The Finals - Xdefiant Comparisons. Big Marketing Push. Region Queue Times & More
The finals twitch number skyrocketed; overnight, we'll go over all the details. With that, we'll also talk about some of the comparisons with X defiant and the net code, as well as some fan-made creations and some new ideas. We'll go over some of the Q Time stuff as well as what some of the developers are seeing on the back end, and a whole bunch more.
This time we're back in with another article, and today we're checking out all things final. Okay, so yesterday we actually did have the finals somewhat blow up over on Twitch, at least in comparison to the current viewership; it did jump up quite substantially compared to the recent numbers. It looks like Embark did sponsor the streamers in order to promote this tournament, and again, this was actually specific to Japan, obviously for the hopes and to promote that game in that region, as it seems like the NA audience is most likely the strongest, and I'll go over some details with that.
At least after this section here again, this was the streamers dive tournament. This was a Japanese tournament for the finals, where we saw a jump up to about 23, 000 and a little bit more over on Twitch. Now we saw a lot over on Twitch, but we also saw a ton of article and YouTube streams as well.
I didn't really see any promo work here in NA, but that's obvious for those reasons, but still, with it only being limited to that region, it seemed like it did decently well. obviously there was supposed to be some other orts stuff, but I believe the breakout esport was just the qualifiers that happened on April 13th; theirs will end on May 26th, 6th, and the actual tournament for the breakout esports stuff seems to be happening on June 8th to the 9th, and we'll have to wait and see on that one specifically.
I do know there was some Reddit post last week asking about where this stuff was going, but I think it was just a qualifier, so it wasn't exactly being live streamed or showcased. It also seems like you're still able to register for the round one qualifiers. I'm surprised I didn't hear anything about the Japanese one.
Maybe I didn't look into it enough. I'll be sure to be more on the ball with that stuff so I can keep you guys up to date with that. Speaking of regions and some people with the matchmaking times, now I know we've had a lot of on-and-off stuff about that, whether the matchmaking times are good or bad, if it's taking too long, or if there's a delay there.
I know some people. By restarting, your queue has actually fixed the issue where people have been in queue for 20 minutes and then uncued and recued and then got a queue within a few minutes. We actually have a developer chiming in about those queue times, specifically to NA, where someone here was asking about some of the region stuff, changing regions, and looking at all the stats.
This Embark developer by the name of Embark Bear went on to say that, looking at the stats, I can't see anything unhealthy in the NA region. All I can recommend right now is to restart Steam and try to queue up again. If you continue to have these issues, I suggest counting the support crew, obviously.
He also went on here to further clarify, saying that he generally sees solid MN times, and that's with most regions, but I know some areas are obviously difficult because people tend to queue at most casual times. Of course, it seems like Europe and North America seem to have the best Q times, and they seem to be pretty good.
Mine used to be around 30 to 40 seconds, and now sometimes they get over a minute. That's still fairly quick and fast for at least the matchmaking times in general, and again. I do know some other regions are having difficulties, which it looks like they are trying to promote in some of those regions, as we just saw with the Japanese streamer tournament; hopefully that does bring some new faces and eyes to the game.
I know that for a lot of it, the game just needs marketing and a huge push, especially when we compare it to X Define and some of the other recent titles. There's a poster on Reddit saying that after playing X Define, I appreciate this game that much more. I think the net code in this game is rough.
I think the balance is bad. Go try X defiant and get back to me. I know X defiant subreddit is basically on fire, and a lot of people are super disappointed. With that game, I played it back in August of 2021, and it is essentially the exact same game to me. It seems like there were performance fixes, but the net code almost feels worse than when I played it back then.
There were definitely some hitch issues, and they kind of ruined my favorite weapon, which was the P90. I've been playing that game on and off this weekend, but it's not nearly as fun as the finals overall. I'm still my cover X Define overall if they do get up in popularity with that game, but that game seems to have a host of issues and is really kind of in a rough spot right now.
We also don't know when that game is going to release, and it basically got delayed from 2022 to 2023 to 2024. So they've had multiple years to kind of rewrite and rework this game, and they just really haven't done much, and the balancing on that game has gone backwards and forwards, especially compared to the finals.
Not to talk about X defiant too much, but just kind of comparing both games and how they actually balance and their philosophy around it. X Defant is essentially completely changing classes and completely reverting them, then changing them back and then reverting them again, so there's a lot of back and forth there, kind of like Whiplash, and the finals don't really seem to do that overall, whereas with the finals balance, they do seem like they actually take time to balance those features.
But when you compare these two games, you definitely see that it's not so bad on the other side. Moving on, though, we did have a post here about a block list. Now someone here has reached their 50-block limit, and they were saying that this was because of cheaters or that they wanted to block people because they were cheating.
Unfortunately, as pointed out by another commenter here, blocking doesn't stop that; it just makes them so that they can't contact you, or through VC specifically with this game, it doesn't actually stop you queuing against them. I think that would be kind of potent, especially in ranking. You could just block top players, and that would just be a little bit of a stretch there, so there has to be some give and take there, so yeah, if you are blocking cheaters, if they do remain unbanned, you still might queue up against them.
