Death of a Game: The Cycle - Frontier

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

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[@JulyYunico]

Can you make a video about Death of the game: Ran Online, Elsword, Point Blank and Mission against Terror please 🥺? These are the multiplayer online games that i played and i want to know how they started and died

[@FrostySiete]

This one makes me really sad actually. I was in a small minority of people who genuinely loved this game. Almost everything about it just clicked for me, and it felt like the people developing it cared about the product. As someone who is super interested in Tarkov but just can’t get into it, this game was the perfect balance of hardcore and casual, and I LOVED IT. Giving up on it during season 3 when they announced the sunset sucked. I was really excited for the new season, but they said they were killing it, and all my motivation to play it was lost. Rest in Peace. I will continue to look for a game that fills the Cycle sized hole in my heart

[@yoKeelo]

same man

[@cinnamonshiv]

Love to hear whenever you find something new to fill this void

[@crodles]

did u find something? or still looking like me?

[@diagonstudios15]

Same man, i picked this up about a month before they fully shut it down. I was lowkey just grinding super hard. Encountered one cheater towards the end who was 100% aimlocking on people. And after that encounter i played maybe 2 more times before i tried to launch the game and servers were shut down

[@MafiaCarpio]

Hey man let me know what game you find! I would love another game like the cycle… as of now I’m looking forward to Arc Raiders since the division heartlands got scrapped! If you do find one would love to game with you! Good luck out there

[@ruohh]

It's actually hilarious how mismanaged this game ended up being. They originally changed the first version of the game because it wasn't profitable, but it wasn't profitable because it was released as a niche game in a niche genre exclusively on a store that wasn't and still isn't market leader. Then after alienating their original playerbase they tried to hop on a trend and couldn't handle that either so they just decide to shut the game down. Now regardless of which version of the game anybody liked more it doesn't matter since they managed to fumble both.

[@Nitidus]

While it obviously saved their company in the short run, I feel like the downward spiral after the Tencent acquisition sounds an awful lot like classic Tencent management as well.

[@marley7868]

@@Nitidus which seems pretty up there alley ain't it? ha here's hoping tencent/china and epic run outta cash soon enough

[@SandyCheeks1896]

If they would have taken a correct turn at any point this game could have been awesome. I mean it looks AMAZING on the surface and on paper. Pure leadership error and a massive waste of potential and labor.

[@ArchaicTTV]

wasn't the initial game a battle royale? Since when was BR a niche genre?

[@ruohh]

@ArchaicDemonTTV it wasn't a traditional br, it was based around a quest system where you would fight other teams for certain areas of the map, and the zone would not close in until the game was nearly over. The objectives themselves would give you victory points which determined the winner, not kills or last man standing. There was also a very large pve component as well as in game weapon progression, so if you stayed on your starting weapon you could save for a more powerful weapon or try and buy an early weapon to snowball a lead. It was a really interesting idea that I haven't seen done before

[@SwanChairUh]

He makes a good point that I agreed with when I played it: the highly geared players absolutely fk up everyone else. In Tarkov, you can absolutely outplay chads with a well placed headshot or two. That's not at all the case in the Cycle. You get punished for not running away from geared players and it makes the game predictable and boring instead of creating memorable fights when winning as the underdog like in Tarkov.

[@DevlVergil]

which sucks especially when you're playing alone against whole teams and there's no solo queue.

[@lustshot]

In my personal experience, I clapped most Chad's a ran in to. I mostly died to not well geared people.

[@Slowp0w]

I didn't mind, kinda liked the power difference. People who grind hard should have the upper hand, nothing that prevents you from saving up for a strong load out to dominate a run.

[@TEHAWSOMEMEH]

Its not really that though, its just that the game was so badly balanced its fucking insane. I have about almost 1k hours in the game and there was a good portion of time where exotic armor and weapons was just a waste of money because white gear was better, especially the double white smg loadout. (And the fact that there was so little players, the players you just killed can just requeue with white gear and can kill you before you get the chance to extract. This is especially bad with the tharis map) which means theres literally no reason to bring good gear in raid, farm reputation with the factions and level up. Its so fuckig sad how badly they fumbled this game its just sad. I also think season 3 with the no wipe update was especially bad for the remaining players like me who just enjoyed the game for the grind and pvp. Season 1 & early season 2 was where the game was peak imo despite the cheaters.

[@messedupperfect9367]

On the other hand, a very skillful player who spent a lot of time grinding could get hit by a lucky headshot from a player that would never replicate it again. It's not a perfect system, both have their flaws. I don't think the point was as good as you make it, but definitely a factor for people who played and enjoyed Tarkov.

[@1alexisfan]

I used to play this game A LOT when it was an epic games exclusive. The PvE aspect really caught me and brought a new aspect to the battle royale genre. But the CHEATING??? OMG I have never experienced such blatant cheating in any game ever.

[@saschaberger3212]

You actually use EPIC? You guys exist?

[@gibran8959]

yes@@saschaberger3212

[@1alexisfan]

@saschaberger3212 lol we have all had our low points 😭

[@devilvergilx]

Modern warfare war zone 1 was a cheater paradise. No cheat protection til war zone 2

[@someone_tc5267]

Played the original cycle for thousands of hours, and played in tournaments for it, there were baraly any cheaters in the original cycle idk what you are on about, plus all of the cheaters were so bad in that game you could win with better game sense and positioning

[@SaltyOctopus]

The cheaters killed this game for me. I remember an invisible guy following us and calling out our names over VOIP, only to head shot and kill us instantly right as we almost extracted... Literally nothing we could do to survive. I uninstalled right there and never looked back.

[@SwanChairUh]

Very similar story for me -- wtf is the point if a game has rampant cheating?

[@HUNKtm]

To be honest the issue with cheaters has been largely fixed upon season 3, I did hundreds and hundreds of games without encountering one, when in season 1 this was almost each raid. But the harm was done, a lot of players has been lost because of the cheating problem of the early stage of the game

[@mulder2400]

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.

[@narzz7440]

@@mulder2400 true,. i loved this game futuristic theme and i love fighting monsters and looting/gathering,.but each time i sortie i prayed hard to not meet other players. i know this is that kind of game but the main reason i stop playing is because of the PVP aspect of it

[@0xmoo]

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.

[@Greg0516]

I was in love with this game. The environment, the mechanics, the sound desing... trying to ambush another player and accidentally giving away my position due to the sound of my ocd reload... such thrilling memories. I quit playimg because I felt stuck on a certain level, the main map not giving valuable enough loot to upgrade myself and the other maps being too difficult. Still felt grief when I wanted to give it another shot and finding out about the sunset. Never even knew it was a thing. RIP.

[@osaw117]

The Gundam episode is going to hurt. I wanted to play it so bad, but quite literally every time I queued up for a match: I either never got a game, or someone would disconnect and prematurely end the game for everyone else. It's a shame to say the most I played the game was in the training room. RIP Zaku II. You were too pure for this world 😢

[@omarsabeur9039]

Evolution?

[@LiveforHM]

​@@omarsabeur9039yeah, even gbo2 is terrible

[@omarsabeur9039]

@@LiveforHM The game was pretty fun , shame. Best Gundam games I have ever played were a tactics game on my PS2 and a couple fighting games. Evolution had promise.

[@ryukaze20]

@@LiveforHM GBO2 isn't that terrible... I guess I can't say that since I play GBO2 on the Playstation, but GBO2 on the PS4 is a bit annoying sometimes, but overall has done well.

[@ryukaze20]

The Gundam episode ain't gonna hurt me a lot. I got hurt a lot by the shuttering of two previous Online Freemium Gundam Games: Gundam Battle Operation Next and Gundam Breaker Mobile. These two games shutting down kinda hurt more than Evolution

[@xpmon]

Literally never heard of the game. The art style looks really cool, really wish it had a single player

[@NinesIng]

600 hours in and it was the only extraction shooter I could get into. I don't think balance killed the game, It was mainly the cheaters. It was possible to outplay purple with white/green gear if you know the map, know when to engage and know how to move, it was rare but possible. Gonna miss this game.

[@haruhirogrimgar6047]

I remember 1 youtuber making a sponsored video about it that I watched for maybe 5 minutes before I got bored and clicked out.

[@moonasha]

"Wish it had a single player" you and me both... I was so excited when I saw bungie was making another Marathon game. Marathon is known for being single player games with heady hard sci fi stories, kind of like a proto halo, before halo turned dumb. Then they said it was going to be a live service extraction shooter.... ugggghhhhhhhh. These companies could be making amazing single player games. The extraction formula works perfectly in single player. But they refuse to, they want that battlepass money...

[@ded2thaworld963]

Me either actually.

[@kingscrump]

Yeah a singleplayer Extraction shooter sounds boring as hell

[@venusfallen]

Hey there! Love your videos. I was a founding member of the PCL (Prospector Community League) which was a community driven competitive scene the was running before the switch to Frontier. There were a lot of reasons the original game failed. In my time with the game and PCL, the devs and CMs initially were very communicative with us, even sponsoring our seasons of competitive play. We had 20 teams playing, live streamed the events with castors, and had a small but amazing team of content creators, marketers, castors, ect. However, as Yager began their internal transition to Frontier, the communication stopped, the minor sponsorships stopped, and their support of a community league ended. We ran for a little bit after with donations from the team to keep prizes going out, but shutdown after the announcement of Frontier. Near the time the internal shift was made, our contacts at Yager were either fired or quit, which furthered the communication breakdown. Once we shut down, the competitive side of the game died with it, and it never recovered. I miss this game and running the PCL. It was a great time with a great game. A shame management ignored the playerbase.

[@spacejambluray2591]

PCL was some of the most fun I’ve had competing

[@prestinryan5373]

I played frontier a lot when it was in its BETA. I had a lot of fun with it until they added the battle pass. The missions for it heavily incentivised PVP over PVE and the community completely changed. Nobody was willing to be friendly after that.

[@SeanFinn92]

I was able to meet random people in game over VoiP and would play multiple runs with them. That happened 5+ times in 100 hours of cycle but never in 1k+ hours of tarkov

[@glacie3001]

The switch to full on Extraction Shooter is really reminding me of what has been going on with Arc Raiders recently, which was a change to that game I wasn’t looking forward to.

[@xP1cky]

I thoroughly enjoyed arch raiders most recent play test, hoping it doesn’t get swept under the rug.

[@glacie3001]

@@xP1cky oh I didn’t know it had a play test recently. I do hope it still goes well for them despite the type of game shift, but when chasing a trend it can be scary, especially when you changed mid-development (at least as far as I’m aware)

[@DaddyDabberino]

Big same. I lost a lot of interest when they switched the game to an extraction shooter. IMO there are two games that get extraction right…HUNT, and Tarkov. Watching ARC Raiders switch to that game design kinda sucks especially considering they already have a PVP shooter in the works that is looking very promising.

[@bloedertje]

@@DaddyDabberino Try some Marauders. They do the extraction shooter part REALLY well too

[@G2H_HellBringer]

My friends and I played the original Cycle: Stormchasers and we absolutely loved that game. That was the one of the few games I was good at and remember when the Kinetic Arbiter was meta and I landed trickshot after trickshot. It then went on to a Voltaic Brute meta, then Konrad, then Manticore. Gosh I miss those days. I was disappointed when they dropped Stormchasers for Frontier.

[@ComradePaolo]

Man i LOVED this game, pre-changes was just so sick to play alone, engage or "wiggle" (chat peacefully) with randoms, fight some genuinely unique and hard to fight NPCs. I could see it from day one that it wouldn't last, but I couldn't really put my finger on it beyond its reach/marketing not hitting the right folks. Just the wrong place, wrong time sort of thing I guess... Thanks for the lovely video as usual brother. Well done.

[@gothicmuffinofdoom]

I am happy reading these comments and finding other solo prospectors. I did have a lot of fun with the old version too.

[@fallendeus]

I miss the original cycle. It was such a unique take on the Battle Royale genre and made me actually interested in a battle royale again.

[@Reo__clips]

The Original Cycle was actually an amazing experience tbh.

[@Locke-pi4ql]

Played this game for the last time tonight before shutdown. Loved playing it during the beginning of seasons when everyone was pretty evenly geared and had some good times on it. Gonna miss you Cycle

[@atemdm-roleplaying9398]

Thanks for putting this case to rest, I did not know they also tried to do Dead Island and Juggernauts as well as specopps the line, talk about a studio that throws everything at the wall to see what sticks.

[@icebite9888]

The nice thing is every project they got yeeted from were great games. Talk about having the midas touch.

[@DjTonySnark]

I consider myself a hardcore gamer, I play all the new games, go to websites and keep up with gaming news. I’ve never heard of this game. Insane!

[@candrian7]

In a similar vein this is the first video I've seen any footage of this 'Tarkov' thing so many talk about.

[@devilussion]

​@@candrian7The cycle really never advertised on anything, there was not many content creators playing that game, and they screwed over the few that stuck with them... tarkov on the other side almost every twitcher has played that game at least once

[@KoloXD]

@@candrian7 Sir, are you living under a rock mayhaps?

[@candrian7]

@@KoloXD Tarkov isnt on Steam, GoG or Epic and is also a 'realistic' pvp shooter so theres nothing that would interest me in there.

[@games_are_good]

I spend a lot of time watching gaming KZbin and heard about it at one point but not again until this vid

[@NargacugaMyBeloved]

The cycle was one of my favorite games when I started to play it, but when I came back a year later to check on the game just to find how much it changed, it was depressing, and now with it losing so many players it’s sad to see it fall

[@RazTheOtter]

I cant wait for the next episode "Death of a game engine: Unity"

[@rexrip1080]

I was a Qa tester on the old version and parts of the new one. The differences in gameplay as well as the performance was not small. Honestly, they should have kept the old design and loop (this is a personal opinion of course), might not have made them as much cash but at least it was fun and worked well with mostly having some small bugs and not a great deal of the critical ones, was extremely stable as well, even on the potato PC's and limited internet speeds...

[@ParotandArmorfinish]

Excited for all the extraction shooter videos you’ll have to make over the next few years

[@bobhihih]

I got a group of friends together for this game a year ago. We played for about a week. We enjoyed ourselves. Then we started losing interest when every single PVP confrontation became an object of survive and run away. We could not win a single fight. Bounties were impossible. So we were basically tired of it after a week because the PVE was all we could do. I'm not sure if people were hacking when we played, or just that much better. Regardless, it was fun and a good idea. I hope something like it comes along and outshines what this once was.

[@Jibbzz]

It's sad I never saw The Cycle, and only got The Cycle Frontier.

[@vini784]

The first version was the best, what was missing were more weapons, perks, attachments and perhaps reconfiguring the game mode, where it was a real PVEVP, and not just necessary to be able to escape the world on the ship, something that by dying would lose something, Tarkov style (which they did later, but with the game all changed and broke).

[@sonictrain1]

This will sound nearly disrespectful, but I'm surprised you even remembered this game. I played the The Cycle prior to "Frontier" and it was during my first year of college with my roommate and it was a truly unique first/thrid person shooter that doubled as a looter/battle royale game. It rewarded your playtime, and felt almost like a multiplayer roguelite on a larger scale. They really had something interesting cooking up with that game. I was waiting for it's steam release but when I found out it finally came I was shocked to find out it was a tarkov clone. I wasn't completely upset by it since tarkov was popular and it was appealing to a much larger audience. But it hurt knowing that the unique game they worked on for years got robbed of it's opportunity to be experienced by the larger audience the steam playerbase would expose it to. Thanks for covering it, I stopped following it after finding out it became a tarkov clone.

[@LetsPlayAceCraft]

Yea, i played all seasons of Cycle frontier. Season 1- Played a lot, got deep into the game, quit due to hackers. Season 2- Played a bit, but the game still had quite a bit of the same issues, and knowing it was all going to wipe again made me not want to invest tons of time. Season 3- Wanted to play because it wasnt going to wipe, but doing the same quests on the same first boring map was just too much, if i got to the new content, I would of had fun, but just couldnt do it a 3rd time. Making a bunch of boring quests on a boring map before you can play the more fun quests on more fun maps is very rough.

[@prospectorbonky]

Ya bro, I just quested only to unlock drills and just solo pvp'd on season 3. I couldn't do the shit quests again

[@skarpantre]

I gave up shortly after it was available, if I knew S3 removed wipes I'd have returned but I stopped caring quickly, as an adult I can't put many hours a day into it to get reset, lmao I remember the arguements I had on steam forums and a few kids were blood boiled over how wipes are crucial for the LONGEVITY of the game, I would have spent money on it beside the basic founder's pack (which I regret buying because nowhere it told me that progress will be wiped) but as soon as I heard it has wipes I just quit, I can't farm to get to endgame only by everything gets deleted and have to start again. For some games that are still work in progress it makes sense because they have to reset servers between major updates that fundamentally change the game but it makes the game feel unfinished and like if it's in alpha-beta. They told me: Don't play it then Me and many others: ok 🤷‍♂

[@jonesy_5637]

I cant lie the original The cycle game was one of my favorite game as we ruled the EU competitive servers. The game was unique to all others as it was fast in terms of game progression and movement, the time to kill wasn't that fast. You had many weapons that were all balanced and had their own benefits and drawbacks. They brought a new concept of questing and points that you can win by while being in a PvP environment and being able to win by skill. It was challenging but at the same time very fun and enjoyable. So my point is Yager ruined such a gem of a game that won the hearts of thousents of gamers like myself. And I can't lie I spent quite a lot on cosmetics on this game such as outfits and their so called "Fortuna pass" which was the season pass varient of the game

[@dodo13111]

They had such an amazing concept with the original game, I hope they revive it and launch it on all platforms. Because it truly was a unique battle royale/extraction shooter concept. Nothing will ever comapre to it

[@Wo1fbite.]

My heart breaks for gundam evolution, just absolutely no* good rewards or reason to keep playing at all once challenges were done. But such an incredible game with actually fantastic balance

[@468erpeashooter9]

One thing it always felt like for the first cycle is that the developers were constantly focusing on rebalancing weapons rather than actually adding more monsters and objectives in the game (which is what made the game unique and interesting in the first place). If you were with that game at any point in 2020 you'll remember that the game went through so many different metas because every update the developers would change the stats of every weapon it was just dumb.

[@Odowlaa]

I played nearly 600 hours across all the seasons - this video is mostly spot on Season 1's biggest issue was absolutely cheaters - I have a screengrab somewhere where I died to some guy hitting me for 200,000 damage with a pickaxe. He was invisible, too. Season 2 largely solved this, but, A: A lot of the players who would've stuck around and enjoyed it had their experience ruined by Season 1's cheating, and B: Tharis Island was actually an excellent map with a very cool mechanic for improving your gear which suffered immensely from the requirement of only being accessible during the Storm. By the time Season 3 rolled around, despite most of the issues in the above largely solved (there was still a few cheaters here and there, but it certainly was *not* season 1), they didn't add anything new, or shake up early progression in a meaningful way, which is important especially for a F2P game that needs players to come in and (unfortunately it always comes to this eventually) spend money on the mtx. I do genuinely believe though, the end game content in TC:F was best in Industry. The dungeon being brutally hard to solo, and only slightly less so with a squad, chefs kiss. Drills that take 2 minutes to land essentially forcing a massive PvP fight between whatever players willing to risk it for a massive pay off, genuinely amazing. Oil rigs being similar to the previous, but on a smaller scale. The forge was also genuinely cool but it was locked behind quest progression much like the others, and changes to this came way too late. All in all, I think had they focussed on the things TCF did well, it wouldn't have needed to close after only 1 year of active development. What can you do, I enjoyed my time and I'm gonna miss it, man.

[@wsxdeee]

most enjoyable game in the last 2 years by far. Sadge it was destroyed by cheaters

[@0xmoo]

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.

[@wsxdeee]

@@0xmoo I agree with most of what you said. S1 PVP was the best. Looter extraction shooters should be hard, it should feel rewarding when you finally get to extract with sick loot. It was never a casual genre as you said.

[@Cloud-zx2mu]

Loved playing when it was focused on PvE. It felt pretty niche and original in some of its ideas to me. It was pretty sad to see the playerbase take a nose dive. The announcement of being reanimated into a tarkov-like extraction shooter was the final nail in the coffin for me

[@polttolinja]

The coffin was already nailed shut and 6 feet under before it was reanimated, so it was worth the shot.

[@dracotoy]

My buddy loved this game. Remember being in discord when he excitedly checked the "newest update" only to read it was the announcement of its permanent shutdown

[@flamemdq]

I play... most of the entire lifespan of this game and i must say THIS WAS A HELL OF A RIDE

[@exhaustive_the_sixth]

I'm so missing the previous version of The Cycle before it became "frontier". Seriously, that times when you could outperform someone and do many cool things were fun. But not so many players were interested, and massive exodus happened when the basis of the game was changed. I'm not surprised why after some time this game was closed. R.I.P "old" The Cycle, many players will miss you.

[@Deadshot-zr5ob]

I really loved this game when it was just "the cycle", once it became the cycle frontier and did all the changes to the game I stopped playing

[@Rugerfred]

Damn, I'm really missing the old The Cycle, before the Frontier change of direction. I truly hope one day we can have the file to have private servers/clients, as it happened in the past with Hellgate: London, Ragnarok Online, and other games. I feel we missed a unique thing, game-wise. Nothing similar to it exist right now, and it created a hole that I'm unable to fill with other games.

[@ZawfinityForever]

The OG Cycle was AMAZING! I would pay SO much for that game. I miss it so much. I am so disappointed they pulled the plug on Cycle OG for Frontier only to abandon it later. RIP OG Cycle.

[@Marsyvv]

I can't believe they launched this game without any anti-cheat, no wonder it was so bad on launch LOL. Good in depth vid!

[@cannon_tortoise]

it's not often that A SINGLE MECHANIC makes the list of failures but you must have had a helluva time dealing with grenades in this game.

[@runewarrior0]

The Cycle's first game iteration was my favorite shooter I've ever played and play it exclusively for several months. Played one week of the shit mode and never turned back.

[@BananekASMR]

When it was first announced I thought Frontier would be a really cool update but quit the game after my first two or three rounds. It just felt really disappointing because pretty much everything I liked about it was just gone

[@MafiaCarpio]

I would do anything to have the cycle back! I wish someone would bring it back to life. I’d pay $100 if needed for a copy 😭

[@imperialhonorguard1483]

I loved this game. Too sad it's gone. I just found out now.

[@kurisi5563]

For me and my friends the hilarious thing was we were all like "Wait it CAME OUT!?" when we heard it was dead.

[@wingxies]

i played the cycle and frontier but my god the changes were so massive when they switched to frontier that i lost all interest in playing😭 i miss the og epic cycle so bad and even though me and my best friend would be queue for HOURS just to get a match with the same people we still had so much fun even if we very rarely won, i haven’t been able to find a game like the cycle and me and my best friend constantly reminisce on the cycle and how we wish we could play again even if we had to queue for forever again, the closest my best friend and i have found to the cycle is hawked on steam and i definitely recommend that anyone who liked the og cycle and frontier too tbh checks it out!! great video!! :D

[@spacejambluray2591]

The cycle (original) is the only epic exclusive I have actually consistently played. The early competitive community was something I have yet to experience since. The strategy with balancing the pve obj and fights was taken to a different level when you got into a game with someone you know, someone who was ranked higher or just won the last competition. The community passing strats, bugs and exploits through pms and grinding out the tech with different suits and equipment over discord. Most of my epic friends list are remnants from the og community needless to say they don’t really get on much anymore myself included. I really do miss the original game.

[@AzureDrive]

I absolutely adored The Cycle when it was that competitive quester game. The format was pretty unique, at least I thought so, and the game was tons of fun. Unfortunately, I got into the game shortly after they announced that they were turning it in to a Tarkov clone and killing the original game. It still saddens me a bit that they killed something fun and interesting to turn it in to f2p Tarkov.

[@BootParnskt]

Such a shame. The original Battle Royale version of the game was genuinely a good game and brought something unique to the BR table. They shut it down and then converted into the increasingly saturating Extraction Shooter genre and the rest is history. =/ Oh well.

[@amund800]

I agree with your initial statement, but.. the BR genre is waaay more saturated than the extraction shooter genre. Personally, I've grown tired of 10 years of BR, and extraction shooters bring me the joy that BR once did.

[@BootParnskt]

@@amund800 that’s true! I’m still playing Hunt Showdown every day, while I haven’t touched a BR for… years(?) at this point. I enjoy a good extraction over my time with BRs for sure. :) What I’m saying though is that The Cycle BR was bringing something new to the BR genre and had a somewhat stable playerbase that were enjoying it. And Yager took that and said “Yeah, we wanna make space Tarkov though” and killed the game people enjoyed. We see it all the time where studios want to compete in a market that is already claimed. If people wanna play Extraction Shooters, they’ll go for Hunt or Tarkov, who already have established player bases and have lasted for years. Like, not even COD or Battlefield could crack into that market successfully. And Hyenas is more-than-likely dead on arrival by the time it comes out… -_- So to have had something slightly unique with the objective-based BR that combined extraction elements… And then squander it and just give up… I dunno. It’s just sad to see originality wasted in the modern gaming space. :(

[@argonnath2]

Would love to see a video about Tribes: Ascend FPS. It IS officially dead but private server keeps a cult following.

[@apex_xd8907]

i felt like it had a lot of potential as a regular pve game, but they made it an extraction battle royale........which i kinda didnt like. Didnt like the feeling of no real permanent progression, but thats just my own opinion.

[@zerro3172]

I really love this game is so see to see It go. Season 1 was rough, Season 2 was amazing and season 3 was Just an upgrade but Howler felt pointless and the economy changes

[@JYMBO]

The Cycle had some good Soundtracks! Korolev music was my favourite

[@Lukas-to1uy]

I keep them bangers on my plaslist. Even the old versions before the cycle frontier.

[@Beesechurger_73]

I really loved the game.

[@der_baumstamm]

Two things I want to add: 1. I played a lot with my friend after the sunset announcement. We always saw ourselves as "above casual but not pro" players. During those last weeks we were able to play with the highest end gear for the first time and while we both had a love-hate-relationship with the game before, we completely fell in love with it the second we got to have fun with the good gear. So my conclusion in that case is that the actual fun part of the game really was reserved for the best players only and most people were stuck with the annoying "meh" part. 2. From what I heard from devs directly there was another huge problem behind the scenes. TCF wasnt developed as a new game but rather as a heavily modified version of the old game. This lead to a huge pile of old spaghetti code which in return made it really difficult to add or change stuff as the code would have to be rewritten entirely. Because of this issue many core bugs which caused a bunch of frustration and made the game feel unpolished never got fixed because the devs "couldnt". One example for that was the way how the scanner could detect players through smokes. This issue originated from code really deep down so in S3 they officially called it a feature because fixing this bug was near impossible. Basically the new game with new code was built on an old and imperfect structure. (This also explains why some bugs from the old cycle carried over to TCF like the slow zoom out when quick scoping sometimes)

[@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-z1n]

18:00 a huge issue with TCF during season 3 was a bug where you'd try to spawn into matches with friends, but it would matchmake all of you into separate instances, causing you to be in trio lobbies as a solo, leading to a likely death because of it.

[@TheGodEmperorOfMankind_]

Played a bit of the original The Cycle, liked how it was more focused to PvE and right at the extraction point was a PvP clusterfuck with several teams fighting around it but it felt like it was very early access. Didn't even know they changed to be more like Tarkov

[@kap3469]

More extraction shooters should have a single player experience. A way to experience everything without having to worry about potential cheaters or just getting your back blown out cause your not good at pvp. Like if eft had a single player experience with progression of the story missions would so fun.

[@garylkz]

played once, the chance of getting rekt by high tier weapon is kinda high so usually i dead from getting ambushed. that said, there are chill peoples too, when we met each other, we jump once to show friendliness.

[@ImHeywood]

that was a really great aspect of the game, the random encounters you would get with some really cool people.

[@XarantaurTheWitness]

If they had just made this into some kinda PvE prospector where you defended against the monsters before the storm or something akin to the PvE stuff in shatterline i think the game wouldn’t have died this horrifically. Cause when it wasn’t some kinda tarkov abomination it had pretty cool ideas that was genuinely fun to play

[@godinek-tothmarcell4183]

1.3k hours in the past year it was the best game Ive ever played I will really miss it “Its good to see a game rise Its awesome to see a game shine Its sad to see a game fall into ashes”

[@Ghanemq8]

Diabotical should be an interesting game to look into. I remember playing it in the beta and enjoying it a lot. Most people really liked it. Shroud among other big streamers played it and it had a big audience because of it. It had a healthy playerbase during the betas but for some reason it was dead on launch day. I honestly have no problems with it other than the player numbers. It's impossible to find matches nowadays. I'm still really confused as it why it died like that. The fact that it's on the Epic launcher might be a factor.

[@avaroth2077]

Petition to revive the game i played it alot i miss it i thi j every day of it

[@Marinealver]

After the news of Gundam Evolution broke, I knew it was going to be featured here.

[@xenom9064]

Very Good video As a player of both The Cycles i feel that there is a one more reason that Old The Cycle failed, and its similar to Titanfall2's release day: Marketing. Game was amazing, unique in its own way but i found out about it only because YT algorhytm showed its trailer. No other ads, discussions on forums etc. while making the game Epic Launcher exlusive made this problem even more severe. Meanwhile The Cycle: Frontier felt like yet another "we pretend to be another extraction shooter where everyone has same chances and rules" game but with dynamic map, but what that means? It means that you often spawned at a location that was already looted a minutes before so you were either forced to wait for stuff to spawn, forced to only hunt players or extract with scraps that barely paid for your used supplies.

[@MyExtraman]

What killed this game to me was the development was too vertical and not horizontal enough. Not seeing your friends at the station was a major buzz kill and in general a major lack of social features.

[@onaucc9899]

Some of my friends tried to get me into the game. As i'm a huge fan of Hunt: Showdown, i went with it and played with them, for quite a time. But i never got into it. The question always was: Why would i play this instead of Hunt? And the answer to that question is: I wouldn't. There's no reason, except maybe the sci-fi setting. Some reasons why i love Hunt so much is that for one, the cheapest, shittiest loadout with literally zero investment can still completely dominate the most expensive loadout. The expensive stuff has advantages, yes, but NEVER to the point where it feels unfair. And literally EVERY SINGLE WEAPON that exists is very viable. You can play whatever and however you want, no meta-slaving required. Also i really enjoy the much slower, much more tactical combat. You can't just "spray and pray" because there are (almost) no automatic weapons. I personally really hate that CoD playstyle of "sprint across the map and autofire into the general direction of the enemy to win". I really dislike that and find it quite cringe, tbh. Personal prefference i guess. Anyways, in Hunt, you really have to deliberately and thoughfully place every single shot you have. And a big part of that is the Audio. You can pinpoint enemy locations by sound alone. It's so precise that you easily can get wallbang kills or so exclusively based on sound. All those are aspects that i didn't find in The Cycle.

[@DevlVergil]

The main problem for me was that I was looking for and expecting a more casual extraction shooter, but they ended up trying too hard to be like Tarkov which made it uninteresting for casual players while the hardcore players already had Tarkov. It was the fact that they never added a proper Solo queue/mode for this game what killed it. I even checked the patch notes regularly months after I stopped playing so I can jump in again when it feels more fair and casual but it never happened as far as I can tell. When you are playing alone there's just no way for you to "outplay" or flee from a group of two people in this game. Though when you mentioned this issue on forums all the answers you got where somewhat along the lines of "Extraction shooters never have a solo queue" or "just find a group of people on Discord to group up with". Stupid arguments tbh, Just because something is typical for a game genre doesn't mean that it can't be changed and improved. Also, I remember even the Survival mode from The Division 1 had a matchmaking system that tried to match you with similar group sizes. And there's many people who just don't want to play with some randoms in a group.

[@marklund117]

Season 3 did actually add a solo mode but it was too little too late

[@UAmmo]

That's what killed it for me too. Especially cuz you can't sneak away in this game, the extraction mechanic here let everyone know where you are and what you're doing. If I can't hop in for a quick match or two without getting ganked by a full squad I'm not really interested

[@KeepCalmSoldierOn]

This one really hurts, I put nearly 20 hours into the beta. After that another 20 into the full release. Hackers, grinds, and makingnit impossible to afford anything without cash, such a shame.

[@justzak8779]

this game had so much potential. it just needs a team that knows what the players want

[@spookieboogi6161]

Games devs need to stop forgetting we want to play alone most of the time and we’re freaking tired of having pvp forced down our throat and tired of being forced to constantly be online

[@thegameplayer125]

it's always interesting seeing games i have never heard of being featured like this game

[@chillhour6155]

very much modern live service game development in a nutshell, blindly following trends without having a clear artistic vision behind said development process will always result in a waste of time and resources, this seems to be a "cycle" of hard lessons game developers don't seem to pick up on

[@matic117]

I played the original The cycle game and it was simple yet very enjoyeble to play, then when they made the other game out of it, it was too complex for no reason and it just wasn't as fun anymore and yeah I saw it coming tbh

[@joshdodson3037]

OMG YOU MADE IT!! I REMEMBER COMMENTING ABOUT THIS LIKE A MONTH AGO!

[@polttolinja]

I loved this game and the day it was announced its going to be shutdown i shed a tear, never has any form of media made me feel that way :/

[@PhriekshoTV]

This was one I kinda enjoyed early on, but extraction shooters all end up being tests in frustration for me. Just like with Hunt Showdown, I preferred it in early access

[@Ababb21]

I LOVED THIS GAME. I was absolutely obsessed during all season 1, but I quickly got burnt out in season 2

[@BananekASMR]

I loved it too but unfortunately didn't get to play it that much :(

[@wolfmirebacta8710]

It's a real shame. It was a more casual experience to Tarkov that allowed you more freedom in how your character looked with cosmetics. Yet lacked interesting enemies, never mind that it seemed to show enemies that weren't in the game in trailers inside the bar on TV's

[@tnotsun3870]

Where could I find the sources you used for this video? There was lots of great information I'd really like to look more into. I played a ton of this game last year during the first couple of seasons and I'm going to miss it. Sad but, understandable how it all fell apart. Thank you for the great content.

[@Tapsel]

I've played a lot in Seaon 1 until the wipe (I hate that mechanic, too). I enjoyed experience of a F2P Tarkov with my friends very much. In addition it had low specs required to run smoothly. Overall nice game with an unknown target audience.

[@xxvoss]

I had over 2,000 hours in this game. I loved it so much, and it was so sad to see it come and go. :(

[@CIP3RM]

I was really into the Steam page for the game until I read that it was an extraction shooter. I'm sick of the genre, I wish all these games included a tdm or coop mode in the same open worlds, all the assets are already there. I also hate all the FOMO content in these games, I hate feeling like I'm 'late to the party' and therefore can't get certain cosmetics.

[@ArchaicTTV]

You're sick of a genre that barely has any games in it and you hate FOMO in games that have.. wipes, that remove that exact feeling. Ofc TCF got rid of wipes in the last season as a last ditch effort bur your logic makes no sense here And good news with TCF cosmetics.. almost nothing new ever came out after week 3 or 4 of each season.

[@Waffle519]

God, I've been doing my own Death of a Game in my head for GunEvo ever since the sunset announcement. Matches were too damn long!!!!

[@nickparsons3194]

Man I really enjoyed the original version of the cycle and thought it had tons of potential. When they shifted to a tarkov style game I found myself wondering "why don't I just load up tarkov"

[@KoloXD]

I thoroughly enjoyed the wheather change at the end of each cycle. It was very unique to the game and gave a really sick atmosphere to it.

[@WarLore]

The thing that is quite unfortunate is that the research for the video seemed to be pretty bad this time. Lots of stuff regarding the old game are completely wrong etc., A bunch of things regarding the timeline that he mentioned also don't add up.

[@setone28ua]

im an adult and had a time to play this game once a week, or less, because i have no friends who played this. So the most annoying thing for me was skill gap and wipes. Like i downloaded the game, played 2 times, and after that all my progress lost because of wipe. LIKE WTF. RIP Cycle

[@blastingoff]

I loved the cycle so much.. Man I miss it. :(

[@aceofhearts573]

Looking at how the Cycle Frontier looked it should have been a game like Borderlands. What a huge miss. Also, how is Yaeger still alive since all their games fail and are closed.

[@MrVlad12340]

Worst part is that i actually like many ideas and style of this project , it had potential, and those with potential always feel worse than those that were failures from the get go due to just being bad ideas.

[@SwoleBenji]

I had fun when this game first launched but the hackers ruined it within the first few days.

[@tharrison4815]

I really loved this game. They made so many good design decisions for an extraction shooter. I think ultimately the company just wasn't big enough to pull off making it profitable and cheat free. I just hope other upcoming extraction shooters use a lot of the good mechanics of this game.

[@Ramona_93]

I always love the detective framing device's vibe ❤

[@rdacandyman17]

As someone who played hundreds of hours of the Cycle and played with lots of people in the community the biggest issue was always the lack of content or variety during the seasons. End of the seasons they had cool things like storm divers and the cataclysm however during the middle of the season there was nothing. No events for holidays, nothing exciting for those that had completed lots of the quests also the MMR system was too easily exploited and they waited too long to change the way matchmaking worked. It's sad because the core game is great, the gunplay can be so good at times but the fact you had nothing fun to keep you going forward and wanting you to help others really damaged it. They should've had a clan system with rewards such as Destiny 2 does, they should've also followed destiny and others with how there is quite often special events or modes (for instance drop the prices of one companies weapons or have one of the maps have a special variant feature every couple weeks). The game could've had some things for halloween and summer but sadly it didn't and sadly we never got to see the full potential of the locked "raid" rooms.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

I don't know if you watched the video but the core game was infested with cheaters and not very balanced. I respect your perspective but much of mine came from literal developers themselves. Players with tons of hours usually get tunnel visioned on very specific things because they're willing to ignore, most of which the player base that quit wasn't.

[@rdacandyman17]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss Oh i did and I love your content because you get a lot of insight from multiple angles and appreciate all you do to constantly explore games like this and was awaiting you investigating the game. I should've worded my response better honestly because did not mean it in anyway to dismiss anything you spoke about, which should've stated ontop of the mentioned cheater/balance issues. The cheater things was an awful problem and the sadly the support team was really bad at communication regarding it. Trust me I used to get cheater comp packages non stop and still have tons of video clips saved with the issues regarding the cheaters, I also had friends and myself send videos and detailed breakdowns to support team members with no responses. But as we know with games like COD and Tarkov that many players will deal with cheaters and balance issues when they feel patches will come along as there also is enough content. As you mentioned in the video the game being f2p makes it something easy to access for cheaters. From my experience talking with numerous groups and people from the discord though most were willing to still play with the risk of cheaters as long as there was something more to bring them back but many of them all said the same thing and it was along the lines of the fact nothing major was being done about the cheaters and no new content was there to make it worth the risk of losing fights to cheaters. Another thing that became an issue later on was constant disconnects and getting connection errors for the last season. The argument some made was it was to help fight off cheaters lag switching and jumping with vpn's but the reality was it was actually just hurting a dwindling community and giving more reason to give up. The unhappiness with dev decisions and then awful responses from some of the community team members really didn't help then there was the issues many streamers had with community members and the lack of any support as well as drama that happened it sucks because it could've been something really good but as you mentioned in your video they got stuck trying to appease one audience that wasn't the only one playing the game and if they focused on more varied stuff and fixing the cheating or at least communicated things better they could've at least gotten another season out of it

[@I_am_ENSanity]

If they had made it Co-Op/PVE it would've been fine. The instant it was PVP/PVE everyone I know dropped it like the "live service" t@rd it was.

[@Truth_are_Lies]

The most surprising thing for me is that this is the first time I ever heard about the cycle.

[@buzvad]

Fun game. Really liked the fact you could just dip out of the map anytime. Made finishing missions easy

[@kenelt]

this game could have been great. if they have make it a pve extration where the fauna becomes more aggresive the most time you stay on the surfice and accomplish objectives. starting with weak enemies on small waves increasing the difficulty as the weather got worse as the storm get closer. making people take the decision extract before the storm hits. or resist the storm where enemies become much deadlier but drop materials changed by the storm like they already did on the game. keep the difficulty ramp up after the storm so more experience players with better equipment could do multiple storm cycles. also give players more safe pockets so even if they get wiped they didnt lose all. add some modifier per storm cycle to spice up the game play. and put materials for prestige items like skins on drop chance depending on the wave so hardcore games get incentive to go harder but allowing more casual players to get those items with enough time getting the materials slowly compare to hardcore players. monetize some more complex skins and remodels not obtainable thro gameplay, ensurance in case of wipes like already does in game, also could use subscriber system with things like better prices on in game shops and battlepass exclusive rewards.

[@KiuhKobold]

Legit downloaded the game a couple weeks back to try it out, only to learn this after not being able to connect to the servers at all (south america). I liked the game and am sad that its dead now, but then again, i died to the extraction vehicle's DOOR and thought that was bs enough. Sad but, yeah

[@Bulleteeth]

What was the game shown from 00:19 - 00:21? Side scrolling extraction shooter?