Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Mippo]

Warhammer and AOC were not even remotely well done. They failed miserably in the most important category that matters: Risk vs Reward.

If you think those games were well done you don't understand game design in the slightest.

[Palum]

Because when I said they were fun, I meant they were well done and engineered flawlessly. I'll have to go grab my dictionary to double check that I guess. Also, sorry but there's no such thing as 'Risk' in modern MMOs except perhaps in EVE. It's all effort vs reward which is entirely a moot point unless the game succeeds to where the end game matters. None of those MMOs did, so your entire post is invalid.

[Mippo]

On a very basic level, there are three main reasons people continue playing MMORPG's.

1) Achievement
2) Competition
3) Social

Almost everyone who plays falls into 1 of the 3 categories, some people falling into multiple categories. Without explaining it in detail, the #1 reason people continue playing MMORPG's is achievement. People like accomplishing things, it makes them feel good. This directly correlates to a risk vs reward system and hence why it is the #1 most important thing you have to get right in your MMORPG.

People expect that for time spent playing, they will be rewarded. In most cases the EXPECTATION of a future reward is what keeps people playing. A game designed correctly is properly rewarding players for their time. In most games this means itemization is one of the most important aspects of the game design as the power of the items dictates the value of the reward, a key component of the risk vs reward equation. If the items suck, like they did in AOC, the risk vs reward formula is now broken. People can accomplish what they set out to accomplish, but they aren't being adequately rewarded for their time. The same was true in Warhammer, where there was little correlation between time spent and rewards obtained. In fact, the system was skewed in the wrong direction. Renown Rank 80 took a ridiculously long time to accomplish but provided very little reward over what people already had. That doesn't fulfill the Risk vs Reward formula. The harder and longer something takes to achieve, the rewards should be greater in proportion.

WoW is one of the only games that is setup to consistently reward players for time spent playing. Even if you lose in the battlegrounds, you can still measure the amount of time needed to obtain the next item you want. The power of the item, and the time spent obtaining it is an important factor in Risk vs Reward. The proverbial carrot keeps people playing as the goals are obtainable for all types of players.

[Mippo]

Originally Posted by Palum

Because when I said they were fun, I meant they were well done and engineered flawlessly. I'll have to go grab my dictionary to double check that I guess. Also, sorry but there's no such thing as 'Risk' in modern MMOs except perhaps in EVE. It's all effort vs reward which is entirely a moot point unless the game succeeds to where the end game matters. None of those MMOs did, so your entire post is invalid.

The problem with using the word "fun" is that it's subjective to the person. Your "fun" and my "fun" are probably different so much so that you can't design a game to be "fun", you need to understand what CAUSES people to have fun, then design the game around that. There is nothing that is universally "fun", it's a subjective word.

If a player is achievement oriented, their fun would be derived from being rewarded. If a player is competitively oriented, their fun would be derived from a victory in competition or in some cases simply the nature of the competition. Do you think it's a coincidence that most pro athletes who are likely very competitive in nature seem to have more "fun" on a winning team then a losing team?

[Tred]

So you're saying just because you don't think a game is fun doesn't necessarily mean the game itself is shitty then?

[Palum]

None of those matter if a game never gets off the ground. The only games I can think of which didn't succeed because of a complete lack of end-game are Earth and Beyond, Auto Assault and AC2.

People quit AoC because Tortage was interesting, polished and had voice acting and every other zone was a complete shithole. People quit WAR because level 20-40 were so boring it wasn't worth playing anymore. Even kekes who would grind endlessly for months for competition aren't going to waste their time if the general populace quits after a week.

Regardless of whether AoC or WAR would have held up in the long run, they died on release. Every single MMO lives or dies in its first month. It sets the stage for the entire life of the project. Arguing the validity of their game design philosophy is pointless. If its fun, it will generate enough subs to cause serious interest. At that point if there's enough to do in the end-game, people will stay and in the case of some rare MMOs you might even gain market share.

[Mippo]

Originally Posted by Tred

So you're saying just because you don't think a game is fun doesn't necessarily mean the game itself is shitty then?

Exactly. I didn't think WoW was fun, but I still think the game is very well designed. Just because a game doesn't cater to my specific needs doesn't mean the game itself is shitty.

I'm sure very few MMORPG designers do it, but the industry has target markets just like every other industry. The game's focus really determines which type of players you are catering to.

If you're developing a PVP MMORPG you need to understand that you are primarily trying to cater to competitive players and that you're competition extends OUTSIDE of MMORPG's to games appealing to the same playerbase. For example, first person shooters or real time strategy games would be competition for a PVP MMORPG.

The draw of a PVP MMORPG over say, a first person shooter / real time strategy game is that it also incorporates a system of achievement where you can continuously improve upon your character. That means the primary thing that would keep people playing a PVP MMORPG over another competitive game like a first person shooter is character advancement and to a lesser degree the social aspect of an MMORPG. You're catering to people who like the competition and also like the ability the improve their characters.

That means a quality system of character advancement whether it be through gained abilities or gear should be the #1 priority when making a PVP MMORPG. It's the main thing that will keep people playing. Another very important factor is balance and maintaining the integrity of the competition. In truth, it's a lot harder to design a PVP focused MMORPG then a PVE one and your potential target market is smaller.

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Rayne

We've been hearing this crock of shit for 4 years now.

"Numbers don't matter", or, "as long as it does well enough to sustain itself, it'll do fine" or, "it'll appeal to a niche market".....

Bullshit. Did you even bother to consider the astronomical costs associated with building some of the games you mentioned? WAR, Conan, Vanguard, and other high end games like them, won't likely ever see any considerale profit relative to thier development costs.

They failed BECAUSE they shot for the bar and missed. By a country fuckin' mile.

You think these guys will be any different? HELL NO! They're setting thier sights directly on that same exact bar. And if they don't at least come somewhat close, you'll be adding thier game to the list when we're talking about the same shit years from now about some other game.

I think you missed what I said.
Games like conan/WAR are intended to be AAA mmos with high costs and a high bar. Both failed to hit that expected level of quality/gameplay/etc. (WAR was oh so close) The competition for these AAA titles is very heavy.
Neither conan or WAR are particularly bad games. But they failed to meet peoples expectations and thus lost subs.

But not every mmo needs to do that. EVE, fusionfall, city of heroes, Maplestory, Runescape, etc. Things of this nature. Aim for a niche market, attend to their needs, and you are good to go.

[Tropics]

Originally Posted by Agraza

And on the other hand many of you suck up to Ngruk an unhealthy amount. *golf clap for the lemmings*

There be beta accounts in those there waves!

or so some may hope...

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Caliane

I think you missed what I said.
Games like conan/WAR are intended to be AAA mmos with high costs and a high bar. Both failed to hit that expected level of quality/gameplay/etc. (WAR was oh so close) The competition for these AAA titles is very heavy.
Neither conan or WAR are particularly bad games. But they failed to meet peoples expectations and thus lost subs.

But not every mmo needs to do that. EVE, fusionfall, city of heroes, Maplestory, Runescape, etc. Things of this nature. Aim for a niche market, attend to their needs, and you are good to go.

Okay. Lets try this from a simpler angle.

You CANNOT spend 10's of millions of dollars, expecting your game to turn out numbers even remotely comparable to WoW, and when it doesn't simply say, "oh well, we missed the mark, but this niche audience we've attracted will turn us a decent profit".

Cause that ain't gonna happen for about a decade. IF it even lasts that long. And lets face it, we aren't talking about any upcoming "niche" title here. We're talking about whats expecting to be a top notch AAA title.

And any title expecting to be considered "AAA", NEEDS to contend directly with whatever the current kings of the hill are. I'm telling you right now, that with the list of talent here in this very thread, expectations are running into overload mode. And if those expections aren't at least reasonably met, it'll be ripped to shit in every gaming circle on the net.

I hope they do well. I genuinely do. But I don't hold much faith for anything fantasy based. Because anything fantasy based needs to contend with WoW directly. And that means spending big money, and getting everything right. Beyond that, sustenance will be key.

And WoW has set that bar pretty fuckin' high.

[Palum]

WAR was very nearly there. They had very impressive numbers at launch, just no immediate retention. Weren't they at 850k or something like that?

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Palum

WAR was very nearly there. They had very impressive numbers at launch, just no immediate retention. Weren't they at 850k or something like that?

Not sure what the actual numbers were. But I wasn't surprised when it didn't meet expectations. For exactly the reasons I stated earlier.

[Kuro]

Random factor: Since it's going to be 9 months or so until we even hear what the IP's name is (judging by them coming into the thread a few months ago and saying it wouldn't be up for a year), I'd be shocked if the game is out in the next 3-4 years. Unless they're just playing their cards really super-ninja-close to their chest.

Which is plenty of time for the MMO landscape to be a completely different beast, or for WoW to do something stupid enough to impale itself (GoD 2.0).

Or for Blizzard to time its next MMO's release to strangle Curt's game in the crib like Sony (unsuccessfully) tried to do to WoW with EQ2's early launch.

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Kuro

Or for Blizzard to time its next MMO's release to strangle Curt's game in the crib like Sony (unsuccessfully) tried to do to WoW with EQ2's early launch.

Not only can I see this realistically happening, but i'm expecting it.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Kuro

Or for Blizzard to time its next MMO's release to strangle Curt's game in the crib like Sony (unsuccessfully) tried to do to WoW with EQ2's early launch.

Remember however that wow also did an early release because EQ2 released, they just had a better polished product by that time than EQ2 was.

I think the biggest issue the last "wave" of MMOs had is they were fun for the first few levels, and got terribly shitty after that. Too much emphasis on testing the starting zones and shit like that, or bad progression planning later on.

For AoC, Tortage was great, and arguably the game was ok for a little while after too(the race specific areas for 20-30) but it quickly became a pile of shit where you had to grind because of a lack of quest, unfinished instances, lack of end game content(no pvp system at all, untested sieges) combined with very bad class issues that showed as you went on(hi one shot DW barbarians, and basically every class but ToS/PoM/Necro/Demo for leveling because all that mattered was AEing).

In WAR, the game was awesome from 1 to ~20, then you entered tier 3. The xp curve slowed a lot, the maps were too spread out and badly designed, such as most people ended up doing Tor Anroc even though it sucked, CC and AEs started to become much more prominent, and even overwhelming(enough tactics for rain of fire/pit of shades shitstuff, lots of snares AE stuns and AE knockbacks, combined with the lava etc). The game ended up as a mess in tier4 where CCs were way too common and powerful, AE and burst DPS too high especially due to some stupid mechanics(hi engineer/magus AE pull) and even worse, it was laggy as shit in sieges, partly due to UI mistakes(spell updates) but the rest due to simply having too many people in the zone lagging the shit. Add terrible reward vs time invested on keeps, terrible pve and well, here you go, everyone leaves after their first free month.


At wow launch, the endgame was terrible. There was no pvp, and almost no pve. MC was unfinished(Ragnaros wasn't killable) and Ony was a buggy pos, as well as totally untuned. However the leveling was mostly good until the end, which means "casuals" would still stick around. Also, and that's very important to note, back then there was not many alternatives. You looked at EQ2 but it wasn't much better. The other games were old, and that was it. You can't repeat that same thing nowadays simply because well, there's wow, there's lotro, so for most gamers, there's options to fall back on if the game suck.


That said, I agree, unless Copernicus is much further in dev that I believe it is, there's a good chance it'll compete directly, or close enough, with Blizzard's own wow killer, which isn't a position I'd envy.