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Can we all just finally admit that the MMO Consumers are POWERLESS in the market?

MMOExposedMMOExposed Member RarePosts: 7,384

Can we all just finally admit that the MMO Consumers are POWERLESS in the market?

I dont know the proper business term for it, but

just look over the past and present.

Developers get tons of money monthly, and even daily in some cases, from the MMO consumers,

Yet the MMO Consumer's voice is meaningless and powerless.

Developers hype up games, and sell boxes like nothing. no matter how much consumers try to speak out against it, they are silenced. what kind of Consumer Power is that?

With all the money, the Developers cant even add features that the Consumers ask for. Come on...

And why is it the consumers get charged a standard 15$ a month sub fee for all forms of quality?

its like Comcast/Verizon,,, their prices seem to keep going up and up and up, yet the quality stay the same,,,, but nothing the Consumer can do about it, no matter how much they cry about it.

Look at Darkfall for example. Why is this 15$ a month, aka the same Sub fee of MMO like World of Warcraft and Rift, which acutally gets content updates and full of quality.... ridiculous...

 

charging the MMO consumers the same price for less quality... come on... You- the MMO Consumer- are so powerless!!!

 

You ask for MMO that arent so WoW Like, yet what they keep giving you? lol You voice is powerless and meaningless!!!

Just accept this reality!! nothing you do/say will change the mindset of Developers that only see things their way and no other way. Developer's Ego has more power than you... You money doesnt say a damn thing, because look at the current genre!!!

 

lol Powerless!!!

Philosophy of MMO Game Design

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Comments

  • DrakxiiDrakxii Member Posts: 594

    MMO market is just wierd.  It's one of the few markets were we expect more but want to pay less.  This has led to wierd state where MMO players anrt ingored as a whole but devs one really listen to people praising them and if we are lucky bug complaints.  Lately any comments against the direction they are going or complaint about lack of this or that is just ingored as the "minority" view.

    So imo, devs are listening to the consumers just to what they want to hear.  

    I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.

  • AlBQuirkyAlBQuirky Member EpicPosts: 7,432

    I refuse to be a victim. *I* have the power of where *my* money goes. Others also have that same power. I just figure that games offer them what they want and they pay the piper. To each their own :)

    C'mon now... *we* cannot even agree on what exactly is "fun" to all of us. How could we possibly agree on what a good, or even great game is? We can say what that is to each of us, individually, but not as a consensus for everyone.

    Game companies do what they do. The majority of players agree with them. All one can do is control where their money goes. *I* cannot worry about what others do with their own money :)

    - Al

    Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.
    - FARGIN_WAR


  • helthroshelthros Member UncommonPosts: 1,449

    This is completely not true. Capitalism puts a bit of power in our hands. Maybe not individually, but dollar votes count more than any silly forum thread on some random website ever will.

     

    OH and Darkfall is $10 a month. Just fyi.

  • Rider071Rider071 Member Posts: 318

    MMO genre is the only one of it's kind I have personally seen in my long life.

    It riots daily, fed by trolls or valid greivances.

    It loves even harder, spending like drunk sailors.

    It will destroy a company's bottom line if made to feel abused, no matter who it is.

    It can also make you king of the world in a matter of days.

    It's a herd of a billion cats, that if you can capture their energy and attention for any amount of time, you have done very well for yourself. Lightning in a bottle = handle with care.

     

    So no, I don't agree in any way with the OP.

  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441

    They will make it as long as players are paying for it.

    However does it seems that many players are getting tired of paying for the same thing in different package (finally) and you can actually notice a slow change with the games in development right now.

    Already released TSW and soon to be released GW2 differs in more way from the Wow model than any other AAA games we seen in a long time and things will change even more when games like Class 4, WoDO, AA and a bunch of other games are comming out.

  • ElikalElikal Member UncommonPosts: 7,912

    "Do not despise the snake for having no horns, for who is to say it will not become a dragon? So may one just man become an army.".

    - Ancient Sage of the Water Margin

     

    " Notice the waves, each moving in its own order. Predictable...unchanging.  But drop in a single stone and see how the pattern changes. Everything  around it is altered."

    - Delenn, Babylon 5

     

    "Only by such small things, from such small spots, the universe and it’s masses can be moved… therefore you must always be cautious, in every of your decisions."

    - Kreia, KOTOR II

     

    And, long, but my personal fav:

    "There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot. "

    - V for Vendetta (best movie ever!)

    People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert

  • VermilioNomyVermilioNomy Member Posts: 32
    People can decide for themselves which duck they decide to feed their money. If people are willing to pay for the wow-genre, then I guess it's what the people want.

    To Caesar what is Caesar's.

    You're only looking at the several hundreds of people that say: I'm fed up with XXX genre, bleh another wow-clone and stuff like that, but you're forgetting there are millions of other people who apparently are willing to pay for that certain game. Developers aren't stupid(well there are exceptions).

    We can only hope developers learn and progress.

  • MuppetierMuppetier Member UncommonPosts: 279
    You wish you could influence which games other MMO Consumers enjoy playing. You cannot.
  • VirgoThreeVirgoThree Member UncommonPosts: 1,198

    The consumers do hold the ultimate power as to whether they want to purchase the latest MMO or not. Obviously people have bought millions of copies of these MMO's because they want to, and no one is forcing them to. It's mostly the vocal minority that come and complain on the forums about it, and as to MMO's withering and dieing over time. Well I'd imagine the average player gets there month or two worth of enjoyment and moves on with out so much as a peep from them.

    Comparing MMO companies to phone companies isn't really a fair analogy. Communication is a necessity in modern day life, and having only a few options here in the US is not condusive to healthy competition. That's why you see our cell phone rates jacked up beyond belief compared to the rest of the world. MMO's have plenty of competition and that's why you see games with the 15 dollar a month asking price crash and burn all the time. There is just a lot of competition, and the players will go where they want to go.

  • CalerxesCalerxes Member UncommonPosts: 1,641
    How about coustomers just don't buy what they don't like and thus cut off the hand the that feeds the companies?

    This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up™ the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.

  • dageezadageeza Member Posts: 578
    Originally posted by AlBQuirky

    I refuse to be a victim. *I* have the power of where *my* money goes. Others also have that same power. I just figure that games offer them what they want and they pay the piper. To each their own :)

    C'mon now... *we* cannot even agree on what exactly is "fun" to all of us. How could we possibly agree on what a good, or even great game is? We can say what that is to each of us, individually, but not as a consensus for everyone.

    Game companies do what they do. The majority of players agree with them. All one can do is control where their money goes. *I* cannot worry about what others do with their own money :)

    THIS..^

    Playing GW2..

  • delete5230delete5230 Member EpicPosts: 7,081

    1) Video games had always been a disappointment.  I'm older than most of you, before the Internet you had to go to the store and read the back of the box.  The back of the box would show a few cool snap shots and a small exciting feature list, but when you play them you find broken crap.  90% of the games would be broken and unplayable shortly into them....This for some reason was acceptable.

    2) MMOs are to be first about community.  This is for some reason not the case for the last few years.  Vanilla WoW was the last we had seen of that.  Developers took that away on their own.  So yes we have no say.

    3) And this is MOST IMPORTANT-  Since Blizzard introduced the ' Dungeon Finder " and " easy play "  to make there mmo less of a community and more solo or un spoken grouping.  Other mmo developers think because WoW is so popular it's what players like.............Without a community, friends, and Guilds there is no reason to play an mmo MORE THAN 30 DAYS no matter how good it is.

    What other developers don't see is that Dungeon finders are very negative aspects in World of Warcraft.  Blizzard's WoW is very much established.  It had the market cornered for so long that many are over looking this mistake.

    Understand that I'm making up figures to make my point :  Blizzard had 10 million players, now down to 9 million, but should be 12 million if they did not screw with the game.....They made it less of a community and players are leaving.  More would leave if we had something better.

    Something better ?.... Well we don't have one, because other mmo developers are following WoW's lead....Developers are taking this direction on there own without players feedback.

     

    Will Guild Wars 2 be that mmo to break away from WoW's mold....I hope so....Because I'm getting tired of loading older mmos back into my computer to play with a community !!!!!!

  • SkuzSkuz Member UncommonPosts: 1,018

    If YOU personally feel powerless then it's an issue with you as a person.

    Perhaps you took the time & effort to craft a well written suggestion or criticism & got no feedback so feel your personal voice is not heard.

    But you do have power, the money in your wallet - of course if you never spend any money in games then you have less power you are a freeloader so only your forums posts & any ingame feedback methods give you any voice & that may not be in line with the developers goals anyway.

    I think that you simply have a defeatist attitude, or perhaps you are under the misguided assumption that this forum & others like it are in any way representative of the wider gaming public, they simply are not, these little communities are cliques & many are very different to each other, but the thing they have in common is they contain the opinions & thoughts of a very thin slice of the overall gamesplaying public, it's a minority voice.

  • MacecardMacecard Member UncommonPosts: 142
    Originally posted by MMOExposed

    Can we all just finally admit that the MMO Consumers are POWERLESS in the market?

    I dont know the proper business term for it, but

    just look over the past and present.

    Developers get tons of money monthly, and even daily in some cases, from the MMO consumers,

    Yet the MMO Consumer's voice is meaningless and powerless.

    Developers hype up games, and sell boxes like nothing. no matter how much consumers try to speak out against it, they are silenced. what kind of Consumer Power is that?

    With all the money, the Developers cant even add features that the Consumers ask for. Come on...

    And why is it the consumers get charged a standard 15$ a month sub fee for all forms of quality?

    its like Comcast/Verizon,,, their prices seem to keep going up and up and up, yet the quality stay the same,,,, but nothing the Consumer can do about it, no matter how much they cry about it.

    Look at Darkfall for example. Why is this 15$ a month, aka the same Sub fee of MMO like World of Warcraft and Rift, which acutally gets content updates and full of quality.... ridiculous...

     

    charging the MMO consumers the same price for less quality... come on... You- the MMO Consumer- are so powerless!!!

     

    You ask for MMO that arent so WoW Like, yet what they keep giving you? lol You voice is powerless and meaningless!!!

    Just accept this reality!! nothing you do/say will change the mindset of Developers that only see things their way and no other way. Developer's Ego has more power than you... You money doesnt say a damn thing, because look at the current genre!!!

     

    lol Powerless!!!

    So these Developers, they wouldnt give 2 cents if we all just stopped buying mmos? They'd just keep on producing these games laughing at how silly we all are for not buying them.

    Yeh powerless... really what you wanna say is stupid. we have these issues with these games yet we buy and play them.

    Consumer power comes from using our money to influence companies. We can yell all we want but if we still hand over that $15 every month they will ignore us.

    If you continue to make sweeping statements like you know what everyone everywhere thinks about a certain topic then I am going to shout at you.
    It easy to type 'I think this is the worst game ever'
    Rather than the 'This is the worst game ever'

  • jpnzjpnz Member Posts: 3,529

    You as a 'person' are not that powerful since you are a single individual.

    Lots of people are powerful.

    This isn't rocket science.

     

    Gdemami -
    Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.

  • RoxtarrRoxtarr Member CommonPosts: 1,122

    No, we are not powerless.  We drive the market.  The problem is lack of vision by studios.  There are three philosophies when it comes to releasing an MMO:

    1. The Popular Method: Let's look at what's popular and copy it. (SWTOR?) Zzzzzzz

    2. The Polling Method:  Let's listen to what are gamers asking for and make it. (RIFT) The problem is, we know what we want we just aren't always good at articulating it. 

    3. The Perceptive Method: Let's look at what we know gamers would love and let's make that.  Steve Jobs said that if Henry Ford gave people what they asked for, he would have given them faster horses.  What they WANTED was faster transportation.  A good studio knows what gamers want, even if gamers don't know how to ask for it.

    If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
    image

  • TheLizardbonesTheLizardbones Member CommonPosts: 10,910


    Originally posted by GrumpyCharr
    No, we are not powerless.  We drive the market.  The problem is lack of vision by studios.  There are three philosophies when it comes to releasing an MMO:1. The Popular Method: Let's look at what's popular and copy it. (SWTOR?) Zzzzzzz2. The Polling Method:  Let's listen to what are gamers asking for and make it. (RIFT) The problem is, we know what we want we just aren't always good at articulating it. 3. The Perceptive Method: Let's look at what we know gamers would love and let's make that.  Steve Jobs said that if Henry Ford gave people what they asked for, he would have given them faster horses.  What they WANTED was faster transportation.  A good studio knows what gamers want, even if gamers don't know how to ask for it.

    When it costs a minimum of $10 Million to get a game out the door, Vision = Lost All Your Money.

    I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.

  • RoxtarrRoxtarr Member CommonPosts: 1,122
    Originally posted by lizardbones

     


    Originally posted by GrumpyCharr
    No, we are not powerless.  We drive the market.  The problem is lack of vision by studios.  There are three philosophies when it comes to releasing an MMO:

     

    1. The Popular Method: Let's look at what's popular and copy it. (SWTOR?) Zzzzzzz

    2. The Polling Method:  Let's listen to what are gamers asking for and make it. (RIFT) The problem is, we know what we want we just aren't always good at articulating it. 

    3. The Perceptive Method: Let's look at what we know gamers would love and let's make that.  Steve Jobs said that if Henry Ford gave people what they asked for, he would have given them faster horses.  What they WANTED was faster transportation.  A good studio knows what gamers want, even if gamers don't know how to ask for it.



    When it costs a minimum of $10 Million to get a game out the door, Vision = Lost All Your Money.

     

    This is why "Big Business" and "Good Games" seldom mix.

    If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
    image

  • Crazy_StickCrazy_Stick Member Posts: 1,059

    OP, when I look over a game, I do so with an assumption that the development team was not stupid and had a valid reason in deciding what to include and what not to. “Sometimes,” I am even correct in this thought. However, I am having to admit that perhaps I am not part of the general target audience for new MMORPG releases anymore. I see features “I want” being left out all to often now. This does not mean I am powerless. It means I spend my money elsewhere. I do not feel that I am alone in this practice as the market seems filled with new one month wonders being released as of late and nothing that has staying power. My fear is that rather than adjusting what they do and provide content for, most developers and publishers are liable to assume they did right to begin with, consider the fan base too hard to please, and give up on producing products for the genre as a dry market they can’t tap when they could just make a console shooter with co-op play for a third of the cost and an easy return.

  • KakkzookaKakkzooka Member Posts: 591
    They aren't powerless. They're to blame. See the initial sales numbers for SWTOR. See them begging for end game treadmill progression.

    The consumers have all the power. If they don't buy obviously bad games impulsively, the industry will have to reconsider churning out half-assed shit. (Again: see SWTOR.)

    Re: SWTOR

    "Remember, remember - Kakk says 'December.'"

  • sammandarsammandar Member Posts: 523
    Originally posted by Rider071

    MMO genre is the only one of it's kind I have personally seen in my long life.

    It riots daily, fed by trolls or valid greivances.

    It loves even harder, spending like drunk sailors.

    It will destroy a company's bottom line if made to feel abused, no matter who it is.

    It can also make you king of the world in a matter of days.

    It's a herd of a billion cats, that if you can capture their energy and attention for any amount of time, you have done very well for yourself. Lightning in a bottle = handle with care.

    So no, I don't agree in any way with the OP.

    Agreed. Very well said by the way; poetic and very insightful.

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403

    Free market is a bitch, ain't it?

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • TheLizardbonesTheLizardbones Member CommonPosts: 10,910


    Originally posted by zymurgeist
    Originally posted by GrumpyCharr Originally posted by lizardbones   Originally posted by GrumpyCharr No, we are not powerless.  We drive the market.  The problem is lack of vision by studios.  There are three philosophies when it comes to releasing an MMO:   1. The Popular Method: Let's look at what's popular and copy it. (SWTOR?) Zzzzzzz 2. The Polling Method:  Let's listen to what are gamers asking for and make it. (RIFT) The problem is, we know what we want we just aren't always good at articulating it.  3. The Perceptive Method: Let's look at what we know gamers would love and let's make that.  Steve Jobs said that if Henry Ford gave people what they asked for, he would have given them faster horses.  What they WANTED was faster transportation.  A good studio knows what gamers want, even if gamers don't know how to ask for it.
    When it costs a minimum of $10 Million to get a game out the door, Vision = Lost All Your Money.  
    This is why "Big Business" and "Good Games" seldom mix.
     Name one good game brought to stores you by a guy with no money. "Big Business" makes "Good Games" possible. If you make a good game business will back it because good games are profitable.


    There are several games that have come out that are both very good and were inexpensive to make, but they weren't MMORPG.

    But what makes a "Good Game"? You have a gaming equivalent of an idiot savant in SWToR selling almost 3 million copies, and you have a quiet genius in TSW selling less than a million copies in the market today. Then you have something like Rift, which had better marketing selling more than TSW but it's arguable whether Rift was actually better than TSW. Did they just have better marketing or did they actually have game systems that were more in tune with the market?

    I don't know, and I bet game developers are scratching their heads too. They know if they come up with the right thing, they'll be able to retire to a private island, but the "right thing" isn't immediately obvious, and the $10 million a pop minimum to enter the MMORPG market limits the number of entries in the market. If it cost $1 Million to produce an MMORPG, you'd have several a year coming out and then there would be clear patterns, but as it is, there's no clear pattern, just big holes where developers can throw money.

    I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.

  • CyflymCyflym Member Posts: 30

    With the hype-lemmings running towards the flashy ads and trusting rigged ratings just to fall into the sea of disappointment after release again and again,

    with the "I'm bored and its just 50 bucks"-people who buy despite knowing it's just some mediocre game,

    with the "Good for a month"-crowd who play mmo's like single player games,

    it takes so much longer than needed to change the direction...

     

    Some even think they show the devs their dislike when they shelve the game a week after purchase.

    They don't see that the first message that reaches the devs&publishers is: "High amount of box sales, well done!"

    It doesnt hurt enough that they lose subs a month after release if they made a profit from box sales already.

     

     

    ...or maybe this is completly wrong and the people who dislike the direction mmo's have taken are a very small minority and just don't count.

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403
    Originally posted by Cyflym

    With the hype-lemmings running towards the flashy ads and trusting rigged ratings just to fall into the sea of disappointment after release again and again,

    with the "I'm bored and its just 50 bucks"-people who buy despite knowing it's just some mediocre game,

    with the "Good for a month"-crowd who play mmo's like single player games,

    it takes so much longer than needed to change the direction...

    Some confusion of cause and effect here...op's dealing from the bottom of the same deck.

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

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