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Author Topic: The Elder Scrolls Online  (Read 755857 times)
Margalis
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Reply #945 on: December 03, 2012, 08:51:21 PM

It has to evolve though. That much is certain. People having tried to piggyback off the current iteration of WoW and failed.

This. The world only needs one WoW. Or maybe an eventual sequel/refresh from Blizzard. Every WoW clone has underperformed.

MMOs are largely about fostering a large community where community size itself becomes a strength of the game. The market can't support 10 games that are all basically the same. One will get the players and snowball, the rest will wither and die.

The fact that a Star Wars WoW-clone still cratered should be the final nail in the coffin to the "let's clone WoW!" thinking.

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rk47
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Reply #946 on: December 03, 2012, 10:50:32 PM

Goddamn, I love the ferocity of WoW bashing and defense.



Well done, chaps. Keep it up. The future of MMO is bright indeed.

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eldaec
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Reply #947 on: December 03, 2012, 11:27:01 PM

One thing people tend to overlook about wow subs is that the vast majority of them are in Asia.

SWTOR and others get seen as a failure at a million western subs but had unrealistic expectations to start with when wow only built 2 million western subs over years.

Asia seems like a marketing afterthought in most games, yet that is where the subs are.

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apocrypha
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Reply #948 on: December 04, 2012, 12:49:21 AM

One thing people tend to overlook about wow subs is that the vast majority of them are in Asia.

SWTOR and others get seen as a failure at a million western subs but had unrealistic expectations to start with when wow only built 2 million western subs over years.

Asia seems like a marketing afterthought in most games, yet that is where the subs are.

More like 5+ million WoW subs in the west, not 2.

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Draegan
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Reply #949 on: December 04, 2012, 08:07:25 AM

I think it peaked at 6.5m, but I can't be assed to look for a source.
Falconeer
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Reply #950 on: December 05, 2012, 04:21:54 AM

Ok, I have something (I think) new for you all. It's called Forge, it's a little indie product that just got greenlit on Steam after failing to make their Kickstarter goal. It's a PvP arena-only game, pretty much a MMORPG without the world and without PvE, with a combat system that is definitely hotbar-based but absolutely focused on action, positioning and reflexes (active block, jumping on walls, aiming, no auto attack). Granted, since it's PvP only we don't know how dumb or exciting could it be in a PvE context, but since it draws so much from the usual MMORPG combat formula while enhancing it with more action, I think it shows a bit better the direction MMO combat might easily evolve into at this point.

Here's a video, and here's the website.

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Reply #951 on: December 05, 2012, 04:34:24 AM

Hmm, I remember Forge, it was started by some WOW arena gladiators / enthusiasts iirc.

I wonder what they can provide that (f'rex) Bloodline Champions doesn't, though...

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Reply #952 on: December 05, 2012, 05:09:06 AM

My memory could be bad here, but isn't Bloodline Champions point-and-click? If the answer is yes that makes all the difference in the world, since we are talking about viable forms of combat for future MMORPGs, not just arena pvp games, and I showed Forge just because the combat is clearly inspired by the WoW-formula but with twitch added. Bloodline Champions is inspired by Warcraft/MOBAs.

(EDIT: If anything, Forge is the new attempt at what that other game tried to do a few years ago but failed horribly. Can't remember the name, help me here. Low budget, arena pvp only. Risk? Rift? Rage? Rank? Dammit, I'm getting worse...)
« Last Edit: December 05, 2012, 05:11:29 AM by Falconeer »

Merusk
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Reply #953 on: December 05, 2012, 05:13:28 AM

, but since it draws so much from the usual MMORPG combat formula while enhancing it with more action,

No it doesn't.   It's a fantasy shooter. They even call it that themselves.

Quote
Forge is a class based multiplayer shooter set...

It looks like the game KallDrexx worked on whose name escapes me.  That game *was* fun but was in no way your traditional MMO combat formula.  These games are taking GW and adding shooter elements to them, which is a different approach.  There's also no character development.

You basically just said Hexxen was a precursor to EQ because both have spells!

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Zetor
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Reply #954 on: December 05, 2012, 05:29:23 AM

, but since it draws so much from the usual MMORPG combat formula while enhancing it with more action,

No it doesn't.   It's a fantasy shooter. They even call it that themselves.

Quote
Forge is a class based multiplayer shooter set...

It looks like the game KallDrexx worked on whose name escapes me.  That game *was* fun but was in no way your traditional MMO combat formula.  These games are taking GW and adding shooter elements to them, which is a different approach.  There's also no character development.

You basically just said Hexxen was a precursor to EQ because both have spells!
Fury, IIRC. And yes, both games seem heavy into the arena-based e-sport thing.

Falconeer
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Reply #955 on: December 05, 2012, 05:34:09 AM

, but since it draws so much from the usual MMORPG combat formula while enhancing it with more action,

No it doesn't.   It's a fantasy shooter. They even call it that themselves.

Quote
Forge is a class based multiplayer shooter set...

It looks like the game KallDrexx worked on whose name escapes me.  That game *was* fun but was in no way your traditional MMO combat formula.  These games are taking GW and adding shooter elements to them, which is a different approach.  There's also no character development.

You basically just said Hexxen was a precursor to EQ because both have spells!

I play Forge. I know what I am talking about. Labels and press names don't mean anything. Especially in a time where everyone is trying to cater to the biggest audience possible. This game is trying to appeal to those pvp-oriented MMORPG players who could use a less miserable combat. I am not surprised, as Zetor says, that this game is being made by some ex-WoW player.

The combat is, to put it simple, WoW (or any other hotbar/cooldown based MMORPG) with lots more twitch. Or simply a faster Tera, which is by no means a shooter and just an evolution of the hotbar formula as everyone kind of agreed on in the last ten pages or so. Hell, even your main spammable free attack here has a hotbar icon and 1 second Global Cooldown. Shooter much?

Thanks for trying, Merusk.


Fake Edit: Fury! Thanks, Zetor.

KallDrexx
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Reply #956 on: December 05, 2012, 06:06:01 AM

I still think that a game like Fury and this does actually have a chance at success, but it requires a *lot* design that has to be extremely well thought out.  That involves not punching newbies in the dick so they actually can understand what's going on in a way that and also providing some form of attachment for players to make them actually want to log in and play.  It also has to make it so a bad game or idiots on your team doesn't make it an extremely boring experience.

Haven't played forge yet (although I think I signed up for a key a long time ago) but judging from the video, while the video is flashy and all I really think it violates my first point (and this was one huge issue I kept bringing up at fury design meetings).  If the game is too fast paced it's too hard to figure out why the hell you just died or what you could have done in that situation better.  The fact that it brags that it's "the fastest combat out there" makes me apprehensive of it being newbie friendly.

Of course, the problem with slower paced games is you get into instances like GW1 guild vs guild where you have 30 minute matches of attrition.

Fast paced works well with FPS because it's pretty simple, if you died it's because you were somewhere you shouldn't have and got shot.  That's not a game with a hotbar ability based game.  Getting a game like this t owork well in the long run is harder than most realize.
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Reply #957 on: December 05, 2012, 06:46:10 AM



Limiting abilities is the first step.  It makes the game much simpler to balance because you don't have untested combos that internal conversations handwave as "that'll never work" and a few hundred thousand players punching keys proves them wrong in a day.

It also has the advantage of being easier to learn since you don't have to memorize (or develop) a counter for X classes * y abilities.

They appear to have done that where Fury failed.  I'm with you on the pace, though.  Feedback is important if you're going to make it so damn quick.  TF2 does this with replays of your deaths, a game like this needs that with what abilities were hitting you flashing in your face if they're relying on HPs instead of FPS hitzones.
 
And that's where the breakdown is for me.  The method of the kill determination.  Even FPS have hotbars in the way you guys keep hammering on it as "psuh butan do damege1".   If you're wearing-down a HP bar instead of "boom headshot" then yeah, it's more MMO-like combat.

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Draegan
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Reply #958 on: December 05, 2012, 07:06:11 AM

I like to twitch, and limited abilities, but I also prefer something slower paced as well.  I hate having to measure success by my APM.
Falconeer
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Reply #959 on: December 05, 2012, 07:41:34 AM

Forge at the moment is definitely "too fast" and with not enough feedback on incoming damage. At least, in an fps way, it shows you the direction damage is coming from, but it's definitely not enough.

Then again, I'd like to see this in a PvE situatiion, although mobs' behaviour plays a big part in the amount of twitch you are gonna get out of any given combat system. The two things have to evolve together, or it keeps being pointless outside of PvP.

El Gallo
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Reply #960 on: December 05, 2012, 07:48:30 PM

The fact that a Star Wars WoW-clone still cratered should be the final nail in the coffin to the "let's clone WoW!" thinking.

SWTOR was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much worse than WoW in almost every respect that I have trouble accepting that conclusion.  If that game had even been in the same universe as WoW in most respects, the addition of companions and increased focus on story would have been a nice iteration of WoW.

It's entirely possible that nobody except Blizzard has the money/talent to do pull it off, but I don't think the market is unwilling to buy it.

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Venkman
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Reply #961 on: December 05, 2012, 08:14:17 PM

SWTOR was the nail in the coffin after 8 years of let's-clone-WoW thinking, not the first nor only example. As was said earlier, the world only needs one WoW. Like the world only needs one Facebook or one Twitter, until something new comes along because the kids think those three things are only for "adults" (like Starbucks, or iPhones).

And just like all five of those examples, every competitor since 2005 has looked at WoW, identified the one or two things they think they can do better, and pinned the entire hope of their game on outdoing those two things, or at least carving a significant chunk of players away. But they all, to a game, did not hit huge numbers because Blizzard had a holistic set of advantages nobody else could match.

But that was recent Blizzard, not current Blizzard (and not even all the same Blizzard wink). WoW is only going to continue to decline, who the heck knows if Titan will ever ship, and even if it does, given how D3 and SC2 went, will Titan truly be something brand new, or just an up'res'd WoW (don't care what they're saying, just care what they'll do).

If MMOs are going to still be The Thing To Do(tm), then I say it's anyone's game right now.

The future for mainstream MMO's will involve trying to drag in the short attention span button mashers from the console generation.

If there's a future for "mainstream" MMOs, my guess is it'll evolve off of social networking games. Many are getting there already, just not in the way we're used to doing things in MMOs competitively or cooperatively. There's tens of millions of new gamers these days who don't call themselves gamers but who'll put in as much time and money on Farmville 2 or Cityville 2 as we would on GW2.

At the same time, consoles are having issues. Packaged media is declining and digital is not offsetting it revenue-wise. We'll be seeing steadily leaner games coming that try to appeal to a wider audience than us, who continue to age and bring the "average age of a gamer" with us. That's not sustainable and the industry knows it. Today's kids and "no I'm not a gamer"s are ditching consoles and PCs for tablets and smartphones. They'll play the big annualized titles, maybe.

GW2 is a good example of a current MMO for the short attention span theater crowd. Very mashy smiley
Threash
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Reply #962 on: December 06, 2012, 11:51:31 AM

I think a much fairer comparison is Rift, which as far as i know is doing "decent".  Swtor was a single player game hammered into an MMO mold, people finished the game and quit playing like they do with any other game.

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eldaec
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Reply #963 on: December 06, 2012, 04:29:54 PM

Swtor's single player thing doesn't really apply the way it used too.

The main questing 1-50 line is better production values for the same process in wow, then an archetypal group raiding game starts. You can't solo much past 50.

And the dungeon finder & pvp systems means you can group 1-50 if you want.


The mechanics have always been built for multiplayer. Player abilities suffer from the same over simple player design that we talked about earlier and which you'd never get away with in a single player game.

On the plus side this is the only MMOG I've played where sheer production values can keep me interested for a stretch.

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El Gallo
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Reply #964 on: December 06, 2012, 08:23:12 PM

Edit: derail deleted

This post makes me want to squeeze into my badass red jeans.
eldaec
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Reply #965 on: December 07, 2012, 05:01:49 AM

Edit: derail deleted

It's been 8 pages since anyone made a post about ESO. That ship has sailed.

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Reply #966 on: December 07, 2012, 05:28:35 AM

It would be great if we had anything new to talk about around Elder Scrolls Online. Sadly, even the fluff slowed down again. Which is not an open invitation to Blackwulf to come back and artificially create some out of nothing.

Threash
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Reply #967 on: December 07, 2012, 12:54:20 PM

Swtor's single player thing doesn't really apply the way it used too.

The main questing 1-50 line is better production values for the same process in wow, then an archetypal group raiding game starts. You can't solo much past 50.

And the dungeon finder & pvp systems means you can group 1-50 if you want.


The mechanics have always been built for multiplayer. Player abilities suffer from the same over simple player design that we talked about earlier and which you'd never get away with in a single player game.

On the plus side this is the only MMOG I've played where sheer production values can keep me interested for a stretch.

My point was that Rift is the most faithful WoW clone without any obvious crippling issues like SWTORs ending story and it is doing good. 

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Ingmar
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Reply #968 on: December 07, 2012, 02:10:53 PM

I'm not sure we have ever been given enough information about Rift to draw any conclusions about how well it is doing. They had early server merges just like everyone else, they just somehow managed to fool you people by saying they were 'creating trial servers' out of the retired ones.

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Reply #969 on: December 07, 2012, 02:37:47 PM

My point was that Rift is the most faithful WoW clone without any obvious crippling issues like SWTORs ending story and it is doing good.  

I'm not sure I'd say it is doing "good". They are down to 8 NA servers from the 30+ they started with. Rift is, as far as we can tell, financially successful but you have to keep in mind that it had much lower expectations and requirements to be financially successful compared to other MMOs. It cost an estimated 50 million to make compared to the 200+ of SWTORs (iirc both numbers...), and it is competently built so it seems they've had an easier time adding new content to the game compared to their competition.

It's not a positive indication of the health of the genre, it's an indication that Trion had a good business plan and a smooth development process. The genre is still declining.

Rift has recently announced that the game will be going F2P in Korea and they added a working in-game store to the NA/EU version of the game a few patches back. You can draw your own conclusions about how healthy it actually is.
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Reply #970 on: December 07, 2012, 06:50:51 PM

Have Trion had mass lay-offs?  If no, they're in a much better spot.

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Reply #971 on: December 07, 2012, 07:14:09 PM

The reason that so many of the let's-clone-WoW titles have failed is that they have cloned that game badly. And that even in areas where they made an improvement, it was typically more incremental than incredible.

Trion is, afaik, doing very well for itself. Rift apparently stuck to its budget of US$50m in development and apparently made back US$100m in 10 months post-launch. They've got other projects in the works, so they aren't going to be completely dependent on one source of revenue. (Is Defiance the way to go? I don't think so, but if Hartsman is involved, anything is possible.)

But I agree that the MMO genre is declining. For a lot of investors, MMOs are WoW, and if in 8 years no-one has come close to matching them, then money should be spent elsewhere. Which is why MOBAs are seeing much more love.

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Reply #972 on: December 07, 2012, 07:58:47 PM

We honestly have no idea how well Rift is doing, other than the fact the game hasn't shut down and the company is still in business.

They are privately owned, post no financials, and don't give information on sub numbers. Any attempt to make a judgement on the success of the game is pretty pointless in my mind.

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eldaec
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Reply #973 on: December 08, 2012, 02:17:23 AM

I strongly suspect they went through the same cycle as everyone else. Over a million boxes bought settling down to a few hundred thousand subs.

Only Rift had more sensible expectations than most.

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Reply #974 on: December 08, 2012, 04:14:11 AM

And it's just plain and simply, in its genre, one of the two best games around. Too bad that isn't really rewarded.

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Reply #975 on: December 08, 2012, 08:58:18 AM

Second best is still first loser. Which is a shame, but seems to be the way it works in MMOs.
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Reply #976 on: December 08, 2012, 09:20:10 AM

I'm not betting on this game being good. I think it has a large chance of sucking. I feel bad for some friends that still play wow, they really don't like wow anymore but are intimidated by other choices in the market. They think this will be the next big thing and are planning a mass exodus if/when it ever releases.

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Selby
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Reply #977 on: December 08, 2012, 10:17:20 AM

We honestly have no idea how well Rift is doing, other than the fact the game hasn't shut down and the company is still in business.
My neighbor works for them.  He's been working for them since just after they started.  While he doesn't give any juicy details, the fact that he's still gainfully employed and excited about what he's working on for the next expansion says to me that they as a company are doing fine, even in 2nd place.
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Reply #978 on: December 08, 2012, 11:14:01 AM

Second best is still first loser. Which is a shame, but seems to be the way it works in MMOs.

I'm sorry but that's pure bs.  Beating WoW was never their goal, they are a profitable game that has more than made up for its cost already, that's a winner.

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Merusk
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Reply #979 on: December 08, 2012, 12:09:43 PM

Second best is still first loser. Which is a shame, but seems to be the way it works in MMOs.

I'm sorry but that's pure bs.  Beating WoW was never their goal, they are a profitable game that has more than made up for its cost already, that's a winner.

I believe he meant in terms of conversation and MMO punditry.  If you're not #1 or breathing down their neck, making them sweat, you're not worth discussing.

I still hold the idea that people are intimidated by unique settings. EQ had generic elves and dwarves, WoW had the same.  If we get another generic elf and dwarf fantasy game that takes off, instead of unique environment, I think we'll see what a major portion of the problem is.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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