a group of adventurers on an epic quest
I will now get the highest score of any MMO pundit making predictions. Ready? “It will not go live in 2012.” Whatever we’re talking about, I’m predicting that it will slip into 2013, or later, or just never ship. The game, the expansion, whatever: not in 2012. I’m going to lose a few points, since something will ship in 2012, but I don’t see how anyone can beat my accuracy rate here.
: Zubon
There is one school of thought that thinks F2P means “if you spend enough time, you can experience the whole game for free – paying is just a shortcut”. There is another school of thought that says “you will never see the whole game, unless you pay astronomical amounts of money, and maybe not even then”. There’s a real conceptual rift between the two camps, and some games are finding themselves caught in the middle, or transitioning between the two.
— Brise Bonbons
I’d argue “astronomical,” although that depends on the model, and it’s really the models I want to discuss here.
We’re all familiar with pure subscription models, as well as subscription plus a small premium shop (WoW sparklepony, CoX booster packs). WoW, Warhammer, and others now have unlimited free trials along with their subscriptions. Most Western players have limited familiarity with the item shop model in its pure, evil form, although Allods players got a taste. I think it’s clear under these models that you will be ponying up some funds or you will not be getting much beyond the most basic experience; item shop gamers may have been fooled at the onset, but it should become quickly apparent once they’re into it.
The murkier middle comes from hybrid models and games that let you unlock content (“no cover charge”). Wizard101 has a very clear unlock model, in which you just do not get most zones unless you pay for them. League of Legends gives you access to everything, eventually, a little at a time, with some free permanent unlocks and why don’t you just give them $20 to get the handful of champions you really want? Turbine is the headliner for the hybrid subscription/pay to unlock model, with Dungeons and Dragons Online and The Lord of the Rings Online. You could theoretically unlock absolutely everything in LotRO without paying, although you would be creating and deleting characters to grind deeds until your very fingertips wore away.
And there really is tension between people who want to play for free, absolutely free, and those who are willing to pay and/or recognize that someone needs to fund these companies if you want servers to stay up. When I am getting a lot of value from a game, I don’t mind giving an extra $20 to Valve or Riot or whatnot. I look at my Settlers of Catan box and wonder if I should mail Klaus Teuber a check or something, based on the play value received. But I remember having no money, and I can see a bit of that perspective.
And then there are games that are just annoyingly in your face with their pleas for money. See, for example, the LotRO UI re-design that makes the shop the most visible UI item (poor design decision: the shop links are annoyingly present even if you cannot use them to spend more money, such as subscribers/lifetimers at the stables).
: Zubon
Playing the Steam free game of the weekend, I have come to wonder: how many games have an Engineer that builds a turret; how many games have an Engineer that does not build a turret; and how many games have a non-Engineer that builds a turret. (I think I will avoid counting Warhammer Online’s Magus and units/classes that “summon” rather than “build.” I’m unclear whether the Raven builds, summons, or do we count “deploy”?) Was there some first game that set the standard that Engineer = build a sentry gun? It feels like engineers and self-directed turrets have become a standard game item, but perhaps exploring some examples will reverse this. I keep finding near-hits, where perhaps they consciously avoided calling the turret-builder an Engineer in recent games. I wonder if non-builder Engineers are also intentional aversions? Inventory below the break, please contribute in the comments.
Edit: let’s see what happens if we add in enemies that do the same, some of which may mirror heroes. Continue reading ‘Engi Census’
I don’t really have a post here. I just wanted to use the pun.
: Zubon
Tobold mentions the “bears, bears, bears” video promoting WAR: “Now that was a great video, and one could say that the enthusiastic hyping of a feature which then ultimately didn’t make it in that form into the game neatly summarizes people’s disappointment with WAR.” Yes! Exactly! I’ve never even watched the video (and why bother to go back and do so at this point?), but if anyone asks about WAR, I summarize it with three (one?) words. It is not so much the enthusiastic hyping as identifying the problem, summarizing it neatly, identifying a solution, and then willfully failing to implement it. Bitter, bitter venom every time I was sent back to kill a named enemy I just killed, and it spills over to other games that make me do the same thing.
: Zubon
As fun as I had last time around in my guild’s massive Gloamwood event, I noticed a flaw. Or rather, I saw the flaw in another form. It’s a unique flaw that has been appearing more in the age of public grouping. Let us call it “the zerg.” The zerg is a group of overwhelming force of otherwise unimpressive individuals, and a zerg in an event usually emits a strong gravitational pull entrapping other players. It’s not a unique thing, as its been for as long as there has been open world PvP (if not longer). Yet, it comes across as something different, possibly fouler, when the zerg’s opponent is the system.
Near the end of the Gloamwood crusade, I was starting to get bored. I was thoroughly enjoying all the camaraderie, but the game was being distilled down to merely following the herd and firing off as many spam skills as I could before whatever was targeted inevitably popped. The system was stretching to the outer limits of its “balancing.” Yet, there were far too many players for it to respond in a useful way. This is when the system needs for players to scatter.
Are we past the point of repeatedly buying the same skill as you level, to get Fire Bolt II, Fire Bolt III, …, Fire Bolt CXVI? Just scale the skills with levels. I understand that having ten versions of each skill gives the illusion of “something new every level,” but you can give rewards that do not mess with your game’s scaling. You can even use a point investment mechanic to get most of the same effect without the annoyance of re-training and adjusting the hotbar.
City of Heroes does this. The Lord of the Rings Online™ does this (except for passive skills). Warhammer Online does this. Dungeon and Dragons, the basis for all these CRPG mechanics, has been doing this for decades (fireball does 1d6 damage per caster level, capped at 10d6), although not so much in 4th Edition.
Really, we promise to pretend not to notice that our spells do 5% more damage while we are fighting goblins with 5% more hit points. MMO players are used to looking past that. Just stop pretending that Fire Bolt III was a good design decision, and especially do not start calling them Lesser Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt, Improved Fire Bolt, Greater Fire Bolt, Lesser Fire Blast, Fire Blast, …, Supreme Exalted Fire Conflagration… And double-especially do not do that while having all those fire bolts on an alphabetized skill screen with no indication of level order.
: Zubon
If anyone still cared about Warhammer Online, this would be a scandal.
– Ardwulf
I know Ravious already covered this. I don’t expect to see a better MMO line this month, so I will give the award now.
: Zubon
Fantasy MMOs tend to start with race-based newbie zones and meet up some number of levels in, thinning to a smaller number of high-level areas before expanding again at the cap (discussed previously). Games with strictly divided PvP factions get a more strongly separated version of this, as you can send your night elf to play with your dwarf friend but not your orc friend. Some games will bring everyone together sooner, others will create several paths to the level cap. Please, make an alt while we work on the expansion.
You spend years making this base content. It takes a lot of work to recreate that leveling path several times, even if you recycle content across the paths (a roc is a red vulture, sure, why not). Unless you are Cryptic, this is something like a four-year development cycle. Now that the game is live, you are expected to patch in new content every one to three months while working on bugs and balance. At least you have some half-developed content that was meant for live, maybe even an advertised feature that was not completed on time; City of Heroes/Villains gets a special prize for patching in the last 10 levels after release twice. Oh, and you likely have an expansion every year or two, and that needs to be big enough to justify selling a new box.
Making new content for each faction is time-consuming, creates balance issues, and has limited value given the number of players at the level cap in multiple factions. Or you can make the new content once and send everyone through it. You will need faction-specific details, but the more overlap you have, the less content you need to develop. Add neutral factions that deal with everyone. Add common enemies. This conveniently encourages PvP and/or cross-faction teams, depending on how you set it up.
So you have one Outland and one Northrend. Albion, Midgard, and Hibernia fought over the one big dungeon, and now their descendants in WAR do the same. Superheroes and supervillains both fight the Hamidon, the Honoree, and Romulus (CoX is odd for having the Statesman Task Force and Lord Recluse Strike Force, very different parallel content). Holiday and event content is often mirrored, with the same content slightly redecorated for the factions’ cities or low-level areas.
I don’t know that I would prefer it any other way. It sometimes feels like corner-cutting, but I do not want to need level-capped characters across multiple factions to see all the new toys, and making two sets of them means more time or more cost. I would rather have two sets of content that I can experience on my main. Although it strikes me that Blizzard has the billions of dollars and the staffing and is still producing shared content at a Blizzard pace.
: Zubon
In this November rain, at least some news is ripping through the MMO ‘sphere’s apathy. Mythic has decided on giving players the option to buy levels. At $10 a pop, all characters on an account get a War Tract, which when used will advance the character one full level. Players can only use this once per account. Players that really like Warhammer Online will likely then pay only a couple bucks per character’s level. Players with only one or two played characters will be paying $5 or $10 per character level, which is a tad steep. However, characters created in the future will also get the War Tract in the mail. They bring about a few other cash shop items too, which Arkenor breaks down.
Ardwulf thinks that if anybody really cared about Warhammer Online, this would be a scandal. It is a small one on Warhammer Online forums, where cries of MMO death are slightly amplified because of this. But, I think Spinks has the right of it. The “suck” was already there with the end-grind hell levels. Having the option to pay past this suck, while not the best option, is far better than if hell levels were designed so subscribers would want to fork more money in to get back to the fun.