Camelot Unchained

[Fordel]

Alb Trickle, Best Trickle. 


That was one of my favorite things about Albs, it was either 3, or 300. Never anything in between.

[Falconeer]

The only people to get F2P right are Arenanet.

TERA is doing F2P very right.

[Nevermore]

What happens next: Nevermore and I plus 62 more ravening Baby Eaters crest the hill behind...

[...and probably decide there's too many Mids looking at the dead Hibby to risk it.

Alternately, you trickle up to us three at a time. It was very sporting of you guys.

No, being a Minstrel if I was in a group it was always part of a zerg.  Maybe in a single group of 8 but that was rare.  Usually I was out solo tracking enemy movement or looking to pick off stranglers.

[kildorn]

Don't knock the trickle. We had to implement a BUDDY SYSTEM because people would wander off one at a time and die horribly to stealthers.

[Sjofn]

No, being a Minstrel if I was in a group it was always part of a zerg. 

I think you misunderstood my point. We'd have 90+ Albs outside a keep (pretty sure that's a zerg, even for Albs, unlike the Mid version of a "zerg," which was nine people.), but they'd trickle in, three at a time, so we could merrily kill them. Apparently Albs don't know what "charge" means.

[Fordel]

Don't knock the trickle. We had to implement a BUDDY SYSTEM because people would wander off one at a time and die horribly to stealthers.

So two of you died instead? 

[Nevermore]

No, being a Minstrel if I was in a group it was always part of a zerg. 

I think you misunderstood my point. We'd have 90+ Albs outside a keep (pretty sure that's a zerg, even for Albs, unlike the Mid version of a "zerg," which was nine people.), but they'd trickle in, three at a time, so we could merrily kill them. Apparently Albs don't know what "charge" means.

Hey, I was just the taxi.  What they did once we got to the keep was out of my hands!

[kildorn]

Don't knock the trickle. We had to implement a BUDDY SYSTEM because people would wander off one at a time and die horribly to stealthers.

So two of you died instead? 

Hopefully three!

.. Maybe we used them as positional data.

[Venkman]

The only people to get F2P right are Arenanet.

TERA is doing F2P very right.

F2P can be done right. But can it be done right on huge AAA titles? Or will us here need to leave this kind of game to make room for the younger players who show up expecting much less than even Rift levels of investments in their MMOs?

Not saying it's a bad thing, just wondering about change in general. Nobody expects players to hang out for longer than six months, and few want them to, because they become the most entitled most expensive players to continue supporting. So F2P works for companies large enough to rotate through games bi-annually.

That's not bi-annual launches of $60mm games though, nor is it sustainable by a one-company/one-game pattern. And I don't use the last few years of games developed on for-subs budgets hail mary'ing into any-income-is-better-than-none land as a baseline either.

I guess this is kinda what SOE was trying to do, except their curation process got in the way.

[UnSub]

There's three major game revenue models:

 - Buy to Play: you have to buy the box to play.
 - Subscription: you have to pay a monthly fee to play.
 - Microtrans: you can buy items / equipment / bonuses / cosmetics with real money.

Yes, F2P MMOs are going to shake up, just like sub-based titles went through because there are too many MMOs for the number of players out there. But I think Jacobs believes - before his game has even been developed - that CU will be so sticky as to keep the 50k - 60k players he expects. I think he's going to get a nasty surprise in an era of MOBAs and other free PVP options.

[satael]

If they can create a good game and have enough persistence (like EVE) I can see them succeeding with a sub model (if the goal is 50k subs) for an extensive period of time. Since it's Jacobs I'm afraid it will fail on atleast one of those.

[Tmon]

I think they'll have trouble with their model if they expect to sell a box and require a sub.  I don't see the sub model dieing off completely but I think the days of expecting players to pay $60+ for a game and then paying a fee to play it are pretty much past.  

[Lantyssa]

F2P can be done right. But can it be done right on huge AAA titles? Or will us here need to leave this kind of game to make room for the younger players who show up expecting much less than even Rift levels of investments in their MMOs?

Not the right question considering you can ask if AAA titles can be done right at all.  The revenue model is just one factor in the overall design.

[Threash]

I've played DDO, path of exile, age of wushu and GW2 and haven't had any problems with any of their F2P models.

[Hutch]

New KS post: I am Mark Jacobs, and my KS is only 55% funded, and I am desperate for your money.

I was going to accuse this wily, seasoned industry veteran of somehow making one of the oldest rookie dev mistakes in the book, i.e Making Promises.

But then I looked over the post, and what he's really done is just crank out some feel-good crap so that he can say he updated the KS this week.

Complete with weasel wording.

1) We will never lie to you, ever. We might be wrong, we might make mistakes, we might not answer all your questions, but we won’t knowingly lie to you.  Everybody at CSE will be held accountable for this, including myself.  Now, this doesn’t mean you can call us up, ask us anything you like and we have to answer it but it does mean that if we say something, it damn well better be true when we say it.

So maybe he's more wily than I thought. Hmm.

[Fordel]

That's just how he writes/talks. He's been doing that since DaoC. He's a pro at using 5000 words to say NOTHING.

[kildorn]

He will not lie to us. He'll provide zero fucking documentation and never explain shit, but that's not lying damnit.

That snippy bit aside, I actually liked the Herald's weekly Q&A, even if the answers were shockingly wrong some times. But nowhere near as wrong as the Paladin TL, so that's something. <3

[Fordel]

The Herald being wrong was still way worse then the crazy paladin TL. The TeamLeads just had their own logs and reverse engineering to work it.


The people who made the fucking game couldn't get their own numbers right. The ones they merely had to like, look up, since they had access to all those things, since they made the game.


it must've been hard coded again though. 

[luckton]

Oh god, the private Mythic TL/beta boards 

They were almost as bad as the VNBoards, except you at least had 5% higher chance of a dev responding to tell you to "STFU, we know what we're doing"   

[Ingmar]

Who were you there?

For me the most egregious thing was not the wrong Q&A answers or anything with the TL program but just the actual numbers up on the Herald being lies/wrong/misleading. I unfortunately can't remember details of the myriad problems we found with it.

[Fabricated]

Basically he needs $50,000 a day from RIGHT NOW to just make it. I have a feeling this is not happening without some magical angel investors.

Edit: Well, given that there's this period in most kickstarters when when you get within like 10-15% of the goal you get a massive uptick in backers I guess he could do it if he makes it to ~1.8 mill or so in the next 10-12 days.

[Fabricated]

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained/#chart-daily

*sad slide whistle sound*

[Venkman]

There's three major game revenue models:

 - Buy to Play: you have to buy the box to play.
 - Subscription: you have to pay a monthly fee to play.
 - Microtrans: you can buy items / equipment / bonuses / cosmetics with real money.

Yes, F2P MMOs are going to shake up, just like sub-based titles went through because there are too many MMOs for the number of players out there. But I think Jacobs believes - before his game has even been developed - that CU will be so sticky as to keep the 50k - 60k players he expects. I think he's going to get a nasty surprise in an era of MOBAs and other free PVP options.

Also:

- Ads

No game can live on that alone. But then, no sufficiently funded game can live on any single revenue stream alone anymore either. Because there's too many ways to collect money, investors will strongly ask why you're not chasing them all. So they'll ask why you can't sell the box you'll monetize through MTX and hey why not throw some sponsorships in there.

Except for SimCity being, like, broken and stuff, they probably coulda done pretty well with the ads they added in.

Unfortunately, ads requires many more eyeballs even than MTX to effectively monetize, like many multiples of eyeballs. And it's all very risky at a time with digital ads are tanking anyway.

Not the right question considering you can ask if AAA titles can be done right at all.  The revenue model is just one factor in the overall design.

Which has been my point about the "success" many of the turned-to-F2P games have enjoyed. The revenue model provides ways to project dollars based on precedent. All the post-WoW subs-based MMOs probably targeted some % of WoW's dollars by analyzing what they didn't have (smaller team, smaller IP, less distribution, shorter time horizon to ROI, whatever). But they were all based on sell through to X number of players with Y% at least paying one month worth of a fee and Z% hanging out for the then-standard of 4-6 months.

They turned to F2P and have mostly announced "more success than ever!11/", but that was compared to where the game was when they made the switch, not where the game was when they decided on the business model.

Compare games designed as pure F2P-only experiences given away for free. They don't get anywhere near the same investment. We in our core-gamer age bracket expect at least WoW quality breadth and depth, and that costs a lot. Younger mobile-focused gamers may eventually get there, but possibly not. The mass market has become gamers, but they have not inherited our desire to spend 40 hours a week in one exclusive title for months on end.

This is why I question whether we'll see a AAA-quality F2P-only title. Between the user habits and the need to minimize risk, there might not be a big enough market for it.

[UnSub]

Basically he needs $50,000 a day from RIGHT NOW to just make it. I have a feeling this is not happening without some magical angel investors.

Edit: Well, given that there's this period in most kickstarters when when you get within like 10-15% of the goal you get a massive uptick in backers I guess he could do it if he makes it to ~1.8 mill or so in the next 10-12 days.

... or some mysterious benefactor (i.e. Jacobs)  puts in the required money with 5 days to go, which then opens the floodgates for all those people who jump on large profile funded Kickstarter video games once they are funded.

Also, that's not a Gamers' Bill of Rights, that's a CSE Code of Conduct statement.

[Lantyssa]

This is why I question whether we'll see a AAA-quality F2P-only title. Between the user habits and the need to minimize risk, there might not be a big enough market for it.

The possibility is there.  It's just a matter of whether someone tries it and makes it work.

A triple-A game doesn't really need to go the f2p route though.  People are more than willing to buy the box then play for free if they think they're getting a good game.  All going from buy2play to free2play gets a title is more initial views.

The real question is whether the project chose the correct monetization model based upon what they have produced, and I imagine it is very easy to misjudge that no matter how many MBAs you throw at the problem.

Looking at recent games:

GW2 - b2p
Defiance - b2p

Team Fortress - b2p -> f2p

'MechWarrior - f2p
Marvel Heroes - f2p
Free Realms - f2p

EQ2 - sub -> f2p
CoH - sub -> f2p
DDO - sub -> f2p
STO - sub -> f2p
LotR - sub -> f2p
Terra - sub -> f2p

WoW - sub
Rift - sub
FFXIV - sub

Wildstar - ?

Most of the f2p games have a subscription option, so really it's about barrier to entry and whether the quality of the game makes people want to spend money.  More pricing options just increase the chances someone feels comfortable throwing money at you.  Is there any f2p title that has failed because it was free rather than it had systemic problems?  (CoH is the only close one, and NCSoft just up and killed it;  We don't know it was unprofitable.)

Where AAA titles fall into a trap is that they want to guarantee everyone playing is paying.  They completely ignore the social aspects and that maybe a one-size-fits-all payment model isn't the most profitable one.  I suppose projections are a lot easier when you can say every player is worth $x amount, but it's also horribly short-sighted.  Perfect for a monolithic company with a conservative attitude.

[Mattemeo]

(CoH is the only close one, and NCSoft just up and killed it;  We don't know it was unprofitable.)

It was still making money; at least enough to tide it over indefinitely. NCSoft shit-canned it because there was zero interest in the game in the home territories is about the closest to the truth I can gather. I could be entirely wrong and/or bitter on that matter though.

Also you missed The Secret World on your list as it occupies a fairly unique position:

TSW: sub > b2p

[Lantyssa]

Those are my feelings on CoH, too, but I'm trying to avoid too much speculation so I gave it the caveat.

TSW is a good point.  Another move away from a sub that helped a game immensely.  Conan, too.

Other than the original GW, we didn't have a lot of datapoints (queue people saying it wasn't a real MMO) for non-shooters.  I think we can agree it's at least viable though.

[Nija]

Planetside 2 is FTP. (and I've spent > $200 on it since launch in 11/2012)

[Venkman]

A triple-A game doesn't really need to go the f2p route though.  People are more than willing to buy the box then play for free if they think they're getting a good game.  All going from buy2play to free2play gets a title is more initial views.

Yes, except they went f2p after they were b2p. If a game starts on paper as f2p (hoping to monetize a percent of everyone who shows up), my contention is it won't get AAA budgets. Because there's no precedent. And because (so far, though dwindling) enough f2p games have made enough money for well under $10mm in dev vs $75mm+.

Good list you provided. Forgot about MechWarrior. Most were "save me!" switches, but I don't know about MechWarrior, am surprised FFX IV is still live, and will be shocked if Wildstar launches with subs

Is there any f2p title that has failed because it was free rather than it had systemic problems?

I'm personally not sure that's the question. When f2p is the "save me" option, I usually wonder if it's just to limp along until the capital investment has finished depreciating.

But I also should be clear: I'm not decrying this shift. Good on these companies for being able to make the shift and, heck, for even wanting to. It's just that I don't think the current perception of "hey let's make a f2p title" equates to "hey let's make one for core gamers who like really expensive shit".

[UnSub]

(CoH is the only close one, and NCSoft just up and killed it;  We don't know it was unprofitable.)

It was still making money; at least enough to tide it over indefinitely. NCSoft shit-canned it because there was zero interest in the game in the home territories is about the closest to the truth I can gather. I could be entirely wrong and/or bitter on that matter though.

CoH/V was killed because (roughly) every quarter's revenue was worse than the one before it since about 2007. It was making about US$10m a year at the end and was the sole source of revenue at a Mountain View-located studio of 80 people. So while CoH/V was profitable with its team of 40, it's extremely likely that all of Paragon Studios wasn't. NCsoft needed to cut costs and PS was underperforming.

What's interesting is that Positron recently revealed that Paragon Studios knew ahead of time that NCsoft wasn't happy with their performance and PS was looking to fund a buyout, but PS and NCsoft couldn't reach an agreement. The surprise for the studio was the sudden nature of the shut down announcement.

Plus there were talks with another publisher that didn't work out.

So although NCsoft has been painted as the bad guy in CoH/V's shut down, it seems they did more than just shut the game down on a whim.

---

Slightly more on topic - Cryptic's Neverwinter is entirely F2P. No sub option at all.

[Lantyssa]

Good list you provided. Forgot about MechWarrior. Most were "save me!" switches, but I don't know about MechWarrior, am surprised FFX IV is still live, and will be shocked if Wildstar launches with subs

I'm not sure 'MechWarrior qualifies as AAA.  Maybe AA, if we push it.  It gets enough traction around here that it's a good example of what the f2p model can produce.

FF XIV did shut down a few months ago.  They're in the closed beta of a Realm Reborn.  While I'm sure it'll be a better game than its predecessor, I have my doubts it'll get the returns a AAA expects.

Yes, except they went f2p after they were b2p. If a game starts on paper as f2p (hoping to monetize a percent of everyone who shows up), my contention is it won't get AAA budgets. Because there's no precedent. And because (so far, though dwindling) enough f2p games have made enough money for well under $10mm in dev vs $75mm+.

This I would agree with.  Until b2p games start losing significant market share to f2p games, it is unlikely we will see this.  SoE had the best shot at changing this, but I'm confident the GW2 model will inspire more future businessmen than Planetside 2.

Maybe when today's teens run things it'll change, but we have plenty of time for the market to shift in a dozen directions before they wield influence.

[Falconeer]

'Mechwarrior is more like a single 'A' in my opinion. Seriously, they basically exist thanks to an internal kickstarter which netted them 4M before they had anything to show, but they started with close to nothing. Sure, maybe I don't know where the lines between the As are, but looks to me that it started like a very small project and grew quickly due to amazing community feedback and an unexpected amount of "shut up and take my money".

[Venkman]

Yea I dunno. It's kinda fuzzy in my mind. I can't easily find a solid definition. I'm sure it's some combination of budget, team size and retail price point. Easy to tell AAA from indie, but it's kind of a gray area all on in between.

I'm confident the GW2 model will inspire more future businessmen than Planetside 2.

Totally agree. GW2 is a good example of an attempted blend. Doesn't seem like they've been able to monetize enough to keep the new content (zones, levels, abilities, classes) coming. But I'm hoping they announce an expansion pack or something. They did such a good job on that game, it'd be a shame if it wasn't the foundation for future iteration ala EQ1 was.

[Falconeer]

I just realized that Final Fantasy XI is 11 years old and it is still sub-only. And so is Dark Age of Camelot, which is 12 years old. And Ultima Online which is 16 years old. What the hell?!

[ezrast]

I did the DAoC trial a year or two ago (never having gotten into the game when it was fresh) and the interface and systems were so archaic it was basically unplayable. Nothing will entice new players into the old, old guard at this point. If the 12 people still subscribing are enough to keep the lights on, there's no reason to disturb the order of things now.