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Did F2P Conversion Work? Korean Investment Bank Weighs In
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Did F2P Conversion Work? Korean Investment Bank Weighs In
The largest investment bank in Korea is predicting that NCSoft's stable of games will have had a fantastic year overall, but that Carbine Studios' WildStar did and will continue to struggle for survival even after a free-to-play conversion in late 2015. Daewoo Securities has published its estimate for the results of the forthcoming 2015 investor report to be revealed later in Q1 2016.
Comments
At the end of the day that, or something like it, is all they can have done.
Of course mmorpg.com posters and Daewoo Securities could both be wrong and players the world over may have been swayed by the sites articles .....
Instances are ridiculously hard, sure some people like challenge but most just want to play the content.
Atunment... this is 2015... not Molten Core... people dont want to do this anymore.
PVP is a joke, telegraphs on everything... AoE madness, pvp stats that do nothing...
The payment mode help if people like aspects of the game but they dont think it deserves a sub. Payment mode is irrelevant if the game is terrible.
Wildstar has several severe issues that people told devs from the start but no one listened.
Instances are ridiculously hard, sure some people like challenge but most just want to play the content.
Atunment... this is 2015... not Molten Core... people dont want to do this anymore.
PVP is a joke, telegraphs on everything... AoE madness, pvp stats that do nothing...
The payment mode help if people like aspects of the game but they dont think it deserves a sub. Payment mode is irrelevant if the game is terrible.
Sounds like the "Wowification" of wildstar.
Wildstar had a very clear niche it tried to fill but unfortunately there wasnt enough interest in it, and the people that wanted wow type gameplay will, and always will play wow.
ie Why would you buy no frills cola over the real thing?
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If NCSoft get to the point where they consider the ROI of Wildstar to be to low, they will shut it down. Keeping it going ties up resources that could be deployed to more profitable projects.
They obviously read the analysis and conclusions that mmorpg.com forum contributors came to and decided they were accurate.At the end of the day that, or something like it, is all they can have done.Of course mmorpg.com posters and Daewoo Securities could both be wrong and players the world over may have been swayed by the sites articles .....
I could also ignore what everyone else says (typically what I do) and try it for myself and come to the conclusion that they were right in the first place.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
Part of the problem with the dungeons was game mechanics shaping player perception and expectation. If you have a dungeon finder, the average player is going to expect a reasonable chance of success with a pug group made through it. If your dungeons need a very high level of communication then dont use a dungeon finder, do something like FF14's party finder. Both are great tools, but for different difficulties of content. A dungeon finder just didnt fit with Wildstar's difficulty and the player expectation it created didnt mesh with the reality of the dungeons.
I also think wildstar needed a Karazhan (10 man) type raid. The 40 mans were just a pipe dream.
Now why oh why did that fail?
Looking at the reported revenue and subtracting the reported marketing and box production costs - it fell way short of recouping what it cost to make. Even wildly optimistic estimates are way more than what it has recouped.
So staff were cut, development costs written off presumably and now - as you say - it is a case of ROI. Not just about WS covering its costs either but of making a "decent profit" - otherwise it pulls down NCSoft's overall.
Bottom line is this,your game has to at least look professional,like top notch employees worked on it with a top notch Director/Producer.WS does NOT look like that game.
I think MOST gamer's/readers seem to forget some very obvious fact >>>$$$$ marketing/advertising.There is a reason it is a billion dollar industry maybe a Trillion dollar industry,..."it works".That is why people get so easily hyped up then are disappointed a month in ,then only stick around a bit longer to get their money worth.
Where is the mad rush now?Aion "f2p",Rift "f2p",WS "f2p" MANY more and soon BnS will join the fray as will BDO.I see a HUGE crowd of people defending these shallow games but then those same people are jumping on some new bandwagon a few months later.
F2p will 100% absolutely NEVER make a game better,it is nothing more than a marketing ploy.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I can tell a lot of heart went into Wildstar... that alone isn't enough to make me play it.
Wildstar hit the perfect storm of what not to do. Action combat is niche. 40-man raids are niche. Hardcore raiding is niche. Had the game not cost as much or taken the ridiculous amount of time it did to develop, maybe it could have done well as niche. Expecting the subs it did was the first mistake.
World of Warcraft is Cartooney art design and we know its history.
Wild Star didn't do well in part because of its same old same old very same old questing.
And if all the raids were uber hard then what happens to players when they coast into "end game" only to be stymied by hardcore raids? I don't know how those were set up, maybe they had different difficulties. But if they didn't then that's an issue.
All I know is that I hated the tutorial section. That was the first turn off for me.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I am not like most of you who just grind and get to the last level as soon as possible. For me it may take years to actually hit the max lvl.