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the beauty of being niche
osmunda
Member Posts: 1,087
This is an attempt to respond to cirsyndic without derailing the thread he posted in.
Originally posted by cirsyndic
Too little too late.
The reason they call it a niche market is because it has a limited growth potential. The majority of the MMO player population is going to be busy with Cataclysm for the next few months at least, and there are other games who are timing their upcoming expansions for when Cata's novelty wears off. SV on the other hand has spent the last 6 months in knee-jerk reactive attempts at fixing the myriad of bugs that plague the game, doubt they have anything left over from their 5 years of coding that survived 2 complete engine rewrites.
The minority who showed interest in MO throughout it's Beta phases and subsequent release, have in most cases left the game for other pastures or gone into "hibernation" of sorts while the game gets good. A small fragment of that minority - we're talking ~100 players at best - are still playing. Mainly because there is/was no other sandbox on the market to play, besides Darkfall.
But as I said, for the most of the small niche interested in MO it's a "case closed" scenario. From my experience MMO gamers very rarely give games a second chance, and usually when they do they are reminded of the reasons why they left in the first place very quickly. At the end of the line, there really isn't anything in MO to actually have fun with. The population has dropped so much that it's pointless to even try go randomly kill people. There wasn't enough sand to keep the sheep in game, now the wolves are getting bored at biting at each other and they'll slowly drift off.
But new games are coming out, some new Developers will step up and promise the next pie-in-the-sky game and it'll start over again. MO won't see a miracle of 13,000 subs coming back - which is the number they need to "break even". They might get 50, 100, even a 1000 subs coming back if the game is incredibly good and polished and fixed; but the fundamental problem will still remain - they targeted a niche market, and they exhausted the market potential in 2 years.
The only thing remaining is to prolong the agony for a while longer until the loans close in and money runs out. Everyone on this forum can lie, SV and Henrik can lie, but at the end of the day the math of their financial report and stock situation doesn't and cannot lie.
It seems to me you are trying to have it both ways. MO clearly is a "niche" game that appeals to a limited subset of MMO gamers. Of course that also means that it appeals to a subset of players that have little to no interest in Cataclysm or any of the MMOs that are trying to avoid releasing in the shadow of Cataclysm's release. MO is much more likely to be impacted by other factors (Perpetuum, Minecraft going from alpha to Beta, Wurm online having a new tutorial and more opportunity for FTP).
There are 122 people on the MO forums right now, so I somehow doubt your statement of 100 people playing is accurate.
While it is certainly possible that you are right about the ultimate fate of MO, your credibility is hurt by the fact that you claim you've quit the game when that helps your argument and that you have played played recently when that helps your argument.
Comments
The 'niche' market in terms of MMO does not make much sense since you cannot really classify MMOs neither it makes any business sense.
Why do you think that people who like MO are not also people who like WoW? Many people enjoy different game types. Heck, just read the latest Survivor Guy. You know, the guy that wrote the review for MO? Well.. he is back playing WoW... by choice (he seemed to have pulled out of Darkfall a little pre-maturely).
Do all MO players want to go play WoW? No... but have many of them gone over to try Cataclysm? Undoubtedly. Same as every other game. It's the 12,000,000 pound gorilla sitting in the corner.
PS: As for the forums... I would wager that many of the people reading those forums are checking out the feedback on the patch to see if the game has gotten better. Heck.. I'm logged in there right now
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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You cannot really have it any other way then "both ways" since the "market" or if you prefer, the players targeted by games are not static variables. Consider; if you've driven Honda's for 10 years, that doesn't mean that you will drive Honda's for the rest of your life. Next year, you might swap to a Ford. Few years down the road, you'll get bored of it and swap to Toyota. Do you see what I'm getting at here?
While the niche MO is targeting is certainly taste-wise, very anti-WoW, there is always that percentage of people who will be tempted to try it out. Some will try it out to see how much it has changed since they played "back in the day", some will try it out just because it's WoW,... etc. There is a large variety of perfectly understandable and acceptable reasons why an individual might or might not try Cataclysm.
While I agree that MO's niche will be more impacted by the likes of Perpetuum, it doesn't necessarily mean it will not be impacted at all by Cataclysm, or any other Themepark MMO coming out in the near or distant future. They all have the "potential" to impact on MO's cake. Here's just an example: Your old gaming buddies want you to come play TOR with them, you're not in a guild in MO, what do you do? 9 out of 10 cases will go relive the "glory days" with old mates and think about coming back to MO at a later date.
Regarding my credibility as you call it, it's quite simple really. I never paid my sub since I was a GM since release, and I refused to pay for it after SV removed my last month's game-time card without a note of explanation. That's when I quit MO. A month back, I started playing on one of the accounts that wasn't played anymore and still had the 3-month sub running. Same reasoning as above... To play with a few old friends. After we trashed the place and the debacle with GM-assisted palisade gates, the last group of people I liked playing with went off the game (~60 accounts closed), some went to Darkfall, some to Perpetuum. I went to Perpetuum with a good chunk of our guild, and we'll grow from there.
I do have to say, it is VERY refreshing to come into a game that just launched; and the only bug you experience for 2 weeks is the ocassional bugged AI mob. Can only laugh now as I think to MO's version of AI with swimming Risar mobs you bug into walls to tame your bullhorse, in Perp the AI actually tries to trap you and draw you in so its buddies can finish you off. Quality piece of programing, couldn't say the same about MO. Anyone who unpacked the game and actually went through the code will notice the funny elements like Xbox and PS3 control support, max 16 players (think that's in the INI's actually), and the whole code written like the BB stuff you get on forums.
Oh and best thing of all was playing around with the ini's. Like all FPS games, once you customize the game so all the annoying graphic bits are removed (like foliage) it actually runs smoothly. Tho all trees are in perpetual autumn and there's no grass anywhere, bit dull.
The person who posted the document was a former GameMaster for Starvault and was copied in on the correspondence as part of that function.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Can you link the post? I don't mean to be overly skeptical, but I've seen a lot of people go apes**t over obvious falsifications before around these parts, I just don't wanna be duped by rlmcoy1985.
Just ask Cyndic.... it's his Email afterall...
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Maerlyn sent the email fully aware of it being leaked, don't be fools
As for niche.. For me, the term is an excuse used by bad devs who are not good enough to design their game to appeal to a large market, and still remain it's original visions and ideals, sorry.
I don't know in what world do you live, but in mine a game with full loot and FFA pvp ruleset will NEVER appeal to large market as in 'casual customer'. To appeal to large market you have only 2 options.
First one is, run WoW.
Second one is copy WoW.
Is EVE online a game with bad design because it doesn't appeal to every WoW zergling in existance? No, its a game directed at players with specifical needs, in other words, a niche game. Just as Darkfall, just as Mortal.
So now that you know what niche really means you can use it in correct sense.
You would have completely valid point only if you were to talk about game like Warhammer Online or LOTRO trying to be a 'niche' game.
I know well what niche means, and my point stands correct. EvE could gain more subs if they spend more time on polishing new user experince and their drastic learning curve. However, with few hundred subs, I would not call EvE niche. Just because it doesn't appeal to everyone, does not mean it should be labeled as niche either. WoW doesn't appeal to everyone, yet you dont see some people calling it for niche, do you?
It may be possible to appeal to a larger market even with FFA PvP and full loot (as UO did), as long as you are not stubborn enough to enforce hardcore aspect in every single feature of the game, and the game is designed well. However, it is also possible to make a hardcore game without full loot, and I think deep inside you are fully aware of that. And without full loot, it too would appeal to a larger market.
Long story short, I would not count 350k subs as really niche. While I do agree that I exxegerated in my previous post, I still stand correct in my belief that often "niche" is just an excuse, as it is with MOs case. They can do lot more with the game if they just stop being such a die hard hardcore fans. They had to introduce userfriendly features such as newbie trainers, tasks, light pillars at priests, compass, ect, if they faced it and made it from the very start, population of the game would probably be bit larger, despite their main problem being bugs and bad trial-and-error approach on almost every feature in the game.
I think an important aspect, that many people seem to overlook, is that, niche or not, the game needs to be good. And MO, is not.
It is buggy, does not fully use the Unreal engine and has a severe lack of content due to it being incomplete. That is not niche, that is simply a poor game.
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Have to agree with the guy above me.
Its a poor game, might be good in a year or two, for now its still Alpha/Beta.
There is something about you that makes me think you did not even played the game and opinion you present is not your own, but taken from anti mo crusaders.
Currently the game have no major bugs, it does not lag, problems are with large battles, but what mmo does deal well with that? Content is being added patch by patch, there really are thinks to do. That is if you drop bloodlust and start seeing other things besides pvp. I've been bored in MO before, but in its current state? Lack of things to do is last thing I would tell describing MO.
I wish that people who do not actually and currently play the game were not allowed to talk about it as their opinion is often outdated or just borrowed from someone else.
You did not exaggerated anything, you stand correct.
As often on there forums, people misplace cause and consequence. Niche market isn't determined by product but market needs. Problem is, those market needs aren't easily to define and classify in terms of MMO thus there isn't really anything as 'niche' MMO market.
Just because someone is doing something differently does not make it a niche.
@ Derpidum: That's exactly what you already have in the official MO forums... So you already got your wish over there!
@ Yamota: Exactly!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Derpidum
You know just as well as anyone that MO forums are under heavy sensorship. This week I seen quite a few posts deleted, it was not a rant, they simply replied that the guy who was asking if MO is ready to play yet should wait a couple of months. That is all they said "Give the game few more months, it is not really polished yet". The posts got deleted. So please don't bullshit about mods only deleting rants.
As for the game.. I honestly don't care about how MO is. What however grinds my gear is that a company like SV, which been treating customers and their volunteers like crap, releases an unfinished and poorly designed product and gets away with it, with fans just swallowing anything they serve. Grow a pair, will you. I really hope this wont become an example for other indie developers that they can release a poor product and still get away with it.
Well, if you really want to know, I do not play and stick to MO because of how awesome the game is or what not, but because it grants me really unique experience(I was just fed up of all the wow clones growing up like shrooms after rain and DF got some inner "bleh" that keeps me away from even trying trial, I'm not into spaceships or robots so I didn't really had a choice).
And if you don't care about the game then may I ask you why are you keep posting negative things in game you obviously do not play anymore, if you ever did? Sure, I agree we had crap for the last few months, no one will deny that, but it finally started to shape up to its promissed form, which I like, MO is finally resambling game I signed up for one and a half year ago.
Hell, I could say go and look how darkfall started and how it turned out. MO is doing exactly the same from what I see with one difference-it improves faster. This is why I stick to it(have to wait somewhere for Dark Millennium Online anyway), not because 'it have potential', not because its 'awesome sandbox', but because its really unique, caters to my playstyles and most important-I enjoy it.
My point is, sure, the crap product was released-just like Darkfall, just like Aion, just like WHO, just like AoC and you know what? They all improved to acceptable standards, just as MO is on a forward path now more then ever with really great improvements and fixes over last weeks.
I think some of the confusion comes from the shift in player base. In my opinion there are two markets (with subsets).
ONE:
There is the old school or experience MMO market of players who play a lot and consider MMOs their main form of entertainment. I fit into this category. Even though I work all week and have a family etc. I manage to log way more hours than I should in MMOs. Most of them bore me to death so I can imagine how the hardcore all day players feel.
MO is a niche of this market.
TWO:
People who started playing video games with consoles and happen to have had a computer at home as well. . they started out with things like Runsecape etc. They play on weekends and the odd weeknight when they feel the addiction kick in. They spend lots of time doing other things for entertainment.
Due to the limited system requirements of WoW. . they have picked up a lot of these gamers all over the world. The part that works for blizzard is that these people pay the same $15 a month as everyone else. WoW also has many hard core gamers who enjoy the grind of raiding or PvP. My guess is that about 90% of people playing WoW or maybe even higher have never been "looted" before. They missed the early days of UO and Meridian. . Shadowbane. .etc.
This is (again, in my opinion) why MO has such fast skill gains. They are working at the first audience who might have a life outside of gaming. They are creating a virtual world rather than a button masher or railed game.
If I am right and the possible player base is full of scenario ONE people. . then they are on track (finally) to get that audience to play their game. The problem is that that audience doesn't have a lot of time to mess around with bugs and downtime. When I work all day I don't want to get home and be frustrated by my entertainment. Having said that I don't want something that is so simple that I can go to the can in the middle of a large battle or download a plug in that can do my job for me.
It is very possible that MO missed the boat with a lot of people. Their only hope left is that nothing else comes along that appeals to players like myself.
Of course there are a lot of grey areas in between but being a niche game in a market that is already likely declining is going to be a tough ride either way. DFO is doing okay because it offers enough of an "action" element to it to appeal to a little wider audience. They are also redoing the UI and adding offline skill gains for in game currency. It seems they realized that my audience is not big enough to support them (or they made too many mistakes).
Mortal has two choices. . stick the the vision. . which they seem finally to be doing and gain a small but likely loyal following OR start heading away from simulation and head toward hack and slash. . which I would say they where doing. If they go that way they have to compete with everyone else. . but have the possibility of gaining more people just by the sheer number of players in that category. I hope that they keep it a sim. . . but then again. . maybe I don't have time for that.
It could be they are trying to appeal to an audience that doesn't really exist anymore (or at least have the available time) to sink into a game like they used to. Maybe there is a new crop of gamers looking for the same thing though.
All I know is that they have to pick one and stick to it or they will lose everyone!
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
Despite me understanding the point you are making, I kinda disagree that you can put any of the above games in the same boat with MO. Sure, they were unpolished at start, but they had enough of features to entertain players and no game breaking bugs. Aion was a rather boring grind, but it was working. Same goes for WHO, it had minor bugs all over it (except for CTD, that one was annoying), but it was working. I can't judge AoC since I have not played it past starting area, but I think same goes for it, despite lack of content in the endgame. Darkfall.. a bit closer to MO, yet it had about double the amount of MOs content at release, i think.
Ok, so we can make the list shorter and leave DF, AoC(no content above 20lvl, game had 80) and add EvE to the mix(anyone remembers eve at release? it looked poorly to say the least and had incredibely high learning curve with no tutorials or hints on what to do while being way more complicated then MO). And Darkfall sure, had more content, bugged to hell if even working, exploitable to hell and back, not fixed for months after release, but had more content, I give you that(and I know because I was following the game really closely as I wanted to play it badly).
The point is, all that games, MO including lost siginifant amount of players at and few months post release and all of them regained subscriptions, some faster, some slower, some just started to(MO).
I am pretty safe about next months in MO as the game is being worked on constantly and newbies are running around towns constantly, not release like level, but constant incom of yellow shields(flag for first character on account only for 8h 'newbie safety') is seen by me.
New player experience as of today is very pleasent in MO compared to what it used to be. I have constantly something to do so I keep playing and this is what mmos are about.
Well, EvE is a good example, but don't you think it is a bit weird to compare a game from 2010 to one from 2003? I mean, eve was probably in development already in 2000, and I think that you can't just ignore the leap technology taken in the past 10 years, allowing developers to ship more advanced, and faster made games. If we say that a game made in 2010 is equal to one made in 2003, polish/stabilitty wise, something is wrong..
DF however is a good example, I guess. But game aside, it is down to the company. Despite me not liking Tasos personally, I can't claim they got loads of skeletons in their closet, as SV does. DEven thou it is questionable that such unpolished games release with the current technology, I honestly don't mind waiting for the game to improve, but it is down to the attitude of the company then, if I am to give them that chance. With that in mind, I can't really say SV convinced me to do so.
Sure, lot of the rumours are made up stories by haters, however I doubt any sane person would just brush them aside, since there have to be some base to them, that many rumours and accusations don't just take place due to nothing.
And here is the point I am trying to make. Sure, I agree that SV did its mistakes and took a kick from the community for it, but MO is not just Henrik happily talking about improvements in 'nearest future', its about SV actually doing that improvements and pulling that stuff together finally, I give them additional credit, but one can credit a company only for so long, happily when I promissed myself that I will put MO away they started to fix all the crucial things that were making me not play for more then 30 mins dialy or not log in at all, now after changes and patches I actually do enjoy logging in and look forward to it. I'm not part of the bloodthirsty pvp crowd, so imagine how hard time I had up to now. Well, I was really loosing my hope, but as I said, game started to shape up into what was advertised to us before even beta started and that will most likely make me defend the game from shit talk which is present here in almost every thread and play and actually enjoy it. I remember all the past and history, good and bad one and I see where the game is going, this is why I'm calm about its future despite the unjust amounts of hate it gets.
@cirsyndic";
You kind of made my point, " the last group of people I liked playing with went off the game (~60 accounts closed), some went to Darkfall, some to Perpetuum. I went to Perpetuum with a good chunk of our guild, and we'll grow from there." How many went to WOW ? I'm not saying Cataclysm and other upcoming MMOs will have no impact on MO, just that the impact will be very limited. MO, Darkfall, EVE and Perpetuum more or less all fit the same "niche" in the MMO genre.
Your post from the other thread (the one I quoted in the OP) reads like you are trying to set MO up against the 6 million pound gorilla (WOW) instead of the more accurate comparisons. Compared to WOW, MO is a failure. Compared to other games in the same niche, not so much. I've seen population estimates for Darkfall ranging from 3,000 to 20,000 http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/285610/page/1 with 12,000 being an estimate several months ago from the a list of clan memberships (sorry can't find that thread). Perpetuum has a total 4,891 registered forum members. Reliable estimates of MO's population are hard to come by, but it's somewhere in this neighborhood.
As for forum population, there are 108 viewing right now, so if there was a spike in viewers due to the latest patch (as slapshot said) then it seems to be persistent.
As to multiple subscriptions, was the three month subscription on your second account. If so, I don't understand why you bought multiple accounts, paid for 3 months in advance on one of them, then did a chargeback on only one of the accounts. If it was someone else's account, they really should keep in mind that you don't give out your passwords to anyone.
"funny elements like Xbox and PS3 control support, max 16 players" How does this reflect on the programming at Starvault? These are almost certainly legacy elements from the Unreal engine. Taking them out has the potential to cause unexpected problems and the only benefit it would provide is making the game 1-2 MB smaller (and maybe eliminate some weird behavior if you have one of those controllers connected to your computer and actually push the buttons while playing)
That statement doesn't make any sense. A "Niche" game is a game that would appeal to a small number of players relative to the total gamer population. How well that game fills the niche in the gaming ecosystem determines how well that game will do.
For instance, an old school sandbox game will not appeal to a large audience. It would be a niche game by definition. That doesn't mean it couldn't be a quality game created by skilled developers.**
** MO doesn't fall into that category (imo).
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I just looked... 113 people but it says that 67 of them are guests....
So I don't really know what kind of correlation to in game population that means...
If you say the population is booming now... welll I can't argue with you other than to just point out that similar statements have been made continuously since launch (by other people). Maybe THIS time it's the truth... I dunno. I honestly use Aetheryn as a guide. I have never found him to make an untruthful nor exagerated statement about the game...
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018