General Discussion

Originally posted by GreenChaos

None of these MMOs have the kind of budget GTA IV did (100 million).  And they do a lot more.

No PC game can be made bug free due to system differences, and for MMOs add network issues.

No MMO developer wants to release a game with issues.  But at some point you have to set a date and ship it out the door or it will never finish, because improvements can always be made.

So most MMOs players are a bit forgiving as far as bugs and network issues go, for the first few weeks. 

again, i have to ask one of my initial questions -- would you feel that way if you went out today and your cable/satellite was connected, after not having it for months; but it's a new company, so during the first hour of the show you're watching, it was real static-ie for about 10 minutes, you couldn't understand what the actors were saying for about 5 minutes, but only during the show, commercials ran fine.

now, say it kept on doing that; would you be patient for a few weeks?  what about a few months?  what about six months?  this is what gaming companies (and fanbois) seem to expect of us.

what are they doing with tens of millions of dollars?  a LOT of these gaming companies boast about their development team, siting all the other games and/or MMOs those team members have been a part of.  for the most part, these aren't noob/rookie development teams.

why SHOULD we be forgiving and accepting of the deliverance of subpar gaming experiences?  are we getting a discounted rate on the game itself? are we being credited for the time we can't play or the aggravation for fighting with bugs and crashes?

why should we?

try and make an mmo yourself  (or any pc game for that fact) thats runs flawlesly on rlease

Originally posted by Caineth

While I think that some of the OPs examples are a bit on the extreme side (MMOs that are unplayable due to bugs, or do offer extremely poor performance usually sell much less in the longer run), I do agree with the general consensus that many players generally accept a lower standard as far as polishing goes, when dishing out money for early reservation tickets for blockbuster MMOs.

as an example that many of us lived thru -- hyjal server (for wow) was nigh near unplayable for the first 6 months.  you'd have about half the time it was up and not too laggy, and half the time where you just couldn't do anything.  combine that with the falling thru the boats and all the other bugs, AND with the lack of battlegrounds and other features which were either on the box or had been promised by blizzard to be a part of the retail edition.

why DO we accept a lower standard?

if you're a player that goes ahead and pays for the subpar games -- why?  for the subpar performance -- why?

what other form of entertainment do you have, which you pay a recurring charge, and you smile and grin and go "oh give them time and it'll improve"?

Originally posted by Czech

damian7, judging by the number of your posts, I have to say that you don't do much else then talk about pretty much pointless stuff on mmorpg.com

I do agree with you to some extent, but try making a bugless game (bigger one - not tetris). If you feel that it's not worth giving money to play MMOs (agree with you here as well, for the most MMOs) then just don't. Do something else, there are so many more interesting things to do in life than to play MMOs...

Enjoy.

your post seems to have nothing to do with this thread.

would you care to answer some of the questions i posed?

i would like to understand why so many (seemingly millions, if not only hundreds of thousands), readily hand out a monthly sub AND defend these games.

or, why people are so quick to go "oh you couldn't do it".  no, but i also can't perform heart or brain surgery.  if a doctor screwed up one of those operations, would you make the same argument of "oh you couldn't do it" or would you be more like "wtf".

you'd probably be 'wtf'.  why?  because that person is trained to do that job and receives quite a bit of compensation for doing said job.

tens of millions of dollars, half a decade (maybe only 4 years, maybe 6 or 7 years) of time, a team of people who HAVE designed games before --- yet, we should be patient and understanding and give them our support (both on forums/verbally and with a monthly sub fee)... why?

would you go to mcdonalds, order a cheeseburger, only to be given half a pack of fries, then be fussed at by other customers that you should eat your fries and stfu?  would you take that?  would you return to that mcdonalds?  would you think it was full of idiots (both employees AND customers)?

Originally posted by GreenChaos

Originally posted by damian7
.....

so... why do you throw away money and tell gaming companies, "hey, give us whatever crap-filled game you want, i WILL support you"... ?

It’s called PC gaming.  Different hardware, different software running in the background.  Mathematically impossibly to test every possible configuration.  Not to mention a wide range or graphic, memory, processor speed and sound capabilities.

If you want a bug free experience you are going to have to play a console.  That’s just the way is.  I thought that was common knowledge?

let's try something which i thought was common knowledge...

does every mmo out there have crashes to desktop and tons of bugs (to where it's really NOT enjoyable to play)?

no

they don't.

a few bugs here and there, perhaps something along the lines of a certain power for one class that doesn't work quite right, or some costume/armor clipping in the art, compared to falling thru boats/buildings/the world and having to die, compared to tons of lag and extremely low frame rates and THESE problems due to memory leaks, bad programming and other things that don't care what sort of computer you use.

you honestly can not distinguish between what i am speaking of and the example you give?

honestly?

you're not able to distinguish betwen them?

i'm sorry that your post makes it seem you are unable to distinguish between them.  i truly am.

damian7 - your analogy comparing MMOs to cable television is one of the worst ever.

A better analogy would be a TV show that is unfinished yet broadcast anyway.

All video games are very complicated(MMOs especially) so eliminating all the bugs is impossible. It's quite obvious you have zero knowledge of video game design.

The more unfinished a MMO is at release to less money the company has at the time. Sigil ran completely out of money so was forced to release Vanguard as is or go under(which happened anyway).

If a MMO is unsatisfactorily unfinished at release I will not play it, I suggest you do the same and stop making lame analogies.

Originally posted by Larry2298

In my opinion, this thread is nothing about games but the way you want to be able to choose to spend your money wisely as you wish. For example, I am looking for a online game to play then I bought Pirates of Burning Sea but the game glitches everywhere, so you can say I just threw my money to make SOE stronger because people paid the game but their servers are light load. It's how the game distributor ripping money from the market. The only thing we can do is go through all the reviews and make your own judgements before you buy. 

well, let's say you have no way of knowing how a game will be BEFORE you play it, no previews, no reviews, nothing but looking at the box.  say you buy it and you play out the 30 day period that came with the game.

now, your 30 day period is up, and this game is still quite buggy.  say you DO like that it's pirates and boats and what not.  say the content/quests are so/so or even good.  but at least once an hour there's an annoying bug, like you fall thru your ship, or d/c in the middle of a fight (which causes you to lose your ship or be killed or whatever), say that other times, it's just real laggy and the gaming company itself has 'fessed up that the lagginess is indeed on their side and something they're working on.

how many months do you continue to play under THOSE conditions until you go "what the, maybe if/when they get their act together i might come back"?

i do go on the assumption that no one SHOULD be addicted to having to play a game, or that MMOs are the only entertainment an individual has.  as such, i see many alternatives (even to online/pc/console games), sports, tv, movies, gf/bf/spouse, church, school activities, whatever.

going on the understanding that no one is addicted and HAS to play an MMO...

how long, and why, would you pay a monthly sub to support people who have delivered a half-finished game to you, with the intention of they'll get it fixed when they get it fixed INSTEAD of having it nice and playable BEFORE it was released into retail?

it seems that there's not really a timeframe on that for most of us.  how many people put up with months and months of horrid gaming when WoW was first released?

i did, only because it was finally an online game the wife would play. nowadays, we buy one box and see how it looks and plays and how buggy it is.  if it's bug-riddled; odds are we don't try it again.  we MIGHT, if a few of our friends bring it up or start playing down the road and they're enjoying it.  but, more often, we don't.

Originally posted by Baikal

Dont people pay because it is fun for them? Bottom line?

If a movie stutters in my theater and doesnt in yours, can the movie be more fun for you than for me, is it just not fun? If I a fan of a bad sports team, I still cheer for 'em win, lose or draw, because I enjoy that.

MMO's are exactly the same. Look, I dont care what they promise, I care about what they deliver. If they leave out 20% of what they promise, but I still enjoy what's left, then I'm not wasting money, because I'm still enjoying what I play.

If you specifically come to a game based on a promise of something, and it get's left out, sure you have reason to be upset, and if you spend money still, then maybe you are wasting your coin.

What do you care if someone else enjoys something, and what they spend their money on. Doesnt everyone have the ability to decide for themselves what they enjoy and have fun with?

i'll go back to the wow example -- there were horrid lag issues, blizzard admitted it was their problem and their fault.

reasonable people would expect the onus to be on the part of the game company to make games available to a wide audience, and if they release a bare minimum spec for a game to be played - - it should be playable with those bare minimum specs.

the last part of it -- every person that sits there for 6 months to a year, steadily paying a monthly sub and telling devs that it's ok, we know you're trying hard.  that's yet another dev team and another gaming company that, rightfully, believes there are idiots in the world that will pay you indefinitely for a half-finished project and THANK YOU for it.

now, does that mean that the next game will be of a higher standard, better quality, or more than half-way finished?

why should they?  they just ran a halfway thrown together game for months/years and had people thanking them for it.  why in the world would they put forth the effort to make certain that the NEXT game they release is beautiful and perfect?

am i really asking something that is a foreign concept to many people out there?

why give your support to a game company that didn't have the decency to, once they realized their game was incomplete/having issues (and a lot of times game companies DO realize it's their problem and only players blame other players computers, as we've seen in this thread), they don't go ahead and say -- hey, here's a big discount, or free month, since we're essentially getting free beta testing from all you players.

a free day for a month of my having a hard time even trying to play a game, or even a game that's fairly lacking in content and boring shortly after starting -- that's not really much of an enticement for a reasonable person to continue playing, is it?  much less if the company gives no enticement.

so, why do we do it?

are we all addictive personalities that just HAVE to be online playing something?