How the necessities of live service crushed the Squad

Rocksteadys Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was recently available for free on Amazon, so I decided to give it a try. Overall, it was a fun comic book romp, and I think it could have easily become a beloved franchise if not for the cascading effects of the live service pitfalls. These are my speculations on how the live service shaped game design, and why some people believe it is responsible for the end of the Suicide Squad (SS).

One of the main criticisms I heard was why all these iconic characters like King Shark and Captain BOOMERANG were equipped with weapons instead of unique fighting styles. The financial incentive to keep players coming back to a live service model requires infinite scalability. A weapon-based loot system is easy to create, can be given to any character, and can be equipped with any number of stats and mods. It expands build variety, but the result is a standardization of the individual traits that make each SS character interesting. It’s especially unfortunate considering how different all of their movement styles feel.

This homogenization consequently affects the design of the enemies, as they all have to be killable with weapons. Despite the enemies’ various gimmicks, your strategy ultimately doesn’t change much no matter who you’re playing. This lack of necessity in dealing with your enemies is a sobering contrast to Rocksteady’s previous Arkham games and even Guardians of the Galaxy, which required you to coordinate with your squad to defeat certain enemies.

The talent trees soften this uniformity somewhat to encourage certain playstyles. Since the game is online cooperative, Rocksteady probably wanted player to create unique versions of each character. One player’s Harley might be a “run-and-gunner” while another’s might be a “slugger,” a decision that thematically fits the narrative of multiple (elseworld) dimensions.

The financial incentive to bring players back to a live service model requires infinite scalability.

However, talents must still exist within the gunplay and live service model, which brings seasonal content in the form of new weapons and mods. Future-proofing talents is no easy task and requires a very rigid structure (see homogenization). The result is a lot of passive talents that are further obscured by their reliance on a combo meter to activate. This makes it difficult to capitalize on or feel empowered by talent choices.

While I think the decision to include co-op was a bold and worthwhile endeavor, the unified gameplay and unimpressive talents of all characters don’t satisfy the desire to make a character your own. This is exacerbated by the demands of a single character/co-op shooter that players need to feel self-sufficient. There can’t be any “puzzles” that only one character can solve. All of this combined fundamentally diminishes the appeal of an SS game about a found family making up for each other’s weaknesses. There’s a very clear disconnect between the thematic goals that should have driven the game and the retention model of the live service genre.

While I think the decision to include a co-op mode was a bold and worthwhile endeavor, the unified gameplay and unimpressive talents of all characters don’t do justice to the dream of making a character your own.

Ironically, SS’s best feature – locomotion – is also its least synergy-enhancing. It makes shooting hectic, as enemies occupy huge vertical areas of the environment. It makes your proximity to your team unpredictable, which is probably why there’s no team action in the game. And I suppose it made the camera sensitive indoors, forcing all gameplay to take place outdoors. Who knows if locomotion dictated mission design or vice versa, but the live service model required a structure that could be used repeatedly anywhere. So they went with outdoor gameplay, where all targets could spawn on rooftops no matter what district or dimension you were in. The resulting lack of mission variety is keenly felt in a metropolis that doesn’t feel inhabited and is just a forgettable transitional space to move between repetitive tasks.

While mission modifiers are fun, you expect bespoke experiences from a premium game, especially when it comes to the Justice League! Rocksteady’s Arkham series did a great job of mixing up the different ways to play, from flying over Gotham to entering a street-level saloon to confront Professor Pyg. This artistry in creating memorable gameplay moments stems from its inherently unique nature – and nothing in a live service game can be made unique. (Except the cutscenes, which definitely stand out here.)

A co-op mix of Sunset Overdrive and Doom Eternal sounds like a successful concept, but the added factor of a squad filled with iconic characters goes completely unused. The unfortunate decision to pursue a live service forced Rocksteady to create a rote structure that they are now trapped in, even though SS’s universe demanded bombastic set pieces.

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