SOE creates games that are easy and offers complexity?

mindspat

http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=11279

We always try to create games that are easy to pick up and play, but offer complexity to those that desire it.

following Q&A was conducted exclusively for HEXUS.gaming with John Hayase, Director of Development at Sony Online Entertainment's San Diego studio.

*note: The interview was mainly focused upon Everquest1/2 - here's a few excerpts:

 John: EverQuest II is certainly a game that newbies can easily get into. The gameplay mechanics and controls are relatively easy to understand and there is a tutorial that walks new players through the key aspects of the game. 

John: All games experience a certain amount of turnover in their player communities, so we’ve learned to live with that. Since we are operating a paid service, we have a live support team that actively updates the game between expansions to provide fresh content to our player community, keeping them interested on an ongoing basis. 

HEXUS: With WOW being one of the most iconic MMO titles how hard is it to compete with so many people comparing to this title?

John: WOW is a great success story, so comparisons are unavoidable. We measure our success by how well we compete against all of the games in the MMO space and are proud of the continued success that EverQuest and EverQuest II are seeing in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

HEXUS: Will we see Sony Online Entertainment offering any of their titles to the free2play model which many MMO publishers are doing, especially the likes of Codemasters?

John: SOE has announced that Free Realms, a new MMO world targeted at a younger audience, will be free to play. We are committed to developing new entertainment experiences with rich, compelling gameplay that can be consumed without an up-front purchase or recurring service fee.

FreeRealms pic: http://img.hexus.net/v2/gaming/screenshots_pc/soe/freerealms_small.jpg

HEXUS: Many new gamers, or those not au fait, find the MMO scene not the most friendly to understand and seamless to get into, this is off putting by initial terminology and requests they do not understand. What kind of effort does Sony Online Entertainment undertake to pull in new gamers and ensure they don’t find the initial experience too daunting?

John: We always try to create games that are easy to pick up and play, but offer complexity to those that desire it. As the gaming community expands, we do see the need to present our games in a way that is easy to comprehend by those that haven’t played MMOs in the past. That said, EverQuest and EverQuest II are by no means casual games and do require some commitment, so it’s unlikely that the game will become overly simplistic.

**

I'm sharing this in an effort to expand upon the understanding of SOE's lack of understanding.  What do they mean by complexity? We all knew SWG was dumbned down with the "nge" becuase "r 2 mch rding". 

Either way, the interview as a plug for SOE developed products with a brief mentioing of Pirates of the Burning Sea, which has a severly flawed character combat system.

What do you think, does SOE offer complexity in their games?  Personaly, I think they remove it at first chance. 

SioBabble

Well, at least in the case of SWG, yeah, they've been dumbing it down from almost the beginning.  One of their problems is that they can't retain developers who can deal with complexity in design, and their management doesn't seem to be composed of people who "learned the ropes", but rather, as is all too common in US corporations, come from sales and marketing.  Smedley himself doesn't seem to understand the product he's selling...he's so focused on all his microtransaction ripoff schemes that the basics of entertaining the customer seems to be lost to him.

SWG if it had launched with Tansarri Point Station built in might have been a greater sucess, because I recall when I got started in beta3, it really was a "here's a blaster and a melon, kid, you're on your own" type of experience.  That wasn't intimidating to me, but I can see why a lot of players would toss their hands up in frustration with that sort of  abrupt introduction to the game.  SWG was a complex game, even at low levels, and having a tutorial to get you through it would have been very helpful.  Once you grasped the system, it became second nature to you, in my experience, and the depth of it was attractive, not a turn off.

This is quite a contrast to WoW where it's pretty easy to learn, and once you've got the basics down what follows isn't that great a challenge...which leads to burn out for a lot of players.  WoW is also very forgiving of mistakes, which of course drives the hardcore absolutely nuts around here...they all want death to be nearly as final as it is IRL or they are robbed of "challenge".

Suvroc

John: All games experience a certain amount of turnover in their player communities, so we’ve learned to live with that.

This comment really disturbed me.

Seems to me that if they just made quality products then customer retention will resove itself. Rather then understanding why there is a turnover (i.e. lack of immersion, lack of community, lack of originality, etc.) they've learned to live with it instead of addressing why people are leaving.

When a game is simply the same as virtually every other game out there, and easy to jump in and learn, then people will simply jump out just as easily when it becomes boring and repetative.

One of the worst problems with the MMO industry is apathy, and this comment really hammers that point home.

Unknown

When your managers are simpletons a game of tic-tac-toe is complex.

 

SioBabble

 

 

Originally posted by Suvroc


One of the worst problems with the MMO industry is apathy, and this comment really hammers that point home.

I think SOE is more vulnerable to becoming apathetic because they're offering so many games, and maintaining enthusiasm for so many similar products is not easy to do.

Add to this the general tendency of commercial software of all types to be rushed out the door unstable and flawed, and it still sells, and you can see why quality tends to be job last.

Yeah, the apparent resignation to player turnover stands out at SOE, especially when they had a game (SWG) with a seriously fanantical base (people who maintained multiple accounts) that they managed with a couple of bold strokes to drive away from them.

One of the things about WoW is that compared to SWG at its height is that its subscriptions don't have the multiple account effect that SWG had, because on one WoW account (with BC added on) you can have up to ten avatars on any one server.  SWG?  Two, in the NGE.  The two games now have the same number of playable classes.  So there is no need to have multiple accounts with WoW like you did with SWG to "round out" your guild with combat or crafting or entertaining types like you did with preNGE SWG.  My third SWG account was created directly because my fairly small guild no longer had a Chef (the previous Chef was one because it was a holoprof, and besides he had left the game because RL was eating up more of his time) and it was seen as a "hole" in the guild's crafting support structure.  So I bought a new copy of hte game, set up a new account, and proceeded to grind up a MBE/Master Chef toon.

Obviously in WoW you don't need crafter support like this, but furthermore, if you did, Blizz gives you a minimum of eight toons per server to play with.  Besides this, you can have more toons on other servers (SWG eight toons per account spread across servers), so you can experience every one of the classes on both sides of the factional divide if you wish too.

This makes WoW a pretty serious bargain compared to SWG for variety of playstyles.

Unknown

SOE also thinks that the subscription model is dying out and that the future is "macrotranscam" based games, this during a time where there are more MMO subscribers than ever before, dwarfing what there were years ago. 

SOE's problem is that it sees ITSELF and ITS situation as representing the MMO industry, as if they were still the leading company in the industry.  They aren't.  They still live in an unreality bubble of their own creation and have no idea whatsoever what the real reasons why they have excessive turnover, a subscription decline, etc.

Could it have to do with hmmm....  The way SOE uses, abuses, and bilks it's customers?

NO WAY!

SOE has no chance whatsoever of pulling out of it's current condition until they have management that is capable of realizing that SOE is experiencing player loss, etc because of themselves, not because that is the way the industry is heading.  They will never be able to do this as long as John Smedley is their president, because they will continue to hide behind their self-imposed hallucination that their detractors are nothing more than a "vocal minority", a paid "cabal", or "forum terrorists", and certainly don't represent the majority of their former customers (who now greatly outnumber their current customers, not just in SWG but in ALL SOE GAMES, including EQ/EQ2!)

 

 

 

 

 

SioBabble

 

Originally posted by salvaje


SOE also thinks that the subscription model is dying out and that the future is "macrotranscam" based games, this during a time where there are more MMO subscribers than ever before, dwarfing what there were years ago. 
SOE's problem is that it sees ITSELF and ITS situation as representing the MMO industry, as if they were still the leading company in the industry.  They aren't.  They still live in an unreality bubble of their own creation and have no idea whatsoever what the real reasons why they have excessive turnover, a subscription decline, etc.
Could it have to do with hmmm....  The way SOE uses, abuses, and bilks it's customers?
NO WAY!
SOE has no chance whatsoever of pulling out of it's current condition until they have management that is capable of realizing that SOE is experiencing player loss, etc because of themselves, not because that is the way the industry is heading.  They will never be able to do this as long as John Smedley is their president, because they will continue to hide behind their self-imposed hallucination that their detractors are nothing more than a "vocal minority", a paid "cabal", or "forum terrorists", and certainly don't represent the majority of their former customers (who now greatly outnumber their current customers, not just in SWG but in ALL SOE GAMES, including EQ/EQ2!)

 

All too true.

The SOE guys just don't grasp that abusing customers is a surefire way to lose them.  Even having exclusive rights to an IP will only protect you to a certain degree...which is the only reason why SWG is still in business. 

I never pick up the contempt for the customer on WoW's forum that I used to detect on SWGs.

Unknown

You don't see customer abuse or "FU" posts on CCP's forums either.  CCP treats their customers like gold, which is how they've managed to keep a MMO that is every bit as old as SWG still growing.  EVE's subscriber growth is continuing and shows no signs of peaking yet.

EVE is a very complex and hardcore MMO as well.  Nancy's head would explode from the amount of reading involved.  And you can be an "Uncle Owen" if you want to be, and do nothing but mine or craft.

No entertainers yet though, but I bet they show up when we get station interiors, avatars, and player owned bars

 

SioBabble

SOE also thinks that the subscription model is dying out and that the future is "macrotranscam" based games, this during a time where there are more MMO subscribers than ever before, dwarfing what there were years ago.

Ha.  They sound so much like telcos yearning for the days of the metered phone call, when all the trends are for flat rate service fees.  It's simpler to bill, it's appealing to the consumer who won't get a bill with surprises.

Microtransactions is one of Smedley's pocket picking plans.  Microtransactions sound good on paper, to greedheads, but those micros add up to real money eventually.

Unknown

 

Originally posted by SioBabble


SOE also thinks that the subscription model is dying out and that the future is "macrotranscam" based games, this during a time where there are more MMO subscribers than ever before, dwarfing what there were years ago.
Ha.  They sound so much like telcos yearning for the days of the metered phone call, when all the trends are for flat rate service fees.  It's simpler to bill, it's appealing to the consumer who won't get a bill with surprises.
Microtransactions is one of Smedley's pocket picking plans.  Microtransactions sound good on paper, to greedheads, but those micros add up to real money eventually.

 

Any scheme that John Smedley comes up with is going to be in his interest and not mine.  He's already proven his callous disregard for customers a thousand times over.

I think that players deserve an accounting for where our subscription money goes as it is, because the SOE model is to finance expansions out of the monthly fee and then charge you for it again later.

cabal001

John: All games experience a certain amount of turnover in their player communities, so we’ve learned to live with that.

 

they have learned to live with fail.....