I was in the alpha for this game. Anyone else that had been in could have seen this game was terrible. After sending in very lengthy reports with no response I stopped testing.
The market has spoken no matter what the head in the sand fellow wishes to say. The game was crap... the mechanics of a pvp only game might of had something to do with that but the game was horrible before that.
Anyone that couldn't see this coming was just deluding themselves. The fact we're even talking about this on a MMO website alone is silly. It wasn't remotely a MMO unless we're now considering BF2, BF2142 and now CoD4 mmos.
I tend to disagree with some of the things that are being said. Fury was not a bad game. There is definitely a market for pvp only games in the mmorpg genre. The biggest pitfalls of Fury were:
1. The introduction of players to the combat systems, and the possible methods of using such a system effectively against other players. Some players have lots of time to sit around and figure it out, others don't. Also, balancing such mechanics is tough. Auran obviously didn't do enough testing of these systems to assure that a definite balance was created.
2. The actual play in the different battlegrounds. It felt like I was playing quake 3. If I want to play quake 3 I'll go buy it, or better yet I'll get 4, or the new unreal etc. The level design was too much like popular fps games. It should have focused on a more fantasy setting with the designs that people enjoy about fantasy. So level design was a big pitfall for them.
3. The system requirements were too high. They should have built the game around lower end systems then added on higher end graphical options.
I see these as being the main pitfalls for Fury. The battlegrounds need to be completely reworked. The tutorials needs to be redone, and more information supplied to new players concerning the mechanics of combat and skills etc. And probably one of the bigger things that would help, and be an easy change is the process of how the server chooses who will enter a battle. People with almost no skills shouldn't be going up against people who have tons of skills and gear. That was really stupid.
I also think that giving everyone a ranged attack is stupid. In fact I would remove ranged attacks from the game entirely.
It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.
Auran CEO Tony Hilliam has posted an announcement stating that Auran, the developer of Fury is closing its doors. The 70 people on the fury development team have all been let go.
Originally posted by zaltar Anyone , including the so called writer of this editorial that is making the claim that Fury has failed is not aware of the current situation , Fury has not failed , the company Auron is being restructured and the resources will be put into Fury and Trainz .
I admit I am not a business major, but when a studio closes down and fires 70 people, isn't that a sign of failure or is that what they call "thinking outside the box" ?
Auron failure not Fury failure , I guess thats the point. Auron Holdings has many offerings besides Fury so the way to interpret that would be that although Fury was not able to sustain Auron including it`s other products , the overall restructuring of Auron has been done to sustain 2 of it`s offerings , Fury and Trainz.
They have essentially cut costs by eliminating a large part of the company and it`s employees which now gives them the resources to maintain Fury with a smaller dev team that will specialize in that game alone.
Rather than equating the elimination of Auron Holdings with the idea that Fury is over with it is actually the opposite , the elimination of Auron holdings gives Fury the opportunity to advance. This fact is obviously being misconstrued as the end of Fury probably because it may be considered appealing to present a doom and gloom story about the demise of a game rather than to say this is only the beginning of Fury which is actually the truth .
Auron`s restructuring is making it possible for Fury to carry on.
How many of you have actually played Fury long enough to have a legitimate opinion? All I see are "I played for an hour", "I played in ALPHA", and "I DLed the trial and uninstalled after the tutorial". Fury isn't a bad game at all, and Auran doesn't really deserve all the hate people are spouting at them. It's like watching the whole Vanguard / Sigil thing all over again. There is no reason to gloat about people losing their jobs ... Especially this close to the holidays.
Auron failure not Fury failure , I guess thats the point. Auron Holdings has many offerings besides Fury so the way to interpret that would be that although Fury was not able to sustain Auron including it`s other products , the overall restructuring of Auron has been done to sustain 2 of it`s offerings , Fury and Trainz. They have essentially cut costs by eliminating a large part of the company and it`s employees which now gives them the resources to maintain Fury with a smaller dev team that will specialize in that game alone. Rather than equating the elimination of Auron Holdings with the idea that Fury is over with it is actually the opposite , the elimination of Auron holdings gives Fury the opportunity to advance. This fact is obviously being misconstrued as the end of Fury probably because it may be considered appealing to present a doom and gloom story about the demise of a game rather than to say this is only the beginning of Fury which is actually the truth . Auron`s restructuring is making it possible for Fury to carry on.
And if Fury had been a "success", which by all accounts it is not, then there would have been no need to dissolve Auran. It's called failure. Accept it.
Another thing, regard your post a few back talking about Fury being like an e-sport. That was another reason for Furys' failure. Dan Gray coming here, trying to shove "how much the e-sports players are enjoying the game" down paying players throats when concerns were brought up (no, I'm not going to link it, you have enough brain cells to type, you can search the Fury forums and news articles here on your own). No one cares about the e-sports guys except the e-sports guys. And for a developer to claim because e-sports professional game players were able to stomp everybody, the game was obviously balanced" (again, look for it) didn't sit well with alot of people as well
Another thing, paying customers don't enjoy being called "n00bs" and "carebears" by the staff of the company they're paying. And GMs and mods are staff, whether they're paid or not, and they are a representation of the company employing them.
In short, game is a failure. If you want to continue to preach to the choir that it's not, that's your call. But then I gotta ask: isn't it dark and smelly in there by now?
Oh, and never try to claim that a game that sells gold and skills to the players for real money is a skillbased game.
Edit: And with this post, I'm done with the Fury boards. Auran tanked, Fury tanked, nothing to dispute any further.
The failure could be attributed to Auron`s expectations that Fury would be able to sustain the company which could be viewed more as a failure on the part of Auron holdings rather than the failure of Fury as a game . They IMHO should not have expected so much in such a short amount of time and given Fury a chance to evolve before putting that much confidence into one particular product. This doesent make Fury a bad game , it simply hasn`t had enough time to come to fruition , especially enough to have the future of Auron riding on it . I`m not sure if anyone could have expected so much in so little time from any game on the market and in Fury`s case one that clearly was in need of more improvements before being rushed to market according to many who tested it .
IMHO they were over confident about Fury`s appeal and made a mistake by putting all of their eggs into one basket , which ultimately cost them the farm . Whether or not Fury will progress toward success at this point with the smaller more specialized dev team they have in place remains to be seen. It is a fun game for people who enjoy pvp and hopefully they can continue to improve upon it .
I'm glad to see the editor follows the genre enough to hit the nail on the head.PVP does not make an MMO at all,and to most old school MMO'rs ,we have no care of PVP whatsoever.There has always been a genre devoted to killing other players ,it's called FIRST PERSON SHOOTER.MMORPG oldschool players ,were around when the definition of RPG was defined.It's a genre meant to be played as a role play or adventure,it has NEVER been about killing another player everytime you see one.
Once you make a game ALL about PVP,then it truly is nothing more than a FPS.A rpg game has to have breaks where players can walk about freely,it doesn't have to be perilous every single time you log onto the game.The idea of perilous every second of the game does NOT make it skilled nor does it mean it is a good game.I guess alot of the PVP ONLY type players can't relate to the fact that some gamers just log onto games for friendship or to relax and have a good time,or some even like to roleplay or even to just craft.To make it even simpler for the stubborn,believe it or not [lol]some players DO NOT want to be told how they have to play a mmorpg,they want freedom.Forcing all into PVP gives the gamer ZERO choice and of course will doom that game to failure.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I wanted a more skill based combat. This is why i didn't like it. I really didn't care what the setting was, but I'm not to fond of sci-fi settings so this was better imo.
I'm not saying there was no skill involved, but I'm looking for something more twitch based than what this offered. I didn't like the auto-target and timer based button mashing.
Pretty much they just didn't carry it far enough into the twitch based style of combat, they half ass did it and it failed because of it.
Well that's atleast my opinion.
If they would have made a better version of Rakion, this game would have kicked some butt.
4) I never figured out how to get out of the tutorial.
Failure of the concept of a PvP game? Ha. How about failure of the concept of sucking as a developer.
I'm looking at the left hand side of this screen and there is a long long long list of failed PvE games. I guess that means they are a failed business model too.
I think game design was a failure, and there is probably no recovering from that.
The game was hardly a massive multiplayer online game, anymore than Battlefield or Halo is a mmo. You had small groups of fighters in arenas, and from what I hear the time it took to get a match and load into the game was longer than the actual matches themselves.
This game was and is garbage, and that is why it failed.
niche game + high system reqs = a bad idea. that's what i think really killed the game. There are alot of people who love PVP and would like to play nothing else. But when most people aren't able to run the game (which is required to run smoothly since it's pvp) that really limits the playerbase.
i played during beta, and the game ran absolutely horrible. wasnt fun, was frantic, haphazard, unorganized everyone slashing at everyone and no real cohesion or sense of purpose in the game. shame as I do like forms up PVP but a out right total PVP only game it doesnt justify the monthly price with everything combined that spelled its doom in the end.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
The problem is that while these hardcore players are numerous, there just aren’t enough of them to support an all-PvP game.
Speaking as myself, as I am now unemployed for the next few weeks and no longer a Fury rep...
There's one thing that my time here on Fury (and before that Guild Wars) has convinced me of: there are enough players interested in PvP to a degree where they will be interested in an all-PvP game. The premise isn't flawed ... it's just that no one has cracked the formula yet.
Fury easily attracted enough players interested in an all-PvP game, despite the poor word of mouth. The problem was, as has been mentioned by Tony a few times, that not many players survived their first few hours in Fury due to the brutal beatings they encountered. As Jon mentions, the current tutorial didn't do its job and the 3 game types at launch did not protect the new player from the veterans well enough. Fury got the formula wrong, so far. I wish the guys who remain on the team all the best in tweaking their formula, as they do have a good game in there.
There's a good sized untapped market out there. The way i think of it is kinda like the MMO genre. Until WoW everyone thought MMO's were niche, and being successful meant 100-200k subs, with a standout at ~500k. WoW changed all that and has shown us that there was always a large, untapped market there for a well designed game to exploit. No one ever expected WoW to be as big as it is now, or for it to still be growing its subs base for as long as it has.
On a smaller scale, I believe the same can occur for an all-PvP game (CORPG, PvPMMO ... whatever they end up being classed as). At the moment there's a belief that the market is too small, too niche. My belief is that there is strong enough interest out there ... but tapping that market is going to require a break out game. The one that gets the formula right is going to attract strong sales. Not on the same scale as a WoW, but it'll be a bigger success than most currently believe possible.
The problem is that while these hardcore players are numerous, there just aren’t enough of them to support an all-PvP game.
Speaking as myself, as I am now unemployed for the next few weeks and no longer a Fury rep...
There's one thing that my time here on Fury (and before that Guild Wars) has convinced me of: there are enough players interested in PvP to a degree where they will be interested in an all-PvP game. The premise isn't flawed ... it's just that no one has cracked the formula yet.
Fury easily attracted enough players interested in an all-PvP game, despite the poor word of mouth. The problem was, as has been mentioned by Tony a few times, that not many players survived their first few hours in Fury due to the brutal beatings they encountered. As Jon mentions, the current tutorial didn't do its job and the 3 game types at launch did not protect the new player from the veterans well enough. Fury got the formula wrong, so far. I wish the guys who remain on the team all the best in tweaking their formula, as they do have a good game in there.
There's a good sized untapped market out there. The way i think of it is kinda like the MMO genre. Until WoW everyone thought MMO's were niche, and being successful meant 100-200k subs, with a standout at ~500k. WoW changed all that and has shown us that there was always a large, untapped market there for a well designed game to exploit. No one ever expected WoW to be as big as it is now, or for it to still be growing its subs base for as long as it has.
On a smaller scale, I believe the same can occur for an all-PvP game (CORPG, PvPMMO ... whatever they end up being classed as). At the moment there's a belief that the market is too small, too niche. My belief is that there is strong enough interest out there ... but tapping that market is going to require a break out game. The one that gets the formula right is going to attract strong sales. Not on the same scale as a WoW, but it'll be a bigger success than most currently believe possible.
There's a large market for games with PvP as their focus.
There just isn't enough market to make a MMO ALL PvP game that requires cash beyond initial box buying. "A good idea that doesn't work". FPS players like their FPS system: They buy the game, they fight online for free. Fury tried to make that: They buy the game, they fight online while paying to do so. That paradigm shift just won't fly. MMO players are willing to fork out 15 bucks a month if the game is fun and the community good. Fury failed on both counts there.Guild Wars at least has a decent game (with no cost aside from buying the expansions, which most people are willing to do, even FPS'ers). The guild wars community is lacking a large way however.
If Fury had cost 1 million bucks to develop, it might have done better, but it seems it was a giant cash sink, that didn't get nearly the bang for the buck for what came out.
Where they failed was in not researching what was financially successful from the existing competitors in the MMO space. The most obvious place to start - the one with the largest playerbase, observe the usage statistics of their servers, note which ones are constantly full - it isn't pvp. The only way to please everyone is to offer both on isolated servers - instead they focused on the lesser of the two which was financial suicide as is now self evident.
I AM surprised how soon the outcome has occurred - Auran has been a great developer - however the writing was on the wall from the first announcement such an ill-conceived game-model would fail. It may limp along for a short while longer but its future is certain - other developers take note in order to survive with the extremes of upfront capital required to produce these products you must aim at the masses not the niche.
DEFINITION OF REALITY: Graphics ok, Sound ok, Gold drops need more work...
The problem is that while these hardcore players are numerous, there just aren’t enough of them to support an all-PvP game.
There's one thing that my time here on Fury has convinced me of: there are enough players interested in PvP to a degree where they will be interested in an all-PvP game. The premise isn't flawed ... it's just that no one has cracked the formula yet.
...
There's a good sized untapped market out there. The way i think of it is kinda like the MMO genre. Until WoW everyone thought MMO's were niche, and being successful meant 100-200k subs, with a standout at ~500k. WoW changed all that and has shown us that there was always a large, untapped market there for a well designed game to exploit. No one ever expected WoW to be as big as it is now, or for it to still be growing its subs base for as long as it has.
On a smaller scale, I believe the same can occur for an all-PvP game (CORPG, PvPMMO ... whatever they end up being classed as). At the moment there's a belief that the market is too small, too niche. My belief is that there is strong enough interest out there ... but tapping that market is going to require a break out game. The one that gets the formula right is going to attract strong sales. Not on the same scale as a WoW, but it'll be a bigger success than most currently believe possible.
Bingo! In the same way WoW surprised the industry, someday an all-PvP game will surprise everyone and forever end this ridiculous argument. I agree that the scale will be smaller but still significant to once-and-for-all prove that a well-designed all-PvP game is what many many people are waiting for.
By the way, I have the secret formula...I'm just waiting to win the lottery.
It took AC2 about three years (or was it two?) to die off, parent company intact and learned well.
It took AA about a year to die off, (again) parent company intact and is revamping a solid title (Jumpgate: Evolution).
It takes two months for Fury to belly flop, and the parent company is effectively toast.
I'm not trying to rub salt in anyone's wound here (sorry Mr. Weekes), but this is honestly proof in the pudding that planning and designing a game is everything over just working on a high and mighty conception of what a game ought to be. Sure, software development isn't exactly a science, but it's not a pure art either. One thing that pretty much killed Fury for me was the stability issues. And another was the lack of a persistent environment. Both pretty much spelled out total boredom to me (I'm still playing TR right now and UO once in a while). I just hope people take it for what it is, not a verdict against PVP, rather a verdict against making MMOs into pseudo-FPSes.
Originally posted by heerobya Most important things you said - "In order for Fury to be successful, there would have to be a fairly large number of players out there who feel that MMORPG-style PvP provides enough entertainment to justify the expense of creating an entire game. Unfortunately for Auran, this does not seem to have been the case.... ""The problem is that while these hardcore players are numerous, there just aren't enough of them to support an all-PvP game." Very, very true. I feel that no matter how much a MMORPG player loves PvP, they still need to have the PvE option available, as well as other "standard" MMO systems like crafting, trade, etc. Also, I feel (from beta) that Fury was just a horribly made game. Even if it wasn't all PvP, I still think it was horrible. I know that is my personal opinion, but I played for an hour in Beta and deinstalled it. So what happened to Auran?They created a bad game on a bad premise and the market spoke. Plain and simple.
That game failed because the pvp sucked....not because it was completely pvp-centric.
Simply put, the overwhelming majority of mmogers Do Not Want PvP in a mmog.
PvP is antithetical to Fantasy Role Playing.
PvP and Fantasy Roly Playing are mutually exclusive concepts.
Mmog players want a High Fantasy World with Immersive and complex Story Arcs and GM Events, not loons running around ganking each other.
I hope Fury goes the way of Shadowbane because the sooner this ridiculous urban legend dies that "players want PvP" , the sooner we'll get gameworlds that real mmogers want to live in.
Simply put, the overwhelming majority of mmogers Do Not Want PvP in a mmog. PvP is antithetical to Fantasy Role Playing. PvP and Fantasy Roly Playing are mutually exclusive concepts. Mmog players want a High Fantasy World with Immersive and complex Story Arcs and GM Events, not loons running around ganking each other. I hope Fury goes the way of Shadowbane because the sooner this ridiculous urban legend dies that "players want PvP" , the sooner we'll get gameworlds that real mmogers want to live in.
Simply put, the overwhelming majority of mmogers Do Not Want PvP in a mmog. PvP is antithetical to Fantasy Role Playing. PvP and Fantasy Roly Playing are mutually exclusive concepts. Mmog players want a High Fantasy World with Immersive and complex Story Arcs and GM Events, not loons running around ganking each other. I hope Fury goes the way of Shadowbane because the sooner this ridiculous urban legend dies that "players want PvP" , the sooner we'll get gameworlds that real mmogers want to live in.
I think you are grossly over exaggerating. PvP and Role playing are definitely NOT mutually exclusive concepts. Look how popular WoW's arena's are. The problem with Fury was not lack of interest in PvP, it was just a series of bad decisions and improper executions on the part of the developers.
I played Fury from early beta up until a few days ago when they released the recent patch. I can honestly say that the game was more balanced and I had more fun playing it in the BETA. In the most recent patch they took what was wrong with the game and made it worst, quite consciously I might add. As a result most of the competitive players and clans have left, including myself.
There was never anything wrong with the PvP mechanics per se, it was fast-paced, intense, it was furious. It's just all the other things they didn't get right. Skill balancing was a major issue that should have been worked out in beta, equipment played to much of a role in a "skill-based" game, the game wasn't sufficiently marketed, the tutorial was horrible and new players didn't know what the hell was going on, among many others.
I think the major misconception that led to the ultimate downfall of the game however is how Fury got labeled as an mmo RPG. It is in no way shape or form an RPG, it's really more of an action game. Over the months I've played, I actually heard new players ask several times where the mobs were. Because there are skills and armor and weapons the MMO community branded it as a RPG, as is evident by it's listing here at MMORPG.com. This misconception coupled with poor execution, is why Fury failed, NOT because there is no market for PVP.
Alex, you were one of the best things about the entire Fury experience, I hope your next employers see what a dedicated community rep they're getting, never fun to be out of a paycheck and especially at Xmas, best of luck.
Back to the topic at hand, everyone saying PvP can never succeed is just the same as all the people who said MMO subs can never rise above 500k for a single game - FPS & RTS have huge numbers of people playing head to head i.e. PvP constantly.
Fury failed for 3 reasons.
1) Like Vanguard, Fury released with a client that will run fine on a wide range of computers in 2010. As improvements to client and computer power converges with luck it will run smoothly in 2008 or 2009 maybe.
2) The newbie experience was totally misjudged, the tutorials are a mess and the starter skillsets woefully inadequate. The entire idea of starting out gimped by skills/level selection only works if you only ever face computer controlled mobs designed to loose to your currently level of gimpness. If two players run over to a BFG9000 and only 1 is allowed to pick it up, the fair playing ground fails, and so does the PvP.
3) It thought it was a MMO, and it isn't, wasting vast amounts of time on far too over complicated lobbies and auction houses and aquire over time gear systems and skill over time power progression. Everyone should have been level, with total access to all skills and able to freely create whatever flavour of (simple and intuitive) armour they wanted. The rest of dev time should have been spent on maps and game types and skill balance tweaking. (performance and bugs goes without saying).
I don't think you can blame Fury's failure on its PvP nature, and I don't even care for PvP that much.
A bad game is a bad game, and it's going to fail. Period. The success of Guild Wars proves that there are enough PvP players to support a game -- heaven knows most people don't play that thing for the PvE. But as others have said, no decent PvP-centric MMO has ever been made, so whether the idea is feasible is still unknown.
And explain to me how DAoC can be considered a success? Right, it is just another in a long line of failures. It did have potential, but the developers sooned learned how to destroy any it had.
I like pvp, I play Eve most of the time now, but I still pve in the game. Fury's problem was quite evident in beta, it was a poorly designed game from the start. Pretty easy to see why the market voted the way it did. Without a dev staff there is just no way this game can become much better either. Servers will be offline within 6 months if it takes that long.
Comments
I was in the alpha for this game. Anyone else that had been in could have seen this game was terrible. After sending in very lengthy reports with no response I stopped testing.
The market has spoken no matter what the head in the sand fellow wishes to say. The game was crap... the mechanics of a pvp only game might of had something to do with that but the game was horrible before that.
Anyone that couldn't see this coming was just deluding themselves. The fact we're even talking about this on a MMO website alone is silly. It wasn't remotely a MMO unless we're now considering BF2, BF2142 and now CoD4 mmos.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
I tend to disagree with some of the things that are being said. Fury was not a bad game. There is definitely a market for pvp only games in the mmorpg genre. The biggest pitfalls of Fury were:
1. The introduction of players to the combat systems, and the possible methods of using such a system effectively against other players. Some players have lots of time to sit around and figure it out, others don't. Also, balancing such mechanics is tough. Auran obviously didn't do enough testing of these systems to assure that a definite balance was created.
2. The actual play in the different battlegrounds. It felt like I was playing quake 3. If I want to play quake 3 I'll go buy it, or better yet I'll get 4, or the new unreal etc. The level design was too much like popular fps games. It should have focused on a more fantasy setting with the designs that people enjoy about fantasy. So level design was a big pitfall for them.
3. The system requirements were too high. They should have built the game around lower end systems then added on higher end graphical options.
I see these as being the main pitfalls for Fury. The battlegrounds need to be completely reworked. The tutorials needs to be redone, and more information supplied to new players concerning the mechanics of combat and skills etc. And probably one of the bigger things that would help, and be an easy change is the process of how the server chooses who will enter a battle. People with almost no skills shouldn't be going up against people who have tons of skills and gear. That was really stupid.
I also think that giving everyone a ranged attack is stupid. In fact I would remove ranged attacks from the game entirely.
It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Antioche
Auran CEO Tony Hilliam has posted an announcement stating that Auran, the developer of Fury is closing its doors. The 70 people on the fury development team have all been let go.
I admit I am not a business major, but when a studio closes down and fires 70 people, isn't that a sign of failure or is that what they call "thinking outside the box" ?
Auron failure not Fury failure , I guess thats the point. Auron Holdings has many offerings besides Fury so the way to interpret that would be that although Fury was not able to sustain Auron including it`s other products , the overall restructuring of Auron has been done to sustain 2 of it`s offerings , Fury and Trainz.
They have essentially cut costs by eliminating a large part of the company and it`s employees which now gives them the resources to maintain Fury with a smaller dev team that will specialize in that game alone.
Rather than equating the elimination of Auron Holdings with the idea that Fury is over with it is actually the opposite , the elimination of Auron holdings gives Fury the opportunity to advance. This fact is obviously being misconstrued as the end of Fury probably because it may be considered appealing to present a doom and gloom story about the demise of a game rather than to say this is only the beginning of Fury which is actually the truth .
Auron`s restructuring is making it possible for Fury to carry on.
How many of you have actually played Fury long enough to have a legitimate opinion? All I see are "I played for an hour", "I played in ALPHA", and "I DLed the trial and uninstalled after the tutorial". Fury isn't a bad game at all, and Auran doesn't really deserve all the hate people are spouting at them. It's like watching the whole Vanguard / Sigil thing all over again. There is no reason to gloat about people losing their jobs ... Especially this close to the holidays.
And if Fury had been a "success", which by all accounts it is not, then there would have been no need to dissolve Auran. It's called failure. Accept it.
Another thing, regard your post a few back talking about Fury being like an e-sport. That was another reason for Furys' failure. Dan Gray coming here, trying to shove "how much the e-sports players are enjoying the game" down paying players throats when concerns were brought up (no, I'm not going to link it, you have enough brain cells to type, you can search the Fury forums and news articles here on your own). No one cares about the e-sports guys except the e-sports guys. And for a developer to claim because e-sports professional game players were able to stomp everybody, the game was obviously balanced" (again, look for it) didn't sit well with alot of people as well
Another thing, paying customers don't enjoy being called "n00bs" and "carebears" by the staff of the company they're paying. And GMs and mods are staff, whether they're paid or not, and they are a representation of the company employing them.
In short, game is a failure. If you want to continue to preach to the choir that it's not, that's your call. But then I gotta ask: isn't it dark and smelly in there by now?
Oh, and never try to claim that a game that sells gold and skills to the players for real money is a skillbased game.
Edit: And with this post, I'm done with the Fury boards. Auran tanked, Fury tanked, nothing to dispute any further.
Merry Christmas.
The failure could be attributed to Auron`s expectations that Fury would be able to sustain the company which could be viewed more as a failure on the part of Auron holdings rather than the failure of Fury as a game . They IMHO should not have expected so much in such a short amount of time and given Fury a chance to evolve before putting that much confidence into one particular product. This doesent make Fury a bad game , it simply hasn`t had enough time to come to fruition , especially enough to have the future of Auron riding on it . I`m not sure if anyone could have expected so much in so little time from any game on the market and in Fury`s case one that clearly was in need of more improvements before being rushed to market according to many who tested it .
IMHO they were over confident about Fury`s appeal and made a mistake by putting all of their eggs into one basket , which ultimately cost them the farm . Whether or not Fury will progress toward success at this point with the smaller more specialized dev team they have in place remains to be seen. It is a fun game for people who enjoy pvp and hopefully they can continue to improve upon it .
I'm glad to see the editor follows the genre enough to hit the nail on the head.PVP does not make an MMO at all,and to most old school MMO'rs ,we have no care of PVP whatsoever.There has always been a genre devoted to killing other players ,it's called FIRST PERSON SHOOTER.MMORPG oldschool players ,were around when the definition of RPG was defined.It's a genre meant to be played as a role play or adventure,it has NEVER been about killing another player everytime you see one.
Once you make a game ALL about PVP,then it truly is nothing more than a FPS.A rpg game has to have breaks where players can walk about freely,it doesn't have to be perilous every single time you log onto the game.The idea of perilous every second of the game does NOT make it skilled nor does it mean it is a good game.I guess alot of the PVP ONLY type players can't relate to the fact that some gamers just log onto games for friendship or to relax and have a good time,or some even like to roleplay or even to just craft.To make it even simpler for the stubborn,believe it or not [lol]some players DO NOT want to be told how they have to play a mmorpg,they want freedom.Forcing all into PVP gives the gamer ZERO choice and of course will doom that game to failure.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I wanted a more skill based combat. This is why i didn't like it. I really didn't care what the setting was, but I'm not to fond of sci-fi settings so this was better imo.
I'm not saying there was no skill involved, but I'm looking for something more twitch based than what this offered. I didn't like the auto-target and timer based button mashing.
Pretty much they just didn't carry it far enough into the twitch based style of combat, they half ass did it and it failed because of it.
Well that's atleast my opinion.
If they would have made a better version of Rakion, this game would have kicked some butt.
I wanted to play fury.
1) It didn't work the first time I downloaded it.
2) I couldn't figure out the controls.
3) The graphics were horrible.
4) I never figured out how to get out of the tutorial.
Failure of the concept of a PvP game? Ha. How about failure of the concept of sucking as a developer.
I'm looking at the left hand side of this screen and there is a long long long list of failed PvE games. I guess that means they are a failed business model too.
I think game design was a failure, and there is probably no recovering from that.
The game was hardly a massive multiplayer online game, anymore than Battlefield or Halo is a mmo. You had small groups of fighters in arenas, and from what I hear the time it took to get a match and load into the game was longer than the actual matches themselves.
This game was and is garbage, and that is why it failed.
i played during beta, and the game ran absolutely horrible. wasnt fun, was frantic, haphazard, unorganized everyone slashing at everyone and no real cohesion or sense of purpose in the game. shame as I do like forms up PVP but a out right total PVP only game it doesnt justify the monthly price with everything combined that spelled its doom in the end.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Speaking as myself, as I am now unemployed for the next few weeks and no longer a Fury rep...
There's one thing that my time here on Fury (and before that Guild Wars) has convinced me of: there are enough players interested in PvP to a degree where they will be interested in an all-PvP game. The premise isn't flawed ... it's just that no one has cracked the formula yet.
Fury easily attracted enough players interested in an all-PvP game, despite the poor word of mouth. The problem was, as has been mentioned by Tony a few times, that not many players survived their first few hours in Fury due to the brutal beatings they encountered. As Jon mentions, the current tutorial didn't do its job and the 3 game types at launch did not protect the new player from the veterans well enough. Fury got the formula wrong, so far. I wish the guys who remain on the team all the best in tweaking their formula, as they do have a good game in there.
There's a good sized untapped market out there. The way i think of it is kinda like the MMO genre. Until WoW everyone thought MMO's were niche, and being successful meant 100-200k subs, with a standout at ~500k. WoW changed all that and has shown us that there was always a large, untapped market there for a well designed game to exploit. No one ever expected WoW to be as big as it is now, or for it to still be growing its subs base for as long as it has.
On a smaller scale, I believe the same can occur for an all-PvP game (CORPG, PvPMMO ... whatever they end up being classed as). At the moment there's a belief that the market is too small, too niche. My belief is that there is strong enough interest out there ... but tapping that market is going to require a break out game. The one that gets the formula right is going to attract strong sales. Not on the same scale as a WoW, but it'll be a bigger success than most currently believe possible.
_________________________
Speaking as myself, as I am now unemployed for the next few weeks and no longer a Fury rep...
There's one thing that my time here on Fury (and before that Guild Wars) has convinced me of: there are enough players interested in PvP to a degree where they will be interested in an all-PvP game. The premise isn't flawed ... it's just that no one has cracked the formula yet.
Fury easily attracted enough players interested in an all-PvP game, despite the poor word of mouth. The problem was, as has been mentioned by Tony a few times, that not many players survived their first few hours in Fury due to the brutal beatings they encountered. As Jon mentions, the current tutorial didn't do its job and the 3 game types at launch did not protect the new player from the veterans well enough. Fury got the formula wrong, so far. I wish the guys who remain on the team all the best in tweaking their formula, as they do have a good game in there.
There's a good sized untapped market out there. The way i think of it is kinda like the MMO genre. Until WoW everyone thought MMO's were niche, and being successful meant 100-200k subs, with a standout at ~500k. WoW changed all that and has shown us that there was always a large, untapped market there for a well designed game to exploit. No one ever expected WoW to be as big as it is now, or for it to still be growing its subs base for as long as it has.
On a smaller scale, I believe the same can occur for an all-PvP game (CORPG, PvPMMO ... whatever they end up being classed as). At the moment there's a belief that the market is too small, too niche. My belief is that there is strong enough interest out there ... but tapping that market is going to require a break out game. The one that gets the formula right is going to attract strong sales. Not on the same scale as a WoW, but it'll be a bigger success than most currently believe possible.
There's a large market for games with PvP as their focus.
There just isn't enough market to make a MMO ALL PvP game that requires cash beyond initial box buying. "A good idea that doesn't work". FPS players like their FPS system: They buy the game, they fight online for free. Fury tried to make that: They buy the game, they fight online while paying to do so. That paradigm shift just won't fly. MMO players are willing to fork out 15 bucks a month if the game is fun and the community good. Fury failed on both counts there.Guild Wars at least has a decent game (with no cost aside from buying the expansions, which most people are willing to do, even FPS'ers). The guild wars community is lacking a large way however.
If Fury had cost 1 million bucks to develop, it might have done better, but it seems it was a giant cash sink, that didn't get nearly the bang for the buck for what came out.
Where they failed was in not researching what was financially successful from the existing competitors in the MMO space. The most obvious place to start - the one with the largest playerbase, observe the usage statistics of their servers, note which ones are constantly full - it isn't pvp. The only way to please everyone is to offer both on isolated servers - instead they focused on the lesser of the two which was financial suicide as is now self evident.
I AM surprised how soon the outcome has occurred - Auran has been a great developer - however the writing was on the wall from the first announcement such an ill-conceived game-model would fail. It may limp along for a short while longer but its future is certain - other developers take note in order to survive with the extremes of upfront capital required to produce these products you must aim at the masses not the niche.
DEFINITION OF REALITY: Graphics ok, Sound ok, Gold drops need more work...
There's one thing that my time here on Fury has convinced me of: there are enough players interested in PvP to a degree where they will be interested in an all-PvP game. The premise isn't flawed ... it's just that no one has cracked the formula yet.
...
There's a good sized untapped market out there. The way i think of it is kinda like the MMO genre. Until WoW everyone thought MMO's were niche, and being successful meant 100-200k subs, with a standout at ~500k. WoW changed all that and has shown us that there was always a large, untapped market there for a well designed game to exploit. No one ever expected WoW to be as big as it is now, or for it to still be growing its subs base for as long as it has.
On a smaller scale, I believe the same can occur for an all-PvP game (CORPG, PvPMMO ... whatever they end up being classed as). At the moment there's a belief that the market is too small, too niche. My belief is that there is strong enough interest out there ... but tapping that market is going to require a break out game. The one that gets the formula right is going to attract strong sales. Not on the same scale as a WoW, but it'll be a bigger success than most currently believe possible.
Bingo! In the same way WoW surprised the industry, someday an all-PvP game will surprise everyone and forever end this ridiculous argument. I agree that the scale will be smaller but still significant to once-and-for-all prove that a well-designed all-PvP game is what many many people are waiting for.
By the way, I have the secret formula...I'm just waiting to win the lottery.
So, lemme see.
It took AC2 about three years (or was it two?) to die off, parent company intact and learned well.
It took AA about a year to die off, (again) parent company intact and is revamping a solid title (Jumpgate: Evolution).
It takes two months for Fury to belly flop, and the parent company is effectively toast.
I'm not trying to rub salt in anyone's wound here (sorry Mr. Weekes), but this is honestly proof in the pudding that planning and designing a game is everything over just working on a high and mighty conception of what a game ought to be. Sure, software development isn't exactly a science, but it's not a pure art either. One thing that pretty much killed Fury for me was the stability issues. And another was the lack of a persistent environment. Both pretty much spelled out total boredom to me (I'm still playing TR right now and UO once in a while). I just hope people take it for what it is, not a verdict against PVP, rather a verdict against making MMOs into pseudo-FPSes.
-- Brede
That game failed because the pvp sucked....not because it was completely pvp-centric.
I think the failure of Fury really shows the fact that despite what people say here and on other forums, 100% 24/7 PvP is not what the masses want.
Many pvp-centric games like DAoC are made with pvp in mind, but not as the main focus. This is why they are still running and Fury is sinking.
Planetside would be the closest to a "successful" all-pvp game, but as previously stated it's a MMOFPS and not RPG.
Simply put, the overwhelming majority of mmogers Do Not Want PvP in a mmog.
PvP is antithetical to Fantasy Role Playing.
PvP and Fantasy Roly Playing are mutually exclusive concepts.
Mmog players want a High Fantasy World with Immersive and complex Story Arcs and GM Events, not loons running around ganking each other.
I hope Fury goes the way of Shadowbane because the sooner this ridiculous urban legend dies that "players want PvP" , the sooner we'll get gameworlds that real mmogers want to live in.
I think you are grossly over exaggerating. PvP and Role playing are definitely NOT mutually exclusive concepts. Look how popular WoW's arena's are. The problem with Fury was not lack of interest in PvP, it was just a series of bad decisions and improper executions on the part of the developers.
I played Fury from early beta up until a few days ago when they released the recent patch. I can honestly say that the game was more balanced and I had more fun playing it in the BETA. In the most recent patch they took what was wrong with the game and made it worst, quite consciously I might add. As a result most of the competitive players and clans have left, including myself.
There was never anything wrong with the PvP mechanics per se, it was fast-paced, intense, it was furious. It's just all the other things they didn't get right. Skill balancing was a major issue that should have been worked out in beta, equipment played to much of a role in a "skill-based" game, the game wasn't sufficiently marketed, the tutorial was horrible and new players didn't know what the hell was going on, among many others.
I think the major misconception that led to the ultimate downfall of the game however is how Fury got labeled as an mmo RPG. It is in no way shape or form an RPG, it's really more of an action game. Over the months I've played, I actually heard new players ask several times where the mobs were. Because there are skills and armor and weapons the MMO community branded it as a RPG, as is evident by it's listing here at MMORPG.com. This misconception coupled with poor execution, is why Fury failed, NOT because there is no market for PVP.
-Fury handle: Dredika
Alex, you were one of the best things about the entire Fury experience, I hope your next employers see what a dedicated community rep they're getting, never fun to be out of a paycheck and especially at Xmas, best of luck.
Back to the topic at hand, everyone saying PvP can never succeed is just the same as all the people who said MMO subs can never rise above 500k for a single game - FPS & RTS have huge numbers of people playing head to head i.e. PvP constantly.
Fury failed for 3 reasons.
1) Like Vanguard, Fury released with a client that will run fine on a wide range of computers in 2010. As improvements to client and computer power converges with luck it will run smoothly in 2008 or 2009 maybe.
2) The newbie experience was totally misjudged, the tutorials are a mess and the starter skillsets woefully inadequate. The entire idea of starting out gimped by skills/level selection only works if you only ever face computer controlled mobs designed to loose to your currently level of gimpness. If two players run over to a BFG9000 and only 1 is allowed to pick it up, the fair playing ground fails, and so does the PvP.
3) It thought it was a MMO, and it isn't, wasting vast amounts of time on far too over complicated lobbies and auction houses and aquire over time gear systems and skill over time power progression. Everyone should have been level, with total access to all skills and able to freely create whatever flavour of (simple and intuitive) armour they wanted. The rest of dev time should have been spent on maps and game types and skill balance tweaking. (performance and bugs goes without saying).
I don't think you can blame Fury's failure on its PvP nature, and I don't even care for PvP that much.
A bad game is a bad game, and it's going to fail. Period. The success of Guild Wars proves that there are enough PvP players to support a game -- heaven knows most people don't play that thing for the PvE. But as others have said, no decent PvP-centric MMO has ever been made, so whether the idea is feasible is still unknown.
And explain to me how DAoC can be considered a success? Right, it is just another in a long line of failures. It did have potential, but the developers sooned learned how to destroy any it had.
I like pvp, I play Eve most of the time now, but I still pve in the game. Fury's problem was quite evident in beta, it was a poorly designed game from the start. Pretty easy to see why the market voted the way it did. Without a dev staff there is just no way this game can become much better either. Servers will be offline within 6 months if it takes that long.