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Indie developers
pye088j
Member Posts: 228
When it comes to single player games I absolutely love the Indie developers. Games that are usually all about the gameplay, mechanics and with functional graphics. World of Goo, Pontiflex and mount and blade are some that comes to mind as nice fun games with both depth and playability. So why are not MMO indie developers doing the same?
Yes, it´s only my opinion but I feel that the quality in gameplay and mechanics are substantially lacking and the emphasis on graphics overtake it. I´d much rather play the game focused on gameplay and mechanics before the game focused on graphics.
Am I the only one or do you aswell feel that the mmo Indie developer is very different from the single player Indie developer?
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
Comments
indie mmo dev's do a hit n miss making mmo's. because its a tough market. ive found fallen Earth and CCP do excellent jobs listening to their community and work their ass off to provide a good mmo. grant it..their not huge but their steady about things and grow as each year comes around. Personally i dont mind waiting 3- 6 months or a year for everything ingame i want fixed/added to be added...why? because they listen and get it rite the first freakin time. to me 15 bucks a month per game is well worth it in my book.
Nope 15$ is not alot indeed. But with MO, DF and FE there´s also a box charge. Initially at about, what, 40-50$? Not alot maybe but exactly the same amount as a AAA mmo costs. I´d be happy with a 20$ Box purchase and a 10$ per month rather out of principle. Just to show that we shouldn´t expekt as much from this game, atleast not in it´s early months, year.
50$ isn´t that much but compared to every other game it´s just as much. And latlely it´s all about the graphics over gameplay and that´s what bugs me the most about this. As I said, in my mind, an indie developer puts gameplay and mechanics first and graphics second.
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
With the exception of Fallen Earth and Eve I think the "indie" developers I've encountered so far are a shady bunch to say the least.
Indie development of an MMORPG, and by Indie I'm refering to low budget (sub $500,000), is incredibly slow. The small teams struggle with long hours, usually substandard tools, and lack of funding. I know of one team that's been at it four years now and might still be another year away from release.
One of the few that I know of that did make it open and seems to have done okay for itself is Crowns of Power. I know there are others, but they aren't usually free to play. I would guess most need every subscriber that they can get just to keep the hosting turned on.
Personally I wouldn´t go so far as to say "shady" but maybe aiming too high and crashing down?
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
Indie Developers fail because MMOs require massive amounts of man hours that indie developers cannot afford.
No other reason. They probably have alot more ambition and skill than the companies who produce AAA titles, but if the funding isn't there, then they can't eat while they work on it and nobody is going to put in that amount of time for free.
They also aim for feats they can't accomplish, because many of them underestimate the amount of man hours required AFTER you have the basic stuff working perfectly.
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Agreed. Crash and burn is the norm. I see a lot of them when they are looking for engines. Most don't make it three months into development before getting ripped apart by 1) the amount of work needed and 2) the required skills of the team (usually coders, artists, designers).
*** applause ***
With this in mind would it be possible for an Indie mmo to make a "shard" of a game and sell that? Starting small and getting funding of let´s say 5 or 10$ a month for each subscriber with a promise to continue to put that money back in the game?
The shard being a fully playable mmo just with a smaller map and less content so they can get a return much sooner in the development phase.
Would you guys trust an Indie developer with that or am I just being naive?
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
The amount of content put into some of the biggest single player games (like Oblivion or Fallout + Expansions) would probably entertain MMO players for less than 2 weeks.
FE tried exactly what you suggested btw. They released 1/3rd of the game that they promised, except they hadn't really thought about what people are going to be doing for fun or really what the game was about. There is still a massive amount of work that needs to be done to keep MMO users entertained for any period of time. So, what happened was they released a game that really had no purpose and really no reason to play at all because they hadn't really decided what the game was going to be about yet.
MMOs change alot from release into the later years. WoW is not even close to what was planned in development, and even what they planned up until TBC. EVE is closer to what the developers had in mind compared to WoW, but it is still pretty far from the original concept.
By releasing only a piece of a game, you're going to have people sign up and soon quit the game forever. Unless the game has a substantial amount of content to keep the players playing, or has enough tools to keep them happy (EVE) while they develop the rest. Either way, it would be a fully finished game in a sense.
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Yes but starting the development with that goal one would think they could plan for it and make, atleast, enough content to be there. And with a lowered cost less crying form the players aswell? Maabe making it seem abit like a real "community" game.
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
Indie devs do tend to listen to their community more, and most of the time the quality of their work is just better. Now, they may not have a huge following, but you don't need one to be successful. A successful playerbase is one that stays and does whatever they can to try and help the devs out.
Single player RPGs are very different from MMORPGs. People need only buy the single player game, whereas an MMO usually has a box and a sub. So they're too different to really compare in that sense
Ah yes they are indeed a different beast as an entity, but what i´m questioning is more where the emphazis lies. Where Single player is geared more towards gameplay and mechanics and mmo´s more towards graphics first.
Is it our fault, critizising graphics and not letting gameplay shine maybe?
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
All of those MMOs have features that your AAA do not have and I definitely think its worth the money . .. check back with Darkfall after the expansion or after next weeks PVE revamp patch.
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I might try DF again in a year or so. Tried it the 2nd time about 4 months ago and just got tired of it. I´ll give it some time and see if the craving returns. Thanks for the tip though.
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.