FF14(24,762)(29,062)(95,150)Steam charts shows it is doing just as bad on this platform alone meaning that other platforms could be even worse. Valheim is doing worse than NW starting with over half a million concurrent and completely crashed now despite being Steam only.
Final Fantasy 14 can be accessed without steam and only came to steam later. Large portion of their player base do not use Steam. Your comparison lacks a foundation because NW is only available through steam.
FF14(24,762)(29,062)(95,150)Steam charts shows it is doing just as bad on this platform alone meaning that other platforms could be even worse.
The fact that it has other platforms in the first place means it's total playerbase is higher than the steam charts and thus, in a "just as bad on the steam charts as New World" situation, must be higher than New World' due to the additional platoforms.
Way too easy to put all blame on him, when the devs themselves are completely clueless and incompetent as well.
The screw ups and broken patches/fixes are on the incompetent dev team, who are just as clueless and have no idea what they are doing either.
So just changing manager is not going to magicaly fix all the problems with this game, when the entire studio is a shambles.
The biggest issue in my opinion was that they designed and built a game that was a survival based small server PvP game and tried to make it an MMO halfway through.
I really enjoyed large chunks of the game, but there were serious issues (depth of content, bugs, exploits) that really kind of ruined it.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
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FF14(24,762)(29,062)(95,150)Steam charts shows it is doing just as bad on this platform alone meaning that other platforms could be even worse.
The fact that it has other platforms in the first place means it's total playerbase is higher than the steam charts and thus, in a "just as bad on the steam charts as New World" situation, must be higher than New World' due to the additional platoforms.
Its not just that. Like someone else already said. The vast majority of FFXIV players on PC play directly via the FFXIV launcher and not via Steam. As it was added to Steam at a much later date.
I have played FFXIV on and off since the start and not play via Steam myself either, as I would have to re-buy everything.
This is a general issue with corporations. They think success translates and that high management degrees are the most important. There are too many skills that some people possess that can't translate with a degree.
Example, I'm a licensed professional counselor. You can't teach genuine empathy and the ability to build rapport in a classroom. It doesn't happen, that is why you do close to 700 hours of practicum. At the end of the day, you may obtain the degree and never work in the field because you just genuinely lack those skills.
Management is the same exact thing. Connecting with people to get their best, so your department shines. If this dude was unable to connect with the people making the game who play games and understand what actually makes people stay and play and spend money on games, then that is on him for not wanting to understand. He probably was more irritated he got placed here as he was doing something that was working for him and got thrown into this new video game crap for children (Heard it numerous times from adults who don't play any games or have any real hobbies)
There certainly has been many occasions when an Executive from one industry has succeeded in an entirely different one, with arguments on both sides whether it's a good practice or not.
Regardless, not every leader can transition their previous success to a new venture, clearly the case at AGS for sure.
The bad news is ..Bobby Kotick is looking for a new job I hear.
There are, which is why companies often hire high level executives cross-industry. There are more similarities than differences at this level of management regardless of industry so it's not as much of a transition as some may think for such a move.
The same level of success isn't guaranteed with such a move of course, but likely enough that it would be a low risk option.
Even an All-Star dev 'n leadership team couldn't fix NW.
...it was built on matchsticks and set ablaze by players just doing 'normal game stuff'; like activating a skill. Or posting sausages in chat. :P
As if a director stepping out is magically meant to make a struggling game better.
Gamers are mainly degenerates who cannot think for themselves and nobody cares what they say. And you and most posters here including the OP of the article itself belong to that group.
He tried to make a game for everyone and in the end made it for nobody. The people in early alpha were right, the original idea for New World should have stayed intact.
I dont see any hope for it even though they seem to keep trying as evidenced by the roadmap.
They kissed up to the same fly-by-night streamers at launch who dont really care about the game. The only streamers left of note are view botters.
Ashes Of Creation may actually end up being the game New World should have been. Thats a story for another time.
You have to acknowledge that mmo players are by far PVE players and only a handful PvP.
That's true, but there are also few PvP based MMORPGs to share that lesser number of players between. New World may have had more success focusing on serving that niche rather than rushing in inadequate PvE features.
Even an All-Star dev 'n leadership team couldn't fix NW.
...it was built on matchsticks and set ablaze by players just doing 'normal game stuff'; like activating a skill. Or posting sausages in chat. :P
As if a director stepping out is magically meant to make a struggling game better.
Gamers are mainly degenerates who cannot think for themselves and nobody cares what they say. And you and most posters here including the OP of the article itself belong to that group.
If the director is the one making the game struggle how could the game be made better without the current one leaving and another stepping in.
As some have said this comes way too late, I am not sure they will recover by this time next year now, so you have to ask yourself will they ever be able to? Hopefully they will get back on their feet, we just don't have the MMORPG's out there to throw them away.
Don't joke about what may come true! But they do need an industry guy, their approach to this from the start was more like a student project to show they can make a game.
P.S. Could this have been great positioning on Smedley's part, his foot is already in the door?
AGS can fire everybody and contract the bests minds of the market and the final result will be the same. Crucible, NW, and LA can easily show that AGS is not interested in create/manage good games or does not have an focus in mind that benefit not just their wallet but also create one active community of avid players that will espand time and money in their product (something that require ability but that is extremelly rewarded in long-term).
Perhaps now AGS realizes that making games is about providing fun, not only to collect prime subs for data collecting features.
Have fun is the last thing that devs will focus. They're extremelly concentrated in manage how milky the player wallet before things go downwhill. They will focus in the market and hype because theres is no product available.
video game crap for children (Heard it numerous times from adults who don't play any games or have any real hobbies)
One of the things that are killing this industry is it. The average age of "gamers" is 30 or more but people and even the ones that work in this industry continue talking about this BS that videogame is something to children... it's something that kill a game even before it be released or placed on paper. I believe that dark themes and mature tematics is what this industry need principally western developers that love realistic graphics. They just need just learn how just create games.
Maybe just maybe the people running gaming companies should be people that actually work in the field or maybe just maybe be people that actually play the games they make.
Someone that just want create good games (knowing that will be rewarded for it) and have someone to check if things are doing well seems good enough. Probably they never putted a control in hands.
If the director is the one making the game struggle how could the game be made better without the current one leaving and another stepping in.
It doesn't happen magically, but it can happen.
And how do incompetent developers in said studio, magically become competent?
A game director is still dependent on competent developers who know how to code and not make crazy mistakes and release bad after bad after bad buggy patches/updates. Breaking more than they fix.
Lets face it. This whole studio is just a shambles.
And even if they did a whole reorganization and hire a new all-star dev team. They won´ t be able to fix this mess, since the myriad of problems and mistakes are too deeply rooted within the game.
Just look back at Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. It was a complete mess when it launched. When SOE took over, some of their experienced devs manage to work some serious magic (especially fixing the chunking problems), but there were just too many glaring problems with the game to be able to fix it all and no matter what they did. The game never recovered.
With New World, the problem is just worse, since they don´ t get any monthly income via subscriptions. So anything they do now, with barely any population left, is just frankly money down the drain for Amazon. They won´ t be able to recover this. It´ s too late.
I wonder if New World will be Amazon Games' last game. That would be pretty hilarious. That game is so bad and boring that even when it goes F2P in a couple of months, I will never play it again. From two betas, I got about 80 minutes of playtime, about 40 minutes in each and around that mark, I would just press ALT+F4 and then uninstall the game, because it's so bad it's not even worth it shutting it down properly.
Sadly, it was obvious to anyone who played through the Alphas that they had absolutely no idea what they wanted the game to be. It changed so many times throughout the Alphas I played I was sincerely worried for the game. They were all over the place. Amazon themselves made their own bed with this unfortunately. This continued decline of players is on them. They screwed the pooch.
They desperately need more time but pushed it out far too early. They brought down the Alpha servers in less than a year prior to launch. They took less than 1 year to implement what we saw at launch. If only they took more time, it coulda been much better.
It was clear that there was something wrong. You can have all the money in the world and still make a bad game, after all good ideas can't be bought with money, but releasing a buggy mess such as New World with a budget of 500 million a year is just incompetence.
Seem so obvious that it would never work putting someone without game knowledge in charge.
I mean someone with experience in gaming could have messed up just as bad, because after some years in management roles people tend to loose touch; but at least some of the rookie mistakes could have been avoided.
Not sure if it was Amazon or AGS's fault with their previous products, but thus far they have a track record of not supporting their products, and just cutting their loses when faced with failures. Future of the games really depends on who replaces him and what resources they recieve. With enough resources and time, miracles can happen - look at games like FFXIV and No Man's Sky for example, despite bombing critically they were actively supported and worked on, leading to nowadays mostly universally loved products.
IMO at this stage Amazon are more likely to put NW on a quasi maintenance mode, working on releasing already developed updates only, and shifting their focus in the short term to Lost Ark while it remains popular, before finally cutting down on that title too.
How is it worth saving when over 90% of the players have left?
There isn´t much money left to be made, as anyone who was even remote interested in the game, has bought it.
So Amazon got their cash.
If MMO history has teached us one thing, is that people don´t come back.
FFXIV was an aberration, helped by a huge FF fanbase that allowed them to make a comeback. Every single other MMO has failed and never managed to recover, no matter how hard the devs tried.
Comments
The screw ups and broken patches/fixes are on the incompetent dev team, who are just as clueless and have no idea what they are doing either.
So just changing manager is not going to magicaly fix all the problems with this game, when the entire studio is a shambles.
Gosh he ran the warehosue so well that we thought he could step right into that game manager position.......
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
As it was added to Steam at a much later date.
I have played FFXIV on and off since the start and not play via Steam myself either, as I would have to re-buy everything.
There are, which is why companies often hire high level executives cross-industry. There are more similarities than differences at this level of management regardless of industry so it's not as much of a transition as some may think for such a move.
The same level of success isn't guaranteed with such a move of course, but likely enough that it would be a low risk option.
As if a director stepping out is magically meant to make a struggling game better.
Gamers are mainly degenerates who cannot think for themselves and nobody cares what they say. And you and most posters here including the OP of the article itself belong to that group.
That's true, but there are also few PvP based MMORPGs to share that lesser number of players between. New World may have had more success focusing on serving that niche rather than rushing in inadequate PvE features.
If the director is the one making the game struggle how could the game be made better without the current one leaving and another stepping in.
It doesn't happen magically, but it can happen.
Don't joke about what may come true! But they do need an industry guy, their approach to this from the start was more like a student project to show they can make a game.
P.S. Could this have been great positioning on Smedley's part, his foot is already in the door?
Welcome to the forums!
And how do incompetent developers in said studio, magically become competent?
A game director is still dependent on competent developers who know how to code and not make crazy mistakes and release bad after bad after bad buggy patches/updates. Breaking more than they fix.
Lets face it. This whole studio is just a shambles.
And even if they did a whole reorganization and hire a new all-star dev team. They won´ t be able to fix this mess, since the myriad of problems and mistakes are too deeply rooted within the game.
Just look back at Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. It was a complete mess when it launched. When SOE took over, some of their experienced devs manage to work some serious magic (especially fixing the chunking problems), but there were just too many glaring problems with the game to be able to fix it all and no matter what they did. The game never recovered.
With New World, the problem is just worse, since they don´ t get any monthly income via subscriptions.
So anything they do now, with barely any population left, is just frankly money down the drain for Amazon.
They won´ t be able to recover this. It´ s too late.
They desperately need more time but pushed it out far too early. They brought down the Alpha servers in less than a year prior to launch. They took less than 1 year to implement what we saw at launch. If only they took more time, it coulda been much better.
I mean someone with experience in gaming could have messed up just as bad, because after some years in management roles people tend to loose touch; but at least some of the rookie mistakes could have been avoided.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Stage one: Already completed
Stage two: Re-staff and remake
IMO at this stage Amazon are more likely to put NW on a quasi maintenance mode, working on releasing already developed updates only, and shifting their focus in the short term to Lost Ark while it remains popular, before finally cutting down on that title too.
There isn´t much money left to be made, as anyone who was even remote interested in the game, has bought it.
So Amazon got their cash.
If MMO history has teached us one thing, is that people don´t come back.
FFXIV was an aberration, helped by a huge FF fanbase that allowed them to make a comeback.
Every single other MMO has failed and never managed to recover, no matter how hard the devs tried.