The fault lies with Funcom not the Free to Play market, and if they cant see that, then there is no hope for that company.
Yes, FTP has diluted the market, but if a company has a quality product people will pay for it.
You say if companies have a quality product, people will pay for it, and that's true - in a vacuum. Only IF you ignore the supply side economics of it. I know a lot of people who download movies by torrent just because they can. Others are happy paying Netflix $8 a month to watch their content. I doubt the movie industry is terribly happy about either one. Movies aren't any cheaper to make! I think similarly if people can entertain themselves without paying a subscription fee, they will, and before long you have a culture of expectation and lots of people who WON'T pay a sub. It's a fact that games are BETTER today than they were in 1997 and they are cheaper to play. So what could be the actual problem, if NOT a bored, fickle and over-stimulated player-base?
I believe the problem is that the MMO market has such low barriers to entry for any development minded collection of programmers and artists that its like having, for example, automobiles designed by 10,000 little companies who give away V-8 roadsters for free. Why would I ever buy another Ford, Dodge, GMC, etc, if my transportation need is met? There is only so much the big companies can do to a product to convince me to go pay $30,000-$40,000 if some other jerky is giving away a passable alternative.
So my prediction is this : large games companies are going to suffer in this environment ( sans perhaps Blizzard ), and like Funcom, downsize, liquidate, and "smart" size their staff, until they are in terms of overhead, equal to the teams that turn out cookie-cutter MMOs every week in Asia. The games they'll produce will be borderline passable. They will not be block-buster productions. They will be packed with item shops and pay-to-win crappo. They're going to burn out like a flash-in-the-pan, repeatedly. WE aren't going to be happy with that. But its ALL we're willing to pay for, so that's the new business model : HYPE, WHORE for $$$ and SHUT it DOWN. Rinse and repeat.
I remember reading something by Richard Garriott years ago about how Ultima Online defied all their expectations, because prior to that time, every game product had a life cycle and profitability arc. Of course, the truth is that UO simply had a longer arc. He was in the midst of a multi-year arc. But now perhaps we're seeing a correction of sorts, where MMOs are returning to this abbreviated model. And it kinda makes sense really - don't DO anything that won't regroup your expenses within the first year of release.
The problem for me with free to play games is the content, Funcom have fun games but are not updated enough for me. I am more likely to drop a sub on a game that has regular content updates. I am happy to have a F2P model where they way you finance is buying the content updates (Like DDO or TSW) and I am not too big on micro-transactions and quality of life enhancements.
TSW and AOC can still work, but they both need a lot of money to get them to par and re-launch them with vast improvements.
Yes, I also understand the F2P market is bursting at the seams with products, but I feel without it, Funcom would of had 2 dead games which really deserve to live (for their concepts). Its not going to be easy for them, but the only way I see them succeeding is getting injected with large amounts of cash and then fix and improve those games. Then, re-launch it like how FF14ARR did.
It is Funcom's lack of knowledge in how to fix bugs that killed this game. They have some of the best gaming idea's in the industry they just dont have a clue how to run the game after it releases or how to fix it.
Lol any CEO; CFO; Production Manager; or Lead Designer that blames a market for a product lines own failure to perform in that market has other "issues" It always comes down to poor targeting, poor implementation, poor vision, lack of communication, and/or existing in a vacuum chamber any time a product line fails to perform regardless if it's physical or digital goods.
Free enterprise also includes the freedom to fail...NOW FREE!!!
For the record, I love, love, love The Secret World. It ranks as one of my favorite games ever.
The problem is that it doesn't really lend itself well to the MMORPG genre. I think the game would have been better off with something like a Minecraft model, with income from the game coming from client box sales, SDK sales for modders, and monthly licensing sales that allow people to host their own servers. RP groups especially I can imagine salivating at being able to host their own version of the game with custom tweaks and ruleset changes.
The SDK would allow people to add their own content and puzzles to expand the longevity of the game (much like NWN, which was still being played 10 years after released, last I checked), and the monthly license for hosting rights would give them steady income at a fraction of the cost it takes to build content and maintain a MMORPG-style server structure.
I have played Age of Conan on and off since late 2009 after the first wave of bugs were cleared and it was playable (still buggy, but playable). It was a great game when I started, you could buy a year sub, get some really powerful ACCOUNT WIDE items. All my characters had a tiger when hitting 80. Once FTP hit it became obvious that at endgame at least your going to have to have a sub. I will say outside of mounts and bags you can largely play the game endgame with just a sub. Because there really isn't much economy in the game it is hard to really make gold without a grind, hence the mounts and bags being pretty necessary (my yearlong sub from xmas 2010 got me both on every fresh 80).
The major problem with Funcom was crappy direction and a bad management team. The current director can't even get a letter out once a month on time. He is most likely underpaid and doing the job of 5 people because of it. Previous directors took the game in multiple and weird directions.
It had the most interesting combat (still the best tab target combat out there) for the time and it's focus on an adult theme made it the only choice for me for a long time. I still enjoy travelling around once in a great while to take in the landscapes. AoC should have been the most popular adult mmo, but it failed because of the crappy launch that never gained momentum. The failure of the Jason Momoa Conan movie also had a big impact on AoC.
I think that if Joel had taken over 2 years previously AoC would be in a better place. The world bosses are a great start, and the infamous crafting update is almost here (maybe). At this point the team is shared and so small it is amazing they have done anything at all. ESO will be out by this time and it replaces AoC on almost every level out of the gate. They had more than enough time to get all of these critical updates in the game, but chose not to. Making Khitai factional pvp + pve instead of just a grind would have gone a long way to making the game have sustainable content. Also giving each zone a level 80 versions would have been smart. Some of the best zones were leveling zones you just never really went back to after 80 (unless to grab gear for vanity).
Another big mistake was making gear the focus. I didn't play before the first update, so I didn't experience it then, but the game took skill or at least insane macro programming skill to play. The dodge system never quite worked well enough, as even with a dodge quite a bit of attacks from npc would land because they had "homing". Once you got to Khitai combat became pretty tough and you had to be on your toes even from the smallest foe. Gearing is a long process, some pieces being really easy to obtain, others being really tough. No matter how many times I did BRC wings I never once got a weapon drop for any of my characters. Weapons made a huge difference as some classes had a pretty tough time getting everything they needed. You could get a weapon from the bowls quest, and a few others for a staff or dagger, but outside of that you had to stick with bad crafted weapons that were much lower dps or the few crafted weapons that did work were insanely priced.
Funcom is a perfect example of why I am in favor of using a Crytek or Unreal type engine for development. They spent too much development dollars on the engine, and it was the main reason for AoC's buggy launch IMO.
In the end Funcom has had major opportunities to improve AoC and make it the best mmo. It doesn't need huge sweeping changes to be, either, as it has a great amount of content and systems in place that just need to be pushed in the right direction.
Meh, the market is definitely diluted, but their games have been open and running for a long time now, too. Stale content is just as much to blame as the industry.
Also, they still have F2P games in development, so if you're so concerned about the industry, why do you continue to develop games for that market?
If that's their direction, and it appears to be, then it might be worthwhile to consolidate your subscription similar to what SOE does and offer an option for a single subscription to rule them all. I think that the AoC offline leveling is something interesting. If they can explore similar subscription advantages across other games and roll it all into a single subscription then it might be something that you'll see some revitalized interest in. It's all about value, right?
Funcom took and took and took from a very loyal and dedicated player base and gave virtually nothing back. When the game started to lose it's population and the existing population could no longer support the game in the way it was designed, those loyal players began to compensate by opening multiple accounts. Funcom encouraged this. Instead of fixing their game, they focused 1st and foremost on monetization and re-monetization of said player base. And yet they gave nothing back. It got to where most players had 2 accounts. That's 30 bucks a month. And zero development in the game. Finally after years, they decide to add some content. What amounted to less than a typical quarterly WoW patch, some instances and some new gear. Not nearly an expansion worth of content. They charged $20.00 for it calling it a "booster" The game has problems. And in response, Funcom put solutions in a cash shop.
I haven't spent enough time with their other titles (nor will I), but I know how FC is managed. That is where the blame lies.
The biggest problem with MMORPGs is that they are barely MMORPGs anymore. When you create single player online games, you aren't going to retain players, because there's nothing special about that except for having a lot of random and often obnoxious people around. Companies can't churn out content fast enough to hold people's attentions.
It would be shocking to see an MMORPG with a classic design of challenging and almost entirely group-based play. You know - the games that defined the genre. Such a game isn't likely to retain millions of subscribers but neither are these failed designs. If such a game could HAVE a sub and a healthy enough number of people to make it profitable, would that be so bad? Do all games have to sell millions of copies to be considered successful? I think not.
When I played Secret World, it was taking them ~2 months at a time to put out content, and that content was usually single player stuff that players would obliterate in a few hours. That is horrifically inefficient and not the way to keep people around for any length of time.
Secret World has some of the best instances I've seen in MMORPGs - boss focused, not wasting your time with trash and idiocy, challenging fights (in the hardest modes), great group mechanics. It also has a really slick gear setup for endgame where you get to customize your stuff and aren't wasting time constantly replacing gear with slightly better pieces of gear.
So instead of extending and building upon a fairly decent endgame setup...funcom puts out single player content bits that get destroyed in moments. That's not how you keep people around. People vanish and may or may not return for that short burst of new content, and over time will tend to return less and eventually not at all.
Why not build on the repeatable (group) content that adds to progression and soaks up more player time, and that gives players stuff to do with other players (kind of the point of MMORPGs, if not ALL online gaming).
Secret World does have some really amazing content, even the solo stuff, but that's still not what I want from an MMORPG. I want more of their group content, which is also amazing. I can get great single player content from a ton of games that usually do solo better.
I got several people to play Secret World and we all loved it - partially because Guild Wars 2 was a huge let down to us as it is basically a single player online game with some of the lamest grouping ever and extremely boring classes. TSW was hugely refreshing since we tried it after GW2 and it had far more interesting content and a return to real grouping.
But there's only so much content in TSW...and we did it all. And at that point, there's really not much to do. And Funcom was adding more single player content, which did not give you a reason stick around. Waiting 1-2 months for 2 hours of content is not all that compelling.
So, no, the crappy and lame F2P market isn't what hurts some F2P games. It's overall crappy game design that makes non MMORPGs into weak single player games that happen to be online. The vast majority of single player games have little to no replay value and putting them online doesn't magically add replay value.
Making an MMORPG htat is essentially a single player game with a smidge of grouping is a sure way to go the path of just about every post WoW MMORPG - nice release numbers (sometimes), huge drop off after 3 months or so (less for FFXI since it was so stupidly easy you could finish the game before the 30 days were up), act surprised because nobody wanted to sub or stick around in your basically single player game with no more content.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
It doesn't help that so many MMORPG players these days don't even know what real MMORPG gameplay entails (mostly grouping...and challenge) and that they constantly complain about the crap that makes up modern MMORPGs and want the genre to be something else.
I hate leveling. I hate classes. I hate grouping. I hate this. I hate that. I constantly see people whining about the things that make up RPGs and thus MMORPGs and wonder why they aren't playing genres they actually like. Perhaps they just like to whine a lot.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Funcom is like Microsoft. They make a lot of promises and take years to do anything. AO''s so called graphics update is all you need to look at. They have great ideas but don't know how to put them foward in a way that makes sense. Its no surprise that money is down. In fact it a surprise that they are still around today. AO was probably the most unique game they ever made and they just let it get old.
It doesn't help that so many MMORPG players these days don't even know what real MMORPG gameplay entails (mostly grouping...and challenge) and that they constantly complain about the crap that makes up modern MMORPGs and want the genre to be something else.
I hate leveling. I hate classes. I hate grouping. I hate this. I hate that. I constantly see people whining about the things that make up RPGs and thus MMORPGs and wonder why they aren't playing genres they actually like. Perhaps they just like to whine a lot.
They were.
They called them virtual worlds. You got to choose what you wanted, and could have as much success as any other goal.
Then the candy man came and made people insane.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Originally posted by Nephaerius I'd blame their subpar games library
This is the reason.
Anarchy Online sold around 100k copies but they only retained around 10k due to the horrible launch and the game never living up to expectations.
Age of Conan sold around 300k I believe and again, lost most of its players in a few short months due to never living up to expectations.
Both of those games were before western companies discovered the wealth of the F2P market in Asia.
Now with TSW, a game I currently play BTW, its the same thing. Its a unique IP with great potential that it mostly does meet. if it wasn't for the open class system, I would have stopped a long time ago because the rest of the game really is average.
Funcom mmorpg,s are populated & fun but ,they have no idea how to get money,seems games are underpriced & they should add useful stuff in cash stores(P2W) coz many players love spend RL money for pixels
Funcom has made a great game with their latest TSW, but...
It was a static game with only contents to last 1.5month.
There was no replay value, and this is a general failure that most MMO developers are doing.
Thinking shortterm and not long-term.
They need better Game designers!!
They dont need better game designers they need to get rid of suits that just see games as a product.. they need businessmen that are gamers themselves and like playing the games each genre has to offer until then we will keep getting crap from AAA studios....until then we got Kickstarter
The fault lies with Funcom not the Free to Play market, and if they cant see that, then there is no hope for that company.
Yes, FTP has diluted the market, but if a company has a quality product people will pay for it.
You say if companies have a quality product, people will pay for it, and that's true - in a vacuum. Only IF you ignore the supply side economics of it. I know a lot of people who download movies by torrent just because they can. Others are happy paying Netflix $8 a month to watch their content. I doubt the movie industry is terribly happy about either one. Movies aren't any cheaper to make! I think similarly if people can entertain themselves without paying a subscription fee, they will, and before long you have a culture of expectation and lots of people who WON'T pay a sub. It's a fact that games are BETTER today than they were in 1997 and they are cheaper to play. So what could be the actual problem, if NOT a bored, fickle and over-stimulated player-base?
I believe the problem is that the MMO market has such low barriers to entry for any development minded collection of programmers and artists that its like having, for example, automobiles designed by 10,000 little companies who give away V-8 roadsters for free. Why would I ever buy another Ford, Dodge, GMC, etc, if my transportation need is met? There is only so much the big companies can do to a product to convince me to go pay $30,000-$40,000 if some other jerky is giving away a passable alternative.
So my prediction is this : large games companies are going to suffer in this environment ( sans perhaps Blizzard ), and like Funcom, downsize, liquidate, and "smart" size their staff, until they are in terms of overhead, equal to the teams that turn out cookie-cutter MMOs every week in Asia. The games they'll produce will be borderline passable. They will not be block-buster productions. They will be packed with item shops and pay-to-win crappo. They're going to burn out like a flash-in-the-pan, repeatedly. WE aren't going to be happy with that. But its ALL we're willing to pay for, so that's the new business model : HYPE, WHORE for $$$ and SHUT it DOWN. Rinse and repeat.
I remember reading something by Richard Garriott years ago about how Ultima Online defied all their expectations, because prior to that time, every game product had a life cycle and profitability arc. Of course, the truth is that UO simply had a longer arc. He was in the midst of a multi-year arc. But now perhaps we're seeing a correction of sorts, where MMOs are returning to this abbreviated model. And it kinda makes sense really - don't DO anything that won't regroup your expenses within the first year of release.
Cant disagree with what you said, as its mostly true.
There are people out there who will choose a FTP game vs a sub-game no matter what the quality. And I also agree that there are people who would pay a subscription if that was the only choice.
But there are also people out there, and I think in my opinion a growing majority, of people who want to pay a subscription so they can receive quality additions and expansions and more importantly a quality product plus service.
Most of us have seen the FTP quality and for the most part its severely lacking.
And comparing a V-8 roadster to a FTP MMO, come on jackie28 , a better comparison would be an 80's Civic hatchback, or Yugo if youre old enough to remember those. Fun to play with, or just cheap to drive, but those who can afford it will pay to have something better.
I did, I paid 5k more to have a VVT-i over a regular model, I'll pay $15 for a Red Robin burger meal over a $7 McDonalds Quater Pounder meal anytime of the day.
If people have a choice and the product is good they will spend the money. I gave some great recent MMO examples too.
Funcom needs to decide if they want to be one of the "McDonalds" of MMO's, or would they prefer to be known as providing something better?
Thats the question they need to answer.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
It doesn't help that so many MMORPG players these days don't even know what real MMORPG gameplay entails (mostly grouping...and challenge) and that they constantly complain about the crap that makes up modern MMORPGs and want the genre to be something else.
I hate leveling. I hate classes. I hate grouping. I hate this. I hate that. I constantly see people whining about the things that make up RPGs and thus MMORPGs and wonder why they aren't playing genres they actually like. Perhaps they just like to whine a lot.
There ya go. I think a game company cannot even come to a site like this and glean constructive criticism about their product. When a hundred thousand people are involved, EVERY opinion is represented, both good and bad, to the point that it all becomes noise. Ultimately devs have to listen to their GUT, but unfortunately sometimes you have a management crew that no longer knows what is FUN because they don't play their own games. It's entirely possible the veterans in this industry are just as jaded and fickle as the players are.
Which is another point, I wanted to add : I think everyone is chasing their virgin MMO fix.
People are nostalgic for that first online experience with that one game that was done "right", but in the end they won't go back and PLAY that game. I'm that way about Ultima Online. I have many great and entertaining stories to tell, but I wouldn't be able to rejoin the game for more than 30 minutes before concluding it was dated and boring. THIS is why I think 90% of the people on these forums who state they want feature X or system Y - this isn't hard data. They are just speaking from bitterness and boredom without really KNOWING what kind of play experience would revitalize them, much less convince them to pay a sub. They're like addicts agitating for a hit, but the high is long gone.
It doesn't help that so many MMORPG players these days don't even know what real MMORPG gameplay entails (mostly grouping...and challenge) and that they constantly complain about the crap that makes up modern MMORPGs and want the genre to be something else.
I hate leveling. I hate classes. I hate grouping. I hate this. I hate that. I constantly see people whining about the things that make up RPGs and thus MMORPGs and wonder why they aren't playing genres they actually like. Perhaps they just like to whine a lot.
There ya go. I think a game company cannot even come to a site like this and glean constructive criticism about their product. When a hundred thousand people are involved, EVERY opinion is represented, both good and bad, to the point that it all becomes noise. Ultimately devs have to listen to their GUT, but unfortunately sometimes you have a management crew that no longer knows what is FUN because they don't play their own games. It's entirely possible the veterans in this industry are just as jaded and fickle as the players are.
Which is another point, I wanted to add : I think everyone is chasing their virgin MMO fix.
People are nostalgic for that first online experience with that one game that was done "right", but in the end they won't go back and PLAY that game. I'm that way about Ultima Online. I have many great and entertaining stories to tell, but I wouldn't be able to rejoin the game for more than 30 minutes before concluding it was dated and boring. THIS is why I think 90% of the people on these forums who state they want feature X or system Y - this isn't hard data. They are just speaking from bitterness and boredom without really KNOWING what kind of play experience would revitalize them, much less convince them to pay a sub. They're like addicts agitating for a hit, but the high is long gone.
I agree with the orange....to an extent. There's a definite magic about the first MMORPG that really 'clicks' with you. For me, it was City of Heroes, so unfortunately, I can't go back to it.
But I've felt that click with a few other MMORPGs over the years. Vanilla WoW. Pre-Moria LotRO. But then there was a dry spell that seemed to correspond with the MMORPG 'boom' that happened. So many games, and none that seemed to really get it right. TSW was the first game that really gave me that old school satisfaction in literally years, mainly due to the phenomenal questing and atmosphere of the game.
This week, mega-publisher Funcom announced its profits were down considerably, and blamed the drop on heavy competition among free-to-play MMOs. While there's certainly a lot of noise out there these days, with a new MMO appearing every five minutes, the company's reasoning seems faulty. After all, isn't competition what free enterprise is all about?
Increased competition seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation to me.
Back in the days before AoC launched your f2p competition was PWI and whatever overly chibi 3D game was getting imported from Asia this month. Today gw2, TERA, Aion, SWTOR, Rift are all available with no monthly fee and at least half of them with models that aren't even all that punishing for people who spend nothing.
I actually found AoC fairly enjoyable when I tried it 8 months ago but the population had shrunken so low that they were merging EU and US servers so I wasn't sure I wanted to invest the time in a game that was that far into decline, perception plays a role as well.
If you take out all of the Koreak/Asian F2P mmo's that have clogged up the industry in the last 3 years, you're really only left with a small handful of crappy P2P games that went F2P as a last-ditch chance at life.
Seriously, the worst contenders are all Asian or Asian-backed. I hate F2P, but the most I realize that fact, the more I think it *could* work as a business model, and still make for a fun game. We just need to see an MMO come out that isn't just tacking on the same Asian-F2P system for their game, thinking it's going to work.
Funcom did well-enough with the B2P conversion, but the author here is correct in that their games have failed largely because they aren't good enough to succeed. The competition, or market, or whatever, is irrelevant at this point.
Originally posted by asmkm22 If you take out all of the Koreak/Asian F2P mmo's that have clogged up the industry in the last 3 years, you're really only left with a small handful of crappy P2P games that went F2P as a last-ditch chance at life.Seriously, the worst contenders are all Asian or Asian-backed. I hate F2P, but the most I realize that fact, the more I think it *could* work as a business model, and still make for a fun game. We just need to see an MMO come out that isn't just tacking on the same Asian-F2P system for their game, thinking it's going to work.Funcom did well-enough with the B2P conversion, but the author here is correct in that their games have failed largely because they aren't good enough to succeed. The competition, or market, or whatever, is irrelevant at this point.
Agreed, I personally hate the F2P model. Some of that though is of course the simple fact that every western mmo that tacked it on sucked to one degree or another imho. Bad game play is bad game play regardless of payment model. Bad market targeting is bad market target...you get the idea. To be fair the western market hasn't been able to produce a decent f2p product yet; witch makes it somewhat difficult to give an unbiased review of the merits of the payment model. It could be the greatest thing since distillery, but if the distillery is attached to a sewer feed, well your gonna get some nasty hooch
The reason why I quit TSW back in the fall of 2012 was that they fired half their staff, and I realised I wouldn't get my 15$ worth in content, and I didn't want to play a game with slow updates in general. I returned when it went B2P and played for a month and a half, in that period I went from Blue-Epic gear and in their defense, it's the best Blue->Epic transitions I've played in a while. When you began on the hardmode dungeons in blue gear your could rarely kill more than 2-3 bosses in the dungeons before you called it. Not untill you had full epic+ could you faceroll the dungeons.
However the dungeons after the 3 first where buggy and never fixed while I played. As far as I know all the content promised for fall 2012 haven't been released yet. So I'm glad I'm out to be honest.
Last time I seriously played AoC was back in 2011 when they still released content regularly. During 2012 they released F... all, and during 2013 they released some of the stuff promissed for summer 2012. AoC is not worth 15 a month by a long shot when you consider content updates.
It's just sad to see how AoC devs obviously just want to make content so they have cool stuff to put on their CV's for the next job and noone wants to fix stuff that's not working no matter how easy it is to fix or how big impact it could have had on the community.
The crafting update in AoC is just sad to look at, it's been 4 years now without a crafting update, because the old system "was not good enough", and "someone" wanted to make a new one. 1 year to create the dev documents, and since 2011 they've worked on the crafting update, they simply lack the resources and manpower to get it through. During those 4 years the economy has suffered and is almost non existent in the game.
Comments
You say if companies have a quality product, people will pay for it, and that's true - in a vacuum. Only IF you ignore the supply side economics of it. I know a lot of people who download movies by torrent just because they can. Others are happy paying Netflix $8 a month to watch their content. I doubt the movie industry is terribly happy about either one. Movies aren't any cheaper to make! I think similarly if people can entertain themselves without paying a subscription fee, they will, and before long you have a culture of expectation and lots of people who WON'T pay a sub. It's a fact that games are BETTER today than they were in 1997 and they are cheaper to play. So what could be the actual problem, if NOT a bored, fickle and over-stimulated player-base?
I believe the problem is that the MMO market has such low barriers to entry for any development minded collection of programmers and artists that its like having, for example, automobiles designed by 10,000 little companies who give away V-8 roadsters for free. Why would I ever buy another Ford, Dodge, GMC, etc, if my transportation need is met? There is only so much the big companies can do to a product to convince me to go pay $30,000-$40,000 if some other jerky is giving away a passable alternative.
So my prediction is this : large games companies are going to suffer in this environment ( sans perhaps Blizzard ), and like Funcom, downsize, liquidate, and "smart" size their staff, until they are in terms of overhead, equal to the teams that turn out cookie-cutter MMOs every week in Asia. The games they'll produce will be borderline passable. They will not be block-buster productions. They will be packed with item shops and pay-to-win crappo. They're going to burn out like a flash-in-the-pan, repeatedly. WE aren't going to be happy with that. But its ALL we're willing to pay for, so that's the new business model : HYPE, WHORE for $$$ and SHUT it DOWN. Rinse and repeat.
I remember reading something by Richard Garriott years ago about how Ultima Online defied all their expectations, because prior to that time, every game product had a life cycle and profitability arc. Of course, the truth is that UO simply had a longer arc. He was in the midst of a multi-year arc. But now perhaps we're seeing a correction of sorts, where MMOs are returning to this abbreviated model. And it kinda makes sense really - don't DO anything that won't regroup your expenses within the first year of release.
The real Problems are listed companys that needs to feed shareholders.
in such companys theres no place for artistic freedom or bravery for trying out new concepts because all what counts is accrued dividend.
The problem for me with free to play games is the content, Funcom have fun games but are not updated enough for me. I am more likely to drop a sub on a game that has regular content updates. I am happy to have a F2P model where they way you finance is buying the content updates (Like DDO or TSW) and I am not too big on micro-transactions and quality of life enhancements.
TSW and AOC can still work, but they both need a lot of money to get them to par and re-launch them with vast improvements.
Yes, I also understand the F2P market is bursting at the seams with products, but I feel without it, Funcom would of had 2 dead games which really deserve to live (for their concepts). Its not going to be easy for them, but the only way I see them succeeding is getting injected with large amounts of cash and then fix and improve those games. Then, re-launch it like how FF14ARR did.
Just my opinion though.
It is not free to play to blame.
It is Funcom's lack of knowledge in how to fix bugs that killed this game. They have some of the best gaming idea's in the industry they just dont have a clue how to run the game after it releases or how to fix it.
Lol any CEO; CFO; Production Manager; or Lead Designer that blames a market for a product lines own failure to perform in that market has other "issues" It always comes down to poor targeting, poor implementation, poor vision, lack of communication, and/or existing in a vacuum chamber any time a product line fails to perform regardless if it's physical or digital goods.
Free enterprise also includes the freedom to fail...NOW FREE!!!
For the record, I love, love, love The Secret World. It ranks as one of my favorite games ever.
The problem is that it doesn't really lend itself well to the MMORPG genre. I think the game would have been better off with something like a Minecraft model, with income from the game coming from client box sales, SDK sales for modders, and monthly licensing sales that allow people to host their own servers. RP groups especially I can imagine salivating at being able to host their own version of the game with custom tweaks and ruleset changes.
The SDK would allow people to add their own content and puzzles to expand the longevity of the game (much like NWN, which was still being played 10 years after released, last I checked), and the monthly license for hosting rights would give them steady income at a fraction of the cost it takes to build content and maintain a MMORPG-style server structure.
I have played Age of Conan on and off since late 2009 after the first wave of bugs were cleared and it was playable (still buggy, but playable). It was a great game when I started, you could buy a year sub, get some really powerful ACCOUNT WIDE items. All my characters had a tiger when hitting 80. Once FTP hit it became obvious that at endgame at least your going to have to have a sub. I will say outside of mounts and bags you can largely play the game endgame with just a sub. Because there really isn't much economy in the game it is hard to really make gold without a grind, hence the mounts and bags being pretty necessary (my yearlong sub from xmas 2010 got me both on every fresh 80).
The major problem with Funcom was crappy direction and a bad management team. The current director can't even get a letter out once a month on time. He is most likely underpaid and doing the job of 5 people because of it. Previous directors took the game in multiple and weird directions.
It had the most interesting combat (still the best tab target combat out there) for the time and it's focus on an adult theme made it the only choice for me for a long time. I still enjoy travelling around once in a great while to take in the landscapes. AoC should have been the most popular adult mmo, but it failed because of the crappy launch that never gained momentum. The failure of the Jason Momoa Conan movie also had a big impact on AoC.
I think that if Joel had taken over 2 years previously AoC would be in a better place. The world bosses are a great start, and the infamous crafting update is almost here (maybe). At this point the team is shared and so small it is amazing they have done anything at all. ESO will be out by this time and it replaces AoC on almost every level out of the gate. They had more than enough time to get all of these critical updates in the game, but chose not to. Making Khitai factional pvp + pve instead of just a grind would have gone a long way to making the game have sustainable content. Also giving each zone a level 80 versions would have been smart. Some of the best zones were leveling zones you just never really went back to after 80 (unless to grab gear for vanity).
Another big mistake was making gear the focus. I didn't play before the first update, so I didn't experience it then, but the game took skill or at least insane macro programming skill to play. The dodge system never quite worked well enough, as even with a dodge quite a bit of attacks from npc would land because they had "homing". Once you got to Khitai combat became pretty tough and you had to be on your toes even from the smallest foe. Gearing is a long process, some pieces being really easy to obtain, others being really tough. No matter how many times I did BRC wings I never once got a weapon drop for any of my characters. Weapons made a huge difference as some classes had a pretty tough time getting everything they needed. You could get a weapon from the bowls quest, and a few others for a staff or dagger, but outside of that you had to stick with bad crafted weapons that were much lower dps or the few crafted weapons that did work were insanely priced.
Funcom is a perfect example of why I am in favor of using a Crytek or Unreal type engine for development. They spent too much development dollars on the engine, and it was the main reason for AoC's buggy launch IMO.
In the end Funcom has had major opportunities to improve AoC and make it the best mmo. It doesn't need huge sweeping changes to be, either, as it has a great amount of content and systems in place that just need to be pushed in the right direction.
Meh, the market is definitely diluted, but their games have been open and running for a long time now, too. Stale content is just as much to blame as the industry.
Also, they still have F2P games in development, so if you're so concerned about the industry, why do you continue to develop games for that market?
If that's their direction, and it appears to be, then it might be worthwhile to consolidate your subscription similar to what SOE does and offer an option for a single subscription to rule them all. I think that the AoC offline leveling is something interesting. If they can explore similar subscription advantages across other games and roll it all into a single subscription then it might be something that you'll see some revitalized interest in. It's all about value, right?
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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After years of Anarchy Online I have this to say.
Funcom took and took and took from a very loyal and dedicated player base and gave virtually nothing back. When the game started to lose it's population and the existing population could no longer support the game in the way it was designed, those loyal players began to compensate by opening multiple accounts. Funcom encouraged this. Instead of fixing their game, they focused 1st and foremost on monetization and re-monetization of said player base. And yet they gave nothing back. It got to where most players had 2 accounts. That's 30 bucks a month. And zero development in the game. Finally after years, they decide to add some content. What amounted to less than a typical quarterly WoW patch, some instances and some new gear. Not nearly an expansion worth of content. They charged $20.00 for it calling it a "booster" The game has problems. And in response, Funcom put solutions in a cash shop.
I haven't spent enough time with their other titles (nor will I), but I know how FC is managed. That is where the blame lies.
The biggest problem with MMORPGs is that they are barely MMORPGs anymore. When you create single player online games, you aren't going to retain players, because there's nothing special about that except for having a lot of random and often obnoxious people around. Companies can't churn out content fast enough to hold people's attentions.
It would be shocking to see an MMORPG with a classic design of challenging and almost entirely group-based play. You know - the games that defined the genre. Such a game isn't likely to retain millions of subscribers but neither are these failed designs. If such a game could HAVE a sub and a healthy enough number of people to make it profitable, would that be so bad? Do all games have to sell millions of copies to be considered successful? I think not.
When I played Secret World, it was taking them ~2 months at a time to put out content, and that content was usually single player stuff that players would obliterate in a few hours. That is horrifically inefficient and not the way to keep people around for any length of time.
Secret World has some of the best instances I've seen in MMORPGs - boss focused, not wasting your time with trash and idiocy, challenging fights (in the hardest modes), great group mechanics. It also has a really slick gear setup for endgame where you get to customize your stuff and aren't wasting time constantly replacing gear with slightly better pieces of gear.
So instead of extending and building upon a fairly decent endgame setup...funcom puts out single player content bits that get destroyed in moments. That's not how you keep people around. People vanish and may or may not return for that short burst of new content, and over time will tend to return less and eventually not at all.
Why not build on the repeatable (group) content that adds to progression and soaks up more player time, and that gives players stuff to do with other players (kind of the point of MMORPGs, if not ALL online gaming).
Secret World does have some really amazing content, even the solo stuff, but that's still not what I want from an MMORPG. I want more of their group content, which is also amazing. I can get great single player content from a ton of games that usually do solo better.
I got several people to play Secret World and we all loved it - partially because Guild Wars 2 was a huge let down to us as it is basically a single player online game with some of the lamest grouping ever and extremely boring classes. TSW was hugely refreshing since we tried it after GW2 and it had far more interesting content and a return to real grouping.
But there's only so much content in TSW...and we did it all. And at that point, there's really not much to do. And Funcom was adding more single player content, which did not give you a reason stick around. Waiting 1-2 months for 2 hours of content is not all that compelling.
So, no, the crappy and lame F2P market isn't what hurts some F2P games. It's overall crappy game design that makes non MMORPGs into weak single player games that happen to be online. The vast majority of single player games have little to no replay value and putting them online doesn't magically add replay value.
Making an MMORPG htat is essentially a single player game with a smidge of grouping is a sure way to go the path of just about every post WoW MMORPG - nice release numbers (sometimes), huge drop off after 3 months or so (less for FFXI since it was so stupidly easy you could finish the game before the 30 days were up), act surprised because nobody wanted to sub or stick around in your basically single player game with no more content.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
It doesn't help that so many MMORPG players these days don't even know what real MMORPG gameplay entails (mostly grouping...and challenge) and that they constantly complain about the crap that makes up modern MMORPGs and want the genre to be something else.
I hate leveling. I hate classes. I hate grouping. I hate this. I hate that. I constantly see people whining about the things that make up RPGs and thus MMORPGs and wonder why they aren't playing genres they actually like. Perhaps they just like to whine a lot.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
They were.
They called them virtual worlds. You got to choose what you wanted, and could have as much success as any other goal.
Then the candy man came and made people insane.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
This is the reason.
Anarchy Online sold around 100k copies but they only retained around 10k due to the horrible launch and the game never living up to expectations.
Age of Conan sold around 300k I believe and again, lost most of its players in a few short months due to never living up to expectations.
Both of those games were before western companies discovered the wealth of the F2P market in Asia.
Now with TSW, a game I currently play BTW, its the same thing. Its a unique IP with great potential that it mostly does meet. if it wasn't for the open class system, I would have stopped a long time ago because the rest of the game really is average.
Or the ceo could be telling the truth?
Heed his warning.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
They dont need better game designers they need to get rid of suits that just see games as a product.. they need businessmen that are gamers themselves and like playing the games each genre has to offer until then we will keep getting crap from AAA studios....until then we got Kickstarter
Cant disagree with what you said, as its mostly true.
There are people out there who will choose a FTP game vs a sub-game no matter what the quality. And I also agree that there are people who would pay a subscription if that was the only choice.
But there are also people out there, and I think in my opinion a growing majority, of people who want to pay a subscription so they can receive quality additions and expansions and more importantly a quality product plus service.
Most of us have seen the FTP quality and for the most part its severely lacking.
And comparing a V-8 roadster to a FTP MMO, come on jackie28
, a better comparison would be an 80's Civic hatchback, or Yugo if youre old enough to remember those. Fun to play with, or just cheap to drive, but those who can afford it will pay to have something better.
I did, I paid 5k more to have a VVT-i over a regular model, I'll pay $15 for a Red Robin burger meal over a $7 McDonalds Quater Pounder meal anytime of the day.
If people have a choice and the product is good they will spend the money. I gave some great recent MMO examples too.
Funcom needs to decide if they want to be one of the "McDonalds" of MMO's, or would they prefer to be known as providing something better?
Thats the question they need to answer.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
There ya go. I think a game company cannot even come to a site like this and glean constructive criticism about their product. When a hundred thousand people are involved, EVERY opinion is represented, both good and bad, to the point that it all becomes noise. Ultimately devs have to listen to their GUT, but unfortunately sometimes you have a management crew that no longer knows what is FUN because they don't play their own games. It's entirely possible the veterans in this industry are just as jaded and fickle as the players are.
Which is another point, I wanted to add : I think everyone is chasing their virgin MMO fix.
People are nostalgic for that first online experience with that one game that was done "right", but in the end they won't go back and PLAY that game. I'm that way about Ultima Online. I have many great and entertaining stories to tell, but I wouldn't be able to rejoin the game for more than 30 minutes before concluding it was dated and boring. THIS is why I think 90% of the people on these forums who state they want feature X or system Y - this isn't hard data. They are just speaking from bitterness and boredom without really KNOWING what kind of play experience would revitalize them, much less convince them to pay a sub. They're like addicts agitating for a hit, but the high is long gone.
I agree with the orange....to an extent. There's a definite magic about the first MMORPG that really 'clicks' with you. For me, it was City of Heroes, so unfortunately, I can't go back to it.
But I've felt that click with a few other MMORPGs over the years. Vanilla WoW. Pre-Moria LotRO. But then there was a dry spell that seemed to correspond with the MMORPG 'boom' that happened. So many games, and none that seemed to really get it right. TSW was the first game that really gave me that old school satisfaction in literally years, mainly due to the phenomenal questing and atmosphere of the game.
Sure why not! you can always blame someone but if it's right or wrong thats the real question.
Increased competition seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation to me.
Back in the days before AoC launched your f2p competition was PWI and whatever overly chibi 3D game was getting imported from Asia this month. Today gw2, TERA, Aion, SWTOR, Rift are all available with no monthly fee and at least half of them with models that aren't even all that punishing for people who spend nothing.
I actually found AoC fairly enjoyable when I tried it 8 months ago but the population had shrunken so low that they were merging EU and US servers so I wasn't sure I wanted to invest the time in a game that was that far into decline, perception plays a role as well.
If you take out all of the Koreak/Asian F2P mmo's that have clogged up the industry in the last 3 years, you're really only left with a small handful of crappy P2P games that went F2P as a last-ditch chance at life.
Seriously, the worst contenders are all Asian or Asian-backed. I hate F2P, but the most I realize that fact, the more I think it *could* work as a business model, and still make for a fun game. We just need to see an MMO come out that isn't just tacking on the same Asian-F2P system for their game, thinking it's going to work.
Funcom did well-enough with the B2P conversion, but the author here is correct in that their games have failed largely because they aren't good enough to succeed. The competition, or market, or whatever, is irrelevant at this point.
You make me like charity
The reason why I quit TSW back in the fall of 2012 was that they fired half their staff, and I realised I wouldn't get my 15$ worth in content, and I didn't want to play a game with slow updates in general. I returned when it went B2P and played for a month and a half, in that period I went from Blue-Epic gear and in their defense, it's the best Blue->Epic transitions I've played in a while. When you began on the hardmode dungeons in blue gear your could rarely kill more than 2-3 bosses in the dungeons before you called it. Not untill you had full epic+ could you faceroll the dungeons.
However the dungeons after the 3 first where buggy and never fixed while I played. As far as I know all the content promised for fall 2012 haven't been released yet. So I'm glad I'm out to be honest.
Last time I seriously played AoC was back in 2011 when they still released content regularly. During 2012 they released F... all, and during 2013 they released some of the stuff promissed for summer 2012. AoC is not worth 15 a month by a long shot when you consider content updates.
It's just sad to see how AoC devs obviously just want to make content so they have cool stuff to put on their CV's for the next job and noone wants to fix stuff that's not working no matter how easy it is to fix or how big impact it could have had on the community.
The crafting update in AoC is just sad to look at, it's been 4 years now without a crafting update, because the old system "was not good enough", and "someone" wanted to make a new one. 1 year to create the dev documents, and since 2011 they've worked on the crafting update, they simply lack the resources and manpower to get it through. During those 4 years the economy has suffered and is almost non existent in the game.