What really killed the game was you could only run it on the newest iPads. The graphics play such a small, if any, part of the game and limiting the potential buyer base from the beginning was a bad business decision imho. Not saying the it wouldn't have happened anyway but it didn't help. Anyway, as others have said, really sad to see it come to this and wish them good luck in the future. Thanks for the great games.
since is most likely to this be taken down at some point anyone have any info is this barely runs on a 4s?
I am terribly sorry to hear about this. I had been a beta tester for Hunters 2 and WHQ after falling in love with Hunters: Episode 1, played the hell out of WHQ in particular. I never had the chance to play Deathwatch because I only owned an iPad 3, but I have now downloaded it in case I get a better device in the future. All the best.
I'm pissed. The game was amazing, one of the better on the iPhone. Here we are, great game in hand. People bitched about the RNG IAP in this game but it was a beautiful product reguardless. Now look. These beautifully talented developers are out of business. Screw the App Store. We need to make a change. This won't end well. We don't want a future where games force you to stop playing. Force you to pay hundreds / Thousands of dollars to progress. Lock content from the player unless they gamble with 49.99$ and 99.99$ package consumables. We need to make a stand, and soon. Farewell guys. Your products were amazing and you cheered a ton of people up and made there days just a little bit better.
I'm in shock here. This leaves a real nasty taste in my mouth, regarding mobile gaming industry. We (consumers) aren't rewarding talented game makers. We're rewarding talented monitizers. This alone makes me lose huge respect for the industry. Look at the top grossing games on the App Store and see the real company were in. Casual gamers. I really appreciate the games Rodeo. You really made my iPhone feel like a legit gaming device early on with Hunters and WQ. I wish it would have worked out.
Worth Every Penny I've spent more on this game than any other mobile game $50 or so. Hearthstone is getting close though. I spent a lot of time playing and grinding and enjoying. Rodeo you guys were awesome, disappointed about multiplayer but that's life. I hope you can make great games in your future lives, because Deathwatch Lone Wolf Medusa one of the baddest of all time!
What's happening to Playdek? Rodeo shuttering is really, really depressing. Seriously, now all we have left are the Trese Brothers for turn based strategy games, who I'm a giant fan of... but dammit.
Although the dissolution of the studio is sad news, since they made games solidly in my wheelhouse, it's not hard to see how they sowed the seeds of their own demise. Hunters: Episode One was released in a nearly unplayable state with frequent crashes, data resets, and launch screen freezes that, once you were hit, happened 100% of the time. Took them four post release builds just to get it into a playable state, and by then their spotlight was gone and they couldn't support it well nor ever deliver on their promised updates to the content. And like all their releases, excepting WHQ (which had its own monetization issues), it didn't know whether it was premium or paymium, reducing their potential audience for no understandable reason.Viewing ads for gear and purchasable currency were just plain off in a game that appealed to purist strategy gamers, while the game design itself lacked anything that would have made it appealing to the sort of gamer that wanted to buy that sort of IAP anyhow. Hunters 2 was essentially the game H:E1 had promised it would become, complete with the mechanics balances that were never delivered to H:E1, and was a much tighter affair that offered a reasonable amount of replay value for the price. This was unfortunately necessary since they abandoned the project only a few weeks after launch to focus on development of their just scored license for Warhammer: Quest. However, much like H:E1, the game warned off some potential buyers with the inclusion of pointless IAP. Warhammer: Quest was a good but flawed game that was slowly killed by the needlessly complicated IAPs that, I believe, greatly reduced their income for the expansions. It makes little sense to develop an entire expansion, but then sell every little piece of a *single* expansion individually, but that's what they did. With each additional expansion, they were selling to a smaller and smaller audience, yet made them far more expensive than could possibly capture more than the hardest of their hardcore fans. It was a hot mess of a mini-whale oriented monetization scheme trying to swim in premium waters, yet putting a ceiling on what they could earn from their "whales"; it just didn't make sense. Like with their previous two games, once they saw greener grass, they stopped trying to fix what they themselves had broken, and abandoned the project to work on their fourth and final title. Warhammer 40K: Deathwatch *should* have been a run away hit for them. For the first time they had a truly modern looking engine with some amazing artwork. The campaign and marines made excellent use of the source IP. The gameplay was, to be blunt, simply Hunters 3, but that's a good thing since Hunters 2 was, and will sadly remain, their best and tightest title. And then they shot it all to hell with freemium gacha mechanics as the only way to advance yet offering nothing to justify chasing it beyond the outlier's fanaticism at collecting ultimate teams. Freemium style gacha works in games that offer a competitive environment for players to interact, compete, and/or show off. Deathwatch offered none of that. It was a strictly single player game, although, like H:E1 & H2 before it, promised upcoming multiplayer and *never* delivered (yet again). It had all the grind and jingling of the tip jar as any freemium team/squad based game, but none of the things that can make such design fun, or at least compelling to a large enough audience. Worse, based on my experience with current generation freemium games, it had arguably *more* grind than most freemium titles relative to progression. I had a number of email exchanges with the developers back in the H:E1 era and the conclusion I came to is they were a bunch of enthusiastic, talented developers with little, if any, business sense for the market or their audience. And although I continued to buy every one of their titles, including buying every IAP for WHQ (except the weapons) at full price in spite of my strong dislike for the way it was implemented, that opinion of the company never changed and, by appearances, was spot on. For all the things their games did right, they were never monetized properly, nor were their projects ever realistically managed leading to consistently over promised and under delivered titles. Hopefully that talent will land in a studio where it can be better managed and directed.
@C.Hannum Well said. This is not just a wall of text and if people take the time to read it they might understand what really happened to Rodeo Games.
Completely agree with your post, C.Hannum. Big fan of Xcom and FFTactics here. Bought WHQ to find iaps for expansions. Semi ok with that, since i could play through one campaign. But when i bought Deathwatch for the same price, excited for the amazing artwork, to find i could only grind and gacha to gain new marines and items after a point... it became less Xcom and more Puzzle n Dragons...
This with all the backlash going in the comment sections i guess https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/482445197/unsung-story-tale-of-the-guardians/posts/1485100
Sad, but DW was doomed I will miss Rodeo, 2 games of over 120hrs each on WQ, still only XCOM compares for sheer enjoyment from a portable device. Yes, i purchased all their games, yes i got every IAP for WHQ... but the "Deck Building" nature of DW killed it for me. if it was a free game they would have had a much larger audience and the freemium style Random Card Generator would have probably worked better. But they got all the statistics wrong, not enough people purchased the game, and those that purchased where then less likely to buy IAP with no guaranteed reward. So either entirely free from the start, with different tiers of decks to purchase to fix the chances of actually getting the marine you wanted. Or sticking to the WQ model to start with a base set of marines, then earn tier 2 and 3 through out the story, and purchase the top tier for IAP.
Rodeo - does this mean you can tell us what the lucky rabbits foot (WHQ) and the mystery codex thing in DW does?
Check which saves you're loading. I think it's different to how it used to work. You have three cloud save slots and a separate three local save slots. It's the option in settings before you start a game.
The game is now for free! I have played the first Hunter game a lot back in the days. What a sad story! Thumps up! @C.Hannum: thanks, big up!
