Relax! You will get your boxed copy later. No worry.
That is NOT the issue. I got the stupid box but I also want a refund since it was implied that the game would be shipped Q3/Q4 2009 when I paid for the pre-order. Now we are in middle of Q1 2010 and I still dont have an actual date for the release.
If that is not a legitimate reason for refund then I dont know what is. Companies cannot take peoples money for pre-orders and then postpone the game indefinetely. That is just plain ridicilous and borderline scamming.
I understand the game isn't exactly of ideal quality. However what does it matter if it's gone gold or not, you can play it either way?
Uhm, no. The game is in Beta and I dont enjoy playing in a beta where my character can be deleted at any time and the game is expected to be full of bugs.
Using that sort of logic you will never again see a game of the eve ilk. Absolutely wrong IMHO The fact of the matter is large dev houses will not release deep involving games as each new feature added reduces its prospective audience and they are all about the numbers. That's what we call an opinion. My opinion is that both Indy and large developers are in the business to make money. Both are usually investor driven. Both can have good development teams with Vision (tm Brad Mcquaid) Indy devs, especially those new to the scene will make mistakes, run out of funds and pretty much always release a game when it is still in development (foregoing an mmo is always in development, more for features than mechanics). Because we have become trained to accept half finished and buggy products by this industry... and each one we accept just lowers the bar for the next one to be shoveled our way. Right now MO hasn't released, no-one is paying a sub and a majority in OB havn't paid anything. But those that did pay $50, $75 or $118 7+ months ago are understandably disapointed in a game that was supposed to originally ship in Summer of 09 but only now seems to be getting to a point where most would start closed beta testing. Expectations have increased to a point where only $20-50M games will ever get past the bs about being unfinished and then will be ripped by older mmo players because they feel empty as they needed to get the numbers in. It's insane. Only if they continue to follow the same old model of $14.99 subscriptions. There is GOOD money to be made if someone offers a premium service at a premium price. One of these small companies should try to launch a COMPLETE game (as in fully functional) but have the balls to charge $25 a month. Use to extra $10 to hire GMs and staff that will continually generate non-standard content. Instead of needing 10 dungeons to keep people happy this game could just have 3... but allow the staff to generate spontaneous attacks on towns by orcs, or generate a raidboss level Dragon that starts to attack... Once the tools are created it should be possible to continually generate fun content that never feels canned or stale. I played on a private UO shard where this happened and it remains the best game I have played to date. With the technology of today and the millions of dollars funneled into game development there are tremendous possibilities waiting to be tapped.
See above
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
Using that sort of logic you will never again see a game of the eve ilk. Absolutely wrong IMHO The fact of the matter is large dev houses will not release deep involving games as each new feature added reduces its prospective audience and they are all about the numbers. That's what we call an opinion. My opinion is that both Indy and large developers are in the business to make money. Both are usually investor driven. Both can have good development teams with Vision (tm Brad Mcquaid) Indy devs, especially those new to the scene will make mistakes, run out of funds and pretty much always release a game when it is still in development (foregoing an mmo is always in development, more for features than mechanics). Because we have become trained to accept half finished and buggy products by this industry... and each one we accept just lowers the bar for the next one to be shoveled our way. Right now MO hasn't released, no-one is paying a sub and a majority in OB havn't paid anything. But those that did pay $50, $75 or $118 7+ months ago are understandably disapointed in a game that was supposed to originally ship in Summer of 09 but only now seems to be getting to a point where most would start closed beta testing. Expectations have increased to a point where only $20-50M games will ever get past the bs about being unfinished and then will be ripped by older mmo players because they feel empty as they needed to get the numbers in. It's insane. Only if they continue to follow the same old model of $14.99 subscriptions. There is GOOD money to be made if someone offers a premium service at a premium price. One of these small companies should try to launch a COMPLETE game (as in fully functional) but have the balls to charge $25 a month. Use to extra $10 to hire GMs and staff that will continually generate non-standard content. Instead of needing 10 dungeons to keep people happy this game could just have 3... but allow the staff to generate spontaneous attacks on towns by orcs, or generate a raidboss level Dragon that starts to attack... Once the tools are created it should be possible to continually generate fun content that never feels canned or stale. I played on a private UO shard where this happened and it remains the best game I have played to date. With the technology of today and the millions of dollars funneled into game development there are tremendous possibilities waiting to be tapped.
See above
Where is this "premium service" you are talking about? Right now if the game releases it will still be alpha and not many people will pay for that.
Where is this "premium service" you are talking about? Right now if the game releases it will still be alpha and not many people will pay for that.
It doesn't exist. I was replying to Wolf's suggestion that we had to accept unfinished games from small companies because they didn't have 25 million dollar budgets. I was trying to show a way where a small company could be profitable. One thing you CANNOT do is charge the same amount as everyone else but offer a half finished product. That's a sure recipie for failure.
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
Originally posted by Malickie Originally posted by AmonSul Originally posted by daarco Relax! You will get your boxed copy later. No worry.
That is NOT the issue. I got the stupid box but I also want a refund since it was implied that the game would be shipped Q3/Q4 2009 when I paid for the pre-order. Now we are in middle of Q1 2010 and I still dont have an actual date for the release. If that is not a legitimate reason for refund then I dont know what is. Companies cannot take peoples money for pre-orders and then postpone the game indefinetely. That is just plain ridicilous and borderline scamming. I understand the game isn't exactly of ideal quality. However what does it matter if it's gone gold or not, you can play it either way?
That assumes it's even playable, even a casual look at the forums shows many people can't get the thing to even run.
Using that sort of logic you will never again see a game of the eve ilk. Absolutely wrong IMHO Really? How long has it been now? 7 Years, how long before you admit it's just unlikely then? The fact of the matter is large dev houses will not release deep involving games as each new feature added reduces its prospective audience and they are all about the numbers. That's what we call an opinion. My opinion is that both Indy and large developers are in the business to make money. Both are usually investor driven. Both can have good development teams with Vision (tm Brad Mcquaid) To some extent that is opinion, but it's backed up by observation and a number of industry dev articles on this site alone that have the 'day in the life' type journals. They all say the same, when the original ideas for the game and the announcement is made, everyone loves the game. Then bit by bit as the progression of development continues and new information and specifics of a game is released those functions/mechanics are praised and bashed in equal amounts. Simple logic states that the more of these you add, the smaller your audience becomes. It doesn't have anything to do with how creative a dev team is. If I make my game a themepark, I alienate those who only play sandbox. If I then make it primarily pvp, again huge droves of audience lost, then add a death penalty, etc, etc. It's not difficult to understand, and these specifics are very broad but very small decisions have just as great an effect just on a smaller amount of people. For instance I love the principle of DF, I could have lived with most of its faws from release, but I'll not play it with no skill degredation and everyone is jack of all trades, but some poeple like that. Either way they lost me as a customer right there on that smallish simple design choice. Indy devs, especially those new to the scene will make mistakes, run out of funds and pretty much always release a game when it is still in development (foregoing an mmo is always in development, more for features than mechanics). Because we have become trained to accept half finished and buggy products by this industry... and each one we accept just lowers the bar for the next one to be shoveled our way. It's not about being trained to accept anything it's about life experience. People who are new to something and have little experience in something make mistakes. The more difficult and complex the task, the greater in number and more profound those mistakes will be. How they learn is the only real marker we should use. Right now MO hasn't released, no-one is paying a sub and a majority in OB havn't paid anything. But those that did pay $50, $75 or $118 7+ months ago are understandably disapointed in a game that was supposed to originally ship in Summer of 09 but only now seems to be getting to a point where most would start closed beta testing. I was one of those and I went in with eyes wide open of the situation. I'm not trying to make excuses for them, I don't have an invested interest in SV anymore than you do in bashing their game. But anyone who bought the game back then really expecting there to be no problems or release delays was living in a dream world. That doesn't make it the consumers fault for buying it but they were saying to people flat out, 'we've run out of money, rather than increase investment liability, we would like to sell the game now and if you buy it we will give you access to alpha/beta clients and stick a server up under beta conditions until the game releases'. How much more can they say? There were a million threads on this board alone about people paying to play beta, all of a sudden they forgot that? The release date was moved back, but then all software moves it's release date, personally I was amazed they could afford to. Expectations have increased to a point where only $20-50M games will ever get past the bs about being unfinished and then will be ripped by older mmo players because they feel empty as they needed to get the numbers in. It's insane. Only if they continue to follow the same old model of $14.99 subscriptions. There is GOOD money to be made if someone offers a premium service at a premium price. One of these small companies should try to launch a COMPLETE game (as in fully functional) but have the balls to charge $25 a month. Use to extra $10 to hire GMs and staff that will continually generate non-standard content. Instead of needing 10 dungeons to keep people happy this game could just have 3... but allow the staff to generate spontaneous attacks on towns by orcs, or generate a raidboss level Dragon that starts to attack... Once the tools are created it should be possible to continually generate fun content that never feels canned or stale. I played on a private UO shard where this happened and it remains the best game I have played to date. With the technology of today and the millions of dollars funneled into game development there are tremendous possibilities waiting to be tapped. Once a game is in a condition to be charging $25 subs (jesus, could you imagine the uproar on this site) it no longer needs that money as much. Like most products the bulk of outlay is in production and development costs, it's all upfront and mmo's have a looong development time with no revenue. Besides which you are just backing up the statement, larger companies do release their clients mostly bug free and fairly stable (again software of this magnitude will never, ever be completely bug free) and people complain to high heaven. Look at STO even if you take out thoes that were weaned out through various design choices that they didn't like, of those left, which effectively liked the game a large number flew through the content and complained there wasn't enough to do. Now imagine if they had a bloated subscription on top but promised the extra money was going towards adding content. I got the feeling there's a good chance NC HO would have got nuked, if it doesn't anyway.
See above
tl;dr - think before you buy, think before you post.
People need to re-evaluate their position and exectations on these games and make their purchases wisely. There's nothing wrong with d/l'ing the MO beta client and thinking 'this game sucks complete ass, not touching it in this state' ~ it's what I did when I first purchased it, I forgot I even bought it until the box landed on the doorstep. That's every consumers right, but don't look at those who chose to buy the game knowing that it was going to be hit or miss if the game even made it out the door in a working condition, as though they are all a bunch of mugs who give their money away. We play the game too we know what it looks like, some will praise the game more than others because it ticks more of the desired boxes of their ideal game. It's not fanboiism, it's the wish to see a game make it to market that currently isn't out there, something that comes close to what people have wondered why no-one has released such a game before and want to back the developer even if it means losing their cash.
They know that there is no way blizards next $100M project is going to be a ffa pvp, let alone have any of the other features or complexity from the start. No I'm not bashing bliz because they are probably the only ones that have released a reasonably stable client, pretty much playiable by the masses, and has a respectable amount of content (which some people still complained about on release when they hit cap in a few weeks) but it's expensive on a scale that they simply can not afford to add features which will turn people away because of the tremendous cost involved in developing that way.
It's like buying a house, it's location will always put a ceiling on the value of that house beyond which it doesn't matter how much more you improve the property you are just adding negative equity. The more people you alientate, the lower that ceiling becomes, once you're gold it doesn't matter because you're living there but it will take proportionally longer to recoup any benifit from any negative cost you incurred. Smaller devs can afford it because they don't need the insane amounts of constant revenue the bigger companies do (unless you take something like SOE's station pass or some of the korean software houses with lots of small games, which is effectively a group of small dev teams, all contributing to a pot to make the larger overall revenue).
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Where is this "premium service" you are talking about? Right now if the game releases it will still be alpha and not many people will pay for that.
It doesn't exist. I was replying to Wolf's suggestion that we had to accept unfinished games from small companies because they didn't have 25 million dollar budgets. I was trying to show a way where a small company could be profitable. One thing you CANNOT do is charge the same amount as everyone else but offer a half finished product. That's a sure recipie for failure.
The problem is with "indy" developers that almost anybody who has zero experience can call themselves one. I personally like to think, that as somebody who manages software projects on a regular basis, that there should be some "criterion for entry" if you're going to tout your name. Not to say you have to have built a great game, or even a game at all... but have some prior experience in some type of development. Of the entire MO team, they have shipped zero titles collectively, and I'm not even talking about MMOs, but even a PONG replacement.
That said... this idea that if you don't have a lot of money, you can't build a complete game is ridiculous. You build the game you are capable of building. My first outing into software development would not be an MMO, because there are a lot of moving parts and lots of things to keep track of, all of which I would readily admit I don't have the experience to manage properly. But I suppose when you take dad's cash, want to build UO because you miss it, the result is a miserable experience like MO. If you want a niche game like MO, then you have to lower your expectations of what that game is. Niche games EVOLVE over time, they don't start out huge and awesome. Look at EVE for that example. They had only a few core functions but those core functions were GREAT. Look at MO. It has a lot of systems, lot of skills, lot of features, and none of them work properly. To boot, they aren't even that good if they DID work properly. You have a good example here of a developer who thinks that features are going to keep the players engaged for a long term, whereas studies would tell you that quality always beats quantity in almost every aspect of purchasing a product -- any product.
The quality of MO is so low, and the game so subpar, I don't see it doing anything other than giving DF more subscribers. And if you want niche developers to build the sandbox PvP game, the easiest way is to petition them on bigger games that are already out. Yes, that means go into WOW and say you want more PvP, bigger PvP, more control, etc. Those things are read and while not necessarily incorporated into THAT project, they could be incorporated into another project. And if you are hoping an indy dev to make a PvP game, it's hard -- because PvP is prone to griefing and griefing costs customers, and costing customers means costing you a long term game. You have to have a solid business plan and project plan BEFORE you develop, which SV obviously didn't do, basically stealing every component from every game and hoping it'd work. For an indy dev to make a sandbox game, it has to be financially viable FIRST, and then everything else follows.
Unless of course the developer took his dad's cash and didn't really care about the business plan because he wanted a new game to play. For the rest of the entrepreneurs out there well... if they want to make it, they will make it financially viable, because as we all know as PvPers, we are real a**holes to others ingame, and that won't really help them sell a product on a long term unless their DESIGN can accommodate that and help other players enjoy it as well. When your central theme of the game is enjoyment of one side beating the other side and making them lose time and work, you better have your design wholly fleshed out or you won't make it on a long term. I think DF has this problem as well, but it hasn't manifested yet. My balls are still on failure for DF, but I think that's another discussion.
What does this mean? You consider yourself a pvper and as such an asshole, therefor any game you play needs to be designed around that fact? Then you start on about what is the point of the pvp, which I kind of understand to some extent, risk versus reward must be prevailent in a game. But then what more important reward was there to eve than could exist in df or mo in the long run? Or are eve's days numbered as well? Where is it you feel MO's ffapvp is designed poorly? Or was it just a warning to all games? For me pvp can be a reward unto itself if it's done correctly, planetside is still the one game I've stayed subbed to since beta because combat is good. Even though there is hacking, major unbalance and 1 dev, independantly all reasons for quiting usually but the pvp alone and the fact there's nothing close to it means I'm still there. It has no convensional rpg elements whatsoever (other than a kind of char development time which becomes a non issue, well if you're good at fps, immediately).
I can't speak for Herc, but to me it seems that MO is lacking any driving force behind the PvP. In most games that I have enjoyed there was a strategic reason for PvP. It might be control of a city, it might be control of resources, it might be control of a certain mobspawn or dungeon area. Roaming around looking for a fight can be fun... but in general.. ganksquads tend to get boring after a short while.
Now, sometime in the future Mortal Online might develop a deeper, more purposeful PvP, but at launch it really will just be ganksquads vs ganksquads, fighting for bragging rights. OK for a short bit, but (to me at least) grows old quickly. Have you seen the guild vs guild videos (think it's Legion vs AI) where they "destroy" one guild's guildhouse? If that's the ultimate PvP offered.. no matter if the Monday Miracle Patch fixes all the bugs and quadruples the content... i can't see the PvP holding my interest. As you say.. there are games (planetside... Battlefield... etc) that do the short-term PvP great already. If MO doesn't offer a better short-term PvP experience than those games.. it needs to offer the more strategic benefits and overarching purpose I mention above.
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
What does this mean? You consider yourself a pvper and as such an asshole, therefor any game you play needs to be designed around that fact? Then you start on about what is the point of the pvp, which I kind of understand to some extent, risk versus reward must be prevailent in a game. But then what more important reward was there to eve than could exist in df or mo in the long run? Or are eve's days numbered as well? Where is it you feel MO's ffapvp is designed poorly? Or was it just a warning to all games? For me pvp can be a reward unto itself if it's done correctly, planetside is still the one game I've stayed subbed to since beta because combat is good. Even though there is hacking, major unbalance and 1 dev, independantly all reasons for quiting usually but the pvp alone and the fact there's nothing close to it means I'm still there. It has no convensional rpg elements whatsoever (other than a kind of char development time which becomes a non issue, well if you're good at fps, immediately).
I can't speak for Herc, but to me it seems that MO is lacking any driving force behind the PvP. In most games that I have enjoyed there was a strategic reason for PvP. It might be control of a city, it might be control of resources, it might be control of a certain mobspawn or dungeon area. Roaming around looking for a fight can be fun... but in general.. ganksquads tend to get boring after a short while.
Now, sometime in the future Mortal Online might develop a deeper, more purposeful PvP, but at launch it really will just be ganksquads vs ganksquads, fighting for bragging rights. OK for a short bit, but (to me at least) grows old quickly. Have you seen the guild vs guild videos (think it's Legion vs AI) where they "destroy" one guild's guildhouse? If that's the ultimate PvP offered.. no matter if the Monday Miracle Patch fixes all the bugs and quadruples the content... i can't see the PvP holding my interest. As you say.. there are games (planetside... Battlefield... etc) that do the short-term PvP great already. If MO doesn't offer a better short-term PvP experience than those games.. it needs to offer the more strategic benefits and overarching purpose I mention above.
Fair enough, that seems a fair critisism. I still fell IF they can get the game in working order by release I'd still be willing to give them time to add in a more incentivised/goal orientated pvp, while I tried the other stuff out. But long term I guess something else needs to be added, the resources do seem very abundant, perhaps there's something (mines) which give greater yield worth fighting for.
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Comments
That is NOT the issue. I got the stupid box but I also want a refund since it was implied that the game would be shipped Q3/Q4 2009 when I paid for the pre-order. Now we are in middle of Q1 2010 and I still dont have an actual date for the release.
If that is not a legitimate reason for refund then I dont know what is. Companies cannot take peoples money for pre-orders and then postpone the game indefinetely. That is just plain ridicilous and borderline scamming.
I understand the game isn't exactly of ideal quality. However what does it matter if it's gone gold or not, you can play it either way?
Uhm, no. The game is in Beta and I dont enjoy playing in a beta where my character can be deleted at any time and the game is expected to be full of bugs.
See above
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
See above
Where is this "premium service" you are talking about? Right now if the game releases it will still be alpha and not many people will pay for that.
It doesn't exist. I was replying to Wolf's suggestion that we had to accept unfinished games from small companies because they didn't have 25 million dollar budgets. I was trying to show a way where a small company could be profitable. One thing you CANNOT do is charge the same amount as everyone else but offer a half finished product. That's a sure recipie for failure.
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
That is NOT the issue. I got the stupid box but I also want a refund since it was implied that the game would be shipped Q3/Q4 2009 when I paid for the pre-order. Now we are in middle of Q1 2010 and I still dont have an actual date for the release.
If that is not a legitimate reason for refund then I dont know what is. Companies cannot take peoples money for pre-orders and then postpone the game indefinetely. That is just plain ridicilous and borderline scamming.
I understand the game isn't exactly of ideal quality. However what does it matter if it's gone gold or not, you can play it either way?
That assumes it's even playable, even a casual look at the forums shows many people can't get the thing to even run.
See above
tl;dr - think before you buy, think before you post.
People need to re-evaluate their position and exectations on these games and make their purchases wisely. There's nothing wrong with d/l'ing the MO beta client and thinking 'this game sucks complete ass, not touching it in this state' ~ it's what I did when I first purchased it, I forgot I even bought it until the box landed on the doorstep. That's every consumers right, but don't look at those who chose to buy the game knowing that it was going to be hit or miss if the game even made it out the door in a working condition, as though they are all a bunch of mugs who give their money away. We play the game too we know what it looks like, some will praise the game more than others because it ticks more of the desired boxes of their ideal game. It's not fanboiism, it's the wish to see a game make it to market that currently isn't out there, something that comes close to what people have wondered why no-one has released such a game before and want to back the developer even if it means losing their cash.
They know that there is no way blizards next $100M project is going to be a ffa pvp, let alone have any of the other features or complexity from the start. No I'm not bashing bliz because they are probably the only ones that have released a reasonably stable client, pretty much playiable by the masses, and has a respectable amount of content (which some people still complained about on release when they hit cap in a few weeks) but it's expensive on a scale that they simply can not afford to add features which will turn people away because of the tremendous cost involved in developing that way.
It's like buying a house, it's location will always put a ceiling on the value of that house beyond which it doesn't matter how much more you improve the property you are just adding negative equity. The more people you alientate, the lower that ceiling becomes, once you're gold it doesn't matter because you're living there but it will take proportionally longer to recoup any benifit from any negative cost you incurred. Smaller devs can afford it because they don't need the insane amounts of constant revenue the bigger companies do (unless you take something like SOE's station pass or some of the korean software houses with lots of small games, which is effectively a group of small dev teams, all contributing to a pot to make the larger overall revenue).
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
It doesn't exist. I was replying to Wolf's suggestion that we had to accept unfinished games from small companies because they didn't have 25 million dollar budgets. I was trying to show a way where a small company could be profitable. One thing you CANNOT do is charge the same amount as everyone else but offer a half finished product. That's a sure recipie for failure.
The problem is with "indy" developers that almost anybody who has zero experience can call themselves one. I personally like to think, that as somebody who manages software projects on a regular basis, that there should be some "criterion for entry" if you're going to tout your name. Not to say you have to have built a great game, or even a game at all... but have some prior experience in some type of development. Of the entire MO team, they have shipped zero titles collectively, and I'm not even talking about MMOs, but even a PONG replacement.
That said... this idea that if you don't have a lot of money, you can't build a complete game is ridiculous. You build the game you are capable of building. My first outing into software development would not be an MMO, because there are a lot of moving parts and lots of things to keep track of, all of which I would readily admit I don't have the experience to manage properly. But I suppose when you take dad's cash, want to build UO because you miss it, the result is a miserable experience like MO. If you want a niche game like MO, then you have to lower your expectations of what that game is. Niche games EVOLVE over time, they don't start out huge and awesome. Look at EVE for that example. They had only a few core functions but those core functions were GREAT. Look at MO. It has a lot of systems, lot of skills, lot of features, and none of them work properly. To boot, they aren't even that good if they DID work properly. You have a good example here of a developer who thinks that features are going to keep the players engaged for a long term, whereas studies would tell you that quality always beats quantity in almost every aspect of purchasing a product -- any product.
The quality of MO is so low, and the game so subpar, I don't see it doing anything other than giving DF more subscribers. And if you want niche developers to build the sandbox PvP game, the easiest way is to petition them on bigger games that are already out. Yes, that means go into WOW and say you want more PvP, bigger PvP, more control, etc. Those things are read and while not necessarily incorporated into THAT project, they could be incorporated into another project. And if you are hoping an indy dev to make a PvP game, it's hard -- because PvP is prone to griefing and griefing costs customers, and costing customers means costing you a long term game. You have to have a solid business plan and project plan BEFORE you develop, which SV obviously didn't do, basically stealing every component from every game and hoping it'd work. For an indy dev to make a sandbox game, it has to be financially viable FIRST, and then everything else follows.
Unless of course the developer took his dad's cash and didn't really care about the business plan because he wanted a new game to play. For the rest of the entrepreneurs out there well... if they want to make it, they will make it financially viable, because as we all know as PvPers, we are real a**holes to others ingame, and that won't really help them sell a product on a long term unless their DESIGN can accommodate that and help other players enjoy it as well. When your central theme of the game is enjoyment of one side beating the other side and making them lose time and work, you better have your design wholly fleshed out or you won't make it on a long term. I think DF has this problem as well, but it hasn't manifested yet. My balls are still on failure for DF, but I think that's another discussion.
I can't speak for Herc, but to me it seems that MO is lacking any driving force behind the PvP. In most games that I have enjoyed there was a strategic reason for PvP. It might be control of a city, it might be control of resources, it might be control of a certain mobspawn or dungeon area. Roaming around looking for a fight can be fun... but in general.. ganksquads tend to get boring after a short while.
Now, sometime in the future Mortal Online might develop a deeper, more purposeful PvP, but at launch it really will just be ganksquads vs ganksquads, fighting for bragging rights. OK for a short bit, but (to me at least) grows old quickly. Have you seen the guild vs guild videos (think it's Legion vs AI) where they "destroy" one guild's guildhouse? If that's the ultimate PvP offered.. no matter if the Monday Miracle Patch fixes all the bugs and quadruples the content... i can't see the PvP holding my interest. As you say.. there are games (planetside... Battlefield... etc) that do the short-term PvP great already. If MO doesn't offer a better short-term PvP experience than those games.. it needs to offer the more strategic benefits and overarching purpose I mention above.
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I can't speak for Herc, but to me it seems that MO is lacking any driving force behind the PvP. In most games that I have enjoyed there was a strategic reason for PvP. It might be control of a city, it might be control of resources, it might be control of a certain mobspawn or dungeon area. Roaming around looking for a fight can be fun... but in general.. ganksquads tend to get boring after a short while.
Now, sometime in the future Mortal Online might develop a deeper, more purposeful PvP, but at launch it really will just be ganksquads vs ganksquads, fighting for bragging rights. OK for a short bit, but (to me at least) grows old quickly. Have you seen the guild vs guild videos (think it's Legion vs AI) where they "destroy" one guild's guildhouse? If that's the ultimate PvP offered.. no matter if the Monday Miracle Patch fixes all the bugs and quadruples the content... i can't see the PvP holding my interest. As you say.. there are games (planetside... Battlefield... etc) that do the short-term PvP great already. If MO doesn't offer a better short-term PvP experience than those games.. it needs to offer the more strategic benefits and overarching purpose I mention above.
Fair enough, that seems a fair critisism. I still fell IF they can get the game in working order by release I'd still be willing to give them time to add in a more incentivised/goal orientated pvp, while I tried the other stuff out. But long term I guess something else needs to be added, the resources do seem very abundant, perhaps there's something (mines) which give greater yield worth fighting for.
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