I suspect game developes/producers are lazy and greedy. As if all they need is hype, meaning, a huge player base to gain attention from. From half the crowd of gamers, maybe the game devs/producers wouldn't get away with mediocrity.
I suspect game developes/producers are lazy and greedy. As if all they need is hype, meaning, a huge player base to gain attention from. From half the crowd of gamers, maybe the game devs/producers wouldn't get away with mediocrity.
Its not developers that need hype, its the player base that relies on them. As much as we like to think we make our own choices there are far too many games to test them all. Its hype that gets our attention, make us pre-order games without regarding the actual quality of the game.
If you want devs to be punished for mediocrity you should stop pre-ordering games because all you do is support devs without knowing if they did a good job or not.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I'd rather gamble with a Kickstarter to see if we get a decent game or not than throw money at a guaranteed bad game.
And at this point, any game that follows the WoW model is a bad game IMO. It's not even that the WoW model is a bad model so much as that any time I start playing a game that follows that model, I feel like I've already played the whole game before.
I still feel the main issue I have with the argument "we can't have another WoW clone" is that currently the most popular recent MMORPG is FFXIV, which is about as far from WoW as SWTOR is and by your previous comments that makes it a "wow clone"
The game people keep saying they want, sounds less and less like an MMORPG. In my opinion the trend of incorporating MMORPG elements into solid mainstream titles, will be the centre of evolution for the genre. What the term "MMORPG" used to represent is no longer a viable investment.
To put it bluntly Blizzard did a Blizzard and killed the entire genre with WoW. I feel its highly unlikely a game will ever have mainstream success to a level people are expecting while still actually resembling an MMORPG in the classic sense.
Games like Destiny etc are the future. I reckon I can live with that. If you are die hard enough there will always be niche games, but they will remain just that, niche.
If people don't have time to play mmorpg's then they shouldn't play mmorpg's. It's very simple, and yet devs try to make their games to cater to everyone who doesn't have time to play them (by throwing in cash shops, making leveling able to be completed in 3 days, allowing everything to be able to be done solo, slapping cooldowns on everything so people who have time can't play more and pass the people who don't have time).
This is why they are all terrible.
Or for that matter tired of the grind. Play non-mmo's. Personally I'm just tired of everything eventually revolving around the treadmill and that being used to give content longevity. However while I dislike the grind. I understand why it is there and needed. Because developers spend a year making new content and in a week most have blown through majority of it. So I get that and understand it just want change. I'm just tired of games period minus a very small handful which I play just for the story alone.
Alorem said: ...What the term "MMORPG" used to represent is no longer a viable investment...
...I feel its highly unlikely a game will ever have mainstream success to a level people are expecting while still actually resembling an MMORPG in the classic sense...
I fully agree. The genre doesn't need another UO, DAOC, or Shadowbane. Those games died out for a reason.
The MMO industry has made a lot of advancements and figured out a lot of things that will be abused or simply aren't fun. Any new MMO needs to take those factors into consideration.
It needs something entirely new, and while it may be closer to those things than WoW, it should not be a straight clone of any older game.
Its not developers that need hype, its the player base that relies on them. As much as we like to think we make our own choices there are far too many games to test them all. Its hype that gets our attention, make us pre-order games without regarding the actual quality of the game.
If you want devs to be punished for mediocrity you should stop pre-ordering games because all you do is support devs without knowing if they did a good job or not.
It is like music, a surprisingly large group of people listens to whatever their friends talk about or that are on a top list.
And of course if you do have friends that like similar games trying out what they like make some sense.
Hyping is a different matter though, then you are getting excited for something you have heard a little about but usually with very little substance. I wish everybody stopped pre-order games forcing the devs to actually deliver something more then a buzz before launch.
Hyping actually can hurt the games, people get upset when they don't get what they thought they would, without the hype they might have liked it for what it is instead of comparing it with a fantasy.
...I guarantee that if you had $50 million in your bank account, you certainly wouldn't spend it to make the game you're talking about.
I can pretty much promise you that a large chunk of that money would be used for that exact purpose because I know I would make that money back severalfold, and have an amazing MMO to play at the end of it.
BUT it's guaranteed!!!!! If you got $50 million today and were guaranteed to have $100 million tomorrow, why wouldn't you do it? You say "severalfold", but you forget that there are expenses to operating a game, also. Honestly, I think you're living in a fantasy world. Like I said, though, there are games coming out that are similar to what you're talking about, so feel free to call me an idiot when one of them makes $100 million a year. The only upcoming game that's likely to make that sort of money is Star Citizen, anything else in the pipe won't come close to those numbers. Shit! We have "innovative" games on here whose "dream" goals are 5000 subscriptions. It's shitty, but at least their goals are much more aligned with reality.
I wont disagree with the video at all, but the #1 problem with MMO's is unrealistic expectations from the players themselves. That is it in a nutshell. Every new game that is released now is suppose to be the best game ever. When that type of hype is put on something it will fail no matter how good it is. You can not please everyone no matter what you do, people are different and have different wants and needs.
I can pretty much promise you that a large chunk of that money would be used for that exact purpose because I know I would make that money back severalfold, and have an amazing MMO to play at the end of it.
BUT it's guaranteed!!!!! If you got $50 million today and were guaranteed to have $100 million tomorrow, why wouldn't you do it? You say "severalfold", but you forget that there are expenses to operating a game, also. Honestly, I think you're living in a fantasy world. Like I said, though, there are games coming out that are similar to what you're talking about, so feel free to call me an idiot when one of them makes $100 million a year. The only upcoming game that's likely to make that sort of money is Star Citizen, anything else in the pipe won't come close to those numbers. Shit! We have "innovative" games on here whose "dream" goals are 5000 subscriptions. It's shitty, but at least their goals are much more aligned with reality.
I didn't say you would double your money overnight, I said you would be pretty much guaranteed to make the money back severalfold. Over the course of A FEW YEARS. You're still making an MMO. Even if it's a sandbox which means you can get it out faster and cheaper it's still going to take considerable time and money. If I handed you 50 million dollars and said "Everything you put in this fund will be returned to you with 100% interest in five years" are you going to put the full 50 million in, and that matter not involve your wife (or fiance in my case) in the process of deciding what happens with that money? Didn't think so. That's the reason I say I would spend a "large chunk of it." Because even if she was 100% on board I'd use 1-2 million to live on for the next few years.
So what I've been arguing is that a AAA company wasting their time on WoW clones like SWTOR, ESO, and ArcheAge could be profitable if they spent their time and money on a AAA sandbox. You think that's a fantasy, but believe Star Citizen will be profitable. When the main thing seperating SC from it's competitors is experience andmoney! The exact same things that separate a AAA title from indie titles!
And take a look at what Star Citizen is promising. A full fledged infantry FPS integrated with a full fledged space sim. Realistic physics, insanely good graphics, a detailed and realistic economy, planetary exploration.
Star Citizen is promising 1000% as much as what you will find in MMO to date. Not in the way of scripted content, but in the way of actual game features for sure. They are building an MMO that is new and unique and different from the ground up!
Honestly I have serious concerns that Star Citizen may have promised more than they will be able to realistically deliver within any reasonable timeframe. Sort of like how Crowfall's promise of a voxel engine sounds great but also sounds a bit too good to be true. If they do succeed, it will be proof positive of MASSIVE interest in games that dramatically break from the standard themepark model.
To be clear what I have envisioned is maybe 200-300% of the features of a Themepark and little to no scripted content. Dramatically easier to pull off than what Star Citizen is talking about.
If people don't have time to play mmorpg's then they shouldn't play mmorpg's. It's very simple, and yet devs try to make their games to cater to everyone who doesn't have time to play them (by throwing in cash shops, making leveling able to be completed in 3 days, allowing everything to be able to be done solo, slapping cooldowns on everything so people who have time can't play more and pass the people who don't have time).
This is why they are all terrible.
Or for that matter tired of the grind. Play non-mmo's. Personally I'm just tired of everything eventually revolving around the treadmill and that being used to give content longevity. However while I dislike the grind. I understand why it is there and needed. Because developers spend a year making new content and in a week most have blown through majority of it. So I get that and understand it just want change. I'm just tired of games period minus a very small handful which I play just for the story alone.
There hasn't been a treadmill/grindy game that has come out in over a decade. I don't understand how you can be tired of them when there hasn't even been that many of them.
All modern games are is grind. First you grind levels, then you grind raids or PvP arenas for gear. That's the game. Suppose you were to have the rarest of the rare items in every single slot in a WoW clone. What is the content at that point?
I can answer that for a sandbox, but not a WoW clone.
I can pretty much promise you that a large chunk of that money would be used for that exact purpose because I know I would make that money back severalfold, and have an amazing MMO to play at the end of it.
BUT it's guaranteed!!!!! If you got $50 million today and were guaranteed to have $100 million tomorrow, why wouldn't you do it? You say "severalfold", but you forget that there are expenses to operating a game, also. Honestly, I think you're living in a fantasy world. Like I said, though, there are games coming out that are similar to what you're talking about, so feel free to call me an idiot when one of them makes $100 million a year. The only upcoming game that's likely to make that sort of money is Star Citizen, anything else in the pipe won't come close to those numbers. Shit! We have "innovative" games on here whose "dream" goals are 5000 subscriptions. It's shitty, but at least their goals are much more aligned with reality.
I didn't say you would double your money overnight, I said you would be pretty much guaranteed to make the money back severalfold. Over the course of A FEW YEARS. You're still making an MMO. Even if it's a sandbox which means you can get it out faster and cheaper it's still going to take considerable time and money. If I handed you 50 million dollars and said "Everything you put in this fund will be returned to you with 100% interest in five years" are you going to put the full 50 million in, and that matter not involve your wife (or fiance in my case) in the process of deciding what happens with that money? Didn't think so. That's the reason I say I would spend a "large chunk of it." Because even if she was 100% on board I'd use 1-2 million to live on for the next few years.
So what I've been arguing is that a AAA company wasting their time on WoW clones like SWTOR, ESO, and ArcheAge could be profitable if they spent their time and money on a AAA sandbox. You think that's a fantasy, but believe Star Citizen will be profitable. When the main thing seperating SC from it's competitors is experience andmoney! The exact same things that separate a AAA title from indie titles!
And take a look at what Star Citizen is promising. A full fledged infantry FPS integrated with a full fledged space sim. Realistic physics, insanely good graphics, a detailed and realistic economy, planetary exploration.
Star Citizen is promising 1000% as much as what you will find in MMO to date. Not in the way of scripted content, but in the way of actual game features for sure. They are building an MMO that is new and unique and different from the ground up!
Honestly I have serious concerns that Star Citizen may have promised more than they will be able to realistically deliver within any reasonable timeframe. Sort of like how Crowfall's promise of a voxel engine sounds great but also sounds a bit too good to be true. If they do succeed, it will be proof positive of MASSIVE interest in games that dramatically break from the standard themepark model.
To be clear what I have envisioned is maybe 200-300% of the features of a Themepark and little to no scripted content. Dramatically easier to pull off than what Star Citizen is talking about.
Back here in the real world there are a lot of astute investors that do things like construct large buildings, make washing machines, cars aeroplanes etc. If what you said was even remotely true they would be lining up to invest in your game. The ROI you are stating beats anything else, and, according to you, all with no risk!
Sorry that is the spiel of a conman, not a real world investment. Even in the video game business MMORPGs are high risk low return investments with long lead times. Not get rich quick schemes.
Real investors aren't as interested in the video game world. Want proof?
Kickstarter accounts.
When Star Citizen first game out I went half and half on a 1000$ ship. Later I needed the money to help finance a move. Me and the guy I went halves with ended up getting 3800$ for that 1000$ ship. That was not the only ship I sold. I sold several other ships all at substantial profit including four 25$ ships for 100$. I later sold my Pathfinder Online accounts for more than I paid for them AFTER anyone with half a brain in their heads realized the game was going to be a total flop.
The Kickstarter market is really hot and with the ability to make your money back on a crap deal like PFO, the risk is pretty minimal. This isn't speculation, this is coming from a guy who's made thousands on the Kickstarter market and lost 0$.
When it's taken investors years to pick up on obvious market trends like that, do you think they are well tuned with what the MMORPG community actually wants?
I have the feeling that if investors actually understood how big the desire for a great sandbox MMO is, they WOULD be lining up to invest in that kind of venture. But generally a detailed knowledge of a massive time sink that generates no real world value and having millions in real life cash don't go hand-in-hand.
They're approaching it from a mindset of how to make money but they don't understand the market which is why we get the same thing over and over and over, while the developers who have a much better understanding of what gamers want are all trying to kickstart sandboxes.
Real investors aren't as interested in the video game world. Want proof?
Kickstarter accounts.
When Star Citizen first game out I went half and half on a 1000$ ship. Later I needed the money to help finance a move. Me and the guy I went halves with ended up getting 3800$ for that 1000$ ship. That was not the only ship I sold. I sold several other ships all at substantial profit including four 25$ ships for 100$. I later sold my Pathfinder Online accounts for more than I paid for them AFTER anyone with half a brain in their heads realized the game was going to be a total flop.
The Kickstarter market is really hot and with the ability to make your money back on a crap deal like PFO, the risk is pretty minimal. This isn't speculation, this is coming from a guy who's made thousands on the Kickstarter market and lost 0$.
When it's taken investors years to pick up on obvious market trends like that, do you think they are well tuned with what the MMORPG community actually wants?
I have the feeling that if investors actually understood how big the desire for a great sandbox MMO is, they WOULD be lining up to invest in that kind of venture. But generally a detailed knowledge of a massive time sink that generates no real world value and having millions in real life cash don't go hand-in-hand.
What you are talking about is arbitrage. Back here in the real world people make, and lose, fortunes doing that sort of thing. In your imaginary world you may or may not have made the cash you are talking about, but to me you sound like one of the horse racing punters I know. Always talking about the wins and never the losses. The real winners are the bookmakers, and they make a small percentage on turnover. No doubling your money every year.
Fortunately, my Star Citizen ship sales are pretty easily verifiable. I could have sworn I made 3800$ off the Idriss but the topic says I was selling at 3500$. May have been some up-bidding in the PM boxes but it's not important enough to track down. Anyway, check for yourself if you don't believe me:
Also the guy who I sold the scout package bought all of my scout packages. The scout packages were the 25$ packages I sold at 100$ apiece. The rest happened through PMs.
Maybe I can talk about losses when I actually have some.
Almost all the post about sandbox is make a really complicated game and make it work. Because that's pretty much what sandbox is.
Sure if some one make it work great. I think Eve obviously make it work. And maybe there will be more that follow.
And honestly there are balizion sand box game, like there are balizion mmorpg. People just don't play it or care about it, because they are not that good.
Almost all the post about sandbox is make a really complicated game and make it work. Because that's pretty much what sandbox is.
Sure if some one make it work great. I think Eve obviously make it work. And maybe there will be more that follow.
And honestly there are balizion sand box game, like there are balizion mmorpg. People just don't play it or care about it, because they are not that good.
Yes, making a scripted themepark is easier then to make a sandbox game but it is not that hard. The main reason so many sandboxes do so badly is that so many of them try to be the new UO. UO was a great game in '97 but time goes on and the mechanics havn't aged with dignity.
FFA full loot PvP games fail as badly if they are themeparks as sandboxes, there just isn't enough players around that want that kind of game. More then a few sandbox fans say that it is part of the genre but it certainly is not a must and it turns away most potential players. Faction based PvP is fine though.
Eve and to some extent SWG did their own stuff and that is why they did stand out. But I you want to make a great new sandbox game you need to stop looking at old games and make something that is fun, let players create their own stories but offers a new gaming experience.
Just remaking old MMOs does not work no matter what game you try to remake.
Almost all the post about sandbox is make a really complicated game and make it work. Because that's pretty much what sandbox is.
Sure if some one make it work great. I think Eve obviously make it work. And maybe there will be more that follow.
And honestly there are balizion sand box game, like there are balizion mmorpg. People just don't play it or care about it, because they are not that good.
Yes, making a scripted themepark is easier then to make a sandbox game but it is not that hard. The main reason so many sandboxes do so badly is that so many of them try to be the new UO. UO was a great game in '97 but time goes on and the mechanics havn't aged with dignity.
FFA full loot PvP games fail as badly if they are themeparks as sandboxes, there just isn't enough players around that want that kind of game. More then a few sandbox fans say that it is part of the genre but it certainly is not a must and it turns away most potential players. Faction based PvP is fine though.
Eve and to some extent SWG did their own stuff and that is why they did stand out. But I you want to make a great new sandbox game you need to stop looking at old games and make something that is fun, let players create their own stories but offers a new gaming experience.
Just remaking old MMOs does not work no matter what game you try to remake.
I can't really think of any MMO that actually is a solid remake of an older title.
Even the sequel titles, EQ2, AC2, L2, FFXIV bear little resemblance to their predecessors.
Sure, some claim to be remaking UO but about the only they come close on is the extremely bad production values it had at launch and little else.
Successor titles like WAR or ESO are almost nothing like DAOC despite claiming to have drawn inspiration from it.
I've always wondered what DAOC2 might be like, patterned after the original title circa 2003, but with a more modern interface and a few convenience features. (certainly not fast travel, dungeon finders or cash shops)
Looks like we'll never really know so now my hope is someone will come out with a game based on new designs that I'll enjoy more than the offerings of the past 10 years.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Game developers have to stop trying to make a game that everyone will want to play. It's really not possible. A game cannot cover all possible preferences and play-styles. The more they try to make such games, the more generic and boring the experience gets, and people either move on quickly, or eventually become numb to the design attempts and don't play MMOs at all. WoW will never happen again for MMOs, not even Star Citizen will be able to become a WoW. People are becoming immune to the bait and switch and Free 2 Play(but not really) poor game design. It's obvious when grind-a-thon play-style is inserted with an offsetting cash shop with items clearly put there for one to purchase with real world money, in order to avoid the grind and proceed through the game quicker. The game-maker doesn't care if the content is consumed quickly, as long as they get their money before-hand. It's short-term game design that will lead the the MMOs quick demise and only contributes a bad taste of MMOs to consumers over time. What ever happened to deep and inspired game-play, with in-depth and creative quests, rich lore, and everything is accomplish-able in the game? I tell you what, it is the insta-gratification mentality of everyone wanting what they want as soon as possible, so they can feel special (which really is just a short-term thing). People don't want to put the time in and go along for the journey, because, in part, the fun journey isn't there anymore because of recent MMO game-design. People bitch because they don't have time to go along that journey, so they expect the game to become easier, and to accommodate them with the option to pay real world money to skip the content of the game more easily. Thus, game-makers know this and focus more time on creating ways to grab your money from the cash shop, and spend less time on a deep and rich MMO world with a fun journey. As long as players are willing to shell out real-world cash in order to skip boring game-design and grind, that's all MMOs will ever be, is just that. Boring grinds with uninspired game mechanics and game world.
Players like myself will likely gravitate more towards niche games, because we're sick and tired of the crappy MMO games that have been coming out.
An obvious mistake that Cloud Imperium Games is doing with Star Citizen, is touting "fun", not only for being important, but worse, to argue against complexity in gameplay that way.
I can't tell if they are aware of it, but when they, like they did on a recent conference, claim that they want to have game mechanics be fun and not just go for something very complicated, they are sort of giving the impression that they will go for the least complicated gameplay by relying on this nonsense qualifier being "fun". There is just no way of knowing what they want. And they probably don't either, just working there, because whenever one isn't actually discussing something concrete, like when talking about a particular understanding of an issue/problem, whatever might be fun, remain an absurdity because at the end of the day, "fun" will always be something entirely subjective generally speaking.
Real investors aren't as interested in the video game world. Want proof?
Kickstarter accounts.
When Star Citizen first game out I went half and half on a 1000$ ship. Later I needed the money to help finance a move. Me and the guy I went halves with ended up getting 3800$ for that 1000$ ship. That was not the only ship I sold. I sold several other ships all at substantial profit including four 25$ ships for 100$. I later sold my Pathfinder Online accounts for more than I paid for them AFTER anyone with half a brain in their heads realized the game was going to be a total flop.
The Kickstarter market is really hot and with the ability to make your money back on a crap deal like PFO, the risk is pretty minimal. This isn't speculation, this is coming from a guy who's made thousands on the Kickstarter market and lost 0$.
When it's taken investors years to pick up on obvious market trends like that, do you think they are well tuned with what the MMORPG community actually wants?
I have the feeling that if investors actually understood how big the desire for a great sandbox MMO is, they WOULD be lining up to invest in that kind of venture. But generally a detailed knowledge of a massive time sink that generates no real world value and having millions in real life cash don't go hand-in-hand.
They're approaching it from a mindset of how to make money but they don't understand the market which is why we get the same thing over and over and over, while the developers who have a much better understanding of what gamers want are all trying to kickstart sandboxes.
You mean the market is so large that DBG just, essentially, gave away the SWG IP and allowed swgemu to start running legitimately? Yeah, it must be a fucking goldmine!!!! On top of that, swgemu, despite running legitimately, has managed peaks of just over 1000 users. That's not to say that there isn't a market for the games, but there certainly isn't the market that you believe there is.
You keep going back to Star Citizen like it's some sort of proof, but it's an anomaly, just like WoW. It hasn't been seen before and won't be seen again. I don't know why you can't wrap your head around that. Star Citizen is a re-hash of a project called Freelancer which promised lofty goals when it was developed over a decade ago. Also, Chris Roberts was the developer behind the Wing Commander series, which has a cult following. There are plenty more reasons for the success of Star Citizen, to this point, than market demand. These circumstances aren't something that can simply be reproduced. If it was that simple, why hasn't someone just done the same thing WoW did? Then they could make billions!!!!
You say that the investor would make back "severalfold" over the course of a few years (5 years to be exact). There are a couple problems with that. First, there are few, if any, games which even last that long these days. Secondly, there are even fewer games which make enough money to sustain themselves, let alone return anything to an investor.
All of this is the reason that I say you're living in a fantasy world. It seems like you believe that a game like Star Citizen proves that there is a market for sandboxes.The problem is that it hasn't even been released. Secondly, you think that people who are interested in Star Citizen are interested in a sandbox. I can tell you first-hand that I have no interest in a sandbox devoid of story. I AM a backer of Star Citizen as well, and I AM an advocate of crowdfunding, as you'll notice my post history suggests. However, I backed Star Citizen for the story more than the sandbox. I would much rather play an updated Wing Commander than an updated EVE. I think that you believe that the vast majority of people backed Star Citizen because of the sandbox, but there are plenty of people on here who have expressed their desire for SC42 over everything else. So there is either an ignorance of the market itself, or you're simply living in a fantasy world.
SWG is an old game. First off, as I said earlier in the topic you aren't going to reach success by replicating old games, sandbox or not.
Second off, older games that have stood the test of time (WoW, EVE, and Runescape) have done so with consistent updates, including multiple graphical updates for ALL of those titles. SWG's graphics felt seriously outdated when I tried it YEARS ago, while it was still up and running.
You can't just pick an old game off the shelf, stick it back on the market, and expect it to succeed. That's not how it works.
Obviously just any sandbox thrust onto the market without any consideration of how MMO's have evolved, poor graphics, and crap gameplay is not going to succeed. If you could do it with no effort than Darkfall, MO, and PFO would have been massive successes.
I think that's where indie sandboxes have made their biggest missteps:
1. Allowing hardcore PvPers to have a say in how safe areas are set up so that they can use wars and suicide ganking to make them unsafe. 2. Listening to the crowd that thinks having quality PvE and enjoyable crafting in a sandbox will somehow hurt the game by carebearifying the community. 3. Weak systems of consequences for random ganking that fail to discourage it in any meaningful way, and poor incentive to take part in more meaningful forms of PvP.
Correcting those issues would massively expand the potential audience for a sandbox with player interaction at it's core.
I think that's where indie sandboxes have made their biggest missteps:
1. Allowing hardcore PvPers to have a say in how safe areas are set up so that they can use wars and suicide ganking to make them unsafe. 2. Listening to the crowd that thinks having quality PvE and enjoyable crafting in a sandbox will somehow hurt the game by carebearifying the community. 3. Weak systems of consequences for random ganking that fail to discourage it in any meaningful way, and poor incentive to take part in more meaningful forms of PvP.
Correcting those issues would massively expand the potential audience for a sandbox with player interaction at it's core.
In my opinion PvE and crafting is at least 50 percent of a sandbox mmo or even 75 percent so taking that away will hurt sandboxes in the long run. In terms of PvP, flag system will fix things. I think people have a delusional point of view that think sandbox is like pvp focused. 90 percent PvP 10 percent PvE, recipe for failure.
The acronym MMORPG use to mean Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.
But the acronym MMMORPG now currently means Microscopic Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Kappa.
If by flag systems you mean the ability to toggle PvP status on and off I disagree that it helps. That kind of system does not allow for player conflict as a major content driver. When you can essentially opt out of PvP whenever and wherever you want, you can remove the element of competition from any content you desire.
The system pioneered by EVE of different areas having different levels of PvP is a good concept. It's execution where it fails. Where EVE's seems to have been thrown together with little thought and seen little review over the years, I would make doing that system right one of the major focuses of the game.
The other piece of the puzzle IMO is creating competition that you can take part in that doesn't involve getting jumped and killed constantly. I think the influence system I describe on my forums is pretty huge in that it allows for players who don't like fighting to still take a meaningful part in shaping the world without leaving the "safe-areas." It essentially turns safe-areas into a full fledged part of the sandbox world that you never really need to leave if you don't want to rather than simple starter areas. Meaning people out in the PvP areas really are there entirely by choice.
Comments
If you want devs to be punished for mediocrity you should stop pre-ordering games because all you do is support devs without knowing if they did a good job or not.
And at this point, any game that follows the WoW model is a bad game IMO. It's not even that the WoW model is a bad model so much as that any time I start playing a game that follows that model, I feel like I've already played the whole game before.
The game people keep saying they want, sounds less and less like an MMORPG.
In my opinion the trend of incorporating MMORPG elements into solid mainstream titles, will be the centre of evolution for the genre. What the term "MMORPG" used to represent is no longer a viable investment.
To put it bluntly Blizzard did a Blizzard and killed the entire genre with WoW.
I feel its highly unlikely a game will ever have mainstream success to a level people are expecting while still actually resembling an MMORPG in the classic sense.
Games like Destiny etc are the future. I reckon I can live with that.
If you are die hard enough there will always be niche games, but they will remain just that, niche.
The MMO industry has made a lot of advancements and figured out a lot of things that will be abused or simply aren't fun. Any new MMO needs to take those factors into consideration.
It needs something entirely new, and while it may be closer to those things than WoW, it should not be a straight clone of any older game.
And of course if you do have friends that like similar games trying out what they like make some sense.
Hyping is a different matter though, then you are getting excited for something you have heard a little about but usually with very little substance. I wish everybody stopped pre-order games forcing the devs to actually deliver something more then a buzz before launch.
Hyping actually can hurt the games, people get upset when they don't get what they thought they would, without the hype they might have liked it for what it is instead of comparing it with a fantasy.
BUT it's guaranteed!!!!! If you got $50 million today and were guaranteed to have $100 million tomorrow, why wouldn't you do it? You say "severalfold", but you forget that there are expenses to operating a game, also. Honestly, I think you're living in a fantasy world. Like I said, though, there are games coming out that are similar to what you're talking about, so feel free to call me an idiot when one of them makes $100 million a year. The only upcoming game that's likely to make that sort of money is Star Citizen, anything else in the pipe won't come close to those numbers. Shit! We have "innovative" games on here whose "dream" goals are 5000 subscriptions. It's shitty, but at least their goals are much more aligned with reality.
Crazkanuk
----------------
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
----------------
So what I've been arguing is that a AAA company wasting their time on WoW clones like SWTOR, ESO, and ArcheAge could be profitable if they spent their time and money on a AAA sandbox. You think that's a fantasy, but believe Star Citizen will be profitable. When the main thing seperating SC from it's competitors is experience and money! The exact same things that separate a AAA title from indie titles!
And take a look at what Star Citizen is promising. A full fledged infantry FPS integrated with a full fledged space sim. Realistic physics, insanely good graphics, a detailed and realistic economy, planetary exploration.
Star Citizen is promising 1000% as much as what you will find in MMO to date. Not in the way of scripted content, but in the way of actual game features for sure. They are building an MMO that is new and unique and different from the ground up!
Honestly I have serious concerns that Star Citizen may have promised more than they will be able to realistically deliver within any reasonable timeframe. Sort of like how Crowfall's promise of a voxel engine sounds great but also sounds a bit too good to be true. If they do succeed, it will be proof positive of MASSIVE interest in games that dramatically break from the standard themepark model.
To be clear what I have envisioned is maybe 200-300% of the features of a Themepark and little to no scripted content. Dramatically easier to pull off than what Star Citizen is talking about.
I can answer that for a sandbox, but not a WoW clone.
Sorry that is the spiel of a conman, not a real world investment. Even in the video game business MMORPGs are high risk low return investments with long lead times. Not get rich quick schemes.
Kickstarter accounts.
When Star Citizen first game out I went half and half on a 1000$ ship. Later I needed the money to help finance a move. Me and the guy I went halves with ended up getting 3800$ for that 1000$ ship. That was not the only ship I sold. I sold several other ships all at substantial profit including four 25$ ships for 100$. I later sold my Pathfinder Online accounts for more than I paid for them AFTER anyone with half a brain in their heads realized the game was going to be a total flop.
The Kickstarter market is really hot and with the ability to make your money back on a crap deal like PFO, the risk is pretty minimal. This isn't speculation, this is coming from a guy who's made thousands on the Kickstarter market and lost 0$.
When it's taken investors years to pick up on obvious market trends like that, do you think they are well tuned with what the MMORPG community actually wants?
I have the feeling that if investors actually understood how big the desire for a great sandbox MMO is, they WOULD be lining up to invest in that kind of venture. But generally a detailed knowledge of a massive time sink that generates no real world value and having millions in real life cash don't go hand-in-hand.
They're approaching it from a mindset of how to make money but they don't understand the market which is why we get the same thing over and over and over, while the developers who have a much better understanding of what gamers want are all trying to kickstart sandboxes.
https://www.reddit.com/user/Eldurian?sort=hot
Also the guy who I sold the scout package bought all of my scout packages. The scout packages were the 25$ packages I sold at 100$ apiece. The rest happened through PMs.
Maybe I can talk about losses when I actually have some.
Sure if some one make it work great. I think Eve obviously make it work. And maybe there will be more that follow.
And honestly there are balizion sand box game, like there are balizion mmorpg. People just don't play it or care about it, because they are not that good.
FFA full loot PvP games fail as badly if they are themeparks as sandboxes, there just isn't enough players around that want that kind of game. More then a few sandbox fans say that it is part of the genre but it certainly is not a must and it turns away most potential players. Faction based PvP is fine though.
Eve and to some extent SWG did their own stuff and that is why they did stand out. But I you want to make a great new sandbox game you need to stop looking at old games and make something that is fun, let players create their own stories but offers a new gaming experience.
Just remaking old MMOs does not work no matter what game you try to remake.
Even the sequel titles, EQ2, AC2, L2, FFXIV bear little resemblance to their predecessors.
Sure, some claim to be remaking UO but about the only they come close on is the extremely bad production values it had at launch and little else.
Successor titles like WAR or ESO are almost nothing like DAOC despite claiming to have drawn inspiration from it.
I've always wondered what DAOC2 might be like, patterned after the original title circa 2003, but with a more modern interface and a few convenience features. (certainly not fast travel, dungeon finders or cash shops)
Looks like we'll never really know so now my hope is someone will come out with a game based on new designs that I'll enjoy more than the offerings of the past 10 years.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
A game cannot cover all possible preferences and play-styles. The more they try to make such games, the more generic and boring the experience gets, and people either move on quickly, or eventually become numb to the design attempts and don't play MMOs at all.
WoW will never happen again for MMOs, not even Star Citizen will be able to become a WoW.
People are becoming immune to the bait and switch and Free 2 Play(but not really) poor game design.
It's obvious when grind-a-thon play-style is inserted with an offsetting cash shop with items clearly put there for one to purchase with real world money, in order to avoid the grind and proceed through the game quicker.
The game-maker doesn't care if the content is consumed quickly, as long as they get their money before-hand.
It's short-term game design that will lead the the MMOs quick demise and only contributes a bad taste of MMOs to consumers over time.
What ever happened to deep and inspired game-play, with in-depth and creative quests, rich lore, and everything is accomplish-able in the game?
I tell you what, it is the insta-gratification mentality of everyone wanting what they want as soon as possible, so they can feel special (which really is just a short-term thing). People don't want to put the time in and go along for the journey, because, in part, the fun journey isn't there anymore because of recent MMO game-design. People bitch because they don't have time to go along that journey, so they expect the game to become easier, and to accommodate them with the option to pay real world money to skip the content of the game more easily. Thus, game-makers know this and focus more time on creating ways to grab your money from the cash shop, and spend less time on a deep and rich MMO world with a fun journey.
As long as players are willing to shell out real-world cash in order to skip boring game-design and grind, that's all MMOs will ever be, is just that. Boring grinds with uninspired game mechanics and game world.
Players like myself will likely gravitate more towards niche games, because we're sick and tired of the crappy MMO games that have been coming out.
I can't tell if they are aware of it, but when they, like they did on a recent conference, claim that they want to have game mechanics be fun and not just go for something very complicated, they are sort of giving the impression that they will go for the least complicated gameplay by relying on this nonsense qualifier being "fun". There is just no way of knowing what they want. And they probably don't either, just working there, because whenever one isn't actually discussing something concrete, like when talking about a particular understanding of an issue/problem, whatever might be fun, remain an absurdity because at the end of the day, "fun" will always be something entirely subjective generally speaking.
You mean the market is so large that DBG just, essentially, gave away the SWG IP and allowed swgemu to start running legitimately? Yeah, it must be a fucking goldmine!!!! On top of that, swgemu, despite running legitimately, has managed peaks of just over 1000 users. That's not to say that there isn't a market for the games, but there certainly isn't the market that you believe there is.
You keep going back to Star Citizen like it's some sort of proof, but it's an anomaly, just like WoW. It hasn't been seen before and won't be seen again. I don't know why you can't wrap your head around that. Star Citizen is a re-hash of a project called Freelancer which promised lofty goals when it was developed over a decade ago. Also, Chris Roberts was the developer behind the Wing Commander series, which has a cult following. There are plenty more reasons for the success of Star Citizen, to this point, than market demand. These circumstances aren't something that can simply be reproduced. If it was that simple, why hasn't someone just done the same thing WoW did? Then they could make billions!!!!
You say that the investor would make back "severalfold" over the course of a few years (5 years to be exact). There are a couple problems with that. First, there are few, if any, games which even last that long these days. Secondly, there are even fewer games which make enough money to sustain themselves, let alone return anything to an investor.
All of this is the reason that I say you're living in a fantasy world. It seems like you believe that a game like Star Citizen proves that there is a market for sandboxes.The problem is that it hasn't even been released. Secondly, you think that people who are interested in Star Citizen are interested in a sandbox. I can tell you first-hand that I have no interest in a sandbox devoid of story. I AM a backer of Star Citizen as well, and I AM an advocate of crowdfunding, as you'll notice my post history suggests. However, I backed Star Citizen for the story more than the sandbox. I would much rather play an updated Wing Commander than an updated EVE. I think that you believe that the vast majority of people backed Star Citizen because of the sandbox, but there are plenty of people on here who have expressed their desire for SC42 over everything else. So there is either an ignorance of the market itself, or you're simply living in a fantasy world.
Crazkanuk
----------------
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
----------------
Second off, older games that have stood the test of time (WoW, EVE, and Runescape) have done so with consistent updates, including multiple graphical updates for ALL of those titles. SWG's graphics felt seriously outdated when I tried it YEARS ago, while it was still up and running.
You can't just pick an old game off the shelf, stick it back on the market, and expect it to succeed. That's not how it works.
Obviously just any sandbox thrust onto the market without any consideration of how MMO's have evolved, poor graphics, and crap gameplay is not going to succeed. If you could do it with no effort than Darkfall, MO, and PFO would have been massive successes.
The biggest innovation I would focus on in a sandbox game is creating the ability to choose what level of PvP you want to be subjected to in regular play and making sure players can still enjoy a full sandbox experience if their answer is "none".
I think that's where indie sandboxes have made their biggest missteps:
1. Allowing hardcore PvPers to have a say in how safe areas are set up so that they can use wars and suicide ganking to make them unsafe.
2. Listening to the crowd that thinks having quality PvE and enjoyable crafting in a sandbox will somehow hurt the game by carebearifying the community.
3. Weak systems of consequences for random ganking that fail to discourage it in any meaningful way, and poor incentive to take part in more meaningful forms of PvP.
Correcting those issues would massively expand the potential audience for a sandbox with player interaction at it's core.
But the acronym MMMORPG now currently means Microscopic Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Kappa.
The system pioneered by EVE of different areas having different levels of PvP is a good concept. It's execution where it fails. Where EVE's seems to have been thrown together with little thought and seen little review over the years, I would make doing that system right one of the major focuses of the game.
The other piece of the puzzle IMO is creating competition that you can take part in that doesn't involve getting jumped and killed constantly. I think the influence system I describe on my forums is pretty huge in that it allows for players who don't like fighting to still take a meaningful part in shaping the world without leaving the "safe-areas." It essentially turns safe-areas into a full fledged part of the sandbox world that you never really need to leave if you don't want to rather than simple starter areas. Meaning people out in the PvP areas really are there entirely by choice.