Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Ebonyfly

Is it fairer to judge the difficulty of a game by a handful of difficult encounters or by some overall assessment of the content? I tend towards the latter because it is so easy for developers to tack some impossible content on to a game which is basically very easy.

 

Yes, if the statement is "challenging content is AVAILABLE" in the game. Is it fair to say it is an easy game when there *is* difficulty content and people avoid it?

 

In most mmorpg's the "difficult" content is at the end.  That means I have to spend 50 hours leveling to ever see it.  That's where I have a problem.  If I'm still steamrolling the game after 6+ hours of play then I'm bored and quitting.

The leveling up process is where the difficulty needs to be added.  I'd much prefer an mmropg where hitting max level is an accomplishment in itself rather then a given if I just put in enough time.

 

But the market disagrees with you. 

for some, unknown reason, it makes more sense to hand players max level within an hour, and let them wander around the end content.

The entirety of the game is no longer the content, only the last 5% is what gets sold.

Originally posted by Slapshot1188

I think DAoC had it right.   Item decay (greater depending on how much higher the item was than your level) but allowing you to repair it.. but repairing lowers durability and eventually your item would be unrepairable.

 

 

Preferably with player professions able to do the repairs though.... the higher the skill of the player the greater the success and the lower the durability hit.

 

 

This.

In a crafting based economy where player created items are superior to those found in the world, to promote continued crafting, item decay needs to happen.

Originally posted by kabitoshin
Never played a space sim, but man the immersion, scaling of this game this man is doing is amazing. What sold me was when he hopped in the cockpit started pressing all them buttons and they all aren't there for looks, but can be used is as close as realistic as I've ever seen. He said that they'll be using not 10,000 but 100,000 polygons on main charachters thats just nuts. My only problem is with this game is being able to run it at the setting I want, I have a 6 core processor 3.30 Ghz, 8gb ram, and a 660 ti. I know this isn't a MMO but will be ran by third party servers and have 3rd party mods cause that's what he wants and allowed. I'm definetly funding this since it's reached it's goal and then some but the 4 mill benchmark will add for a rich story and possibly greater stuff than that.

Since the game is in space, it allows for much higher polys. you dont have to render grass, trees, dirt, on top of structures, players, hair, etc. You are only rendering ships, the interior, and players. 

Im seeing some people argue that with his name and his history, he should be able to secure any funding he wants.

its not that easy

well it is, that is if you are willing to give up somethings in return. 

If im going to give someone 10 million for a game, you can bet your ass my hands will be in the development process somewhere. Investors dont just hand over a blank check and tell the dev, "Call us when its done!" no, they get involved, and when they get involved, shit gets changed, and when shit gets changed, you get vanilla, because vanilla always sells and you cant go wrong with vanilla.

He can pitch star citizen to an investor and the investor (given today's path games are following) will ask for something similar to EVE online except a F2P model completely nullfiying the original idea (see the original idea for Horizons before it was butchered). 

Giving SC to EA will result in Chris Roberts being fired 5 months in, the game being handed off to BioWare, and the entire concept reworked into a mass effect MMO. 

In short, an investor handing over millions of dollars will have immense pull and say over the direction of the game, people who chip in $10-100 do not. And yes, while kickstart is a sort of scam, it does allow developers much much more freedom and allows them to create the product they want, not what a suit wants.

It wont affect the future of any sandbox game. If it flops, it flops, and the year after that another sandbox will come out and so on and so forth. 

The reason it wont affect the future of sandbox games if it does flops is because gamers today are retarded when it comes to money. Which is why people spend money on day 1 DLC that was already on the disc they already paid for. but i digress. 

a sandbox game flopping means absolute dick. themepark after themepark have failed and devs continue to make themeparks and gamers continue to buy it.

Originally posted by biggarfoot

 

will a developer take the main ingredients from GW2 and add more carrot on a stick to win a larger player base? will they keep the cash shop or put more meaningful items in there to encourage player spending? or even add a subscription and give you the complete experience without a cash shop?  Or will the mainstream companies stay away?

They will copy GW2 and call it innovative because they spent $50 million more on it.

Originally posted by Jemcrystal

I think when a company hires forum workers they should check up on them to see if the forum employees are harassing the gamers.

 

Here is a post I made today and note the moderator's treatment.  Also note that this subject is not disallowed so that was not the reason for bad treatment.  The moderators need moderated.

 

Link if that is to hard to read here.

I see nothing wrong with the Moderator's post. 

I have no desire to make an MMO, the thread was to sort of get opinions of others. Could a MMO made on a small budget with 200,000 subs after the initial falloff can be deemed a success or if 1,000,000+ subs and a budget larger than The Fellowship of the Ring is the new standard. 

Originally posted by Larsa

Originally posted by Swollen_Beef

If a small studio (think 2000 mythic small), managed to raise 5-15 million, identified their demographic, and set an ideal subscription number at 200k at $12.99/mo could they be profitable within 5 years? 

 

Of course they would be tremendously profitable if they could retain 200k subscribers for 5 years. 200k subscribers at $12.99 per month for 5 years would mean roughly $155 million in revenue. That's a lot for a smallish company.

Of course we also know that the propability for a mass-market game to retain that amount of players for so long is rather small.

And of course we also know that a game with mass market appeal cannot be produced for $5-15 million in the first place.

Something doesn't add up.

I think since WoW, most have come to expect and demand a game to have a huge 100 million+ dollar budget.

But considering such a game would not have voice overs (at least initially. if financially successful, VO's could be explored). no million dollar budget cinematics, or budgets for offices filled with sand which would be denied.

Obviously graphics would suffer. But it seems the consensus around here is that more money is going to flashy graphics and hardly any is going to the actual game

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Caldrin

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Swollen_Beef

im thinking the initial surge would be 500,000ish.

To get that initial surge of 500k you'd be spending 5-10 million on advertising alone.

not really depends how you advertise.. GW2 for instance im sure they would never have needed to spend that much on advertising.. tho they probally did as well.. but they didnt have to because of all the player hype around the game.. the players basically advertised it for them..

We're not talking about an established publisher with an already popular, successful IP.

And, YES... from the advertising that GW2 did, they spent at least 10 million, if not more.

• paid advertising (banners, interstitials)
• site skins (like the one here)
• travel and booth expenses for cons, expos, press tours

Over five years, and especially during the last year before release, that adds up to a LOT.

 

Now, back to Mythic 2000...

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/dark-age-of-camelot/credits

What do you think it would cost to pay that crew for five years at today's salaries?

 

This is usually where someone says "What about Minecraft?" to which my response is that building a business plan around an anomaly is never a good idea. :)

 

To be completely clear, I'm not saying MMO advertising or an MMO even needs to cost that much. An MMO that is looking to land 500,000 paying customers at release should plan for that much.

many were working in multiple departments.
I think in today's environment employees are hired to do one just and only that job. There is no cross-training.

25 employees, paying them an average of $70,000 (my opinion, is on the high-end, but im just guessing that number. im probably wrong). works out to 1.75 million per year (excluding benefits. or maybe with benefits).

You could probably drive down the cost of labor by hiring out of the tech school diploma mills. Also considering more and more are getting into programming for games because of the bullshit being fed in advertising, im thinking there is more to choose from.

I would think since such a game would not be going after AAA status, a $19.99 digital box price with a free trial (30 days?) would suffice.

also, i dont think 500,000 initial buyers is a stretch. as previously said, the genre has millions ready jump to the next game.

The only problem would be the churn. Thats a train you need to slow down. There will always be the sky is falling types. Im thinking that if you constaly remind players the direction of the game, and the exact audience you are targeting, possibly avoiding some or many of your target audience being swayed by the nay sayers. (EVE seems to do well with this).

im thinking the initial surge would be 500,000ish. Given the current mmo atmosphere, and the nomadic behavior of mmo players. But one that 3-4 month drop off begins, you would have to be very agressive in getting in front of the doom and gloom bus, making it known that such a drop was expected and that 500,000 while nice, is not the target number. 

So probably figure in added expense for PR regarding the first 6 months. 

If a small studio (think 2000 mythic small), managed to raise 5-15 million, identified their demographic, and set an ideal subscription number at 200k at $12.99/mo could they be profitable within 5 years? 

another "Why not make an MMO set in the X universe"

Originally posted by Kopogero

So let's see to sum it all up for the last decade

Before 2001 = Was considered one of the most hardcore gamers on the planet. Played almost every single SNES, NES, PSX and Dreamcast title avaliable as well as I enjoyed arcade and PC net gaming with friends outside.

2001 = Since I got my PC lost complete interest in most single player games. I was totally addicted to the online gameplay from FPS shooters like CS, HL, UT and RTS like SC to playing most big title MMORPGs like UO, SWG, WOW and many many others F2P or smaller P2P titles.

2011 = DCUO was one of my last MMORPG that I enjoyed for 2-3 months and Aion happened to last around the same.

PRESENT time = 0 interest in any MMORPG or 99% of single player PC games. I happened to go back and try to finish some missed games like FFX, FF12 and pretty much thats about it.

So I must thank the developers and their awesome job for turning one of the most hardcore players on the planet into a game free individual. Thank you so much, without your lack of imagination and lazy work I would be playing something right now than thanking you!

You are thanking the wrong group.

VCs, Publishers, and stock holders.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by GTwander

Originally posted by Ariannae

Pro-tip; There is not a chance in hell that Blizzard would be even a fraction of the company they currently are if they had released their past few titles with the playerbase that they had during the time of Diablo 1/Warcraft II/ Starcraft. They would have fallen into a black abyss and been forgotten by the gaming world simply because the playerbase back then didn't buy into garbage on a plate.

That's because people used to make games THEY wanted to play.

Now they make ones that "market research leans towards"... but in a way, they are right - because the major demographic they are hitting will eat shit with a smile.

Why would i care what devs want to play? I want them to make games that *I* want to play. If "market research" is how they find out what *I* want to play, so much the better.

 

There you have it folks. This generation's attitude summed up in just 3 simple sentences.

To answer OP's question:

No, Money is ruining the MMO experience.