[dirtyklingon]

(originally titled on my blog as:)what we learned(or ignored the reality of) in 2012 (mmos)

so 2012 was the year of hope for mmo’s. the year in which we hoped we would see some innovation among blockbuster “AAA” big name big IP big studio mmo’s.

and yet many of the people i talk to and or play with feel 2012 was generally a big let down. like the mmo’s that launched during 2012,(or shortly before) the realities of the mmo’s we were looking forward failed to live up to their hype.

let’s take a look at what we learned(or are choosing to ignore):

you cannot support a $15 dollar sub with the wow clone model for long, no matter how big your IP is or how quality your story telling is(swtor, tsw).

you can have a great leveling experience, but if you switch over to dungeon/raid/instanced pvp grinding at level cap, you are not going to retain players. (swtor,tsw, maybe gw2)

calling yoru cash shop cosmetic adn convenience only and effo not pay2win when it’s pay 2 win in the original sense of the term in every way, is not going to fool players for long.(gw2)

yoru economy is not any more real than other game economies just because you have legitimized first party RMT. (eve, gw2, (non mmo) d3)

dev written story driven narratives for mmo’s doesn’t work well, and is hard to maintain a reasonable level of post launch content creation with to retain players that are playing the game for that reason.(swtor, tsw, gw2)

don’t oversell and under deliver(is this really something that we should not have known for years and decades already?)(swtor, gw2)

don’t say you are going to compete with/against/overtake/kill wow.you aren’t.(swtor, gw2)

swtor’s f2p model vs tsw’s hybrid b2p model vs gw2’s b2p model. - if you peanlize free players for doignyou and yoru paying players a service by populating yoru servers, then people won’t bother with your game, let alone pay for it. if you don’t put quality cosmetics in your cash shop, people won’t spend money on your game, if you price your boosters too high people aren’t going to buy them. if you sell your cash shop as an investment then remove the investment properties of your cash shop, expect masss refund request and BBB and FTC reports. if you have lockboxes in your game, expect to get nyerk on for it.

your game is not goign to succeed by copying wow’s endgame model where every other game has failed utterly that has copied wow’s endgame model, so stop copying wow’s endgame model, and even better don’t sell your game as being anything but wow’s endgame model then switch to wow’s endgame model.
(swtor, tsw, gw2 ascended)

don’t sell your game as being play your way or anti grind/grind free when there’s a very specific methodology for progressing in your game and teh endgame is nothing but endless unrewarding grind. (gw2, tsw)

when you pay youtuber mommy vloggers to promote yoru game, realize that just as many people if not more are going to resent you for bringing them on than you will poetentially gain in customers. it’s even more negative when you pay someone who is incompetent and has a vocal bias against the genre of your game. (tsw, ps2)

treat yoru customers/players with respect, as equals, and as fellow human beings. no matter how much you promote your community as being some kind of utopia, if you rule that community with an ironfist, you will not have a pleasant community. prove youa re also a gamer and a fellow netizen by posting and communicating and acting like it, as opposed to the steretyipcal mid aughts modpowertrip forum staff we all remember vividly.(swtor, tera, gw2)

NDA player testing doesn’t help anyone. least of all your game or the devs. the people you keep inviting only use it as braggign rights to tease their guild members and random internet strangerss, and to recruit more players to their guilds. while giving you poro quality feedback that you people keep listening to and setting course for utter failure. ofc it’s your own fault for listening to players that tell you to follow models which have an extremely high failure rate.(everygame this year)

yet again it was not hte year of the linux desktop.

if your game has mass pvp, it’s probably not a good idea to have half or more of the players that should be on screen instead be invisible.(gw2)

action rpg or real action combat is extremely dull, and not at all new. stop pretending it’s all that interesting. we’re talking about a combat style which has been around since the 90s on consoles. (tera)

wow vanilla style questing is boring as nyerk, even if you dress it up with voice over cutscenes. (swtor)

the token hot gamer girl dev making an ass out of herself on your dev vlogs thing is getting old people. (every ncsoft game since anet took over the western division)

you can throw 100million dollars at a project but if you hand it off to mythic you are gonna have a bad time. (swtor says hi)

no one is buying into what your employees/guerilla marketting team keeps posting on youtube/4chan/facebook/reddit/fansites.
(swtor, gw2)

if you are going to promote the game as having a felshed out and expansive cosmetic system that is tied into endgame, then nyerking put it in and flesh it out prior to launch. don’t half ass it then remove it at endgame then switch gears away from it. and give us some nyerking variety in looks. or better yet, take a look at how tsw handled cosmetics and copy pasta that if you’re going to copy pasta nyerk.(swtor, gw2)

cash shop currencies that are not a 1:1 numerical ratio, combined with cash hop items that are designed to leave you with a balance are disrecptful to your players adn their gaming dollars. nyerk off with that nyerk already. better yet take a hint from valve’s steam wallet here.(swtor, tsw gw2)

not putting yoru game on steam only hurts you. and don’t act like the reason is because steam is evil. only luddites are going to believe that nyerk.(swtor, tsw, gw2)

don’t promote yourself as being in the same league as valve while acting like EA.(gw2)

if you’re not going to offer a competitive prodcut at $15, try a more competitive price like $10. dry humping that $15 figure isn’t doing devs pubs or the model any favours for what you guys have been offering at that price vs your comeptition.
(swtor, tsw)

mmo gamers don’t watch the kind of tv that has ads. stop wasting your money on that nyerk.(swtor)


and the number one lesson we failed to learn in 2012 is

factions are bad. for players, for communities, for your game. nyerk off with your factions.(swtor, tsw, maybe gw2)

This post has been edited by dirtyklingon: 25 January 2013 - 07:56 PM

[Outrageous]

I want a nice FFA PvP MMO. Like Runes of Magic, but with actual decent gameplay.

[dirtyklingon]

i want a non factional pvp system that has depth like l2 had at one time, combat and questing like gw2's but better tuned, crafting and economy like lineage 2(including the manor system), and uh i forget the rest of my wet dream mmo, avatar cosmetic elements like tsw(ie clothing has no stats and is changeable at any time, stat gear has no cosmetics, barber/plastic surgery shops).


there used to be more wow in there but i guess gw2 replaced alot of that.


i can't really remember the rest of my wet dream mmo fantasy but that's a solid chunk right there.

[Neb]

I don't think the cash shop is really a big problem in GW2. If anything it's vastly under utilized. Most of the stuff in there is totally worthless.

[dirtyklingon]

i touch on th eunderutilization in several points.


the problem is selling it as not being pay 2 win when gems to gold is the very definition of pay 2 win.


idk anyone who argues with this outside of gw2fanboy hotspots and doesn't get laughed hard at.


well the real problem is the lockboxes being the game at all. it's really a very abusive mechanic.

[Neb]

But the lockboxes don't contain anything remotely useful. Black lion chests are nyerk.

Iunno, I still think pay2win as being pay more to be better than everyone else. Thus you win against them. But I guess definitions will differ.

Diablo 3 is a much better example of pay to win this year, imo. Though it's not an MMO.

This post has been edited by Neb: 23 January 2013 - 03:19 PM

[dirtyklingon]

regular old rmt is the original definition of pay 2 win. legitimizing rmt doesn't make it suddenly stop being pay 2 win.

[Neb]

Eh, I don't know. In a game of easy to reach max stats it just doesn't have the same impact for me.

Yeah, you can drop some money and get to X faster, but X wasn't hard at all to get to the in first place. I guess that's why it doesn't have the same feeling. In Diablo 3, for example, the gear keep getting progressively stronger the more money you're willing to dump into it.

But I see your point, and I agree in that I hope the 'legit' RMT doesn't catch on. I just don't think it's a real reason for GW2 sucking. Plenty of other much bigger reasons for me.

[dirtyklingon]

this list isn't about gw2 sucking or any other game sucking or w/.e.



it's about lessons we (failed to) learn in 2012 in regards to mmo's.

[Neb]

One in the same is it not? It's a list of reasons the games did not do well.

[dirtyklingon]

sure but more than half the reasons are the same nyerk from the past 7 years. some are particular to last year sure, but the ppoint is these idiots keep banging their heads on the same wall expecting to tunnel to china.

[Nobody]

I actually agree with most of your above list, but disagree with the internal testing issues you mention. Trust me - a lot of times the testers in certain games (note the plural used in games) in the past year definitely picked out major issues and were either ignored, told their issues weren't high enough on the list of issues to make it into launch, or told that even though the developers agreed, they couldn't do what needed to be done (implying high level management/marketing was affecting design decisions).

Which would be why a lot of game breaking things seem to worm their way into release or even game altering patches when they really shouldn't.

Regarding pay 2 win, please quit treating it like it's an on/off state. It's some kind of slider with certain Perfect World games on one side and Minecraft on the other side. And it's going to be different for every person as far as where on the slider they quit being interested in the game.

[dirtyklingon]

i have never treated pay2win like an off and on state, it's a spectrum, where world of tanks is on one end and wow is on the other. it doesn't stop the fact that gw2's gems to gold is the classic deffo of pay 2 win. call it what you wanna call it, it is what it is.

[Neb]

dirtyklingon, on 23 January 2013 - 04:39 PM, said:

sure but more than half the reasons are the same nyerk from the past 7 years. some are particular to last year sure, but the ppoint is these idiots keep banging their heads on the same wall expecting to tunnel to china.

Well... the same idiots keep eating it up in droves too. Lots of companies have simply learned to make money via launches. I don't think at this point it is necessary for them to create long term projects to make a profit.

SWTOR may have not been so profitable, given the immense cost of making it, but honestly I never followed the game at all. (Don't like star wars)

[Nobody]

What Neb said is sadly true, although the largest issue is that it IS expected they'll make insane amounts of money post launch. Bioware was basically (and sadly) dismantled by EA for missing whatever was expected from them. Note that they did make money on SWTOR, but they didn't meet expectations.

Welcome to corporate America.

And I think we're going to see some bad stuff come down the pipe after the Elder Scrolls game launches. There will be extremely high expectations placed on them and if they fail to meet those expectations then we can likely kiss the whole Elder Scrolls franchise goodbye.

Sadly

I want mah old game companies with their own creative control back. *sniffle*

[Neb]

Game 'Publishing' companies is probably one the worst things that have happened in the entire industry. For us anyways.

[GurrenLagann]

Nobody, on 23 January 2013 - 08:42 PM, said:

What Neb said is sadly true, although the largest issue is that it IS expected they'll make insane amounts of money post launch. Bioware was basically (and sadly) dismantled by EA for missing whatever was expected from them. Note that they did make money on SWTOR, but they didn't meet expectations.

Welcome to corporate America.

And I think we're going to see some bad stuff come down the pipe after the Elder Scrolls game launches. There will be extremely high expectations placed on them and if they fail to meet those expectations then we can likely kiss the whole Elder Scrolls franchise goodbye.

Sadly

I want mah old game companies with their own creative control back. *sniffle*

i'm not sure, i mean at first i was thinking the same thing but then i realized that if treated the Elder Scrolls online like i treated the single player games i could have a good time.

This means i'm expecting exploration from them, i mean walking around with a set goal in mind. Dungeons in the elder scrolls always sucked, some quests are good a lot are generic.

But the exploration is the best thing for me, just roaming around discovering the world, i loved that in fallout 3 and the elder scrolls games and i hope to get the same thing from ESO and not much else.

[BlackOrchid]

I think the major problem nowadays is that companys try and cater to every crowd to maximize profit, and in the process usualy end up failing bad.

The major launch of 2012 was like it or not Guild Wars 2, and like it or not it has been the greatest Game in the past few years (and no I am not a fanboy). It has its flaws (will get to them in a few) but it has mostly strong points. Guild Wars 2 team managed to identify some of the weak spots in previous MMO's and correct them creating a game that can be played by anyone no mater if they have previous experience in MMO's or not, they created a dinamic world with dinamic events that envolves players in the lore, they managed to rule out of the equation the need to be in a guild to progress or to be playing with a group of friends from start to make your way through leveling. They took out the competitive grind fest to get to lvl cap and turned it into a "pleasent" experience.

Thing is when you take out the grind fest you will not cater to the "hardcore" players that expect it at the end game, they rush through the content only to get to the end and "Hey all gear has the same stats ! So if you want to grind ....do it for the unique look !" The hardcore crowd doesnt like that, the hardcore crowd likes to have ubeer stated gear so they can pawn everyone else and say I AM UBBER BECAUSE I PLAY MORE TIME THAN YOU !

The downside of Guild Wars 2 is not the p2w cash shop, in fact everything in the cash shop does not provide a player with an unfair advantage over another player (unless you count looks), fact is that every game has to have a reason for people to keep on playing end game, and Guild Wars 2 hasn't. In fact Arenanet actually realized that and introduced a major correction to the system by introducing unique gear with unique stats, I am talking about the FOTM gear. That upset alot of players because to get it you actually had to work for it ... grind for it even. But no one took the time to actually look into the ways you had to obtain the gear...it's much easier just to rage quit claiming arena net failed to deliver on theyr initial promiss. As far as I am concerned GW2 fails in only introucing this kind of gear so long after launch. As bad aspects of GW2 I point out the badly designed in game shops...what I mean is problems like not being able to preview karma items without unintentionaly buying them, not being able to be refunded by the npc after an inusitated wrong buy, or even the terribad game support that has the standart answer..."srry but at this time there is nothing we can do to solve your problem." Another aspect that I consider bad on GW2 is the fact that they took out the class specific traits...turning end game dungeons into boring dps/dodge races to the end. This completly took out the thrill of group playing and group coesion in dungeon.

A big problem that companys face is the fact that players will always compare the current game to previous games ... a game should be a stand alone and not compared to another game. When I see people saying WoW is beter in this this and that ...or lineage II is beter in this this and that...I can't help but wonder, if you like it so much why didn t you stick to playing it? A new game can be a ground breaking experience or more of the same experience but with revamped graphics and/or new lore with the same old mechanics. The company's aim is to sell, and to do that they need to promote, and they will promote it to the best they can, it's up to you the consumer to see if that product is for you or not...if the company belives its good to promote a product through a Vloger...then so be it. If you dislike the Vloger promoting it...don't watch it, or even beter post on his Vlog comments that he is selling himself to the cooporate world ...pfffttt

Elder scrolls will be the next GW2 and they will either deliver or perish. I honnestly hope they deliver on what they have been promissing, but I am not holding my breath on it ....guess we will have to wait and see

[Nobody]

Fair enough criticism. GW2 is pretty much the epitome of a western audience game as far as I can tell. I know a lot of people that are very happy with the game and are still playing it. I found the game amusing to cap and it had fun points after that too. I find it interesting that our supposed "hard core" folks tend to go back to playing Minecraft of all things after they consume the content of the latest mmo game. I think it's the sandbox-ness of it potentially?

I'm not sure that Elder Scrolls could do better than they've done and I fear that their direction isn't leading them the right way. I agree that I will buy it just for the exploration (Morrowind is still my fav game in the franchise btw), but I'm not sure they realize what their own strengths are with what's been put on their site. The game is supposed to be a faction war-based game and that just sounds like it'll interfere with their strengths rather than highlighting them. I could be wrong though.

[dirtyklingon]

gw2 was the most mmmoish mmo of the past few years but aklot of your points are flat out wrong.

as someone who spent alot of money on gems for gear, the differences between me and a non paying customer were tremendous.


they didn't remove the grind nor was the game anti grind, they simply penalized players for farming naturally, instead you had to learn the various methods of gaming the DR system, such as switchign zones every 20 minutes, which flies in the face of their "play it your way " selling point(nevermind the various things you must do while leveling, that fly in the face of that.)


there is still very few avenues to obtain teh FOTM gear, and they are not unique stat allocations, but they are equal in power gain to that of a teir of wow raid gear. which again flies in teh face of major selling points of the game.


which is all covered under the "don't oversell and underdeliver" part of the OP.


as for your assertion that games shouldn't be compared, that's very naive and totally unrealistic. ofc games will be compared to each other within the same genre. people go as far to compare games outside of the same genre. nevermind that when devs say "we're going to kill wow" they are inviting the player to compare that game to wow directly.


as for the rest of yoru post blackorchid, i think you've confused us with aion players. we don't force ourselves to keep playing games we aren't enjoying in this section of the forums. '



my pooint about paying vlogggers to show your game is it's shooting yourself in the foot. vloggers are promoiting or hating on games long before they are apporached, and have alreadwy made up their minds and the minds of their fans in regardsto your products. paying a guy like totalbiscuit to stream your game when he's already decided he hates it isn't going to bring you more customers, and it's only going to cause resentment among customers that have already signed on when they see him bashing your game out of incompetence.

nevermind as someone who has now landed on two server with youtuber fanguilds, such servers are even more toxic than with a regular average zerg guild.



anyways this isnt a gw2 specific thread or post.



snoozle: gw2 is more asian in alot of people's eyes. idk how many people i've seen say it's too asian looking/feeling/playing for them.