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Amazon Game Studio Head Steps Down Amid Declining New World Active Players | MMORPG.com

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  • WordsworthWordsworth Member UncommonPosts: 173
    Yeah.  I would not want to get a call into an office and have to explain to someone why the game studio I have been put in charge of has cancelled four in-house games and fumbled one of the first AAA western-developed MMORPG releases in almost a decade.
  • JakobmillerJakobmiller Member RarePosts: 694
    JeroKane said:
    Wargfoot said:
    I think New World is worth saving.
    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.
    I never picked the game up, but I am definitely interested in seeing this game turning out for the better. 
    Kyleran[Deleted User]
  • WordsworthWordsworth Member UncommonPosts: 173
    JeroKane said:


    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.
    What constitutes a recovery?  Like, I would have considered Eve and DDO's switch to F2P to be a big turnaround for both games.  I thought Albion made a legendary recovery as well.
    Kyleran
  • Slapshot1188Slapshot1188 Member LegendaryPosts: 17,651
    tzervo said:
    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. 
    According to them, the design and ambition was to scale up, even when it was a survival game:

    New World Servers to Start with 500 Player Capacity But May Grow to 10k | MMORPG.com
    Maybe those were the plans (kind of irrelevant as what matters is what launched)... but its not JUST server capacity, there were lots of items that showed a smaller game design was envisioned.   Some of these would be :  Mandatory quests to kill a named NPC that only a few people could get credit for, with a 20 minute respawn,  PvP quests that took place in a space small enough to run across in 30 seconds, 50 vs 50 "endgame" events that could only happen in each location every few days...

    I had more fun in NW for the first month than I had in any MMO in years... but after awhile the accumulation of all the issues kind of took the fun out of the game.
    KyleranBLNX

    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. 

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  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 10,014
    Saruomo said:

    KaliGold said:

    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.

    THere is PVP in every single MMO I have ever played...It may not be the focus of the game, but almost all of them put it in the game in one form or another.
  • XiaokiXiaoki Member EpicPosts: 4,045
    Wargfoot said:
    I think New World is worth saving.

    It could be saved but it can't.

    To save the game they would have to eliminate a major source of the problems with the game and that is the systems that are client side.

    If the team is constantly tackling gold and item dupes then that slows down progress on any new content.

    And, sadly, moving systems to client side is probably because of the awful Lumberyard graphics engine. Developers from Amazon's cancelled games have said that Lumberyard is not good at handling online, which definitely makes it perfect for an MMO.
  • VorthanionVorthanion Member RarePosts: 2,749
    edited March 2022
    Was it poor leadership or poor design? For me, it was much more if not completely the latter.
    [Deleted User]

    image
  • illutianillutian Member UncommonPosts: 343
    kitarad said:
    Saruomo said:
    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.
    Not to mention they broke the ability to use the Steam edition of FF14 to play the Square Enix edition (aka non-Steam version).

    So now if you still want your time tracked (and thus contribute to the 'total hours played' displayed by SteamDB) you need to use Steam Edit to remove the "-issteam" flag of the Steam edition. Then login with your non-Steam credentials.

    ...it's a PITA. Because each Steam update reverts the change.
    [Deleted User][Deleted User]Kyleran

    Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising everytime we fall.

  • Slapshot1188Slapshot1188 Member LegendaryPosts: 17,651
    tzervo said:
    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. 
    According to them, the design and ambition was to scale up, even when it was a survival game:

    New World Servers to Start with 500 Player Capacity But May Grow to 10k | MMORPG.com
    Maybe those were the plans (kind of irrelevant as what matters is what launched)... but its not JUST server capacity, there were lots of items that showed a smaller game design was envisioned.   Some of these would be :  Mandatory quests to kill a named NPC that only a few people could get credit for, with a 20 minute respawn,  PvP quests that took place in a space small enough to run across in 30 seconds, 50 vs 50 "endgame" events that could only happen in each location every few days...

    I had more fun in NW for the first month than I had in any MMO in years... but after awhile the accumulation of all the issues kind of took the fun out of the game.

    Survival game or MMORPG, unfortunately the game would have failed either way. It is a war game where players can stand on control points and go invuln. It isn't really a mystery why everyone quit. Issues, bugs, exploits like these were pointed out to AGS by the players during Beta.

    Its actually a shocker to me that there are so many people who say "Questing is boring, gameplay is bland. That's why it failed." Nobody seems to know why they don't like this game, they just know to dislike it.
    You ever watch those cooking competition shows?  Somehow they are always on in my house even though none of that food is ever cooked here... but anyway... 

    The analogy I am going for is that they started to make one modest dish, tasted some of the ingredients midway, realized it wasn't going to win, threw out half of what they had already cooked, and decided to make the most complicated dish possible, with 20 minutes left.

    I thought the game was pretty cool...  until it wasn't.

    And yes, the PvP glitches/exploits and bullshit certainly helped.
    [Deleted User]Kyleran

    All time classic  MY NEW FAVORITE POST!  (Keep laying those bricks)

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    Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017. 

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  • olepiolepi Member EpicPosts: 3,053
    There are a bunch of different pieces to the puzzle. Some were done very well, others weren't.

    - game design -- this is poor. Whoever designed the game didn't really know what they were doing. Is it a survival game? A PvP game? An MMO? An MMO with lots of PvE? It sounds like somebody did a good sales job selling their idea to management, and the management didn't know enough to see it was crap. Then they tried to correct mid-stream.

    - programming -- this also is poor. Putting so many things client-side is a recipe for what happened: tons of exploits, dupes, bugs. Of course, it does lower the demand on the servers. So again,  it looks like somebody who knew something about computers designed the architecture, but didn't know much about games especially MMO's.

    - graphics -- this is great. I think they did a great job here, and it misleads people into thinking the rest of the game is of the same quality.

    - marketing -- Amazon is good at this.

    I bought the game when it released, and am waiting my usual 6 months to a year before playing it. I hope it's still alive by then.


    ------------
    2024: 47 years on the Net.


  • kam19080kam19080 Newbie CommonPosts: 5
    just quit the job and leave a mess out....

    please, save the game and not just leaving
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    edited March 2022
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • JeroKaneJeroKane Member EpicPosts: 7,098
    edited March 2022
    JeroKane said:


    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.
    What constitutes a recovery?  Like, I would have considered Eve and DDO's switch to F2P to be a big turnaround for both games.  I thought Albion made a legendary recovery as well.
    Both DDO and LOTRO only briefly experienced an influx of new players after converting to F2P. In which LOTRO actually did better and for longer than DDO. Though, LOTRO also lost a lot of loyal players in anger at the same time they made the switch.
    It was only a brief respite and Turbine still went down under, just to be saved by Warner Bros at the last moment, then forced by WB to reorganize to mobile game development and forced to ditch both DDO and LOTRO.

    It were the devs that were laid off that reorganized and created SSG and begged WB to take over DDO and LOTRO or both games would have be shut down right at that moment.
    To make matters worse. SSG has done more harm than good to LOTRO over the last couple years, with terrible buggy/broken expansions, stupid changes no one asked for, etc, etc.
     

    EVE Online? Are you serious?  I was there during the high days between 2005 and 2009, when the broke concurrent connection record after record.
    After they ditched Walking in Stations, giving in to the threats from Goon&Co. CCP as we knew it was no more and the game only went downhill ever since.  F2P did not save the game one bit.

    Sorry, but you people look back with way too rose tinted glasses.
    Just because these games are still online, doesn't mean they are succesful in any way. The games are just kept alive by a bunch of wales spending lots of money and keep the lights on at SSG and CCP. That's about it. Since both companies have nothing else to keep them alive or afloat!
  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 44,058
    I'm actually willing to give it a go one day, but not until (or if) they can reign in the exploiting and defects to a point they don't impact my personal gameplay.

    Lost Ark has reportedly gazillions of bots, yet if there are I've rarely noticed nor ever been impacted by them, so I continue to have fun.

    Same here, though fresh start servers would be a big plus as well, but not a show stopper.






    "True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde 

    "I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant

    Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm

    Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

    Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™

    "This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon






  • WordsworthWordsworth Member UncommonPosts: 173
    JeroKane said:


    Sorry, but you people look back with way too rose tinted glasses.
    Just because these games are still online, doesn't mean they are succesful in any way. The games are just kept alive by a bunch of wales spending lots of money and keep the lights on at SSG and CCP. That's about it. Since both companies have nothing else to keep them alive or afloat!
    Yikes.  Sorry, I guess.

    I was just trying to share opinions on the subject and get different views.  Of course, I should have known it's a settled subject beyond hearing different sides.  My mistake.

    In my mind, I considered EvE and DDO a turnaround because people were touting it a financial success in gaming rags.  I guess I was wrong.  Again, sorry.

    Please correct my bad thinking by telling me the correct definition of a turnaround.  Again, I beg forgiveness for being so woefully ill-informed.  Must be those damn rose-tinted glasses.  B)
    Iselin
  • TillerTiller Member LegendaryPosts: 11,485
    edited March 2022
    They should put John Smedley in charge of it all so it can be put out of it's misery lol. (kidding, don't do that)
    SWG Bloodfin vet
    Elder Jedi/Elder Bounty Hunter
     
  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 44,058
    JeroKane said:


    Sorry, but you people look back with way too rose tinted glasses.
    Just because these games are still online, doesn't mean they are succesful in any way. The games are just kept alive by a bunch of wales spending lots of money and keep the lights on at SSG and CCP. That's about it. Since both companies have nothing else to keep them alive or afloat!
    Yikes.  Sorry, I guess.

    I was just trying to share opinions on the subject and get different views.  Of course, I should have known it's a settled subject beyond hearing different sides.  My mistake.

    In my mind, I considered EvE and DDO a turnaround because people were touting it a financial success in gaming rags.  I guess I was wrong.  Again, sorry.

    Please correct my bad thinking by telling me the correct definition of a turnaround.  Again, I beg forgiveness for being so woefully ill-informed.  Must be those damn rose-tinted glasses.  B)
    I like your responses, keep posting more.

    ;)
    [Deleted User]

    "True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde 

    "I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant

    Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm

    Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

    Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™

    "This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon






  • JeroKaneJeroKane Member EpicPosts: 7,098
    JeroKane said:


    Sorry, but you people look back with way too rose tinted glasses.
    Just because these games are still online, doesn't mean they are succesful in any way. The games are just kept alive by a bunch of wales spending lots of money and keep the lights on at SSG and CCP. That's about it. Since both companies have nothing else to keep them alive or afloat!
    Yikes.  Sorry, I guess.

    I was just trying to share opinions on the subject and get different views.  Of course, I should have known it's a settled subject beyond hearing different sides.  My mistake.

    In my mind, I considered EvE and DDO a turnaround because people were touting it a financial success in gaming rags.  I guess I was wrong.  Again, sorry.

    Please correct my bad thinking by telling me the correct definition of a turnaround.  Again, I beg forgiveness for being so woefully ill-informed.  Must be those damn rose-tinted glasses.  B)
    If it was such a success and turnaround, then Turbine wouldn't have gone through several major lay off rounds and went nearly bankrupt, until bought up by WB.
    WB's first act was to ditch both DDO and LOTRO as not worth the effort and it not being profitable enough.
    If some former devs didn't form SSG and begged WB for them to take over these games, then both games would have been shutdown before end 2016.


    EVE Online is just a sad story and most of it is CCP's own fault. Not sticking to their guns and vision and let themselves being blackmailed and threatened by a bunch of adult bullies (Goons & Co).
  • TheDalaiBombaTheDalaiBomba Member EpicPosts: 1,493
    tzervo said:
    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. 
    According to them, the design and ambition was to scale up, even when it was a survival game:

    New World Servers to Start with 500 Player Capacity But May Grow to 10k | MMORPG.com
    May was the key word in that phrase I think.  That whole thing honestly sounds more like hype than actual plans.  What dev hasn't included "hopes" or "plans" to expand X, add Y, or refine Z?


    Slapshot1188
  • CembryeCembrye Member UncommonPosts: 65
    Part of the reason I don't play MMORPG's as much as before is that they came to increasingly resemble Skinner Box/Data Mining operations. Loot crates, games as service, etc. You went from the early auteurs, the ones who saw the goal as painting a Sistine Chapel, to the ones who saw the goal as milking engagement for profit. I highly doubt Amazon will replace the departing fellow with anyone better.
    JeroKane[Deleted User]eoloe
  • TheDalaiBombaTheDalaiBomba Member EpicPosts: 1,493
    Saruomo said:

    KaliGold said:

    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.
    Based on the state of PvP features in the game, it honestly doesn't look like it was going to offer much beyond a unique setting in that department, either.
    [Deleted User]
  • Slapshot1188Slapshot1188 Member LegendaryPosts: 17,651
    tzervo said:
    tzervo said:
    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. 
    According to them, the design and ambition was to scale up, even when it was a survival game:

    New World Servers to Start with 500 Player Capacity But May Grow to 10k | MMORPG.com
    May was the key word in that phrase I think.  That whole thing honestly sounds more like hype than actual plans.  What dev hasn't included "hopes" or "plans" to expand X, add Y, or refine Z?
    Sure, but again, it was not a "designed and built a game that was a survival based small server PvP game and tried to make it an MMO halfway through.". It was a "designed with the ambition to scale up but oh well that plan can now be canned because we cannot".
    I feel I must point out that BOTH statements can be true...

    TheDalaiBomba[Deleted User]

    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

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  • TheDalaiBombaTheDalaiBomba Member EpicPosts: 1,493
    tzervo said:
    tzervo said:
    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. 
    According to them, the design and ambition was to scale up, even when it was a survival game:

    New World Servers to Start with 500 Player Capacity But May Grow to 10k | MMORPG.com
    May was the key word in that phrase I think.  That whole thing honestly sounds more like hype than actual plans.  What dev hasn't included "hopes" or "plans" to expand X, add Y, or refine Z?
    Sure, but again, it was not a "designed and built a game that was a survival based small server PvP game and tried to make it an MMO halfway through.". It was a "designed with the ambition to scale up but oh well that plan can now be canned because we cannot".
    I must disagree.  The interview reads more like pipe dreams.  They insist there is no upper limit to that capacity number, but no one would seriously think they could continue scaling.
  • reanorreanor Member UncommonPosts: 441
    People finally realized that New World was just a waste of time all along. Hype wears off and your eyes open. There is like a huge blob of about 2 million of MMO players that migrated from one MMO to another. The one's that are left 25k-35k are the core community who may stay in NW for a while longer, since they are the ones that really found in this MMO what they were looking for. The rest of the blob moved on to look for another excitement.
    Kyleran
  • Slapshot1188Slapshot1188 Member LegendaryPosts: 17,651
    reanor said:
    People finally realized that New World was just a waste of time all along. Hype wears off and your eyes open. There is like a huge blob of about 2 million of MMO players that migrated from one MMO to another. The one's that are left 25k-35k are the core community who may stay in NW for a while longer, since they are the ones that really found in this MMO what they were looking for. The rest of the blob moved on to look for another excitement.
    At the end of the day all MMORPGs are a “waste of time”.   I Mean,  if we dedicated that time to something productive maybe we would have world peace, the cure for cancer or at least be billionaires…
    [Deleted User]eoloe

    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

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