quick drop in subscriptions when it is few from the beginning

arcundo · December 2015

All MMOs except WoW, experience at some point a quick drop of subscriptions and take drastic measure to keep going. Usually this is merging servers and/or going F2P. But many games (like ESO) has a solid player base to start with, so even after a large drop in subscriptions, the game has a solid number to continue with after going F2P.

But lets say CU start with 100.000 subscriptions, and after half year drop to about 20.000. How can a kickstarter MMO cope with that without the players feeling "nothing" is happening on the server anymore?

YashaX · December 2015

Population declines are always worrying especially for a RvR based game where player interaction is basically the entirety of the game.

I terms of financing though, I think kickstarters are somewhat insulated from the usual pressures of business since they didn't have to take out massive financing to make the game. Using your numbers as an example they would be going from $1.5m/month to $300,000/month. With no loans to pay back that's a lot of revenue even at the lower figure.

Octagon7711 · December 2015

It would really depend on their expenses and how well they managed their income. IE: Salaries, Bonuses, R&D, unexpected problems, planned future additions or expansions.

DXSins · December 2015

Isn't 100k way to high of a number to be thinking of? Their kickstarter ended with 14,873 backers pledged $2,232,933 and now they are at $3,733,559... healthy guess would be around 25-30k at launch imo. Sure once a hard release is set in stone, some more will buy in... but really don't think pvp sub based game is going to pull in high numbers.

Hopefully the devs have planned out to be able to support the game in their vision (sub based) and keep there servers running / game updates coming with a small playerbase. Else they would be far better off building the game from the ground up to work well as F2P and attract a bigger audience, instead of changing to F2P later on.

Sovrath · December 2015

My guess is that they already know this, probably have the idea of what percentage they will drop and probably have budged accordingly. This is not Mark Jacobs' first rodeo.

gervaise1 · December 2015

arcundo said:

All MMOs except WoW, experience at some point a quick drop of subscriptions and take drastic measure to keep going. Usually this is merging servers and/or going F2P. But many games (like ESO) has a solid player base to start with, so even after a large drop in subscriptions, the game has a solid number to continue with after going F2P.

But lets say CU start with 100.000 subscriptions, and after half year drop to about 20.000. How can a kickstarter MMO cope with that without the players feeling "nothing" is happening on the server anymore?

As Sovereth says: they know this.

All games - including WoW - go through the same "life cycle curve". Initial launch; sales growth; plateau; decline; old age. There are ups and downs as new markets are added, new models are launched and promotions are run - you have an amalgamation of curves basically - but it is standard business 101. EQ added a new server just before WoW launch (new expansion); ESO boost when it entered a new market (consoles) as did FFXIV when it launched in China and so on. It is not rocket scence.

Companies not only expect it but they build their business around it. A financial model will be created for expected sales; typically a conservative one - not quite worst case but one they would hope to hit easily. This is used to generate an expected revenue model. Link it into the cash you have and compare the answer to what you are spending and what you expect to spend. And there are iterations you do, stretch targets, contingency planning .... stuff.

And I hope - and am pretty sure - that the devs won't be doing it; business/financial/project management people though - absolutely.

(And when people are talking about money in remeber there are taxes)

Wizardry · December 2015

This problem does not escape even Wow.
There is a bigger problem,...game design.

If every game leaves out the adventure and open world concept for a single linear path of following yellow question marks,then anyone not in the race is left behind.

It doesn't take more than a few days now with games being so shallow to completely turn a busy zone into a ghost zone.So it doesn't matter if a game has 100 million,a player moving about casually and just trying to enjoy al lof the game rather than those yellow question marks will see an empty playing field.

It was 2-3 expansions ago,i entered WOW,no clue what server it was at this point.I counted 7 players that i saw in one whole week and that is the most populated rpg going.Two of those players did not even belong in the zone and one was just strolling through looking for new players to join his guild.

SO as long as these devs keep making such shallow designs,it will never be anything but empty zones expect for the last zone and no server merges or anything will save it.

bcbully · December 2015

ESO is not F2P

bcbully · December 2015

OT - CU will be fine every pvpr and their friends are looking forward to CU.

arcundo · December 2015

Thanks for a lot of serious and solid answers in this thread except for bcbully's one post. ;-) (Btw if I change it to B2P i wil be correct, right? I like many use F2P sometimes for B2P games (especially ESO). In the long run it is not to much difference in expenses for the player between those two). Anyway I stopped the sub before it happened.

Like some of you have pointed out of course the devs know that the subscriptions will drop and have that in their calculation when it comes to expenses etc. I am not worried about that part, but like Wizardry touched on "7 players" on server is not fun. That does not mean that there is only 7 subscriptions on that server. But MMOs are senitive to having high numbers for the player to have the massive experience.

Hopefully CU will have some nice and smooth merge server mechanic.

Ledrir · December 2015

I believe if they put things in the game that encourage community and that give casual gamers a way to have fun and contribute to the realm wars then the population will be great. However, if the game is made only for the hardcore pvp crowd then I agree that the game will have a large drop in population after release.

Sovrath · December 2015

arcundo said:

But MMOs are senitive to having high numbers for the player to have the massive experience.

My bet is that the players who would be interested in this game might already play one of the earlier games and might be used to small but active communities.

Dark Age of Camelot seems to have a regular population of about 1,200 or so per night. And they are enjoying the heck out of the game.

This is a small indy game. It's going to be speaking to a small but dedicated audience that wants this type of game. So the players who are logging in are not going to be looking for WoW numbers but are going to be ready for a small but close knit community.

That's my guess anyway.

Octagon7711 · December 2015

At least until another similar niche game comes along that does it better. But that's a thing for any game.

goboygo · December 2015

arcundo said:

All MMOs except WoW, experience at some point a quick drop of subscriptions and take drastic measure to keep going. Usually this is merging servers and/or going F2P. But many games (like ESO) has a solid player base to start with, so even after a large drop in subscriptions, the game has a solid number to continue with after going F2P.

But lets say CU start with 100.000 subscriptions, and after half year drop to about 20.000. How can a kickstarter MMO cope with that without the players feeling "nothing" is happening on the server anymore?

Make it fun and without equal.

When you simply copy what everyone else in doing with some minor twist you get the initial swarm of tire kickers then people go been there done that and just drift off to the next clone.

Shadanwolf · December 2015

My 2 cents
-DAOC is now about 14-15 years old and still a subscription. Rvr done right has legs.
-DAOC subscriptions were far higher than any discussed here. I think those kinds of numbers are possible with CU
-CU will have no direct competition (except DAOC ). It if far from a cookie cutter game
-Mark J is at the helm..He brings a unique set of experience ,skills and passion that could help him navigate the ups and downs of captaining this type of ship.
-there are millions of xDAOC players longing for the next iteration of DAOC
-decision making will not be in the hands of corporate financial types who get paid to generate profit in the short term

net net I think the upside for the game is huge.It will be a niche game with far more players than you might imagine.

Phry · December 2015

Shadanwolf said:

My 2 cents
-DAOC is now about 14-15 years old and still a subscription. Rvr done right has legs.
-DAOC subscriptions were far higher than any discussed here. I think those kinds of numbers are possible with CU
-CU will have no direct competition (except DAOC ). It if far from a cookie cutter game
-Mark J is at the helm..He brings a unique set of experience ,skills and passion that could help him navigate the ups and downs of captaining this type of ship.
-there are millions of xDAOC players longing for the next iteration of DAOC
-decision making will not be in the hands of corporate financial types who get paid to generate profit in the short term

net net I think the upside for the game is huge.It will be a niche game with far more players than you might imagine.

Have to agree, i think a lot of people were hoping that TESO would fulfill that RvR(vR) PvP experience, but it was poorly implemented, as a result its campaigns are effectively just farms, and very few provide any really meaningful or fun PvP, if CU can provide this, then great, i just hope they don't fall into the same trap that Zenimax did, and use megaserver tech, megaservers may mean they never need to consolidate individual servers, because essentially there aren't any individual servers, but it also means that there is effectively no community in the game either, and the guild system used to combat this deficiency has effectively reduced guilds to a status of being little more than 'chat channels'.
If CU is going to promote the realm pride that DAoC virtually created, then there has to be a community, its just as important as the games combat mechanics, one without the other would imo result in an abject failure, and its why i also think that there is no realm pride in TESO, because without the community factor, it never stood a chance.
If they can do this, then yes, i'll be there too.

Copperfield · December 2015

Cu already had a playerbase as soon as they announce that they made a new version..

I did kickstart CU.. but im kinda dissapointed with the overall game speed of the game.. its terriable slow

im not sure if this game is for me will see.

JamesGoblin · December 2015

If you start with, IMO, extremely low initial sales (100k ??), then apply horrible retention rate to it while still remaining with reasonable playerbase, I guess it says a lot about how resistant CU is - "just in case".

To explain the "reasonable" from above: "30-50K subs and 80+ on Metacritic would be great. We know we will have to cut corners with certain things that might hurt our scores with some critics - like musical score, trailers and interstitials (never liked them anyways). However, I hope that they will see the game for what it is and not for what it isn’t due to smaller budget, independent development, etc. - like many did with Dark Age of Camelot."

arcundo · December 2015

Sovrath said:

arcundo said:

But MMOs are senitive to having high numbers for the player to have the massive experience.

My bet is that the players who would be interested in this game might already play one of the earlier games and might be used to small but active communities.

Dark Age of Camelot seems to have a regular population of about 1,200 or so per night. And they are enjoying the heck out of the game.

This is a small indy game. It's going to be speaking to a small but dedicated audience that wants this type of game. So the players who are logging in are not going to be looking for WoW numbers but are going to be ready for a small but close knit community.

That's my guess anyway.

Well then this answers my op post actually.

Thanks!

Warlyx · December 2015

CU looks promising i didnt put any money , but probably will buy it on release , if its as good as promised!

arcundo · December 2015

Phry said: Have to agree, i think a lot of people were hoping that TESO would fulfill that RvR(vR) PvP experience, but it was poorly implemented, as a result its campaigns are effectively just farms, and very few provide any really meaningful or fun PvP, if CU can provide this, then great, i just hope they don't fall into the same trap that Zenimax did, and use megaserver tech, megaservers may mean they never need to consolidate individual servers, because essentially there aren't any individual servers, but it also means that there is effectively no community in the game either, and the guild system used to combat this deficiency has effectively reduced guilds to a status of being little more than 'chat channels'.
If CU is going to promote the realm pride that DAoC virtually created, then there has to be a community, its just as important as the games combat mechanics, one without the other would imo result in an abject failure, and its why i also think that there is no realm pride in TESO, because without the community factor, it never stood a chance.
If they can do this, then yes, i'll be there too.

On paper megaserver sounds like the right way to go to avoid the need for merging etc. But since TESO had phasing and campaigns the difference to separate server MMOS wasn't that big in reality imo. And actually in some ways mega server proved to have more trouble than regular server technology.

I agree to what I put in bold in your post.
One of the fun things in server MMOs is recognizing individual enemies in PvP wether it is openworld, sieging or bg. In TESO I hardly fought against the same players to evenings in a row, and hardly had time to recognize who the other players are. But until proven otherwise this is somewhat the nature of the RvR for me. :-\

I hope somehow CU will be able to provide rivalry and recognition in some form. Fundamental things for a thriving community imo.

DalamarGM · December 2015

Shadanwolf said:

My 2 cents
-DAOC is now about 14-15 years old and still a subscription. Rvr done right has legs.
-DAOC subscriptions were far higher than any discussed here. I think those kinds of numbers are possible with CU
-CU will have no direct competition (except DAOC ). It if far from a cookie cutter game
-Mark J is at the helm..He brings a unique set of experience ,skills and passion that could help him navigate the ups and downs of captaining this type of ship.
-there are millions of xDAOC players longing for the next iteration of DAOC
-decision making will not be in the hands of corporate financial types who get paid to generate profit in the short term

net net I think the upside for the game is huge.It will be a niche game with far more players than you might imagine.

Agree on the first 3 points.

It's still to be seen if Mark is the 'right man' for this. (at least IMO, I'm personally not a fan w/ how Mark handled DAoC when he was in charge, but I'm more than willing to give him another chance)

By all accounts I don't think CU is the next iteration of DAoC. It may seem that way but the direction this is heading is different enough that existing/ previous DAoC players man not be lured permanently to CU. I have no doubt that i'll sink DAoC population on release but I have serious concerns on the longevity of CU.

-decision making will not be in the hands of corporate financial types who get paid to generate profit in the short term. I'm not sure I trust Mark on this. Mythic sold to EA and there's no doubt that Mark was instrumental to that sale. IF CU takes off who's to say EA won't court him again?

We don't have a fully functional product before us so all of this is speculation. I sincerely hope Mark and his team put out an excellent and fun product.

But, i've been a DAoC player since early 2002, i've seen and felt the repercussions of his past.

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quick drop in subscriptions when it is few from the beginning

Comments

"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey

"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey