Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online

[Mrbloodworth]

What was unexpected or bad in that info? Its mostly what I thought it would be. I am glad its a shooter, cover is also cool, I like tanks, match sizes and instances are expected. Only thing that gives me pause is RPG gear in a shooter, but there is like, zero info about that yet.

You also thought APB was amazing.  At first.

I found it highly enjoyable, and the tech impressive, I thought perhaps it was the best compromise for this very topic (between player numbers and features, and the use of instances) I was highly disappointed when the postmortem was canceled at the conference.

Anyway I never expected for this title to test boundaries.

[Sky]

What part of the "WH40K look-n-feel and ruleset + Planetside = Awesome" is so hard to understand? Three factions, real-time twitch combat, massive battles. The tech was good enough to retain interest beyond the neckbeardy ww2ol folks, at least until the incompetent devs torpedoed the game (PS).

[Typhon]

WoW killed the word "Battlegrounds", WAR came along and defiled the corpse, Serbian PVP sounds fucking awesome and I really don't care that's it's a Babel fish invention.

DAOC called their small "training-wheels" RvR instanced-zones "Battlegrounds" before WoW even existed.  So technically DOAC is the murderer, WoW is the corpse fucker and... well, yeah.  Carry on!

[Arthur_Parker]

I didn't mind the DAoC ones.

[Mrbloodworth]

What part of the "WH40K look-n-feel and ruleset + Planetside = Awesome" is so hard to understand? Three factions, real-time twitch combat, massive battles. The tech was good enough to retain interest beyond the neckbeardy ww2ol folks, at least until the incompetent devs torpedoed the game (PS).

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Maybe even 60, just on principle.

[Ingmar]

I didn't mind the DAoC ones.

Seriously? 40 Albs PK camping 10 Hibs while 5 Mids would occasionally try to pick off some stragglers was better than maps with real objectives and forced team size balance?

I don't understand nostalgia sometimes.

[Threash]

I don't understand the hate for battlegrounds either, to me if you are not fighting equal opposition who's ready to fight back you aren't pvping.

[ashrik]

Eh, there's only 3 letters in pvp so I'm not sure which letter stands for Fair Symmetrical Fights, but who am I to say what is pvp'ing and what isn't?

To me, battlegrounds were always about leveling the entire pvp experience. Which was nice for the people who found themselves on the losing side of world PVP. Take out the lows, but also the highs.

[Ghambit]

The main problem with PvP in 40k is exactly that, PvP... as in PLAYER vs PLAYER.  There's a severe lack of overarching tactics, teamplay, and strategic choice when you talk about making a simple pvp-centric game.  What the masses want is war; bloody, complex, war.  Not a skirmish-grind.

Back to the chokepoint/64-cap/ww2o discussion.  If you design your game with the proper balance and features, you'll rarely come up against the cap.  And even when you do, it wouldnt alter the game noticeably.  Stretch a galactic battlefront across 2-3 factions (wherein each 'zone' is in fact a capturable planet with space lanes between), inject Space Hulk warfare, space battles, air battles, infantry, spec-ops, engineering, armour, guns, mechs, HQ level strat., and on and on... then inject an RDP, supply line, and modified 'ticket' system along with overarching HQ and I GUARANTEE you you'll rarely run up against a noticeable network problem.

Also, I disagree with the statement 'players go where the action is.'  This is in some ways true, but a properly designed game gives the player at least the option of doing what matters most to WIN rather than simply going where there's lots of people.  Especially when there are elements of control involved such as a rank structure, etc.
And lots of people != fun many times.

[Malakili]

I don't understand the hate for battlegrounds either, to me if you are not fighting equal opposition who's ready to fight back you aren't pvping.

Bottom line, in a competitive PvP came, I agree with you.  In an MMO that is hypothetically a more living/dynamic/whatever world, I want it to be far more open ended.  Planetside and WW2O are good examples of this in my opinion.  I like Starcraft, Quake 1v1, TF2 6v6, whatever, but to me thats an entirely different experience than I want out of an MMO, otherwise, why make a big game in the first place?  Just set up a normal team based shooter and release it.

[Arthur_Parker]

I didn't mind the DAoC ones.

Seriously? 40 Albs PK camping 10 Hibs while 5 Mids would occasionally try to pick off some stragglers was better than maps with real objectives and forced team size balance?

I don't understand nostalgia sometimes.

Euro playing on US servers, so barely anyone in them.  Besides in context of time, they were brought in because people were complaining they had to max level before going rvr, limited to that objective they worked well enough to be later copied by other games.

[eldaec]

Fuck, how did this WAR development thread get here?

[UnSub]

Another stab at the 2-sided PvP heavy MMO sorta-RPG sorta-FPS? Good luck with that.

[UnSub]

THQ spending about US$50m on developing W40K:DM

It's a sad state for the industry that the $50m - $60m price range is about the median cost of getting a AAA MMO developed. That's way too much for most titles to 1) attract enough players in such a competitive space and 2) do anything but go into maintenance mode if it isn't an immediate hit.

[Hawkbit]

It's all about taking the lessons learned by other developers and iterations, and learning from it!   

[Murgos]

THQ spending about US$50m on developing W40K:DM

It's a sad state for the industry that the $50m - $60m price range is about the median cost of getting a AAA MMO developed. That's way too much for most titles to 1) attract enough players in such a competitive space and 2) do anything but go into maintenance mode if it isn't an immediate hit.

And yet, it's less than half of what current reports are for AAA non-MMO titiles.  Things like Assassins Creed 2 are reported to have 100 million (200 million according to some places) plus budgets.

This tells me that if you're thinking you can get a budget MMO out the door for 50-60 million you are pretty much just cranking out dross, last generations tech, little to no innovation and etc...

[Mrbloodworth]

Minecrafts "tech" is like, 4 gens ago. Just saying. Most MMOs do not use bleeding edge what so ever.

[UnSub]

THQ spending about US$50m on developing W40K:DM

It's a sad state for the industry that the $50m - $60m price range is about the median cost of getting a AAA MMO developed. That's way too much for most titles to 1) attract enough players in such a competitive space and 2) do anything but go into maintenance mode if it isn't an immediate hit.

And yet, it's less than half of what current reports are for AAA non-MMO titiles.  Things like Assassins Creed 2 are reported to have 100 million (200 million according to some places) plus budgets.

This tells me that if you're thinking you can get a budget MMO out the door for 50-60 million you are pretty much just cranking out dross, last generations tech, little to no innovation and etc...

Links at 10 paces, then?

Assassin's Creed 2 cost US$24m to develop.

Average game development cost is around US$28m although it may have risen a bit since the start of 2010.

Assassin's Creed 2 was also a franchise title in exactly the same vein as its predecessor and launched on numerous platforms, which helps make its budget more reasonable. W40K:DM is based on a franchise, but is an entirely new type of game for that franchise and (to my knowledge) is only launching on one platform, the PC.

DCUO cost over US$50m for its development and appears to have sold (about two months post launch) something like 700k copies over the PC and PS3 platforms. Retention rates aren't expected to be great, plus then there is the issue of continuing development costs to keep the content rolling out.

If MMO studios actually need $50m - $60m just to roll out a decent MMO, then the entire industry is fucked. WoW cost that much during development (and was an extreme outlier then) but Blizzard realised they'd need to get something like 1m players subscribing for a year to earn that money back. Most titles today struggle to hold onto sub numbers less than a fifth of that.

[Mrbloodworth]

Not sure comparing a single player game to one that needs a huge back end is viable.

[Sheepherder]

Okay, so you can't compare single and multiplayer game development budgets and World of Warcraft doesn't exist.  Got it.

[Mrbloodworth]

Okay, so you can't compare single and multiplayer game development budgets and World of Warcraft doesn't exist.  Got it.

At the very least, art budgets have increased do to the increased complexity of modem rendering features, and no, the "massive" part puts a great deal of extra resources to use in infrastructure and all that goes with it. Its quite more complicated that simple server hosting for multiplayer.

[Lantyssa]

Not sure comparing a single player game to one that needs a huge back end is viable.

If you are talking profitability they are.

Why spend more money to make and support a game that sells fewer boxes and whose subs cannot make back the initial investment?  Long term profits versus short term is an acceptable decision to make, but turning a profit is key.

[Ghambit]

Okay, so you can't compare single and multiplayer game development budgets and World of Warcraft doesn't exist.  Got it.

At the very least, art budgets have increased do to the increased complexity of modem rendering features, and no, the "massive" part puts a great deal of extra resources to use in infrastructure and all that goes with it. Its quite more complicated that simple server hosting for multiplayer.

I think this is false.  Art budgets have DECREASED and AC1&2 are testaments to that.  It's all in the tools, which is why Assassin's Creed was pumped out so fast at such a high quality (they used the best, quickest tools to get the job done).

These days if your art budget is bloated that typically means your design doc includes parameters to give your staff "job security."  You do a lot of shit completely by hand (from concept to rendering), dont buy external assets, no mocap, etc.  The same can be said of the engines underlying the game. 

[Margalis]

I think this is false.  Art budgets have DECREASED and AC1&2 are testaments to that.  It's all in the tools, which is why Assassin's Creed was pumped out so fast at such a high quality (they used the best, quickest tools to get the job done).

Decreased relative to what? Compared to the previous hardware gen art budgets have skyrocketed.

[Mrbloodworth]

I think this is false.  Art budgets have DECREASED

[Sheepherder]

Bloodworth, compare the geometry on the low poly and the high poly model (left and right).

Normal maps: dynamic LOD via mipmapping since 2003.  Also, the art department legitimately not giving a fuck what that playtesters say about performance since 2003.

[Mrbloodworth]

Man hours to create are higher. Not to mention the increase in number of textures ETC.

[Margalis]

Bloodworth, compare the geometry on the low poly and the high poly model (left and right).

Normal maps: dynamic LOD via mipmapping since 2003.  Also, the art department legitimately not giving a fuck what that playtesters say about performance since 2003.

I have absolutely no idea what this post means. Is it informative? An agreement? A rebuttal?

[Sheepherder]

An artist can make that high poly model Bloodworth posted, hit an export option in whatever modeling software they happen to be using, futz with some settings, and in seconds they'll have the figure to the right.  Additionally, if you look, you'll notice that the wireframe for left and right are identical, much of the detail is in a normal map.

Then, that one normal map can be mipmapped into any number of lower resolution maps, which allows you to scale detail with very little artifacting.  Which lets you have a shitton of model quality options for very little work, and lets you dynamically scale model quality with distance.  Prior to normal mapping it required the artist to generate a new model for every reduction in detail they wanted, so "model quality" settings generally had fewer options and games tended to just not show things at very far distances.

[Murgos]

Links at 10 paces, then?

Assassin's Creed 2 cost US$24m to develop.

Ok, sure, AC2 was a bad example then but I do recall having read something about an enormous budget for it.  But examples I have found still put many games at or near the 60 million mark.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Most_expensive_games

Grand Theft Auto IV - $100 million [1]
Shenmue - $70 million [2]
Too Human - $80-100 million
Tom Clancy - $50 million [3]
Halo 3 - over $30M, about $60M including promotional costs
Killzone 2 - ~$40-$60M [4][5][6]
APB MMO - $50 million budget [7]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - $40-50 million [8]

To reiterate: if it costs 40-60 million to make an AAA single player title with 20-30 hours of content an MMO with it's greater demands of infrastructure and content MUST be much more to even be competitive.  For example APB at 50 million.  So, yeah, my point stands. 

[Cadaverine]

Do they factor in the costs of CS, and all the back end stuff needed for that, in the cost of the game for MMOs, or is that shuffled off under something else?

[UnSub]

Do they factor in the costs of CS, and all the back end stuff needed for that, in the cost of the game for MMOs, or is that shuffled off under something else?

The launch budget usually refers only to the cost of development up to that point, which usually won't include CS costs. It might include server costs, but it depends on the company / whoever is announcing.

Ok, sure, AC2 was a bad example then but I do recall having read something about an enormous budget for it.  But examples I have found still put many games at or near the 60 million mark.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Most_expensive_games

To reiterate: if it costs 40-60 million to make an AAA single player title with 20-30 hours of content an MMO with it's greater demands of infrastructure and content MUST be much more to even be competitive.  For example APB at 50 million.  So, yeah, my point stands. 

You realise you picked a list of Most Expensive Games EVAH, right?

And even those costs were stupid. $80 - $100 million on Too Human? The economy wasn't there for a lot of those games either.

The "average" cost of a AAA title is somewhere in the US$20m - $30m range. That's expensive, particularly since publishers / developers only get back about 50% of the physical box price (and something like 70% of the digital download price). It means a title likely won't be profitable until it cracks the 1 million units sold mark (assuming 1m sales at $50 - $60 a pop, which isn't guaranteed either). Only about 1 in 5 titles that appear on the shelf make a profit, with the mega-hits sponsoring development of the also rans.

MMOs are doubling these costs on the grounds that they last a lot longer, so there is a higher chance of paying back the investment (in theory). Plus they are more technically complex projects. And yet despite having these kind of budgets, MMOs end up flopping hard (e.g. APB's budget was probably closer to US$80m, Tabula Rasa was allegedly US$100m plus, WAR was allegedly up around US$100m). In part they collapse under the weight of their development debt - get a rocky start and suddenly a studio is looking at a decade of being in the red before they've even started working on new content (which means staff reductions, which slows down content development, which sees players leave and it's a vicious spiral into the ground).

And then there is the issue of MMO development actually choking off development of other titles as studios spend years working on only their MMO, so it really is a gamble that makes or breaks a studio.

If your point is that MMOs are only going to succeed when they have incredibly huge budgets because they need them to succeed, you just might be on EA's Board of Directors.

THQ is working on the assumption that the game will be profitable "anywhere near" a million subscribers, which is true, but good luck in finding those 500k+ subscribers in a market where 200k+ is considered a huge sub base for anyone who isn't WoW. 

TL;DR version: too much money kills as surely as too little.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Well, games like Age of Conan, WAR both sold over a million copies on launch. They flamed out because they were terrible past the beginning areas. The market is there but it seems nobody is competent enough to retain & attract customers post-launch besides WoW & Eve.

[Margalis]

An artist can make that high poly model Bloodworth posted, hit an export option in whatever modeling software they happen to be using, futz with some settings, and in seconds they'll have the figure to the right.  Additionally, if you look, you'll notice that the wireframe for left and right are identical, much of the detail is in a normal map.

Then, that one normal map can be mipmapped into any number of lower resolution maps, which allows you to scale detail with very little artifacting.  Which lets you have a shitton of model quality options for very little work, and lets you dynamically scale model quality with distance.  Prior to normal mapping it required the artist to generate a new model for every reduction in detail they wanted, so "model quality" settings generally had fewer options and games tended to just not show things at very far distances.

A few points.

1: High poly models cost a shitload.

2. Relying on mipmapping of textures to give you different "model quality options" means that every level of detail is going to have the same bone and vert count. And mipmapped textures take up more memory than non-mipmapped textures and take longer to draw as well. The point of using LODs is to save memory, drawing time and animation time when objects are far away. Mipmapping accomplishes only the memory saving aspect of those, and only if you do something clever like only load the lower mip levels in the chain when the model is far away. (Which most games don't do) The main purpose of mipmapping is better image quality.

3. Currently you have to model a high poly and a low poly model. Before you had to model just a low poly version, and if you want an LOD maybe another version or two. A super high poly model and a normal model is a lot more expensive that what was "normal" 5 years ago and something lower than that.

The idea that art budgets are getting smaller thanks to tools is insane. The premise is flawed - budgets aren't getting smaller. Maybe they have dropped slightly in the past couple years or so, if so that's almost certainly due to outsourcing. But generation to generation it's a continuously upward curve, and most publishers are doubling down on a strategy of fewer, more expensive games.

[Mrbloodworth]

Thanks, to add, normal and defuse are not the only textures needing to be created.  Newer models have 3-5 Texture layers, as opposed to the Wow model example of one.