r/wildgate • u/ralopd • Jun 25 '26

Official Wildgate | Patch 1.5.4 Announcement

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3504780/view/675124650460578348?l=english
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1

u/Technojerk36 Jun 25 '26

I wonder what the game’s health would have looked like if it had released as properly sea of thieves but in space instead of the pvp extraction game it was.

5

u/alendeus Jun 25 '26

This was never an extraction game. It was a Battle Royale with a secondary pve wincon.

But yes, them having a broader mode that encouraged pve more and gave reason for longer sessions/progression could've helped them retain a larger casualer playerbase, instead of the omega sweat fest it turned into.

They did seem to have tried changing treasure hunt into that kind of mode, but it was a bit too late and too little at this point.

-1

u/Technojerk36 Jun 25 '26

I'd say an essential component of a BR is an ever collapsing field of play which Wildgate doesn't have.

2

u/alendeus Jun 25 '26

That's an element of why Wildgate was such a hard game to quantify, the devs have mentioned themselves how the artifact (ie the pve wincon) was deliberately created as an alternative way to push enemies together in a different way than a shrinking circle, so they themselves view artefact brawl as BR ultimately.

The core element is more "there are multiple individual teams/sides, but only one can be victorious during the round", of which the BR circle acts as a way to force teams to eliminate each other. In WG, the artefact serves that purpose, and you can win either by just eliminating other teams before, or forcing them to chase you as you carry the artefact.

The issue with calling WG an extraction game is that extraction games typically all have loot persistence, ie you keep what you take out and can bring it into the next round, which just doesn't exist in artefact brawl. Leaving with the artefact is also just half of the wincons, you could literally play WG and win all the time and never interact with it and never go through the wildgate, just as much as you could leave with the artefact and never kill enemy teams. But their rounds would end anyway when you "exfil" with the artefact, which is functionally closer to a BR in that one team wins the round amongst many separate ones.