Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Draegan]

It was a buggy broken piece of crap game that was hardly finished. The game engine was awful. Dungeon design was pretty meh in most places. World was gigantic with a lot of empty space. It was very grindy in certain points. It was also full of hacks and broken abilities and things.

It was not supported very well.

The only things you can take from the game is that the class system/design was probably the best out there and I liked the Offensive and Defensive targets.

[Falconeer]

It was the opposite of polished at the peak of an era where everything that wasn't WoW was just actively ridiculed. As Draegan pointed out (and everything he said is spot on) there were many issues, but at the end of the day the lack of polish couldn't attract anyone but the most die hard EverQuest fans, which were not that many to begin with and were at the time already stretched over EQ1 and EQ2.

[Ingmar]

[snip]
Part of the whole raid mentality is taking up the challenge and proving yourself against that challenge and being in a community that respects that and acknowledges that. [snip]

Question to those advocating for large raids and best gear for largest raids - why wasn't Vanguard successful?  Not a snarky question, just wondering about your take on the failure of Vanguard.  I don't know anything about Vanguard except that it was supposed to be more on the challenging/punishing side of the house.  Vanguard seems like it would have drawn the type of people that Draegen is talking about in that quote.  My impression (from people posting about it here) was that it was a reasonably well designed and implemented game, but it seems like few played it.

Besides what Draegan said, it abandoned a bunch of things that I feel fairly confident that most of the people who want at least some kind of separate raid game with its own content would want. Stuff like instancing, fast travel, and keeping the ball-busting stuff confined to group content. It's kind of useless for the argument because it was such a bad game almost nobody actually got to the raiding content in the first place.

[Typhon]

Thanks all, wasn't trolling, was just curious.

[Pennilenko]

Question to those advocating for large raids and best gear for largest raids - why wasn't Vanguard successful?  Not a snarky question, just wondering about your take on the failure of Vanguard.  I don't know anything about Vanguard except that it was supposed to be more on the challenging/punishing side of the house.  Vanguard seems like it would have drawn the type of people that Draegen is talking about in that quote.  My impression (from people posting about it here) was that it was a reasonably well designed and implemented game, but it seems like few played it.

Vanguard didn't flop because of its difficulty factor. It flopped because it was a bug ridden, duck-taped, sandwich of shoddy programming.

[Margalis]

Often when a game fails people try to draw broad lessons from it about what the audience does or does not want, when the reality is simply that the game just wasn't good.

You see this all the time with sandbox games - a cheap, poorly designed sandbox game fails and that is taken as evidence that people don't want sandbox games.

A classic non-MMO example of this is Mad World for Wii - it didn't do particularly well and was used as evidence that Nintendo gamers didn't want "core" games. Of course, the game was a black and white arena-based brawler that would bomb on any system, and in fact Anarchy Reigns, a similar game by the same company, released later for PS3 and 360 and also bombed.

Before Red Dead Redemption you probably could have argued that gamers don't like the western setting, when the reality was that the few games in that setting were mediocre.

I don't think there are too many high-level concepts in games that flat out don't work. But to make them work you have to make a good game - having a certain concept is like step one of one million.

[Draegan]

I agree with that.

Unfortunately "similar but better" is a hard sale to investors where "different and unique!!" is easier to attract the monies.

[Ghambit]

Selling to investors rather than gamers is the majority of these studios' problem right there.

[Typhon]

I agree also.  As such, I'll be happy that we stop saying, "procedurally created content can't be fun", and start saying, "whoever figures out how to do entertaining procedurally created content in multi-player online games is going to net a lot of money".

[Nebu]

It's all in who can best design the next loot slot machine.  MMO buyers are the crack addicts of the gaming world.  All you have to do is hook them and the money follows.

[Ghambit]

[01101010]

Memories... 

[Sky]

CCG buyers are the crack addicts of the gaming world.  All you have to do is hook them and the money follows.

[Chockonuts]

Often when a game fails people try to draw broad lessons from it about what the audience does or does not want, when the reality is simply that the game just wasn't good.

I know 10,000 rabid and angry CoH players who would like to disagree with you. 

Jokes aside, I like what you wrote about that. Gaming Darwinism often is covered with that nonsensical statement that "every game deserves to be made" that I hear a lot. There are simply too many bad game makers and designers out there that need to be making town traffic-signal software instead.

It's like the NBA/NHL . People always think there should be another team expansioned out because 'we have all this great talent out there' and then the leagues start to suck because they let marginal people who should have been personal trainers after their college careers start playing at a guaranteed minimum salary.

[Venkman]

The evolution of these kinds of games results from those failed attempts as much as the successful ones. For a long while, nobody could outspend SOE, so we saw many ideas tried, some limited successes, SOE stumble on the sequel, and Blizzard take over the world. Then they became unassailable until the whole concept of single huge subs-based MMOs started to get left behind as the easy money chased lower risk opportunities on emerging social and mobile platforms and other core gamer games ripped off the high retention features like scaffolded XP ladders, player pyramids and all the other systems.

All games do deserve to be tried. Otherwise, we're presupposing we already know all the best ways to do something. Which we never do ever nor ever have in the history of anything

tl;dr: we learn by doing.

Unfortunately "similar but better" is a hard sale to investors where "different and unique!!" is easier to attract the monies.

I find this statement curious. Is that a typo? I ask because I've always seen that "similar but better" is what brings the investor money in where "different and unique" is what leaves them in a wait-and-see mode. It depends on the type of investment of course. Self-made millionaire game studio founder funding a new game is very different from the VC investor who normally invests in summer blockbuster projects you happened to sit next to on the flight

[Ginaz]

Unfortunately "similar but better" is a hard sale to investors where "different and unique!!" is easier to attract the monies.

I find this statement curious. Is that a typo? I ask because I've always seen that "similar but better" is what brings the investor money in where "different and unique" is what leaves them in a wait-and-see mode. It depends on the type of investment of course. Self-made millionaire game studio founder funding a new game is very different from the VC investor who normally invests in summer blockbuster projects you happened to sit next to on the flight

You are right.  Its why we see endless sequels within the entertainment industry.  Straying too far off the beaten path scares investors and if they're scared they won't invest.

[Margalis]

It's very hard to do data-driven analysis of the video game industry with regards to things like the appeal of different types of games because there aren't enough data points.

If 100 sandbox MMOs and 100 theme park MMOs released a year and theme parks did better it may be safe to say that theme parks just have more appeal. But when there is between zero and one high-profile sandbox MMOs a year there's not nearly enough data for the issues with any particular game to be irrelevant.

At least for AAA games there just aren't enough games made for data-based analysis of this sort to have meaning.

[Draegan]

Unfortunately "similar but better" is a hard sale to investors where "different and unique!!" is easier to attract the monies.

I find this statement curious. Is that a typo? I ask because I've always seen that "similar but better" is what brings the investor money in where "different and unique" is what leaves them in a wait-and-see mode. It depends on the type of investment of course. Self-made millionaire game studio founder funding a new game is very different from the VC investor who normally invests in summer blockbuster projects you happened to sit next to on the flight

You are right.  Its why we see endless sequels within the entertainment industry.  Straying too far off the beaten path scares investors and if they're scared they won't invest.

You read the context wrong. When the norm is WOW and WOW clones and someone goes off and makes a sandbox game (opposite of WOW) and it fails, it's really hard to say to investors that it failed because of X, Y, Z and I can do it better!

[Venkman]

Ah ok, thanks for clarifying. We're basically saying the same thing.

And while I agree with you Margalis, that is unfortunately how it goes. There's not enough quantitative data to say whether something fundamentally does or does not work. But there are enough high profile high risk largely underperforming games that have launched for people to think they can intuit some type of baseline.

This is always the push/pull between analytics and business decision making. Some people make very metrics--based decisions. But most times, businesses can't just rely on the numbers because the numbers can only tell you what HAS happened, not what could possibly. For example, as much as Zynga has been said to use huge arrays of measurements to tweak everything from monetization through game mechanic, they've had to take a wide array of risks to expand their business beyond the *ville type mechanic, when that mechanic plateaued across the social space and jumped to mobile.

And so it goes with businesses. There's metrics, but that gets combined with intuition, politics and ego

[luckton]

Pricing model released.  Going the EVE "it's still 1999, but you can BST game-time" approach.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/632/feature/7690/WildStar-Revenue-Model-Revealed.html

Not sure if I'll still pick this up now.  Will have to see how Hex pans out.

[Nebu]

So basically you buy the box, learn to exploit a broken economy/system, and then play-for-free until you get bored.  Got it.

[Kageru]

Eve mostly does that to pad it's activity numbers even with the lack of content, I suspect this one will be tuned much meaner. The fact that PLEX are much more expensive will make them rarer in game for a start.

No surprise really. When they started talking about a raiding game it was pretty obvious they reckon they have a chance at being WoW's replacement. And they'll need money for the content stream to back that up.

[amiable]

 it was pretty obvious they reckon they have a chance at being WoW's replacement.

This is going to end poorly for them.

[luckton]

I think the market for WoW in Space (or at least a sci-fi version of WoW) is still there.  It may not be as cantankerous as it was when WoW truly peaked, but it's there.  A lot of the systems and mechanics they're throwing in do make it very lucrative as well.  Still, the market has a thirst for F2P and Buy Once games that are of A to AA quality now, unlike how they were when WoW, again, was at it's peak.

The sooner they drop the NDA and start showing real confidence in their product, the better.

[angry.bob]

2013
Pay $60 for a subscription based game, $15 a month
No microtransactions
No free to download
No free to play

Ahahahahahaha. Yeah. Add in raid exclusive content and this game can fuck itself right in the ass regardless of how great the faction and housing trailers looked. If they stick with this, they're probably going to be cancelled  inside of two years.

[apocrypha]

It'll be F2P within 6 months of launch is my prediction.

[Ginaz]

It'll be F2P within 6 months of launch is my prediction.

Going out on a limb are we?

[Nebu]

It'll be F2P within 6 months of launch is my prediction.

Don't forget that it will also be $7.99 on Amazon or Steam.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, not too thrilled about a $60 entrance fee, then a subscription on top of that, no matter how many in-game things let me shortcut that sub price. If I don't get in beta and see whether this game is worth it or not, I won't be buying this at release. Consider my interest... cooled.

[Lakov_Sanite]

If you think F2P as a model is going to last the next five years you are crazy.

[Nebu]

If you think F2P as a model is going to last the next five years you are crazy.

I hope you're right.  I personally loathe the F2P model.  I'd much rather pay for a boutique of services than get nickeled and dimed to death.

[Malakili]

If you think F2P as a model is going to last the next five years you are crazy.

I hope you're right.  I personally loathe the F2P model.  I'd much rather pay for a boutique of services than get nickeled and dimed to death.

I agree.  I was hoping this would be a sub game, although I thought the chances were small.  I much prefer being able to just pay the 15 bucks and then play the game on my own terms for a month.

[Mrbloodworth]

If you think F2P as a model is going to last the next five years you are crazy.

I think your wrong. For the record.

[Rasix]

If we're going to record this for posterity, fix the spelling.

I'm not sure sub/ftp changes my equation for playing this.  I'll probably buy it, maybe make it past the first month, get bored/frustrated with solo play because I'm a hermit, and then quit.

[Shatter]

F2P was so pre-2013, this game is 2014 now so sub model is back in bitches!