I think there's a large portion of peeps who underestimate the power of old style mmo playing with updated graphics and new lands to explore, I would not be surprised at all to see Pantheon hold over a million subs for years to come. Love you post its spot on and totally agree.
Over a million subs? Try to contain your enthusiasm. As far as I know the only MMO in the west that has retained over a million subs over several years is WoW. At the peak EQ had somewhere around 400k or so (I think). A million subs would overwhelm the expectation that VR says they have and I would expect bad things...
EQ also became popular when there was about 1/15th of the people that are currently on the internet. Just something to think about, because there hasn't been anything remotely like it since, so theres no data to suggest otherwise (no, I don't believe VG and EQ2 were even close to on par with classic EQ).
The game is still a long ways out, and it remains to be seen whether they can achieve everything they aspire to, but if they do, a million subs is not at all unrealistic.
True about fewer people being on the internet and it is also true that there were fewer options for those people. From what I remember reading though VR is not aiming for those types of numbers and won't be prepared if they arrive.
Has there been any MMO in the west that has had more than a million subs at once other than WoW and SWTOR? SWTOR went below 1 million subs within 6 months or so. Some others are harder to judge due to a different business model (FTP, BTP, that sort of thing).
Don't think so. That is because MMOs haven't been designed for consistent, long-term play in a very long time. Instead, they're created for the short term but with as much mass appeal as possible. Content is created to be consumed quickly with some "end game" grind, followed by a new expansion which brings everyone back to a level playing field. This is the casual design that has been used over and over for the last 10 years, and while it worked for WoW, it wasn't very successful for anyone else.
Despite one game's success, I believe most players sense how artificial and generic that design is, and have put off MMO games awaiting a virtual world with greater emphasis on cooperative gameplay (massively multiplayer), meaningful progression (starting at level 1), and real risk vs reward.
I just want to go back to when it felt like when you used a skill something big was going to happen at the target location. I remember grouping in Karnor's Castle shortly after Kunark release on my wizard. Our monk was single pulling and I did very little until the tank had established agro and the mob was at 50-60% hp, then I'd drop an ice comet on its head which was a long ass cast and took a lot of resource but finished or almost finished the mob off. THAT'S a wizard. This new crap where I spam skills for very little impact in every game is bogus and in no way feels impactful.
Bring back 3-4 hour long buffs that are meaningful. Bring back 10 minute snares, long duration 1-3 minute DoTs, huge heals with long cast times, actual resource management INCLUDING DOWNTIME. Downtime doesn't need to be quite as extreme as EQC but actual "meditation" for a few minutes after 15-30 minutes of group grind? Yes please!
If only it was dangerous in a game again when you got an add and didn't have any CC. Two adds should be certain death without CC. Even in a full, otherwise balanced group. Nothing feels dangerous anymore in games? Got 10 adds? Who cares, fire off some aoes and let's move on! Died? Who cares, 30 second run back to your corpse, no xp lost, no worries we can be as reckless as we want, there's nothing to lose.
I still remember zoning into Kithicor forest at night on my blind as a bat human warrior in bronze armor and blue hands (crafted gloves, holy crap i was a beast) and my executioner's axe that I wielded with pride and trying to decide if I should risk running on the wall to Rivervale or should wait it out until daytime. I had SoW so I was feeling brave. At least the corpse run from west Freeport to halfling city wasn't too bad, lucky for me . I remember hearing the sound of giant footsteps off in the distance a bit while at an orc camp in Western Commonlands and scurrying away to safety while a few of my group members weren't quite so lucky. Sitting on the dock of the bay (in Oasis) and hearing the familiar sound of Spectres being trained there. Damn you griefers!
I don't know if it's even possible to bring back the magic of 1999 EQ. It's probably not. I'm glad to see a few developers are willing to give it the ole college try though, and hopeful that they can prove me wrong.
Clearly you haven't played a geared Mage or Warlock in WoW, because you certainly aren't spamming skills with little impact. The MOBs are simply balanced so that you can't have one overgeared person in the goup basically solo the MOBs while other people simply distracted it enough so that Wizard can free cast.
EQ also did that, later on. Kunark was a long time ago, the game changed.
That also made classes like Necros and Shaman utterly worthless from a DPS perspective, BTW, since their DoTs needed time to actually perform. Upside, downside... That's the way it works.
I think there's a large portion of peeps who underestimate the power of old style mmo playing with updated graphics and new lands to explore, I would not be surprised at all to see Pantheon hold over a million subs for years to come. Love you post its spot on and totally agree.
Over a million subs? Try to contain your enthusiasm. As far as I know the only MMO in the west that has retained over a million subs over several years is WoW. At the peak EQ had somewhere around 400k or so (I think). A million subs would overwhelm the expectation that VR says they have and I would expect bad things...
EQ also became popular when there was about 1/15th of the people that are currently on the internet. Just something to think about, because there hasn't been anything remotely like it since, so theres no data to suggest otherwise (no, I don't believe VG and EQ2 were even close to on par with classic EQ).
The game is still a long ways out, and it remains to be seen whether they can achieve everything they aspire to, but if they do, a million subs is not at all unrealistic.
True about fewer people being on the internet and it is also true that there were fewer options for those people. From what I remember reading though VR is not aiming for those types of numbers and won't be prepared if they arrive.
Has there been any MMO in the west that has had more than a million subs at once other than WoW and SWTOR? SWTOR went below 1 million subs within 6 months or so. Some others are harder to judge due to a different business model (FTP, BTP, that sort of thing).
Don't think so. That is because MMOs haven't been designed for consistent, long-term play in a very long time. Instead, they're created for the short term but with as much mass appeal as possible. Content is created to be consumed quickly with some "end game" grind, followed by a new expansion which brings everyone back to a level playing field. This is the casual design that has been used over and over for the last 10 years, and while it worked for WoW, it wasn't very successful for anyone else.
Despite one game's success, I believe most players sense how artificial and generic that design is, and have put off MMO games awaiting a virtual world with greater emphasis on cooperative gameplay (massively multiplayer), meaningful progression (starting at level 1), and real risk vs reward.
You could be right. Assuming that the game gets released I hope the servers don't get hammered too badly. If they are expecting 200K (I saw that number posted somewhere) and they get a million plus their data center will melt (figuratively speaking).
I have no issues with Pantheon and cheer them on in earnest. But frankly I don't see how they can do it. They have a very, very talented but small staff. And to make a game like this so much work has to be done.
Suppose you have an NPC who paths into a building and gets stuck. Someone has to make a note of that. Someone has to read that note. Someone has to go and find a solution to that issue, implement that solution, and make sure nothing else was affected adversely in the process. All of that takes time, and there are probably a million little things like that.
When you have a small army of coders available, that type of work can get pushed down to staff. But if you don't, or if they are in too short supply, you have to use your creative people on it.
I love the idea of this game, and I respect the people who are making it. It's just hard for me sometimes to picture the project getting finished anytime in the foreseeable future.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I have no issues with Pantheon and cheer them on in earnest. But frankly I don't see how they can do it. They have a very, very talented but small staff. And to make a game like this so much work has to be done.
Suppose you have an NPC who paths into a building and gets stuck. Someone has to make a note of that. Someone has to read that note. Someone has to go and find a solution to that issue, implement that solution, and make sure nothing else was affected adversely in the process. All of that takes time, and there are probably a million little things like that.
When you have a small army of coders available, that type of work can get pushed down to staff. But if you don't, or if they are in too short supply, you have to use your creative people on it.
I love the idea of this game, and I respect the people who are making it. It's just hard for me sometimes to picture the project getting finished anytime in the foreseeable future.
I worry about the time frame as well when I think of a full featured launch with 50+ levels worth of content, but that might not be the plan. They have spoken of contingencies where they may postpone certain things from the launch or have a "light launch" if necessary. I could totally see them creating the game they've promised in a perfectly polished state, but only releasing maybe 30 levels worth of content. If that gets the game out of the door with most of the major features, that would allow them to grow the company exponentially and dramatically reduce development time for future content.
Uh oh. It's never good when you see the fan with the big promo banner in the bargaining stage.
Some reality hit you lately, @dullahan , or is it an on-going slip in product confidence?
If anything, after seeing the recent live stream I'm more confident than ever than Pantheon will be the game I want to play, and that it has the potential to even reshape the genre.
Whether or not VR will be able to get a game with 50 levels of content and everything else that they have planned completed before the end of 2017 has been a concern since pretty much the word go. The difference between my concerns and others, is that I'm not worried about whether the game will be good, or whether it will eventually be finished. Its a matter of when, not if.
"My main issue with Pantheon is that it looks like the classes will be like EQ, not like in Vanguard."
That's the whole idea. It's what the people who want to play the game want. That's what I paid a pledge for. Getting back to class basics. Hopefully a harder and slower playing curve .
"But frankly if I wanted to play EQ - the original is still available, is it not ? But Vanguard is no longer up."
I hear this a lot. Vanguard was great, good at this and that. Ask yourself, if Vanguard was so great why was it closed? Obvious it wasn't closed because it was making them money.... I assume the community got so small that it was cheaper to close the game down than maintain the server. EQ is still going after what 17 years, so the formula must be working??
"And Vanguard had a huge and important improvement over EQ in respect to the class design, and that was that classes havent been locked into one task only. In Vanguard, most classes had a primary task, at which they have been overall as good as other classes, and then they had secondary tasks that havent been unimportant either.
For example the Cleric, the class I played the most (and in the end got kinda sick of), you have been obviously healer as primary task, but you also could operate as an offtank...."
This was what I didn't like about vanguard. If you need an offtank then get an offtank. A cleric should be there for healing and buffing, along those lines. That's also the same for games like Rift, where a warrior can be a Healing support. Keep a warrior as a tank or offtank, that's their class. Mixing them up only makes it harder to get groups. Like in Wow where Druids were preferred to a healer because they could tank and heal. Same with Paladins sometimes.
(Tried to quote but pushing the quote button did nothing)
The sad part is developments like Greed Monger and Star Citizen has hurt the KS/Crowdfunding and make people skeptical in backing these games. I would have rather had this game backed than the two I mentioned. But that is where we are and crowdfunding isn't going to get easier for these companies.
I too have some concern regarding the launch date. It is indeed way, way too early. And it will almost surely cost them in terms of general reception.
But i think this has to do with how Brad? Someone else? Projected the time vs 'no money' aspect of the equation. Logical and understandable
I do not know their true budget, nor their individual financial situation. But i can understand how you can only dedicate so many years in something you get no funding for.. In proper circumstances, i think it's safe to say they'd take a lot longer. You have to look at it both ways, end of the day.
And looking at it thus, ie fairly, i remember myself giving this project a zero chance in hell to make it. Before it even failed its Kickstarter, which it did. And yet.. look at them now yeah? That says something about "how long one can go on" all of its own
Again, this is with the current situation. If pledges pick up to a sufficient degree, i don't see why they couldn't 'delay' this further, give them the extra time needed. So end of the day, you can sit and debate or you can contribute, simple as that.
To some that is an option; not for me. Give me one other MMO of this direction that is in the works, just one.. there isn't any, is there.. ? So i do my part. Have had really, really enough with all the shit coming out this past decade.
I worry about the time frame as well when I think of a full featured launch with 50+ levels worth of content, but that might not be the plan. They have spoken of contingencies where they may postpone certain things from the launch or have a "light launch" if necessary. I could totally see them creating the game they've promised in a perfectly polished state, but only releasing maybe 30 levels worth of content. If that gets the game out of the door with most of the major features, that would allow them to grow the company exponentially and dramatically reduce development time for future content.
Just be careful that it isn't a Pathfinder type release. You only get 1 chance to make a first impression and once you start charging for a game it is released with all that goes with it - reviews, criticism, etc.
I worry about the time frame as well when I think of a full featured launch with 50+ levels worth of content, but that might not be the plan. They have spoken of contingencies where they may postpone certain things from the launch or have a "light launch" if necessary. I could totally see them creating the game they've promised in a perfectly polished state, but only releasing maybe 30 levels worth of content. If that gets the game out of the door with most of the major features, that would allow them to grow the company exponentially and dramatically reduce development time for future content.
Just be careful that it isn't a Pathfinder type release. You only get 1 chance to make a first impression and once you start charging for a game it is released with all that goes with it - reviews, criticism, etc.
I agree 100%. When Pathfinder went live, it was missing key features and was completely unpolished.
Whatever they launch with, be it 50 levels of content or just 30, it needs to be polished and properly represent exactly what they've promised. We know some things will likely come later, but the game people finally play must NOT feel unfinished, even if it technically is (though an MMO should never be "finished" in the first place).
Game needs to be in a state where developers are capable of starting work on new content right from the start. Once people hit the end and they have nothing left to do they are gone and you arent getting them back.
A polished Game that has the majority of the elements promised is the most important part. The game needs to be consider great when it comes out if they want to get the players and funds coming in to further development.
If "Endgame" is not completely finished at launch it is probably ok, but it needs to released in a timely manner once the game lanches, not 1-2 years later. Meaning before people start hitting cap, and by people I mean any player not just the majority. As Svann said once people run out of stuff and quit chances of getting them back are slim. Since this is not the typical WoW clone where people will be Cap level in 2-3 weeks (hopefully) it will give them more time then some other games to start releasing stuff.
I am worried about thier ability to do this in the time frames they stated with the dev team size. I do not question thier abilities to make a solid game, but their ability to finish everything in time. Honestly if it is to succeed it has to be a AAA quality game even with a AA budget and team size. Especially with the plan for P2P, game has to not only deliver the majority of the promises out of the gate, it has to be extremely polished.
In my opinion if they are doing a light launch, launching without portions of planed launch content, they need to hold off launch until they are at a point where they can launch the game and have endgame coming out within a month with more constantly streaming in. People will be fine with a light launch I feel, as long as content comes out before they run out of stuff to do ingame.
I'm really not as worried. I think people are seriously underestimating development times and costs now that platforms like Unity are available. A lot of people don't realize that a MASSIVE amount of the cost and time of developing an MMO was having to create a completely new engine from scratch, which also meant graphics, netcode, server code, account/billing, etc etc etc. This required a ton of people that were expensive. It was also extremely time consuming.
With Unity they literally are able to just start busting out content from day one. That's why you've seen a ton of progress in such a short (relatively speaking) amount of time. They're not having to hire graphics engineers to create a graphics engine, computer engineers to create netcode, etc etc. They can run with a lean and mean team of designers, modelers, texture artists, etc.
It's also significantly cheaper, I don't remember the exact cost but a developer license for unity was around 1500 USD per PC. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.
So, keep in mind, once they release, they sell however many copies of the game, and get $15 a month for at least 2 or 3 months (provided the content isn't "modern" content locust max level in 50 hours) that allows them to pay for new artists, new coders, etc etc to expand the game.
Is it more precarious than a massive developer like Blizzard who can throw 10's of millions of dollars and 100's of people at it? Of course. But I don't think the chances of success are as slim as people think.
The actual cost of running an MMO is nowhere near what it was in the EQ and early WoW days. The general Internet network infrastructure is massively more robust than it was then. Bandwidth is a hellofa lot cheaper. And the bandwidth requirements of games are a smaller sliver than they were before. For example back in EQ, you could use 200 to 300 k/s for the game, and the company had to have enough bandwidth for every concurrent user, that was expensive when a 1.5meg T1 cost $4000/mo. Now, maybe you need 1.5 or 2 mb/s for a game (that's probably stretching it) and a pipeline that's literally 50 times more robust costs about the same a month, if not less. So now you can support a ton more concurrent users for a lot less money.
Then you get into the hardware needed to run the game. Now we have essentially VM's running each "server" instead of individual servers. Operating costs there are significantly reduced due to complexity, and having to only have 1 or 2 sys admins. Downtime is lower as upgrades can be performed in hours rather than days, and resets, etc, take minutes instead of hours.
I could go on, but you get the point. The overall operating cost of running an MMO is down significantly per user, which means more of that $15/mo is profit, which can be turned into ongoing development via paying salaries of developers.
Post edited by Hrimnir on
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
It's also significantly cheaper, I don't remember the exact cost but a developer license for unity was around 1500 USD per PC. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.
Oooooh. That is well within my budget. I could make my own game. Stay tuned for AmatheOnline.com.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
A polished Game that has the majority of the elements promised is the most important part. The game needs to be consider great when it comes out if they want to get the players and funds coming in to further development.
If "Endgame" is not completely finished at launch it is probably ok, but it needs to released in a timely manner once the game lanches, not 1-2 years later. Meaning before people start hitting cap, and by people I mean any player not just the majority. As Svann said once people run out of stuff and quit chances of getting them back are slim. Since this is not the typical WoW clone where people will be Cap level in 2-3 weeks (hopefully) it will give them more time then some other games to start releasing stuff.
I am worried about thier ability to do this in the time frames they stated with the dev team size. I do not question thier abilities to make a solid game, but their ability to finish everything in time. Honestly if it is to succeed it has to be a AAA quality game even with a AA budget and team size. Especially with the plan for P2P, game has to not only deliver the majority of the promises out of the gate, it has to be extremely polished.
In my opinion if they are doing a light launch, launching without portions of planed launch content, they need to hold off launch until they are at a point where they can launch the game and have endgame coming out within a month with more constantly streaming in. People will be fine with a light launch I feel, as long as content comes out before they run out of stuff to do ingame.
If it takes people 1-2 years to hit cap, then the game will fall on its face based on that merit alone.
These days I would not play an MMORPG that takes more than a few weeks to hit the level cap. Plain and simple. Levels are already an almost-outdated concept. They need to find another way for character progression that isn't designing the game to artificially slow people down leveling up.
I'd grind for gear over levels, any day of the week.
I derive entertainment from the cooperative play experience and character improvement process at level cap. Before level cap, you can't really do that since it's too easy for hard work to get thrown away in a game that slows you down simply to keep you subscribed.
I am not a Genre Philosopher. I'm a gamer that wants to have fun. I won't let what the developers think is philosophically ideal ruin that. I'll play something else instead.
They're also gonna need a trial soon after launch. A lot of people are done with paying full price to "try" the game. And if they wait too long, and the game doesn't smash the charts at launch, they risk losing any hype or momentum they accumulated (players lose interest in it/stop thinking about it).
It's also significantly cheaper, I don't remember the exact cost but a developer license for unity was around 1500 USD per PC. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.
Oooooh. That is well within my budget. I could make my own game. Stay tuned for AmatheOnline.com.
That's well within a lot of people's budgets. The engine isn't what costs a lot, it's the people developing the game and the servers/bandwidth to keep it running/maintained.
Developers, Artists/Designers, Hardware, etc.
Yes, Unity is *only* $1500 per PC, which is cheap.
But a good, decently experienced developer is like $60K+ a year, and I doubt many (if any) of the ones working on this game are making less than that.
$1,500 per PC Engine License is cheap. $5K+ per developer (and probably benefits, etc. on top of that) is a lot less cheaper than that.
Then the hardware, server, bandwidth, etc. costs on top of that. And of course that was *only* the developers.
Why do you think Layoffs come first whenever a company needs to raise profits from a game. Unless they can successfully change their business model (Subscription to Cash Shop and make a decent amount of cash there), they will start laying off people. GMs, QA, Developers, etc.
A polished Game that has the majority of the elements promised is the most important part. The game needs to be consider great when it comes out if they want to get the players and funds coming in to further development.
If "Endgame" is not completely finished at launch it is probably ok, but it needs to released in a timely manner once the game lanches, not 1-2 years later. Meaning before people start hitting cap, and by people I mean any player not just the majority. As Svann said once people run out of stuff and quit chances of getting them back are slim. Since this is not the typical WoW clone where people will be Cap level in 2-3 weeks (hopefully) it will give them more time then some other games to start releasing stuff.
I am worried about thier ability to do this in the time frames they stated with the dev team size. I do not question thier abilities to make a solid game, but their ability to finish everything in time. Honestly if it is to succeed it has to be a AAA quality game even with a AA budget and team size. Especially with the plan for P2P, game has to not only deliver the majority of the promises out of the gate, it has to be extremely polished.
In my opinion if they are doing a light launch, launching without portions of planed launch content, they need to hold off launch until they are at a point where they can launch the game and have endgame coming out within a month with more constantly streaming in. People will be fine with a light launch I feel, as long as content comes out before they run out of stuff to do ingame.
If it takes people 1-2 years to hit cap, then the game will fall on its face based on that merit alone.
These days I would not play an MMORPG that takes more than a few weeks to hit the level cap. Plain and simple. Levels are already an almost-outdated concept. They need to find another way for character progression that isn't designing the game to artificially slow people down leveling up.
Thats just it, Pantheon does have character progression beyond just levels. Like many older MMOs, there was a lot more to the game than the content at max level.
I'd grind for gear over levels, any day of the week.
I derive entertainment from the cooperative play experience and character improvement process at level cap. Before level cap, you can't really do that since it's too easy for hard work to get thrown away in a game that slows you down simply to keep you subscribed.
Says who? There were plenty of games where the cooperative play and progression of early levels were meaningful, and the things you achieved along the way were even relevant at end game.
I think you're just so used to that shallow design, you've been convinced that its the only alternative.
I am not a Genre Philosopher. I'm a gamer that wants to have fun. I won't let what the developers think is philosophically ideal ruin that. I'll play something else instead.
They're also gonna need a trial soon after launch. A lot of people are done with paying full price to "try" the game. And if they wait too long, and the game doesn't smash the charts at launch, they risk losing any hype or momentum they accumulated (players lose interest in it/stop thinking about it).
You may find that what they think is ideal is enjoyable. If not, there will always be other games for players who think like you.
They also plan to have a free trial at launch, so no risk to you.
Ya, we did discuss how a low res, low bitrate pixelated stream might not represent what the game actually looks like. Stop being dishonest. None of those images were pre-rendered.
Comments
Despite one game's success, I believe most players sense how artificial and generic that design is, and have put off MMO games awaiting a virtual world with greater emphasis on cooperative gameplay (massively multiplayer), meaningful progression (starting at level 1), and real risk vs reward.
Clearly you haven't played a geared Mage or Warlock in WoW, because you certainly aren't spamming skills with little impact. The MOBs are simply balanced so that you can't have one overgeared person in the goup basically solo the MOBs while other people simply distracted it enough so that Wizard can free cast.
EQ also did that, later on. Kunark was a long time ago, the game changed.
That also made classes like Necros and Shaman utterly worthless from a DPS perspective, BTW, since their DoTs needed time to actually perform. Upside, downside... That's the way it works.
Suppose you have an NPC who paths into a building and gets stuck. Someone has to make a note of that. Someone has to read that note. Someone has to go and find a solution to that issue, implement that solution, and make sure nothing else was affected adversely in the process. All of that takes time, and there are probably a million little things like that.
When you have a small army of coders available, that type of work can get pushed down to staff. But if you don't, or if they are in too short supply, you have to use your creative people on it.
I love the idea of this game, and I respect the people who are making it. It's just hard for me sometimes to picture the project getting finished anytime in the foreseeable future.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Some reality hit you lately, @dullahan , or is it an on-going slip in product confidence?
Whether or not VR will be able to get a game with 50 levels of content and everything else that they have planned completed before the end of 2017 has been a concern since pretty much the word go. The difference between my concerns and others, is that I'm not worried about whether the game will be good, or whether it will eventually be finished. Its a matter of when, not if.
He is far from that unrealistic delusion train some others seem to have.
No point in mocking him for being reasonable.
"My main issue with Pantheon is that it looks like the classes will be like EQ, not like in Vanguard."
That's the whole idea. It's what the people who want to play the game want. That's what I paid a pledge for. Getting back to class basics. Hopefully a harder and slower playing curve .
"But frankly if I wanted to play EQ - the original is still available, is it not ? But Vanguard is no longer up."
I hear this a lot. Vanguard was great, good at this and that. Ask yourself, if Vanguard was so great why was it closed? Obvious it wasn't closed because it was making them money.... I assume the community got so small that it was cheaper to close the game down than maintain the server. EQ is still going after what 17 years, so the formula must be working??
"And Vanguard had a huge and important improvement over EQ in respect to the class design, and that was that classes havent been locked into one task only. In Vanguard, most classes had a primary task, at which they have been overall as good as other classes, and then they had secondary tasks that havent been unimportant either.
For example the Cleric, the class I played the most (and in the end got kinda sick of), you have been obviously healer as primary task, but you also could operate as an offtank...."
This was what I didn't like about vanguard. If you need an offtank then get an offtank. A cleric should be there for healing and buffing, along those lines. That's also the same for games like Rift, where a warrior can be a Healing support. Keep a warrior as a tank or offtank, that's their class. Mixing them up only makes it harder to get groups. Like in Wow where Druids were preferred to a healer because they could tank and heal. Same with Paladins sometimes.
(Tried to quote but pushing the quote button did nothing)
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
I too have some concern regarding the launch date. It is indeed way, way too early. And it will almost surely cost them in terms of general reception.
But i think this has to do with how Brad? Someone else? Projected the time vs 'no money' aspect of the equation. Logical and understandable
I do not know their true budget, nor their individual financial situation. But i can understand how you can only dedicate so many years in something you get no funding for.. In proper circumstances, i think it's safe to say they'd take a lot longer. You have to look at it both ways, end of the day.
And looking at it thus, ie fairly, i remember myself giving this project a zero chance in hell to make it. Before it even failed its Kickstarter, which it did. And yet.. look at them now yeah? That says something about "how long one can go on" all of its own
Again, this is with the current situation. If pledges pick up to a sufficient degree, i don't see why they couldn't 'delay' this further, give them the extra time needed. So end of the day, you can sit and debate or you can contribute, simple as that.
To some that is an option; not for me. Give me one other MMO of this direction that is in the works, just one.. there isn't any, is there.. ? So i do my part. Have had really, really enough with all the shit coming out this past decade.
Pride, honour and purity
Whatever they launch with, be it 50 levels of content or just 30, it needs to be polished and properly represent exactly what they've promised. We know some things will likely come later, but the game people finally play must NOT feel unfinished, even if it technically is (though an MMO should never be "finished" in the first place).
If "Endgame" is not completely finished at launch it is probably ok, but it needs to released in a timely manner once the game lanches, not 1-2 years later. Meaning before people start hitting cap, and by people I mean any player not just the majority. As Svann said once people run out of stuff and quit chances of getting them back are slim. Since this is not the typical WoW clone where people will be Cap level in 2-3 weeks (hopefully) it will give them more time then some other games to start releasing stuff.
I am worried about thier ability to do this in the time frames they stated with the dev team size. I do not question thier abilities to make a solid game, but their ability to finish everything in time. Honestly if it is to succeed it has to be a AAA quality game even with a AA budget and team size. Especially with the plan for P2P, game has to not only deliver the majority of the promises out of the gate, it has to be extremely polished.
In my opinion if they are doing a light launch, launching without portions of planed launch content, they need to hold off launch until they are at a point where they can launch the game and have endgame coming out within a month with more constantly streaming in. People will be fine with a light launch I feel, as long as content comes out before they run out of stuff to do ingame.
I'm really not as worried. I think people are seriously underestimating development times and costs now that platforms like Unity are available. A lot of people don't realize that a MASSIVE amount of the cost and time of developing an MMO was having to create a completely new engine from scratch, which also meant graphics, netcode, server code, account/billing, etc etc etc. This required a ton of people that were expensive. It was also extremely time consuming.
With Unity they literally are able to just start busting out content from day one. That's why you've seen a ton of progress in such a short (relatively speaking) amount of time. They're not having to hire graphics engineers to create a graphics engine, computer engineers to create netcode, etc etc. They can run with a lean and mean team of designers, modelers, texture artists, etc.
It's also significantly cheaper, I don't remember the exact cost but a developer license for unity was around 1500 USD per PC. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.
So, keep in mind, once they release, they sell however many copies of the game, and get $15 a month for at least 2 or 3 months (provided the content isn't "modern" content locust max level in 50 hours) that allows them to pay for new artists, new coders, etc etc to expand the game.
Is it more precarious than a massive developer like Blizzard who can throw 10's of millions of dollars and 100's of people at it? Of course. But I don't think the chances of success are as slim as people think.
The actual cost of running an MMO is nowhere near what it was in the EQ and early WoW days. The general Internet network infrastructure is massively more robust than it was then. Bandwidth is a hellofa lot cheaper. And the bandwidth requirements of games are a smaller sliver than they were before. For example back in EQ, you could use 200 to 300 k/s for the game, and the company had to have enough bandwidth for every concurrent user, that was expensive when a 1.5meg T1 cost $4000/mo. Now, maybe you need 1.5 or 2 mb/s for a game (that's probably stretching it) and a pipeline that's literally 50 times more robust costs about the same a month, if not less. So now you can support a ton more concurrent users for a lot less money.
Then you get into the hardware needed to run the game. Now we have essentially VM's running each "server" instead of individual servers. Operating costs there are significantly reduced due to complexity, and having to only have 1 or 2 sys admins. Downtime is lower as upgrades can be performed in hours rather than days, and resets, etc, take minutes instead of hours.
I could go on, but you get the point. The overall operating cost of running an MMO is down significantly per user, which means more of that $15/mo is profit, which can be turned into ongoing development via paying salaries of developers.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
These days I would not play an MMORPG that takes more than a few weeks to hit the level cap. Plain and simple. Levels are already an almost-outdated concept. They need to find another way for character progression that isn't designing the game to artificially slow people down leveling up.
I'd grind for gear over levels, any day of the week.
I derive entertainment from the cooperative play experience and character improvement process at level cap. Before level cap, you can't really do that since it's too easy for hard work to get thrown away in a game that slows you down simply to keep you subscribed.
I am not a Genre Philosopher. I'm a gamer that wants to have fun. I won't let what the developers think is philosophically ideal ruin that. I'll play something else instead.
They're also gonna need a trial soon after launch. A lot of people are done with paying full price to "try" the game. And if they wait too long, and the game doesn't smash the charts at launch, they risk losing any hype or momentum they accumulated (players lose interest in it/stop thinking about it).
That's well within a lot of people's budgets. The engine isn't what costs a lot, it's the people developing the game and the servers/bandwidth to keep it running/maintained.
Developers, Artists/Designers, Hardware, etc.
Yes, Unity is *only* $1500 per PC, which is cheap.
But a good, decently experienced developer is like $60K+ a year, and I doubt many (if any) of the ones working on this game are making less than that.
$1,500 per PC Engine License is cheap. $5K+ per developer (and probably benefits, etc. on top of that) is a lot less cheaper than that.
Then the hardware, server, bandwidth, etc. costs on top of that. And of course that was *only* the developers.
Why do you think Layoffs come first whenever a company needs to raise profits from a game. Unless they can successfully change their business model (Subscription to Cash Shop and make a decent amount of cash there), they will start laying off people. GMs, QA, Developers, etc.
Says who? There were plenty of games where the cooperative play and progression of early levels were meaningful, and the things you achieved along the way were even relevant at end game.
I think you're just so used to that shallow design, you've been convinced that its the only alternative.
You may find that what they think is ideal is enjoyable. If not, there will always be other games for players who think like you.
They also plan to have a free trial at launch, so no risk to you.
story
bro
pre rendered concept art that looks nothing like the actual game.
We already discussed this.
http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/447393/this-game-looks-way-too-amateurish-next-to-eq/p1
/smh
Only video can show the combat, animation and enemy AI which stood out the most as looking bad.
Looking foward to the next video.