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MT Model Success (And other claims)-Burden of Proof
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Dradius Calvantia
Lip Shords
#21 - 2011-09-09 05:12:53 UTC
Puppet Mas'ter wrote:
Dradius Calvantia wrote:
Go visit the JG:E forums for some very good examples of this.


really youre saying the forumgoers MADE the guys developing the game waste so much time and money that the backers sued them for the money theyd put into the development of the game? Hell they should be suing the forumgoers instead then


No, I am saying that the beta testers, JGC vets, and forum goers pointed out years before the law suit that ND was dumbing down the flight model and game mechanics too much in their attempt to appeal to a wider audience. They correctly predicted that the game play would be dull and repetitive. ND finally realized much too late that their game play was **** and tried to start over from scratch.. but had already wasted too much time and resources.

BTW, Jump Gate Evolution started out as a content patch for Jump Gate Classic. All us old bitter JGC vets predicted the fact that JGE would fall on its face and exactly why back in 2004 when ND announced that they were making a sequel with more mass appeal instead. The Jump Gate Classic server is still up and the community has actually been rebounding recently despite the fact that there has not been any support for it in years.

JGE/C actually provides a great example of why:

1. Your core player base is extremely important
2. Sacrificing depth and core game play mechanics in order to try to appeal to a broader audience is not a good plan for a niche space game
3. Ignoring community feed back will distance players from the game
4. Bad press can significantly damage a company

PS: For those who do not know, JGC was a space combat MMO with a Newtonian flight model. The game was very challenging, and most pilots ended up just being civs either hauling stuff form station to station or fighting the easier NPCs. You could count the number of good PVP combat pilots on one hand. The complex flight model lead to some very involved combat maneuvers, and it was quiet funny to go to the newbie station and watch lvl 1 pilots trying to learn how to dock. Most slammed into the side of the station and exploded for a few hours then quit. But for those pilots who stuck it out and learned the game, there was a tremendous sense of accomplishment in nearly everything you did.
Thomas Orca
Broski is ded
#22 - 2011-09-09 23:57:53 UTC  |  Edited by: Thomas Orca
Dradius Calvantia wrote:
Little evidence that subscription models can be successful long term? There are dozens of examples of subscription games that that have been around over a decade and are still being developed and have growing populations.

APB can not be considered anything but a complete failure. It was shut down a few months after release and then later reopened by a different company that payed basically nothing for it and still did not manage to make a profit. Fallen Earth was and still is subscription based, but can hardly be considered to be successful. It is terribly bug ridden and unsupported with a free falling population.

Also.. Gamersfirst does not develop their own games. They purchase failed games for basically nothing and then squeeze a few bucks out of them using a MT model because no one in their right mind would pay a subscription for them. They are not able to support a development team, or anything more that the bare minimum customer support on the income from MTs.

I would define success for an MMO as the ability to continue content development and support population growth. The line between short and long term is not easy to define, but games such as Fallen Earth, APB, Black Prophecy, Star Trek Online, LOTRO ect.. clearly can not be considered "long term."


At no point, did I mention that Gamersfirst was a good company, I was pointing out the fact they are profiting from a microtransaction system. The obvious point of this is, from a corporate point of view, that APB and Fallen Earth both failed miserably as subscription-based games, however, Gamersfirst has already made back the money they invested into.

And to the poster who pointed out that Fallen Earth is not yet under MT, you're an idiot, it is.
Nin Kimrov
Kenzi Arms and Munitions
#23 - 2011-09-10 00:05:34 UTC
The problem I see is not that MT is not a succesful method. It's that you need to convert the complete game to adapt it to MT.

And converting EvE to the new model would certainly kill its current population, it would be also pointless. Successful MT game started doing it at the beginning of their release and all their development is aiming with the cash shop in mind.
Avon
#24 - 2011-09-10 00:10:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Avon
Puppet Mas'ter wrote:

but yeah, DDO (sadly) seems to be the best example
(ill never play a game where to get a quest from a questgiver I have to pay real money)


The beauty of DDO is that it works two ways.

You can pay a subscription and get all the quests included, or you can go f2p and buy quest packs when your characer progresses to that level.

Even better, whe you are a subscriber you get a monthly allocation of points, which you can save up and then go f2p and buy all the content.

The microtransactions are also clever in that you can buy an advantage, but that they can help you and your party. Being able to spend a few point to raise your party's healer from the deal is seen as a "good thing".

DDO is perfectly suited to microtransactions because the game is a co-op pve experience. Other games, especially competetive games, will struggle for wide acceptance of MTs because of the natural dislike of many to "pay to win".

DDO is a great model, but only because it is a very different game. (LOTRO uses the same model, but for some reason it doesn't feel so slick)
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