f13.net

You can see it here. (http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx)

Aion responsible for 52% of NCsoft's overall sales revenue last quarter. Suggests that 970k Aion boxes were sold in NA and EU.

States explicitely and even breaks it down in NA/EU (500k in NA and 470k in EU). Not sure if that means sales to retailers or sold to consumers. Aion will have worse retention than AoC or WHO for certain. Im guessing 100k in two months.

I doubt that, its not as obviously flawed as those two games.  But we are still searching for the post-WoW juggernaut, and I think we will have to get to Bioware's baby before we have another MMO retain more than a million.

The next MMO to retain one million subs after the first 6 months will be made by Blizzard.  Anyone want to bet me?

24-36hrs of grinding to go from 49-50, with almost no interaction with Devs or CS are pretty significant flaws. In fact the lack of glaringly bad problems is more damning. Of the 30 or players I knew or met only one went past the free month. People are going to hit the barrier of grinding in the mid 30's. And then quit or roll another character when the mandatory 12hrs or more of grinding to progress hits.

Nebu, whats the current next runner up? 200k-300k after 6 months? Don't think you are going to get any takers.

Aion shows that at this point there are tons of ex-WoW players willing to give a try non-WoW DIKU. Next one to release non-shit MMORPG has a good shot at getting and holding these subscribers.

For that to happen they would already need to be doing badly and i see no signs of that.

I don't disagree with you, but until devs stop living up their own ass about what players want vs what the devs want to provide, it's not going to matter.  5 years later and we are still seeing games that were built to compete with EQ or DAOC, not WOW.   Devs are too hardcore for their own good and the good of their business.

What signs would you expect with no concrete numbers beyond boxes sold? Friend list suffering massive attrition and knowing the mid-late grind is going to chew through subscriptions seems pretty solid grounds.

LotRO was the one, wasn't shitty at all, and didn't work. Blizzard got too many things "right", some by fluke too. I agree with Nebu, of course. Next 1m will be Blizzard's. Sigh.

Not sure Blizzard can pull it off at this point, either. It could be Pandaren Blowjobs Online and couple months down the road you can bet people are going to whine it's but repetitive grind with too few things to do.

Freshly launched games suffer from large disadvantages -- people already "been there and done/seen it all" in the previous titles, and a new game is lacking 'investment' anchor which develops after spending few years playing. So it's much easier to quit it as soon as there's anything that doesn't rub the player just the right way. And people got much whinier and picky about how the foozles for whacking should be served, too.

Didn't LotRO have an over reliance on grouping?

I think the quitting factor comes in when players realize that they have fully leveled and geared characters in another mmo + unlimited access to the end game content. Why do developers think that players want to spend the first 40 hours on noob land is beyond me.

People mostly complained (still do) about the 'sluggish' combat system caused by mandatory auto-attacks delaying execution of their skill key presses and such. Though originally they did have some stages mid-game designed for group play (both instanced and open world) with no solo alternative, that likely had impact too until they added new areas to address that.

Their Q3 ended on Sept 09, which means these numbers are for the first three weeks of box sales. Back in September, the dissenters were relatively small, and mostly just wondered why people would play this (or any) diku over WoW. It was at the end of Sept and then into early Oct that the grind, the inconsistency, and the lack of PvP all started kicking in as a lot of the players reached that threshold between "fine I'll PvE for the good stuff" to "wth am I grinding this much to get smacked down by 35+somethings in the 25+ Abyss".

We won't see the results of that until the Q4 numbers are out. Which won't matter because I still think this game will not have much interest from here anyway :-)

What I find interesting from Aion's, AoC's and WAR's launch is that there about about 800k Western players who will get a MMO at the very start of its life. That's something all MMO developers who are looking to release AAA titles have to plan for - 800k players banging on your door for the week of launch.

I wonder if that also demonstrates that MMO gamers enjoy the early arms race.  Speaking for myself, I loved starting on a fresh server in games where new servers would open periodically.  The opening of the classic servers in DAoC kept me around for another year or two just to replay the arms race.  ATitD was similar. 

Yeah, the early rush in any MMO, the level playing field of starting at level 1, is really a breath of fresh air when you are in the loot treadmill doldrums of the end-game somewhere else. The problem is that after that wears off, rather than spend years on the loot treadmill doldrums of that new game, people would rather just go back to their old one, where at least they are already built up and probably don't have to wade through quite as much entry level bullshit.

People like being ahead of the curve, i notice a severe drop in enthusiasm in new games as soon as someone falls slightly behind.

I do think there is an audience of 800K to 1.2 million subscribers who like RVR type content, fortress fights, and small skirmish PVP.  The problem though is that they don't want a boring PVE experience to slog through only to get to a broken end game.

AOC: Grind levels 21-80, busted siege game, poor client performance
War: Boring PVE, busted PVP end game, poor client performance
AION: Very boring PVE, unrewarding end game, poor RVR client performance

In order to keep these people as paying customers they have to:

1.
Make the PVE less boring, less tedious, viable solo and group PVE, and put in some sort of soft cap where you don't have situations of a level 48 always being pwned by a level 50.  If the intent it to allow people to PVP in a zone from levels 25-35, then level shouldn't be 99% of the deciding factor on who wins.

2.
The end game has to be rewarding, or people will feel like their efforts are wasted.  If they hear the end game sucks, then they may very well quit prior to that point (i.e. AION loses a lotta folks prior to level 25).  Gear, tokens, medals, realm points, etc all need to be obtained by people who actively participate, and there should be good individual and guild ranking systems.

3.
Poor client performance is harder to deal with if the sieging end game allows for unlimited people to flood an area.  In Warhammer the zone would crash, in AION people load and unload based on viewing distance and it reminds me a lot of how Shadowbane used to handle environment/player loading. In big fights you can be killed by people you NEVER see, and also get to enjoy crashes left and right.

This is a hard issue to address, but I don't see how you do it without instancing.


So yeah there is a big customer base out there for RVR type games, but the last three attempts have gotten one or all of those three issues wrong.  Folks won't wait around for 6-12 months waiting for Dev's to fix a game anymore, and if they new game sucks then they will just go back to their old one (usually WoW) until the next game comes out.

AION is just another MMO that has had a big launch, but is so bad in other areas that it is just as likely to fail as AOC and Warhammer.

If my 4 years or so of DAOC are any indication, the overlap between the groups of people who like these two things is actually very very small. There was constant tension in the community between the groups over it, actually.

I don't think there is all that big a customer base for it to be honest.  There is a fairly large group that THINKS they want it, and will try a new game out if it boasts having it.  However, I think realistically speaking, there isn't enough room in the market to support a bunch of monthly fee 1 million subscriber games, no matter how good they are.  Assuming WoW keeps a huge population like it has, I think smaller MMOs are probably going to be in much heathier places. Hell, look at a game like Darkfall that we all lulzed about, it was made with a smaller audience in mind, and now has servers open in both EU and NA, and I think they are slowly growing.  Whether you like Darkfall or not isn't the point (i haven't even played it myself).  That business model is probably a lot more sustainable. Granted, I think Aventurine has large amounts of capital, and had a lot of years to make their game, so maybe it isn't the best example in those terms. 

I agree with you. I think the model of being WOW beaters is just not going to happen and people are slowly realizing it. WOW is the big tumor on the hill, sucking up the available custom, and its gong to stay there because its blizzards game. Every game that has tried has failed. I think the model of the small niche game is the only one that can work in the present environment.

I rather agree... it has impressed my how easy it is to sell 1M boxes to a new MMO these days.

I wonder if the real answer is to reduce risk and go after the $100M incrementally via paid and validated limited releases.

In other words, what can you develop for $25M (1M x $25/box net) plus 6 mos of incremental revenue (perhaps via RMT/DLC) with only 50% retention... say $2M per month ($4 x 500k subscribers - keep the bar very low initially).

Prove-out the game in the initial release... tweak and improve for release next.... repeat ad infinitum.

The end of each phase would be some sort of soft-cap RvR holding area with near infinite player (re-)generated content.

If you make each Stage a short trip to the RvR holding area - more like the Death Knight starting area than TOA grind - to introduce new mechanics, skills, changes then folks would enjoy the experience rather than resent it.

Financially, the goal would be to capture increasing box sales (so, 250k box 1 plus 1.25M box 2) plus folks in phase 2 might be willing to invest, say, $6 per month (up 50%).

Who knows, perhaps this is what GW2 is looking at?

For me it was two things, the combat like you said, and the fact my PC of they day simply could not run LotR satisfactorily.


All these new MMO's keep trying to amp up their graphical effects, often at the expense of Art and Design. Always at the expense of everyone with a old machine. Just another facet of trying to be "hardcore" I suppose.

Not for any special reason either.  The big budget games just HAVE to try to get a lot of customers, and cast a wide net, and often times they basically just can't pull off doing that much stuff, and the whole projects suffers as a result.   The smaller games usually try to do less out of necessity, but actually end up being able to pull of doing that stuff well.  Fallen Earth comes to mind.

UnSub (800k potential AAA early adopters) = correct.
Waylander (800 - 1200k RVR PVPers) = smokin crack.  (The rest of Waylander's post was full of great observation and analysis, but in no way supported his opening thesis)

There are more than a million Westerners itching to play a new AAA diku-type MMO with as much fun and polish as (but different from) WoW, and 800k of them are willing to pay money up front on hopes of finding that new fix. 

In attempting to provide that fix we have gotten:

LotRO - not quite as good (at release), not quite different enough.
AoC - different enough and actually much more fun for 20 levels, then crap with a lot of nothing interspersed with more crap.
WAR - promised something better for the end game, delivered crap for the 1 to max grind and nothing workable for the end game.
Aion - probably different enough, probably polished enough, but horrible levelling curve plus balance issues with PvP, gold farming, gold spamming, & etc. cripple the fun factor.
CO - *laugh*  wrong league.
EVE - not DIKU and thus too different.  Probably also too much boredom between bouts of fun for mainstream success.

um, who did I miss?

It seems to me that, when it comes to MMO's based on character development, PvP is likely at least as much a disadvantage as an advantage.  I suspect a lot of people tried out the more PvP-focused games listed above IN SPITE OF the PvP.   I know there are a large number of people who will refuse or strongly resist getting sucked into a game in which PvP is either unavoidable or in which avoiding PvP results in a restricted character or second-class gaming experience.  And PvP is inherently much harder to "do right" since it MATTERS if one player is more powerful than another, whereas balance in PvE is at least a little bit more forgiving.

The developer that comes up with the magic formula that produces an MMO with fun, balanced, cheat-free PvP available for all players from day one to end-game while still providing solid and fun PvE content for solo and group play from day one to end-game will make bank.

The developer that comes up with the PvP part without the PvE part will be competing with all the f2p FPSs out there.  Good luck with that.

The developer that comes up with the PvE part without the PvP part will make bank, give WoW a run for it's money, and have a year or two to fiddle with the getting the PvP part right (as long as their adjustments to balance PvP don't disrupt established equilibriums in PvE play).

So tell me, why do developers keep insisting on increasing their risk and their up-front expenses by pushing PvP as a major day-one selling point?

How well would you say Guild Wars did at this? Without having played it very much, my impression was that this is exactly what they delivered, or at least intended to.

ah - i didn't play GW, but my summary of impressions from reviews and discussions would be: fun PvP,  PvE not enough or not enough different to distinguish it.

It seems to fit in the same category as LoTRO in that it seemed to have done almost everything right yet was only a marginal success.

Guild War measurable success was box sales. Which so far surpass every game on that list in the west save WoW. Beyond that Guild Wars didn't have retention issues of sub based games so I don't think it can boost having "over xxx million subs" but it did manage to get +2 million box sales per expansion so calculate the playerbase from there. The funny this is, guild wars has statically greater pve playerbase than pvp. In fact the "high level" pvp area, Heroes Ascent, is mostly ghost town except for international districts. The most popular pvp is Random arena, Alliance Batttles, Guild vs Guild and now Seal deck (which is a new arena built to replace the Hero battle format and Team arena). And only Guild vs Guild is truly upper level pvp. Also helps to heavily support casual play GG.

A problem with the small niche route is that you will eventually be canablized by bigger mmo's offering what you do with a bigger playerbase, other niche mmo's offering exactly what you do with a new skin, and f2p games offering exactly what you do but free. This market isn't any less unfriendly to small games now than it was in EvE's time. Darkfall had a mass exodus once their big war was over with the remaining playerbase desperately attempting to fuel nonexistent excitement and the dev team is basically on extended vacation (in fact opening of the NA servers happened just before vacation). Another thing about niche games is that while they technically have more longevity then their block buster counterparts they also die often without making a dime. FE seems to be made for cheap enough that their target audience of 50k players will be happy that at the very least anymore than that can guarantee future development. The only problem is that if the population dips below that target they have a problem. They have to produce new content, but they can't produce it under the pressure of paying the light bill. EVE success was finding a "casual" niche to grow their game on, which was their empire carebears. Any future niche game is going to have to find that growth market.

What? You mean higher players ganking lower players, or something else which I would be very curious about?

I know a lot of people who picked up Aion. Most of them quit after reaching the level cap.

Aion will suffer from the same virus WAR did.  WAR could of created and sustained a lasting game if they moved quickly on the glaring issues and made them a top priority but we all know how that turned out.  Aion I suspect wont make the needed changes in a timely fashion either and TBH I get the feeling they dont want to.  To some degree they want Aion to be a grindy game that requires people to slug out grind levels to get to 50. They will soften it a little but it will never be for example close to a current WOW leveling curve. 

It really sounds like the people you know are all the "Buy a new MMO, hardcore race to cap, then quit" types. I play more than your average, healthy person with a full time job should and I am still 9 levels short of the cap.

The game has major flaws, and NCSoft's veritable lack of customer service is definitely high on the list.

There's so few people at level cap right now in Aion that I'm not surprised they quit. The game is about massive battles, not getting up there and go gank lowbies until you're bored.

The game has flaws, but has many redeeming PvP qualities for those who care about it. 

You know a lot of people who reached the level cap? i play a lot and i'm not even 40 yet.

The funny thing about Falc is that he supports the game going completely niche instead of saying it could solve its mainstream problems. Despite the fact that NcSoft will most likely cull future development of Aion if turns out to have niche game numbers in the west. Lineage 2 all over again.

Nobody here wants a mainstream game.  F13 doesn't cater to mainstream gamers. 

Aion will be Lineage 2.5.  I said this about the game back in beta.  Expecting anything else would be delusional. 

I expect regular customer service from a company that I pay a monthly fee to.  The fact that I still cannot submit an online petition sunk the game for me.  If they can't manage to "fix" that problem (I suspect they broke it on purpose) by now then they don't get any more of my dollars.

They got the purchase price plus one additional month.  That's as far as I'm willing to go if they aren't willing to service customers in a reasonable manner.  

I said Aion is reskinned Lineage 2 months before beta. Fact is they aren't pulling for a niche game then and their defiantly not pulling for one now. They have already proven that they will close servers if a game under performs.

You need mainstream numbers to develop the game that F13 would want, however.  Therefore there is an impasse. 

Everquest 2.

Yeah, I know that technically it predates WoW but EQ2 now has only a passing resemblance to the Vision-riddled Second System fuckup it was at launch.

I want to disagree, but realize that I have no expertise to do so.  I think it's possible to make a profitable MMO that would satisfy the gamers here.  The margins would just be much smaller than what you see for something like WoW.  I'm sure that's not a very sexy pitch to investors.  

I think there are plenty of people here want a "mainstream" game but many people here don't want a diku game.  There's a difference.

You trolled me for months and it still escapes you that 'mainstream' is not exactly my thing? I don't like niche, I am a niche.

EDIT: Lineage 2 development has been culled due to numbers in the west? Joke of the day. Lineage tanked in the west and DESPITE THAT development has been strong because, you know, Asian numbers. Don't wait on your toes for Aion's development to be culled anytime soon, it'll stay strong and constantly expanded for the next 10 years thanks to, again, Asian numbers. Works for me.

Which is odd, because CoX had the best customer service I had seen in a game for a long time.  They easily got a few extra months out of me because of how they handled problems I had.

Aion subs will be cliff diving in the west IMO, massive bot swarms and utter lack of CS plus a Lord of the Flies vibe. I think that Aion's long term appeal (for most westerners at least, all lollipop and no tootsie roll) was limited to begin with, but they could have saved a lot of early cancellations if they had launched with the spam controls that were put in about 3 weeks after launch (and made it clear to newbies how to use the spammer block tool, which they never did) I mean lots and lots of cancellations, huge numbers.. and the fix was so simple, they still are doing a remarkably poor job of hand holding newbies- money down the drain, astounding. The bots is another story, there are elements of gameplay that make it seem like the game was designed to accommodate botting, really bizarre...

Haha. They should have a quest in the tuturial where some faggot NPC is spamming chat in the opening area, and it's your job to shut him out.

Yeah, that's sort of my point though.  I think people here would require a somewhat polished game that meets certain criteria.  The money would never be available for a realistic number of subscribers.  For instance, even with the lip service, does anyone really think Mythic was "okay" with having 300,000 subs?  I doubt that EA was.  Maybe some smaller developer would be willing, but I don't think any of these folks are expecting to hit a ground rule double.  They all want the grand slam WoW money in the end.

And not to seem like an apologist, because I am not. But NCSoft did post positions for GMs to specifically target botting and RMT stuff about 2 and a half weeks ago now. Of course, they should have expanded their GM staff as soon as they saw the kind of presale numbers they were getting in September instead of at the one month mark, but hindsight is 20/20.

Of course, they did not trumpt that all over their official site for the game or in their in game system. They could probably have saved another 10% of the bleeding subs if they had just let people know they were on a massive GM hiring spree.

EQ2 is actually what I'm playing now, off and on.  But I left it out because the version that was initially released was designed before anyone knew anything about WoW.

EQ2 also stands as the poster child for why you have to wait to release it until it's finished.  And by finished I mean a full polished experience with all major systems functioning and sufficient content to get you from 1 to max without too much repetition.  EQ2 as it exists now is far better than WAR, AoC or probably even Aion.  Yet there's just no way it's going to get any significant portion of those 800K - 1.2M people that wasted their money on those others to even give it a try.  It's sad, because the EQ2 live team has learned all the right lessons and done the right things, yet they'll likely never profit from it because the suits at Sony pushed it out the door waay too soon (after developing it with the wrong Vision in the first place).

Sony marketing also shares some of the blame.  I remember seeing lots of commercials on TV plus ads everywhere for EQ2, right about the time WoW's first expansion came out.  A year later, when I was bored of WoW and looking for something else though, EQ2 was nowhere to be found.  They wasted a lot of money trying to go head-to-head with WoW (repeatedly) when they could have gotten much better return on their investment (and quite possibly have picked up a lot more long term subscribers) by holding their fire until the time was right - ie, when WoW players were bored and facing a long wait still for the next expansion.

So who's to blame for EQ2's initial failure - the suits or the devs? Should the suits have waited and spent more money so that the devs could have really polished up that wrong Vision?

EQ2 was an initial design failure that was saved by having the right people on it post-launch to bring it back.

EQ2 is a great game. Absolutely awesome (for a diku MMORPG). Where me (the niche) and you all disagree is that it was great even when it launched. It just wasn't for you (the mainstream). Something not ok when you spent 60m or so in the making, I understand that.

The original design team, the suits, marketing, the green shade money guys, and probably Sony HQ, some shady Yakuza-linked investors, el nino, ufo's and numerous others all share the blame for the train wreck whose shipping date got pushed up just so they could beat WoW to market by a couple weeks.  I might have agreed with Falc that the original EQ2 was a good game, just not for me, if the dang thing had actually worked rather than being a buggy pos that ran like crap on what was then-state-of-the-art gaming rigs.

But that's all just sadly normal for the industry.  The real surprise in all that is that the B-team came in and learned the right lessons and actually made a great game out of it.

So, in other words high level people shouldn't be much more powerful than low level people but high level people should constantly get more powerful. A bit of a problem there :)

A little too early before people were tired enough of WoW. But with some very minor changes, and a different engine, this could have been a huge hit. But there's something about the Turbine engine that either you don't mind or it drives you out of your skull. It's a vague lag and sluggishness that I would liken to the difference between driving a sportscar and a big old boat. It lacks fahrfegnugen :) (Which is sad because obviously the engine is capable of some really beautiful stuff.)

That and the long chain quests requiring a group with no real way to form groups.

But even with those, I don't know the sub numbers, and from the number of servers they can't be all that. But I'm shocked that it didn't do better than it did. If it was released a year later I think it would have had a far different trajectory.

There's no single "F13 demographic" to design an MMO for, any more than "MMO" is an accurate umbrella term for everything from GW to SL :-). Some people want to be first in an MMO and then bolt at the first sign of success, because it's no longer cool and unique. Some people want mass success so they can validate their own choices. Some people want a hugely immersive game they can play in uninterupted five hour stretches. Others bitch when they can level every half hour.

Back on topic: the 800k box sales proves there's a market of people chomping at the bit for a competent WoW-like game that isn't WoW. The post-launch cliff-dive proves nobody has delivered it yet.

We are mostly here because we are interested in the subject matter and like to be around (relatively  :oh_i_see:) intelligent discussion of it. I don't believe there is a core F13 playstyle  at all.

If Blizzard just redid WoW with updated graphics and the ability to level with PvP effectively they would knock it dead. 

I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't something they are making right now.  But not DIKU.

It sounds good but, I mean, are they really going to knock it MORE dead than just making more WoW expansions? I'm one of those "perfect storm" people that thinks WoW's success is as much a part of its pop culture status as it is of being a great game.  I mean, it would still likely be the most successful MMO even if it had never "caught on," but the numbers they have are just so far past the rest for the market they are aiming for that I don't think you could assume that many subscribers for the exact same thing, even done better, today.  They might possibly be able to do it through using WoW to gain the attention they need for something new, but I just don't see them making another game with similar results, even if thegame is "better."

WoW's numbers, at least in the west, are inflated. Their hasn't been a competent (as in not stuck between the time period of Daoc and EQ2) mainstream mmo released at all since Wow. WoW has no competition and hence it is the king of the hill. WoW has no competition and hence it is competing with itself.

Lord of the Rings Online was competent. I'm probably one of the harshest critics of the game on f13. But it was a complete game without major flaws other than squishy imprecise movement and poor ability to find groups. (The latter a sin that WoW reveled in for years and seems to want to return to.)

I said this elsewhere, but I think Cataclysm is WoW-2. Remake the world to the point of it being a new world, move a bunch of mechanics around. But keep their subscribers.

Yes, but the real question is not what 4.0 will be but what they plan for 4.x ... if there is rebirth and innovation, that is where we will see it.

and released it on consoles.  :awesome_for_real:

That.

Plus, I thought there was a plan to add PvP XP at one point earlier this year? This was one of those things I said back during the beta of WAR. XP from PvP is a great idea if done right. But that alone would more likely mean Blizzard would steal it than it would be the major success factor of WAR :-)

Yes, they added Xp in the battlegrounds.  The problem is it's still much, much quicker to quest or mob grind.  Particularly with the 2 heirloom items that give 10% bonuses to all xp gains.  To get decent Xp in a battleground you have to be constantly churning kills, capping objectives and winning the match.  If none of those three things happen, you're better off doing the same ol' same ol'.

I don't think there is an "F13 playstyle" necessarily, but the tendencies here are definitely more towards PvP than PvE.

Personally I think slower leveling is appropriate for pvp xp, especially in a tiered system like they have.

They've got all those tiered gear rewards to unlock, which takes some time, and you want to be able to stay at level x9 long enough to feel like the top dog for a little while before you get pushed into the next tier as a scrub again.

This is coming from someone who parked all his characters at 19 and 29 for months at a time, so maybe I'm just crazy. but then again maybe that's a representative attitude from the kind of people who play WoW as primarily a PvP game.

[edit:capitalized]

(http://www.instruction.greenriver.edu/avery/activities/tech/images/Shift_Key.jpg)

He's too busy rockin' the sure shot. 

MY APOLOGIES GOOD SIRS FOR MY NEGLECT OF PROPER INTERNET FORMATTING. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN

Ever been driving along and just see a massive accident developing in front of you?

Quit being a douchebag and type like a grown-up, you fucking retard. Seriously, first you type like some kind of idiot, and then you have to be a giant prick about it? Fuck you.

Wow, take a joke man. I was hoping we could just discuss videogames.

Actually yes I have, on the highway though. Funny, it happened really slow at first, and then I remember looking back at the auto-carnage - all of which took 5-7 seconds to drive through.

And oh yeah, Aion... I have my month of fun, did well for that month for me, but that's gone now.

When in Rome...

I'm amazed he managed to capitalize his own name, since his keyboard has only Caps Lock.

Yeah, typing that way can get tedious.

It's that kind of place. Eat shit you passive-aggressive assbucket.

 :popcorn:

Ah, that new guy smell.

Is anyone up for the "embarrass a developer" game? It's been a while since Vajuras guy.

I just want to mug Xuri for his popcorn.  I'm all out.

Here you go: http://mikedarga.blogspot.com/

I'm not embarassed, I'm just in the bad habit of using proper capitalization on forums or other places where I'm in a hurry.

If that's a dealbreaker for you guys (and i guess it is), I'll happily go back to lurking.

[edit:capitalized]

And yeah i realize that guy was mad about the smartass response moreso than the lack of caps.

Based on all the threads i've read here in the past, I was hardly expecting a little sarcasm to make people so upset.

I just wanna discuss game design. In lowercase if at all possible /shrug

[edit:capitalized]

It's not. Many of the folks at the company you work at can tell you it's not. I think you even have a few ex-f13 staff there that would hit you with their shoes if you did.

Ok, then I apologize.  If it's a forum rule I'll respect it. It just seemed more likely that was people hassling the guy with the low post count for fun.

Look at all this sweet publicity I'm getting!  :ye_gods: You guys should come read my blog and insult me in the comments section.

ANYhow:

Personally I think WoW's slower PvP xp rate is appropriate, especially in a tiered system like they have.

They've got all those tiered gear rewards to unlock, which takes some time, and you want to be able to stay at level x9 long enough to feel like the top dog for a little while before you get pushed into the next tier as a scrub again.

This is coming from someone who parked all his characters at 19 and 29 for months at a time, so I'm hardly the typical player, but I'd guess it's a representative attitude from the kind of person who plays WoW primarily as a PvP game.

I think I'm glad that I'm not in the gaming industry :oh_i_see:

Wish he would have lashed out to be honest, there is some funny to be had.

Back in your cage, damnit. :grin:

 :sad_panda:

I dunno if it's a formal rule so much as it's just something you'll get shanked in the shower with a filed-down toothbrush for doing around here. There's a whole list of things like that, and nobody knows what they are until they do one of them. Now that you're capitalizing like a proper literate human, we can be pals.

I think the word you're looking for is "hazing"  :wink:

If a game is billed as a PvP diku, then it needs to have leveling up from PvP. And it needs to be at least on par with the pace of PvE XP. For two reasons:

• You billed the game as PvP diku. If you force people to PvE to level up, you'll lose peoples' interest.
• PvP diku is best when the levels don't matter in the equation. Therefore, even if meta guilds cheat their way to max level, who cares It's about the objectives, not just the circlejerk deathmatch.

WAR got this part right imho. WoW should have just ripped the whole thing off instead of tip-toeing as they have.

If I were to redo WAR with Tiers, there would be no levels.  But a series of quests and achievements needed to unlock the next tier.  DIKU PVP games really shouldn't have levels.  Or if they do, they should be very very easy to get.

MMo developer: "Hey I have a great idea! Lets make sure players aren't competitive from day one! Our retention rate will be through the roof!."
Player: "So how long till steam finish loading TF2?"

Oxymoron? not sure...

DIKU's don't necessarily need levels, they need numbers.  There are some old DIKU Muds, that I played, that were free of levels but your power level was based on your proficiency of skill X and Y.

You ran around farming loot and chasing people and killing them.

There was another subset of MUDs that were PVP based off of Owen Emlen's code.  MPV, MPV2, LOC, ROP and a myriad of others that I've forgotten.  I played these the most.

Levels were incredibly easy to get.
You hit max level you remorted to do it all over again.  You got 5 skill points and a boost in hps.
Gear was power.  Skills were limited.
Full loot pvp.
You could "tackle" someone and then their gear was useless.  More stats allowed you to escape or avoid tackling.  But an uber guy could get tackled, then get beat on by 1 or 2 other people and lose pretty easily if he was unlucky.

It had an interesting skill system.  No classes.  Each race has X skill slots and Y skill slots and you could pick any skill you want as long as you had the prereq's.  So if you picked a class that had balanced skill/spells you could be a pretty balanced character, and be tough.  Heal/Buff/DPS.  There were extremes too obviously that worked well.

If I had money this is the game I would make.  It works real well in small scale worlds.

Which brings up another interesting point.  Instead of having a large world and 1000's of people being able to access that server, how about having smaller worlds with a more limited playerbase to increase "community" recognition?

It would appear that "levels" is more of an RPG phenomenon than an MMO phenomenon.  Most MMOs are of the RPG variety, but even the ones that aren't traditional have some form of "leveling", e.g. Eve.  If you don't have levels then the game is basically just an FPS:  run around until you find the napalm launcher. 

APB.  We'll have to see how it works, since I think you will be able to change areas, but it should help foster this smaller community feeling.

This is one of the reasons I really liked Neverwinter Nights persistent world communities. 

Except now your FPSes have levels too. :wink:

I remember this one time saying that games should make levelling undesirable, for some reason or another. People were like, "Oh don't be silly, that's impossible!" I think that was before DAOC, and now WOW has perfected it.

And MikeD, I would never have read your blog if you didn't be all lower-case-man. Yay you!

So that's win for everyone, right?  There haven't been too many FPSs lately that have multiplayer that seem desirable.  Do they really have levels?

I miss Blood.

Now that we're all good, I've tagged you. Sorry, comes with the territory, it helps keep you (and, to a lesser degree, us) from... making a regrettable mistake.

Haha fair enough. I like accountability or I wouldn't blog under my real name, but I'd best just go back to lurking if my employer's name is going to be emblazoned across my every post.

I'm pretty sure every human in every forum everywhere would eventually get fired under those circumstances  :awesome_for_real:

You've said twice that you lurked, but uhhhhhh, it strikes me that you haven't done much lurking if you haven't seen a pile of people with their company as a custom title. But you'd also know about proper grammar, capitalization, etc. >_> Basically, it's just a reminder to not be a moron. Letting developers roam free here would be counterproductive and frankly, they're posting on a gaming forum and work in the gaming industry - it's a serious accountability issue. I hate having to remind people they always represent the company they work for in real life and it bothers me even more on the internet.

Yep, I think it's pretty safe to say I fail at the internet this week and should just mind my own business.

Sorry to derail an interesting conversation.

Blood was so so so awesome.

Anyway, levels will be patched in and hardcoded to Real Life pretty soon. Which will become more DIKU and less sandboxy. It's already happening.
Games without levels will be soon considered blasphemy, or clownshoes, or both.

MMm.. RL Caste system.

"Goddamnit why wasn't I born an engineer caste!"

I'm no expert of FPSes, so I'm really only going by the CoD and newer Battlefield games (and of course TF2). But CoD4, 5, and 6 all have persistent levels and abilities. You gain levels by XP and levels unlock a new set of abilities (weapons and attachments) you can skill up in. And when you skill up an ability, you gain XP at milestones. The levels/abilities carry with you between multiplayer matches.

And yea, I consider it a win for everyone. Not that it makes people better at FPS games. But it's the kind personal measure of achievement that makes games more inclusive than just for those who fall into clans.

I don't particularly care for FPS online play.  My primary multiplayer experience was when we used to have LAN parties with blood.  I'll never forget listening to people curse when they got napalmed or flamed up with the spray paint can. 

"It burns, it burns!!!!!"  Ah, reminiscing is fun.

Coincidentally, I only really started online FPS when they added levels. Building characters is something I'm used to, and CoD4 felt like an actual alternative to WoW.

Nothing like almost a decade of grind conditioning to be ready for when the rest of the games started adopting grind mechanics  :grin:

marketing wonk or CS?  how long will it take?

True, but I thought in APB you could switch servers whenever you start a new game?  I'm talking about permanent server choices where each server is incredibly small.  Not sure how much extra this would cost to run.

F13 made me better at typing. Not even joking.