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Originally posted by momodig
When I tried this game I enjoyed it too -- but the sad truth is, once a game fails it fails... not mater how much money is put into re-development.

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Dungeons and Dragons Online would like to have a word with you.

Originally posted by xenorace

What I did not like is the lack of instanced dungeons. There were none.

There are six of them, but one of the high level ones was still closed to the public when Spellborn went bankrupt. The first one, Exarchyon, is for level 25 and above and this is the best one in the game. You need to do a quest chain that starts in Ringfel Hearth to gain access to it though.

I regret never to have figured out the right tactic to kill the spider boss in the Forge (a small high level instance with its entrance in the Green District). Good fun though.

About Frogster turning this game into a f2p game. Nothing has been said about what will be changed. So, some of us old fans are wondering whether Frogsster will turn the game around without destroying it. The core of the game was considered to be totally unsuited for micro-transactions. We fear the worst.

BTW, this:

It was highly anticipated before its release, but after the beta release, it was soon clear that it was not all that successful in the pay to play model. This forced them to go into redevelopment.

Is not entirely correct. It was not that the game would not be successful in the pay to play model. The way that the publishers of Spellborn themselves sabotaged the gamelaunch  would have caused any business model to fail. In hind sight it was probably done deliberate because the publishers did not like the p2p business model.

The Chronicles of Spellborn suffered from developer hubris in my view.

The game was developed and released with an attitude of : "Play it How We Tell You To".

There were numerous posts highlighting the lack of proper Quest Objectives and markings on the overhead map as in more recent MMORPGs, the Quest Tracking System and other issues.

Chat was filled 90% with people asking where Mobs, NPCS and quest targets were.

Now there were players who said WHEEE! This is FUN, its utterly fantastic that no one knows where to go, or what to do. That's the type of game they had been waiting for all their lives, mentioning ten and twelve year old franchises such as the original EQ and Ultima Online.

Anyway, long story short is that this 'HARDCORE' approach failed.

And I guess the 'core' group of players that they have now, which is not enough to support the game's further development and continuation, represents these players that loved all this about the title.

The combat scheme was refreshing, and I found the graphics and art direction to be very good. Those were the things that drew me into the game.

Here's hoping that the redevelopment makes the game much more userfriendly and modern in its approach to player interaction and Gamers in general.

Originally posted by Gel214th

Chat was filled 90% with people asking where Mobs, NPCS and quest targets were.

Which in the case of most quest was a bit surprising, because the directions in the quest text were very clear to me. In all cases it turned out that people did not read the quest texts. It is true that developers did not take that into account, but should they have? Should game developers take into account all bad habits that gamers did pick up elsewhere. You claim they should have. That is your right; to have an opinion. But I think you are exaggerating in your post. The game was nowhere near hardcore. It just expected players to enjoy the lore by actually reading the quest texts.

Originally posted by Delanor

Which in the case of most quest was a bit surprising, because the directions in the quest text were very clear to me. In all cases it turned out that people did not read the quest texts. It is true that developers did not take that into account, but should they have? Should game developers take into account all bad habits that gamers did pick up elsewhere. You claim they should have. That is your right; to have an opinion. But I think you are exaggerating in your post. The game was nowhere near hardcore. It just expected players to enjoy the lore by actually reading the quest texts.

Yes, Developers need to take their Players into account. Developers that do NOT take their players into account...well you see what happens.

The quest text was fine at that specific point in time, but if you put the game down and came back to it two weeks later you were lost. The Synopsis text did NOT contain those specific directions and instructions, so unless you had a little notepad next to your keyboard and took notes, you'd be lost.

There were no co-ordinate systems in the game either..so people's directions were "Follow the road from the docks...by the big tree turn right...then head toward the mountains...cross the stream...go around the bush and they should be somewhere around there". Great fun for some....but it seems this became tedious for the majority of players.

You cannot, and should not attempt to Force players to do anything, in my view. If they want to read the quest text, great. Provide some additional benefit for them doing so. But don't limit the game to where they cannot proceed otherwise. Because they STILL won't read all the quest text, and they'll end up frustrated and leave. If you have to Force players to do something they don't want to do....then you have certainly misunderstood your customer base.

Look, if you assume that their intended demographic were the people that do NOT want Quest tracking, Quest Targets on maps,detailed information on powers,skippable tutorials etc. then you have to accept that these are the people that remain in the game now. Since the game cannot continue effectively with just these people, it means their business plan was not viable. So they either need to change it, or pack it up.

Which I think is what happened.The type of player they were thinking was out there, simply was not in sufficient numbers to support what they wanted to do. This happens a lot of time when you simply fail to properly understand the market.

So you can say that the Developers should not take players habits into account, but you should know that the Facts are that this goes completely against Customer Service, User Interaction and User Interface design teaching. And you do it at your own risk. And again...I have to say we've seen the results of that.

I hope they can turn things around, and if Frogster implements systems which are currently in games like Runes of Magic then I think that vast improvement in usability and player friendliness will certainly benefit the title. Sadly I believe if such systems were in the game at launch , TCOS would be surviving now as a Subscription based game...but that's just my opinion.

Originally posted by Gel214th

Which I think is what happened.

You are not far from the truth, but what actually happened is that they ran out of money long before launch date and were not able to maintain a full development team to give the game the polish it needed. Many features that were planned were not in at launch. Your complaint about quest tracking are exaggerated in my eyes, but it is true that the game could have used more features some of them way more important then better quest tracking. Alas.

I have no doubt that Frogster will do something about these shortcomings, but I am afraid Frogster will not stop at that and change the core of the game too. The result of that is unknown. We will see.

Originally posted by jawali

This is really great game, if you are bored with mmo rpg give this game a try !!!

(if you use ATI/ AMD there can be some issues but I hope this will be fixed in new year)

Well everyone should stay away from ATI ... i had lots of problem with cooling system and lots of crashes and black Screen of death with War,AOC and lots of FPS ...

Argh, wth. I asked several several times if there were instances in-game and everybody told me there was not. I took that very serious and quit mostly because of that. Glad the community in game has no idea what they are talking about.

I disagree that this game suits a subscription model, it simply has less grind for rewards compared to WoWcrack and it removes the reliance on others to progress your character -  so you can play at your own pace. Also because it is a game where playing skill matters obsessive grinding doesn't make you over powered. It is possible to achieve at your own pace.

Do I have an answer to a payment model? I am completely paranoid about the shop model they are brining it as it basically is a form of paid cheating. Its a hard one to answer as it is free now. I dislike the GW expansion model.

The main issue of this games lack of popularity is marketing within a saturated limited market.