Originally posted by Meriik

  I fear if this project succeeds, which at this point i think it will, then other mmo developers will be more inclined to make their games in Neverwinters image, thus destroying my beloved genre even further.  Anyway, just sharing my opinion, dont hate me too much!

 

Here's the thing, OP: Neverwinter doesn't have to succeed or fail for that to happen. Free To Play games are more likely to run in the black, budget-wise. The writing, as they say, has been on the wall for a long time now.

To put it the way Yahtzee did: "That ship has sailed, circumnavigated the globe, and returned to port laden with exotic spice."

Having said that, I'm still not seeing anything in this cash shop that would give me an unfair advantage over anyone. Can someone point me to something specific that is in the cash shop that is unbalancing?

Can we interview him again in a few days? You know, after he's gotten some sleep and isn't running on his twenty-second cup of coffee.

Christ, look at it. His answers are nearly incomprehensible.

And that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

I'm a lifer for that game. Someone asked me whether I felt ripped off because it is going Free To Play. I said no, because the F2P people get a gaming experience that is far chopped down from what I get.

They basically get a glorified free trial to the game. I support this approach to MMORPGs, and I believe no MMO should launch without either a F2P option or a comprehensive free trial in place. These are games that you can neither take back nor trade in, you see, and since they offer vastly different experiences (don't laugh) you need to be able to determine for yourself whether they're right for you before you shell out the cash.

Originally posted by Elethon

What troubled me with CO was that the powers kept getting overhauls and it was too costly to respec into a worthwhile build. That aspect about this game made it completely unplayable for me.

Is anyone playing this that can tell me if it still feels like a beta?

 

 The answer to that would be no. The game is generally bug free and the retcon thing's pretty well in hand since Cryptic tends to pass them out like candy.

That said, it still suffers from the same problem all Cryptic games have: Nothing to do once you've done it all. Most MMOs have something for their endgame crowd to chew on. A good one will let you take part in epic battles that pit player versus player or player versus environment in a meaningful, world-changing way, something that's important for you to log on and do on a daily basis.

An OK MMO will have a PVP endgame that's fun to play, at least.

This MMO's PVP isn't really anything to write home about, and the world-affecting stuff I mentioned is nowhere to be found. So, you're left wondering, "What now?"

Actually I'm looking for an old ride.

We've begged and we've begged but we still have no mechanism to refit our old ships so that they can remain competitive at high levels.

Indeed, good for them!

Going Free-To-Play with DDO was a bold maneuver. They sunk a lot of time and money into converting it when they could have just hauled stakes and let it die. Now they've done the same with LOTRO and it's paying dividends again.

It's nice to see something other than the typical business model do well. Nice to see the underdog score a touchdown.

No shame in that. KotOR2 was fantastic. It just wasn't *finished*.

Let's not kid ourselves. Obsidian Entertainment has some serious game. They just need to learn to allow themselves enough time and money to finish and polish a product before they release it.

They had the same problem with Neverwinter Nights 2. Story-wise it made Bioware's first NWN offering look just sad. The characters were more fleshed out and interesting, the story didn't revolve around retrieving artifacts (first some monster parts, then evidence, then Words of Power), it was just better all the way around. Again, like with KotOR2, they just tripped at the finish line.

I will say that Chris Avellone appears to have dinner with the Grim Reaper every Thursday night, though. KotOR2's ending? "Hmm. How can we handle... aha! I'll take control away from the players via cutscenes and kill the characters I just spent a whole game making beloved." NWN2? "Hmm... I've got it! I'll squash everyone under falling rocks! They'll never see it coming!"

The man has a serious fetish for making his audience an emotional wreck.

"So the ladies really liked Bishop, eh? We'll just see about that! Let's see how they like him once he's *dead* and his soul's being stripped away on the Wall of the Faithless!"

As for Bioware and SWTOR... They've proven they don't need our help anymore. They've officially reached 'the next level'. They can say to the world that their games have pristine storytelling and be spot-on true. That's why I don't worry about SWTOR. It's in good hands. Good, proven hands.

Some might remember Cryptic with Champions Online and Star Trek Online. They designed the games in such a way that they could both be played on the 360, went out of their way even to make it happen. Then due to something behind closed doors, after years of negotiation, they finally said 'screw it' and stopped trying to work with Microsoft.

Many developers have apparently had this problem. I don't know if it's the 360 or Microsoft themselves that make MMOing on their system such a hassle, but FFXIV is not the first MMO to flip them the bird and they won't be the last.

Originally posted by kb056

3 million created quest, seems like alot, doesnt it?

Think Sony made a mistake here. If someone knows how long it takes to "create" a quest, I think they have given us enough info to peg the number for the maximum subscriber base currently ingame.

 

If every single person playing did nothing but created quests, depending on the time needed to create a quest, you can peg the max number of possible subs.

 

They say 1 person created 6k quests? 60 minsX24 hrsX30 days=43200 mins. 43200 mins/6000quests=7.2 mins.

This equates to a maximum of 200 quests per day per person with everyone playing 24 hrs a day for a month. 3M/200=15,000 players....

 

I.m betting SWG doesnt have more than a few thousand players still playing, sad.

Kinda drunk, atm, so please recheck my math...I may be wrong but not by much.

*headdesk*

No no, idiot, you just calculated the *minimum* number of players. SWG has, at bare minimum, 15k subscribers if we use your math. This assumes that every single person in the game is doing nothing but making quests for all 24 hours out of every day.

Since we know that can't possibly be true, we can use a sliding scale to figure out how many subscribers there are.

If 6000k is the max (insane man who does nothing but make missions from sun-up to sun-down), and 1 is minimum (little to no interest in the system), we can calculate a curve that estimates the average user's number of quests created.

Somebody break out their graphing calculator, mine's broken.

Originally posted by Delzo

This will give gamers who are "on the fence" a solid two weeks with the game?

Aren't betas meant to help squash any remaining bugs, and not meant to be a "try before you buy?"

I think the term beta has lost its meaning over the last few years.

MMmmmnnnneeeeh. It's more like it expanded in purpose.

The devs still gather valuable data during the Open Beta phase. The thing is it's all back-end stuff that pretty much just needs a lot of people on at the same time. They don't need actual testers for that, they just need bodies. As long as they're doing that they might as well showcase the game, get the word out and the hype up.

Originally posted by Irishoak

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Irishoak

How is the MT store? I always figured they made resources scarce to fuel that thing. Have they scaled it back? I was always worried it would effect game play on a base level. Because like it or not, hell you don't even have to believe it, but game design is effected by adding a dedicated store. Greedy sods.

 

The store inventory currently consists only of vanity pets called Action Figures. All the doom and gloom was for naught.

 

Or did the gloom and doom change it? Because I remember several interviews where it was more than just pets. Be dismissive if you wish, the backlash changed the outcome I believe.

Or, perhaps you're both mistaken and the actual content going into the store simply isn't in there yet. My money's on the backlash changing nothing.

Originally posted by Somnulus

Originally posted by lordoffiling

Originally posted by MikeB

 

I wanted to make it known that I understood Cryptic Studios' motives with the patch, but found the fact they didn't allow their testers to put the changes through the paces during beta a boneheaded move. Make more sense?

 

There's that word again. "Boneheaded." Implies a lack of intelligence or unwillingness to learn.

You really think they didn't realize this thing was going to upset some players? I'm relatively certain that the people who made the game are experienced professionals, intelligent people with degrees and everything.

Yes, they knew it would upset the players.  They simply don't care.  Get used to it, it's par for the course for this crew.

Yes, because I'm sure "this crew" hates money and everything to do with it. They *want* to go broke. /eyeroll If you don't like them and the way they handle things that's fine, but let's not assume they're out to ruin everything.

You're a writer for this website so I can only assume you know how this works: Patches take time to develop. They take time to test. They take time to get feedback on, and they take time to alter based on that feedback. Roll all that up into a sum and you get X, X being the amount of time it takes to properly create and implement a patch.

You strike me as a relatively inexperienced MMORPG player if the concept of a "test server" to allow your subscribers to test patch content BEFORE it goes live eludes you. You don't just dump it on the players, specifically at launch. Of course, this crew is well-known for exactly this type of idiocy.

27 MMOs and counting. I'm completely familiar with the concept of a test server. I'm all for the idea of a test server, they're fantastic tools. However, for reasons I will detail below, I do not believe the use of one would have helped in this case.

Since this isn't a live product, we must also factor for Y, Y being the launch date. Y is a fixed number, one mutually agreed on by Cryptic and Atari. Or maybe not, maybe Atari issued an ultimatum saying they had to launch on Y, regardless of the state of the product. It has happened before. In either case, Y is a date that, by the time it was realized the critical patch had to happen, couldn't be moved.

Wrong.  You release AS IS, continue to develop the changes you feel are necessary and test them on the test server, and then release a thoroughly tested update while also keeping your subscribers informed.

Again, something that hasn't been a strong suit for this crew in the past.

Almost every beta tester agreed the game was broken in that it was too easy, lots of powers were over/under powered, and certain combinations put you into god mode. A large balance patch was not only necessary, it was being called for. To do it your way might have taken weeks. Weeks, in an MMO were wailing on up to max level in a day or two is not only possible but likely. We may have to agree to disagree on this one, but in my mind the fallout from a major rebalance patch several weeks *after* everyone got used to being in god-mode would have been a lot worse.

X was too big to fit into Y. They had to trim the process down. Since there was no time to even do so much as get patch notes up for it before it went live, I'm guessing they managed to get the thing into a workable state just under the wire by pulling triple shifts. They squeezed it onboard just in time, and the player feedback portion of the process became an unfortunate casualty. All done to make the patch content go live *before* the primary customer base could get their hands on the game and have the rug yanked out from under them days later.

The player feedback portion became an unfortunate casualty? Hmmm. So I guess they won't have any heartburn if the subscriber portion of the game becomes a casualty?

The point is; there was no need to pull the rug out from under anyone. They should have tested it thoroughly, got player feedback, explained the necessity, and balanced the patch out before releasing. With thorough testing and balancing, the patch probably wouldn't have been released for at least a month, giving the subscribers the opportunity to test it and provide input.

Again, this approach would give everyone the opportunity to get really used to and comfortable with the idea of being in god-mode all the time, when the devs knew that was not the way the game was going to have to run in the end. Also, I've never once seen "explaining the necessity" work the miracle you're thinking of, because a whole lot of MMO players seem to think they know better. They believe their fifteen bucks a month means they're entitled to special treatment and that the devs have to listen to anything and everything they say. I've never once seen a player thank a dev for a nerf that affected them, no matter how well reasoned the dev post explaining the necessity was. They always react with rage and frequently with a cancellation. 

It comes down to naming your poison. Sudden changes on the preorder people vs. announced changes on the subscribers. My thinking, the fallout would have been a lot worse inflicting upon the subscribers.

The point I'm making is this: Hasty, it was. Boneheaded, it was not. There can be no "boneheaded" decision when your back is to the wall, the gun is to your head, and the man is in the process of squeezing the trigger, because the only truly stupid thing you can do in that situation is nothing.

Boneheaded it was. Releasing may have been a foregone conclusion; injecting an untested and unexpected patch that changed game mechanics entirely was NOT. They had an extensive beta and multiple open-beta weekends wherein their potential market played the game and either liked the mechanics or did not.

Those that liked the game enough to purchase it as it was could not have been pleased by the changes, and in fact, it seems as though many were not.

So yes, that is what I would call boneheaded.

Everyone knew the changes were coming. No one could have possibly expected, for instance, Invulnurability to remain at granting 80% protection from everything. Most of the testers I talked to about it knew changes had to eventually happen. Many wanted them to. As for whether they had to or not, my thinking is that they did, for reasons already explained. No matter what you do, nerfs are never popular. The lesser of two evils in this case was subjecting the ex-beta testers (now the preorder people) to a nerf, since they were used to the change process and at least somewhat prepared for the changes they knew had to eventually come, rather than the non-testers who would be paying customers for likely a month or more when the bomb fell.

And, before you ask, why am I making such a big deal out of this? Because this statement goes on to set the tone of the rest of your review. By writing in this fashion you make yourself more than you are, writing as though you know more than the devs. You come off sounding like--forgive me, fellow posters--an angry nerd on a video game forum, one of the ones who believes in his bones that he knows more about making and running an MMO than the people actually doing it for a living. The ones who arrogantly spout their ideas and scream things like, "They never listen to me!" when their pet cause goes ignored.

Couldn't agree less. The reviewer was fair and even-handed in the review and simply stated the facts as s/he knew them and their opinion.

It's a he. Again, you're entitled to your opinion. Personally I believe the reviewer was being intentionally incindiary, either because he believes taking a swing at the new kid in town will make him more popular, or else because he just has an axe to grind.

The only thing I would disagree with in the review is the "First Impressions" moniker. It should have been titled "Release Impressions". A true first impressions review would not have introduced any information from the state of the game at beta.

 

Originally posted by MikeB

 

I wanted to make it known that I understood Cryptic Studios' motives with the patch, but found the fact they didn't allow their testers to put the changes through the paces during beta a boneheaded move. Make more sense?

There's that word again. "Boneheaded." Implies a lack of intelligence or unwillingness to learn.

You really think they didn't realize this thing was going to upset some players? I'm relatively certain that the people who made the game are experienced professionals, intelligent people with degrees and everything.

You're a writer for this website so I can only assume you know how this works: Patches take time to develop. They take time to test. They take time to get feedback on, and they take time to alter based on that feedback. Roll all that up into a sum and you get X, X being the amount of time it takes to properly create and implement a patch.

Since this isn't a live product, we must also factor for Y, Y being the launch date. Y is a fixed number, one mutually agreed on by Cryptic and Atari. Or maybe not, maybe Atari issued an ultimatum saying they had to launch on Y, regardless of the state of the product. It has happened before. In either case, Y is a date that, by the time it was realized the critical patch had to happen, couldn't be moved.

X was too big to fit into Y. They had to trim the process down. Since there was no time to even do so much as get patch notes up for it before it went live, I'm guessing they managed to get the thing into a workable state just under the wire by pulling triple shifts. They squeezed it onboard just in time, and the player feedback portion of the process became an unfortunate casualty. All done to make the patch content go live *before* the primary customer base could get their hands on the game and have the rug yanked out from under them days later.

The point I'm making is this: Hasty, it was. Boneheaded, it was not. There can be no "boneheaded" decision when your back is to the wall, the gun is to your head, and the man is in the process of squeezing the trigger, because the only truly stupid thing you can do in that situation is nothing.

And, before you ask, why am I making such a big deal out of this? Because this statement goes on to set the tone of the rest of your review. By writing in this fashion you make yourself more than you are, writing as though you know more than the devs. You come off sounding like--forgive me, fellow posters--an angry nerd on a video game forum, one of the ones who believes in his bones that he knows more about making and running an MMO than the people actually doing it for a living. The ones who arrogantly spout their ideas and scream things like, "They never listen to me!" when their pet cause goes ignored.

Originally posted by Jpizzle

Originally posted by lordoffiling

My irritation is at the reviewer. The tone of most of his post is that he thinks the CO devs are idiots, and he's saying it when he himself can't get the facts in his tiny initial impressions review straight.

Another strange line in this review is that the devs created the launch day patch with "no feedback", when in the next paragraph he outright says the patch was created using accurate feedback from the players that the game was too easy. So what's the gripe? That they didn't get feedback on their response to the feedback? That they didn't delay launch so they could get feeback on the feedback on the feedback?

Sorry, the whole review is a dog wearing a cape.

 

Um... I don't know if you're being ignorant on purpose or aren't reading it correctly. He's saying they patched on launch, and gave no feedback on the day of the launch. There was no warning. There were no patch notes. And hours and hours passed before an initial response was given by the devs.

That's a completely unaceptable approach towards your community in the opinion of most people paying money.

 

. . . No?

The line in question says, "Well, in a boneheaded move, Cryptic Studios thought it would be a good idea to dump major, far-reaching changes into the game in a launch day patch with absolutely no feedback from players."

So, it would seem it is you who did not read correctly. The review says nothing about Cryptic's communication. Yes, it did suck, no, that's not what the reviewer was talking about, nor was it what *I* was talking about. He's griping about the fact that the patch went live without the testers getting the chance to provide feedback on it. He is, in other words, upset that Cryptic Studios lacks the power to fundamentally alter the space-time continuum.

Proper feedback on a patch that size and scope might have taken weeks. It was launch day. Time was up.

Originally posted by korat102

Originally posted by lordoffiling

OK, well, it might be a good idea to do some fact-checking before you turn these things in, reviewer. You can retcon from level 40 all the way back to genesis now, it's been this way for a while.

So much for "boneheaded mistakes."

 

Still not affordable though is it? Unless you've been using one of the gold sellers that have inevitably cropped up in the game.

I have not had a problem affording my retcons, but that might just be because I know where the auction counter is located. Having said that, the devs have admitted the costs are too high, their solution to the issue has been carefully outlined.

My irritation is at the reviewer. The tone of most of his post is that he thinks the CO devs are idiots, and he's saying it when he himself can't get the facts in his tiny initial impressions review straight.

Another strange line in this review is that the devs created the launch day patch with "no feedback", when in the next paragraph he outright says the patch was created using accurate feedback from the players that the game was too easy. So what's the gripe? That they didn't get feedback on their response to the feedback? That they didn't delay launch so they could get feeback on the feedback on the feedback?

Sorry, the whole review is a dog wearing a cape.

OK, well, it might be a good idea to do some fact-checking before you turn these things in, reviewer. You can retcon from level 40 all the way back to genesis now, it's been this way for a while.

So much for "boneheaded mistakes."