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Why do companies put out games that MMO players could tell them will not do well? (with examples)
mmodanno
Member Posts: 163
Why do companies spend so much time, money and effort designing and building MMOs that spending a little time with a few focus groups of actual MMO players would indicate that the game will fail?
How often have we see Dev's ignore player's almost desperate pleas to change something? Many times a game has a mechanism or design feature that gamers can clearly see will simply not work, but the developers charge ahead with it any way, following their 'vision', only to see that mechanism or design feature end up being the very thing that killed the game.
Why?
Below are a few games I offer as 'case studies' for my point. Some of the more obvious ones, like Age of Conan, I haven't had a lot of experience with, and I would be interested in seeing how others view it:
Champions Online: Heir apparent to City of Heros, with the ability to customize our powers? HooRah!
Reality? Never really took off, and faded soon after. The 'plastic' look of the game design turned off a lot of people. The promised level of power customization was trimmed down to a bare bones 'add on' type of upgrade. Extremely linear game play made creating alts a 'been there, seen that' experience, which limited replay value. PvP? Figidaboutit! No end game content was the final nail in the coffin.
Now: Game is on life support, with design emphasis on cash shop items and content.
*****************************************************
Warhammer Online: A PvP heavy game based on the Warhammer universe? Score!
Reality? Game shot out of the gate with big numbers, but player enthusiasm cooled quickly and game is now considered one of the bigger failures in MMOs.
Reason: Several. Right off the bat, players urged the Devs to reconsider their 'two sides' approach. Didn't happen, and game was released with only two realms. Only having two realms meant that servers quickly become dominated by one side or the other. Instead of massive keep sieges and open field battles, player mobs just skirted around each other and grabbed the easy XP sites. Player base was scattered over too many servers and lands, and the Devs refusal to merge servers until it was far too late resulted in a huge exodus of players.
Archetype balance was also off at first, with some types dominating battlegrounds. Changes were slow in coming and when they did, they seemed to ignore the player base suggestions.
Now: Most servers closed and merged into a remaining few. Current player base is hardcore, but very small. Mythic's eyes seem to have turned away from this game.
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DC Universe Online: A new superhero MMO based on a hugely popular franchise. Several very talented people are involved in the visual and graphic design of the game. Should be awesome!
Reality? Game crashed and burned quickly.
Reason: Hard to pin down. The questionable design of the UI limited players to only a few powers in their hotbars and was often listed as a reason for sub cancellation. Weapons and powers were hard to balance for PvP, as a result the Devs had a 'guardrail to guardrail' type of nerf process that quickly alienated the hardcore PvPers. Lack of end game content... any end game content at first.. turned off the power levelers and many left before the game could introduce new content.
Now: Game is still being supported, but Dev focus is on cash shop content packs. Servers have been slowly merged to try and gather what player base remains into 'super servers', leading to more frequent PvP matches.
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Star Was The Old Republic: Enormous hype and box sales. A Star Wars MMO by a company with a history of putting out top notch Star Wars games! A promise of huge teams of people constantly churning out new content for years to come? Where do I sign up!
Reality? Game had a smooth launch, one of the better handled launches in MMO history. However player time quickly fell off a cliff, with sub numbers soon following.
Reason: People power-leveled and ground on to top level and all was good. The air came out of the tires with SWTOR about the second month. The players that had raced to the top of the leveling mountain discovered nothing but thin air and bare rock. Casual players grew cold on the PvP with it's limited game play and hordes of ganking level 50 hardcores. With really no variation on the leveling experience, leveling alts became a chore. As people started leaving the game, the huge number of servers brought online to handle the launch soon became emptier and emptier. The process feed on itself, creating an enormous drop in the number of players actually online at any one time. By the third month, it was obvious the subs were falling like flies.
Now: Limited server transfers are finally starting, giving hope to what player base is left. The promised churn of content never materialized, and with layoffs at the SWTOR team ramping up, any big game changes are unlikely. We may never know the actual numbers, but the game clearly lost enormous numbers of players quickly and doesn't look to recover them.
Comments
Warhammer's main problem was their conquest system was NOT ready and instead of acknowledging it they kludged the system to make winning not possible until they had their ducks in a row.
We got to the fortress REALLY EARLY before there was any hope of defeating one and it was obvious it wasnt ready even then. This was before they made it really hard to flip the zones. Now, if they initially had it set up so that the fortress battles actually worked instead of being a huge lag and crashfest and had a much more compelling city raid system, things would have not gone downhill the way they did.
The other BIG problem was the one you mentioned -- 2 sides -- *BUT* that could have been easily rectified without adding a side. Put a moon in the sky. When the moon is full chaos gets bonuses. When the moon is new, law gets bonuses. It is neutral when the moon is at half. Now you have periods where one side has a definite advantage and other times when the other side gets the same. This would make it possible for the distaff side even on moderately unbalanced worlds able to succeed during their time of the month.
The mergers made things worse -- you could go from a balanced world to a very unbalanced one with a merger.
I would not put DCUO there, it was aimed at comsole gamers and took a very different direction, still going strong on F2p and consoles. As i said, it was a whole different type of game.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I don't feel it's the developer's fault per'se. The guys who write teh code, design the graphics, the sound, the spell animations, etc. are not really to blame at all. It's the guys over in the implemination department. The "Ghostclaw" types if you will. DCUO was a very beatuiful game, and the ideas in it were superb, but making the decision to have the level cap be such a low number, and making the decision to have lack of endgame, is only a few people's fault.
Your game could be the greatest by design and filled with fresh new ideas, but if some "manager" in the back room makes bad decisions, the ENTIRE game suffers for it. I personally think there needs to be more balance in the command structure of dev teams. Some guy in a back room shouldn't have game breaking power.
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
Or have multiple beta's with multiple designs in play. See what the reaction to the different designs are. Same graphics engine, same interface, same setting. but maybe the balance is different, the objectives are different. Just to see what the players enjoy most.
Heck, it's beta, do some crazy shit, just to see if players like it!
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
The biggest problem with these games is the dumbing down of the mmo to a point where no new inovation comes into play in several key aspects.
1)Gameplay, devs are so sick of balance issues and whatnot they have made everything cookie cutter to a large degree. Swotr just said "screw it" your character gets 1 or 2 weapons at most and your skill tree is mostly an illusion where only a few key choices define characters. Thankfully some games like Tera are trying to buck the trend.
2)The experience overall. Games are not MMOS anymore they are single player games that drag you along from hub to hub and you have no sense of exploration or open worldness, things are theme parked to the extreme and occasionally you work with other folks along for the ride. Swotr and DCUO were honestly single player games.
3)No other features, You have the story and the grind and that is it, no effort has been made by these so called other titles to put anything else of substance that might require time and effort. Since the companies only want giant WoW mass appeal numbers they make cookie cutter crap rather then take a risk.
Betas arent Pre-release testing platforms any more. They are Public Previews/Demos
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Firefall seems to be bucking this trend. They are making big changes to the game play based on player feedback.
I think the best bet would be tons of closed beta's, with real feedback from the players. (ie. Every closed beta tester must report their opinion of the game and any bugs they found, or else!) And to go wild with the things you are testing. One week it's the levelling process, the next week its the raids, the next it's PVP at endgame, followed by PVP at mid levels.
Most games are made pretty well in the world/graphics/physics engine department, and what really kills them is the balance/objectives/leveling process/pvp department, so why not test that to death! Throw some curve balls into that beta test! Once you get a lot of positive feedback from your beta testers, you'll know you have done well. (need atleast 50+ to get a well rounded opinion, from different age groups and backgrounds. 50+ middle aged white men may be alittle biased...)
EDIT: and after that closed beta period, can still have open beta's to show off your brand to the general public.
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
That's the open beta though. The closed beta's and alpha's (or whatever it's called) are still done with actual testing aren't they?
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
Large companies tend to look at the bottom line, once however they stop making money off these types of games they will stop.
I'll add this to Warhammer, it didn't capture the Warhammer world at all. Warhammer is supposed to be dark and gritty not a bright cartoony world. Also the two sides was Games Workhsop putting their foot down. Crack open the table top rule book and you will quickly see that GW actually splits the armies into order and disorder themselves. Those words are in fact in one of the editions (can't remember which one, or whether it was 40k or fantasy rulebook it was in).
I think this is one of the main failings. Management. While the coders, artists, animators, etc are actual gamers, Management is not.
Management is made out of guys with degrees in business management and accounting. They dont play games. Most probably never have.
So while you have actual Game Developers making the game saying "Hey this is great for the game", you have Managers at the top end saying "No. That doesnt fit with our demographic focus group metrics"
Then they say "Put XYZ in the game" even though a Dev might think it doesnt "fit, Management will say "Do it anyway. make it happen"
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
I think it comes down to not identifying the target audience and not having done any play testing with the target audience.
Champions Online is a good example. First there is a limited audience for super hero games. Second there was already a game out (City of Heroes) with lots of content to compete against. Third did they do play testing? What makes Champions more appealing than City? .... that kind of thing.
The other huge thing new MMOs have against them is content. To draw players from other MMOs and hold them they need to have more/different content than other MMOs. Most MMOs at launch do not have more than a few months worth of content.
Champions Online: Heir apparent to City of Heros, with the ability to customize our powers? HooRah!
This game was broke because of any primary stat being your power stat and everyone could just be a tank which killed the whole concept of the strength build.
Warhammer Online: A PvP heavy game based on the Warhammer universe? Score!
Almost prefect PvP until they started balancing PvP for T1 and T2 gameplay. One of the games that launched without full content, never a good move for a MMO.
DC Universe Online: A new superhero MMO based on a hugely popular franchise. Several very talented people are involved in the visual and graphic design of the game. Should be awesome!
Actually a pretty fun game. Should have done better.
Star Was The Old Republic: Enormous hype and box sales. A Star Wars MMO by a company with a history of putting out top notch Star Wars games! A promise of huge teams of people constantly churning out new content for years to come? Where do I sign up!
With amount of money spent on this game it should have been the next best MMO but it was not. They missed the whole concept of a MMO. The IP aside it just was not a MMO and we learned that cinimatics suck in MMOs.
Alphas not sure as Ive never been in during an Alpha test period, but I have been in enough closed Betas.
Long ago, yes they were, but now more and more Closed Betas are just smaller closed versions of Open Betas. They are really just about stability tests. By Beta, the game is pretty much complete and wont change
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
I think a big problem is that you can 'level up' too fast in most MMOs. Anarchy Online had an increasing scale so that the last 10 levels or so took a LONG time to get to. Game was fun, so you didn't notice it though.
Now... MMO comes out, and it seems half the player base has hit top level within a week.. or less!
As long as they have game designers have only with experience based on WoW recipe and publisher swants to score quick bucks by making a wow clone, we rarely gona see some inovative, fresh mmos.
Still there is hope with Kickstarter projects.
Knowledge is power, guard it well.
FMMOS
Yep, but this is what the casual masses want.They never used to know what an MMO was in the past and also the reason of your original topic.Developers don't really care how good thier product is because these same casual masses will pre order it anyway and move on to the next thing as soon as possible so there is no attempt to even keep people playing a game for years anymore.Whats the point if they can make a profit with box sales alone?
Yeah by the time most games reach the common gamer its way too late to make drastic changes......Also most companies don't listen to us because they figure that they know whats best and we dont......Also I'm not sure how many of the games you listed are true failures......THe object for most game companies is to make a profit, and I think all of those games did......Now if you want to talk about games like Tabula Rasa or CHronicles of Spellborn, where the games were literally shuit down early, then that is a different story.
The fact that it takes soooo long to make does have a lot to do with it. In a market with rapidly changing interests, how can you know your MMO will be successful after 5years?
Shouldn't they have known there would be copies of WoW and players wouldn't want to play the same kind of game?
They probably do set most of their designs in stone and maybe 20% of it is flexible. Having everything being flexible would be extremely expensive and the game would probably never finish. Imaging building a car and then deciding you want to use a size and type of screw. There are too many moving parts in an MMO to not set most of the designs in stone.
Wasn't there a lot of devs on SWTOR that worked on or played SWG in the past? It does seem to be mostly a managemnt issue. Where features are often cut and MMOs are usually launched unfinished. By hey, atleast they got the core checklist filled...
maybe their internal definition of "doing well" differs from ours.
Or Champions, really. A small genre, one strong title-holder, and 8 years of development to match/exceed.
I wouldn't have bet the development budget on it in either case. But Marvel's may be positioning to try it (again) I understand.
OTOH, are you going to bet the budget on a similar situation facing off against the Behemoth in the sword-and-board genre, instead? How can that make more sense?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Well, looking at my bookshelf I can see a dozen or so genres that haven't been tried as MMOs in a significant way yet. Hollywood will probably kick out another any day now, too.
Place to start, if you've got 50 million sitting around to spend.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I'm only $49,999,500 short! :P
Seriously though, we've all seen games coming down the pike that we all KNEW, absolutely KNEW, where going to bomb because of one or more features, or lack of one or more features. If we, the unwashed masses, can see this so clearly... why can't people who do this for a living?!?
DCUO failed? Last time i checked, they are releasing additional DLCs, hardly a game going down the tubes. Last time i logged in, there are players everywhere in the watch tower.