it or not, when you've already committed to a build. The community feedback in the early days was amazing. The biggest problem with the game was not the game itself but it was because it was a different client. That meant that it was never going to be as big as tft since you cant just funnel all of the existing playerbase of dota 2 in a separate client as easy ( you can with give skins in dota 2 if you played underlords as valve has done years ago with tf2). When underlords died i tried tft a couple of times but it didn't feel as fluid and since ive played dota since 2007 and have never played lol, learning new heroes and what they do was a barrier i never crossed. A dota player would rarely go to play tft. And here i am playing a dead game even now, playing the same few alliances with a dwindling playerbase that was never given a proper chance by a simple mistake. Im pretty sure the autochess custom game in dota 2 has a bigger playerbase then underlords even though it is inferior imo.
Sad times, was playing this before they even introduced the underlords
It made Dota 2 reach its peak of concurrent players after a drought of players. It revitalized Dota 2 on some dark times.
I remember installing Dota on my university's computers just to play Autochess with my friends
It was so fun
Love your videos, NS!
I loved Auto Chess when it was a mod. I gave Underlords a chance but it just didn't have the same appeal. And when they brought in the namesake, it felt overwhelming. The turns didn't feel like they were long enough and I wasn't as invested and just dropped it. Battlegrounds has been great for the most part. They managed to create various additions like prizes, buddies, and quests and they made turns longer so you had more time (usually) to do everything you want.
There are so many failed online CCGs and TCGs to cover as well. Scrolls, Shadow Era, and Champions (forget the full name).
Can someone PLEASE tell me the song that's used during the 'final thoughts' sections of the video. I want that sweet saxophone.
It's one of the songs for the Detective Conan anime. I forget what it's called but you can probably look up "Detective Conan saxophone music" and find it.
This is genuinely the first time I've heard of the standalone game Auto Chess. I remember hearing about the mod pre-Underlords and the genre being called by that name before Auto-Battler or whatever took over, but I'd always just assumed that Underlords was the evolved form of the original mod rather than it going on as another title entirely. Huh.
i needed this to take my mind off some bad sh1t now, and great vid.
Me and all my friends are playing this game intensively around 2018. It's a great game with good experience, I'm sad there's no further update. I still play this game recently and still got the vibe.
Autochess should've been a game mode inside Dota 2.
I will admit sometimes it is entertaining to watch AI battles just to see how they work, I'd prefer to be able to PLAY my game.
But in the era of LIVE SERVICES it is the games that are playing the "payers" and the High Scores is the amount of money the whales spent.
I actually thought Auto Chess was also a Warcraft 3 mod cause back in 2018 I used to play a Pokemon mod where you capture Pokemons, upgrade them and after a few minutes they battle it out with other player's Pokemons and you also loses hp based on how much of the other player's Pokemon are alive.
It's called Pokemon Defense, I found gameplay th-cam.com/video/CSUK99czyx4/w-d-xo.html
i really love this game, it has so many potential if they update it, sad to see it dead
Yes!! Finally :D as a dota player, been waiting for this video.
StarCraft 2 had a mod called desert strike
that used essentially all the same mechanics as far back as 2016
to this day its one of the most popular mods
Don't forget Tencent also put TFT into the league of legends client, with a constantly flashing yellow dot to get people to click on it just to make it go away for a couple days before it inevitably comes back.
Nice work with chapters
Ah, Underlords. The game that absolutely ruled my life for a couple of months before I suddenly lost the urge to play. I still can't explain it. I put 245 hours in, and tbh I have very found memories of it.
The only thing I'm sad about, is Pokemon TD a Warcraft 3 Mod was the first Auto Chess game.
Pretty sure it came out before or around the same time as Legion TD.
It's like when activating an infinite money glitch or code, it makes you don't even want to try anymore. Valve in a nutshell.
First problem. They made it a 2nd client.
Second Problem. They didn't just hire the auto chess team, and make it a mini game inside of Dota you could either play, or play against a bot while you were waiting in queue.
They could have also offered in game rewards with the above option, built it into the battlepass, ect ect.
Almost as big of a misfire as Artifact lol
they did try to hire the auto=chess team. They just didn't want to work for valve.
@@Farkham more likely valve just didn't want to pay them a proper cut
@@streetguru9350 valve probably thought it's there client, their heros. the auto chess dev is not that needed.
@@normalguy5583 they saw what happened to HoTS and Newearth. *also the countless other failed dota clones
Minor note, but doesn't LoL still dwarf Dota 2 in player numbers by a huge margin? It sounded like the video implied the opposite? Or maybe I misunderstood that part.
at the very end of that line he says western world. which is probably true.
@@bezacho It’s probably closer, though still not sure it eclipses League’s numbers in the west
@@bezacho lol, league absolutely dwarfes Dota in the west. The only region where it’s not the case is CIS
Seeing that Crowfall is next, I wanna see you talk about Kickstarters and why kickstarting a MMO/GaaS game isn't a good idea from the start
I don't agree it isn't, just to be clear. I don't blame a system when someone fails.
Awesome I played drodo auto chess earlier today! Nice to see that game getting even the slightest mention in the west I still play it quite a bit
Is the game still alive ?
"Wow so good to hear that music again" my brother in christ, we could never hear that music because its so low
I really love Valve's artstyle
I feel like Valve is in a lazy comfortable position that their priorities are in other places.
They don't want to keep the competition with other companies over a genre nor want to create new games/genres nor patch the games they already have.
I think one of the reasons for that is clearly that they are uncontested in distributing digital games rather than making them through Steam. Like even though i have GOG i would always open my Steam and let it run in the background waiting for a friend to ask for a party game or check a steam summer sale for those sweet $0.99 henta... errr... video games offers.
The saddest part is that when they really try and get passionate they deliver masterpieces.
I am mixed with current valve, i do acknowledge how they still fund and support other aspect of gaming like linux viability and hardware development, Steam is still the best launcher and marketplace without any competition as modders and amateur projects wouldnt thrive in the authoritarian esque nature of most launcher and marketplace atleast those within the big publisher (GOG and Paradox not windstanding). Source though outdated is still free game for developers and the sheer amount of feature focused on community building is something only valve will even consider or even let in their platform
But valve go in and go out system might enable some creative freedom and passion but it actively encourage stagnation as no one who isnt entirely focused on that project will slowly burn out and move to another one, alyx is a good example, Index was most of valve focus went with the alyx dev team having to hire a third party team to keep things even in schedule.
It's called resting on their laurels.
@@MangaGamified "Dormirse en los laureles", i honestly wasn't aware that phrase existed in english, now i know.
This video was a LOONG time comin
I STILL PLAY IT UNTIL NOW.
If I remember this was their auto chess game right? I heard zero things about it after the launch
Heres my scheduled request for a DOAG for puzzle pirates
I played this game for around 15 hours when it launched, hoping to have jumped on the next big thing.
Although I tried Dota Underlords because I first learn of auto-chess through some LoL cc I still watch but I didnt want to install the LoL client back
tft has an app on mobile. if you're in SEA like I am then it's region locked because of garena. it will be available on january once riot cuts their deal with garena.
And then League cloned it and succeeded.
It is clear why it lost. TFT has a penguin. Underlords does not. TFT auto-wins this autobattle.
Next case is going to hit me hard, had high hopes for this one :/
This reminds me of the recurring Fire Emblem Heroes Event Pawns Of Loki. But there they'll sometimes shake things up by offering bonus points for using certain kinds of units. Also just thought of another mobile game for this series. Sonic Runners (I know a TH-camr named Patmac did a just over hour-long video on it. But I would still like to see a DOAG episode on it)
Anyone else notice a weird audio issue in this episode or is it just me?
Like his voice fades a little and gets a slight tuned sound?
I literally never heard of any of this or the whole genre until today because TMV talked about valves hostory and how the new game Deadlock is in alpha testing.
The thing is that GaaS is also the model of the other Autobattler competitors (TFT loves their skins). The biggest thing is that they had a content stream that made sense for GaaS.
TFT is the easiest example. While the Set model initially had some kinks (Set 2 nearly killed the game because that Set had some design problems), the Set model provided a strong promise that the game would be changing every few months radically. This was huge for a game that a) was incredibly reliant on novelty as its main draw and b) also gave people set times to come back and retry the game, even if a Set was not to their taste.
One things you nailed on the head. My perception of valve changed significantly for the worse when the just abandoned this. Imo their auto battler was much better than the competition imo.
Looking forward to the next Death of a Game, I imagine you will have lots to say about Crowfall.
It's Very rare to see a game here that i actually played
The fact now Auto Chess is also shut down is so sad. On Team Fight Tactics left for regular updated auto chess games
Biggest thing that kill Underlord is undoubtedly TFT, as someone who is ingrained in the TFT community, it dominates a very substantial part of the twitch community and a very passion head game designer
Ooh a vid for dinner time
I really liked Underlords and was the only autochess game I played.
Without finishing the video, so I don't know if it comes up, but Riot's TFT is in the same launcer as Lol, and Battlegrounds is just a gamemode inside Hearthstone. They are not completely separate from their base game, and so are much easier to jump into.
Autochess is though, and it's far more popular globally.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss well it was the first, and made by the original modders so they had a headstart AND the heart so no wonder if it's popular. It basically has the seven figure audience of the original mod.
Hey editors! If the audio issue is yet to be resolved, please apply a Deesser on your audio just to get rid of painful sibilances. Cheers!
It's my environment
Death of the Game Tribes: Ascend !
12:36 That crow character there... that's an exact copy of Tony Millionaire's Drinky Crow!
it was fun while it lasted. the duo mode was really good, me and my buddy played a LOT till we finally reached top 10. sadly you cant find a game anymore in duos in a decent time. you have to search for half an hour at minimum now :(
I remember getting this game shortly after early access launch, and having fun with it...for a week or two...and then I got bored and moved on pretty soon after.
I'd say Valve still has passion, but it's for hardware now instead of software. And on the hardware side it feels like they're finally having success.
love your vids. is it only me or is the audio kinda strange on your voice in this one
finally new vid
the auto battle genre even got to Clash - they made Clash Mini!
I was hoping for Dota smash-like game
Makes me sad since i actually loved this game, but it def felt that it had a lot of balance and improvement to be done, specially on the balance of the underlods themselfs
I think the most telling thing for why TFT had more energy and innovation behind it is how it came to be according to the devs. It was riot devs that simply loved auto-chess who said "Can't we do this in League?" and then they did. It feels like Valve missed that spark and without it the success needed was dying down too quickly leading to corporate decision to shelf it.
I originally discovered your channel from death of a game: overwatch due to being a fan of the game. Seeing what happened to this one I really hope that "Ow2" doesn't die until the real part of the sequel, being PvE, releases. If that happens, PvE might be too little, too late.
Its funny, that I'm reading this comment on a day OW2 scrapped their PvE to "never release"
This was sad, I wish they would do something with the setting. It was neat.
Nice video!
Eagerly awaiting the Google Stadia DOAG
I always called this game Dunder Lords.
As a DOTA player since my early teenage years and unable to keep up, Underlords not updating has been a bit of a blessing. Still playing daily.
Underlord fans crying about 2 years of no update when TF2 got its last big update in 2017
facts
Fr
Team fortress 2 or titanfall 2?
I used to play Underlords until relatively recently. The issue is less that there are no updates to keep things interesting and more that there are some outright broken characters/combos (cough Slark cough) that can make the game frustratingly unplayable
@@dragonlord3376 both