Amazon’s Crucible Is Having Some Launch Issues

It's crunch time.

Crucible
Crucible

Launching today on Steam, Crucible is a free-to-play shooter published by Amazon Games that asks players to work together to take on giant beasts and other players. Ostensibly a PVPVE game, Crucible launches with 10 different hunters to choose from on the quest for something called “Essence”, a valuable resource.

Being one of the biggest new games of May (well, really, one of the only big games of the month), plenty of players have been flocking to play Crucible. 12,135 concurrent players on launch day isn’t bad at all, especially with so many F2P shooters vying for attention.

Despite its strong start in terms of players, its Steam reviews so far show that it isn’t having the best debut day technically.

With Mixed ratings from a total of 2,160 reviews to date, it seems a lot of Crucible players are struggling to see the hook for the game so far, many feeling that it’s lacking content and optimised poorly.

From M:

“I hope this game gets fixed up and optimized. However judging from the zero fanfare that this game was dropped with courtesy of Amazon, I don’t think the publisher had much faith in it to begin with and just wanted it out.”

From Helghan:

“This is another Anthem fail with a company with a ♥♥♥♥ ton of money. Really ♥♥♥♥ing sad. Do not buy this pile of horse ♥♥♥♥.”

From Big Boss:

“Needs critical balancing. Great looking game. Still seems rushed for launch though. Which is odd considering they had extra time. Really wanted to get hooked. The feel of the Third person feels good, but it’s needs much more.”

There are quite a few players who are finding plenty to love with the game, though the complaint about it being seriously lacking at this point in its life keeps coming up again and again. As well as that, some players are struggling to find matches, think the balancing is way off, and the lack of voice or text chat is a huge miss.

It should be noted, however, that this is the pre-season for the game, meaning that players are currently being implored to just log in and learn the ropes before Season 1 kicks off sometime down the line. Curiously, though, you can still buy a “Pre-Season Battle Pass” for 950 Credits, which is the first time I’ve ever seen something like it in a live service game.

On top of that, it can’t be easy to launch any big-scale multiplayer shooter, and that’s without even considering all of “this” going on right now. Few PVP games come out of the gate completely ready for the limelight, so you should expect some polish for Crucible as time goes on.

Developed by Relentless Studios, Crucible is the first of two games published by Amazon due to launch this year. The second, New World, is an ambitious looking MMO set on an island ripe for colonisation with supernatural elements due for release on August 25th, 2020. Another Amazon game, Breakway, was cancelled in early 2018.

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