"Promoting" means spending cash. Not changing a website for a while isn't promoting.

If anyting, SOE lost money to them too, I doubt that PE paid them anything for the little bit of promoting they DID do.

They had to bail on it before release because they knew they couldn't afford to go that way. And that was the first sign of the fury apocolypse.

Well, they spent MMO bucks on a FPS game... I've been saying it since I learned what the game was going to be like.

I feel bad for the employees who lost their jobs during the holidays, but the writing was on the wall (from where I sit anyways)... MMORPG PvP is just not the shiznit everyone seems to think it is, and this game design even removed the thing that saves the others: PvE.

Was a hard thing to swallow, paying monthly for a game that was buggier, slower, and smaller (at least all the instances I was in) than your average free to play multiplayer FPS shooter (well, free to play once you bought the game). They went to free-to-play, but too late. They marketed it like an MMO, and it wasn't.

"will be more frequent with our new agile team". Isn't that always the spin... 'more agile'. Sure, management gets harder with more people, but if more people can't produce more work than fewer people, you have a problem with MANAGEMENT. Heh.

It is amazing how these people got any money to start making G&H in the first place. Let alone somehow win the STO license...

Hey, they're making SOE look good even to some of the haters, and that takes some serious effort.

I hope paramount pulls out of their deal with PE/P2, I suspect they'd have the legal code for doing so for 'underperforming' or some other vague legal term. Would have been a smart thing to do.

If they could pull out the license and sell it to someone else quickly, we might see a STO game in 5 years (not joking, it takes about that long now, unless you're making a YAAMMO (Yet another asian mmo) where cut and paste and bad hairdo's rule.

This is quake with swords and spells with a built in gamespy... and they wanted you to pay monthly for it. Heh....

Wonder why they had to switch. It certainly isn't a MMO. Why its even listed here is beyond me. Its a FPS with matchmaking software built in.

Most horrible words a fan (or employee for that matter) ever wants to hear:

shareholder value

In plain language that means "We plan on driving stock prices up, then bailing with our wads of cash in the near future, leaving an empty shell behind for the vultures to pick over."

I believe all MMORPG's fail at pvp combat.

They succeed in griefing and ganking.

PvP means to me a fight between players where the skill of the player (not the arbitrary power of a toon leveled to 50 or whatever) decides the outcome. WW2 Online, Planetside, etc, are examples of this kind of PvP. Everyone has a chance to win for the most part (rifleman vs tiger, not so much, but Tigers are super rare, and rifleman are not). Besting an opponent in this style of combat is a rewarding experience for me.

In MMORPG's however, aside from the somehat balanced small instances in some of them (BG's in WoW etc) typically devolve into one sided gank fests (DAOC, L2, Shadowbane, AO, etc). Without balance, you have grief. Superior numbers and levels wins the day. Every... single.... time........ That would bore the hell out of me, but apparently there are sufficient numbers of sociopaths in the world that it makes game developers think of them first (PotBS, Warhammer, AoC) when designing new games. I find no joy in ganking someone 5 or 6 on 1. That's not fun for me, and I shudder to think of what kind of person it is who does find it enjoyable (Did they boil puppies alive when they were younger? Put firecrackers into frogs?)

And on the opposite side, the person who gets ganked 5-6 on 1 will find it unenjoyable as well. They'll probably cancel the account if it gets bad enough (Shadowbane anyone?) This kind of PvP where levels and items and time played (and numbers) matter far more than skill is self defeating for the developer. Sure, you don't have to provide end game content as these people are more than willing to sit at a spawn point for hours on end waiting for a helpless victim to come along.... but sooner or later, the game runs out of helpless victims and it goes under.

As for why most games aren't Open PvP, I wonder why... its these same sociopaths who'd ruin it for everyone but themselves. Its why we have laws in our societies. We shouldn't NEED them, but there are people, just as in these games, who'd go out of their way to mess with everyone (or worse) if they weren't in place. And sometimes even the laws don't stop them and they have to be jailed or put down (see the colorado religious school shootings just yesterday). Wouldn't suprise me if the idiot who went on the shooting spree was a griefer in some MMORPG.

If you want to talk to a Ferengi shopkeeper, it goes through the Interaction System. 

"Please deposit 25 cents to talk to this merchant. <Deposit> <Cancel>"

Need to get some additional phaser training at the local Starfleet Academy?

"Please deposit 2 dollars for additional phaser training. <Deposit> <Cancel>"

Want to beam down to a planet?

"Please deposit 1 dollar to beam down to the planet. <Deposit> <Cancel>"

Responding to a distress call from a crippled starship?

"Please deposit 1.25 dollars to respond to this distress call. <Deposit> <Cancel>"

In fact, when one is done tallying (Tally??? Freudian slip?) up the mission givers, trainers, vendors, Transwarp Terminal operators, Dahar Masters, helpful cadets and informative colonists, you'll find that there are just about as many peaceful interactions in Star Trek Online as the phasers-and-bat'leths variety. All of which will be microtransacted for maximum enjoyment factor! After all, microtransactions enable the casual user to keep up with the hard core types! And who can afford 15 bucks a month? With microtransactions, you'll be forking that much over every day! So much easier to afford (my new Ferrari!).

Well, I'll tell you one thing....

The way PE/Daron Stinnett are going.... they're making McQuaid and Vanguard/Sigil look like choirboys by comparison. At least Vanguard got released. G&H didn't even make it to that (I beta'd it, and it was only mildly entertaining, and held no great 'WOW! I WANT TO KEEP PLAYING!' factor for me).

STO is definitely in the wrong hands. It should have been given to someone who could have made it a blockbuster of a game, one that could tap millions of subs.

Daron's LAME excuse about 200 bucks a year being too much (180 anyone 12x15) for most people is patently ridiculous. A movie costs 10 bucks to see these days, for 2 hours of fun. At 5 bucks an hour (not including drinks/popcorn/candy), its still fairly 'cheap' compared to say, seeing a baseball game or football game. If a casual player even plays 4 hours a week, 30 hours a month... that's a whopping 50 cents an hour of entertainment time. 10 times cheaper than a movie.

His response is a cover for the fact that they're having these discussions for another reason: They'll release a bare bones game with nothing in it, and microtransaction people to death with content additions.

I suspect a 'casual' player would end up paying MORE than 15 bucks a month in microtransactions if they want to experience the world and 'keep up with the Joneses'. So... what's that about 'sustainable'?

No, this is PE thinking that they can release a stinker of  a game, and make money off the 'candy' at the concession stand, then escape before the gates close on it with their bags of loot.

Originally posted by Krileon

 

The current satellite we use requires 2 Hops. This new dish works only on 1 Hop. Reducing latency significantly (by half). So if I can't play on what I got now. Then I surely can on this, but I need more info.

Not sure how your figuring that out... bouncing off a satellite is a two hop procedure no matter what :).

And SPEED is only part of it, you'll still have worse latency, as the laws of physics don't cease to exist because of a bandwidth change.

Very sad to see the ST license languish with a bunch of maroons.

I'll never play a F2P game that requires the purchase of in game items with cash.

Ehhh.. movies come out that suck all the time.

Remember Ishtar?

And heck, just check IMDB and the rest for all the little 'bugs' people spot in movies.

For instance, in LOTR the two towers, in one scene, you can tell the display in reverse (unless chimneys somehow learned to suck in smoke).

And of course, the LOTR movies also show what kind of sacrifices are made to make a movie, if they'd tried to make a movie out of the whole book, it'd have been over 40 hours long. We as consumers got the 'shaft' in regards to that, but no one complains because its a movie, not a game.

For those who doubt me, I heartily recommend they get a job in the game design/programming industry (heck, programming period) and then tell me how things work which I've experienced first hand in my professional life AND studied (game design) in my academic life...

Seems the vast majority of people here don't understand several simple things about the game industry in general and MMO's in particular:

1) They're in development for years. This causes problems in and of itself. Technology changes, hardware, software, API's, OS's, heck, even the programs you use to write the game change.

2) They require huge teams. These people's salaries typically are more than 50% of the total budget for the game. Then they require benefits, vacations, training for new things, new hires at different times for when the team needs to grow, and layoffs when the teams need to shrink (don't need 20 artists full time from the start, etc).

3) The cost of a MMO is orders of magnitudes greater than a single player game (or even a multiple player game).

4) When you buy a box, the developers don't get much money at all. Some might get NONE. See, typically, the publisher has fronted the developer money, and they won't let the developer get any more till they get THEIR money back. Imagine a corporate loan shark, that's pretty much what publishers are.

5) The publishers control when the game is released. It was THEIR money, so they decide when they want to release it. The only two exceptions to this that I know of is PotBS which is self funded and Blizzard. They can control when they want to publish (though I suspect PotBS has strained the cash reserves of its benevolent leader).

An example of the differences when a game developer develops in house vs using a publisher, Gods And Heroes. Since no publisher was providing the money for G&H, they could do whatever they liked.... however, since it became obvious that the game was a dud, and needed a LOT more work, they shelved (dumped) it, stopped losing money on it, and put all their resources onto their ST:O game. WW2 Online was published by Strategy First.... the game wasn't done, wasn't ready, and everyone knew it. But SF felt spending any more money on it as a waste (a danger to their profitability), and so they forced a premature release. I'm sure SF made their money back, but it crushed the game's chances permanently. No skin off SF's back because they're the publisher, not the developer, and most people don't know WHO publishes a game. SF publishes many other titles.

It comes down to business. Most games reach a point where the producers (usually the publishers) have spent too much money just to flush the thing down the toilet. If they release, at least they'll recoup some of the money they've spent (this happens all the time with Movies and music as well, you just don't notice 'bugs' as much in those mediums, and there's a ton more selection to keep you interested even if you buy a dud once in a while (who would really buy Britney Spears or Rap? I mean.... really).

"There's no accounting for taste."

"There's a sucker born every minute."

"A fool and his money are soon parted."

The real losers are the developers of the product. If their product fails, the publisher has made their cut back, leaving the developers with nothing to a) develop their NEXT product with and b) nothing to fix the current one and c) a bad reputation for releasing crappy products early (which was probably forced upon them by the publisher in the first place).

I wonder if the people whining in this thread know that SOE is only publishing the game for the NA and Euro parts of the world, Akela is doing Russia, and the rest of the world is currently in limbo looking for a publisher (Oceania I'm looking at you).

So, unless you live in NA or Europe, don't expect SOE to be trying very hard to get you the game... that's not their job.

Originally posted by Acaeus

 

Disagree with you there. IMO best end ga

Originally posted by eric_w66

When you get down to it, *all* MMO's are mindless grinds. The issue is.... are you having fun while doing it?

Back when EQ1 raised the cap from 65 to 70, I was not having fun (GoD and OOW were poopy expansions designed for 72 person raids, not a 6 person group).

When WoW raised the cap from 60 to 70, I was having fun, but only doing the new quests and stuff, exploring the new zones. Once the 'you have to raid to advance' wall was hit, I stopped playing again.

Lesson to MMORPG designers:

1) Do not make PvP the end game. Been there, done that, its dumb.

2) Do not make impossible raids the end game. Been there, done that, its dumb.

Someone come up with a NEW and FUN idea for the end game rather than these pathetic excuses for 'content'.

me thus far has been DAoC's, which is a form of PvP. I'd say the integration of PvE and PvP in Darkness Falls was also a very good idea.

 

 

As a casual, raiding is a "no go" for me. PvP is doable in the form of  DAoC battlegrounds, or even some mindless group RvR (defending/attacking a keep). IMO PvP is still the best possible end game.

 

Either way, I'm getting RoK as soon as it comes out. Will be playing EQ2 (casually) until WAR is released (and pehaps after WAR is released ).

End game DAOC is just a RvR hamster wheel to keep you paying while they try to develop new content. I've slaughtered many thousands of people in different games, and well, I won't PAY for that content, at least monthly fee wise to keep me 'busy' retaking the same forts over and over and over and over again. Planetside with swords and sorcery, no thanks. And if your server is unbalanced (like most if not all were when I quit), one faction has the 'club', the other two are 'baby seals'. Unbalanced end game PvP content that you pay for! No thanks.

PvP isn't the best possible end game, its the 'easiest to code' end game. Doesn't require paying programmers and artists every month to make new content.

I'm not suprised at this 'update'. A poorly running game that's only about PvP.... Quake with bugs? That's basically the entire game. Quake with swords and magic with bugs. Nothing but battleground combat.

If this was a free download and no monthly fee, I could see it being somewhat enjoyable *briefly*, but passing it off as a 'MMO' is a joke. This is no MMO. This is GameSpy tacked onto a FPS in a sword and sorcery environment.

For the record, I had a *winning* match record when I gave up on it, been there, done that, not gonna pay to do it again (especially with the bugs and crashes). Owning people in pvp might keep simple minded people happy for a long time, but for someone with a brain that works, well, I need something more than an e-peen viagra game (Especially one touted as a MMO). I slaughtered probably close to 50,000 people in tribes 1, over 30,000 in WW2 Online, more in the various quakes/unreals/Call of Duty/Battlefields... did the Shadowbane thing (hated it too, since I wasn't part of my server's 'top guild'), made Knight-Captain in the *old* WoW pvp ranking systems (the one where you had to play 24/7 to even have a chance of advancement)...    

And all that has lead me to believe that while PvP can be fun, it cannot be the ONLY thing you do unless its done exceptionally well (and is free to play once bought), aka call of duty's, etc. For a MMO to be PVP only... well... it sucks. 

What game ISN'T level based?

Even games without levels are 'level based'. You just don't see the 'level' listed.

When you get down to it, *all* MMO's are mindless grinds. The issue is.... are you having fun while doing it?

Back when EQ1 raised the cap from 65 to 70, I was not having fun (GoD and OOW were poopy expansions designed for 72 person raids, not a 6 person group).

When WoW raised the cap from 60 to 70, I was having fun, but only doing the new quests and stuff, exploring the new zones. Once the 'you have to raid to advance' wall was hit, I stopped playing again.

Lesson to MMORPG designers:

1) Do not make PvP the end game. Been there, done that, its dumb.

2) Do not make impossible raids the end game. Been there, done that, its dumb.

Someone come up with a NEW and FUN idea for the end game rather than these pathetic excuses for 'content'.

Without SOE, there'd have been NO vanguard. So which would you rather have had: no game, or a half finished one?

Sigil hosed Vanguard up. Plain and simple.

BTW, Mythic has a wonderful history of crap too.

DAOC? The game without content? Dungeons without monsters, monsters without loot? Anyone remember all of that?

Yes, Mythic is guilty of the same crap everyone else is guilty of... releasing crap too early. And WAR seems like its headed to the same place. Not a suprise really.