Still gnawing away at this old bone, are you Damian7...
It seems no matter what reason we give you, you just can't seem to accept ppl are willing to pay for subpar games because at that particular time, they have little else to try, and so want to experiment with the hopes the game will improve.
Keep bringing up your tv/cable/phone analogies...they'll still tell you the same over and over...and you'll be asking the same question over and over. Maybe you should do more 'listening' and less vituperation and try to understand what we're saying...
I don't mind discussing, but if every time we state an opinion, you just repeat "So you'd be willing to pay for a subpar service/good" jargon, we just see you trying to sound right, and not trying to debate the issue.
You might consider a game sub-par for a whole range or reasons, but if someone enjoys it and is happy to pay for it, then to their tastes it's not 'sub-par' and they almost certainly wouldn't describe it as such. So essentially, it's down to an individuals perceptions of what is acceptable to them with regards to spending their money on entertainment.
Different tastes, subjective values. There really is no other answer to the question you are asking *shrug*.
---------------------------- Hundreds of years from now, it will not matter what size my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove... But the world may be different because I did something so bafflingly crazy that my ruins become a tourist attraction.
The good news, damian7, is that while there are a few people who don't mind wasting their money out of some weird idealistic loyalty, the majority of gamers won't put up with it. Games that suck tend to fail. Period. And this is becoming more true as the industry matures.
The trick is in being able to weed out the opinions of idealistic fanbois when you are making your own purchasing decision, but it's not all that hard as their arguments are invariably taken directly from the companies' own PR machines.
i'm also curious, people of those opinions, do you accept that from cable, cell phone, or any other monthly service you have? would it be ok with you if your satellite/cable crashed and had to be rebooted a couple of times a day? or if you had laggy (perhaps static-filled) television programs and/or phone calls? ....
Just thinking of someone working all day, getting home at about six a clock and then his internetconnection is broken and he can't play his lovely game.
And then he is calling the internet provider and they say: "Oh, sorry, but we have some problems, as there are so many people using internet between 6 and 12pm, it may be possible that you will have no internetconnection for some time. But we promise that, if you pay us the next 6 month, you will have internet even at those times....... .......maybe!"
Usually it is possible to play past the bugs..While I see what you are getting at, people just want to play the game they have waited X amount of time for. You cannot really blame them for getting all hyped up, and then not being patient to purchase the game.
People buy games to enjoy themselves. Why should these people look forward to games, and then finally near release, not buy it because it has some bugs? They are just looking for a good game to play, and, especially if they have been waiting a while, they are not willing to take others' words on it. If they are in a guild, who is to say that just because the game doesn;t have a great release, that they should not enjoy themselves while playing with their guild.
__________________________________________________ In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten
Do not think we can say anything to satisfy your question. People pay for sub par stuff all the time, 50 bucks for a meal at a resturant and its horrid, Cable that is constantly going out, a graphics card that becomes obsolete in a few months, windows operations system...Need I say more? Humans want we want want want everything, its the nature of the beast. We throw money away on so many other things why not games?
Hehe, the irony in damian7's use of the term subpar in his arguments is amusing. If the majority of MMO's are released playable but with bugs and lack of polish, that means the par is playable with bugs and lack of polish.
Either way, there are so many aspects of an MMO (genre, content, client performance, network performance, customer service, etc.) that subpar ends up being completely relative, as a couple of other posters have said. For me, WoW is a subpar game despite its amount of content and polish, simply because it was boring to me. If the reason I play a game is to have fun, and I'm having fun despite whatever bugs I encounter, then that game has already surpassed WoW in terms of what I'm willing to spend money on.
Edit: Just using WoW as an example because that's usually what people point to as the epitome of polished MMO's.
A game being bugfree is only one of many qualities. If I see the game is going into the right direction, why should I leave ? Especially if I dont know an alternative to my current game.
First off some of the OP's analogies are wrong. There are plenty of movies that are released that are bombs. they might not be glitchy but they have bad acting, poor plot, bad special effects etc. Some of these fail due to this, others do ok, and some still do well. There are plenty of sports teams that do horrible but still make money and have die hard fans. They invest more money on one player for one season than an entire MMO budget and come in last place. people still use cel phones despite poor customer service, billing problems and dropped calls *cough sprint*
However let's compare software to software. Software is released all the time with bugs. Windows Vista anyone? yet how many people reading this are using it? You aren't going to figure out all the bugs in a MMO and release one bug free because "developers should have figured it out a long time ago." Software and hardware are constantly changing. If we were all using x86 processers and playing pong I am sure there would be no bugs in any software. However there is new hardware everyday that developers must factor into their game development. telephone technology has been around for 50+ years and has not changed nearly as fast as computers. So please OP, learn something about software development and the world in general before you start a rant.
many people get sucked intot he hype of an MMo and then find out it is crap when it releases. You might say they should know better but people do it for regular games too and other products like movies. The marketers tricked us and maybe we will learn next time. i think as a whole the MMO community has learned that lesson better than many other markets out there. People still rush off to the opening night of a movie going only by a review and a few scenes or by a console game on release day, yet I don't see giant rants about that.
people play buggy games because the game is still fun. crashing to desktop once an hour is no big deal to me. It's telling me I need to take a break while my comp reboots. Now if it crashes every time I log in thats a different story. Should a game be polished- yep. i think MMo developers are starting to learn that lesson. Will there still be bugs? yep, its unavoidable in software development. people will stop playing when the annoyance factor outweighs the fun.
So to say that for other products people don't pay for subpar products is plain wrong. people do it all the time. Peoples opinions vary, its what makes us unique. You say you crashed in WOW at release all the time. I didn't so that's why i played. My server (Argent dawn) never crashed that I remember. Maybe my computer was better than yours, maybe your ISP sucked or maybe your server was stressed beyond what they Blizzard anticipated so they had to scramble for a fix. Not every MMO is a bug filled crap fest on launch. That's why you research the game and try it out if it sounds good. Now if it is a crap fest and you s tick around, yea or are a moron but most people don't.
Originally posted by patri0tz Hehe, the irony in damian7's use of the term subpar in his arguments is amusing. If the majority of MMO's are released playable but with bugs and lack of polish, that means the par is playable with bugs and lack of polish.
damian's wording makes perfect sense if he is talking about video games as a whole, not just MMO's.
By gaming industry standards, you're right, a lot of games ARE released buggy and unpolished. In other words, subpar as video games.
Just because the MMO genre is plagued by a lack of professionalism doesn't mean we should lower the bar on the whole industry. It does mean MMO publishers need to wake up and acknowledge that the special nature of their product requires more development and testing time than a regular game.
It's okay, though. There will always be devs and publishers who do put forth professsional material, and these polished products will NEVER FAIL to bring in more money than half-assed ones. So the cheap and the greedy will go unrewarded in the end.
damian7, judging by the number of your posts, I have to say that you don't do much else then talk about pretty much pointless stuff on mmorpg.com
I do agree with you to some extent, but try making a bugless game (bigger one - not tetris). If you feel that it's not worth giving money to play MMOs (agree with you here as well, for the most MMOs) then just don't. Do something else, there are so many more interesting things to do in life than to play MMOs...
Enjoy.
In all fairness, damian7 was trying to logically figure out why people are willing to throw money away on a game that is nowhere near completion, compared to spending cash on other services that they pick based on the quality and reliability.
I have to agree with him. If a phone service was crap, 9/10 people would more than likely change phone companies. But mmo's for some reason are indeed different, it's as if people have begun to accept the fact that every game is going to suck at release and they are willing to stick it out until things are fixed. He was only trying to give a realistic comparison of monthly services or of the sort.
Instead of telling him to do himself a favor and quit playing mmos, consider where he was trying to go with this.
Yet people do purchase games which some people might consider unworthy of purchasing. The problem appears to be with the observer not able to resolve an apparent conflict. Perhaps if he looked in a different way at his issue he would resolve his conflict.
When you say we accept "sub par" that means that the "norm" is %100 polished and bug free games and thats not the case.
Buggy and unpolished IS the par, with a few companies (ie BLIZZARD) who tend to put out quality stuff with very little bugs and very high polish.
But really sometimes its a choice between playing something you're interested in vs something that's polished.
WoW is very polished but I'm sick of sword and sorcery.
I like space but Eve-Online is a buggy and unpolished piece of crap, on top of having some mechanics that make the game too boring for me.
I've come to the conclusion there is no %100 perfect game, its always missing something.
But you know what, that doesnt stop us from enjoying what they DO offer.
Just because %20 of the movie is crap doesn't mean you can't enjoy the other %80.
Today I went to wendies and had a burger, it looked like it was slapped together by a blind man with the tomatoes on one side and the lettuce on the other.
Did I enjoy the burger? Hell yeah.
Sure I could go back and demand a perfect burger but who has time for that. I was hungry, I ate my food.
And guess what, I'd go back there tommorrow and have another, because it still tasted pretty good.
Same with games. WoW wasnt %100 fun for me, but I spent a couple months and enjoyed most of the content, for the most part I was entertained.
BF2 disconnects me every 1-2 hours but I still play it almost every night for the past 2 years.
Simcity 4 has some bugs but guess what I still play that and enjoy it.
Over time I've played all kinds of games with some weird bugs and no polish, and guess what, they did their job of entertaining me.
It comes down to this :
There is no 1 perfect game that you play for the rest of your life.
Even MMO's.
You pop it in, you get your entertainment, and when it gets old and boring you toss it and play something new.
If theres a bug somewhere, you dont obsess over it, just rip through the rest of the content and move on the next game. Just like the burger I had today.
Originally posted by patri0tz Hehe, the irony in damian7's use of the term subpar in his arguments is amusing. If the majority of MMO's are released playable but with bugs and lack of polish, that means the par is playable with bugs and lack of polish.
damian's wording makes perfect sense if he is talking about video games as a whole, not just MMO's.
By gaming industry standards, you're right, a lot of games ARE released buggy and unpolished. In other words, subpar as video games.
Just because the MMO genre is plagued by a lack of professionalism doesn't mean we should lower the bar on the whole industry. It does mean MMO publishers need to wake up and acknowledge that the special nature of their product requires more development and testing time than a regular game.
It's okay, though. There will always be devs and publishers who do put forth professsional material, and these polished products will NEVER FAIL to bring in more money than half-assed ones. So the cheap and the greedy will go unrewarded in the end.
Well the context of the OP and the rest of the thread is "mmo-type" games, so that's what the statement was directed at.
The nature and scope of an MMO (both in development and ongoing support) makes it unfair in my opinion to compare to a single player game. I can't speak for others, but I definitely have a different set of standards for single player games. If it gets generally negative reviews and the demo is a horrible experience for me, I won't buy it.
The problem is, a single player game by definition can't deliver the same interactive online experience of an MMO. Therefore, if I'm in the mood for that experience, I'm left to choose among the existing MMO's on the market. There are a few polished choices, but the majority are far from perfect. The few polished choices for whatever reason don't interest me and thus provide no entertainment justifying a $15 monthly expense. My whole objective in playing a game is for the fun of it, so if there is an unpolished game that I find enjoyable and is within my boundaries of playability, it is worth $15 a month to me where the other polished choices aren't. Value is ultimately decided by each individual.
If I followed damian's advice, I would basically have to write off the entire MMO genre because the only games that are polished enough to be paid for aren't ones I would spend money on.
Having said that, I do agree that in the long run devs need to be held to a higher standard than they are currently. It's just not easy for us as consumers to do that right now because our choices in the MMO genre are a fraction of what's available in the single player market.
Comments
Still gnawing away at this old bone, are you Damian7...
It seems no matter what reason we give you, you just can't seem to accept ppl are willing to pay for subpar games because at that particular time, they have little else to try, and so want to experiment with the hopes the game will improve.
Keep bringing up your tv/cable/phone analogies...they'll still tell you the same over and over...and you'll be asking the same question over and over. Maybe you should do more 'listening' and less vituperation and try to understand what we're saying...
I don't mind discussing, but if every time we state an opinion, you just repeat "So you'd be willing to pay for a subpar service/good" jargon, we just see you trying to sound right, and not trying to debate the issue.
nuff said for me on this thread
You might consider a game sub-par for a whole range or reasons, but if someone enjoys it and is happy to pay for it, then to their tastes it's not 'sub-par' and they almost certainly wouldn't describe it as such. So essentially, it's down to an individuals perceptions of what is acceptable to them with regards to spending their money on entertainment.
Different tastes, subjective values. There really is no other answer to the question you are asking *shrug*.
----------------------------
Hundreds of years from now, it will not matter what size my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove... But the world may be different because I did something so bafflingly crazy that my ruins become a tourist attraction.
The good news, damian7, is that while there are a few people who don't mind wasting their money out of some weird idealistic loyalty, the majority of gamers won't put up with it. Games that suck tend to fail. Period. And this is becoming more true as the industry matures.
The trick is in being able to weed out the opinions of idealistic fanbois when you are making your own purchasing decision, but it's not all that hard as their arguments are invariably taken directly from the companies' own PR machines.
Just thinking of someone working all day, getting home at about six a clock and then his internetconnection is broken and he can't play his lovely game.
And then he is calling the internet provider and they say: "Oh, sorry, but we have some problems, as there are so many people using internet between 6 and 12pm, it may be possible that you will have no internetconnection for some time. But we promise that, if you pay us the next 6 month, you will have internet even at those times....... .......maybe!"
1997 Meridian 59 'til 2019 ESO
Waiting for Camelot Unchained & Pantheon
Usually it is possible to play past the bugs..While I see what you are getting at, people just want to play the game they have waited X amount of time for. You cannot really blame them for getting all hyped up, and then not being patient to purchase the game.
People buy games to enjoy themselves. Why should these people look forward to games, and then finally near release, not buy it because it has some bugs? They are just looking for a good game to play, and, especially if they have been waiting a while, they are not willing to take others' words on it. If they are in a guild, who is to say that just because the game doesn;t have a great release, that they should not enjoy themselves while playing with their guild.
__________________________________________________
In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten
Do not think we can say anything to satisfy your question. People pay for sub par stuff all the time, 50 bucks for a meal at a resturant and its horrid, Cable that is constantly going out, a graphics card that becomes obsolete in a few months, windows operations system...Need I say more? Humans want we want want want everything, its the nature of the beast. We throw money away on so many other things why not games?
Hehe, the irony in damian7's use of the term subpar in his arguments is amusing. If the majority of MMO's are released playable but with bugs and lack of polish, that means the par is playable with bugs and lack of polish.
Either way, there are so many aspects of an MMO (genre, content, client performance, network performance, customer service, etc.) that subpar ends up being completely relative, as a couple of other posters have said. For me, WoW is a subpar game despite its amount of content and polish, simply because it was boring to me. If the reason I play a game is to have fun, and I'm having fun despite whatever bugs I encounter, then that game has already surpassed WoW in terms of what I'm willing to spend money on.
Edit: Just using WoW as an example because that's usually what people point to as the epitome of polished MMO's.
A game being bugfree is only one of many qualities. If I see the game is going into the right direction, why should I leave ? Especially if I dont know an alternative to my current game.
First off some of the OP's analogies are wrong. There are plenty of movies that are released that are bombs. they might not be glitchy but they have bad acting, poor plot, bad special effects etc. Some of these fail due to this, others do ok, and some still do well. There are plenty of sports teams that do horrible but still make money and have die hard fans. They invest more money on one player for one season than an entire MMO budget and come in last place. people still use cel phones despite poor customer service, billing problems and dropped calls *cough sprint*
However let's compare software to software. Software is released all the time with bugs. Windows Vista anyone? yet how many people reading this are using it? You aren't going to figure out all the bugs in a MMO and release one bug free because "developers should have figured it out a long time ago." Software and hardware are constantly changing. If we were all using x86 processers and playing pong I am sure there would be no bugs in any software. However there is new hardware everyday that developers must factor into their game development. telephone technology has been around for 50+ years and has not changed nearly as fast as computers. So please OP, learn something about software development and the world in general before you start a rant.
many people get sucked intot he hype of an MMo and then find out it is crap when it releases. You might say they should know better but people do it for regular games too and other products like movies. The marketers tricked us and maybe we will learn next time. i think as a whole the MMO community has learned that lesson better than many other markets out there. People still rush off to the opening night of a movie going only by a review and a few scenes or by a console game on release day, yet I don't see giant rants about that.
people play buggy games because the game is still fun. crashing to desktop once an hour is no big deal to me. It's telling me I need to take a break while my comp reboots. Now if it crashes every time I log in thats a different story. Should a game be polished- yep. i think MMo developers are starting to learn that lesson. Will there still be bugs? yep, its unavoidable in software development. people will stop playing when the annoyance factor outweighs the fun.
So to say that for other products people don't pay for subpar products is plain wrong. people do it all the time. Peoples opinions vary, its what makes us unique. You say you crashed in WOW at release all the time. I didn't so that's why i played. My server (Argent dawn) never crashed that I remember. Maybe my computer was better than yours, maybe your ISP sucked or maybe your server was stressed beyond what they Blizzard anticipated so they had to scramble for a fix. Not every MMO is a bug filled crap fest on launch. That's why you research the game and try it out if it sounds good. Now if it is a crap fest and you s tick around, yea or are a moron but most people don't.
/rant off
sorry for the wall of text
Who cares why they throw away money.... just throw some away my way!
By gaming industry standards, you're right, a lot of games ARE released buggy and unpolished. In other words, subpar as video games.
Just because the MMO genre is plagued by a lack of professionalism doesn't mean we should lower the bar on the whole industry. It does mean MMO publishers need to wake up and acknowledge that the special nature of their product requires more development and testing time than a regular game.
It's okay, though. There will always be devs and publishers who do put forth professsional material, and these polished products will NEVER FAIL to bring in more money than half-assed ones. So the cheap and the greedy will go unrewarded in the end.
In all fairness, damian7 was trying to logically figure out why people are willing to throw money away on a game that is nowhere near completion, compared to spending cash on other services that they pick based on the quality and reliability.
I have to agree with him. If a phone service was crap, 9/10 people would more than likely change phone companies. But mmo's for some reason are indeed different, it's as if people have begun to accept the fact that every game is going to suck at release and they are willing to stick it out until things are fixed. He was only trying to give a realistic comparison of monthly services or of the sort.
Instead of telling him to do himself a favor and quit playing mmos, consider where he was trying to go with this.
Yet people do purchase games which some people might consider unworthy of purchasing. The problem appears to be with the observer not able to resolve an apparent conflict. Perhaps if he looked in a different way at his issue he would resolve his conflict.
Almost all games have bugs.
When you say we accept "sub par" that means that the "norm" is %100 polished and bug free games and thats not the case.
Buggy and unpolished IS the par, with a few companies (ie BLIZZARD) who tend to put out quality stuff with very little bugs and very high polish.
But really sometimes its a choice between playing something you're interested in vs something that's polished.
WoW is very polished but I'm sick of sword and sorcery.
I like space but Eve-Online is a buggy and unpolished piece of crap, on top of having some mechanics that make the game too boring for me.
I've come to the conclusion there is no %100 perfect game, its always missing something.
But you know what, that doesnt stop us from enjoying what they DO offer.
Just because %20 of the movie is crap doesn't mean you can't enjoy the other %80.
Today I went to wendies and had a burger, it looked like it was slapped together by a blind man with the tomatoes on one side and the lettuce on the other.
Did I enjoy the burger? Hell yeah.
Sure I could go back and demand a perfect burger but who has time for that. I was hungry, I ate my food.
And guess what, I'd go back there tommorrow and have another, because it still tasted pretty good.
Same with games. WoW wasnt %100 fun for me, but I spent a couple months and enjoyed most of the content, for the most part I was entertained.
BF2 disconnects me every 1-2 hours but I still play it almost every night for the past 2 years.
Simcity 4 has some bugs but guess what I still play that and enjoy it.
Over time I've played all kinds of games with some weird bugs and no polish, and guess what, they did their job of entertaining me.
It comes down to this :
There is no 1 perfect game that you play for the rest of your life.
Even MMO's.
You pop it in, you get your entertainment, and when it gets old and boring you toss it and play something new.
If theres a bug somewhere, you dont obsess over it, just rip through the rest of the content and move on the next game. Just like the burger I had today.
By gaming industry standards, you're right, a lot of games ARE released buggy and unpolished. In other words, subpar as video games.
Just because the MMO genre is plagued by a lack of professionalism doesn't mean we should lower the bar on the whole industry. It does mean MMO publishers need to wake up and acknowledge that the special nature of their product requires more development and testing time than a regular game.
It's okay, though. There will always be devs and publishers who do put forth professsional material, and these polished products will NEVER FAIL to bring in more money than half-assed ones. So the cheap and the greedy will go unrewarded in the end.
Well the context of the OP and the rest of the thread is "mmo-type" games, so that's what the statement was directed at.
The nature and scope of an MMO (both in development and ongoing support) makes it unfair in my opinion to compare to a single player game. I can't speak for others, but I definitely have a different set of standards for single player games. If it gets generally negative reviews and the demo is a horrible experience for me, I won't buy it.
The problem is, a single player game by definition can't deliver the same interactive online experience of an MMO. Therefore, if I'm in the mood for that experience, I'm left to choose among the existing MMO's on the market. There are a few polished choices, but the majority are far from perfect. The few polished choices for whatever reason don't interest me and thus provide no entertainment justifying a $15 monthly expense. My whole objective in playing a game is for the fun of it, so if there is an unpolished game that I find enjoyable and is within my boundaries of playability, it is worth $15 a month to me where the other polished choices aren't. Value is ultimately decided by each individual.
If I followed damian's advice, I would basically have to write off the entire MMO genre because the only games that are polished enough to be paid for aren't ones I would spend money on.
Having said that, I do agree that in the long run devs need to be held to a higher standard than they are currently. It's just not easy for us as consumers to do that right now because our choices in the MMO genre are a fraction of what's available in the single player market.