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Author Topic: Possibility Space  (Read 19708 times)
HaemishM
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on: February 16, 2005, 09:41:01 AM


SirBruce
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Reply #1 on: February 16, 2005, 09:44:11 AM

Good article.  I'd like to point out, though, that Eve is pretty open about their subscriber numbers as well.

Bruce
Alkiera
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Reply #2 on: February 16, 2005, 10:44:56 AM

I agree, Haemish.  Which is one of the reasons I'm attracted to Dungeons and Dragons Online.  They're aiming for lower population servers, in the hundreds, not thousands.  Presumably this will mean there will be a lot more servers, but more low-pop servers is vastly preferable to fewer high pop servers, IMO.  They also seem to have a Tabula-Rasa like system where you start in the city, get together with your friends, and go find a dungeon to crawl thru.  The dungeons are all instanced, and from what I've been reading, they have a lot of neat stuff.

Basically, it sounds like CoH, only fantasy genre, with items, but no crafting.

It seems like at least some portion of the industry is thinking and learning and trying new things.

Alkiera

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Fargull
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Reply #3 on: February 16, 2005, 12:57:02 PM

Haemish,

Good article.  I think instancing is a great idea till technology catches up.  One thing I have never understood is why did COH not automatically have the zone choice made by the first of the party to go through the zone line.  The same could be added to any game out there, even WOW.  Just add in the mechanic to keep the party (if one exists) in the same instance and then balance the population from there.  Hell, not sure why virtualization of the actuall back end hardware has not been implemented also to create more space with less physical framework.

One thing I would love to see added into the MMOG space are just common games, or things to do outside of hunting.  Think about Sking... why the hell could that not be added to a game?  What about just normal games, like capture the flag, or racing.  WOW has it all in place with the race track, but no in game options to allow the PCs something more than just "Hey bob, lets gather at the track and run around like loons with mobs."

I personally think the worlds are much to small.  I have not liked the broken shard syndrome since Origin introduced it into the MMORG space.. I understand why it is there from a hardware standpoint, but do not like it from a game standpoint.  I like the idea that Wish had for the world, though I think it was small.  Content would be a big issue in making this work, that and keeping the ability to travel a factor to not diminish the world.  Giving more power to the players to create quests would be wonderful.  The Auction Houses in WOW are a step in this path, but instead of bidding on items that have been placed there, reverse it and bid for items that you want at the price you want and see if anyone takes it.  Priceline it....

Anyway, nice read for a Wednesday at work.

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit." John Steinbeck
TheWalrus
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Reply #4 on: February 16, 2005, 05:58:17 PM

 Something that caught my eyeball was the pay per use thing. I put in some thought on that for awhile, and that sounds like something I could definitely go for. Whack someone important with that one Haemish.

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HRose
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Reply #5 on: February 16, 2005, 07:09:46 PM

Good read. But.
Quote
People did not want to play Massively Multiplayer Online Games in order to meet two thousand other strangers and interact with them.
I did for more than two years taking part on the bigger battles in DAoC. I enjoyed the large scale warfare way more than the 8Vs8 mini-game (that still was fun at times).

One game that you appreciated if it wasn't for its horrible technical level is Shadowbane. Again another game where you cannot discard another player from your experience. The space is shared, cohabitating produces interaction. The interaction becomes the fun of the game in the case you make friends and in the case you make enemies.

I believe that there's a huge potential to tap about truly massive environments but not just as extension of socializing and chatting. The immersion in a *world*, along with all these elements, produces interaction. It can be a war, it can be a coordinated effort to build a city, it can be a conquest. There's a lot to do from this perspective.

And it IS fun.

I'm sure that both Ubiq and Raph are beside me on this argument and they'd be able to explain this concept way better than how I could hope to.

(in particular about the instances I wrote too much on my blog to summarize. But the basic concept that you suggest and I LOVE - affecting the environment - is way more fun when it happens in PvP. Or we could just go back to play in single player.)
« Last Edit: February 16, 2005, 07:12:48 PM by HRose »

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SirBruce
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Reply #6 on: February 16, 2005, 07:23:44 PM

I don't mind *interacting* with those 2000 people.  I just want those interactions limited, so my fun isn't largely dependent upon them.

Bruce
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Reply #7 on: February 16, 2005, 08:09:35 PM

I don't mind *interacting* with those 2000 people.  I just want those interactions limited, so my fun isn't largely dependent upon them.
I definitely agree. It's about the type of interaction and how the gameplay is organized.

A "free for all" environment isn't fun for the large public. WoW's PvP servers are popular because they are basically different from, say, DAoC's Mordred.

In general I define PvP everything that involved a group of peoples so even building a town is PvP from my point of view. "telling stories" work better in small environment because you have control over all the elements. The PvP, instead, needs interaction within a schema. So it surely need boundaries and schemes, but it's about giving the players these possibilities.

The quality of the fun depends on how you design the ruleset.

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Reply #8 on: February 16, 2005, 11:29:48 PM

Good article.  I'd like to point out, though, that Eve is pretty open about their subscriber numbers as well.

Bruce


Sir, can you please stop it with the fucking numbers? Thank you!

No Nerf, but I put a link to this very thread and I said that you all can guarantee for my purity. I even mentioned your case, and see if they can take a look at your lawn from a Michigan perspective.
jpark
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Reply #9 on: February 17, 2005, 08:03:23 AM

I quite enjoyed that article.  You have a vision - which is a rare thing to see.

Some comments.

WoW and graphics.  Total agreement.  One angle you might consider on the low poly + real art formula vs. high poly + no art, is that the former may actually last longer - be less prone to appearing "dated".  I think this the true innovation of WoW.  Most don't agree with me on this.

Instance use.  You have great ideas as to how instances can be used which also illustrates how under utilized they are today.

Server population.  Again agreed.  My only concern with very small server numbers is the impact on the economy and the problems it can create when your putting together a group.  I see this as a risk - but I am open to trying it.

Pricing model.  I hear what your saying about MMORPG payments.  People have talked of similar things even with Microsoft Office - the average user needs a tiny fraction of the full package.  Can't we just pay for what we use?  Adobe Photoshop offers scaled down retail products for folks who are not professionals - but there really is not the option to purchase "modules" on top of the base package.  The idea of adding features on a 'pay as you go' system has not really caught on in these other applications.  My main concern about your idea here is - ironically - human behavior:

"We are going to enter Runneye - like to join us?"
"Sec guys, let me check my credits - how much is it?"

Or... you're soloing, you have done several instances, and beside your exp bar is your Credit Bar - letting you know how much real money you have left to enter instances.  You might even have a con system - if you don't have enough money left for the instance - the entrance "cons red" ;)

What your talking about for a pricing system has yet to materialize for big CAD and Graphic Art packages.  These guys don't offer the base + pay as you go tool/ modules system.  It might be viable for MMORPGS since by definition you are online all the time - but there are the asthetic issues above.

The problem with this proposal, which would ruin a game for me, is it results in two currency bars in inventory:  real money and in game money.  It might even result in a credit bar beside the exp bar so players can track their spending, in addition to a con system for instances so you have some idea how expensive they are.


« Last Edit: February 17, 2005, 08:07:28 AM by jpark »

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TheWalrus
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Reply #10 on: February 17, 2005, 08:09:27 AM

Unless, of course, you just go with something simple like charging it to a card.

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jpark
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Reply #11 on: February 17, 2005, 08:11:32 AM

Unless, of course, you just go with something simple like charging it to a card.

You still need to track your spending.  And you would still like to know the cost of an instance before you use it.

"I think my brain just shoved its head up its own ass in retaliation.
"  HaemishM.
HaemishM
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Reply #12 on: February 17, 2005, 08:53:23 AM

I'm not talking about instances being $5 per instance, nor am I talking about these instances being played in the same manner as the hardcore catass way we tend to look at MMOG's now. Mass market people don't play the way we do. If each instance is say 2-3 hours worth of content, and the average player plays maybe 6 hours a week, that's a total of 8-12 instances a month. Charge each use of an instance at say $1 per instance. In the end, that customer pays about $8-12 a month, $24-36 a quarter. What do those numbers sound like? About the same as buying an expansion pack every quarter.

You could also offer the "hardcore" package where for $15-20 a month (yep, subscription fee), you get to use an unlimited number of instances per month. Sure, you might run out of content after a while. That customer would be a more expensive and less profitable customer than the per-use customer, but it's likely those people would/could drive the more casual/more profitable customer to spend more.

You know, I really should be charging somebody money for this goddamn idea.  evil

jpark
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Reply #13 on: February 17, 2005, 08:59:11 AM

Okay - correct me if I am wrong - but didn't the some of the original text based online games charge by the hour?

Why do you think that pricing model changed? (not sarcasm - I don't know)

"I think my brain just shoved its head up its own ass in retaliation.
"  HaemishM.
HaemishM
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Reply #14 on: February 17, 2005, 09:05:22 AM

Because someone thought it should.  :mrgreen:

Actually, opinion is mixed. AOL used to charge by the hour, and I've known people who ran up $200-300 AOL bills, just for playing text-based games. I think Psychochild could tell us a bit about M59's time using pay-per-hour schemes. It worked, and was profitable. There are tales of people playing Gemstone (old text game) and running up $3000 bills on it. Raph would be able to tell us better about the thought process behind the subscription price of $9.95 per month for UO. I think it was set at that low because they weren't sure anyone would pay more for it. Everyone else just followed suit until I believe it's become an assumption in the MMOG business world that you have to use a subscription fee. It is steady revenue, which is very important to businesses. But it wasn't until the Guild Wars guys announced their no subscription model that anyone has tried anything differently in regards to making money with MMOG's, other than a few things like "lifetime subscriptions" and such.

Anarchy Online has recently dipped their toes in this water, offering the base game for free for a year. If you wish to enter or use any of the expansion content, you have to pay a subscription. I wonder how that's working out.

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Reply #15 on: February 17, 2005, 10:11:21 AM

Transaction based application use has been tried in a couple of different sectors, and as it turns out, while it sounds like a good idea, it just doesn't work as well as you would think.

--how many people are angered/frustrated at ATM transaction fees for using your own money?
--how many people still elect to pay for each local call on a per use basis, instead of a monthly fee?
--how many people have "free/unlimited checking", instead of paying a processing fee per check?

One of the sectors where it has been attempted extensively, and most of the time dropped off the horizon is message based middleware applications. The original model was that if you need to send messages of any sort through a middleware application (for routing, data mapping, protocol conversion, etc.), you would purchase (or build) an application that sat in the middle of your message transaction chain and performed the operations needed. Several applications are on the market to do this in a wide variety of sectors, from healthcare IT to financial transactions to simple business communication.

The transaction based fees were introduced in several of these sectors, but they appear to have died out (I know in healthcare IT it simply isn't used at all anymore), and while I don't have any studies that show why the model didn't work, I'm hesitant to believe that online gaming is a good sector for it to be accepted either.

I'm not dissing Haemish's ideas--they do make sense, but a lot of sectors have shown in the past that it isn't as effective as you would think it would be.

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HaemishM
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Reply #16 on: February 17, 2005, 11:14:36 AM

For the three you mentioned, I'm not sure they are applicable.

ATM Transaction fees are a convenience thing. Yes, they annoy the fuck out of people, but for the most part, it's usually a matter of "Do I want to get the money here, or drive 2 minutes to my bank?" And if you are travelling to places without your bank, you should expect it. Those fees haven't gone away.

The local call thing? I couldn't tell you numbers on people who pay per use vs. monthly fee, but I don't imagine the latter are a significant portion. I could be wrong. As little as I use the phone, I'd probably save if I did it that way, but I don't want to bother with the inconvenience of finding out.

Free/unlimited checking vs. processing fee per check? I know for my own part, the free/unlimited checking usually has stipulations about such things as minimum balance and such that can self-select the customers. None of which is really relevant to the idea of entertainment, IMO. I'm also not sure what the healthcare IT issues have to do with this. That sounds like more of a business-to-business field as opposed to entertainment-to-consumer field.

I look at this idea of pay-per-instance as like movie rentals. You can pay for each rental/instance and get a night's worth of entertainment, something that may or may not carry over to a different night (as in your character gains may or may not carry over - it would depend on the type of instance). Or, you can go the Netflix way and pay a subscription for unlimited instances.

I do contend, however, that the consumer base for such a product may be smaller today than it will be in 2-3 years.

Krakrok
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Reply #17 on: February 17, 2005, 01:24:01 PM

Monkeysphere:
I don't subscribe to the "I only want ~200 people on my server at a time because that is the maximum amount of community that I can comprehend" mentality. For me I'd rather have the diversity of 2000 or 10000 or more different unknown people on one server than 200 people where everyone knows everyone. I'd rather see something unique around every corner than the same 200 people around every corner. In that sense the number of concurrent users per server is a draw for me.

Instancing:
Couple things. I'm not sure instance is the right word (or maybe it is if you are wanting Guild Wars style levels). If it were me I wouldn't instance the worlds off the hub. I prefer virtual worlds with no instancing vs. games with instancing.

---

NWN basically offers the "hub" play area and you create a character to jump off and play on each player created world "instance" (personal NWN server). Maybe NWN2 is going to offer better functionality of this?

A nice property to use for the "hub" would be the Bazaar in the Myth books by Robert Aspirin.

---

Second Life has all the tools that you descibe to make something like that work but I don't think they have the will to do it. They could impliment a 3D WWW (remember VRML?) if they wanted to.

---

An invester could take say $50 million and give it to 10 dev houses ($5 million each) to build worlds off the same hub.

OR if you wanted to be ghetto about it you could do it on the cheap by seeding your hub with a few "instances"/zones/worlds of content and then allow "players" to create their own content. Some indie dev house is experimenting with this but the name fails me right now.

Partnered with the Pay-Per-Use model you give the "players" who create their own "worlds" of content a percentage of the revenue based on how many people buy into their "instance" or "world" off of the company hub. The "player" created worlds could be rated by other players which would theoretically seperate the wheat from the chaff. The "hub" company might also offer a certification program for player created worlds/instances.

---

Pay-Per-Use:
As far as pay per use goes it is a good idea though I personally don't care for paying per use. Two successful industries that use pay per use are cell phone service providers and cable/satellite TV. I would never buy a Pay-Per-View movie even though it is only say $1.99 yet I subscribe to Netflix.

And the cell phone industry charges what? $0.20 per (sms) TEXT MESSAGE? There are articles floating around the net of people not understanding SMS costing money and then getting $800 phone bills for SMS messages. Not to mention ring tones and screen savers and background images for your phone which are all $0.99 to $3.99 or whatever per item. AND PEOPLE PAY IT! If fact it's big money (billions a year).

---

Edit:

Lastly, I can guess at why they went with a monthly subscription vs. a pay per hour model in UO. By the time UO came out all the other pay per hour services had mostly all moved to subscription per month. The trend was towards subscription per month. If UO had been pay per hour I wouldn't have played it.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2005, 01:27:36 PM by Krakrok »
HaemishM
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Reply #18 on: February 17, 2005, 01:28:55 PM

You know, the more I think about it, the kind of service I'm talking about is like X-Box Live, where the Live part is an actual avatar-based Hub world, and the individual games are spokes off of it. Obviously, it's more fully realized than X-Box Live is, but Live is a good start.

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Reply #19 on: February 17, 2005, 01:29:38 PM

Haemish, what you just said is something I've wanted since I was 7 years old. Make it plz now.
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Reply #20 on: February 17, 2005, 01:34:24 PM

Actually, let me expand on that.

SWG is the perfect example of a world that would be awesome for such a thing. Multiple planets could represent different genres. Through that, you could have a homeworld. Where you and your clanmates/friends/whatever would have a neighborhood of houses or whatever. It would be PC Based - so the NextBox/Xbox 360/Xbox Next/Xbox 2: Electric Boogaloo would be the best system to combine it with - particularly with the type of stat tracking they have for games like Halo 2. Anyway...

You get your house. As you beat games or advance in them, you get money or whatever currency exists in this virtual world. As such you can decorate your houses, or do whatever. If you wanted to play a game against someone, you'd actually go over to their house in the world.

There could be mini-games in the world as well, the perfect place for my gardening sim. Which I still haven't written about, and I apologize for that. Basically, different games could unlock or provide resources for such a simulator and eventually you'd have a bustling beautiful neighborhood of people who have played and beaten tons of games. It provides inherent competition to have a bigger house or whatever, which sells more stuff for Microsoft. Also, development post release would be minimal for the company taking care of the servers. The live dev team, whathaveyou.

As a game is released by say UBI soft. Let's say that game is Splinter Cell 4. That team would make art/content for the virtual hub world that would be implemented at release of the game.

From here it gets fuzzy. But there's probably an entire design doc to be written about such a thing.

The PSP should really have this sort of matchmaking. But I'm confident Sony would have advertised it if they did.

Edit: Koboshi came up with something similar, but the games are more interconnected and feed into a larger game of sorts, while mine is nothing more than a twisted version of The Sims. I'm sure he'll write something up on it sooner or later.
schmoo
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Reply #21 on: February 17, 2005, 02:36:23 PM

Re the micro-payment idea:

Micropayments and Mental Transaction Costs

An interesting discussion of small payments.  It's a pdf file.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2005, 02:38:55 PM by schmoo »
jpark
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Reply #22 on: February 19, 2005, 04:44:07 PM

You know, the more I think about it, the kind of service I'm talking about is like X-Box Live, where the Live part is an actual avatar-based Hub world, and the individual games are spokes off of it. Obviously, it's more fully realized than X-Box Live is, but Live is a good start.

For myself, this idea captures my imagination, but I do not understand completely.  It can take different forms - as Schild discussed above.

I had some trouble following Shild's elaboration, but I think this is along similar lines:  release a single player RPG that allows you to use your character from a MMORPG (e.g. WoW; EQ2 etc.) in this stand alone product.  The translation would recognize all gear and preserve their abilities and appearance for playing the game.  The game would scale for difficulty based on the level of the character playing it.

This could be a entirely different angle on "solo" play in MMORPGS - by releasing single player RPGs that draw upon the account created for the MMORPG.


"I think my brain just shoved its head up its own ass in retaliation.
"  HaemishM.
Zane0
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Reply #23 on: February 20, 2005, 06:59:54 PM

Your payment idea is interesting, but there would be problems, of course.

What happens if your group wipes and disbands early on?

What happens if you can't find another group?

What happens if your modem stops working after payment?

What happens if you need to get something/meet somebody outside, when you've just entered a pay-instance?

Not insurmountable with some creative design, but it would likely be a bumpy ride trying to make a system that works in spite of these various problems, and to encourage jaded players to make a leap of faith.  As a publisher/developer, with the market as tight as it is, do you want to take such a risk?

Guild Wars will give us a limited look at the possibilities for this style of payment, I suppose.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2005, 07:01:40 PM by Zane0 »
HaemishM
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Reply #24 on: February 21, 2005, 08:12:05 AM

Guild Wars will indeed be a litmust test for the survivability of future MMOG's with or without a subscription fee. A lot of the transactional issues involved with my idea would have to be worked out, such as the "Oops, I got punted" problems. I would think that credit could be issued for another instance or such, but it really depends on the costs of customer service. Since it's already established that a $15/month subscription fee doesn't buy shit for customer service, I'm wondering what kind of CSR's you'd get without even that fee.

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Reply #25 on: February 21, 2005, 11:09:23 AM

I'd probably still be playing Planetside, WW2OL and maybe DAOC if I could pre-pay a month for $15 (or so), but then not 'use' that month in a month, but spend it use-based, minute by minute, and even be OK with $15 = 150 hours.

I liked all those games, but after I learned all the systems / leveled to 50, I only found it fun in guild 'events' which were weekly or bi-weekly.   I could not justify spending $15 a month on a game I played 4 hours a week.
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Reply #26 on: February 21, 2005, 11:26:17 AM

I'd probably still be playing Planetside, WW2OL and maybe DAOC if I could pre-pay a month for $15 (or so), but then not 'use' that month in a month, but spend it use-based, minute by minute, and even be OK with $15 = 150 hours.

I liked all those games, but after I learned all the systems / leveled to 50, I only found it fun in guild 'events' which were weekly or bi-weekly.   I could not justify spending $15 a month on a game I played 4 hours a week.

Being a casual MMOGer, I'd much rather pay for the time I actually use than for the time that I'll never have the time to use.
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Reply #27 on: February 21, 2005, 01:26:55 PM

It totally depends on the player. For some people, paying for use would feel like they are being nickle and dimed to death. For others, it's silly to pay $15 a month for a month you barely played in.

IMO the best strategy would simply be offer both. Have an all-you-can eat price and an a la carte price.

The games are only going to get more expensive, which makes the a la carte pricing that much more attractive for people who don't play for weeks at a time. However I guess the question is, if someone doesn't play very often and can pay for only the time they use, do you really care that much if you lose their business?

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Kail
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Reply #28 on: February 21, 2005, 03:12:38 PM

Monkeysphere:
I don't subscribe to the "I only want ~200 people on my server at a time because that is the maximum amount of community that I can comprehend" mentality. For me I'd rather have the diversity of 2000 or 10000 or more different unknown people on one server than 200 people where everyone knows everyone. I'd rather see something unique around every corner than the same 200 people around every corner. In that sense the number of concurrent users per server is a draw for me.

I think the point here, with the Monkeysphere article, is more along the lines that having a thousand other people is a lot more fun in concept than it is in practice.  I mean, playing alongside five thousand other players definitely sounds like a great idea at first pass.  Playing Jedi Academy or something,  I always felt a bit retarded in, for example, the Hoth map, where me and a half dozen other guys would be recreating the Empire's epic assault against the valiant but futile last-ditch defense of the Rebels (or whatever) with a grand total of two rebels and three stormtroopers.  There are times in every game, when you're doing the equivalent of storming Helm's Deep, or whatever, where it just feels right to have a thousand screaming orcs at your back.

However, the role played by those thousand screaming orcs is extremely different from the role played by, say, the character played by your buddy from math class.  You don't interact with them, you don't talk to them.  Their sole purpose in the game is to act as wallpaper.  You could, without much difficulty, replace them with the most rudimentary AI and still get almost the same effect.  Blizzard could tell me there's five thousand people playing on the same server as me in World of Warcraft, and I'd shrug and say "Okay, whatever."  Blizzard could also tell me that there's really just a hundred people playing on my server, and all the other "Players" are just bots who wander around killing random mobs, and that would seem about equally plausible, because the amount of influence they exert on my game is (thankfully) close to nil.  They don't talk to me, nor I to them.  The only real effect they have (aside from making the world look full) that I can think of is that they provide an audience which could possibly be impressed by my doing something cool.  I don't know about everyone else, but for me, this doesn't happen often.  The question here, I think, is if the benefits of having five thousand other people around are actually worth the serious costs to the gameplay that having five thousand armed warriors running around such a small world will entail.  At least, that's my take on it.

-Regarding Subscription Fees:
These are the main reason I only rarely buy MMORPGs.  Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but there's something about subscription fees in an MMORPG that reeeeeeeeeeeally makes my teeth grind.  I find myself regularly dropping fifty bucks for a game that'll last me maybe two or three weeks, but when a company tells me I have to subscribe to play their game, it sends up all kinds of red flags in my head.

The big thing that bothers me is the lack of permanence, I think.  Eventually, I'll get sick of any game, and I'll stop subscribing.  At that point, all the money I spent on the game will be, basically, wasted, because I won't be able to play it anymore (as in, it's the same situation I'd be in if I hadn't spent any money on it).  What I'd like to see (and I think this is fairly similar to the way Guild Wars is being done, but I'm not positive) is a more permanent billing system.  Let me play the game as long as I want for a single initial payment (the box price), but charge, say, ten dollars to unlock each dungeon or something.  The important thing for me is that, if I decide to stop paying, I'll still be able to play as much of the game as I have already "unlocked."  Every time I pay the company, I'm getting something tangible back, rather than just preventing them from taking something away from me.

I dunno, that's the kind of game I wouldn't mind paying for, anyway.  Maybe I'm in the minority here, though.
Paelos
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Reply #29 on: February 21, 2005, 08:26:48 PM

Adding more people to the real world hasn't solved our problems yet, so I don't see why developers think it will in our games.

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HaemishM
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Reply #30 on: February 22, 2005, 07:18:20 AM

However, the role played by those thousand screaming orcs is extremely different from the role played by, say, the character played by your buddy from math class.  You don't interact with them, you don't talk to them.  Their sole purpose in the game is to act as wallpaper.  You could, without much difficulty, replace them with the most rudimentary AI and still get almost the same effect.  Blizzard could tell me there's five thousand people playing on the same server as me in World of Warcraft, and I'd shrug and say "Okay, whatever."  Blizzard could also tell me that there's really just a hundred people playing on my server, and all the other "Players" are just bots who wander around killing random mobs, and that would seem about equally plausible, because the amount of influence they exert on my game is (thankfully) close to nil.  They don't talk to me, nor I to them.  The only real effect they have (aside from making the world look full) that I can think of is that they provide an audience which could possibly be impressed by my doing something cool.  I don't know about everyone else, but for me, this doesn't happen often.  The question here, I think, is if the benefits of having five thousand other people around are actually worth the serious costs to the gameplay that having five thousand armed warriors running around such a small world will entail.  At least, that's my take on it.

Yeah, that surrounds it pretty fully. It isn't that there AREN'T possibilities for interactions there. And if you are talking about a game where war is the main object, say like Shadowbane, then the theory that the more the merrier is certainly applicable. But in a game like most of the fantasy MMOG's out there, games which are built around the premise of 6-8 adventurers creeping through the isolated, monster-filled dungeon, having 5,000 other people in the world only provides either: 1) window dressing for a populated world, or worse 2) competition for content which can also turn into potential for grief.

Adding more players does add some new possibilities, but I don't think that it makes the game better in and of itself. If the choice is 5,000 random people or 20 people I know and don't mind interacting with, I'll take the 20 people. While the possibilities for more varied interactions exist with the 5,000, the possibilities for ENJOYABLE interactions with the 20 are greater.

Quote
-Regarding Subscription Fees:
These are the main reason I only rarely buy MMORPGs.  Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but there's something about subscription fees in an MMORPG that reeeeeeeeeeeally makes my teeth grind.  I find myself regularly dropping fifty bucks for a game that'll last me maybe two or three weeks, but when a company tells me I have to subscribe to play their game, it sends up all kinds of red flags in my head.

< snip >

I dunno, that's the kind of game I wouldn't mind paying for, anyway.  Maybe I'm in the minority here, though.

You are not in the minority; rather the people who WILL pay a subscription fee have shown themselves to be a minority. The subscription fee is attractive to both developers and investors because it is steady revenue, and revenue is the lifeblood of business. But I do not think it is the only way to build a successful MMOG business, and I think because of the self-selecting nature of the subscription fee, it is a barrier to entry for the casual player. Despite what anyone in the industry will tell you, there are an metric fuckton more game players out there that won't pay a subscription fee than there are who will pay one.

Hoax
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Reply #31 on: February 22, 2005, 01:38:31 PM

Your description of a multitude of small instanced random adventures, as well as personal choice avatars that change when they enter said instanced adventures was interesting to say the least.

Do I find it feasible?  Not at all really, but who cares what I think...

What I would like to add is this, I'm sure you have read it, but just in case you haven't there is a book called Snowcrash (which is fantastic imo) where the author's vision of the future of the internet or cyberspace is very similar to how you describe this future mmog.

Seemed worth adding at the time...   undecided


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WayAbvPar
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Reply #32 on: February 22, 2005, 01:41:41 PM

Quote
book called Snowcrash

Great book. Have loved eveyrthing I have read from Stephenson so far, in fact.

When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM

Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood

Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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Reply #33 on: February 22, 2005, 01:43:09 PM

Just wanted to point out that your history is a little wonky.

Meridian59 launched with the $10/month subscription fee.  They launched a year and a half before UO did.  UO went with $10/month because that's what the only other MMO out there was doing.  It didn't take a genius at EA/OSI to figure that one out.  I haven't kept up with M59 over the past 9 years, so I can't really comment on whether or not M59 was ever on an hourly charge, but it was $10/month when it launched in 1996.  The industry standard was $10/month for years and years because of M59.  The monthly subscription fee industry standard we are still living under is because of M59, not UO.  Get your facts straight.

As for alternative pricing schemes, check out Puzzle Pirates' recent announcement about Doubloons:  http://www.puzzlepirates.com/support/faqs/doubloons.html
WayAbvPar
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Posts: 19268


Reply #34 on: February 22, 2005, 01:48:14 PM

It is all Psychochild's fault! Where do we keep the tar and feathers?

When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM

Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood

Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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