Is someone still seriously trying to argue that MMOs haven't changed as much as our own tastes have, and that its not developers fault that the genre is stuck in freefall?
No. I still have fun in old MMOs. They are designed VERY differently.
It's amazing what happens when you have MMOs designed for a niche audience by hardcore fans of the genre that want to create a virtual world experience, by people who know what they're doing.
vs modern MMOs that are designed by publishers to mimic WoW, and crash and burn right away because they're basically designed ENCOURAGING people to quit and be anti social
The developers got smart and started to develop better games for more people making a ton more money. Keep living in the past with your niche games that barely anyone wants to play while the majority of us enjoy the far superior games with millions playing. The numbers don't lie.
Er, outside of WOW, what single MMORPG has "millions" playing. FFXIV perhaps, but who else? Lineage 1? Wait, that's old school. Just curious how many games have subscribers exceed EVE's 400-500K which is clearly a niche title?
And please, don't point to MOBA's or some other type game, that's players leaving the genre and don't count.
Did I say a single game? There are more people playing the games today because they are better. The only reason those old games were even able to keep their subscriptions back then was because they were the only ones around. People put up with those crappy designs. They will not today except for the minority that can't let the past go. If they kept on making games with old, tired, and archaic mechanics like those games in the past we wouldn't have millions of people playing MMOs today.
WoW was the beginning of the end for socializing. It's gameplay actively discouraged people from playing together unless they were a part of a preestablished clique or guild. WoW still had some leftover socializing from pre WoW MMOs and people getting into MMOs for the first time and wanting to talk to all the people around them. But that quickly went away, as the game forced people into raid guilds and instances and solo quest grinding.
There was almost no reason to actually group or interact with strangers in WoW, so people didn't do it. Or if a random group quest FORCED you to be with some stranger, you left that group as soon as the quest was done and never talked again.
I'm always shocked when people remember WOW as being social. But I guess that's what happens when WoW's your first MMO and you have nothing else to compare it to.
There are a number of things that make MMOs less social, for one thing the games are so easy nowadays that you only need to group for dungeons and raids in most games, in games like M59, Lineage and EQ you needed a group to beat many opponents in the open world as well. As a soloplayer you had to know when to run and gather a group or ignore larger monsters.
Another thing is that silly loot mechanics, need or greed. Getting ninjad a couple of times can turn most people antisocial.
Locking encounters doesn't help either, as do AH instead of player owned stores.
But MMO people used to be a rather small group of people, most also played pen and paper games and were interested in computers as general. You can't get that tight socially in a genre with many millions of players no matter what you do.
That doesn't mean that MMOs shouldn't focus more on bringing players together of course. And use instancing and phasing very carefully since not seeing other players makes socializing impossible.
True. Though I'd say instancing and phasing has no place in an MMO. All it can offer is things that pull people apart, and half assed singleplayer experiences that I'd be better served playing a singleplayer game to get.
You can solve all the same problems instances solve with better game design.
Originally posted by DavisFlight Is someone still seriously trying to argue that MMOs haven't changed as much as our own tastes have, and that its not developers fault that the genre is stuck in freefall?No. I still have fun in old MMOs. They are designed VERY differently.It's amazing what happens when you have MMOs designed for a niche audience by hardcore fans of the genre that want to create a virtual world experience, by people who know what they're doing.vs modern MMOs that are designed by publishers to mimic WoW, and crash and burn right away because they're basically designed ENCOURAGING people to quit and be anti social
The developers got smart and started to develop better games for more people making a ton more money. Keep living in the past with your niche games that barely anyone wants to play while the majority of us enjoy the far superior games with millions playing. :) The numbers don't lie.
Er, outside of WOW, what single MMORPG has "millions" playing. FFXIV perhaps, but who else? Lineage 1? Wait, that's old school. Just curious how many games have subscribers exceed EVE's 400-500K which is clearly a niche title?And please, don't point to MOBA's or some other type game, that's players leaving the genre and don't count.
Did I say a single game? There are more people playing the games today because they are better. The only reason those old games were even able to keep their subscriptions back then was because they were the only ones around. People put up with those crappy designs. They will not today except for the minority that can't let the past go. If they kept on making games with old, tired, and archaic mechanics like those games in the past we wouldn't have millions of people playing MMOs today.
While Kyleran is perfectly capable of answering, I wanted to bring something up in this tangent.
How many of those "happy players" actually PAY for their entertainment. EQ may have "only" had 300-400K players, but every last one of them paid for their entertainment.
Not too many MMOs today can say the same. With your logic, if I made a free car that anyone and everyone could drive, that would give me billions of "customers." Then I could ask drivers to donate what they felt was OK. Does that mean my free car is better than any other car where drivers have to pay for it?
On one hand, you use numbers as a basis for your argument. On the other, you "poo-poo" the same argument against yours.
More MMOs. More FREE MMOs than "the old days." Of course you're going to have bigger numbers. Unfortunately, money is what developers seek, not simply freeloading players. Very few players pay enough to keep the freeloaders' games afloat.
Ask yourself this. If MMOs required a box purchase AND a sub, how many would still be kicking? Free games slant the numbers and speak NOTHING of quality.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
And I still believe that in the case of many of those "for most people" you are speaking for, they are playing what they consider to be the best of the worst. The brightest shiney they could find from garbage picking. And that with each new big budget title to release comes the promise of a better experience that millions flock to, only to find 2 months later it wasn't.
Right, keep telling yourself that to make you feel better.
Yeah, It seems I have to since I can't sleep at night......
LOL, what kind of reply was that?
A response to your comment, not my fault you fail to understand it.
Oh, come on now, my sarcasm was clearly implied that I understood your comment but rather questioning why you would assume this issue is oh so important to anyone that they'd need to tell themselves something to feel better. That was a ridiculous comment, and now you are just posting one ridiculous statement after another.
My number one complaint about most modern day MMOs is that they lack immersion. Games are so focused on features, balance, storyline, etc but most seem to lack the ability to make the gamer feel attached and immersed in their character and in the game.
I know some will say that storyline is what captures the gamer but I would disagree. Sure storyline and it's delivery are important but these things by themselves do not captivate most gamers. A good example is watching a sport verses playing a sport, which is similar to what I am talking about with most modern MMOs. When I first picked up EQ and WoW I felt like I was the story, my character was part of a ever changing digital world and my purpose there was to pwn players and NPCs alike. I have yet to play a game since TBC WoW that has made me feel like that. I was never particularly immersed in the WoW storyline but I was deeply immersed in my character and I felt as if he had a purpose inside that digital world.
My complaint kind of goes along with OP's complaint. My biggest gripe is that we seem to be back-peddling in content and quality over the last 10 years because the MMO market blew up so much after the first generation (Ultima/Everquest/DAoC).
Once everyone figured out you could make as much as the movie industry with videogames it all became crap. Everything is rushed out so the quality sucks, there's more bugs now than ever, you'd think with the technology today games would blow the first generation out of the water....if not for the crap graphics nothing would beat those first MMOs innovation. But now the only hope we have for decent games rests with indie developers.
How many of those "happy players" actually PAY for their entertainment. EQ may have "only" had 300-400K players, but every last one of them paid for their entertainment.
I don't know how many, but does it matter?
TOR made more than $200M in 2013 .. someone is paying for it. Does it matter whether 10M players each pay $20, or 100k whales each pay $2000?
How many of those "happy players" actually PAY for their entertainment. EQ may have "only" had 300-400K players, but every last one of them paid for their entertainment.
I don't know how many, but does it matter?
TOR made more than $200M in 2013 ..
I know you're the dedicated troll of this website but... that 200 million? Not only was that not listed as end profit in the report, but the report was ESTIMATING, and provided no sources.
If EA had made that money on SWTOR, it would have announced it with ringing silver trumpets. Instead we haven't heard a peeep from EA about SWTOR in a long long time.
but they have many things that make them true MMO and good RPG , things that nowadays MMORPG lacked.
"true" MMO is not desirable to me. I would much prefer modern more game-like MMOs.
My biggest complaints? They don't go far enough to incorporate good SP type solo content into instances.
And now that they have, we have thread after thread after thread of players asking "Where did it all go wrong?"
and what they don't realize is that nothing goes "wrong". They just go to cater to some other players' preferences.
I'm not so sure it's that they go and cater to someone else as much as I think it's that they are trying to cater to everyone they possibly can all at once.
My number one complaint about most modern day MMOs is that they lack immersion. Games are so focused on features, balance, storyline, etc but most seem to lack the ability to make the gamer feel attached and immersed in their character and in the game.
I know some will say that storyline is what captures the gamer but I would disagree. Sure storyline and it's delivery are important but these things by themselves do not captivate most gamers. A good example is watching a sport verses playing a sport, which is similar to what I am talking about with most modern MMOs. When I first picked up EQ and WoW I felt like I was the story, my character was part of a ever changing digital world and my purpose there was to pwn players and NPCs alike. I have yet to play a game since TBC WoW that has made me feel like that. I was never particularly immersed in the WoW storyline but I was deeply immersed in my character and I felt as if he had a purpose inside that digital world.
I agree with you except I felt EQ wasn't that deep. It just felt like a never ending quest fest where all the quests were way to far from the quest giver. There was no potential for interaction with other players. FFXI was my immersion grabber but what made it great back then wouldn't work now-a-days. Most of us are bored of the same old thing we've already experienced.
But you are dead on about NO IMMERSION. I play a character and it feels just like me playing a character. That is bad. I want to feel like I am the character. So I try to do little things to make me feel more "at home" in that cyber world - more real. One example: I buy a house and try to decorate. But then I run in to limits like there can only be so much furniture in a house. My character has to place the furniture a certain way. My character cannot sit down or eat at the table. I don't have a closet with pajamas instead I lay in bed with my boots on - if I'm allowed in the bed at all. Etc. Limits limits limits.
I could give more examples but I have leave. I think the time of run-of-the-mill mmo's is over. We need games to be more detail orientated than ever to keep the player's mind's occupied and not bored.
My number one complaint about most modern day MMOs is that they lack immersion. Games are so focused on features, balance, storyline, etc but most seem to lack the ability to make the gamer feel attached and immersed in their character and in the game.
I know some will say that storyline is what captures the gamer but I would disagree. Sure storyline and it's delivery are important but these things by themselves do not captivate most gamers. A good example is watching a sport verses playing a sport, which is similar to what I am talking about with most modern MMOs. When I first picked up EQ and WoW I felt like I was the story, my character was part of a ever changing digital world and my purpose there was to pwn players and NPCs alike. I have yet to play a game since TBC WoW that has made me feel like that. I was never particularly immersed in the WoW storyline but I was deeply immersed in my character and I felt as if he had a purpose inside that digital world.
I agree with you except I felt EQ wasn't that deep. It just felt like a never ending quest fest where all the quests were way to far from the quest giver. There was no potential for interaction with other players. FFXI was my immersion grabber but what made it great back then wouldn't work now-a-days. Most of us are bored of the same old thing we've already experienced.
But you are dead on about NO IMMERSION. I play a character and it feels just like me playing a character. That is bad. I want to feel like I am the character. So I try to do little things to make me feel more "at home" in that cyber world - more real. One example: I buy a house and try to decorate. But then I run in to limits like there can only be so much furniture in a house. My character has to place the furniture a certain way. My character cannot sit down or eat at the table. I don't have a closet with pajamas instead I lay in bed with my boots on - if I'm allowed in the bed at all. Etc. Limits limits limits.
I could give more examples but I have leave. I think the time of run-of-the-mill mmo's is over. We need games to be more detail orientated than ever to keep the player's mind's occupied and not bored.
How many of those "happy players" actually PAY for their entertainment. EQ may have "only" had 300-400K players, but every last one of them paid for their entertainment.
I don't know how many, but does it matter?
TOR made more than $200M in 2013 .. someone is paying for it. Does it matter whether 10M players each pay $20, or 100k whales each pay $2000?
Here's my subjectivity on all this (for what it's worth, I know)
I really don't care that TOR made 200M. The only extent I care about financials in the games I want to play is "Are they making enough money to keep the game going with the development it needs to have?"
After that, I could care less if it's two hundred dollars or two hundred billion dollars. One thing I learned as a long time Anarchy Online subscriber. As a player, I thought I was supporting my game paying for on going development and content each month. Well, I wasn't. FunCom was taking all the proceeds they were getting from one game and using it for another project. Well, what they do with their profits is up to them, but I was paying for a service and only receiving it in part. FunCom owed me and the rest of AO's player base a truckload of overdue content and upgrades that were promised and never came. Finally, they did get off their butts and release some gear upgrades and a couple new instances. Something akin to an average sized content update released by most MMORPGs after a few months. The difference here is that it was only once. Just one. After years, just one. But the kick in the balls was that they charged $20 bucks for it and called it a "booster pack".
So, if all that money these companies make isn't re invested back into improving the player experience for that game, then those financials are for investors, I don't give a flying F**K what it means otherwise.
pay2win. There is no single MMORPG, where you can simply congratulate another player for having achieved something, because you know that they could have probably bought there way there. I hate it. If there'd be ever another MMORPG without a cash shop or a cash shop that sells only items that have zero impact on the gameplay, then I would play that game.
Developers who create a non-cash shop MMORPG try to do one thing: build the best MMORPG possible with the amount of money and time available, so that many people buy it and keep playing it.
Developers who create a cash shop MMORPG try to do one thing: make you pay more. Lure you into the game with an easy entry, and then put obstacle after obstacle in your path, that can only be solved by spending money.
Ask yourself this. If MMOs required a box purchase AND a sub, how many would still be kicking? Free games slant the numbers and speak NOTHING of quality.
^ another great point... I have never been a fan of the B2P and F2P MMO model. I would rather pay for quality and be able to demand new content regularly over being at the mercy of the development studio that got all their money up front and no longer has a great deal at stake.
Making my character some sort of chosen one, heroic from the start, or destined for greatness plot lines. Because then everyone is a heroic, destined for greatness, chosen one.
Ask yourself this. If MMOs required a box purchase AND a sub, how many would still be kicking? Free games slant the numbers and speak NOTHING of quality.
^ another great point... I have never been a fan of the B2P and F2P MMO model. I would rather pay for quality and be able to demand new content regularly over being at the mercy of the development studio that got all their money up front and no longer has a great deal at stake.
box+ sub games don't mean quality, regular updates or anything else you just tried to attach to it. If anything the f2p game that didn't collect $60 a player has more at stake when trying to get it's development costs back.
Originally posted by Chewybunny Making my character some sort of chosen one, heroic from the start, or destined for greatness plot lines. Because then everyone is a heroic, destined for greatness, chosen one.
But that's just like real life...haven't you seen what they teach kids nowadays ?
box+ sub games don't mean quality, regular updates or anything else you just tried to attach to it. If anything the f2p game that didn't collect $60 a player has more at stake when trying to get it's development costs back.
Depends on the game really. I can point to LOTRO as a game where quality of expansions suffered once they went F2P compared to what it was in the first couple of years of subscription and look at SWTOR where they said at launch they'd be extending class stories but haven't presumably because F2P=not enough money. Then you look at a game like Path Of Exile which releases a good deal of new content without a sub or a big budget so it can go either way. Although if I really want to play a game a sub still makes me feel more secure.
Another factor to look at is how long people stick with these games. If the average person plays 3 weeks and then quits isn't it hard to call that a good game compared to older games that could retain many players for years?
Ask yourself this. If MMOs required a box purchase AND a sub, how many would still be kicking? Free games slant the numbers and speak NOTHING of quality.
^ another great point... I have never been a fan of the B2P and F2P MMO model. I would rather pay for quality and be able to demand new content regularly over being at the mercy of the development studio that got all their money up front and no longer has a great deal at stake.
But you DID give the developer all of your money upfront when you bought the game. That covered it's development costs. Everything thereafter is gravy. How is spending $50 to play a game for 30 days promising you new content and spending $50 to play a game forever not promising you new content. You just ASSUME your subscription is being used to generate new content but the reality is, all that content was already in the pipes before you even bought the game.
I just don't fathom this mentality at all. All a subscription does is ALLOW you to continue playing a game that you already paid for. Whether there is or is not any updates to the game has zero to do with your subscription fee. If it did, they'd forego a box price entirely, allow you to download it for free and only let you play it while you have active time on your game card. But they don't do they?
Take the WoD expansion, that's a $50 fee that comes with 30 days game time. You will spend an additional $90 just to get their first content update (more or less). $140 spent. That guy that bought the B2P game spent $50 and got their content update for $0. Next content update is down the road even more... so more money spent. Now you could say you'd stop playing until the content drops, thereby saving you money. But therein lies the hole in your theory... if they are using your subscription fee to fund updates, how are they going to get their money if you're not subbed? Who's paying for this content then?
Subscriptions are hogwash. People pay subscriptions to keep playing the game they enjoy, not because of some promise of new content. That expectation was manifested later by the players.
box+ sub games don't mean quality, regular updates or anything else you just tried to attach to it. If anything the f2p game that didn't collect $60 a player has more at stake when trying to get it's development costs back.
Depends on the game really. I can point to LOTRO as a game where quality of expansions suffered once they went F2P compared to what it was in the first couple of years of subscription and look at SWTOR where they said at launch they'd be extending class stories but haven't presumably because F2P=not enough money. Then you look at a game like Path Of Exile which releases a good deal of new content without a sub or a big budget so it can go either way. Although if I really want to play a game a sub still makes me feel more secure.
Another factor to look at is how long people stick with these games. If the average person plays 3 weeks and then quits isn't it hard to call that a good game compared to older games that could retain many players for years?
The examples you give are for games that survived not thrived. So of course they scaled back from what they planned on doing because the revenue they were expecting wasn't there. It wasn't there when they were subscription based. It's not F2P that doesn't generate enough money for them it's the game itself no mater what payment option used doesn't make enough money. The question is if LOTRO stayed P2P would it have made enough money to pay for the content rate it had planned. It seems like because they went to a F2P model to survive that no the P2P was not going to make any difference. Something was going to give. The last 6 months I played AoC there was amost nothing for updates, why, they were not making enough money. GW2 has constant updates, it is a sucessful game it is also B2P.
box+ sub games don't mean quality, regular updates or anything else you just tried to attach to it. If anything the f2p game that didn't collect $60 a player has more at stake when trying to get it's development costs back.
Depends on the game really. I can point to LOTRO as a game where quality of expansions suffered once they went F2P compared to what it was in the first couple of years of subscription and look at SWTOR where they said at launch they'd be extending class stories but haven't presumably because F2P=not enough money. Then you look at a game like Path Of Exile which releases a good deal of new content without a sub or a big budget so it can go either way. Although if I really want to play a game a sub still makes me feel more secure.
Another factor to look at is how long people stick with these games. If the average person plays 3 weeks and then quits isn't it hard to call that a good game compared to older games that could retain many players for years?
Nothing you said really disagrees with me ? The post I quoted said they'd rather pay for quality by playing a box+sub game. Your own examples only seem to further the point that attaching a box price and a sub doesn't mean quality or more development. Sustained income going to a company that doesn't want to just suck the players dry has a much better chance of getting you want you want, but that has more to do with the company than the payment model.
I am so sick of people being stuck on this linear, quest grindy, reward driven, level-based progression model.
We have the ability to play these games differently, yet we chose not to and complain that they aren't different. I would love to see a change in mentality that would actually allow for different types of MMOs to exist. I would love to see more sandboxy games that don't rely heavily on quests or pvp. But I would love to see them actually thrive, instead of being really small, clunky, niche genres.
I'd love to see more RPGs using the zelda model of progression. Obtain tools to allow you to traverse more of the gameworld, over simply getting a high enough lvl to survive.
I'd love to see more interactive combat (I miss the skillchain system FFXI had, for example).
I'm not huge on crafting, but it would also be nice to see more interesting crafting systems in these games. Though again, if it's too intricate, people don't seem to bother using them.
- Though, I will also say that I've met a lot of really great people through these games. So it really has been a mixed bag. I just wish the status quo was a bit different. Maybe in a few years.
Nail on the head!
Seeing you brought up FFXI... let's continue along that road. I miss what FFXI offered when it came to community and communication. People took the time to talk to one another, not troll the chat-ways. Modern MMO games and players have created a toxic community of griefers and trolls that do not even try to fit into a game world nor be a part of the game world.
Skill chains in FFXI were nice... LOTRO also had a similar system.
Originally posted by AlBQuirky Ask yourself this. If MMOs required a box purchase AND a sub, how many would still be kicking? Free games slant the numbers and speak NOTHING of quality.
^ another great point... I have never been a fan of the B2P and F2P MMO model. I would rather pay for quality and be able to demand new content regularly over being at the mercy of the development studio that got all their money up front and no longer has a great deal at stake.
box+ sub games don't mean quality, regular updates or anything else you just tried to attach to it. If anything the f2p game that didn't collect $60 a player has more at stake when trying to get it's development costs back.
That is certainly true. There are "bad" box+sub MMOs as well as "good" and "mediocre" ones. I am not saying what you think I am saying.
What a box+sub does is MAKE players pay for their entertainment. If the entertainment does not meet their "value judgment", they stop paying/playing. When something is free, people will take/use/play it simply because, "It is Free!"
Box+Sub in no way indicates a good game. However, it does indicate if players actually like it.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Originally posted by AlBQuirky Ask yourself this. If MMOs required a box purchase AND a sub, how many would still be kicking? Free games slant the numbers and speak NOTHING of quality.
^ another great point... I have never been a fan of the B2P and F2P MMO model. I would rather pay for quality and be able to demand new content regularly over being at the mercy of the development studio that got all their money up front and no longer has a great deal at stake.
box+ sub games don't mean quality, regular updates or anything else you just tried to attach to it. If anything the f2p game that didn't collect $60 a player has more at stake when trying to get it's development costs back.
That is certainly true. There are "bad" box+sub MMOs as well as "good" and "mediocre" ones. I am not saying what you think I am saying.
What a box+sub does is MAKE players pay for their entertainment. If the entertainment does not meet their "value judgment", they stop paying/playing. When something is free, people will take/use/play it simply because, "It is Free!"
Box+Sub in no way indicates a good game. However, it does indicate if players actually like it.
What about B2P with no sub? You pay for your entertainment there too, and you can pick it up whenever you like. And I'm sure the games that are good or at least showed promise during beta will get good initial sales, and if they have a good business model with a minimal cash shop, they can be successful as long as their game is fun for their intended audience.
Comments
Did I say a single game? There are more people playing the games today because they are better. The only reason those old games were even able to keep their subscriptions back then was because they were the only ones around. People put up with those crappy designs. They will not today except for the minority that can't let the past go. If they kept on making games with old, tired, and archaic mechanics like those games in the past we wouldn't have millions of people playing MMOs today.
True. Though I'd say instancing and phasing has no place in an MMO. All it can offer is things that pull people apart, and half assed singleplayer experiences that I'd be better served playing a singleplayer game to get.
You can solve all the same problems instances solve with better game design.
How many of those "happy players" actually PAY for their entertainment. EQ may have "only" had 300-400K players, but every last one of them paid for their entertainment.
Not too many MMOs today can say the same. With your logic, if I made a free car that anyone and everyone could drive, that would give me billions of "customers." Then I could ask drivers to donate what they felt was OK. Does that mean my free car is better than any other car where drivers have to pay for it?
On one hand, you use numbers as a basis for your argument. On the other, you "poo-poo" the same argument against yours.
More MMOs. More FREE MMOs than "the old days." Of course you're going to have bigger numbers. Unfortunately, money is what developers seek, not simply freeloading players. Very few players pay enough to keep the freeloaders' games afloat.
Ask yourself this. If MMOs required a box purchase AND a sub, how many would still be kicking? Free games slant the numbers and speak NOTHING of quality.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Oh, come on now, my sarcasm was clearly implied that I understood your comment but rather questioning why you would assume this issue is oh so important to anyone that they'd need to tell themselves something to feel better. That was a ridiculous comment, and now you are just posting one ridiculous statement after another.
My complaint kind of goes along with OP's complaint. My biggest gripe is that we seem to be back-peddling in content and quality over the last 10 years because the MMO market blew up so much after the first generation (Ultima/Everquest/DAoC).
Once everyone figured out you could make as much as the movie industry with videogames it all became crap. Everything is rushed out so the quality sucks, there's more bugs now than ever, you'd think with the technology today games would blow the first generation out of the water....if not for the crap graphics nothing would beat those first MMOs innovation. But now the only hope we have for decent games rests with indie developers.
and what they don't realize is that nothing goes "wrong". They just go to cater to some other players' preferences.
I don't know how many, but does it matter?
TOR made more than $200M in 2013 .. someone is paying for it. Does it matter whether 10M players each pay $20, or 100k whales each pay $2000?
I know you're the dedicated troll of this website but... that 200 million? Not only was that not listed as end profit in the report, but the report was ESTIMATING, and provided no sources.
If EA had made that money on SWTOR, it would have announced it with ringing silver trumpets. Instead we haven't heard a peeep from EA about SWTOR in a long long time.
I'm not so sure it's that they go and cater to someone else as much as I think it's that they are trying to cater to everyone they possibly can all at once.
I agree with you except I felt EQ wasn't that deep. It just felt like a never ending quest fest where all the quests were way to far from the quest giver. There was no potential for interaction with other players. FFXI was my immersion grabber but what made it great back then wouldn't work now-a-days. Most of us are bored of the same old thing we've already experienced.
But you are dead on about NO IMMERSION. I play a character and it feels just like me playing a character. That is bad. I want to feel like I am the character. So I try to do little things to make me feel more "at home" in that cyber world - more real. One example: I buy a house and try to decorate. But then I run in to limits like there can only be so much furniture in a house. My character has to place the furniture a certain way. My character cannot sit down or eat at the table. I don't have a closet with pajamas instead I lay in bed with my boots on - if I'm allowed in the bed at all. Etc. Limits limits limits.
I could give more examples but I have leave. I think the time of run-of-the-mill mmo's is over. We need games to be more detail orientated than ever to keep the player's mind's occupied and not bored.
Great insight here to be honest.
Here's my subjectivity on all this (for what it's worth, I know)
I really don't care that TOR made 200M. The only extent I care about financials in the games I want to play is "Are they making enough money to keep the game going with the development it needs to have?"
After that, I could care less if it's two hundred dollars or two hundred billion dollars. One thing I learned as a long time Anarchy Online subscriber. As a player, I thought I was supporting my game paying for on going development and content each month. Well, I wasn't. FunCom was taking all the proceeds they were getting from one game and using it for another project. Well, what they do with their profits is up to them, but I was paying for a service and only receiving it in part. FunCom owed me and the rest of AO's player base a truckload of overdue content and upgrades that were promised and never came. Finally, they did get off their butts and release some gear upgrades and a couple new instances. Something akin to an average sized content update released by most MMORPGs after a few months. The difference here is that it was only once. Just one. After years, just one. But the kick in the balls was that they charged $20 bucks for it and called it a "booster pack".
So, if all that money these companies make isn't re invested back into improving the player experience for that game, then those financials are for investors, I don't give a flying F**K what it means otherwise.
pay2win. There is no single MMORPG, where you can simply congratulate another player for having achieved something, because you know that they could have probably bought there way there. I hate it. If there'd be ever another MMORPG without a cash shop or a cash shop that sells only items that have zero impact on the gameplay, then I would play that game.
Developers who create a non-cash shop MMORPG try to do one thing: build the best MMORPG possible with the amount of money and time available, so that many people buy it and keep playing it.
Developers who create a cash shop MMORPG try to do one thing: make you pay more. Lure you into the game with an easy entry, and then put obstacle after obstacle in your path, that can only be solved by spending money.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
^ another great point... I have never been a fan of the B2P and F2P MMO model. I would rather pay for quality and be able to demand new content regularly over being at the mercy of the development studio that got all their money up front and no longer has a great deal at stake.
box+ sub games don't mean quality, regular updates or anything else you just tried to attach to it. If anything the f2p game that didn't collect $60 a player has more at stake when trying to get it's development costs back.
But that's just like real life...haven't you seen what they teach kids nowadays ?
Depends on the game really. I can point to LOTRO as a game where quality of expansions suffered once they went F2P compared to what it was in the first couple of years of subscription and look at SWTOR where they said at launch they'd be extending class stories but haven't presumably because F2P=not enough money. Then you look at a game like Path Of Exile which releases a good deal of new content without a sub or a big budget so it can go either way. Although if I really want to play a game a sub still makes me feel more secure.
Another factor to look at is how long people stick with these games. If the average person plays 3 weeks and then quits isn't it hard to call that a good game compared to older games that could retain many players for years?
But you DID give the developer all of your money upfront when you bought the game. That covered it's development costs. Everything thereafter is gravy. How is spending $50 to play a game for 30 days promising you new content and spending $50 to play a game forever not promising you new content. You just ASSUME your subscription is being used to generate new content but the reality is, all that content was already in the pipes before you even bought the game.
I just don't fathom this mentality at all. All a subscription does is ALLOW you to continue playing a game that you already paid for. Whether there is or is not any updates to the game has zero to do with your subscription fee. If it did, they'd forego a box price entirely, allow you to download it for free and only let you play it while you have active time on your game card. But they don't do they?
Take the WoD expansion, that's a $50 fee that comes with 30 days game time. You will spend an additional $90 just to get their first content update (more or less). $140 spent. That guy that bought the B2P game spent $50 and got their content update for $0. Next content update is down the road even more... so more money spent. Now you could say you'd stop playing until the content drops, thereby saving you money. But therein lies the hole in your theory... if they are using your subscription fee to fund updates, how are they going to get their money if you're not subbed? Who's paying for this content then?
Subscriptions are hogwash. People pay subscriptions to keep playing the game they enjoy, not because of some promise of new content. That expectation was manifested later by the players.
The examples you give are for games that survived not thrived. So of course they scaled back from what they planned on doing because the revenue they were expecting wasn't there. It wasn't there when they were subscription based. It's not F2P that doesn't generate enough money for them it's the game itself no mater what payment option used doesn't make enough money. The question is if LOTRO stayed P2P would it have made enough money to pay for the content rate it had planned. It seems like because they went to a F2P model to survive that no the P2P was not going to make any difference. Something was going to give. The last 6 months I played AoC there was amost nothing for updates, why, they were not making enough money. GW2 has constant updates, it is a sucessful game it is also B2P.
Nothing you said really disagrees with me ? The post I quoted said they'd rather pay for quality by playing a box+sub game. Your own examples only seem to further the point that attaching a box price and a sub doesn't mean quality or more development. Sustained income going to a company that doesn't want to just suck the players dry has a much better chance of getting you want you want, but that has more to do with the company than the payment model.
Nail on the head!
Seeing you brought up FFXI... let's continue along that road. I miss what FFXI offered when it came to community and communication. People took the time to talk to one another, not troll the chat-ways. Modern MMO games and players have created a toxic community of griefers and trolls that do not even try to fit into a game world nor be a part of the game world.
Skill chains in FFXI were nice... LOTRO also had a similar system.
What a box+sub does is MAKE players pay for their entertainment. If the entertainment does not meet their "value judgment", they stop paying/playing. When something is free, people will take/use/play it simply because, "It is Free!"
Box+Sub in no way indicates a good game. However, it does indicate if players actually like it.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
What about B2P with no sub? You pay for your entertainment there too, and you can pick it up whenever you like. And I'm sure the games that are good or at least showed promise during beta will get good initial sales, and if they have a good business model with a minimal cash shop, they can be successful as long as their game is fun for their intended audience.