Your role in the sandbox done right

Posted on October 8, 2012 by SynCaine

Recently I finished my first playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas (yes, 2010 does say hello, thanks), and in addition to being an amazing game, it shows how to do a player-story in a sandbox amazingly well. Possibly better than any game I’ve ever played, actually (this feeling is very likely enhanced thanks to just finishing the GW2 player story, which, um, F:NV it is not…)

The key is that while what you do matters and is important, the world does not simply wait for you, and it feels like things are happening around you rather than always because of you. It’s fantastic the more I think about it. Some of the examples here around going to be spoilers, so if you have not played the game and hate spoilers… well read the post anyway.

The first half of the main story is finding out who the guy that shot you in the head is, and why he robbed you of the platinum chip. It explains why you are in a small random town out in the waste, and connects you with one of the game’s more important characters (you were hired by Mr. House, the big guy in Vegas). It gives you a goal, but the goal is not immediately “save the world”. Compare this to Skyrim, where in the first 5 minutes dragons happen and after 30min, you are The One.

While you are chasing the guy who shot you, you very quickly notice that the real big event in New Vegas is a war between the NCR and Caesar’s Legion. Some characters really care about this, others just don’t want to be in the crossfire, and some can’t be bothered at all. In a way, this very much reflects how you can approach things as well. You can strongly side with either faction, or screw with both and do your own thing. The game’s story handles all three choices very well, and in very different ways.

Once you reach Vegas itself along the main storyline, things switch from finding the guy who shot you to figuring out how the war is going to affect Vegas and its many factions. Rather than becoming the savior here, you instead play somewhat of a side role and align things based on your decisions. The war, and the big battle, is going to happen regardless, but you can help shape it. That to me is quintessential sandbox vs the solo-hero design of most sRPGs or even themepark MMOs.

Another small example that really stuck out to me was meeting Mr. House. If you go against his plan, he first tries to logically explain why you are making a mistake, and only when you REALLY insist on being a dick does he somewhat lose his composure and start getting angry. It’s a great example of you not being The One, but just some random person in a very big world with very big characters. Mr. House just wants you to play your little part so he can move on with being important, rather than shaping all of his plans around you (again, contrast this with Skyrim and being The One, and how all city leaders react to you).

If you decide to kill Mr. House, his final words are that all his planning is undone, and the area is doomed because it is losing someone special and retaining some small-fry (you). (Which ends up being accurate as Yes Man ultimately reprograms himself at the end, which was a great twist I just spoiled for you.)

There are countless other examples, but hopefully you get my point. Fantastic game overall, and made more so by the brilliant design of the world, and what role you play in it.

Posted in Fallout 3, MMO design | 12 Comments

NFL Friday Blog War

Posted on October 5, 2012 by SynCaine

Nothing at all to do with MMOs, other than that this epic trolling would fit right into ForumFall (coming Nov 20th as well!)
If the link did not make you laugh you either don’t follow football, don’t have a soul, or believe Tebow can play.

Posted in Random | 10 Comments

AV confirms DF1 players will recieve DF:UW for free

Posted on October 5, 2012 by SynCaine

Aventurine today confirmed that anyone who had a Darkfall 1 account will receive Darkfall: Unholy Wars for free. Nice move on AV’s part, especially considering that those who played on the EU server had to rebuy DF to play on the NA server. I’m curious if they will keep the sub price at the current reduced rate, or return it to $15.

Also the wipe was confirmed, for the few mutants who actually thought they might not wipe. Obviously a good move, whether the skill systems actually aligned or not. Now AV just needs to take a hard line on exploiting and swing the banhammer often to avoid many of the issues that plagued the early EU days.

Inquisition will be hitting DF:UW full-force. DF1 EU was the most fun we have had in an MMO for years, and beyond DF:UW the outlook for solid MMOs looks pretty bleak. Among the DF community, a lot of old names have returned to the forums, and old guilds seem to have popped back up again and are preparing.

All of this leads me to believe that come launch, DF:UW will have a very solid population, and that itself drives so much of the content. Nov 20th can’t come soon enough.

Posted in Darkfall Online | 6 Comments

China is a scary place for MMO gaming

Posted on October 4, 2012 by SynCaine

The China MMO market sounds terrifying. The whole video is almost an hour, but all of it just sounds awful. And not just because of the money issue, but because none of these games are actually designed to be fun so much as getting you addicted. It’s basically browser-based slot machine design.

The cultural differences are very clear, from the competitive aspect to the acceptance of things being unfair. What stands out to me is that in the west, one of the original selling points of a game like UO was that despite your status in real life (sex, race, wealth, appearance, etc.), in a virtual world your worth is determined by your in-game actions. With F2P, and especially with P2W, your real life aspects become more and more of the focus, with your in-game actions simply being the end result or trophy.

It’s certainly interesting to observe from afar, but it’s not even remotely anything I’d actually want to get into.

Posted in MMO design, Random, RMT | 20 Comments

Xfire is pretty much the gaming equivalent of blackface

Posted on October 3, 2012 by SynCaine

How are people STILL confused by what Xfire represents? It’s not that hard, yet time and time again people get it so wrong it makes my head spin. So consider this the second blogging service post of the week. You’re welcome.

Xfire does not represent everyone. No shit. But Xfire does represent A LOT of people (LoL alone has 30k+ people reporting stats), at least compared to your choice of metrics (feel free to provide a link, thanks!). Not only that, but the top games on Xfire over the years have been the top games based on sales, so that large group of people who do use Xfire also seem to trend right along with other, more official metrics when we get them. Head-in-the-sand aside, how anyone can argue at this point that Xfire only represents some small special interest group is beyond me.

Furthermore, when people glace at Xfire numbers (sorting the list by ranking), you are looking at hours played, not number of people playing. Why is this significant? Because people play a fresh release a lot more than they do an older game. Even if the actual number of players stays the same, your Xfire ranking is going to decrease after the first month of release as people get over the “omg new game must play 24/7” feeling and go back to normal mode. This is especially true for MMOs, and doubly so for MMOs that flame out after a very short time (GW2).

Finally, I’ve yet to see an example where a game’s statistics on Xfire have been proven wrong in terms of trending by a different, official source. When WAR was dropping on Xfire, it was also dying overall. When SW:TOR fell like a brick after the first month on Xfire, we now know that it was falling like a brick overall. When LoL was climbing up the Xfire rankings, it coincided with Riot hitting the big time and LoL becoming the most popular game out. I could go on, but the point is that at least in the top 50 or so games, what Xfire has shown in terms of trending has lined up with exactly what is actually happening.

To keep writing the numbers off as inaccurate or only representing a unique subset of the gamers in the NA/EU at this point is, IMO, simply ignorant.

Also it might be racist. Because, um, racism.

Posted in Random | 23 Comments

The long list of mass market MMOs that everyone is playing

Posted on October 2, 2012 by SynCaine

So if you did not pick up on the fact that yesterday’s post was a long-winded setup to tell you that EVE is the best MMO ever, you are either new here or not paying attention. Also if you are someone who likes to dismiss EVE because it’s a niche MMO in a genre full of mass-market MMOs, this should prove educational.

Let’s cover the niche part first though, since it’s pretty easy. WoW is an outlier with millions of subs, so I’m going to put it aside for now. Yes, EVE is niche compared to WoW, but based on that logic GW2 selling 2m boxes is also niche because 12m subs > 2m boxes. Same goes for SW:TOR, LotRO (who had a lovely “come play with millions of others” ad campaign pre-release. How’s that working out for ya?), or… actually any MMO not called WoW in the NA/EU (silly Asia).

So WoW aside, how do the 400k subs (I know I know, it’s just one guy with 400k accounts, and he buys PLEX in-game so even he is not paying anything, but let’s pretend for a moment that somehow magically those 400k subs still somehow count as 400k x $15 per month for the sake of CCP’s revenue) stack up to everyone else? Well no one has 1m subs, so now we are talking thousands rather than millions.

A whole slew of ‘mass market’ MMOs are now F2P because not enough people found them worth $15 a month. SW:TOR, which will soon join the F2P fail-ranks because it could not keep its 500k or bust target, cost more money than any MMO before it, and EAWare famously stated that if you are not spending $300m, you can’t compete with WoW. I guess if you DO spend $300m+, you can’t compete with EVE either. In fairness to EAWare EVE probably cost somewhere close to 300m to develop as well. Well 300m Yen anyway.

GW2 just launched and rewrote the whole MMO formula, including that nagging issue of having to pay to keep playing, because really, who likes paying when you can get the exact same thing for free? Not surprisingly GW2 sold fewer copies than Skyrim though, another “buy the box and play forever” fantasy title. To be fair, Skyrim is in the more mass-market sandbox genre, while GW2 has to carry the heavy burden of being a themepark. Also the NPCs in Skyrim are more helpful and less likely to go poof after a month, and the dynamic events don’t repeat as often. Both games do feature loot piñata dragons, meh combat, and nice visuals. I’ll be kind and not compare the main storylines.

Rift is still a sub-based MMO, and it’s a mass-market themepark. It has fewer subs than ‘niche’ EVE if various data sources are to be believed, and somehow if Trion retained half a mil subs I think we’d here about it. Plus get back to me when Rift has 400k subs at its ten year anniversary. Hey only about 8 years to go, but to be fair when EVE launched it had way fewer subs too, so maybe Rift will grow much like EVE has. Maybe. That said, out of the last few years, Rift is the only major MMO to actually stay a sub-based MMO for a year+, so it would not be totally unreasonable to call it the most successful launch since… WoW?

So I ask, what ‘mass-market’ MMO are people talking about when stating EVE’s 400k subs is ‘niche’? I thought we got over the whole “WoW or bust” thing in 2007? Or are people really still thinking the ‘MMO market’ is 12m strong, and surely the NEXT title is going to hit that mark? Because if you do I’m sure EAWare has a spot for you on the team! Or maybe Funcom. Or Mythic. Wait is Mythic still a thing? No, why, what happened? Didn’t they have that huge surefire IP and mass-market MMO that was going to crush WoW? (I hate you whiteshades.)

And once you realize that 400k subs is not niche, but near the top of the not-WoW market, you can reasonably set expectations for design and market size if you are actually aiming to design a game that is intended to be played beyond the first month. You know, an MMO. Or what the old folks called an MMO before Anet came along and ‘fixed’ it for all of us.

Furthermore, if you can’t make $18m in yearly revenue work for you and your dev team (100k subs for a year, and assuming zero box sale money), you are doing it wrong. Probably to the tune of $300m wrong that leads the head doctors to call it quits because people pointed out that you delivered $300m worth of garbage while helping to shut down a game people loved (which may or may not have had more players than SW:TOR currently has actually playing).

But seriously, $18m a year is not peanuts, and I don’t think retaining 100k people for a year is asking for the moon. Hell, maybe would call that hyper-niche and laugh while they go back to their 1m+ subs MMO not called WoW, so it must be easy! And look, if EQ1 got 500k people back when you had to use a rotary dial to login, I’m pretty sure a team of devs can make something today to get 100k. Or 50k and try to survive off $9m in revenue. The horror.

Or you know, keep pumping out those ‘mass market’ MMOs all the kids are talking about. The ones just crushing it in terms of numbers like… WoW. Release in 2004.

Yea, those!

Posted in Age of Conan, Aion, DDO, EQ2, EVE Online, Fallen Earth, FreeRealms, Global Agenda, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Rant, Rift, SW:TOR, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 62 Comments

Defining Success in the MMO Genre

Posted on October 1, 2012 by SynCaine

How we measure success in the MMO genre varies from person to person. Or at least, what we call a success varies. Personal success, industry success, believing in success based on PR or ‘solid’ data; all of this gets mixed into a giant blender and tossed out on blogs and forums. My goal today is to define success both to the player and to the company, hopefully setting the groundwork for a post tomorrow.

There are two critical aspects of success when talking about an MMO: Did you like it, and did the company profit off the title.

The first point, did you like it, is of course extremely subjective. I like Darkfall, most do not. Is Darkfall a success by this standard? For me it is, for you it might not be.

While this point seems simplistic, keep in mind that your enjoyment of a title may (should?) depends on others as well. We are talking MMOs here, right? So for instance, while I really liked Darkfall in its first year, towards the end of my second year with it I was losing interest not due to gameplay, but due to a lack of social motivators (not enough players shaking things up in PvP). Why there was a lack of players is another issue, but the fact remains that due to player inactivity, I stopped liking Darkfall as much as I originally had, despite the gameplay not changing nor my feeling about it.

Another example here is GW2. Pre-release INQ was very excited for the game because we enjoy PvP, and especially enjoyed RvR. GW2 lost me because not only was much of the game better-by-design solo (random might-as-well-be-bots don’t count as social for me) and extremely short, but design flaws such as queues and WvW scoring soured most of INQ on that aspect as well. This in turn impacted my enjoyment of GW2, because while the actual WvW gameplay was decent, not being able to quickly form guild groups or even have the guild stick around became a major factor.

The second aspect of success is company profitability, but let’s look at this from a different angle then just the pure amount of profit (few MMO companies are public or offer this number straight up): is your MMO being updated, and is it being updated in a way you enjoy.

The first factor is pretty simple. When was the last time your MMO got a good update? If the game is doing well, it still has talented devs working on it, and those devs are improving the game. This is a core principle of the genre, and should be a major strength if done right.

The second is subjective, but just as important. Ultima Online got updated, but the update was Trammel, which ruined the game for many. SWG got the NGE. WoW got WotLK. I’m sure most have their own examples. Whether the update was done from need (sub game failing and going F2P), from greed (Trammel to chase EQ1 players), or from misguided metrics (WotLK being focused-grouped out to cater to casuals at the expense of the core), the end result is an update that instead of making the game better for you, made it worse.

So let’s recap: A successful MMO is one you enjoy playing, one that has an active dev team, and that active dev team is producing content that is enjoyed by the current player base (you). This in turn creates a game you not only enjoy playing, but can continue to enjoy playing long-term.

Posted in Random | 20 Comments

Pick a group, design for it, don’t get greedy

Posted on September 28, 2012 by SynCaine

When I see people write that no MMO can hope to retain people beyond 3 months now, like they did back in the big 3 days, I can only shake my head, laugh, and think about my recent two years with Darkfall, my almost three with EVE, and the infinite amount of time I’m about to spend with MMO baby jesus DF:UW.

Snark aside, the reality is that most MMOs after 2004 are designed, either intentionally (GW2) or not (SW:TOR), to be short. The first time I heard EAWare mention the 4th pillar is the first time I said SW:TOR is going to fail (look it up kids). That one single design decision is all I needed to know about the game, because NOTHING could have saved SW:TOR from being a short-burst game after the 4th pillar was announced. (Short of going in the total opposite direction after the story end. Gee I wonder what EAWare is focusing on of late?)

Consider these two stark contrasts. In GW2 you have access to EVERYTHING your character can do combat-wise at level 30, which lets be really kind and say takes 30 days to reach. In EVE, you won’t be able to sit (forget flying well) in one of the biggest ships (Titan) in the first 177 days, assuming you do NOTHING but straight train towards that (and completely ignoring how you would actually acquire one).

The question at hand is not which method you would prefer, or which one is more ‘fun’. The question is simply this: out of the two options above, which one sounds like it’s designed for a game that the devs expect you to play long-term, and which one is designed to be played in a short burst?

Of course for the 177 day training to be found worthwhile, everything else around it must also work to some extent, and in EVE it does. I’m by no means saying that long-term retention is as simple as extending the ‘grind’ and calling it a day. As I’ve said thousands of times now, long-term retention design is HARD. Really, really hard. But hard does not mean impossible, and under the right conditions, long-term retention done well can yield WoW (12m subs). Most likely it yields EVE (400k subs). Maybe if you really go niche it yields Darkfall (100b subs). So long as you properly identify your market size and deliver something for it, you can be successful on a variety of levels. Not everyone (anyone?) can be WoW, and that’s ok.

And it’s important to remember that much of the current MMO population is not interested in long-term retention. Whether someone outright states they don’t want to play something longer than a month, or has a playstyle that reflects it (solo), these people are not looking for the same thing people interested in living in a virtual world are. They might drop in and visit (tourists), but regardless of the design, you just can’t retain them. (WoW is the MMO first-love for many, which is why it draws them back time and time again. It’s another perfect-storm situation that can’t be repeated. It’s also dying and something like 5 people bought into Panda-time and 3 of them have already quit, so whatever).

The mistake so many devs have made is believing that they CAN retain them, if only they tweak the design and add more solo PvE content to a PvP game (WAR), or put in a 20 level pre-game to the core game (AoC), or spend a billion dollars on one-off voice acting (SW:TOR). These design decisions sacrifice the long-term for a quick burst, and the expected result happens; you get your short burst at the expense of your long-term. It’s why MMO release after MMO release looks exactly the same, and why it has convinced some that that’s just how things are today.

The reason I cheer for games like SW:TOR to fail is because, hopefully at some point, developers will wake up and realize you can’t attract the millions of short-burst players AND retain them by trying to design for both.

If you want to make a short-burst MMO like GW2, go for it. Sell the box and don’t expect more after, have a business plan that supports that expectation, and make the best one-months-worth of content you possibly can. If you do it right you will sell a whole lot of boxes and people will move on happily a month later. Just don’t do PR where you proclaim to have ‘fixed’ the MMO genre and all will be good.

And if you want to get $15 a month from a few hundred thousand people, please design accordingly as well. That group has shown a willingness to deal with valleys if the peaks are worthwhile, but they better have something to do in six months, and that something better not be the exact same thing just reskinned from the first month. Plan your business model accordingly, figure out a way to handle the tourists initially, and don’t get fooled into thinking you have something bigger than you actually do. Long-term retention MMOs are a niche. It’s a pretty sizable niche, and $15 a month for 6 months is more than $60 once, but yea, it’s hard to get right.

As players, we have to be honest with ourselves. You can’t expect the highs of long-term moments to fit into your ultra-casual schedule. The peaks and valleys will be more muted because in the MMO genre, you get what you put in. That said, it’s not nearly as hard to be part of something big as some make it out to be. World-first raiding and the time/dedication it requires is not the only way to get a huge high from an MMO. Just being a regular member of a guild doing something big/cool might be enough.

Of course, that guild can’t do something really cool if everyone moves to the next game in a month, but that’s the tradeoff you accept when deciding between the two styles.

Posted in Age of Conan, Darkfall Online, EQ2, EVE Online, Guild Wars, MMO design, Rift, SW:TOR, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 21 Comments

Splitting the genre in two

Posted on September 27, 2012 by SynCaine

Let’s move past why GW2 sucks and onto a bigger topic; why so many recent MMOs suck, shall we?

Chris thinks all MMOs are good for 3 months or less, and that’s just how things are today. Keen has a pretty solid counter, but it raises the question that will (hopefully) clear the air here: are you looking to play a game for a while, or not?

Because I think that really cuts to the root of the issue. In the ‘good old days’, I think the vast majority of MMO players WANTED to get sucked into something long-term (group 1). Much of the original hype behind an MMO was that it was an RPG that never ended, and that is EXACTLY what people wanted. New Ultima game but with unending content? Hell ya! Take my money!

Today not everyone is on the same page. There are a lot of players who DON’T want to get sucked into something long-term (group 2). They WANT a 3-monther or something to do for a month and move on, and nothing short of a miracle (WoW) is going to change that.

One group is not more right than another, and however you arrive at either group is an unrelated issue (got old, more money, kids, whatever).

What does matter is that the two groups are looking for very different experiences, yet are being lumped into one group (MMO players). Worse still, studios are designing games with the impression that they can design content for the short-term group, and expect long-term retention. SW:TOR is the latest poster-child for this, but it’s just one of many such failures. And make no mistake, these games ARE failures, because the target they are aiming at is WoW, which prints money not because it sold a ton of boxes, but because it RETAINED millions of players for years. EAWare expected SW:TOR to RETAIN at least 500k subs, and at one time the expectation was 1m+. They sold a ton of boxes because group 2 wanted something new. They failed because solo-story content does nothing for group 1, and even if it did, group 1 is just not that big.

Both markets, the short-term ‘MMO’, and the original model, are viable. EVE is an undeniable success, DESPITE the fact that it’s a niche within a niche product (non-IP Sci-Fi with no avatar). CCP is successful because they understand who their market is, and they design the game around the long-term retention of their core rather than the short-burst of group 2 (Incarna aside). Misleading talk aside, GW2, much like GW1, will likely do fine because the model is not around providing long-term entertainment, but rather just a short burst every now and then.

This also clears up the F2P vs sub aspect as well. F2P ‘works’ because a tiny subset of your entire base is willing to pay enough to subsidize everyone else. That’s why so much of the design around a F2P is aimed at catering to that tiny minority, or to convert some of the unpaying masses into cash cows. By contrast, the sub model is designed to provide enough content for the long-term majority, in the hopes that most people will stick around and play/pay.

And if you combine the intent of group 1 or 2 with the business model and content design around a game, you have your target.

Developers are doing a decent job catering to group 2. There are countless F2P titles that are good-enough to play for a month, and occasionally one will get some cash out of you. Those that don’t, shut down or get their support slashed, but even the most marginal titles end up surviving in one form of zombie mode or another.

Designing a solid title for group 1 is much harder, in part because it’s so different from the rest of gaming. Instead of just making sure the current content is fun once, the devs must consider how the content will play in a year, or for the 100th time, or when someone with 1000 hours plays alongside someone with 10. That’s hard. Just as EAWare, Mythic, Turbine, or any other studio that has tried and failed. Maybe the original big three were really lucky, or really good, or understood the market better than most do today. Regardless, it worked then, and it continues to work today.

The extreme example of success in group 1 is WoW, but that’s misleading if you buy into the fact that WoW’s success was as much good timing as it was solid design. Make no mistake, 2004 WoW was very well designed, but that’s not the entire story IMO.

Regardless, it’s unlikely that we will see another WoW-like success. Far more likely is someone hitting EVE-like numbers. And again, CCP is making very good money off EVE. But that’s happening because they understand the size of the market, in addition to how best to cater to it.

You can’t spend $300m today because you predict 1m+ subs. It’s not going to happen. Plan to get 100k with a solid title, figure out the budget to make that happen, and good luck. And let’s not kid ourselves, with 100k subs you can make a VERY solid game. Maybe you won’t have all your dialog voiced by professional actors, but you won’t be limited to Pong-like graphics either. Spend smart, spend S-mart!

Posted in Age of Conan, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Fallen Earth, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rift, SW:TOR, The Elder Scrolls Online, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 46 Comments

GW2: What he said

Posted on September 27, 2012 by SynCaine

If Guild Wars 2 is what MMOs should have always been, then I am very thankful that every other one I’ve played has done so much wrong. – Attic Lion

Via KTR.

Well said sir, well said.

Posted in Guild Wars | Comments Off on GW2: What he said