Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

State of the industry: Buy full B2P MMO for price of one subscription from year ago.

2

Comments

  • AxehiltAxehilt Member RarePosts: 10,504
    Originally posted by Sulaa

    Guess I am not 'core' group then.  I am also a member of a small forum that theoretically focuses on mmorpg's with around 30 regulars and around 20-30 more sporadic members. It consist of 'old timers' remembering UO and members that came up with later and even relatively recent games.   2 members played this game only after release (much more checked beta ofc), then few more bought it for 15$ on amazon sale few months ago.   As far as I know - 1 person played few months and those other few that gave game a shot played only between few days and few weeks.

    Most people that played - were not agreeing with Funcom opinion about 'trying too much new'.   They described it as story-focused linear themepark with preety standard instanced end-game.  Some even said that it resembled single player adventure game just with some apparent mmorpg mechanics showing every now and then.  Others compared it to Swtor.

    I am one of those that snagged very cheap copy months ago - and I would say that 'too much new' is not problem either.  Anyone who had been playing themeparks in last 3-4 years will have no problem in finding himself in this game.  So I don't think 'innovation' is what killed this game as there is not much innovation there aside of incorporating even stronger single player approach to levelling.

     

    'Failed so hard' - everyone has their own measure what that mean, but since game was not even remotely close to their lower scenario target sales and subsciptions,  CEO of Funcom left company 1 day before TSW release and is facing insider trade investigation, Funcom fired most of their workers and is undergoing heavy restructurizaion,  was unable to repay debt (in talks with debt owners), it's stock lost over 90% in last year (crashed soon after TSW release) and finally company is looking to sale itself / investor - then I would assume that it failed hard.

    I hadn't followed along, so it sounds like it was indeed a hard failure.

    As for trying too much new, "most people that played" is the key point!  Most people who play a Barbie Dress-Up videogame don't complain they're playing a Barbie Dress-Up game.  Because the only people buying Barbie games are people who want to play Barbie games.  And in this case, the number of people who wanted to play a modern horror MMORPG wasn't particularly high.

    "What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver

  • Eir_SEir_S Member UncommonPosts: 4,440
    Originally posted by strangiato2112
    Originally posted by Eir_S
    What did TSW do that made it fail so hard?

    Terrible combat

    Well, yeah.  That's the main reason I didn't keep playing.  The tone of the game was fine with me, I love horror games (unless they scar me for life).

    @Axehilt.  if a Barbie MMO comes out, you'll play it with me?

  • DavisFlightDavisFlight Member CommonPosts: 2,556
    Originally posted by Scalpless

    TSW failed because of insufficient marketing and many other reasons, but I don't see how you could link its failure to greed or plagiarism, because it obviously had neither.

    It failed because it was made by a designer that wanted it to be a singleplayer game. A designer that had only ever made singleplayer games. Funcom pushed him to make the game an MMO to try to make some extra subscription bucks after the hole in their company left by Age of Conan.

    Singleplayer games with monthly fees DO NOT DO WELL. See: SWTOR.

     

    The game failed because of its design. Not lack of advertising. It was on every website and in several magazines and stores for months before it launched. It just wasn't a good MMO.

  • VidirVidir Member UncommonPosts: 963
    Originally posted by Lobotomist

    You can now buy The Secret World for 15$ , this is aproximately same as one month subscription we used to pay for MMOs almost year ago.

    This is where MMO companies had led themselves by constant failure to listen to the players and instead insist on greed and plagiarism.

    They wanted to make big bucks like WoW , but instead sell the whole game for one subscription.

    Well done.

     

     

    This tread is not against TSW, but against all the industry and its failure.

    TSW itself is a great game. Probably would be quite sucessful MMO if it came before people started to be fed with all the themepark bull. People just dont want that , never did.

    Whole point of MMO is to be a virtual world we can influence and change. Not singleplayer game with other people in it.

     

     

     

     

    Game creators will do what ever they think vill bring in the most money for them. subscription games today are few and not overpopulatet. That is the reason for the canges, we comsumers want thos changes.

  • duggyfr3sh123duggyfr3sh123 Member Posts: 95
    Originally posted by Eir_S
    What did TSW do that made it fail so hard?

    buggy as hell, consistent with funcom's reputation. gameplay and animation quality very, very poor for the time it came out.

  • VengeSunsoarVengeSunsoar Member EpicPosts: 6,601
    Originally posted by DavisFlight
    Originally posted by Scalpless

    TSW failed because of insufficient marketing and many other reasons, but I don't see how you could link its failure to greed or plagiarism, because it obviously had neither.

    It failed because it was made by a designer that wanted it to be a singleplayer game. A designer that had only ever made singleplayer games. Funcom pushed him to make the game an MMO to try to make some extra subscription bucks after the hole in their company left by Age of Conan.

    Singleplayer games with monthly fees DO NOT DO WELL. See: SWTOR.

     

    The game failed because of its design. Not lack of advertising. It was on every website and in several magazines and stores for months before it launched. It just wasn't a good MMO.

     WoW.  I think this may be the first post from DavisFlight that I actually agree with.

    To me SwTor wasn't a bad game, it just wasn't a good MMO.  It wasn't different enough from what I'd allready played and left to keep me around and had nothing to make me want to pay more for it than I allready did.

    I came back to with my brother maybe hmm 6 monthsish ago.  Again played for a month but didn't see the point of continuing. 

    Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
  • DavisFlightDavisFlight Member CommonPosts: 2,556
    Originally posted by Vidir
    Originally posted by Lobotomist

    You can now buy The Secret World for 15$ , this is aproximately same as one month subscription we used to pay for MMOs almost year ago.

    This is where MMO companies had led themselves by constant failure to listen to the players and instead insist on greed and plagiarism.

    They wanted to make big bucks like WoW , but instead sell the whole game for one subscription.

    Well done.

     

     

    This tread is not against TSW, but against all the industry and its failure.

    TSW itself is a great game. Probably would be quite sucessful MMO if it came before people started to be fed with all the themepark bull. People just dont want that , never did.

    Whole point of MMO is to be a virtual world we can influence and change. Not singleplayer game with other people in it.

     

     

     

     

    Game creators will do what ever they think vill bring in the most money for them.

    Except as we've seen, what publishers think will sell has NOT been what's actually sold, hence the failure of almost every AAA MMORPG since 2004.  They won't do what we actually want.

  • niceguy3978niceguy3978 Member UncommonPosts: 2,047
    Originally posted by Lobotomist
    Originally posted by Eir_S
    What did TSW do that made it fail so hard?

    TSW is excellent game. This tread is about MMOs in general.

     

    Well, if the game were still selling well, it would still have a higher price and a sub.  But as it didn't do as well as they thought it would they dropped the sub and lowered the overall box price.  They can only charge what people will pay.

  • aesperusaesperus Member UncommonPosts: 5,135
    Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

    Hmm of couse the other side of the argument is maybe they did listen to players.

    Players have been screaming about making games free.

    They have been screaming about making things easier, more casual, quicker to get into, quick to get groups.

    TSW delivered that in spades.

    IMO the lesson really is.  Don't listen to what your players tell you haha.

    This ^.

    It's easy to point to flaws in a game that has been released, and say 'If these stupid devs would've just listened to us (meaning me) they would be in a much better position". However, what that perspective ignores is the fact that there are now millions of 'me's, all with differing opinions. Many people here would agree that a game like CoD is a lazy, uninspired, piece of crap game. So then why does it still sell record numbers?

    I know it's not a popular view, but at a certain point we as gamers need to turn that criticism on ourselves and ask 'what are we doing to contribute to this climate'? How many of us have supported crappy games? How many continue to support crappy games? (defiance anyone?). Even more important, what's the last game you didn't like, but were okay with others liking it? This seems like an issue mostly limited to MMOs. How come in this genre we can't accept that people like different things? That not every new MMO has to cater specifically to your each & every needs (and can't).

    Heck one of the most praised games on this site (SWG) was ruined, BECAUSE they listened to their players. This doesn't mean they listened to all their players, but rather they listened to the wrong ones. And that's a mistake you don't often get to make twice. Many devs are trying to give us what we want. However that needs to be juggled with what others want, what works with the game, and what's actually achievable.

    As they say, hind-sight is always 20/20.

  • GravargGravarg Member UncommonPosts: 3,424

    So, I paid $60 for Battlefield 3, then $10 for each DLC...but now I can buy all them for $40 since Battlefield 4 is coming out...so Battlefield 3 was a bad game?

     

    Just trying to see people's logic here, makes no sense to me...games get old, the price drops because they get old...

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by DavisFlight
    Originally posted by Scalpless

    TSW failed because of insufficient marketing and many other reasons, but I don't see how you could link its failure to greed or plagiarism, because it obviously had neither.

    It failed because it was made by a designer that wanted it to be a singleplayer game. A designer that had only ever made singleplayer games. Funcom pushed him to make the game an MMO to try to make some extra subscription bucks after the hole in their company left by Age of Conan.

    Singleplayer games with monthly fees DO NOT DO WELL. See: SWTOR.

     

    The game failed because of its design. Not lack of advertising. It was on every website and in several magazines and stores for months before it launched. It just wasn't a good MMO.

    So they fix it by selling it B2P. People should be happy about it. Buy it as a SP game, and play it as such.

    I don't really care if it is a good MMO. The question is whether it is a good game.

  • niceguy3978niceguy3978 Member UncommonPosts: 2,047
    Originally posted by Gravarg

    So, I paid $60 for Battlefield 3, then $10 for each DLC...but now I can buy all them for $40 since Battlefield 4 is coming out...so Battlefield 3 was a bad game?

     

    Just trying to see people's logic here, makes no sense to me...games get old, the price drops because they get old...

    No, that doesn't make it a bad game.  I don't think TSW is a bad game either.  What I'm saying is, is (ugh I hate using two words next to each other like that) the reason the game is cheaper now is becuase it isn't as popular is it was (which is the trajectory of most games.  I am also saying that if it were more popular, it would charge a higher price.  Supply and demand is the same for games as everything else.  They will charge what they think will get them the most money.  Same reason why mmos rarely (possibly never?) ship with a trial, other than possibly a buddy key system, they don't need to.  

  • reeereeereeereee Member UncommonPosts: 1,636
    I never gave TSW a fair shake because I couldn't make it past character creation.
  • DavisFlightDavisFlight Member CommonPosts: 2,556
    Originally posted by nariusseldon
    Originally posted by DavisFlight
    Originally posted by Scalpless

    TSW failed because of insufficient marketing and many other reasons, but I don't see how you could link its failure to greed or plagiarism, because it obviously had neither.

    It failed because it was made by a designer that wanted it to be a singleplayer game. A designer that had only ever made singleplayer games. Funcom pushed him to make the game an MMO to try to make some extra subscription bucks after the hole in their company left by Age of Conan.

    Singleplayer games with monthly fees DO NOT DO WELL. See: SWTOR.

     

    The game failed because of its design. Not lack of advertising. It was on every website and in several magazines and stores for months before it launched. It just wasn't a good MMO.

    So they fix it by selling it B2P. People should be happy about it. Buy it as a SP game, and play it as such.

    I don't really care if it is a good MMO. The question is whether it is a good game.

    Sell it as buy to play, and don't pretend its an MMO and then they're all set.

    However, all their marketing went into pretending it was an MMO. And honestly, it would have been a hundred times better has a singleplayer/coop game. That way the plot  could actually impact the world, and not be dragged out to get longer subs.

  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,739
    Originally posted by Eir_S
    What did TSW do that made it fail so hard?

     I know alot of people seem to like it but I never thought it was a very good game.....While 15 dollars seems like a fair price, I think alot of people have moved on and are looking forward to other games at this point.

  • QuirhidQuirhid Member UncommonPosts: 6,230

    I can't speak for anyone else, but TSW felt like every game before it. Combat was arcaic and boring, skill wheel felt a little more than a gimmick... it wasn't released in a particularly good state either: It was unfinished.

    Funcom happened.

    Have they ever had a succesful launch?

    I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky

  • GroovyFlowerGroovyFlower Member Posts: 1,245
    Originally posted by Lobotomist

    You can now buy The Secret World for 15$ , this is aproximately same as one month subscription we used to pay for MMOs almost year ago.

    This is where MMO companies had led themselves by constant failure to listen to the players and instead insist on greed and plagiarism.

    They wanted to make big bucks like WoW , but instead sell the whole game for one subscription.

    Well done.

     

     

    This tread is not against TSW, but against all the industry and its failure.

    TSW itself is a great game. Probably would be quite sucessful MMO if it came before people started to be fed with all the themepark bull. People just dont want that , never did.

    Whole point of MMO is to be a virtual world we can influence and change. Not singleplayer game with other people in it.

     

     

     

     

    For years and im talking 2004 when i was still playing Asheron's call 2 is timesink and sub every month  they dont have time or wanne pay for something they dont always play.

    Now almost 10years later we have F2P/B2P(still many pay more then before every months in cashshop lol) and fast cookies and prgress all solo almost no timesink anymore thanks to old skool gamers :P

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403
    Originally posted by Loktofeit
    Originally posted by Lobotomist

    You can now buy The Secret World for 15$ , this is aproximately same as one month subscription we used to pay for MMOs almost year ago.

    It's the same as a monthly sub for a subscription MMO right now, or has that changed?

    Also, the box price of almost every MMO drops after a year, so I'm not seeing how that has anything to do with the problems TSW has or doesn't have, let alone the state of the industry.

    Careful, do not tread on the false dichotomy, it is a delicate flower.

    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.

  • -aLpHa--aLpHa- Member UncommonPosts: 852

    I bought TSW, all i can say is that the combat is horrible. It's probably one of the worst i have ever seen. You do allot of combat in that game, which in turn is quite a problem for me.

    I quit when i got to Egypt because i wanted to finish the Solomon island story line, which was quite good, too bad really, especially since this was developed by the same guys who did Age of Conan where the combat was pretty good.

  • evilastroevilastro Member Posts: 4,270

    Its just simple supply and demand. Onec one company started offering a decent themepark for free, the rest had to follow. If someone offered you a hamburger for $10, and another company offered you a hamburger for free, but it came with no fillings and you had to buy them individually, what would you pick? Depends on how many fillings you want doesnt it?

    People will go wherever the value for money is. Which is why the subscription industry has folded. You have to be offering something you cant get elsewhere to keep the sub model.

  • CalerxesCalerxes Member UncommonPosts: 1,641
    Originally posted by DavisFlight
    Originally posted by Vidir
    Originally posted by Lobotomist

    You can now buy The Secret World for 15$ , this is aproximately same as one month subscription we used to pay for MMOs almost year ago.

    This is where MMO companies had led themselves by constant failure to listen to the players and instead insist on greed and plagiarism.

    They wanted to make big bucks like WoW , but instead sell the whole game for one subscription.

    Well done.

     

     

    This tread is not against TSW, but against all the industry and its failure.

    TSW itself is a great game. Probably would be quite sucessful MMO if it came before people started to be fed with all the themepark bull. People just dont want that , never did.

    Whole point of MMO is to be a virtual world we can influence and change. Not singleplayer game with other people in it.

     

     

     

     

    Game creators will do what ever they think vill bring in the most money for them.

    Except as we've seen, what publishers think will sell has NOT been what's actually sold, hence the failure of almost every AAA MMORPG since 2004.  They won't do what we actually want.

     

    So a growing market financially, demographically and numerically has been failing since 2004? no the market failed to make games you like. The MMO genre has been a runnaway success for everyone else, thats why we have many many more MMO's in development with millions of dollars backing them TESO, Archeage, EQnext, Turbines secret MMO etc.. The problem with the market is the amount of different games to play many players don't stay a long as they used to BUT many many players do, my guild in TOR has many players they were in headstart and love the game and there are loads of guilds the same throughout game.

     I wish some people around here would get their head out of the "games were better back in day" sand and see the bigger picture. MMO's have exploded in the last decade and the diversity is there and continuing to broaden you have games like EvE (space sandbox), A Tail In the Desert (crafting MMO), Wurm Online (Medieval sandbox), TOR (SciFantasy Themepark), GW2 (Low Fantasy Thempark), Atlantica (MMOTBS) the list goes on and on, just focusing on AAA games is rather myopic really even when all the AAA games of the last few years are still running except a couple ie Tabula Rasa, COX.

    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.

  • SulaaSulaa Member UncommonPosts: 1,329
    Originally posted by Axehilt
    Originally posted by Sulaa

    Guess I am not 'core' group then.  I am also a member of a small forum that theoretically focuses on mmorpg's with around 30 regulars and around 20-30 more sporadic members. It consist of 'old timers' remembering UO and members that came up with later and even relatively recent games.   2 members played this game only after release (much more checked beta ofc), then few more bought it for 15$ on amazon sale few months ago.   As far as I know - 1 person played few months and those other few that gave game a shot played only between few days and few weeks.

    Most people that played - were not agreeing with Funcom opinion about 'trying too much new'.   They described it as story-focused linear themepark with preety standard instanced end-game.  Some even said that it resembled single player adventure game just with some apparent mmorpg mechanics showing every now and then.  Others compared it to Swtor.

    I am one of those that snagged very cheap copy months ago - and I would say that 'too much new' is not problem either.  Anyone who had been playing themeparks in last 3-4 years will have no problem in finding himself in this game.  So I don't think 'innovation' is what killed this game as there is not much innovation there aside of incorporating even stronger single player approach to levelling.

     

    'Failed so hard' - everyone has their own measure what that mean, but since game was not even remotely close to their lower scenario target sales and subsciptions,  CEO of Funcom left company 1 day before TSW release and is facing insider trade investigation, Funcom fired most of their workers and is undergoing heavy restructurizaion,  was unable to repay debt (in talks with debt owners), it's stock lost over 90% in last year (crashed soon after TSW release) and finally company is looking to sale itself / investor - then I would assume that it failed hard.

    I hadn't followed along, so it sounds like it was indeed a hard failure.

    As for trying too much new, "most people that played" is the key point!  Most people who play a Barbie Dress-Up videogame don't complain they're playing a Barbie Dress-Up game.  Because the only people buying Barbie games are people who want to play Barbie games.  And in this case, the number of people who wanted to play a modern horror MMORPG wasn't particularly high.

    Modern horrr theme especially that Funcom advertised 'serious' approach and at same time had put big amounts of  almost-Tales-from-the-Crypt-like 'funny grotesque' which may hurt game / theme coherency for some.

    Still I would not stress theme problem too much.  I think main problem was that very heavy 'cinematic linear story' Bioware style does not mix as good for mmorpg's as industry hoped and banked for. I don't know why industry went for this since that kind of design does not offer replayability or even one but slow playthrough on the contrary it is best suited for 'play through once' and relatively fast.  Not something you want for mmorpg from business point of view I would assume.

    It's kinda telling that even in single player rpg-ish department Bioware / cinematic-linear-storytelling has it's biggest success in Mass Effect series which is very lite on rpg + third person shooter rather than normal core rpg game and it's audience is in big part diffrent than audience of older BW games. (ofc there is partial overlap and old BW fans as well but that's not the point).

    Other than personified cinematic story experience - TSW offered very normal very standard end-game instances only experience.  Which is a field with very strong competition, so with normal amount of players leaving game once they hit standard end-game and with small playerbase even after b2p conversion - then I can't see where and how TSW could build it's success on.   Of course - it does not mean it won't make positive cash flows - but I think investors will have a hard and long time time seeing this game returning millions invested in it for development and even harder seeing promised profits.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by DavisFlight
     

    Sell it as buy to play, and don't pretend its an MMO and then they're all set.

    However, all their marketing went into pretending it was an MMO. And honestly, it would have been a hundred times better has a singleplayer/coop game. That way the plot  could actually impact the world, and not be dragged out to get longer subs.

    Yeh .. and isn't that what they have done?

    I did a 3-day trial. It works pretty well as a SP/co-op game. I may even shell out the $15 if i have the time for it.

  • Beatnik59Beatnik59 Member UncommonPosts: 2,413

    Yes, the "buy in" price has gone down...as well it should, because these things can be taken away from us at any time.

    The CoH closure was a wake up call for me; our continued enjoyment of these things is wholly dependent on factors outside of our control.  As a result, is it any wonder why people might be skeptical to pay $60 ... or even $15 ... for something that can go *poof* at the stroke of an accountant's pen?

    Yes, the price for these games better go down, because there's a kind of risk associated with these products that you don't have in other forms of computer entertainment.  Because it's one thing to risk spending a lot of money on a game you don't like.  It's another thing to risk spending money on a game you like too much, only to have the game get snatched out from under you by a cost-cutting executive somewhere.

    __________________________
    "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
    --Arcken

    "...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
    --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.

    "It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
    --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE

  • AxehiltAxehilt Member RarePosts: 10,504
    Originally posted by Sulaa

    Modern horrr theme especially that Funcom advertised 'serious' approach and at same time had put big amounts of  almost-Tales-from-the-Crypt-like 'funny grotesque' which may hurt game / theme coherency for some.

    Still I would not stress theme problem too much.  I think main problem was that very heavy 'cinematic linear story' Bioware style does not mix as good for mmorpg's as industry hoped and banked for. I don't know why industry went for this since that kind of design does not offer replayability or even one but slow playthrough on the contrary it is best suited for 'play through once' and relatively fast.  Not something you want for mmorpg from business point of view I would assume.

    It's kinda telling that even in single player rpg-ish department Bioware / cinematic-linear-storytelling has it's biggest success in Mass Effect series which is very lite on rpg + third person shooter rather than normal core rpg game and it's audience is in big part diffrent than audience of older BW games. (ofc there is partial overlap and old BW fans as well but that's not the point).

    Other than personified cinematic story experience - TSW offered very normal very standard end-game instances only experience.  Which is a field with very strong competition, so with normal amount of players leaving game once they hit standard end-game and with small playerbase even after b2p conversion - then I can't see where and how TSW could build it's success on.   Of course - it does not mean it won't make positive cash flows - but I think investors will have a hard and long time time seeing this game returning millions invested in it for development and even harder seeing promised profits.

    "Funny grotesque" doesn't matter to the players who didn't buy though.  The Barbie game could have a part where she sells her Corvette for crack money.  That's not going to matter to the people who didn't buy the game because the initial premise wasn't appealing.

    Theme is a major element in whether someone buys or doesn't buy a game, whether or not you realize it.  I'm simply not going to buy a Barbie game, and some MMORPG gamers aren't going to buy a horror game or a modern game or a game without a particularly clear theme.

    WOW quests aren't particularly replayable either, yet it persists.  Higher quality questing mechanisms aren't the problem unless they start to interfere with actual gameplay (don't contain gameplay themselves, or aren't easily skipped.)

    Sort of hilarious to call the RPG which probably has the most consequential story decisions of any RPG ever "lite on RPG", but sure it has an atypical combat system (although are people questioning Skyrim and Fallout's RPG just because it uses atypical FPS combat too?)

    Personally I don't care if a game is "very standard" in its setup.  All that matters is the moment-to-moment gameplay of each fight being at least as fun as WOW's.  Thus far, few have come close (RIFT/CoH) and most (TSW included, despite being  above average) are pretty far away.

    "What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver

Sign In or Register to comment.