Paragon: A Look Into 2017

The exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of Paragon, John Wasil­czyk, announced a lot of excit­ing news today for the MOBA, via the PlaySta­tion Blog.

He stat­ed that dur­ing 2016, they got it “right some of the time, and oth­er times did­n’t do enough.” So he pro­claimed that the year of 2017 would be the year of they were “dou­bling-down.” Wasil­czyk also said the team would be pro­vid­ing reg­u­lar updates in both short and long term on what’s to come for Paragon. So if plans change, at least you will be aware it has happened. 

New Stuff on It’s Way

These are some fea­tures they have planned for release over the next few weeks and months:

• Match­mak­ing sys­tem V2. All new from the ground up
• Lots of bal­ance changes. We know many things need to be improved and we lis­ten intent­ly. Expect con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and a hand­ful of mis­takes along the way
• Ban­ners: add your sig­na­ture to every kill with this new sys­tem (screen­shots and videos com­ing soon). It’s exper­i­men­tal but we think it’ll be cool
• New Skins and Skin Vari­a­tions: We’re giv­ing you even more skins and a new sys­tem that will allow play­ers to unlock more vari­a­tions for almost every skin
• “Hero Mas­tery” improve­ments. More con­tent, more pro­gres­sion, and more rewards for get­ting Heroes to max level
• Loot Crates: More loot (with more vari­ety) will be rolling into crates over the next few months. Expect to find some rare ban­ners and skin vari­a­tions com­ing soon in crates.
• Hero Reworks: Revis­it­ing old Heroes with new kits and balance

Com­pet­i­tive Play

It seems they want com­pet­i­tive play to be more than just tossed into the game. They are using the first half of 2017 to roll out com­pet­i­tive play in stages, by giv­ing it to the play­ers and improv­ing on it as it moves for­ward. After that, Ranked Mode is deliv­ered, which is bal­anced more for hard­core com­pet­i­tive gameplay. 

A bold state­ment was also made regard­ing prized events:

“As for events and com­pe­ti­tions, we’ll be start­ing with lad­dered com­pet­i­tive events that tran­si­tion into Paragon Invi­ta­tion­als. We’re also work­ing on prized events that will pro­vide real mon­ey rewards for play­ers across many dif­fer­ent regions and skill lev­els. Yes, the invest­ment is real. We want every­one to be able to com­pete, not just the Pros. Expect more details on this over the next few months.”

It seems the com­mu­ni­ty is doing quite well con­sid­er­ing the game real­ly has no mar­ket­ing. It cur­rent­ly has 5.7 mil­lion reg­is­tered play­ers. PlaySta­tion play­ers seem to be upset there are no tro­phies in the game, and word is there will be tro­phies lat­er this year when the game is ful­ly finished.