Today’s Kool-Aid flavor is grape. Grape and failure

Posted on August 28, 2013 by SynCaine

A lot of funny stuff is happening in this post over at TAGN, please go check it out. My only major complaint is that Wilhelm was light on the actual insults. I’m going to try and correct that here.

I think the biggest gain from that post is my discovery of a new blog: Zen of Design. The title is a bit misleading though; I think it would be far more accurate to call the blog “Tales from a hotbar salesmen”. That aside, its great reading, in much the same way the comments section on Massively is ‘great reading’. Just quotes on top of quotes of goodness.

But before we get to that, a few quick points from the TAGN piece; has anyone ever considered that while you benefit from having multiple accounts in EVE, the real reason so many do it is because they really, really like the game? We talk all the time about what a huge insurmountable barrier $15 a month is, so what are EVE players telling you about their game when they happily pay $30, $45, or more per month, for months if not YEARS at a time? (I really only want replies to this from people who have an above-Tobold understanding of EVE, thanks).

On the chances of TESO or WildStar being successful; in a genre with F2P abominations like SW:TOR, B2P 3-week titles like GW2, and “I have nothing in common with my 2004 version” WoW, is it really that unimaginable that there are hundreds of thousands of players just looking to play/pay for 2005/6 WoW in 2014? I don’t mean an exact copy/paste job, but I’m not buying this notion that all gamers have evolved into something unrecognizable from 2005. Not saying that either TESO or WildStar will become that game, but if/when someone does, my bet is they will be successful (just not perfect-storm WoW successful)

Those points aside, let’s get back to my new favorite blog, shall we?

I’ll state this up front; the below is a little unfair. The writer is working for EA and SW:TOR, so perhaps a lot of this is just singing the company line rather than personal belief. That said, no one (I think) is forcing the guy to write this, so it’s fair game.

“It probably comes as no surprise that I have discovered religion about Free 2 Play in a big way. It’s very clearly the way that the future of the genre is going, and any new competitor that enters the space is going to face immense competition from the rest of us that now provide a pretty substantial amount of gameplay for free. Right now, WoW is the only successful subscription-only MMO in the west, and even they seem to be sticking their toe in the pool.”

Let’s do a real quick recap of SW:TOR and its initial aim:

1) It had a built-in audience thanks to its IP (Star Wars), the devs (BioWare), and prior games (KOTOR)

2) It had the biggest budget of any MMO, with the marketing power of EA

3) Its goal initially was to challenge WoW, a title that retained millions of subscribers year after year (until everyone with talent left the company, and the interns started doing updates/working on Diablo 3)

What actually happened:

1) The launch was a disaster, with ridiculous bugs (invuln dancing), high-res textures being held out, and countless PR embarrassments

2) Players were jumping ship at an amazing rate, thanks to the game being a shallow, sub-par sRPG on a tragically terrible engine that couldn’t handle more than 5 players in one area

3) The game was forced into the F2P minor leagues

4) The F2P model itself might be the biggest joke amongst all offerings, including the beyond-ridiculous option to buy hotbars. It’s so bad that when Massively put up a “it’s not that bad guys!” piece about it, readers were not sure if it was satire or not.

5) EA has been trying to distance themselves from the title ever since, downplaying its impact during financial calls and trying to redirect attention to its successful properties

6) The heads of BioWare threw in the towel shortly after SW:TOR crashed.

So, that is the basis of Damion’s new ‘religion’. Whelp.

(Talking about NVN and Marvel Superheroes) “It also means they get to avoid the stigma of ‘failure’ that comes from a hasty conversion. Perhaps the most painful part of transitioning SWTOR from subscription to Free-to-play was reading all of the commentary describing us as a failed game, when all of the internal numbers we had showed that F2P completely reinvigorated the game.

So wait, SW:TOR isn’t a failed game that was forced into F2P, but yet was reinvigorated by F2P? I was not aware something already successful can get reinvigorated. Usually we call that “more of the same”.

Which again brings up the question seemingly no one has an answer to; why is it that only failed MMOs go F2P? Why is it that failed F2P games don’t go subscription? Why is it that when a F2P game does really well (Allods, somehow…), it goes from F2P to subscription? Why is it that successful MMOs (EVE, WoW for now) stay subscription? If F2P is so awesome, so amazing, so “the future”, why is it only used when you either have a subpar MMO out of the gate, or you fail as a sub? Anyone?

Free-to-play is all about making the game accessible – getting more people into the front door. SWTOR’s success here is no fluke – DDO reported that their concurrent players increased 5x. For LOTRO, the number was 3x. If anyone wants to see the effects of Free to Play on logins, check this chart

Again, that “SW:TOR success” part cracks me up, as does including a link to DDO from 2009 (at the time of the F2P conversion) and LotRO from 2010. Damion, why have you not provided more recent links to DDO and LotRO success stories? It can’t possibly be because going F2P from subs is a one-time boost for a failing game that fades and you return to just being a failed game, can it? Based on those 2009 and 2010 stories, Turbine must be straight killing it today right? What’s that, Turbine has been in financial trouble for a while now? But F2P really saved those games, didn’t it? Just like it’s going to save SW:TOR, won’t it?

Whether or not the billing model of Eve’s economic-spreadsheet driven libertarian paradise is right for a fledgling mass market MMO remains to be seen. But I doubt it.

As I’ve mentioned before, if someone associated with SOE or SW:TOR tells you something is bad, put the house on that something working out. Easy money.

One of my mantras about being a free-to-play game is that, in order to call yourself that, your evangelists have to feel good about telling their casual friends, “Yeah, you can totally play for free!”

You sell hotbars. Your fluff piece about your F2P model over at Massively was ridiculed. YOU MIGHT HAVE THE WORST F2P MODEL IN THE GENRE. Dude…

And all of those delicious quotes off just one post. So, so much more to dig into in the days to come.

Edit: F2P ALL THE WAAAAYYY (out the door)

Posted in Allods Online, DDO, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, Mass Media, MMO design, Rant, RMT, SW:TOR, The Elder Scrolls Online, WildStar, World of Warcraft | 51 Comments

DF:UW – At 95k prowess and counting

Posted on August 28, 2013 by SynCaine

Alright, long overdue personal progress update on DF:UW time.

Currently my character is at 95k prowess, with 10k of that being spent on Armorsmith mastery. The rest is in stats (100str, 95dex, 95wis), general skills (100 in transfers, heal self, etc), and combat/warrior skills (100 greatsword mastery, 100 archery mastery, most battlebrand and berzark skills at 50-75).

The next big chunk of prowess is coming from finishing Fire Giants (35 of 150) and Terrors (180 of 400), as well as the gathering feats from our city’s grove and farm. My plan for more prowess is to pick up the dex booster, and buy the Skirmisher role skills. I’d like to switch to skirmisher for large-scale naval combat and just as a change of pace for sieges.

Proxy as a clan has been great. We are very active daily in terms of PvE and PvP, and with our allies Blood find ourselves in the middle of most sieges and Sea Fortresses. Thanks to the clan’s emphasis on getting better as a player, both from duels and after-combat reviews, I feel I’ve improved significantly. I’m still far from a top-tier player, but feel like I make a solid contribution in group combat, and 1v1 I can hold my own against many players.

The current war between the Death alliance and NOX has been the source of the large sieges for the last month or more, including perhaps the best battle in DF:UW happening a few days ago. The fight was over the city of Aradoth (again), and for multiple hours both sides would push in and out of the city and its surrounding area. One side would land some critical AoEs and push the enemy back, killing a few players in the process, only to have the other side regroup or receive reinforcements and make a counter-push.

Proxy was in the middle for most of the night on the side of the Death alliance, and we did a good job of keeping our 12-15 players together amongst the masses. When one of our own would go down, we would converge on that location and prevent the enemy from getting off a gank using our knockbacks. Another tactic that currently works very well is to intentionally knock a downed player further back behind the lines, making it easier to rez them and allow them to recover. Our primalists also did an excellent job of landing heals and revives as needed.

As for the game itself, AV is currently busy launching the game in Korea and Japan, leaving the US/EU without a patch since mid-August, much to the delight of Forumfall. As for the content added, I’ve still yet to visit the two newest dungeons, but have attended all but one of the Sea Fortresses. The revamped village capture and stealing system has made the villages around Izkand a source of activity for myself and Proxy, and we continue to be active on the seas in Scrapers and combat ships.

 

Posted in crafting, Darkfall Online, Proxy, PvP | 1 Comment

Skyrim vs DF:UW combat

Posted on August 26, 2013 by SynCaine

Playing Skyrim on the side again (new mods ftw), first time since Darkfall has been release, and yikes is the combat in Skyrim slow and disconnected compared to DF:UW. I also can’t hit a damn thing with a bow because I’m so use to archery in DF; I keep forgetting you shoot missiles in Skyrim.

(Yes, sorry excuse for a Monday blog post. Sorry. A detailed update on what I’m doing in DF is coming tomorrow)

Posted in Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, Random | 9 Comments

The cure for F2P disease is quality

Posted on August 22, 2013 by SynCaine

In the comments section from yesterday’s post, Rohirrim raised the issue that with so many failed MMOs being demoted to the F2P minor leagues, gamers today might be weary of jumping on a new game that is sub-based for fear of the F2P switch. I think the issue has two parts, one being overall recent market conditioning (which includes things like Steam sales rewarding waiting rather than buying on day one), and the other being the somewhat recent sub-to-F2P trend.

Both problems are solved by having a quality game, but making a good game is hard.

When a new game is released on Steam, I only pay full price if I want the game right away, and the only games I want right away are the best ones (for me, of course) or if my friends are playing it and I want to join in. Civ V and its expansions were full-price purchases, and I consider those money well spent. Same for XCOM and Skyrim. How many people paid $30+ for ARMA II because their friends were playing Day Z and they just had to jump in? But that is a high bar to reach, and again, most devs can’t reach it.

The same goes for MMOs; if you have a good MMO with good retention, you stay with the subscription model. If you launch an MMO that can be ‘finished’ in 3 weeks/months, or one that doesn’t have the social hooks to keep guilds going, you switch to F2P and milk suckers with the F2P math tax for as long as you can get away with it.

Will WildStar or TESO be good-enough to stay as subscription games? We’ll find out ‘soon’. At the very least, they are not throwing in the F2P towel on day one, so they have that going for them.

But let’s not kid ourselves, no successful MMO has ever switched to F2P, because if you have a successful title, the subscription model is where the money is in NA/EU (Asia is completely different for countless reasons). You don’t go F2P because you will make MORE money with a successful title, you go to F2P because you are failing and a cash shop might hook enough suckers to keep you afloat, especially early on as you have not yet destroyed your overall game with the kind of additions you will eventually add to the shop (gear, lockboxes, etc).

And the F2P “sell the future for the present” design destruction will only accelerate as the dummies catch on. You (usually) can only fool someone a few times before they realize buying lockbox keys is stupid, or that they are paying way more than $15 just to come close to getting what they had before with a subscription. Zynga made a lot of money when it beat everyone else to those tricks, but it caught up to them (as did the laws) and the company is worth a fraction of what it once was (that they are still in business is a miracle actually).

By the time EQN is finally released, how many uneducated F2P dummies will be left? By that time, how many actual MMO gamers will be fed up with the cash shop trash and looking for a straight-up deal? Even at a site like Massively we are already starting to see such comments, and if there was ever a bastion for F2P dummies, its Massively.

Side-note; I think the next evolution of the sub model will be to increase the monthly cost. The sub ‘barrier’ of $15 is nothing to something who actually wants to play an MMO, and the only people you are going to lose are the people who were already flaky. If you have a solid title, I don’t think increasing the cost to $20 or even $30 a month is going to matter to fans (again, people paid $30 for ARMA, an older title, just to play a mod), while it would allow a developer to continue operating at a certain level with a smaller total population.

Even at $30 a month, an MMO you play as your primary source of gaming would still be ridiculously cheap entertainment compared to anything else, but it would more than double the income a studio would get per player, lowering the ‘make or break’ threshold and allowing for more target-focused titles, rather than the ‘try to cater to everyone, deliver to no one’ junk we have been seeing over the last few years.

 

Posted in Camelot Unchained, EQNext, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rant, Rift, RMT, SW:TOR, The Elder Scrolls Online | 33 Comments

Shocking news; F2P is dead

Posted on August 21, 2013 by SynCaine

Well that didn’t last long, huh? Wish someone had called F2P a fad, that would have been pretty insightful of them.

Am I happy that the F2P plague is dying? Of course.

Will F2P still exist in some capacity? Yes. Games like LoL that do F2P right will continue being successful, and lesser MMOs that have no choice like SW:TOR will continue to sell you hotbars until shutdown, but finally the genre is returning to the model that makes sense for players AND dev of good MMOs.

Now does this make WildStar, FF 14, or TESO good MMOs automatically? Of course not, but it helps in that at least the devs don’t have to carry the design burden of F2P.

And let’s not kid ourselves; F2P is indeed a dev burden. Do you think the devs behind SW:TOR think their game is better thanks to hotbar limits, or XP gain rates that have been drastically reduced? Is LotRO a better game now that it spams you to buy something every 5 seconds? Is there ‘design brilliance’ for creating yet another gaudy set of wings in EQ2? Of course not; but the F2P model drives what you create, and in order to sell crap in the store, the game has to ‘nudge’ you towards it. Great content without a hook into the cash shop is a ‘wasted opportunity’.

F2P fans have commented that a sub-model has built-in grind to keep you subbed. No shit. Oh the horror, a game I enjoy is designed to keep me playing. Because what happens when ‘the grind’ is no longer fun? You quit, and the sub model doesn’t work if you quit, so simply going SW:TOR on your MMO and gimping everyone’s XP gains is not a successful way to run your sub-based MMO.

The only semi-legit knock on the sub model is that it doesn’t allow you to play a dozen MMOs at the same time, and I’m 100% fine with all of those people not playing my MMO. There is nothing worse than a once-a-week playing in your guild, and your game doesn’t develop the kind of community that makes an MMO special with those people.

If that means you ‘only’ have 500k subscribers, so be it. It’s not like anyone has reach WoW peak numbers with F2P or the sub model, so one is not more ‘mainstream’ or successful than the other. A million free accounts are worth less than one paying account, as I’m sure some devs are learning the hard way.

Who knows, maybe in a year or two some devs will start talking about the importance of retention again, or how they have a plan longer than three months for players. The more things change…

Posted in EQ2, League of Legends, Mass Media, MMO design, Rant, RMT, SW:TOR, The Elder Scrolls Online, World of Warcraft | 61 Comments

WildStar – I can’t say it sucks, yet

Posted on August 20, 2013 by SynCaine

TAGN beat me to posting about the WildStar PLEX plan. /agree

It works in EVE because EVE has a balanced economy. WildStar being a themepark, it won’t (feel free to bookmark this and come back 6 months into release and tell me otherwise).

What I do find interesting is that WildStar, being an NCSoft title, is going to charge a sub, while GW2, also under NCSoft, does not. Now sure, GW2 is a sequel to GW1, which was also sub-free, but Anet never set out to create an MMO with GW1, while they most certainly tried with GW2. Pretty clear message NCSoft is sending with this announcement; WildStar is not a 3 week vacation.

Whether it succeeds or not I can’t tell yet, mostly because I’ve not been following the game closely and I’ve yet to read anything convincing about it one way or the other.

Now that I think about it, that’s a huge compliment to the game actually. Past MMOs have been easy; be it SW:TOR (4th pillar of fail), GW2 (living world of static zones), TESO (“we reskinned WoW with the ES IP, yo”), or EQN (SOE, parkour, boss red boxes, countless design fails in a single presentation) those games and many others were/are/will be DOA. I can’t say that about WildStar yet. Congrats?

Posted in EQNext, EVE Online, Guild Wars, MMO design, Rant, SW:TOR | 8 Comments

Kickstarter – TMI?

Posted on August 16, 2013 by SynCaine

It’s been a few months now since I helped fund a few Kickstarter projects, and I’m happy to say all of them appear to be progressing nicely. That said, I’m rarely interested in the content of their weekly email updates.

For one, the games are far off from release so getting hyped this early seems a bit silly, especially for non-MMO titles. On top of that, do I really want to know that much info before I play the game? I’ve already paid, so I don’t need it to help me make a buying decision, and again for non-MMO titles I feel like being surprised or figuring out things is part of the fun.

I think it might also be an age thing. I’ve gone through so many early hype cycles now that I’m burned out, even for titles I’m really looking forward to. Having so many titles to play as is, not to mention a huge Steam backlog, and who has time for something a year or more away?

Just me?

Posted in Kickstarter | 6 Comments

Why is there not more XCOM DLC?

Posted on August 15, 2013 by SynCaine

Back when it was released, I assumed we would be getting tons of XCOM Enemy Unknown DLC as the months went on. More missions, more weapons, more maps, etc. We got a few piddly additions (3 mission arc, really?), and then nothing.

Now I see this, which I don’t think is directly related, but um… sorta looks like it is? Get your action out of my strategy please!

Pretty frustrating when you want to give someone money, but they just won’t take it.

Posted in Random | 8 Comments

EQN – Player freedom is too scary for most

Posted on August 12, 2013 by SynCaine

The most interesting topic around right now is how a living ecosystem or smart AI could actually work in an MMO. Now, before you go ahead and comment “but SynCaine, you already told us how it would work in 2011”, the post today will go into a bit more detail, as well as cover some “what not to do” aspects.

At a high level, letting your players determine how an MMO goes forward is a very scary thing for most companies. If you give the players a chance to save the world, and they fail (intentionally or not), assuming failing has a real consequence (which it must if the chance was ‘real’ to begin with), are you ready to face the backlash of a destroyed world and what it could do to your player base?

Most companies are not. The ‘fail’ state is often just a delay, and sometimes players STILL get rewards.

EVE is one of if not the most ‘sandbox’ MMO out right now. CCP gives the players great freedom to manipulate the economy, determine territory control, and fight/harass each other. But that freedom can also result in things like Burn Jita, where the Goons decide they are going to shut down the biggest market hub in the game and kill anyone near it, simply because they can. Would Blizzard ever let players do that? Will SOE in EQN?

The comical part of the above is an event like Burn Jita most likely gets CCP more subs than it costs them, because EVE gets a ton of free marketing out of the great player stories it creates, even if those stories result in some players un-subbing because of them. The willingness to let the players sort themselves out is something most companies are missing, because it’s scary, and the genre has a history of that ending poorly (Shadowbane and its infamous “play to crush”, where the players did just that to the game). But those poor results are not because the players are jerks, but because of poor design. SB failed not because the players choked every server, but because the design allowed and encouraged them to do so.

A living ecosystem and mobs actually roaming/reacting is exactly a test of this; how much control are you going to give the players? Are the players driving the game, or are they simply answering the occasional yes/no question along a pre-set dev storyboard?

The EQN example of a tent city becoming something more smacks of yes/no storyboarding. Why is ‘phase 2’ attacks from an underground cave? Are the devs just predicting players will dig, or is phase 1 of the PQ a digging event that just walks the players to phase 2? Much like GW2 and its ‘living’ zones, I suspect EQN will play it very safe, and rather than a living world, we will simply see a series of pre-planned dev events that players progress through. And just like in GW2, it will feel fake and pointless once you have seen the ride once. The big selling point SOE made was that their PQ takes 2-3 months, and once completed goes away. Neat, sure, but not all that different from the on-rails scripted content of every other themepark.

The mob AI is the same thing. Can the players truly hunt creatures out, or will hunting them simply trigger phase 2 of the cycle? The cycle approach seen in GW2 is again easy and safe, and not just for the devs, but the players as well. How much frustration would the average GW2 player experience if they headed to their favorite farming zone after work only to see that everything has been wiped out and migrated to the other side of the world (let’s pretend GW2 has meaningful travel and not teleporting all over)?

In GW2 that can’t happen, because the devs played it safe. In EVE it can.

If you live in a wormhole, your sleeper sites can be run by visitors, and given the respawn timer and mechanics, this could result in your home being devoid of PvE content for hours if not days (if you get camped or the visitors cycle correctly). This temporary extinction is also noticeable to the players because it happened in a space they care about (their home wormhole), and they can’t simply teleport over to the next zone and farm away.

In order for these things to matter, they must have positive AND negative aspects. If you remove all the negative, your players will notice and shortly stop caring. Those GW2 centaurs are probably attacking a village right now, and no one outside the zone cares because that village burning has zero consequence, no matter how hard a manifesto tried to tell us otherwise. EQN is in its own ‘manifesto’ stage right now. Will SOE dare to make more than just hype out of it? And if they do, will they have the talent to avoid the pitfalls of SB and the like?

Posted in EQNext, EVE Online, Guild Wars, MMO design | 15 Comments

DF:UW – Same place, different crew

Posted on August 8, 2013 by SynCaine

Let’s get back to talking about a sandbox, shall we?

I recently left OTG to join up with Proxy. It was a tough decision as I liked playing with OTG and the clan is doing very well in DF:UW. I made the move because a few of the people I played most with in OTG had recently gone to Proxy, and they all seemed to enjoy the experience. The major difference is Proxy is smaller, but the leadership is more experienced in the specifics of DF and particularly the in-combat organization that is required. Much like EVE FC’ing, it’s a rare but very important skill.

Proxy is allied to Blood, a clan I played with in DF1. Blood is currently in a very heated battle with Lost Minions over their capital city; a city that has been unsuccessfully sieged 6 times now, each time resulting in a huge battle and plenty of Forumfall drama. While not direct allies, OTG is more on the LM side of the war, putting me somewhat against them when the entire server goes to war.

Until very recently, Proxy was living out of Blood’s capital city of Erinthel, but a few days ago we sieged and successfully captured the city of Izkand on Cairn. I was not able to attend the siege myself due to work, but there is an excellent video from the Proxy perspective here. The mass gravestones in the water are a pretty strong visual I must say. Also, as readers may remember, Cairn is a location OTG spent some time on in the first month or so of the game, and not only that, but we were allied to Imperium, the clan we captured Izkand from, and the major power on Cairn still. The more things change…

Finally, just yesterday we were involved in a siege for a hamlet on Cairn. Former Imperium allies Ruin owned the hamlet, and intended to give it to VAMP. Not wanting VAMP to have the hamlet, Imperium got help from NOX, who jumped into the siege as a second attacking force. How the mechanics work is simple; whoever from the attacking side does the most damage to the hamlet bind stone, without having their siege stones destroyed, wins the hamlet. As a result, the siege had two attacking forced, without a true defender.

In a funny twist, Ruin was fighting with VAMP/Proxy to help them win the siege and take their hamlet, rather than have NOX win it. Unfortunately for our side, after some very good back and forth action on both land and sea, we were routed and NOX won. In just a few days, Cairn has gone from an island completely controlled by one alliance to a hotly contested PvP area. From our perspective, being surrounded by PvP is exactly why we sieged Izkand.

As for the city itself, it was completely empty, but thanks to a lot of dedicated sea scraping for building mods (one unsuccessful trip can be seen here, starting at 2:40. The ships with two large yellow sails are the Sea Scrapers, the loot chest can be seen in the middle of the deck), we now have some key buildings, the walls, and zap towers up. Fun stuff all around, and we are just getting started.

 

Posted in Darkfall Online, Proxy, PvP | 6 Comments