Fortnite has slowed Paragon's growth

Fans of Epic Games' Paragon have expressed some concern about the game's future recently, and so the developer/publisher has taken to Reddit to address these concerns directly, and level with the community.

At first Epic talks about the movement to a new card system and the various changes that the game has been going through, saying that their focus has always been on growing the game, however, "while each of these incarnations has been beloved by a core community, none has been large enough to achieve mainstream success. This, combined with the humbling success of Fortnite has caused us to question if we have a good path to grow Paragon and make it thrive."

They do maintain that work on Paragon is continuing though, as V.45 ships this week featuring both Hero and Card balances on top of stability improvements. The reason the work has slowed, though, is because of the team's time being split between immediate improvements and long-term goals, meaning there's "less visible progress." Another big reason is that some Paragon team members have been moved onto Fortnite as the game has grown "far larger than anything in Epic's past" (and we bet it will continue to do so, given there's a hefty update coming today).

"Here inside Epic, we're talking about the future of Paragon in pretty much the same terms as you're talking about it," the post continues. "The core challenge is that, of new players who try Paragon, only a small number continue to play regularly after a month. Though Paragon has evolved, no iteration has yet achieved that magical combination of ingredients that make for a sustainable game. (As an aside, the problem isn't marketing or how to make money with Paragon. We have good ideas that would solve those problems if we can find a way to make Paragon grow.)"

The post concludes that over the next few weeks the team will be thinking about how they can evolve the game, and recognise that development will be slower in the meantime, adding that player feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

What do you think Paragon needs to do to thrive?