Yes yes, but its FREE garbage!

Posted on August 9, 2012 by SynCaine

Catching up on blogs, and I just came across this line from Lum:

Everything is free to play, because the financial barrier entry for MMOs is fiercely competitive and in the end it’s very difficult to compete with zero.

I think we have all seen similar thoughts from lots of different places, and it seems pretty obvious right? It would be hard to argue that FEWER people will be willing to try SW:TOR for free than to pay $60 to try it. 0>anything here, duh.

On the other hand, if GW2 had a $70 box cost instead of $60, how many people who pre-ordered would cancel? Some, sure. But many?

EAWare could offer to pay me $15 a month and I’d still not bother downloading SW:TOR, and CCP could start charging $30 a month for EVE and I’d still pay/PLEX for 3 accounts.

~$15 a month is not the great wall of China in terms of a ‘barrier of entry’. Your game being good/garbage is. Or in other words, SW:TOR is a failure not because it costs $15 a month, it’s a failure because the game sucks as an MMO. Focusing on the business model behind the pile of fail is missing the point. Remember all those amazing numbers Turbine brought up the first week of DDO/LoTRO going F2P? Why is it we only hear from them once? Oh right, because F2P or sub, DDO/LotRO are still DDO/LotRO (mostly, but that’s a different topic).

Dropping down to F2P will get you some freeloaders, those who that $15 a month or so really is an issue, and they might even toss you a buck or two occasionally, but F2P is not a magic cure that turns a bad game into a good one. It might help people justify spending time on something average-at-best, but the better ‘business model’ is to make a game good enough that people actually, you know, want to play/pay for. That has been in very short supply the last few years.

Posted in Uncategorized | 29 Comments

Civilization V multiplayer is good

Posted on August 9, 2012 by SynCaine

My friend and I have finally moved on from playing Heroes 6 multiplayer, primarily due to the AI. On most maps, it’s just terrible, and even at the highest difficulty you simply can’t get a decent game out of it. We can’t play just 1v1 because that gets boring quickly, and playing Heroes with anything more than two people is asking for a marathon of mostly waiting.

During the last Steam sale, I gifted him Civ V Complete and he picked up the Gods and Kings expansion. This is his first exposure to Civilization, so he has a lot to learn, but he is enjoying himself so far and we are about halfway through our first multiplayer game.

Dear god is Civ V multiplayer enjoyable compared to Heroes 6. Simultaneous turns are so incredible and yet basic I still don’t understand how Heroes 6 shipped without them. The turns being far shorter also keeps the pace up, while at the same time allowing you to casually chat in vent about what’s happening or how something works. In Heroes we always felt pressed to finish a turn rather than talk because we knew the other person was waiting.

It’s also helpful that overall Civ V is a superior game. Far better balance, great AI (compared to H6), random maps, more civ/faction choices, more ways to win, etc. If you have been considering playing with someone but feared the general length of one game of Civ, I’d highly recommend giving it a try. It’s more enjoyable than I initially imagined it being, and makes for a very deep, relaxing bit of gaming.

Posted in Civilization Series | 1 Comment

Captain Gevlon going down with the Tortanic

Posted on August 8, 2012 by SynCaine

And… back!

Vacation was very nice, thanks for asking.

TAGN did a very nice job filling in for me on the SW:TOR failure front. I agree with everything in his post, and will only add one thing; while it’s obvious now why SW:TOR is a terrible MMO, it’s important to remember that when the 4th pillar was originally announced, lots of bloggers and commenters were convinced BioWare was aiming at the right target. Hell, even as more info about SW:TOR came out, those people were STILL convinced the game was going to work. And 1.7m or whatever even put down $60+ because they still believed.

The great thing about the best blogging gift of 2012 however is that this is just another step on the fail cascade for SW:TOR. As Wilhelm correctly predicts, EAWare is going to do lots of hilarious things with the F2P model for the game. Time to cook up another batch of popcorn and enjoy the next phase of failure. I’m hoping they put out more of those fancy videos explaining things, those were incredibly entertaining.

The other item of hilarious fail is Gevlon. Where to start… (I’d link to the posts, but with Gevlon editing things as heavily as he does, it’s pretty pointless. That said, it is amusing to read his stuff after the fact, and then try to follow the comments as they talk about things that are no longer there. His editing skills need some serious work.)

Gevlon created a Corp, it failed.

Gevlon created another Corp, it also failed.

Gevlon then posted that EVE is less hardcore than WoW, in a sad justification of why he is going to play with Pandas soon.

While all of this was going on, Gevlon continued to fail to get into a Null entity in the batshit crazy way he wanted to. Why no one jumped on the chance to gain a tackle-titan/fleetboost-titan/noob-carrier/noob-logi pilot still remains a mystery to me…

And while ALL of that was happening, he continued to ‘prove’ that being a human market bot was a way to create some modest wealth (for all non-EVE players, 100b ISK is very modest for market players.) Yes, who knew selling Badger IIs, skillbooks, and hardwires for 2-3 hours a day, every day, for six months straight (!) could make you some ISK in EVE. Also I heard you can mine veld in highsec, c/d? The best part here is Gevlon believes he is providing something of value and teaching this revolutionary method to anyone.

Personal and hilarious failure aside, Gevlon’s little adventure into EVE highlights an important aspect of the game; in order to succeed, you must not only have goals, but be able to accomplish them or fail and learn from the failure. Gevlon took the box of Legos that is EVE and tried to do many things with them. To his credit, at least he had some goals. Sadly, due to his nature, he would not listen when people told him you can’t grow grass from Legos. In that he failed in spectacular fashion over (fits) and over (Corps) and over (Null) again, but unlike the rest of humanity, rather than actually learning from those failures he continued to bash his little green head into the learning-curve wall.

And like many, when ultimately faced with the failure of not having any ‘content’, he has decided to return to safer pastures, to pick up Simon Says again, rather than get into anything of substance in EVE. WoW is nice and safe because it always holds your hand, brings you to the next instance, and tells you exactly how good you did and where to go next. Having ‘goals’ in WoW is easy by design, and for those who lack the ability to self-motivate, or to accomplish anything semi-complex, it works perfectly.

By contrast, EVE does not. Or rather, it does not when you fail to accept even the absolute most basic suggestions. It won’t become obvious why your tackle-Titan is a complete failure until the soon-to-be ridiculed killmail shows up, and even then the feedback is still player-based rather than the game itself telling you why. For someone as ‘unique’ as Gevlon, this feedback loop does not work, or works very, very slowly in the most extreme cases.

Gevlon is right in that EVE is easy however. As almost all of the members of my Corp will attest to, being a new player in EVE and being able to accomplish significant goals is not nearly as hard as it first seems on day one. The amount of support, both in-game and on Vent/Mumble that you can provide to someone in EVE is amazingly high compared to WoW. I can bring that day-one pilot into a C6 wormhole and show him the ropes, and within a week he can provide real value in what some would call an ‘end-game’ space in EVE. Of course, I would never take someone like Gevlon, but luckily those types are easy to weed out in the recruitment process, and even if they get past that they have a nice way of killing themselves off, as Gevlon is doing right now.

I think the saddest thing about Gevlon failing in EVE however is that he only did so on his blog. He never, well, did anything in EVE itself. He never got in that Titan to produce a good killmail. He never got a Corp off the ground far enough to have it implode for all to see. He never went into WH space. Never really went into Null. Just sat in a few stations, updated his market orders, and flew his frig around in high-sec.

Unlike SW:TOR, all that potential hilarious fail, wasted.

Posted in EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, Rant, RMT, SW:TOR, World of Warcraft | 12 Comments

How I paid for my vacation

Posted on July 26, 2012 by SynCaine

I knew buying Zynga was a brilliant move!

At some point, one of these ‘expert analysts’ is going to mention that, perhaps, in order to make money in the gaming sector, you might want to try making a good game, right? Wait what’s that…

“At the end of the day, though, virtual goods might not be a viable business strategy. People eventually stop spending money in virtual goods and want to spend that money on real goods.” – Mr. Gartenberg

Oh…

Bigger waste of oxygen: the 10k Farmville player, or whoever pays money to get such ‘expert analysis’ as the above?

Dear Mr. Gartenberg, I’m pretty damn sure people are going to be spending money on virtual goods going forward. Virtual vs real goods is not the issue. Shitty goods (virtual or not) vs quality goods is. It’s much easier to sell a quality good than a shitty one (10k farmers aside).

Shocking: A business model based around peddling shitty goods in mass quantities and then using now-banned methods to trick people out of their money is not doing well.

Posted in Mass Media, Rant, RMT | 6 Comments

Vacation time

Posted on July 25, 2012 by SynCaine

I’m off on no-Internet vacation until August 6th, so this blog will be quiet until then.

When I get back I’ll be sure to talk a little about SW:TOR shutting down (that’s still scheduled for next week, right?), as well as likely reopen recruitment in EVE (train up those scanning skills).

Behave yourselves until then.

Dear EAWare and SOE: Please don’t release any blog-worthy announcements until I get back. I so do hate missing quality bash opportunities.

Ah who am I kidding, zero chance you guys can go a week without something stupid coming out.

Posted in EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, Site update, SW:TOR | 4 Comments

EVE: Flying in the Alliance Tournament

Posted on July 25, 2012 by SynCaine

Jester has a bunch of excellent Alliance Tourney posts up, but I like this one the most (so far). It’s a great look behind the scenes of one of the more unique experiences you can have in the MMO genre. In the giant pile of “only in EVE”, the Alliance Tourney experience is easily near the top, especially because so many outsiders believe PvP skill in EVE is limited to hitting R1 and orbiting.

Posted in Combat Systems, EVE Online, PvP | 2 Comments

I ruined SW:TOR I guess

Posted on July 24, 2012 by SynCaine

How is it that this is the first time I’m seeing SW:TOR being referred to as “Tortanic”? That’s brilliant and I wish I had thought of it.

Also I guess I’ll take the blame for SW:TOR here, as back in 2010 I was calling it an sRPG, and I guess EAWare was listening? My bad. If only SW:TOR was MORE like WoW it would totally be a huge hit right now. Totally.

Posted in Mass Media, SW:TOR | 40 Comments

Mainstream dilution, core gamer evolution

Posted on July 20, 2012 by SynCaine

I’m glad people enjoyed the article I linked to yesterday, and I wish I had seen it earlier as I really believe it does an excellent job breaking down how certain companies approach creating ‘games’ and also who is actually buying. Because as bad as Zynga and others like them are, they only exist because there are a lot of people buying the trash they are selling, and buying it in amounts large enough to draw companies like EA into that market.

I had a draft half-done talking about how current-day MMO players have finally evolved from the ‘accessible’ garbage phase that permeated the genre from 2007 until SW:TOR or so. The quick exodus from SW:TOR, and the initial scorn for what TESO is aiming to be, seems to show that even in the casual MMO gamer space, people are done with cookie-cutter crap games, and want something a little more… MMO. The cheering for GW2, if somewhat over-the-top at times, is also a solid sign.

So how can we both be moving forward, yet at the same time taking such giant steps back? Market split. Or rather, just different games aiming at completely different targets, and both (so far) hitting more often than not. The only ones who are truly missing today are those stuck in the middle. Those who aim to be ‘accessible’ but still a game, be it an MMO from EA or a more game-like game from Zynga.

The prime Zynga target, that 30 something mother that (somehow…) gets sucked into dropping 10k a year to build a farm, won’t spend 15k if her farm had better gameplay. In fact, she is likely to only get confused and run away, because if you have the mental capacity to drop 10k on a virtual farm, I’m pretty sure you lack the mental capacity to actually play Pong, let alone anything more complex.

The reverse appears to now be true in the core gamer space. The average MMO gamer has (finally) realized that while welfare epics are neat RIGHT NOW, they destroy your fun long-term. That while rainbows shitting out cookies might seem ‘epic’ the first time around, it’s not something you are going to enjoy month after month, and reskinning the rainbow seems to have stopped fooling most as well.

I’d like to believe that the cheap cash-in that is Zynga won’t be sustainable. That once that mother realizes her pimped out farm is just glitzy garbage, she won’t be tricked again and build a 10k city or spacestation. Sadly history suggests that the depths of human stupidity are truly remarkable, and despite being slapped in the face, that mother WILL drop another 10k, or maybe 15k after Zynga refines their ‘secret sauce’ and makes it an even better idiot trap. Just like the slot machine zombies you see at every casino, there is no cure or hope for these people.

Luckily for the rest of us, while catering to the zombie crowd is one way to make a (cheap and sleazy) buck, it’s not the only one. You can bet that DayZ is making suits in every major game studio perk up, just like Minecraft did before it. A title like Skyrim performing amazingly well is news to cheer.

Not only is there good money to be made in creating solid games with good design (LoL), that good money is very sustainable long-term (EVE) under a model that respects the customer. And as gamers (hopefully) continue to get smarter, we should not only see quality rewarded, but more examples of creativity as well. DayZ is successful not because its gameplay is perfected, but because its general concept and execution are so fresh.

(It’s important to note that in the early years of gaming, quality was indeed rewarded. But as the market expanded and gaming become mainstream, the average gamers IQ dropped. I believe what we are (slowly) seeing now is that IQ going back up, overall, while there is still that Zynga sub-set as well.)

Posted in MMO design, Random, Rant, RMT | 16 Comments

Best thing written about gaming (ever?)

Posted on July 19, 2012 by SynCaine

This is required reading. If you don’t read this start to finish right meow you will be forced to turn in your “gamer” card.

My thoughts on all of it are coming ‘soon’.

H/T to Shiolle for the link.

Posted in MMO design, Random, RMT | 28 Comments

It’s not contagious, is it?

Posted on July 18, 2012 by SynCaine

Grade-A trolling folks. Just next level blogging at its finest. If we could get more of this kind of content and less D&D, Tobold might be worth reading again.

After reading Tobold, go re-read EA Louse. It was great the first time, but now that most of it has come to pass, no sane individual can write it off as sour grapes.

All caught up? Let’s have some fun.

“I like Paul Barnett” – Pretty sure Paul Barnett’s mother hates Paul Barnett at this point.

“The man certainly has artistic vision, great enthusiasm, intelligence, and is great fun to watch.” – Fun to watch (fail), yes. The rest… not so much. Cool shades though. Can’t forget the cool shades. PB was WAY ahead of his time rocking those. A true visionary (get it?).

“These qualities might not be matched by an ability to actually turn all that artistic vision into reality” – Not a big deal at all, unless your job is to turn artistic ‘vision’ into reality. Oh right…

“Already it can’t possibly get worse than Lord of Ultima” – I’ll take that bet. Granted, I’ve never played LoU, but as far as I know, BP was not involved with LoU, so if nothing else it has that going for it.

“I’d rather see Paul Barnett trying to revive the Ultima brand than Richard Garriott” – Paul Barnett, bears man vs RG, Ultima series creator, including UO, and Tabula Rasa, which EA did a nice job of burying before its potential was reached. Hell, I’d take RG coding My Little Ponies from a space shuttle over PB being a QA intern with the next Skyrim game (not the MMO abomination).

“most people would consider the original Ultima IV as well as Ultima Online to be unplayable these days” – Lets ignore that UO has more people still playing it today than many ‘modern’ MMOs, and that’s not counting the 3rd party shards going, some of which have thousands of players. Or that EA killed a Ultima IV fan remake project in fear that it would distract people from PG upcoming abortion.

“Maybe Paul infected me” – Guess the trolling finally stopped?

Good stuff though. Gevlon-level trolling.

Posted in Rant, RMT, SW:TOR, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online | 14 Comments