Art Attack
First off, I know… It’s perfection. You’re envious, I understand, truly, I do! No-one will ever hold a candle to, nevermind best, my godlike art skills. As painful as that realisation is, that’s not the point of this article. Besides, that pain would be a fraction of a fraction compared to the pain caused by Hi-Rez Studios when their beloved hero shooter Paladins with executed in cold-blood with the introduction of the Cards Unbound system. *shivers* Truly a chilling tale never to be forgotten by the victims of this atrocity. The community fought back in spite of the constant denials to remove the newly implemented system that Hi-Rez repeatedly mentioned they were “committed” to. First with outrage and abandonment, then solid proof of the madness in the form of logically presented arguments and documented facts. But recently the Paladins community used a new approach, specifically with the idea of showing their distaste for Cards Unbound with equally distasteful MS Paint art and then using it as ammo to OBLITERATE the front page of the Paladins Reddit.
Slowly, this began gathering traction and soon snowballed into an avalanche of intentionally bad art with seemingly no limit in sight. The Paladins community as a whole had finally taken its downfall as the sour joke it was and began treating it as such. If Hi-Rez were so intent on destroying their own self-image with callous disregard, why should the fans who poured their time, love and energy into their games not get to do the same? As the MS Paint riot raged over the course of the week, it only got bigger and gathered more eyes and priceless pieces of art to add to the collection of masterpieces. At this point, four months after OB64 and the introduction of Cards Unbound, people just wanted somewhere to release that pent-up resentment at Paladins mishandling even if it didn’t change a thing. But the weird thing is, it may have been what tipped Hi-Rez over the edge.
Febuary 22nd.
Something absolutely magical happened…
The following image was publicly shared by HiRezChris, along with this here lengthy post explaining all the wonderous, marvelous changes that were soon to come back to the realm with him at the helm of the ship as the new project lead of Paladins after his successful work on leading the development of SMITE.
But I only want to focus on a single snippet of that post:
“We know this system has angered many of our most loyal fans and become a point of continuous contention in the Paladins community (and even inside of Hi-Rez). Your voice has been heard loud and clear.”
To quote myself from December 9th, 2017: “It’s weird thinking that the hilarious, fun-loving, passionate developers who made me fall in love with the game work under the same roof as the gits that forced this change. I bet they’re angrier than we are.” It wasn’t exactly the hardest scenario to have predicted but, DAMN, if it didn’t feel good to have been on the money about it. What’s basically going to be nothing more than a tweaked rollback will go down as the most significant update in Paladins history. (Besides the infamous and insidious OB64, of course.) The day Paladins was brought back from the dead. OB67, in all its glory, will be titled “The Realm Restored” if that’s any indication of its importance to both developers and fans. I can’t wait. I can finally reinstall and play Paladins again. There’s obviously still reason to be cautious of Hi-Rez’s probable future shenanigans, but its nice to have won this battle at the very least…
The art is so important to marking this shift to the future that some of the awful art pieces are being turned into sprays that will stay in Paladins forever, both as a reminder of Paladins revival AND its near-death experience. I’ll be using them for those reasons exactly, lest we become complacent.
There’s a TONNE of technical stuff to go over, but for now, let’s just be thankful that Paladins as we knew it gets to live another day! Have a terrifying work-in-progress version of MS Paint Pip to celebrate!
For reals though, that Pip in your image looks damn good.
I’ve been thinking of jumping back into Paladins to experience the new Battlegrounds mode. Have you played it? Any opinions on it?
Not yet, I was too salty over OB64, but with these changes I’m a lot more willing to try it since A) They fixed the base game and B) it’s being made into a standalone game. They finally realised you can’t balance a team class shooter and a Battle Royale with the same system. So once it’s out (again) I’ll give it a go for sure! It could definitely be something interesting in time…
Early footage I’ve seen of (what’s being tagged) PABG was pretty imbalanced. But that was back when the cards you’d find would give you ridiculous perks like 50/100/150/200% damage upgrades. But that’s been scaled back to something sane: Cards from the base game for the champion you play as. Strength tied to rarity of chest etc. So now more team compositions should work other than squads of four of the same sniper. I hope it sees more evolution with time though. It seems like it uses the Fortnite blueprint, minus the depth at the moment. But it has some real potential.
Differences thus far:
Random roster of 8 champs at beginning of match. Two of each class. No champ/class limits atm.
Champions with abilities, shines most in sqauds. (Potential for four unique champions in same team.)
Mounts add some speed (and Skyrim horse vertical mountain climbing) to the game.
We’ll both just have to try it and see what we think 🙂 (As useless at that response is…) Especially as the game is so malleable in its current state.
Also thanks for the compliment lol (Clearly for the bottom Pip, as it IS perfect.)