50k? I have no idea how much it cost to make a game but just random guessing I doubt you could do it for under $30 million. (I may be way off high or low, I have no clue). If we shoot low subs because it is an niche game, I still honestly think a quality game with good support could maintain a million subs. If we use WOW as the gold standard with 8 millionish subs , then I don't think its unrealistic to shoot for 1/8th of that. The key is to do the polar opposite of Sony when it comes to advertising though. You must must must advertise the game not only in America but overseas as well. Try to get that Asian market. Those psychos don't care how hard leveling it. They will play a good game. Europe has very dedicated gamers as well. Don't just release the thing and sit and hope someone buys it. Put out a serious marketing campaign. 50k is a ridiculously low number. If that's the best you can hope for don't bother. You'll never pay it off.
Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
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I don't know the exact timing of the changes that were made, but those changes most certainly were made at some point. What changes do you disagree with?
Combat was completely changed to move away from the original vision, and that was before launch. Now maybe the original combat sucked because it wasn't implemented in a compelling way, but it most certainly was changed and the pace was sped up to be more in line with the other popular MMORPGs. The death penalty was nerfed (i believe both pre and post launch but not positive). The leveling curve became a complete joke after they sped it up and i'm almost positive this was pre-launch. I specifically remember outleveling a major quest-hub area (i think the main quest hub in your late teens/twenties but don't remembver the name) while right in the middle of the questline and wondering how in the hell anyone could think that's a good idea. The massive world was still there but eventually they put in the insta-ports usable by everyone which then makes the impressive size of the world almost completely inconsequential (believe that was well after launch though). I should say though, to this day VG had the most impressive world i've ever played in in terms of size/scope/artistic style etc. Absolutely loved it...to much brown my a$$
I know you were there, but to say the game that launched was a vast improvement in every way is...well, i just disagree. Yes, it was a much more playable game no doubt Many fixes were put in that made the game more playable but the move away from the original vision that was posted on the Sigil website absolutely happened both pre launch and continued into post launch.
Having said all of that, i still played the game for close to 2 years and enjoyed it, and if the engine was good I think things would have went much differently for VG.
Bruman
Golden Squire
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Yeah, I've pointed this out before (and the impracticalness of people wanting a niche game but with AAA polish and marketing and all their friends playing). That feature list describes something only a small amount of people would be interesting in playing for any amount of time. Back when EQ ruled the roost and was the only real game in town, it topped out at what, 500k? The point being a AAA title CAN'T produce this, because you said, it will never pay off. Brad's supposed to be doing something different though, with likely crowd-sourced funding, so hopefully the two things can line up.
I think you have a good point too with marketing overseas as well, although that's still not as simple as "oh okay let them buy it too". There are high costs to localization, support (both technical and customer service), running servers over there, billing, then various laws (look at the editing Blizzard had to do to WoW in China). It does seem like an untapped revenue stream for many MMOs though.
What I'd heard was that the original combat wasn't a hot button bar combat at all - that it was something like you targeted your attacks to specific body parts / areas, and had conditions, or something like that. It definitely sounded pretty complex.
The design will be niche but I think they've got their fingers crossed that more people want that niche product than expected. Sustain profit with low sub numbers, but rake it all in if it's more successful than anticipated. And if success comes due to an old school design, they'll stay the course.
The only way I saw the vision weakening is if the response is worse than expectations.
The only way I saw the vision weakening is if the response is worse than expectations.
popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
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Leveling curves always seem faster later, because they are. Information isn't as easy to get and powerful gear isn't as common and people are trying different things and actually exploring. Sure, there were a select few who had enough information to make a power-leveling plan, but aside from a few poopsockers with a plan to rush to max, the exp rate at launch seemed to feel good. It walked the fine line where people would say 'man, leveling is slower' but take it as a challenge instead of it being a complaint and seen as an unacceptable hindrance.
I think that line is what needs walked. We can't go back to head-against-wall progression. It has to be present so people notice and feel it working against them, so they dig in a little and push back. Whether 'kids these days' will respond well to such a game is a point of debate, but I think there have always been and will always be people looking for challenges in a game. I'd argue that increasingly challenging games and content is more popular than ever. It's just that other genres have found clever ways to continue ramping up complexity and challenge and the mmo market is so stagnant most of the players are even starting to believe the 'that would never work' bullshit that doesn't seem to plague other industries to the same extent.
Back to Vanguard, though, for some reason... I think you actually hit on one of the things that was wrong with the leveling curve: quest hubs. The exp rate wasn't the issue, but that quest hubs created a leveling curve that was. The game suffered from split philosophies. The first (original) philosophy of a huge world with dungeons and places to explore and a stiffer death penalty and slower travel all helped temper the speed of advancement. It was a system designed to be supported by quest lines, not quest hubs. Even today, if you play the game based on a quest-line experience and avoid the quest hub and local fetch quests, it's a totally different experience, and one I will claim is still pretty good.
The further problem isn't just that the quest-hub style gaming didn't fit the existing game design, but that it split the player base. If you were like me you were in Skawlra early on in launch getting your ass kicked, but being rewarded for it, and the game felt like a true EQ-style revolution. Over time quest-hubs were found to be 'more efficient' and the path of least resistance won out. There became less and less people to group/explore/dungeon-crawl with, and those wanting that group/explore/dungeon experience often didn't make it to the higher levels when quests were more likely to force you into dungeons. And the people who did make it via quest hubbing were either shitty at the game and got pissed off and left or didn't want a dungeon experience because that wasn't the game they had been given so far. The players didn't know what the game was supposed to be, because the game itself didn't even present a coherent image.
In beta the only thing more painful than seeing people in chat complaining the "don't know where to go" was watching Sigil actually start responding to those 'complaints' by making changes. Not a bad thing to point players in a direction or even lead them by the hand to a dungeon or start of an overland quest-line. But instead they started leading players to the quest hubs and the hundreds of quests they had shit out just so they could compare their number of quests with that of WoW. Many of the fast, easy, solo sort of arguments and systems weren't even bad in a vacuum, it's just they went against everything else the game was doing.
I guess the point is decide what the game will be and work on making it the best possible version of that game, instead of trying to make it some aborted version of every-game. The second things start getting tacked on for the sake of some 'other' audience or style, everyone loses, because the original target audience sees it as betrayal and the new audience realizes it's just bullshit pandering.
Damn Vanguard.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Still trying to figure out who's troll account this is.. Good post either way..I find it interesting you chose this thread to post in for your first.
VG just went off course. Really not much more can be said about it. What we got was 2 different game philosophies crammed into one game..
I think the people like Denault did a great job considering.. I'm sure at the time even they didn't agree with all the design decisions being made. It really just needed more time.
VG just went off course. Really not much more can be said about it. What we got was 2 different game philosophies crammed into one game..
I think the people like Denault did a great job considering.. I'm sure at the time even they didn't agree with all the design decisions being made. It really just needed more time.
They most definitely sped up the exp a couple of times in VG, plus they added rest exp and then started doing double exp weekends and shit. You could outlevel and area on double exp weekend no problem.
You nailed this on the head. The minute people were presented with anything difficult progression wise, Sigil nerfed it. Now, keeping in mind "back in the day", you either played Everquest or went back to UO so it could be argued people were forced to deal with it, but the result of that was people adapted, learned the content, sent tells to see if anyone knew how to get around "x" problem etc...It seems the current thinking is, run into issue or difficult problem, /rage quit, race to forums and spend the next four hours complaining about what a terrible game it is.
Is it possible to reverse today's younger generation mentality of "easy mode"? I'm not sure. When I was a kid I spend all damn day playing PacMan and that got hard as hell after the first 4-7 boards. Kids adapt, kids learn. Its only as we get older we develop expectations and judge products or services based on those expectations. The big picture is, the more easy mode you make a game, the less reasons exist to play it. I spend 8 hours on a corpse run in POF, got one hour sleep then got up and went to work. Was that excessive? Sure. Did I quit the game over it? Nope. I logged right back in when I got home from work. Its possible to make a difficult game that is rewarding and retain players, but it seems so often its the developers who get cold feet and undo months, even years of work based on a kneejerk reaction to players.
Look at the "souls" games, is there alot of /ragequit in those? Yep, but they are very succesfull and full of younger players.
it's not age. read the d3 thread when it was launched: more complaints than people were trying to figure tatics out.
what is interesting is the wanting of "hard mode" so long as it is seemingly attuned/balanced.
given limited avail time as we age, "hard mode" is something we tolerate less if poorly implemented (given that we've done it before)
it does seem, that if you don't know the "hardness of the mode", then people will complain more. prior expectations and consent to that mode is, imo, imperative.
youth is for badly tuned "hard mode".
Good points. I used to think I would no longer tolerate "hard mode" time consuming games either. I am going to school full time and raising a family, yet the funny part is, the wife and I play MMOs at night. I play on my own EQ emulator and she plays EQ2 or Vanguard. It would take us forever to level, but we are still playing 6 days a week. So throw that theory out the window.
So I was reading a book about Everquest the other night, and this one part pretty much said that people had been super stoked and excited playing MUDs. And then Everquest came along and took MUDs to the next level and recaptured the original awe and excitement of MUDs.
MY opinion is that MMOs really haven't been taken to that next level. We're just kinda... stagnant.
So now someone needs to take MMOs to the next level...and recapture the original excitement...
^__^
MY opinion is that MMOs really haven't been taken to that next level. We're just kinda... stagnant.
So now someone needs to take MMOs to the next level...and recapture the original excitement...
^__^
According to your theory, that would actually be creating a new excitement, one that hasn't not been discovered yet. Much like what EQ did in 1999.
"hard mode" != intrinsically more time consuming.
perhaps i should said instead: we only think we want something new - but what we want is familiar.
perhaps i should said instead: we only think we want something new - but what we want is familiar.