Depends if free also meant there will be future content planned and actual devs working on the title again. Other than that no.
Agreed, VGs problem is that once they fixed the game up they left it with almost no updates and that is what makes VGs subs shrink.
I think that's very true. Players want to feel like their game is being developed, like it will be around for a while and that the company who is in charge of the game values its success.
dollars to donuts that if they actively developed it, it would have more subs. Maybe not "tons" more but far more than it does now.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
If vanguard was reduced never mind free I'd play it.
I'm not paying £10 a month for a half empty game that could close its doors at any given moment I would pay £5 though
VG has been enticing me a lot recently as a tide over till TOR however I simply cannot justify the £10 a month for the above reasons.
Costing roughly $1-1.50 to host a player it would still be good profit for a dieing game for SOE but I doubt they will ever budge and hurt their precious EQ2.
Depends if free also meant there will be future content planned and actual devs working on the title again. Other than that no.
Agreed, VGs problem is that once they fixed the game up they left it with almost no updates and that is what makes VGs subs shrink.
The thing is that while they were doing updates and had plans for content patches and all, the playerbase kept on shrinking. If you or anybody else owned Vanguard, and money spent on it is coming out of your pocket, would you continue staffing developer resources into a game with a rapid declining population?
That's an answer everybody has to ask themselves. If it was your money, would you continue to spend money into a game with a fast declining population after 3 years? People keep blaming SOE for this and that about Vanguard, but it really was SOE that allowed Vanguard to be "finished" in the first place. That first 2 years of launch was nothing but finishing the game up. Someone paid for all the developers, coders, and artists who spent time & resources to finish the game so it was at launch quality. At the very least they made the game playable so people didn't CTD or have weird things happen everytime they chunk.
It wasn't until after the 3rd year when they pulled the developer resources. So you gotta ask yourselves, would you be willing to keep forking the money from your own bank account for a game that saw rapidly shrinking population year after year, month after month. We all know the answer to that question.
Depends if free also meant there will be future content planned and actual devs working on the title again. Other than that no.
Agreed, VGs problem is that once they fixed the game up they left it with almost no updates and that is what makes VGs subs shrink.
Yes, and in addition for me, at this point for me, it is too old and dated without continuous content updates. I'll gladly pay a newer or upcoming studio $/month for a newer product, with improved everything (just about), and a very attentive development staff with an more active community.
Depends if free also meant there will be future content planned and actual devs working on the title again. Other than that no.
Agreed, VGs problem is that once they fixed the game up they left it with almost no updates and that is what makes VGs subs shrink.
The thing is that while they were doing updates and had plans for content patches and all, the playerbase kept on shrinking. If you or anybody else owned Vanguard, and money spent on it is coming out of your pocket, would you continue staffing developer resources into a game with a rapid declining population?
That's an answer everybody has to ask themselves. If it was your money, would you continue to spend money into a game with a fast declining population after 3 years? People keep blaming SOE for this and that about Vanguard, but it really was SOE that allowed Vanguard to be "finished" in the first place. That first 2 years of launch was nothing but finishing the game up. Someone paid for all the developers, coders, and artists who spent time & resources to finish the game so it was at launch quality. At the very least they made the game playable so people didn't CTD or have weird things happen everytime they chunk.
It wasn't until after the 3rd year when they pulled the developer resources. So you gotta ask yourselves, would you be willing to keep forking the money from your own bank account for a game that saw rapidly shrinking population year after year, month after month. We all know the answer to that question.
It's a good point, and more than valid. However, if I was interested in maintaining my subscribers and growing them i would want to make the game more attractive.
That's what makes Sony different than say CCP. It seems CCP was more about "this is our game and this is what we do, "this" game. Therefore we will continue to invest in it to make it a great game for our players and hopefully attract new players".
But Sony goes at it by looking at sub numbers and only putting resources toward the game based on those numbers. if those numbers go down then they just reduce the amount put into the game. However, if this was their only game they would probably want to put as much into the game as possible to attract more players.
CCP is very much behind their product because they don't have much else at the moment. Sony has many things, many divisions so if something tanks then it tanks. No reason to really put more into it.
at least that's how it seems to me.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
CCP is very much behind their product because they don't have much else at the moment. Sony has many things, many divisions so if something tanks then it tanks. No reason to really put more into it.
at least that's how it seems to me.
Oh I have my own complaints about SOE, one of which is how they go for quantity instead of quality. They keep creating and gobbling up games, stretching their dev resources thin. They also load their p2p games with too much RMT.
But when it comes to Vanguard, you gotta ask how long do you expect SOE to keep pumping resources into the game before it turns around? Vanguard never turned around. While the game has been fixed, improved, content added over the years, the playerbase as a whole kept on shrinking. So as a company that cares about budget and meeting the bottom line, do you keep putting more money into a game that gives you little to no return? If so, do you do it for 1 year? 2 years? 3 years? How long is an acceptable time frame?
I look at it from the start, where Vanguard clearly failed to deliver, the game wasn't finished when it launched. It was missing a lot of important aspects of a MMO, it was also missing a lot of the basics such as visible player helms, raid interface, class specialization, and of course all the technical issues & bugs that should not be there at launch. If SOE was really *that* bad, they would've left the game that way and never improved it. But on the contrary, they staffed the game with developers, programmers, and graphic artists (something you don't normally have after a game is launched or after an expansion cycle). The game was in full development mode for 3 years after launch, and they've done a LOT in those 3 years.
If by year 3, the game has been fixed, improved, and it even had a free content patch with level cap increase....if by then, the playerbase is still shrinking, you honestly can't say it's SOE's fault that people kept on leaving. SOE is bad, but they aren't *that* bad. They didn't leave Vanguard in that piss poor state it was in. They spent 2-3 years in full development mode to fix the game up. So I think it's a tad unfair to say SOE isn't like other companies because they gave up on VG after 3 years and pulled all dev resources from the game. I think anybody who has a bank account and has to work and pay bills knows you can't go on forever losing money on something.
imo of SOE they are in the mmo bizz just to make money on a mmo title and bail...its what huge companys do like soe ..not only are they in the mmo bizz but they are a huge electronic company wich alot of people seem to forget and mmo's make up a small portion of their money....every title they have had they have slowly stoped putting resources into because the game has slowly peaked off ..so what do they do..push out another game for about 6months..then another..besides eq, they still have many updates and expan all the time..and i think its just because it was sonys 1st and best HUGE hit in the mmo world and its the only real game they can hang their hat on..as for vanguard i truely think a f2p change and for them to market it f2p or f2p websites and sites like this would jumpstart this game in a huge way
Comments
I´d for sure try it out again if it went FTP
Depends if free also meant there will be future content planned and actual devs working on the title again. Other than that no.
Agreed, VGs problem is that once they fixed the game up they left it with almost no updates and that is what makes VGs subs shrink.
I think that's very true. Players want to feel like their game is being developed, like it will be around for a while and that the company who is in charge of the game values its success.
dollars to donuts that if they actively developed it, it would have more subs. Maybe not "tons" more but far more than it does now.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
If vanguard was reduced never mind free I'd play it.
I'm not paying £10 a month for a half empty game that could close its doors at any given moment I would pay £5 though
VG has been enticing me a lot recently as a tide over till TOR however I simply cannot justify the £10 a month for the above reasons.
Costing roughly $1-1.50 to host a player it would still be good profit for a dieing game for SOE but I doubt they will ever budge and hurt their precious EQ2.
The thing is that while they were doing updates and had plans for content patches and all, the playerbase kept on shrinking. If you or anybody else owned Vanguard, and money spent on it is coming out of your pocket, would you continue staffing developer resources into a game with a rapid declining population?
That's an answer everybody has to ask themselves. If it was your money, would you continue to spend money into a game with a fast declining population after 3 years? People keep blaming SOE for this and that about Vanguard, but it really was SOE that allowed Vanguard to be "finished" in the first place. That first 2 years of launch was nothing but finishing the game up. Someone paid for all the developers, coders, and artists who spent time & resources to finish the game so it was at launch quality. At the very least they made the game playable so people didn't CTD or have weird things happen everytime they chunk.
It wasn't until after the 3rd year when they pulled the developer resources. So you gotta ask yourselves, would you be willing to keep forking the money from your own bank account for a game that saw rapidly shrinking population year after year, month after month. We all know the answer to that question.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
Yes, and in addition for me, at this point for me, it is too old and dated without continuous content updates. I'll gladly pay a newer or upcoming studio $/month for a newer product, with improved everything (just about), and a very attentive development staff with an more active community.
It's a good point, and more than valid. However, if I was interested in maintaining my subscribers and growing them i would want to make the game more attractive.
That's what makes Sony different than say CCP. It seems CCP was more about "this is our game and this is what we do, "this" game. Therefore we will continue to invest in it to make it a great game for our players and hopefully attract new players".
But Sony goes at it by looking at sub numbers and only putting resources toward the game based on those numbers. if those numbers go down then they just reduce the amount put into the game. However, if this was their only game they would probably want to put as much into the game as possible to attract more players.
CCP is very much behind their product because they don't have much else at the moment. Sony has many things, many divisions so if something tanks then it tanks. No reason to really put more into it.
at least that's how it seems to me.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Oh I have my own complaints about SOE, one of which is how they go for quantity instead of quality. They keep creating and gobbling up games, stretching their dev resources thin. They also load their p2p games with too much RMT.
But when it comes to Vanguard, you gotta ask how long do you expect SOE to keep pumping resources into the game before it turns around? Vanguard never turned around. While the game has been fixed, improved, content added over the years, the playerbase as a whole kept on shrinking. So as a company that cares about budget and meeting the bottom line, do you keep putting more money into a game that gives you little to no return? If so, do you do it for 1 year? 2 years? 3 years? How long is an acceptable time frame?
I look at it from the start, where Vanguard clearly failed to deliver, the game wasn't finished when it launched. It was missing a lot of important aspects of a MMO, it was also missing a lot of the basics such as visible player helms, raid interface, class specialization, and of course all the technical issues & bugs that should not be there at launch. If SOE was really *that* bad, they would've left the game that way and never improved it. But on the contrary, they staffed the game with developers, programmers, and graphic artists (something you don't normally have after a game is launched or after an expansion cycle). The game was in full development mode for 3 years after launch, and they've done a LOT in those 3 years.
If by year 3, the game has been fixed, improved, and it even had a free content patch with level cap increase....if by then, the playerbase is still shrinking, you honestly can't say it's SOE's fault that people kept on leaving. SOE is bad, but they aren't *that* bad. They didn't leave Vanguard in that piss poor state it was in. They spent 2-3 years in full development mode to fix the game up. So I think it's a tad unfair to say SOE isn't like other companies because they gave up on VG after 3 years and pulled all dev resources from the game. I think anybody who has a bank account and has to work and pay bills knows you can't go on forever losing money on something.
Just my opinion anyway.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
imo of SOE they are in the mmo bizz just to make money on a mmo title and bail...its what huge companys do like soe ..not only are they in the mmo bizz but they are a huge electronic company wich alot of people seem to forget and mmo's make up a small portion of their money....every title they have had they have slowly stoped putting resources into because the game has slowly peaked off ..so what do they do..push out another game for about 6months..then another..besides eq, they still have many updates and expan all the time..and i think its just because it was sonys 1st and best HUGE hit in the mmo world and its the only real game they can hang their hat on..as for vanguard i truely think a f2p change and for them to market it f2p or f2p websites and sites like this would jumpstart this game in a huge way