Originally posted by Drvanitus
Go back to basics Funcom... go back to Anarchy Online... 2.

I totally agree. The community realled needs a good ground base MMORPG. 

Originally posted by Vimm

I didn't mind the look of TSW or the theme, however, the MMO market is heavily congest atm and the competition has a lot of content out there, nobody wants to wait 2 or 3 years while paying a subscription for the developer to basically be in paid beta mode for the first year plus waiting another year or two to get some decent content.

 

It was my major issue with Rift as well, was a nice game but doing the same thing over and over is repetitive to the point people don't take paying jobs that repetitive, they are going to be hard pressed to part with their hard earned money to do that.

 

I believe sandbox of semi-sandbox MMOs are the real future.  It doesn't mean you shouldn't create great content, but at what pace can any developer produce content?  Nowhere near as fast as people can consume it.  Time spent creating tools that allows players to create content tends to give people the ability to fill the gaps between developer created content.

 

EVE Online is a great example, they get away with almost non-existent content development and their numbers have been strong and growing for many years.  People do not notice the lack of developer content as much when there are tools there for players to entertain themselves, especially the most competitive element of players.

 

The subscription model is dying, if no dead.  I don't think many new MMOs can afford to launch with only a subscription model if they want to compete, as the FTP is gaining popularity and people look at a game like GW2 or LOTRO and say why do I need to pay $X per month when I don't for other games.

 

I didn't get TSW because it was subscription based, not because the monthly fee is too much, but because there are a number of games I am and plan to play and I don't feel the need to subsidise those who crank out 100+ hours playing the game if I can only put a few hours into it here and there.

 

That is the problem with subscription models, you subsidise heavy users.  It is why heavy users dislike FTP because it represents a user-pays system and it will likely be cheaper to fork out $10 or $15 a month via a subscription model than to go with a user-pays model.

 

I don't know what you mean by wait 2 or 3 years to get decent content. the content is being increased monthly. New zones are to be added early 2013.

Also i am all for sandbox games. however they need to be designed simliar to Eve so that they open with a themepark that will kid the CoD babies to either go away back to their senseless DM, or scream about the game being Fail and quit. each game that ive played that gives you a weapon and says "have fun" without and kind of opening or PvE themepark area to start has resulted in kids turning the game into a Deathmatch. Perfectly good games ruined by the people we dont want playing them.

Funcom seem to make a lot of mistakes when making games. TSW seemed like a decent idea but it drowned in weird stuff that didn't appeal to as many players as they thought. And that's one of the things with Funcom. They don't seem to really know their customers and the market they operate in.

They have a bad name in the MMO world (I know many hate them, me included). That's a bad place to start when making games.

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by thark

Originally posted by Sovrath

My initial thought was "what were they looking for" with regards to subs?

Everything they said about the game screamed niche. At least to my thought. Why would a company sink a lot of money into a game that has a very specific audience and expect to pull in large numbers of mmo players?

Maybe a millino signed up to their forums so they thought that meant interest in buying and sales. That might be a reasonable assumption. Personally, I never thought the game would get more than 250k sales. As it stood they had 200k or so?

And then they have to keep these players?

Game companies need to be more realistic. It's ridiculous that these games launch and if they don't hit a magic number they fold.

I remember being told about what it took to open a restaurant. One had to have 3 years worth of operating money because tha'ts the time it would take to start and grow the business. This was years ago so I'm not sure if that still holds true but it seems that companies need to plan better if they truly want to succeed.

The Occult and Conspiracys and Horror in general  has always  had huge fanbase--Zombies and Vampires is always popular.

Not a single clue what you are basing your "screaming niche" from..

 Besides, since when isn't battling monsters in a game popular ?

 

the niche part comes from their posts about the puzzles, the solving clues, the going to outside sources on websites to figure out larger bits of story or clues to other clues.

All of this was presented over the course of development. Finding bits on a website that would be overlooked by most people. This type of game play is not mainstream.

as far as horror and occult having a huge fanbase: are you talking games or are you talking books/movies? Becuase "yeah" 100% agree, there is a huge fanbase out there for horror books/movies.

Now let's talk horror games. The only games that immediately come to mind (and amazing games in my opinion though your mileage may vary) are Clive Barker's Undying, Amnesia, Possibly Vampire Masquerade, 7th guest is an old one... I"m sure there are others but I can' think of them.

So which horror games that you know have a huge following? All the above games had a following and a deservedly devoted following but I don't recall any of those being blockbusters.

Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Dead Space, Doom, F.E.A.R, Lef4Dead, (Bioshock?), Dead Island, (System shock?) to name quite a few. I could go on.