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Gamasutra article
gervaise1
Member EpicPosts: 6,919
From the article:
"The problem with The Elder Scrolls Online, to my mind, is not that it is not free .......... is that it has not accepted how F2P has changed what gamers expect."
Which mirrors one of the ancient problems with subscription based games since the days of EQ1 - they build in grind; whether it is running from A to B, waiting for a boat, playing whack-a-rat or grinding reputation. Busy time designed to keep you subbed. Whereas people today, by and large, expect action packed fun and then to move on to the next product - or xpac.
Comments
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I particularly liked the final assessment that is made.
To paraphrase, they expect us to play simply because it's an Elder Scrolls game; not because it's actually worth it.
Some people you mean.
Some people like a grind. It is a marathon, an endurance race and many are up for it.
I found both these articles ok. They are points of view.
His worth it is to do with his focus on the f2p model thats easy to make atm but it doesnt hold water as tightly as he implies.
Juicier critisism is to be had in the vg24/7 article he refers to
http://www.vg247.com/2014/02/10/the-elder-scrolls-online-skyrim-skin-cant-make-up-for-mmorpg-mediocrities/
Where he discusses the interaction wheel.
Without a community and compelling group pve content a lot of people wont stick around either.
That was actually a really good article, when you play a beta you're basically playing a f2p game since you've spent nothing and the same rules apply in a beta as do with a f2p game. You aren't invested in a f2p or a beta, you paid nothing and go in with the mindset of "Impress me now!" and the clock is ticking from the moment you log in for the first time.
People that paid for access or paid for the game will go in with a totally different mindset. Thinking back I've had this happen myself, f2p games I played and installed I quit playing over the smallest things or within a very small amount of time (I quite Aion within 15 minutes for instance). P2P games I played that had worse issues I stuck with until I either found some hook or gave up but the point is I gave them a far greater amount of time to hook me than I have almost every f2p game I've tried. Most of the f2p games I like now are ones I played when they were p2p. I'm not a free loader on even f2p games though, I usually spend quite a lot so maybe my standards are higher.
As said in the article the problem with this game is simply that they don't put any effort to blow you away from the start, they simply expect that you're in it for the long haul and the good stuff comes later (hopefully). On Skyrim for instance I hated the character creation part and dungeon crawl bit at the start, I would of quit a f2p game around that point but since I paid for it I stuck around and after sticking with it, emerged from the dungeon and was in love with the game from then on.
I also do agree with what OP stated, in a world now where you get GW2 for one cost and games like Tera and Rift which are free it's kinda hard to accept games to demand regular payment when they offer exactly the same thing. FFXIV ARR suffers badly from this and it appears that ESO may to, they just don't go above and beyond what is standard from free games. It used to be you didn't get updates, the games were cheaply made and they had other serious issues but those days are gone in the f2p market.
The p2p market needs to catch on and offer above and beyond what the best f2p games offer.
I glad eso is not f2p. Add to that the "M" rating and maybe, just maybe we'll get no whiney trolls and even less brats in game!
One can only hope. /pray
No trials. No tricks. No traps. No EU-RP server. NO THANKS!
...10% Benevolence, 90% Arrogance in my case!
Lock boxes and developer sanctioned trading of real world money for in game currency are deal killers for me. They completely change the motivation of the developers and how they go about creating content which in turn changes how the game plays. I get it that F2P and these so called B2P games make a lot more money than Sub's per average player and can understand the drive from companies to adopt a low barrier to entry higher cost at the back end model but that doesn't mean me as a consumer has to like it.
People are taking this consumer emancipation way to seriously.
To many big releases resulted in hurt feelings.
It will go F2P, probably just as fast as SWTOR or even faster. There is simply no way around it, the game offers nothing new and is not a great MMO and not a great TES title. It's not a bad game but it is not good enough to stand alone with a box price and a monthly subscription.
10 years ago, maybe this game could survive as a subscription game, but not today. There are way too many games out there to pick and choose from and unless the game is really special, people just wont pay the price + sub for an inferior TES game and an inferior MMO experience.
The fact that they are putting in bonus to CE and pre -order tells you all you need to know how they really feel about their product. If it could stand alone on it's own merit they would drop the Imperial race and other options....but they know the game cannot.
The whole idea of a box price plus a monthly sub is so players do not have to PAY for more cash shop ridiculousness, which is exactly what the Imperial race lock and faction unlocks are.
They will do what SWTOR did. Release the game, proclaim it a massive success and then start number crunching and realize that the sooner they go F2P the better off the will be....but they will have to wail a little bit because they have been trumpeting their "this will not be a F2P title". That is there big mistake, painting themselves into a corner, and they will pay a pretty hefty price at some point.
But the game is not terrible or even well below average. It's a decent game and pretty solid.....but not good enough to justify the monthly sub + box price.
Gotta love all the people who believe monetization methods require justification... it's the latest internet craze.I guess I must be in a tiny minority of people who decide to play or not play because it's how I want to spend my time or not given options available.
There are literally hundreds of F2P AND sub games I want nothing to do with. And there are some games I want to play regardless of their revenue model... I guess I'm weird that way
To anyone who says 'I won't play this game with a sub but I would play it if it was F2P"... you lost my attention right there.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Amen!
You right in that fun engaging game play can overcome any monetization method. However I have played a lot of games covering all the different ways to get consumers to open their wallets and there have been more than a few where you hit a point where you say this is just not worth what they are asking from me.
The minute there are no more sub MMO's being released, is the minute the genre loses me. Now Im not so self absorbed to think i would be missed because there will be 50 numbnuts to take my place. I just cant believe "gamers" have turned this genre into the Madden football franchise.
I have paid thousands of dollars into kickstarter now as a last ditch effort to show game developers and the wallets behind them, that the real gamers out there want something more substantial than the blow thru an MMO in 2 months and move on to the next game mentality. I don't need or want my hand held and I don't play games to distress or just for "fun". The MMO genre was a diamond of greatness in the EQ/daoc era.
I reach that point equally with F2P or sub games it seems. I don't think I ever say "it's not worth what they're asking for me." It's more "I'm done with this for now--maybe for good or maybe for a while, but I'm going to go do something else instead."
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Sorry - you get MORE whiners in games that you pay for. The reason being they paid for it, they want what they want. I saw this first hand in Rift.
Remember this will be on consoles also. Get ready for the teen annoyance factor.
I am kind of getting burnt out on F2P games, with MMORPGs like RIFT now including lock-boxes in their cash shops, it's something that is making me want a subscription MMORPG more and more.
The problem I see with TESO is that like Bill Murphy mentioned those first 10 levels are just boring, plain and simple (hopefully this isn't breaking the NDA since I am just repeating what Bill said in his article). It doesn't hook you at all, and there's no reason for it. Why not just make the first 10 levels like the rest of the game instead of lulling me to sleep?
Smile
And now we know why there is not and probably won't be a Skyrim multiplayer expansion: if there were, no one would play TESO.
The logic is that people will play a "less good" ES title multiplayer game, simply because it is ES and multiplayer, even though it compares unfavorably to the last released ES SPG title (and it does).
I would like to think that the only thing F2P has brought to the genre is more players but at the same time those new players expect every game thereafter to also be free even if that new game is of much higher quality. It seems people will choose f2p just because its free and not because it is a better game or a better way to monetize the game... I do not think F2P games have changed what gamers expect at all.. it just made some gamers cheap and put their tolerance of crap at an all time high.
I think LotRO and EQ2 are still worth playing but they arent nearly as good as they were under the sub model.
He didn't say the first 10 levels are boring he said they're slow. And a big part of that, IMHO is that you're getting used to all kinds of new ways of doing familiar MMO things in tdifferent ways. Some MMOs feel very much like most other MMOs you've played before and you're off an running in not time. Others take a bit longer to get the hang of...
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Bethesda said long before ESO that they did not want to make a co op game. Whether or not they stick to that on the next release is going to be interesting. I would still play ESO even if the next SP ES game offered 2-4 player co op and I hope it does.
I seriously doubt the investors or the board have such a lack of business acumen.
The Gamasutra article compares mmo's to movies and televison, and I just don't think that's a fair comparison. An mmo usually opens up slowly, more like a book often does. There is a bigger story to tell in an mmo and the idea of that is to live out the smaller details of that story leading up to the larger plot points. A movie sits you down, and tries to hit a major plot point every 20 minutes so they can wrap it all up after two hours.
What I've always enjoyed about mmo's is feeling like I'm on an adventure, which is why I like crafting, long dungeon crawls, and reading lore books as I search around for clues to smaller quests and mysteries. There's nothing wrong with feeling epic early in a game, and if Eso's starting area (which there are three so I'm going to assume there is a less fun one of the three and that could be the source of some of this backlash) is really that bad than, there is no excuse for that. But to say 2-3 hours of an adventure are generic so the other few hundred hours are not worth your time is pretty shortsighted, especially since a lot of feedback I'm seeing has stated that the further you get in the game the more fun and interesting it becomes.
If the game was in open beta and people could play at higher levels and do all the dungeons and pvp and people still said the game was boring than I could totally understand that. And if that's the case than the game will do poorly indeed. But go read the first couple chapters of The lord of the Rings and tell me how bad the story is because it's just about some old guy with a ring who has a birthday party and insults a bunch of people. Or how about The Dark Tower, let me know how exciting it is to see a washed up cowboy chase a guy in a robe across the desert for a few chapters. Sometimes a great adventure is about more than the first few chapters.
Not all who wander are lost...
What investors? This is a privately owned and funded company. Good try at a one liner though.
These are gamers deciding to play or not to play. Their willingness to spend time with this game should be totally independent from business model... in case you actually did miss the point.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Or it could work out in favor of everyone that ever wanted, at least, some co-op in an ES game.
They won't make another ES MMO, good or bad, succeed or fail, this is it. At least for quite some time.
If it doesn't generate more favorable response it's going to hit Bethesda. Bethesda's name is all over the game, and it's an ES game. It's not going to matter that Bethesda didn't actually make the game themselves, it's their IP and when people put out money for it only to find it's nothing like the previous games they're going blame Bethesda.
Putting co-op into the next ES SPG could go a long ways to instilling any lost faith that this game may generate among the fans.
And I guarantee that when the console gamers get ahold of this game, Bethesda is going to lose a lot of faith among those fans who buy it because of Oblivion and Skyrim; only to find they were sold an inferior product that expects a monthly fee to keep playing.
I'm playing SWTOR and I'm paying sub for it. I don't have any problem with it.
SWTOR went (partially) free to play so fast becouse it had broken engine that couldn't handle more than 10 people at the same time, it had no PvP beside huttball, a space mini-game that was a joke and it was basicly identical to WoW in terms of gameplay, skills, classes and more.
ESO may go b2p at some point, but I doubt it will happen that fast, if the PvP part is succesfull and the game doesn't suffer from major technical difficulties, such as flawed game engine that can't be repaired. The worst thing that may happen is if they release a game that is unfinished and use the time between PC and console release as an extended beta fase. This would be a terrible idea.