"Slow build"... well, that could mean different things.
If a game would build slowly in a vertical sense (there is no upper content and you have to wait for months to do something new, i.e. you get 5 more levels and content per 6 months, and you finish the content in 1 month, and you have nothing to do 'till more content is added) i wouldn't play. (Any theme park game's case: you get 5-10 levels per year and that's it. More of the same.)
If a game builds slowly but horizontally (i.e. there is enough stuff to do, and additions give new gameplay, new ways to interact with stuff, new ways to scam and grie... er... do social things etc.), then i'd definitely play it. (Eve Online: you get new toys, and new ways to combine 'em, not the usual "bigger wtfpwnall stuff equal as last year's one but with +10000dps")
Would we accept a higher monthly fee for "our game?"
It depends. Does the quality of the game warrant a higher monthly fee?
The current crop of MMOs - including WoW, which I play - does not warrant more than $15 bucks a month from me. They're barely worth that. If developers and publishers make a game that captivates my attention so fully that I want to play the game out of a sincere desire to do so, then oh yeah, I'd pay as much as $30 a month. For example: Dragon Age was so well done (despite some of the annoyances it did have) that I literally could not wait to play the next bit of it to see what would happen. I could not wait to play through again as a different character and make different choices to see how those choices would affect the overall gameplay and story - and DA:O wasn't even an MMO! It was a single-player, ride-the-rails game that didn't give me a whole lot of room to explore, but the story was brilliant. Take that kind of writing and give me a chance to level a character, explore freely, craft, and have interactions with/parties made up of other players instead of NPCs and I would be a happy camper. I can tolerate bugs, so long as they are fixed. I can tolerate a lot of things in a game, so long as the game is imaginative - it doesn't have to be a "breath of fresh air" or do anything exotic and new. It can use what already exists and do something interesting and compelling with what already exists...but it does need to at least do something interesting and compelling...something that many designers and publishers seem to have forgotten in this insatiable quest to "be the next World of Warcraft."
Would we accept minimal developer content?
Provided that players are given enough tools to create their own content, yes. SOE may be Satan incarnate in a lot of things, but there are some things they do well in terms of this. Both MxO and SWG had decent tools (SWG is definitely the better of the two in this regard) that were brilliant in terms of allowing players a great deal of latitude in terms of RP. SWG's recent implementations have gone far further than anything MxO ever had in that, as I understand it (I never got too far into it during my brief recent return to SWG to check out the GCW update), players can create all kinds of new things, including certain kinds of missions if I understand the system properly. Considering that we are talking about Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games, and considering that RP (as in, playing an actual character, not playing a person who engages in conduct best left to those who call a 1-900 number) is a major part of my enjoyment of a game, I don't need a developer scripting my content the entire time I am logged into a game and I actually tend to resent a developer telling me that killing ten rats is the only possible way for me to develop my character.
Would we accept a "slow build?
Dear sweet Baby Jesus, my most favorite of all the Jesuses, yes!!! Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!!!! I would much rather developers take their time and get things in their game right before they release it than release an unfinished, buggy, broken product that is a frustrating nightmare for the players.
Publishers need to get this through their thick, money-grubbing skulls (this means you, Atari and EA): if it isn't ready to ship, if something is broken, if there are more bugs than an entomology exhibit at the San Diego Zoo, for the love of God, do not force the developers to ship it before it is finished! You are creating ill will and a PR nightmare! If you will wait until it is no longer broken but a smooth, polished, complete product, you will make more money and garner far more respect for your company. A few pissed off people in the short run is really worth the long term respect for your company name and the reputation for high quality that holding back on a product until it is actually ready for the market will bring to you, I promise.
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
I wouldn't accept all 3 at the same time. Well, I probably would if a game was truly great, but I'd prefer just paying more. I do see the need for compromises, though. After all, if a game had everything I wanted, it would severely limit the number of potential customers. Consider this simplified model for how to make a profit out of an MMO:
xy = A + By + C/12Yy + D * floor(y/N)
where:
x = monthly subscription price
y = number of players
A = cost of running a server with no players
B = cost directly related to increasing number of players by one
C = total development costs
D = cost of increasing number of servers by one
Y = expected lifespan of game in years
N = total number of players each server can hold
Obviously, for a game to be profitable, the left side of the equation has to be greater than the right side. The ceiling for number of players, y, goes down as the target audience gets narrower. The only way to compensate for this, without affecting the quality of the game, is to increase the monthly price. Let's consider the alternatives, though.
B is fairly insignificant for a niche game. Obviously x must be greater than B, but cost per player (bandwidth, customer support etc) is dwarfed by the other costs until number of players reaches hundreds of thousands, or even millions of players.
Hardware costs matter more. A is the entire cost for running the game's servers if there is just one cluster. D is the cost of increasing number of servers (or expanding the capacity of existing ones) each time number of players increases by a multiple N. This cost is important to consider when saying you can just reduce the price, attract more players, and profit. Each time you reach enough players to get cost D, you need to get enough of a boost in population to cover this cost in addition to covering the loss from lowering the price. Actually lowering the fixed server costs is, of course, possible, but only if you know exactly how many players you are going to get, or are willing to lower the quality of the product.
And so we are left with C. Development costs have to be covered somehow. You can subtract box-sales directly from this, but most of it has to be covered by subscription fees over the lifespan of the game. If C is high, xy has to be high. In other words, to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs with just a few thousand players just isn't possible. Increasing the expected lifespan of the game, is also not something that is easily done. If the game is still going strong after initial development costs are covered, this has to be seen as a bonus, and of course the total cost goes up somewhat over the years with additional content and patches. For a niche game, C has the biggest impact on the range in which you can vary monthly subscription fees while keeping the game profitable.
The way I see it, we end up with 3 options for pricing a niche MMO while keeping it profitable.
Make the game with the budget of a mass-market game, and raise prices until it is profitable.
Price the game according to industry standards ($15/month), and lower development costs enough to make this model profitable.
Lower the price below industry standards, keep costs at an absolute minimum, and hope to grow out of the niche market.
Most new niche games go with option 2. Players are not happy with this since it is easy to compare the production quality with similarly priced games. I'd personally prefer option 1, but I know $15/month is already at, or near the limit of what most people are willing to pay per month, and the price would have to be quite a lot higher for it to make a difference. I guess all in all, finding ways to lower development costs by delivering a limited product at release is the safest way to give us the games we want and actually keep them going, One of the advantages of an MMO is that it's under constant development, and the costs of additional content and polish can be inserted into to the equation after the important variables are known and/or have increased enough to cover the costs.
About the slow build, that is exactly what I'm doing with Fallen Earth. I play the game slowly so that I'm constantly getting more and more impressed as patches go by, rather than sprint to endgame and have to wait for it. I see this game being much improved in just the few months it has been out.
1) I would be willing to pay a slight increase to say $17 -20 per month if it was a decent game, but $40 - 50 dollars per month is insane; the only company I know of that tried that amount was S.O.E. back in the original EQ, and the primary point of that special server was that you were supposed to actually get decent customer service (something other companies tried to give for the standard price).
2) I don't have a special love affair with sandbox style games like a lot seem to have; while I have nothing against them, I do like having enough content so that I can reach the endgame and be able to make an alt that follows a different path. I think Eve hung on so long because there was multiple paths to follow and it took forever to level up just one character (even longer if you tried to split development time between multiple characters). I'm not entirely sure how well a sandbox game might do today if it is severely lacking content; while RP and other player driven activities can fill in for a lot, you do need something else to do (especially at high levels). If the game launches with the levelling speed and sparse content as one of Cryptic's two new games, then forget it.
3) As far as the slow build, once again it needs to have enough content to keep me busy; as above, Eve worked because it took a long time to level up (something on the order of a year and a half or more of real time). If a game has a slow levelling time like that, and enough initial content, then I could see it working. It's not going to be wildly popular (at first anyway), but if it has a solid foundation then I could see it succeeding and it could very well be the game I fall in love with. Unfortunately, the current trend has been to shove things out the door with gaping holes in content; as a result players are a lot less tolerant now, and a slow building game that has significant holes in content might not be able to weather the initial storm of criticism.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
I doubt many people would want a slow build especially when many on these very forums seem to lack the patience to allow anything like an MMORPG to develop before dismissing it as "poor quality".
It's heavily reflected on the popularly shared view that the industry is on some kind of decline despite the fact that it's continuing to turn greater and greater profits. Oh of course, its the quality that declining not the money, well, for those that want to argue this...please define quality to me. I'm sure you'll get thousands of conflicting responses.
Despite EVE's success, it is still ultimately a niche game and whoever it caters to, it does it well, but its definitely not for everyone and I want to point at the slow pace of the game as the reason why. We are living in this instant gratification society and everyone wants everything now. There is no satisfaction for these people so I firmly believe that with all your points brought up, they would continue to cry and complain about the realities they would bring.
Ultimately, outspoken minority will never be satisfied for the most part because there will always be this perceived, there's something wrong with game X or game Y because it never matched their vision of what the game should of been.
Mmm i think game hoppers will hop no matter what, might be the best game ever, but they'd get the itch to hop around and see whats out there, they may come back for periods of time though.
Of course we would. Not all of course, but some would. Enough to make a game viable/profitable.
But given the current MMO environment, dominated by publishers and investors who demand profit without risk, the question should be "Would they?" Would any AAA Publishing company be willing to put up the money in the hopes it'll pay off in a couple of years? I don't think so. The current trend is to make as much as possible off of box sales, driven by using an established IP, heavy marketing, and deals of questionable value (I'm looking at you Cryptic/FunCom).
Independents will try but they rarely have the money to produce a product that has the kind of polish to attract a player base. And when I say polish I'm simply referring to the client.
The small, ad hoc list that you have generated screams one common theme: maturity.
Are the players mature enough to pledge RL assets higher than the norm if their tastes are more selective than the norm? By pledging, investing?, there would be the pressure to follow through. If the game releases with minimal content, but there is obvious effort shown by devs to make the game expansive with time, and timely, periodic releases of content continuously stream out of the devs' stronghold... absolutely.
There's more to it, obviously, that what has been said here. But it gets me thinking: would this bring 'community' back to MMORPGs? With the exception of EVE and a flailing FFXI (both of whom, ironically?, have been the only AAA titles that have stayed 'true to form' since their releases), communities have been on the decline (subjective, subjective but let's not: there's enough word fodder on this topic to emperically conclude, at the least).
Would terms that call for the gamer to be mature about their gaming bring back the *ESSENCE* of what MMORPGs were birthed around?
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
Point 1. No, I think that would be a really poor business model as MMO pricing is pretty much a standard acrross the board, double your prices you will alienate way more than half of your potential customers, for an MMO to be worth more than a standard subscription fee it would have to offer something as yet unseen.
Point 2. I think that "Here's an empty world, go kill each other coz that's all that there will ever be for this game" again alienates everone who isn't a 100% pvp player which is a very small portion of the population, if you want to get more people into the sandbox, give them more to do than hit each other with rocks. The other extreme is the kill 1000 rats and you can't move you the next zone (to kill 1000 wolves) until you have killed them all. Neither interest me at all really.
Point 3. Playing a slow build game is a risk, you are playing a game on the promise than things will slowly improve with subscriptions funding further content until the game snowballs into something recognisable as a complete game. It is a model I would be willing to attempt, assuming I can see the game has a vision and the devs are actually aiming towards it, rather than churning out something incomplete and leaving it to fester having recouped there money through preorder box sales. This is a perfect model for a small indie company, if a larger company tried this is would be seriously suspicious that it was simply a money grab. I think the trick to a slow build game is to offer a unique experience to begin with, but with a limited scope. A good example is what Xsyon is pushing out, (Assuming that there is something behind the promises) There has been a LOT of radical features announced, yet the scope of the game to begin with will be small (Limited land space, very limited tech) this way they can hopefully generate interest without breaking their initial budget and rolling out new tech and more land mass is a lot more believable that promises of completely radical gameplay.
In a sandbox the players create the environment, if that environment is conducive to people quitting in the first month, you will have a small game. If you want more people to join you in the sandbox, perhaps you should examine the people who think it's fun to crap in it. Low numbers are as much to do with the environment as the "FFA pvp" tag.
I think a big issue why "sandbox" games haven't done so well has been they were soley targetted at the 100% pvp crowd. It's my impression that these game offer little else apart from pvp with some mobs to train your skills up on. I think this image is what has restricted the popularity of these games. Together with the demographics of these games that attract the frenzied pvp crowd and especially griefers. Create an ecosystem consisting of 80% wolves and 20% sheep and in 6 months you'll end up with nothing but a hungry pack of wolves turning on each other. Turn that into a 90% sheep 10% wolves and overall the sheep get on with life, yes it's dangerous but overall safety in numbers means they aren't too worried, and there is plenty of scope for fun for the wolves too.
I'm not saying the sheep are those who avoid pvp at all costs, more that the wolves are those whose sole purpose in the game is to hunt people down, the less challenge the better. If the game doesn't offer areas of "relative" safety people get fed up of "oh! one shot again"
Games where on day 1 or 2 of logging into a game and you are faced with players that go out of their way to basically make new/low level players lives a misery (yes, there are players like that out there who play full loot FFA pvp because it means they can pick this no risk combat) and retention rates will be low. If the environment isn't conducive to fthe game being mostly fun the chances of the game growing is minimal. Most people don't find being repeatedly one shot by a guy going out of his was to harrass as "fun". My personal experience of FFA pvp can be summed up as frustrating and not fun in any way, I was driven away from the game before I even got a chance to participate in pvp, unless you can count being one shot by max level griefers as participating. I won't say never again, but certainly never again in that format that allows/encourages griefing without little consequence.
In reality the whole Sandbox/Theme Park thing is a grey area, you can have a level based game with enough content and choices about how you want to play that it doesn't really resemble a theme park at all. I certainly wouldn't regard VG as a themepark from levels 1-50, everything SOE introduced afterward has been incredibly linear and repetitive, but the initial vision was giving the players a lot of freedom. Other games it feels like you are on rails and can't even turn you head levelling is so controlled. Level or Skill based I don't actually mind, just give me enough freedom over my character and how I play it to make me feel part of the world.
I suppose my ideal game is one than gives a good deal of freedom of how to play, offers plenty to do outside pvp, and offers a deal of depth to the world. It's my impression that some of these FFA pvp sandboxes are incredibly shallow with the only draw being the FFA pvp. It's fairly obvious that the smaller the scope of the game the less audience it will appeal to.
Would we accept a higher monthly fee for "our game?"
I would - I've said so here and elsewhere. The 14.99/mo sub fee was established how long ago? And how much have prices risen since then? By rights we should be paying 25.00 a month for the same quality of game as back then, never mind the huge improvements in game technology we have now.
This static situation is exactly why microtransactions even exist. Prices have gone up, development costs have gone up, the product has improved, but our costs to get so much more than we used to get have not gone up due to some popular delusion that "nobody would play if it weren't 14.99 or less". This delusion is imposing an artificial barrier on the progress of the entire industry and forcing dreck models like sub + RMTs.
Fix the price fixing, and the industry will fix itself real quick. Prices will rise until companies can create the best quality games they can and maintain them for long-term play, instead of the current boom and bust model, then competition will flatten the pricing again.
Oh, and it doesn't have to be our Utopian sandbox either. Such a thing does not exist and will not exist, ever. You can give me any quality game for 20 or even 25.00/month, keep the RMT crap out of it, and keep it supported and GM'd so that it works as intended, and I'll be as happy a camper as the gameplay lets me be.
Make it Planetside circa 2004-2006 and I'll be freakin' ecstatic.
How do you tell a slow build from no build? If I put money on the table, a company will gladly take it, but once they have the money, how do I ensure they they actually do follow through on their implied promises to improve the game? No, I think as a game consumer, I have to have finite patience, I have to be willing to walk away if the say-do ratio drops too low or if the game simply isn't fun. As much as I'd like to pick one game and stay with it forever, there simply aren't any market mechanisms that can guarantee that loyalty will translate into continued improvement. You can only see successful slow burns in hindsight.
Ok, Good post and I will try to field these questions in order.
1) Yes, I would accept a higher monthly fee for a game. I have incidentally payed higher than the traditional $15 fee a few times. Whether it be from a cash shop or monthly fee plus some services, I rarely just pay $15 a month for the entire lifespan of my relationship to the game.
If you factor in buying expansions for certain games (wow) it averages out to more than 15 bucks. But not many look at it that way.
2) Yes, I would and normally do. I rarely feel the pinch of lack of content. Granted, if I started playing a game with NO CONTENT such as been the case with Mortal Online, it would bore me. But if I liked the game itself I would give the devs a chance to "gel" I understand there are many challenges of being a new mmorpg developer. Not everyone is going to be 100%, 100% of the time.
I'm willing to overlook some things, and some things I just won't. Lack of customer service is one of the BIG dealbreakers for me.
3) Yes, as I stated above I would give them time to grow into lets say a "CCP". Most times I just tend to sit back and wait to see how they handle the growth process, making changes to the game as they go along. Sometimes I don't watch the game as much as the company.
For example: Funcom. They have some such a long way and made such strides to improve AoC. I do not like AoC, its not the game I like to play. But it doesn't mean I didn't like Anarchy or I'm not going to play Secret World. I am pulling for them because I have seen a great effort from them in improvements. They have a good grasp on community matters and good customer service. I can see that over the years working in the industry they have "gelled" but haven't seen the success that some other co's have had.
So to sum this all up. If The Secret World was released, hypothetically it was a sandbox game with a realistic economy. It had EVE's time based skillpoint system or Darkfalls repetitive use skill system. It had all the things I want in an MMO, because the list is longer and getting longer every day. I would pay WELL OVER 15 smackaroos to play it and have the ultimate MMO experience "FOR ME".
I know I'm long winded, but it was a topic that stirred some thought.
Point 1. No, I think that would be a really poor business model as MMO pricing is pretty much a standard acrross the board, double your prices you will alienate way more than half of your potential customers, for an MMO to be worth more than a standard subscription fee it would have to offer something as yet unseen.
Point 2. I think that "Here's an empty world, go kill each other coz that's all that there will ever be for this game" again alienates everone who isn't a 100% pvp player which is a very small portion of the population, if you want to get more people into the sandbox, give them more to do than hit each other with rocks. The other extreme is the kill 1000 rats and you can't move you the next zone (to kill 1000 wolves) until you have killed them all. Neither interest me at all really.
Point 3. Playing a slow build game is a risk, you are playing a game on the promise than things will slowly improve with subscriptions funding further content until the game snowballs into something recognisable as a complete game. It is a model I would be willing to attempt, assuming I can see the game has a vision and the devs are actually aiming towards it, rather than churning out something incomplete and leaving it to fester having recouped there money through preorder box sales. This is a perfect model for a small indie company, if a larger company tried this is would be seriously suspicious that it was simply a money grab. I think the trick to a slow build game is to offer a unique experience to begin with, but with a limited scope. A good example is what Xsyon is pushing out, (Assuming that there is something behind the promises) There has been a LOT of radical features announced, yet the scope of the game to begin with will be small (Limited land space, very limited tech) this way they can hopefully generate interest without breaking their initial budget and rolling out new tech and more land mass is a lot more believable that promises of completely radical gameplay. In a sandbox the players create the environment, if that environment is conducive to people quitting in the first month, you will have a small game. If you want more people to join you in the sandbox, perhaps you should examine the people who think it's fun to crap in it. Low numbers are as much to do with the environment as the "FFA pvp" tag. I think a big issue why "sandbox" games haven't done so well has been they were soley targetted at the 100% pvp crowd. It's my impression that these game offer little else apart from pvp with some mobs to train your skills up on. I think this image is what has restricted the popularity of these games. Together with the demographics of these games that attract the frenzied pvp crowd and especially griefers. Create an ecosystem consisting of 80% wolves and 20% sheep and in 6 months you'll end up with nothing but a hungry pack of wolves turning on each other. Turn that into a 90% sheep 10% wolves and overall the sheep get on with life, yes it's dangerous but overall safety in numbers means they aren't too worried, and there is plenty of scope for fun for the wolves too. I'm not saying the sheep are those who avoid pvp at all costs, more that the wolves are those whose sole purpose in the game is to hunt people down, the less challenge the better. If the game doesn't offer areas of "relative" safety people get fed up of "oh! one shot again" Games where on day 1 or 2 of logging into a game and you are faced with players that go out of their way to basically make new/low level players lives a misery (yes, there are players like that out there who play full loot FFA pvp because it means they can pick this no risk combat) and retention rates will be low. If the environment isn't conducive to fthe game being mostly fun the chances of the game growing is minimal. Most people don't find being repeatedly one shot by a guy going out of his was to harrass as "fun". My personal experience of FFA pvp can be summed up as frustrating and not fun in any way, I was driven away from the game before I even got a chance to participate in pvp, unless you can count being one shot by max level griefers as participating. I won't say never again, but certainly never again in that format that allows/encourages griefing without little consequence. In reality the whole Sandbox/Theme Park thing is a grey area, you can have a level based game with enough content and choices about how you want to play that it doesn't really resemble a theme park at all. I certainly wouldn't regard VG as a themepark from levels 1-50, everything SOE introduced afterward has been incredibly linear and repetitive, but the initial vision was giving the players a lot of freedom. Other games it feels like you are on rails and can't even turn you head levelling is so controlled. Level or Skill based I don't actually mind, just give me enough freedom over my character and how I play it to make me feel part of the world. I suppose my ideal game is one than gives a good deal of freedom of how to play, offers plenty to do outside pvp, and offers a deal of depth to the world. It's my impression that some of these FFA pvp sandboxes are incredibly shallow with the only draw being the FFA pvp. It's fairly obvious that the smaller the scope of the game the less audience it will appeal to.
Really nice post above. It makes several good points.
I would deffinately have to say "no way" to a higher priced subscription fee. For several reasons, the main reason being... MMORPGs are very much so, an economy of scale. What that (basically) means is, initially, when sub numbers are low, the cost of reimbursement for initial investment, the cost of daily ongoing costs to run the game and the cost of present and future development takes up a very large portion of the subscription payment. However, once the sub numbers go up, the costs of running the game are spread out over more players, meaning that only a smaller portion of each subscription fee goes to "paying the bills".
Eventually, if they have done things right, they will get to a point where, like in the case of WoW, with so many subs, the cost of running the game barely makes up a fraction of a percent of the total subscription fee. Meaning everything else is simply pure and total profit. While I do not in any way, shape, or form, have a problem with the generation of profits, I do have a HUGE problem with games and developers like Blizzard, who feel the need to charge for game expansions, when they are making so much money per subscription fee already.
The reason why? Simple, and it leads me to the second reason why I would not support a higher subscription fee. Developers like CCP and their game, EVE Online, have shown me and the world that you can run a successful game, at a standard $15 a month fee, and never, ever, EVER charge "extra" for the expansions they put out, and yet still remain profitable and successful. Nor do they use or support any frivilous Cash Shop or RMT services. Yes, they do have the standard extra fees for character changes and stuff like that. They also have the pay cash for time cards, thus selling them to other players for in-game money feature. I would not classify either of those in the same realm as these other Cash Shop / Sub+ RMT scams the current developers are trying to get away with.
I've gone on long enough, just on the higher subscription fee thing. I will have to get back later on the other two points asked. I'm sure someone somewhere needs a break from my ramblings.
Fallen Earth developers seem to go the EVE route in the way that they carefully plan the content release (lvl cap is 46atm and is supposed to be 150 in the end), while at the same time taking the time to listen to the playerbase.
Untill now, their contentupdates have been very good and they also keep adressing bugs every few patches in between the content updates. They have a very good balance between releasing content, fixing bugs and listening to player suggestions.
On top of that if you consider that they are an Indie company, they show that you dont even need a major MMO producer for this as long as you carefully plan the development.
1. Yeah, easily. And you would too if you had your dream game releasing tomorrow, teasing you with features you've waited years for. I consider the ~£10 I pay on a single subscription fee already very low, considering all the hours of entertainment I get for it a month.
2. (answer based on the assumption that content = quests, raids, instances, etc) Yes, that's the definition of a sandbox. It doesn't need 'rides' to keep me entertained.
3. No. I'm too inclined to say 'I'll come back in X months when Y problems are solved'. That only really works if everyone else doesn't do the same though... or those who do stick it out and keep paying end up shaping the game into something I don't want to play anymore, as the developers rightly try to keep their paying customers happy.
Well, since I'm certainly in the group you are pointing at with this topic, here goes:
Would we accept a higher Monthly fee for "our" game?
Damn skippy. Pardon my french. Jon, you bring up the point of some folks supposedly on board at first and then jumping ship mid way through development. Valid concern, for sure, and one than can easily be countered by the developer, oh, being up front with total game design and what elements and features they are going to put in and, most importantly, sticking to that list. As Jennings wrote in his recent article the developer would have to ditch publishers so that they would have the freedom and time to make a quality game. I just don't believe anymore that game companies aren't revealing their systems because they are afraid someone else will pick them up. I now think it's more of they have no freaking idea of how they are going to do it in the first place until a week before they "reveal" it. Such "down the road" revelations are cause for people to jump off the bandwagon as it may be a system they don't like.
So yes, it's be nice to see MMO companies actually, oh, sit down and think about what systems they want in the game sum total, outline how they interact with each other, announce them and then not launch until they get them all in. Perception currently is they are throwing all of the cake ingredients into the stove before reading directions and doing initial preparation.
Would we accept minimal developer content?
(notice a theme here?)
Seriously, though.The people you hear complaining about no content are in my opinion the themepark warriors. Those folks love developer directed content and consume it faster than a speeding bullet. If you have heard a sandbox gamer of the like you are addressing hear state such things it because a) it's true, b) we got no other modern sandbox games to go to so we have to get our MMO gaming fix in these themeparks and c) the game doesn't have any detailed tools through which sandboxers can invent their own content.
If a sandbox game has wide ranging and intertwined toolsets through which players can build/create items with which to forge stories, they keep themselves occupied. If a developer provides such an exhaustive set of tools as a skeleton the players will fill that skeleton with mass.
Would we accept a "slow build"?
I think that many of us asking for such a sandbox game would accept it. That said I don't agree that it has to be a slow build. In fact I think if all the developer had to worry about was the interaction of the various game systems (tools) and coming up with new ways for them to interact it'd less of a pain than trying to come up with new story ideas and quests and testing the new quests and raids, etc. The world would develop as fast as the players made it happen, building settlements, etc.
Anyway, I truly think it would work. If a company actually threw as much money as they had toward, say WAR or AoC, at a game where they only had to put in game systems that were tools for the players to build with and not worry about traditional themepark content, I think it'd work well. It'd certainly carry over 250,000 subs world wide if visually it looked like a serious effort. That and I know there are at least that many of us "old farts" as one poster likes to call us in another thread out there who would love to have the story-telling and world building back in our hands as opposed to picking lines of dialogue and having a story told to us.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
I won't pay more but the rest, if the game is good enough I would easily tolerate and maybe even enjoy if done correctly.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
Well as long as I don't have to face this stupid Wow+ community again, I would be willing to pay more but according to that wanting a clear stated destination for the game. Playing Darkfall right now and yes I accept a slow build.
So all in all if done right, I would accept all of the stated options. I think playing a "privilege" REAL MMORPG would also lead to a much better community, mabe something like 1999!
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
To add my own views on this, I must say that the answer is highly dependent on the type of game in offer. Working with the assumption that we are talking about each individual's dream game, then I could provide a provisional YES. More specifically, my onw dream game could be (only very very briefly) described as a full, deep sandbox design, in an open interactive world with no artificial restrictions (save those that can be loosely described as realistic), based around a dark fantasy setting- something along the lines of Micheal Moorcock's Mutliverse/ Eternal Champion creations, or a horror fiction setting (think World of darkness) or even a science fiction theme along the line of the Shadowrun RPG. In addition there would need to be a strong emphasis, or I should rather say that the game will be designed around, a proper role-playing experience, and by that I do not mean having a set of numerical values that in one way or another increase over-time. I simply mean deep immersion and support in acting out your character's persona.
With the above premises in mind :
Would we accept a higher monthly fee for "our game?"
Granted that the above criteria are sufficiently met I would accept and higher monthly fee in the area of 20 to 25$. Anything higher I don't think is viable, nor, personally, acceptable.
Would we accept minimal developer content?
Player driven content >>>>>>>> developer drive content. Personally a quest driven game of the traditional variety is a big no.
Therefore and big yes here. A well thought (and built of course) sandbox game needs the bare minimum in terms of content of the usual sort.
But... and it is a big one.. if we are talking about lack of tools for creating player driven content, lack of areas to explore, or lack o depth in lore and the game world itself, then the answer must be NO.
And while on this subject, I rather have more depth and less breadth to start with than the other way around - and then building slowly upon that stable basis. For instance I would rather be given a relatively small area to start with, gone with care and loving attention to detail, rather than lots of place to visit that lack depth and purpose.
Would we accept a "slow build?"
I think I probably just answered this. Quick answer: YES. The crucial condition, as described earlier is that developers pay attention to detail and try to bring the game world alive, start small and build on that. And I hold a similar view as far as subscribers/costumer base is concerned. Focus on your most fundamental player base and build on and around that. I am of the opinion that (unless you are WoW) a loyal player base is the best long term investment for any MMO that pans on being around for long. They will support you, provide free marketing and advertising by talking to their friends about it, give valuable input to developers, just as long as you treat them with respect.
But then again... what are the chances of something like that happening?
What might be interesting if there was an opportunity for players to add content themselves.
After building the builder, content could then be provided by the community itself. A bit LPMud-like. How open world/sandbox would this be and it might even be economically feasible...
Its funny you should mention that, I was just about to post my thoughts in a similar vein.
First, though, what people need to bear in mind is that what most folks consider "niche" games are not. WoW is an outlier/aberration, and trying to fit the industry into the you don't have X million subscribers is a poor way of looking at things. When looking at true subscriptions numbers and dropping your outliers (highest/lowest) most games fall into an average grouping of subscriptions. No game developer is going to recreate WoW. Even Blizzard won't recreate WoW with their in development game, it was the perfect storm at the perfect time (simple, easy to grasp, you could pretty much run it on a Commodore 64 etc.). Talking about how a sandbox game would be a niche game is actually an incorrect moniker . Or one could say that every single MMO out there that isn't WoW is a niche game. Whatever semantic argument you want to make it doesn't really change the outcome.
With regards to the questions:
1. Would I pay more?
Somewhat more yes. $40-50/month however is impractical. Not from a standpoint that the price may or may not be too high, but simply that the average consumer is not going to be swayed by that when other games, inferior or not, have a much lower monthly subscription fee. I also don't think its necessary as ongoing development costs can be kept fairly low
2. The sandbox
A sandbox relies on players to make the content happen. It can have an overarching theme but it isn't reliant on the developer to provide content for it to function. This frees up developers to work on the game mechanics, system stability etc. Splitting developer focus with fixed resources (i.e. budget) and financially required deadlines is exactly why most MMOs are released with a multitude of bugs and a lack of content.
However, there's an opportunity that can be done in a sandbox game that would also free up developer time (and hence keep developer costs low) and that is user generated content. We can pull inspiration from offline single player games such as Oblivion or offline/online multiplayer games like the NeverWinter Nights franchise its easy to see that there are a great many very talented player/fans who enjoy making content, for no payment other than the enjoyment of doing so and the gratitude of other players. It should be fairly easy to leverage those content developers. They're there and they love doing so.
As such what a developer could do would be to provide the worldbuilding kit for these player developers to generate quests/missions and other content. While some safeguards would need to be in place, likely with regards to loot, such that they couldn't make a hidden quest to kill a rat for a billion coins, such a system could work. An editor or two for this content would also be required prior to it being activated to ensure it wouldn't be imbalancing and also to ensure that there are no copyright violations for existing IPs. These quests could also be aged out, both to not overly populate the world (or servers) with unused content as well as to keep the game world dynamic. While in such a system quality would obviously be hit or miss, the same can be said for theme park games with developer provided content
3. The slow burn
Allowing players to develop much of the content with the appropriate tools would also involve the slow burn buildup as like any of the games that allow this type of world building initial content is often small and simple as the player developers are learning the system, but often grows to very in depth and involved content.
Providing tools like that would, in my mind keep developer costs low, and as a result keep monthly fees lower. It would allow for a truly dynamic world when combined with the more traditional sandbox elements such that the players can live in a virtual world and not return to their starting city five years later in real time to see Fippy charging headlong to Qeynos yet again. Finally it would invigorate the player base with continuously flowing content, and remove the grind aspects that all Themepark games degenerate into due to lack of content (because no matter how you want to look at it, no matter how slowly you play to end game, eventually in a theme park game you reach it and its oh boy a new expansion now we have 1 new raid we can do every Saturday night until we all get our new gear to wait for the next expansion).
What might be interesting if there was an opportunity for players to add content themselves.
After building the builder, content could then be provided by the community itself. A bit LPMud-like. How open world/sandbox would this be and it might even be economically feasible...
Eve Online and Second Life seem to be succeeding at this in very different ways.
Comments
"Slow build"... well, that could mean different things.
If a game would build slowly in a vertical sense (there is no upper content and you have to wait for months to do something new, i.e. you get 5 more levels and content per 6 months, and you finish the content in 1 month, and you have nothing to do 'till more content is added) i wouldn't play. (Any theme park game's case: you get 5-10 levels per year and that's it. More of the same.)
If a game builds slowly but horizontally (i.e. there is enough stuff to do, and additions give new gameplay, new ways to interact with stuff, new ways to scam and grie... er... do social things etc.), then i'd definitely play it. (Eve Online: you get new toys, and new ways to combine 'em, not the usual "bigger wtfpwnall stuff equal as last year's one but with +10000dps")
Would we accept a higher monthly fee for "our game?"
It depends. Does the quality of the game warrant a higher monthly fee?
The current crop of MMOs - including WoW, which I play - does not warrant more than $15 bucks a month from me. They're barely worth that. If developers and publishers make a game that captivates my attention so fully that I want to play the game out of a sincere desire to do so, then oh yeah, I'd pay as much as $30 a month. For example: Dragon Age was so well done (despite some of the annoyances it did have) that I literally could not wait to play the next bit of it to see what would happen. I could not wait to play through again as a different character and make different choices to see how those choices would affect the overall gameplay and story - and DA:O wasn't even an MMO! It was a single-player, ride-the-rails game that didn't give me a whole lot of room to explore, but the story was brilliant. Take that kind of writing and give me a chance to level a character, explore freely, craft, and have interactions with/parties made up of other players instead of NPCs and I would be a happy camper. I can tolerate bugs, so long as they are fixed. I can tolerate a lot of things in a game, so long as the game is imaginative - it doesn't have to be a "breath of fresh air" or do anything exotic and new. It can use what already exists and do something interesting and compelling with what already exists...but it does need to at least do something interesting and compelling...something that many designers and publishers seem to have forgotten in this insatiable quest to "be the next World of Warcraft."
Would we accept minimal developer content?
Provided that players are given enough tools to create their own content, yes. SOE may be Satan incarnate in a lot of things, but there are some things they do well in terms of this. Both MxO and SWG had decent tools (SWG is definitely the better of the two in this regard) that were brilliant in terms of allowing players a great deal of latitude in terms of RP. SWG's recent implementations have gone far further than anything MxO ever had in that, as I understand it (I never got too far into it during my brief recent return to SWG to check out the GCW update), players can create all kinds of new things, including certain kinds of missions if I understand the system properly. Considering that we are talking about Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games, and considering that RP (as in, playing an actual character, not playing a person who engages in conduct best left to those who call a 1-900 number) is a major part of my enjoyment of a game, I don't need a developer scripting my content the entire time I am logged into a game and I actually tend to resent a developer telling me that killing ten rats is the only possible way for me to develop my character.
Would we accept a "slow build?
Dear sweet Baby Jesus, my most favorite of all the Jesuses, yes!!! Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!!!! I would much rather developers take their time and get things in their game right before they release it than release an unfinished, buggy, broken product that is a frustrating nightmare for the players.
Publishers need to get this through their thick, money-grubbing skulls (this means you, Atari and EA): if it isn't ready to ship, if something is broken, if there are more bugs than an entomology exhibit at the San Diego Zoo, for the love of God, do not force the developers to ship it before it is finished! You are creating ill will and a PR nightmare! If you will wait until it is no longer broken but a smooth, polished, complete product, you will make more money and garner far more respect for your company. A few pissed off people in the short run is really worth the long term respect for your company name and the reputation for high quality that holding back on a product until it is actually ready for the market will bring to you, I promise.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
I wouldn't accept all 3 at the same time. Well, I probably would if a game was truly great, but I'd prefer just paying more. I do see the need for compromises, though. After all, if a game had everything I wanted, it would severely limit the number of potential customers. Consider this simplified model for how to make a profit out of an MMO:
xy = A + By + C/12Yy + D * floor(y/N)
where:
x = monthly subscription price
y = number of players
A = cost of running a server with no players
B = cost directly related to increasing number of players by one
C = total development costs
D = cost of increasing number of servers by one
Y = expected lifespan of game in years
N = total number of players each server can hold
Obviously, for a game to be profitable, the left side of the equation has to be greater than the right side. The ceiling for number of players, y, goes down as the target audience gets narrower. The only way to compensate for this, without affecting the quality of the game, is to increase the monthly price. Let's consider the alternatives, though.
B is fairly insignificant for a niche game. Obviously x must be greater than B, but cost per player (bandwidth, customer support etc) is dwarfed by the other costs until number of players reaches hundreds of thousands, or even millions of players.
Hardware costs matter more. A is the entire cost for running the game's servers if there is just one cluster. D is the cost of increasing number of servers (or expanding the capacity of existing ones) each time number of players increases by a multiple N. This cost is important to consider when saying you can just reduce the price, attract more players, and profit. Each time you reach enough players to get cost D, you need to get enough of a boost in population to cover this cost in addition to covering the loss from lowering the price. Actually lowering the fixed server costs is, of course, possible, but only if you know exactly how many players you are going to get, or are willing to lower the quality of the product.
And so we are left with C. Development costs have to be covered somehow. You can subtract box-sales directly from this, but most of it has to be covered by subscription fees over the lifespan of the game. If C is high, xy has to be high. In other words, to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs with just a few thousand players just isn't possible. Increasing the expected lifespan of the game, is also not something that is easily done. If the game is still going strong after initial development costs are covered, this has to be seen as a bonus, and of course the total cost goes up somewhat over the years with additional content and patches. For a niche game, C has the biggest impact on the range in which you can vary monthly subscription fees while keeping the game profitable.
The way I see it, we end up with 3 options for pricing a niche MMO while keeping it profitable.
Most new niche games go with option 2. Players are not happy with this since it is easy to compare the production quality with similarly priced games. I'd personally prefer option 1, but I know $15/month is already at, or near the limit of what most people are willing to pay per month, and the price would have to be quite a lot higher for it to make a difference. I guess all in all, finding ways to lower development costs by delivering a limited product at release is the safest way to give us the games we want and actually keep them going, One of the advantages of an MMO is that it's under constant development, and the costs of additional content and polish can be inserted into to the equation after the important variables are known and/or have increased enough to cover the costs.
About the slow build, that is exactly what I'm doing with Fallen Earth. I play the game slowly so that I'm constantly getting more and more impressed as patches go by, rather than sprint to endgame and have to wait for it. I see this game being much improved in just the few months it has been out.
1) I would be willing to pay a slight increase to say $17 -20 per month if it was a decent game, but $40 - 50 dollars per month is insane; the only company I know of that tried that amount was S.O.E. back in the original EQ, and the primary point of that special server was that you were supposed to actually get decent customer service (something other companies tried to give for the standard price).
2) I don't have a special love affair with sandbox style games like a lot seem to have; while I have nothing against them, I do like having enough content so that I can reach the endgame and be able to make an alt that follows a different path. I think Eve hung on so long because there was multiple paths to follow and it took forever to level up just one character (even longer if you tried to split development time between multiple characters). I'm not entirely sure how well a sandbox game might do today if it is severely lacking content; while RP and other player driven activities can fill in for a lot, you do need something else to do (especially at high levels). If the game launches with the levelling speed and sparse content as one of Cryptic's two new games, then forget it.
3) As far as the slow build, once again it needs to have enough content to keep me busy; as above, Eve worked because it took a long time to level up (something on the order of a year and a half or more of real time). If a game has a slow levelling time like that, and enough initial content, then I could see it working. It's not going to be wildly popular (at first anyway), but if it has a solid foundation then I could see it succeeding and it could very well be the game I fall in love with. Unfortunately, the current trend has been to shove things out the door with gaping holes in content; as a result players are a lot less tolerant now, and a slow building game that has significant holes in content might not be able to weather the initial storm of criticism.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
I doubt many people would want a slow build especially when many on these very forums seem to lack the patience to allow anything like an MMORPG to develop before dismissing it as "poor quality".
It's heavily reflected on the popularly shared view that the industry is on some kind of decline despite the fact that it's continuing to turn greater and greater profits. Oh of course, its the quality that declining not the money, well, for those that want to argue this...please define quality to me. I'm sure you'll get thousands of conflicting responses.
Despite EVE's success, it is still ultimately a niche game and whoever it caters to, it does it well, but its definitely not for everyone and I want to point at the slow pace of the game as the reason why. We are living in this instant gratification society and everyone wants everything now. There is no satisfaction for these people so I firmly believe that with all your points brought up, they would continue to cry and complain about the realities they would bring.
Ultimately, outspoken minority will never be satisfied for the most part because there will always be this perceived, there's something wrong with game X or game Y because it never matched their vision of what the game should of been.
Mmm i think game hoppers will hop no matter what, might be the best game ever, but they'd get the itch to hop around and see whats out there, they may come back for periods of time though.
F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html
Of course we would. Not all of course, but some would. Enough to make a game viable/profitable.
But given the current MMO environment, dominated by publishers and investors who demand profit without risk, the question should be "Would they?" Would any AAA Publishing company be willing to put up the money in the hopes it'll pay off in a couple of years? I don't think so. The current trend is to make as much as possible off of box sales, driven by using an established IP, heavy marketing, and deals of questionable value (I'm looking at you Cryptic/FunCom).
Independents will try but they rarely have the money to produce a product that has the kind of polish to attract a player base. And when I say polish I'm simply referring to the client.
So yeah, I would. But I'm not holding my breath.
The short answer:
Yes.
The long answer:
Yessireebob.
The small, ad hoc list that you have generated screams one common theme: maturity.
Are the players mature enough to pledge RL assets higher than the norm if their tastes are more selective than the norm? By pledging, investing?, there would be the pressure to follow through. If the game releases with minimal content, but there is obvious effort shown by devs to make the game expansive with time, and timely, periodic releases of content continuously stream out of the devs' stronghold... absolutely.
There's more to it, obviously, that what has been said here. But it gets me thinking: would this bring 'community' back to MMORPGs? With the exception of EVE and a flailing FFXI (both of whom, ironically?, have been the only AAA titles that have stayed 'true to form' since their releases), communities have been on the decline (subjective, subjective but let's not: there's enough word fodder on this topic to emperically conclude, at the least).
Would terms that call for the gamer to be mature about their gaming bring back the *ESSENCE* of what MMORPGs were birthed around?
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
Point 1. No, I think that would be a really poor business model as MMO pricing is pretty much a standard acrross the board, double your prices you will alienate way more than half of your potential customers, for an MMO to be worth more than a standard subscription fee it would have to offer something as yet unseen.
Point 2. I think that "Here's an empty world, go kill each other coz that's all that there will ever be for this game" again alienates everone who isn't a 100% pvp player which is a very small portion of the population, if you want to get more people into the sandbox, give them more to do than hit each other with rocks. The other extreme is the kill 1000 rats and you can't move you the next zone (to kill 1000 wolves) until you have killed them all. Neither interest me at all really.
Point 3. Playing a slow build game is a risk, you are playing a game on the promise than things will slowly improve with subscriptions funding further content until the game snowballs into something recognisable as a complete game. It is a model I would be willing to attempt, assuming I can see the game has a vision and the devs are actually aiming towards it, rather than churning out something incomplete and leaving it to fester having recouped there money through preorder box sales. This is a perfect model for a small indie company, if a larger company tried this is would be seriously suspicious that it was simply a money grab. I think the trick to a slow build game is to offer a unique experience to begin with, but with a limited scope. A good example is what Xsyon is pushing out, (Assuming that there is something behind the promises) There has been a LOT of radical features announced, yet the scope of the game to begin with will be small (Limited land space, very limited tech) this way they can hopefully generate interest without breaking their initial budget and rolling out new tech and more land mass is a lot more believable that promises of completely radical gameplay.
In a sandbox the players create the environment, if that environment is conducive to people quitting in the first month, you will have a small game. If you want more people to join you in the sandbox, perhaps you should examine the people who think it's fun to crap in it. Low numbers are as much to do with the environment as the "FFA pvp" tag.
I think a big issue why "sandbox" games haven't done so well has been they were soley targetted at the 100% pvp crowd. It's my impression that these game offer little else apart from pvp with some mobs to train your skills up on. I think this image is what has restricted the popularity of these games. Together with the demographics of these games that attract the frenzied pvp crowd and especially griefers. Create an ecosystem consisting of 80% wolves and 20% sheep and in 6 months you'll end up with nothing but a hungry pack of wolves turning on each other. Turn that into a 90% sheep 10% wolves and overall the sheep get on with life, yes it's dangerous but overall safety in numbers means they aren't too worried, and there is plenty of scope for fun for the wolves too.
I'm not saying the sheep are those who avoid pvp at all costs, more that the wolves are those whose sole purpose in the game is to hunt people down, the less challenge the better. If the game doesn't offer areas of "relative" safety people get fed up of "oh! one shot again"
Games where on day 1 or 2 of logging into a game and you are faced with players that go out of their way to basically make new/low level players lives a misery (yes, there are players like that out there who play full loot FFA pvp because it means they can pick this no risk combat) and retention rates will be low. If the environment isn't conducive to fthe game being mostly fun the chances of the game growing is minimal. Most people don't find being repeatedly one shot by a guy going out of his was to harrass as "fun". My personal experience of FFA pvp can be summed up as frustrating and not fun in any way, I was driven away from the game before I even got a chance to participate in pvp, unless you can count being one shot by max level griefers as participating. I won't say never again, but certainly never again in that format that allows/encourages griefing without little consequence.
In reality the whole Sandbox/Theme Park thing is a grey area, you can have a level based game with enough content and choices about how you want to play that it doesn't really resemble a theme park at all. I certainly wouldn't regard VG as a themepark from levels 1-50, everything SOE introduced afterward has been incredibly linear and repetitive, but the initial vision was giving the players a lot of freedom. Other games it feels like you are on rails and can't even turn you head levelling is so controlled. Level or Skill based I don't actually mind, just give me enough freedom over my character and how I play it to make me feel part of the world.
I suppose my ideal game is one than gives a good deal of freedom of how to play, offers plenty to do outside pvp, and offers a deal of depth to the world. It's my impression that some of these FFA pvp sandboxes are incredibly shallow with the only draw being the FFA pvp. It's fairly obvious that the smaller the scope of the game the less audience it will appeal to.
Would we accept a higher monthly fee for "our game?"
I would - I've said so here and elsewhere. The 14.99/mo sub fee was established how long ago? And how much have prices risen since then? By rights we should be paying 25.00 a month for the same quality of game as back then, never mind the huge improvements in game technology we have now.
This static situation is exactly why microtransactions even exist. Prices have gone up, development costs have gone up, the product has improved, but our costs to get so much more than we used to get have not gone up due to some popular delusion that "nobody would play if it weren't 14.99 or less". This delusion is imposing an artificial barrier on the progress of the entire industry and forcing dreck models like sub + RMTs.
Fix the price fixing, and the industry will fix itself real quick. Prices will rise until companies can create the best quality games they can and maintain them for long-term play, instead of the current boom and bust model, then competition will flatten the pricing again.
Oh, and it doesn't have to be our Utopian sandbox either. Such a thing does not exist and will not exist, ever. You can give me any quality game for 20 or even 25.00/month, keep the RMT crap out of it, and keep it supported and GM'd so that it works as intended, and I'll be as happy a camper as the gameplay lets me be.
Make it Planetside circa 2004-2006 and I'll be freakin' ecstatic.
How do you tell a slow build from no build? If I put money on the table, a company will gladly take it, but once they have the money, how do I ensure they they actually do follow through on their implied promises to improve the game? No, I think as a game consumer, I have to have finite patience, I have to be willing to walk away if the say-do ratio drops too low or if the game simply isn't fun. As much as I'd like to pick one game and stay with it forever, there simply aren't any market mechanisms that can guarantee that loyalty will translate into continued improvement. You can only see successful slow burns in hindsight.
Ok, Good post and I will try to field these questions in order.
1) Yes, I would accept a higher monthly fee for a game. I have incidentally payed higher than the traditional $15 fee a few times. Whether it be from a cash shop or monthly fee plus some services, I rarely just pay $15 a month for the entire lifespan of my relationship to the game.
If you factor in buying expansions for certain games (wow) it averages out to more than 15 bucks. But not many look at it that way.
2) Yes, I would and normally do. I rarely feel the pinch of lack of content. Granted, if I started playing a game with NO CONTENT such as been the case with Mortal Online, it would bore me. But if I liked the game itself I would give the devs a chance to "gel" I understand there are many challenges of being a new mmorpg developer. Not everyone is going to be 100%, 100% of the time.
I'm willing to overlook some things, and some things I just won't. Lack of customer service is one of the BIG dealbreakers for me.
3) Yes, as I stated above I would give them time to grow into lets say a "CCP". Most times I just tend to sit back and wait to see how they handle the growth process, making changes to the game as they go along. Sometimes I don't watch the game as much as the company.
For example: Funcom. They have some such a long way and made such strides to improve AoC. I do not like AoC, its not the game I like to play. But it doesn't mean I didn't like Anarchy or I'm not going to play Secret World. I am pulling for them because I have seen a great effort from them in improvements. They have a good grasp on community matters and good customer service. I can see that over the years working in the industry they have "gelled" but haven't seen the success that some other co's have had.
So to sum this all up. If The Secret World was released, hypothetically it was a sandbox game with a realistic economy. It had EVE's time based skillpoint system or Darkfalls repetitive use skill system. It had all the things I want in an MMO, because the list is longer and getting longer every day. I would pay WELL OVER 15 smackaroos to play it and have the ultimate MMO experience "FOR ME".
I know I'm long winded, but it was a topic that stirred some thought.
Really nice post above. It makes several good points.
I would deffinately have to say "no way" to a higher priced subscription fee. For several reasons, the main reason being... MMORPGs are very much so, an economy of scale. What that (basically) means is, initially, when sub numbers are low, the cost of reimbursement for initial investment, the cost of daily ongoing costs to run the game and the cost of present and future development takes up a very large portion of the subscription payment. However, once the sub numbers go up, the costs of running the game are spread out over more players, meaning that only a smaller portion of each subscription fee goes to "paying the bills".
Eventually, if they have done things right, they will get to a point where, like in the case of WoW, with so many subs, the cost of running the game barely makes up a fraction of a percent of the total subscription fee. Meaning everything else is simply pure and total profit. While I do not in any way, shape, or form, have a problem with the generation of profits, I do have a HUGE problem with games and developers like Blizzard, who feel the need to charge for game expansions, when they are making so much money per subscription fee already.
The reason why? Simple, and it leads me to the second reason why I would not support a higher subscription fee. Developers like CCP and their game, EVE Online, have shown me and the world that you can run a successful game, at a standard $15 a month fee, and never, ever, EVER charge "extra" for the expansions they put out, and yet still remain profitable and successful. Nor do they use or support any frivilous Cash Shop or RMT services. Yes, they do have the standard extra fees for character changes and stuff like that. They also have the pay cash for time cards, thus selling them to other players for in-game money feature. I would not classify either of those in the same realm as these other Cash Shop / Sub+ RMT scams the current developers are trying to get away with.
I've gone on long enough, just on the higher subscription fee thing. I will have to get back later on the other two points asked. I'm sure someone somewhere needs a break from my ramblings.
Maligar Kelison
Threat Removal
No
Yes
Yes
Godspeed my fellow gamer
Fallen Earth developers seem to go the EVE route in the way that they carefully plan the content release (lvl cap is 46atm and is supposed to be 150 in the end), while at the same time taking the time to listen to the playerbase.
Untill now, their contentupdates have been very good and they also keep adressing bugs every few patches in between the content updates. They have a very good balance between releasing content, fixing bugs and listening to player suggestions.
On top of that if you consider that they are an Indie company, they show that you dont even need a major MMO producer for this as long as you carefully plan the development.
1. Yeah, easily. And you would too if you had your dream game releasing tomorrow, teasing you with features you've waited years for. I consider the ~£10 I pay on a single subscription fee already very low, considering all the hours of entertainment I get for it a month.
2. (answer based on the assumption that content = quests, raids, instances, etc) Yes, that's the definition of a sandbox. It doesn't need 'rides' to keep me entertained.
3. No. I'm too inclined to say 'I'll come back in X months when Y problems are solved'. That only really works if everyone else doesn't do the same though... or those who do stick it out and keep paying end up shaping the game into something I don't want to play anymore, as the developers rightly try to keep their paying customers happy.
Well, since I'm certainly in the group you are pointing at with this topic, here goes:
Would we accept a higher Monthly fee for "our" game?
Damn skippy. Pardon my french. Jon, you bring up the point of some folks supposedly on board at first and then jumping ship mid way through development. Valid concern, for sure, and one than can easily be countered by the developer, oh, being up front with total game design and what elements and features they are going to put in and, most importantly, sticking to that list. As Jennings wrote in his recent article the developer would have to ditch publishers so that they would have the freedom and time to make a quality game. I just don't believe anymore that game companies aren't revealing their systems because they are afraid someone else will pick them up. I now think it's more of they have no freaking idea of how they are going to do it in the first place until a week before they "reveal" it. Such "down the road" revelations are cause for people to jump off the bandwagon as it may be a system they don't like.
So yes, it's be nice to see MMO companies actually, oh, sit down and think about what systems they want in the game sum total, outline how they interact with each other, announce them and then not launch until they get them all in. Perception currently is they are throwing all of the cake ingredients into the stove before reading directions and doing initial preparation.
Would we accept minimal developer content?
Seriously, though.The people you hear complaining about no content are in my opinion the themepark warriors. Those folks love developer directed content and consume it faster than a speeding bullet. If you have heard a sandbox gamer of the like you are addressing hear state such things it because a) it's true, b) we got no other modern sandbox games to go to so we have to get our MMO gaming fix in these themeparks and c) the game doesn't have any detailed tools through which sandboxers can invent their own content.
If a sandbox game has wide ranging and intertwined toolsets through which players can build/create items with which to forge stories, they keep themselves occupied. If a developer provides such an exhaustive set of tools as a skeleton the players will fill that skeleton with mass.
Would we accept a "slow build"?
I think that many of us asking for such a sandbox game would accept it. That said I don't agree that it has to be a slow build. In fact I think if all the developer had to worry about was the interaction of the various game systems (tools) and coming up with new ways for them to interact it'd less of a pain than trying to come up with new story ideas and quests and testing the new quests and raids, etc. The world would develop as fast as the players made it happen, building settlements, etc.
Anyway, I truly think it would work. If a company actually threw as much money as they had toward, say WAR or AoC, at a game where they only had to put in game systems that were tools for the players to build with and not worry about traditional themepark content, I think it'd work well. It'd certainly carry over 250,000 subs world wide if visually it looked like a serious effort. That and I know there are at least that many of us "old farts" as one poster likes to call us in another thread out there who would love to have the story-telling and world building back in our hands as opposed to picking lines of dialogue and having a story told to us.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
I won't pay more but the rest, if the game is good enough I would easily tolerate and maybe even enjoy if done correctly.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
Well as long as I don't have to face this stupid Wow+ community again, I would be willing to pay more but according to that wanting a clear stated destination for the game. Playing Darkfall right now and yes I accept a slow build.
So all in all if done right, I would accept all of the stated options. I think playing a "privilege" REAL MMORPG would also lead to a much better community, mabe something like 1999!
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
To add my own views on this, I must say that the answer is highly dependent on the type of game in offer. Working with the assumption that we are talking about each individual's dream game, then I could provide a provisional YES. More specifically, my onw dream game could be (only very very briefly) described as a full, deep sandbox design, in an open interactive world with no artificial restrictions (save those that can be loosely described as realistic), based around a dark fantasy setting- something along the lines of Micheal Moorcock's Mutliverse/ Eternal Champion creations, or a horror fiction setting (think World of darkness) or even a science fiction theme along the line of the Shadowrun RPG. In addition there would need to be a strong emphasis, or I should rather say that the game will be designed around, a proper role-playing experience, and by that I do not mean having a set of numerical values that in one way or another increase over-time. I simply mean deep immersion and support in acting out your character's persona.
With the above premises in mind :
Would we accept a higher monthly fee for "our game?"
Granted that the above criteria are sufficiently met I would accept and higher monthly fee in the area of 20 to 25$. Anything higher I don't think is viable, nor, personally, acceptable.
Would we accept minimal developer content?
Player driven content >>>>>>>> developer drive content. Personally a quest driven game of the traditional variety is a big no.
Therefore and big yes here. A well thought (and built of course) sandbox game needs the bare minimum in terms of content of the usual sort.
But... and it is a big one.. if we are talking about lack of tools for creating player driven content, lack of areas to explore, or lack o depth in lore and the game world itself, then the answer must be NO.
And while on this subject, I rather have more depth and less breadth to start with than the other way around - and then building slowly upon that stable basis. For instance I would rather be given a relatively small area to start with, gone with care and loving attention to detail, rather than lots of place to visit that lack depth and purpose.
Would we accept a "slow build?"
I think I probably just answered this. Quick answer: YES. The crucial condition, as described earlier is that developers pay attention to detail and try to bring the game world alive, start small and build on that. And I hold a similar view as far as subscribers/costumer base is concerned. Focus on your most fundamental player base and build on and around that. I am of the opinion that (unless you are WoW) a loyal player base is the best long term investment for any MMO that pans on being around for long. They will support you, provide free marketing and advertising by talking to their friends about it, give valuable input to developers, just as long as you treat them with respect.
But then again... what are the chances of something like that happening?
What might be interesting if there was an opportunity for players to add content themselves.
After building the builder, content could then be provided by the community itself. A bit LPMud-like.
How open world/sandbox would this be and it might even be economically feasible...
Its funny you should mention that, I was just about to post my thoughts in a similar vein.
First, though, what people need to bear in mind is that what most folks consider "niche" games are not. WoW is an outlier/aberration, and trying to fit the industry into the you don't have X million subscribers is a poor way of looking at things. When looking at true subscriptions numbers and dropping your outliers (highest/lowest) most games fall into an average grouping of subscriptions. No game developer is going to recreate WoW. Even Blizzard won't recreate WoW with their in development game, it was the perfect storm at the perfect time (simple, easy to grasp, you could pretty much run it on a Commodore 64 etc.). Talking about how a sandbox game would be a niche game is actually an incorrect moniker . Or one could say that every single MMO out there that isn't WoW is a niche game. Whatever semantic argument you want to make it doesn't really change the outcome.
With regards to the questions:
1. Would I pay more?
Somewhat more yes. $40-50/month however is impractical. Not from a standpoint that the price may or may not be too high, but simply that the average consumer is not going to be swayed by that when other games, inferior or not, have a much lower monthly subscription fee. I also don't think its necessary as ongoing development costs can be kept fairly low
2. The sandbox
A sandbox relies on players to make the content happen. It can have an overarching theme but it isn't reliant on the developer to provide content for it to function. This frees up developers to work on the game mechanics, system stability etc. Splitting developer focus with fixed resources (i.e. budget) and financially required deadlines is exactly why most MMOs are released with a multitude of bugs and a lack of content.
However, there's an opportunity that can be done in a sandbox game that would also free up developer time (and hence keep developer costs low) and that is user generated content. We can pull inspiration from offline single player games such as Oblivion or offline/online multiplayer games like the NeverWinter Nights franchise its easy to see that there are a great many very talented player/fans who enjoy making content, for no payment other than the enjoyment of doing so and the gratitude of other players. It should be fairly easy to leverage those content developers. They're there and they love doing so.
As such what a developer could do would be to provide the worldbuilding kit for these player developers to generate quests/missions and other content. While some safeguards would need to be in place, likely with regards to loot, such that they couldn't make a hidden quest to kill a rat for a billion coins, such a system could work. An editor or two for this content would also be required prior to it being activated to ensure it wouldn't be imbalancing and also to ensure that there are no copyright violations for existing IPs. These quests could also be aged out, both to not overly populate the world (or servers) with unused content as well as to keep the game world dynamic. While in such a system quality would obviously be hit or miss, the same can be said for theme park games with developer provided content
3. The slow burn
Allowing players to develop much of the content with the appropriate tools would also involve the slow burn buildup as like any of the games that allow this type of world building initial content is often small and simple as the player developers are learning the system, but often grows to very in depth and involved content.
Providing tools like that would, in my mind keep developer costs low, and as a result keep monthly fees lower. It would allow for a truly dynamic world when combined with the more traditional sandbox elements such that the players can live in a virtual world and not return to their starting city five years later in real time to see Fippy charging headlong to Qeynos yet again. Finally it would invigorate the player base with continuously flowing content, and remove the grind aspects that all Themepark games degenerate into due to lack of content (because no matter how you want to look at it, no matter how slowly you play to end game, eventually in a theme park game you reach it and its oh boy a new expansion now we have 1 new raid we can do every Saturday night until we all get our new gear to wait for the next expansion).
Eve Online and Second Life seem to be succeeding at this in very different ways.
yrs,
Shava