Concord First Hands-On: Plenty of Balancing Left to Go, and Not Much Time
Concord was originally teased last year with a simple video that showcased a ship cruising through space. I think a hamburger was involved. Anyway, after seeing that short teaser, I honestly expected to see a story-driven FPS – this is a first-party Sony game, after all – but maybe it’d be something like an MMO, a la Destiny. I was on board for a new experience regardless, but then I was somewhat surprised to learn that Concord is, in fact, a 5v5 shooter.
And now that I’ve played it, I’m very glad that Concord does plan on keeping up with its world lore and ongoing storyline, since some of my favorite FPS games like Overwatch and Apex Legends do this seasonally as well . Additionally, each season that releases will be free to all players, who only have to purchase the game and enjoy future updates to come.
While I enjoyed my time in the limited hands-on preview overall, I have several concerns for the longevity of Concord and what it has to offer. Concord’s meat-and-potatoes formula is a pretty standard 5v5 set up, with two teams choosing their preferred character before diving into an objective-based team battle.
During the preview, I was able to play three of six modes that will be available at launch: Trophy Hunt, Cargo Run, and Clash Point. Trophy Hunt was the only one that featured respawns in the match and was basically Kill Confirmed team deathmatch.
Cargo Run, meanwhile, was a single-life match where the objective was to run to the center, steal a Blue Buddy package and plant it at one of two sites. If planted, the enemy team could go and stand on the package to diffuse it and take it back. And finally, Clash Point was a round-based single-life game mode with the objective being to control the only capture zone in the entire map multiple times to get the victory.
The single-life modes were tough to warm up on while still getting to know the game, as failure obviously means you’re out of the action for a bit. And while Concord is a fairly straightforward FPS, I have a core criticism a mere two months from its August 24 launch: in the build I played, the movement felt extremely floaty and required a bit of time to get used to. This is exacerbated by the fact that each Freerunner character you can play has a unique set of movement and skills they bring to the team, so each time you swap to a new character, you’re then attempting to learn and configure your brain to how they work. So you can imagine that it gets a bit disorienting.
And while Concord will be released on PC day and date with PS5, I was only able to preview this on the PS5 with a controller, and so with that in mind, I’d say the movement is heavily reminiscent of Destiny and Halo. Again, it is incredibly floaty, which could be a fun element if it is done well. However, the way the preview build felt, the feather-light jumps and hang time really did not match the amount of fast-paced fights that could occur at any time in the matches.
While Halo does utilize a similar floaty jump mechanic, the rest of the mechanics and gameplay in Halo justify that reasoning and do not make it feel like the odd element out. Grenades also feel light when lobbed through the air, the various abilities in Halo all have the same weight and cadence to them, and the match pacing reflects the balancing between the base game mechanics. Players in Halo, even in competitive ranked matches, do heal over time after avoiding taking damage for a while.
Similarly, Destiny is a game that’s more PvE related and thus does not need the incredibly snappy mechanics that Halo or Concord need in PvP fights. Even in the PvP fights in Destiny, the usual TTK is slower since the fights can be drawn out due to the different class abilities allowing for slower or faster play, depending on how players choose to engage (i.e. more directly or more reserved). Each class also has different movement capabilities and healing abilities that ensure match pacing stays consistent throughout.
So the problem in Concord, at least in this preview version, is that it takes little pieces from games like Halo and Destiny and mixes them together in a formula that doesn’t quite come together for me as of yet. Concord actually utilizes the same type of dodge animation from Destiny that pulls you out in third person. While I liked this element in Destiny, in Concord it doesn’t quite work because there’s a brief-but-noticeable delay between your input of the dodge and the actual deployment. This can make or break your life since timing is everything in competitive play and a single hesitation, or simulated hesitation through the delayed input, can punish you greatly.
Sony says there will be six total maps at launch, so perhaps some of the game modes will feel better paced and optimized on the others when spread out. But the way things stand currently, most maps felt very oddly misshapen. Some lanes were too long or big and barely saw rotations while the second lane in another map would just feel entirely too small and cause prolonged team fights due to its claustrophobic size.
Concord touts its competitive nature and fast-paced fights. I love all of that but found that the competitiveness risks being unwelcoming to new players attempting to learn the game because most of the game modes are single-life-focused.
It’s important to note that even if you are an incredible player, Concord is not a game that allows for many 1v2 fights to be won. Unlike a game of Apex or Halo where you can potentially outsmart your opponents and win in 1v2 scenarios, Concord is so heavily a team game that you’re not able to succeed if you’re on your own. While this is the point of team FPS games, it’s pretty punishing for modes like Trophy Hunt where you’re encouraged to go off and get kills for the objective.
Another reason these lopsided matchups are impossible to win is the fact that each character in Concord has their own health pool and hitbox. This would be fine if these characters had your traditional classes, but Concord doesn’t utilize your typical class system. Usually, each class has their own health stats that you can expect each character in that label to have.
Taking a look at Overwatch, for instance, most Tanks have a base health of anywhere from about 525 to 700 (with combinations of shields or armor in game for specific characters that have them like DVA and Reinhardt). In Concord, it was incredibly difficult to tell what exactly the health pool was for any of the classes since nothing was really quite established with their system.
For example, 1-Off is a cute robot who sucks up trash and is most definitely a tank character with his big physique and clunky movement and hard-hitting weaponry who has 300 health. However, Teo, who is essentially a DPS that plays like your traditional ground soldier-like character with no tank qualities, has 220 health as a Concord Ranger class. But Roka, another character who is essentially a DPS, is classified as a Haunt and has 170 health.
What these non-traditional classes mean is extremely confusing. In the preview, we weren’t given details on each class and what the terms mean, but it all seems a bit arbitrary when the health pools and damage numbers vary so much, causing an even further division of game balancing.
Overwatch also utilizes the system of ensuring there is a roster for the amount of characters allowed from each class. Concord currently does not utilize a mechanic like that and allows players to use whatever characters they want, since these class systems are not traditional. While this is fun in theory, in my brief experience playing a competitive game like Concord, it doesn’t pan out too well.
Another reason Concord is so heavily a team-based game is that each character has their own running speed and damage output. It could be argued that this is an extension of the lack of clear classes, but I did want to focus on this as its own balancing issue. The DPS on characters is pretty important since you’re allowed to have a team of whatever characters you want.
There were some definitely “overpowered” characters in the preview build that you really did need on your team if you wanted to win, especially in Trophy Hunt. Let’s look at the rocket launcher Freegunner, Roka.
She’s able to deal 43 damage with direct hits while firing rapidly and establishing her lock-on target almost instantly. After having done some watch backs, it seems there’s no real answer to what the distance of Roka’s splash damage is and how much it does consistently. So far I’ve seen it hit from a decent distance for 12 damage, then also hit for 27 damage closer to the target. Roka also has eight total rockets to use before she has to reload so these numbers add up.
Comparing this to Overwatch’s Pharah, another rocket-launcher-wielding character, she only does 40 damage to an enemy when it is a direct hit, with her splash damage being about half that. She also only has six rockets before having to reload and does not have any abilities for lock on fire.
Obviously comparing these two games head-to-head isn’t fair to either, but it’s important to note the difference between balancing. It’s entirely possible that with time, Concord will be able to get a better grasp for how its balancing should be maintained. But the way it stands currently, I’m concerned for the more casual players’ experience and general approachability.
The option to play crossplay with PC and PS5 will be available at launch which is good news for players like me who have friends on both platforms, but it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. The preview build I played showcased heavy aim assist on controllers. It was most noticeable on Roka, the rocket launcher character, since her weapon locks-on. I would find myself having to really rip the thumbstick away to get her to turn away from the nearest enemy that I didn’t even want to target.
The other characters I played didn’t feature nearly as aggressive aim assist, but I could feel the magnetization there, which was a bit frustrating and concerning considering the option for crossplay would be enabled at launch. While yes, you can argue that on PC you can do more rapid movement adjustments on the fly, the ever-ongoing battle between controller aim assist versus keyboard and mouse movement seems to just be aggravated here.
Fortunately, there are still a couple of months to go until Concord’s launch – still a decent bit of time for the balancing and tweaking of every aspect of the game that always happens at this stage of the development process. Fingers crossed Concord is able to tighten up its floaty controls and address its character balancing before it drops on August 24 for PS5 and PC.
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