Originally posted by SirDerp Longer, larger beta tests with unpaid QA? uuuhh... no. Closed betas are for server stress testing and should remain that way. Open betas are unprofessional and should cease to exist entirely. I expect bugs and major game mechanics to be fleshed out during Alpha and pre-Alpha testing, like every other genre of video game. If you have a crazy new game mechanic you want to create, focus group test it. Research the market, follow changes in preference of consumers, act like any other business with a new idea. What's happened to the world of investors? If you aren't able to find people to help fund your game, that's a good clue that it'll be a flop.
Actually beta testing serves a useful purpose beyond simple stress testing. It is the infinite monkeys effect, you are looking for people doing things in combinations and orders that you did not conceive of during structured testing.
However, what we see in most MMORPGs is not beta testing it is promotion of an upcoming product, getting the word of mouth (or forum posting) going. There is also the disturbing trend to make it a marketing opportunity, founders packs etc.
I would love to see a return to structured beta testing, but do not expect it any time soon.
Originally posted by SirDerp Longer, larger beta tests with unpaid QA? uuuhh... no. Closed betas are for server stress testing and should remain that way. Open betas are unprofessional and should cease to exist entirely. I expect bugs and major game mechanics to be fleshed out during Alpha and pre-Alpha testing, like every other genre of video game. If you have a crazy new game mechanic you want to create, focus group test it. Research the market, follow changes in preference of consumers, act like any other business with a new idea. What's happened to the world of investors? If you aren't able to find people to help fund your game, that's a good clue that it'll be a flop.
Actually beta testing serves a useful purpose beyond simple stress testing. It is the infinite monkeys effect, you are looking for people doing things in combinations and orders that you did not conceive of during structured testing.
However, what we see in most MMORPGs is not beta testing it is promotion of an upcoming product, getting the word of mouth (or forum posting) going. There is also the disturbing trend to make it a marketing opportunity, founders packs etc.
I would love to see a return to structured beta testing, but do not expect it any time soon.
That is true. Once you have a mass amount of people doing something, you can see new problems arise, i.e. balancing skills/classes/etc. However, development of core game mechanics really has no place in a beta test.
I also agree there needs to be a return to a more structured beta test. I refuse to pay a company to let me try their unfinished product.
"If we want to see more MMOs take risks and succeed, we have to put aside these preconceptions and give developers the room to grow and make mistakes."
"WE" as a customer don't HAVE to give or do anything. A customer has every right to judge or prejudge all they want. To put responsibility or blame on the customer is just bad business practice.
Originally posted by SirDerp Longer, larger beta tests with unpaid QA? uuuhh... no. Closed betas are for server stress testing and should remain that way. Open betas are unprofessional and should cease to exist entirely. I expect bugs and major game mechanics to be fleshed out during Alpha and pre-Alpha testing, like every other genre of video game. If you have a crazy new game mechanic you want to create, focus group test it. Research the market, follow changes in preference of consumers, act like any other business with a new idea. What's happened to the world of investors? If you aren't able to find people to help fund your game, that's a good clue that it'll be a flop.
Actually beta testing serves a useful purpose beyond simple stress testing. It is the infinite monkeys effect, you are looking for people doing things in combinations and orders that you did not conceive of during structured testing.
However, what we see in most MMORPGs is not beta testing it is promotion of an upcoming product, getting the word of mouth (or forum posting) going. There is also the disturbing trend to make it a marketing opportunity, founders packs etc.
I would love to see a return to structured beta testing, but do not expect it any time soon.
That is true. Once you have a mass amount of people doing something, you can see new problems arise, i.e. balancing skills/classes/etc. However, development of core game mechanics really has no place in a beta test.
I also agree there needs to be a return to a more structured beta test. I refuse to pay a company to let me try their unfinished product.
That truly is the most assinine thing, a token reward like a title might be appropriate. Getting people to pay to work for you, how gullible can people get.
"If we want to see more MMOs take risks and succeed, we have to put aside these preconceptions and give developers the room to grow and make mistakes."
"WE" as a customer don't HAVE to give or do anything. A customer has every right to judge or prejudge all they want. To put responsibility or blame on the customer is just bad business practice.
Originally posted by craftseeker
*snip*
That truly is the most assinine thing, a token reward like a title might be appropriate. Getting people to pay to work for you, how gullible can people get.
Thank you! All of the unprofessional video game companies can go out of business and leave room for those which will make quality games.
Sounds to me like he's talking about stealing programmers ideas. MMO's today are garbage because an artist like yourself thinks he can just put pointless images on a canvas. You don't need more unpaid testers to tell you that your not creating anything innovative that your not ready to fund or work harder with the same pay. This guys articles is no more then an attempt to get some attention.
I'll continue to vote with my wallet. Kickstarter is pointless. And anyone who buys into is just a sucker. No way are you ever getting me to pay more then the general price for a game . If you spend thosands of dollars on a game you should atleast be buying a percentage of the company stock as an investment. Otherwise your just getting suckered throwing your money away. Star citizen junk gets 20 million dollars big deal. The money will never be enough to seriously fund a game to better then projects like the uncreative swtor's, 200-300 million dollar game, rift, defiance or any of the same regurgitated, lets make players grind to pay for uncreative artist or studio.
So I'll have my quick fun in something like bf4 or some other 10 hour rpg and move on to the the next barely profitable game since mmo's think all they have to do is get more players in a lobby to be a better "more fun" game.
ROFL 8 weeks to make a boss mob, if I took that long I would of been fired LOL, funny stuff, were does he get that 8 weeks, if someone models, that slow they need to find a new line of work....
Sounds to me like he's talking about stealing programmers ideas. MMO's today are garbage because an artist like yourself thinks he can just put pointless images on a canvas. You don't need more unpaid testers to tell you that your not creating anything innovative that your not ready to fund or work harder with the same pay. This guys articles is no more then an attempt to get some attention.
I'll continue to vote with my wallet. Kickstarter is pointless. And anyone who buys into is just a sucker. No way are you ever getting me to pay more then the general price for a game . If you spend thosands of dollars on a game you should atleast be buying a percentage of the company stock as an investment. Otherwise your just getting suckered throwing your money away. Star citizen junk gets 20 million dollars big deal. The money will never be enough to seriously fund a game to better then projects like the uncreative swtor's, 200-300 million dollar game, rift, defiance or any of the same regurgitated, lets make players grind to pay for uncreative artist or studio.
So I'll have my quick fun in something like bf4 or some other 10 hour rpg and move on to the the next barely profitable game since mmo's think all they have to do is get more players in a lobby to be a better "more fun" game.
I don't agree with this guy at all, but programmers ideas?? What, they don't come up with ideas so you know.... That's not there job..
i spend $100 on the starter pack, loved the game, but after i found out that all your hard earned items are lost cuz you can't repair them . [mod edit]
I don't think it's a very big secret that there's a pretty large disconnect between what developers are making and what we as gamers are actually looking for, so Mr. Kern is very correct in acknowledging the fact that dev's should most definitely let their fans in on at least some of the creative process, even if its just a smell test on some of the larger design decisions.
If anyone was paying attention to all of the negative feedback that Elder Scrolls received after their initial reveal, you'll see what I was talking about. Yes, the game is still in beta, but for many Elder Scrolls fans, this MMO just isn't the game they are looking for (and while, yes, the game is still in beta, most of the design decisions are fixed as its far too late to change major things at this state in development)
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
The problem is simple. First there was single player RPGs. Then the internet reached a stage where people could play together. Developers merely copied 90% of those features/systems into MMOs. Initially this was a fun new way reaching its culmination with WoW. But ultimately 99% are just online single player RPGs with some co-op play. It is not worth paying a monthly fee for and that is why "grind" was introduced to keep players distracted from this reality. F2P has occurred to stem this downward trend but despite that the novelty has worn off for the vast majority who don't pay a dime letting the 20% of addicts support an industry without base value.
Only a proper sandbox MMO is value adding. An online world where player action influences things permanently. Difficult to design and to prevent abuse/griefing? Maybe yes. But that is still the only worth while future for online rpgs.
If what this article says is true and major publishers are leaving the MMO genre that is a good thing. Smaller budgets will lower graphical and other expectations from players. This will in turn make the innovators like StarVault and Aventurine more palatable (depending on which game style you prefer).
I could careless about production costs. Game companys make millions and millions of dollers each year. Game developers are well paid and live well then most people do in the world. The only thing you are talking about here is money and time. If developers took more time developing their games and testing them like what Trion did with Rift there would be no problems. You said you used to work on WoW with blizzard development team, but have you seen what your company has turned that game into? It's a hunk of garbage now because the new developers have turned it into a walk-in toy store for little tweeny kids.
What needs to change is the game developers who always make MMORPG's simplistic, linear, and less indepth. So they can make everything as easy as possible because they feel the carebears and casuals are the only ones who really matter. They need to go back when MMORPG's used to be good. Like games like everquest, shadowbane, and SWG PRE NGE. Not the crap we have now.
I agree with the article. So many mistakes could be avoided if players could give feedback earlier on in the process. Whether it's weekends, monthly or even quarterly, these benchmarks would allow the devs to shape the game based on feedback of fans, while minimizing the risk of burn out.
I think a full week of public testing every quarter, with smaller focus tests as needed in between, would probably be a model worth considering.
Feedback early on in this process? Gamers give feedback constantly in the form of forums like these. its like the developers don't bother actually reading any of it. And by the time we're told and allowed to have feedback on a game itself, it's usually in beta (meaning almost complete) so the company says "We can't change it now".
How exactly do you propose we give feedback early when we give feedback constantly already?
I don't agree with the author's "solution". I agree that things need to change, but getting the players involved earlier in the process won't reduce production costs. And how many of those players will spend a year or more beta testing and then play the game for a long time? They may already be bored of it by the time it goes live.
What game companies need to do is go modular. Don't try to reinvent the entire wheel. Pick one aspect of an MMO and create it in a way that sets it apart from the competition. Want dungeon crawling? Make a game that is just a big dungeon. Give the players cool abilities and give the dungeon intelligent mobs. Mob AI is so much less than it could be. Create 1 big dungeon with mobs that are both proactive and reactive. Mobs that react in intelligent ways based on the group and what the group does. Dynamic fights instead of scripted fights.
Want PvP? Then create a PvP system (arena, battleground, open world, whatever) that focuses just on that and make it as good as it can possibly be. Forget PvE. Forget quests.
By going modular, companies will be able to bring a game live much quicker and at much less cost. The players who enjoy that particular aspect of MMOs will get a game that is more innovative and focused on what they want. That will result in a more stable player base and a more profitable bottom line. The companies can then add other aspects to the game in a similar fashion, or remain within their niche and keep adding to that core module.
The author is correct that there's just too much expected in an MMO today. Game companies try to cater to every type of player and the result is a bland experience that ultimately satisfies no one. Do one thing and do it really well. Get it live and get the money coming in, then work on adding other MMO elements to the game.
Another idea would be to come up with a really good character system. Make it a game unto itself with housing and stuff. Then create a bunch of smaller, modular type games for those characters. So players would be able to create a character and then play as that character in multiple games. Characters could have lives and possessions that exist outside of the games in which they play. Abandoning a game would no longer mean abandoning the character that the player invested so much time into.
MMO companies need to start thinking on a smaller scale. Only then will innovation increase and cost decrease.
Try to cater to what players exactly? The problem is that they don't. They cater to the PvP'rs and the linear PvE and that's it. Crafting and housing are both being neglected while they "balance" classes and turn them in to virtual clones of each other other than clothing and a few skills (and names of skills). These companies have virtually eliminated any need to group and the only way they can think of to do it is by giving more xp to people when they do it (all that does is lack imagination).
IMO from a business perspective the only model that makes sense is the Asian one. Quick cheap startup time, cost recovery as fast as possible, grind plus microtransactions, by the time people get bored you've profited, rinse repeat.
The MMO genre is a bit ridiculous. There is no "market" to address per say. It isnt like FPS or even RTS. There are 12,000 different groups of "MMO fans", all equally demanding and all impossible to satisfy. Most "genre fans" prefer posting about and complaining about the games, and dreaming about "the perfect game" and opining on whats "wrong" with the industry to playing. They can write a 400 page dissertation on whats wrong and be hugely vocal about what everyone "needs" but for every person that supports them 5 will disagree and have a 400 page dissertation of their own.
At some point (soon, IMO) I think this will be crystal clear and you will see big money development exiting the space. Current economics simply don't support $200M science projects that are a financial disaster and result in nothing but bitter and angry bitching on forums. Imagine investing all of that money, effort and time just to hear legions of bloggers beating a drum over how idiotic and "retarded" your studio is? And all the while "Angry Birds" made $600M?
The only way a dev shop can "win" this game, IMO, is to *not play*.
At some point (soon, IMO) I think this will be crystal clear and you will see big money development exiting the space. Current economics simply don't support $200M science projects that are a financial disaster and result in nothing but bitter and angry bitching on forums. Imagine investing all of that money, effort and time just to hear legions of bloggers beating a drum over how idiotic and "retarded" your studio is? And all the while "Angry Birds" made $600M?
The only way a dev shop can "win" this game, IMO, is to *not play*.
Sooner it happen's the better. Only serious crash can change things. From my player perspective - whole current mmorpg market is so bad and it's trends are even worse - that even if crash change it to far worse it won't have any effect on me.
Agreed about cheap Asian mmo(rpg) model. Seem it is what major part of playerbase wants and only Perferct World-Cryptic seem to understand. I say - give it to them. Maybe after several years of getting only cheap low-cost cash grabs on repeat cycle - market will be so exploited and shrinked - it's perception will change.
Originally posted by Hjamnr Here you go, Mark; Exactly what you're asking for: Camelot Unchained
I'm a backer of Mark Jacob's Camelot Unchained. He/we are breaking the mold. CU doesn't need an outside publisher or a huge player base to be successful. Crowd funding ftw with a built-in tester community.
I don't agree with the author's "solution". I agree that things need to change, but getting the players involved earlier in the process won't reduce production costs. And how many of those players will spend a year or more beta testing and then play the game for a long time? They may already be bored of it by the time it goes live.
What game companies need to do is go modular. Don't try to reinvent the entire wheel. Pick one aspect of an MMO and create it in a way that sets it apart from the competition. Want dungeon crawling? Make a game that is just a big dungeon. Give the players cool abilities and give the dungeon intelligent mobs. Mob AI is so much less than it could be. Create 1 big dungeon with mobs that are both proactive and reactive. Mobs that react in intelligent ways based on the group and what the group does. Dynamic fights instead of scripted fights.
Want PvP? Then create a PvP system (arena, battleground, open world, whatever) that focuses just on that and make it as good as it can possibly be. Forget PvE. Forget quests.
By going modular, companies will be able to bring a game live much quicker and at much less cost. The players who enjoy that particular aspect of MMOs will get a game that is more innovative and focused on what they want. That will result in a more stable player base and a more profitable bottom line. The companies can then add other aspects to the game in a similar fashion, or remain within their niche and keep adding to that core module.
The author is correct that there's just too much expected in an MMO today. Game companies try to cater to every type of player and the result is a bland experience that ultimately satisfies no one. Do one thing and do it really well. Get it live and get the money coming in, then work on adding other MMO elements to the game.
Another idea would be to come up with a really good character system. Make it a game unto itself with housing and stuff. Then create a bunch of smaller, modular type games for those characters. So players would be able to create a character and then play as that character in multiple games. Characters could have lives and possessions that exist outside of the games in which they play. Abandoning a game would no longer mean abandoning the character that the player invested so much time into.
MMO companies need to start thinking on a smaller scale. Only then will innovation increase and cost decrease.
Try to cater to what players exactly? The problem is that they don't. They cater to the PvP'rs and the linear PvE and that's it. Crafting and housing are both being neglected while they "balance" classes and turn them in to virtual clones of each other other than clothing and a few skills (and names of skills). These companies have virtually eliminated any need to group and the only way they can think of to do it is by giving more xp to people when they do it (all that does is lack imagination).
That's exactly my point. They try to please everyone and fail. Did you read the rest of my post?
I'm talking about making a game that is much smaller scale in order to cater to a very specific subset of players. That subset may be PvPers. It may be raiders. It may be explorers. It may be crafters.
The point is to make a much smaller scale MMO so that costs and development time will be significantly reduced, thereby lessening the risk of innovation. Once a game is successful, they can add other modules to expand the gameplay.
Several posts grapple with the problems of 1) how to lose the hype angle and go back to actual testing and 2) deal with early negative feedback from players expecting a polished game.
The two problems are intertwined. So-called beta testers expect a polished game because they assume that the game is more or less in final form and that they are there simply to generate hype!
The solution is easy. Go back to character wipes at the end of every beta stage (including the final open beta) that were the norm in the early days when Beta testing was a process of actually testing the developing game and make it explicitly clear that the there will be wipes. First off, you'll lose all the people joining the alpha/beta just to play and get an early start and you'll get more (if not mostly) people interested in helping develop the game. Second, wipes as SOP make it clear to everyone that the game is still in development (and that you expect bugs, etc. and that players cannot permanently benefit from any such bugs, exploits, and any other aspects on an unfinished game.
If the Devs treat the developing game as still in development so will the players. As things generally stand now, the Devs don't treat betas that way and so the players don't either.
Several posts grapple with the problems of 1) how to lose the hype angle and go back to actual testing and 2) deal with early negative feedback from players expecting a polished game.
The two problems are intertwined. So-called beta testers expect a polished game because they assume that the game is more or less in final form and that they are there simply to generate hype!
The solution is easy. Go back to character wipes at the end of every beta stage (including the final open beta) that were the norm in the early days when Beta testing was a process of actually testing the developing game and make it explicitly clear that the there will be wipes. First off, you'll lose all the people joining the alpha/beta just to play and get an early start and you'll get more (if not mostly) people interested in helping develop the game. Second, wipes as SOP make it clear to everyone that the game is still in development (and that you expect bugs, etc. and that players cannot permanently benefit from any such bugs, exploits, and any other aspects on an unfinished game.
If the Devs treat the developing game as still in development so will the players. As things generally stand now, the Devs don't treat betas that way and so the players don't either.
The problem is, now a days beta does mean its almost final. They're just testing loads on the server and maybe fixing a few major bugs but that's all. And mostly, they're giving some players a sneak peak. Most bugs will still be in the game when the game is released and probably never fixed. Most betas last 6 months and if players say they think something should be changed during beta (even if its thousands of players) they get ignored and often told "Its too late to change it now, its almost final".
I've been part of betas where the devs are repeatedly told by players that it needs to go back to alpha stage and that its not ready to be released but they get completely ignored. Then the game companies wonder why everyone leaves after 6 months to a year and the game goes free to play or goes under.
I really don't get it. Its not that hard to understand. Yes, gamers want to be listened to. But its about more than "balancing the classes". It's about being listened to in other things to. Gamers talk constantly everywhere about what they like and don't like and what they think needs to be changed. Feedback already exists. In copious amounts. Devs and publishers would only need to spend a week on this forum alone to see what people are saying, never mind actually bothering to read the forums for their own games. They already get lots of feedback. Over and over again, and people are always saying the same thing.
But what we are getting from the game companies is more of the same, less features (in spite of their claims) and cool graphics while everything else is being ignored. We can't even get in game maps that players can write on (something that has been begged from game creators for at least ten years. The closest anyone has ever come to a proper map is one created by a player for use with EQ2 called EQ2maps, and even that isn't really what people want), never mind major changes like a more involved crafting system than any company has so far proposed (even SWG didn't go nearly as far as it could have).
Now it's too late: cows are definitively gone! I weas starting similar things 3/4 years ago: high dev costs, small market (for mostly players MMO=WoW, no other games allowed), futile beta periods, no customers listening and, overall, no innovation, and many other problems killed this genre.
You can find some nice games, but are WoW copies: no new ideas, hard to looking back to the MMO golden age (EQ, DAoC, FFXI, etc). Mostly... all publishers, for a long log time, despite every logical prediction, waned to create the perfect WoW-killer.
Well: WoW is still alive, mostly of those MMO are ranted and others are closed. Developers lost years for a stupid and impossible chimera looked by publishers.
And mostly players quitted a lot of stupid and badly developed ideas in order to come back to WoW or, simply, to real life.
This genre will revive if:
1) publishers understand that only Blizzard can beat itself
The industry is headed back to hardcore as a means to have leverage against its playerbase as free to play takes hold. Guild Wars 2 has no problem having limited time special events to try to get players to play the game and or buy items from the cash shop for these events. It is this type of aversion of loss, typical sales pitches, sales etc. "ACT NOW", bombardment coupled with the promise of the ability to do this without paying anything that is driving the new age of "casual" gameplay. It is not going anywhere soon.
What the industry needs to do otherwise is accept that they are not going to make another 12 million subscriber game like WoW. Under 1 million susbcribers is the norm and games are very niche. Embrace that and you can have a long lasting franchise like Everquest, which is still brutal and un-soloable by most classes without a mercenary.
Once one realizes that MMOs have psychologists on staff under the guise of making sure their game is not too addictive, that it has been thought about enough that it warrants hiring a PhD, then one sees that there is potential to switching that over to a complicit PhD just around the corner. This understanding of human nature has driven sales and marketing and advertising departments since the advent of the golden age of advertising in the late 50's and early 60s.
It is no longer a means to sell the game, it is integrated into the game. It IS the game. And it is hardcore.
Comments
Actually beta testing serves a useful purpose beyond simple stress testing. It is the infinite monkeys effect, you are looking for people doing things in combinations and orders that you did not conceive of during structured testing.
However, what we see in most MMORPGs is not beta testing it is promotion of an upcoming product, getting the word of mouth (or forum posting) going. There is also the disturbing trend to make it a marketing opportunity, founders packs etc.
I would love to see a return to structured beta testing, but do not expect it any time soon.
That is true. Once you have a mass amount of people doing something, you can see new problems arise, i.e. balancing skills/classes/etc. However, development of core game mechanics really has no place in a beta test.
I also agree there needs to be a return to a more structured beta test. I refuse to pay a company to let me try their unfinished product.
"If we want to see more MMOs take risks and succeed, we have to put aside these preconceptions and give developers the room to grow and make mistakes."
"WE" as a customer don't HAVE to give or do anything. A customer has every right to judge or prejudge all they want. To put responsibility or blame on the customer is just bad business practice.
That truly is the most assinine thing, a token reward like a title might be appropriate. Getting people to pay to work for you, how gullible can people get.
Thank you! All of the unprofessional video game companies can go out of business and leave room for those which will make quality games.
Sounds to me like he's talking about stealing programmers ideas. MMO's today are garbage because an artist like yourself thinks he can just put pointless images on a canvas. You don't need more unpaid testers to tell you that your not creating anything innovative that your not ready to fund or work harder with the same pay. This guys articles is no more then an attempt to get some attention.
I'll continue to vote with my wallet. Kickstarter is pointless. And anyone who buys into is just a sucker. No way are you ever getting me to pay more then the general price for a game . If you spend thosands of dollars on a game you should atleast be buying a percentage of the company stock as an investment. Otherwise your just getting suckered throwing your money away. Star citizen junk gets 20 million dollars big deal. The money will never be enough to seriously fund a game to better then projects like the uncreative swtor's, 200-300 million dollar game, rift, defiance or any of the same regurgitated, lets make players grind to pay for uncreative artist or studio.
So I'll have my quick fun in something like bf4 or some other 10 hour rpg and move on to the the next barely profitable game since mmo's think all they have to do is get more players in a lobby to be a better "more fun" game.
I don't agree with this guy at all, but programmers ideas?? What, they don't come up with ideas so you know.... That's not there job..
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I don't think it's a very big secret that there's a pretty large disconnect between what developers are making and what we as gamers are actually looking for, so Mr. Kern is very correct in acknowledging the fact that dev's should most definitely let their fans in on at least some of the creative process, even if its just a smell test on some of the larger design decisions.
If anyone was paying attention to all of the negative feedback that Elder Scrolls received after their initial reveal, you'll see what I was talking about. Yes, the game is still in beta, but for many Elder Scrolls fans, this MMO just isn't the game they are looking for (and while, yes, the game is still in beta, most of the design decisions are fixed as its far too late to change major things at this state in development)
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
-The MMO Forum Community
The problem is simple. First there was single player RPGs. Then the internet reached a stage where people could play together. Developers merely copied 90% of those features/systems into MMOs. Initially this was a fun new way reaching its culmination with WoW. But ultimately 99% are just online single player RPGs with some co-op play. It is not worth paying a monthly fee for and that is why "grind" was introduced to keep players distracted from this reality. F2P has occurred to stem this downward trend but despite that the novelty has worn off for the vast majority who don't pay a dime letting the 20% of addicts support an industry without base value.
Only a proper sandbox MMO is value adding. An online world where player action influences things permanently. Difficult to design and to prevent abuse/griefing? Maybe yes. But that is still the only worth while future for online rpgs.
If what this article says is true and major publishers are leaving the MMO genre that is a good thing. Smaller budgets will lower graphical and other expectations from players. This will in turn make the innovators like StarVault and Aventurine more palatable (depending on which game style you prefer).
I could careless about production costs. Game companys make millions and millions of dollers each year. Game developers are well paid and live well then most people do in the world. The only thing you are talking about here is money and time. If developers took more time developing their games and testing them like what Trion did with Rift there would be no problems. You said you used to work on WoW with blizzard development team, but have you seen what your company has turned that game into? It's a hunk of garbage now because the new developers have turned it into a walk-in toy store for little tweeny kids.
What needs to change is the game developers who always make MMORPG's simplistic, linear, and less indepth. So they can make everything as easy as possible because they feel the carebears and casuals are the only ones who really matter. They need to go back when MMORPG's used to be good. Like games like everquest, shadowbane, and SWG PRE NGE. Not the crap we have now.
Feedback early on in this process? Gamers give feedback constantly in the form of forums like these. its like the developers don't bother actually reading any of it. And by the time we're told and allowed to have feedback on a game itself, it's usually in beta (meaning almost complete) so the company says "We can't change it now".
How exactly do you propose we give feedback early when we give feedback constantly already?
Try to cater to what players exactly? The problem is that they don't. They cater to the PvP'rs and the linear PvE and that's it. Crafting and housing are both being neglected while they "balance" classes and turn them in to virtual clones of each other other than clothing and a few skills (and names of skills). These companies have virtually eliminated any need to group and the only way they can think of to do it is by giving more xp to people when they do it (all that does is lack imagination).
IMO from a business perspective the only model that makes sense is the Asian one. Quick cheap startup time, cost recovery as fast as possible, grind plus microtransactions, by the time people get bored you've profited, rinse repeat.
The MMO genre is a bit ridiculous. There is no "market" to address per say. It isnt like FPS or even RTS. There are 12,000 different groups of "MMO fans", all equally demanding and all impossible to satisfy. Most "genre fans" prefer posting about and complaining about the games, and dreaming about "the perfect game" and opining on whats "wrong" with the industry to playing. They can write a 400 page dissertation on whats wrong and be hugely vocal about what everyone "needs" but for every person that supports them 5 will disagree and have a 400 page dissertation of their own.
At some point (soon, IMO) I think this will be crystal clear and you will see big money development exiting the space. Current economics simply don't support $200M science projects that are a financial disaster and result in nothing but bitter and angry bitching on forums. Imagine investing all of that money, effort and time just to hear legions of bloggers beating a drum over how idiotic and "retarded" your studio is? And all the while "Angry Birds" made $600M?
The only way a dev shop can "win" this game, IMO, is to *not play*.
Sooner it happen's the better. Only serious crash can change things. From my player perspective - whole current mmorpg market is so bad and it's trends are even worse - that even if crash change it to far worse it won't have any effect on me.
Agreed about cheap Asian mmo(rpg) model. Seem it is what major part of playerbase wants and only Perferct World-Cryptic seem to understand. I say - give it to them. Maybe after several years of getting only cheap low-cost cash grabs on repeat cycle - market will be so exploited and shrinked - it's perception will change.
I'm a backer of Mark Jacob's Camelot Unchained. He/we are breaking the mold. CU doesn't need an outside publisher or a huge player base to be successful. Crowd funding ftw with a built-in tester community.
That's exactly my point. They try to please everyone and fail. Did you read the rest of my post?
I'm talking about making a game that is much smaller scale in order to cater to a very specific subset of players. That subset may be PvPers. It may be raiders. It may be explorers. It may be crafters.
The point is to make a much smaller scale MMO so that costs and development time will be significantly reduced, thereby lessening the risk of innovation. Once a game is successful, they can add other modules to expand the gameplay.
Several posts grapple with the problems of 1) how to lose the hype angle and go back to actual testing and 2) deal with early negative feedback from players expecting a polished game.
The two problems are intertwined. So-called beta testers expect a polished game because they assume that the game is more or less in final form and that they are there simply to generate hype!
The solution is easy. Go back to character wipes at the end of every beta stage (including the final open beta) that were the norm in the early days when Beta testing was a process of actually testing the developing game and make it explicitly clear that the there will be wipes. First off, you'll lose all the people joining the alpha/beta just to play and get an early start and you'll get more (if not mostly) people interested in helping develop the game. Second, wipes as SOP make it clear to everyone that the game is still in development (and that you expect bugs, etc. and that players cannot permanently benefit from any such bugs, exploits, and any other aspects on an unfinished game.
If the Devs treat the developing game as still in development so will the players. As things generally stand now, the Devs don't treat betas that way and so the players don't either.
The problem is, now a days beta does mean its almost final. They're just testing loads on the server and maybe fixing a few major bugs but that's all. And mostly, they're giving some players a sneak peak. Most bugs will still be in the game when the game is released and probably never fixed. Most betas last 6 months and if players say they think something should be changed during beta (even if its thousands of players) they get ignored and often told "Its too late to change it now, its almost final".
I've been part of betas where the devs are repeatedly told by players that it needs to go back to alpha stage and that its not ready to be released but they get completely ignored. Then the game companies wonder why everyone leaves after 6 months to a year and the game goes free to play or goes under.
I really don't get it. Its not that hard to understand. Yes, gamers want to be listened to. But its about more than "balancing the classes". It's about being listened to in other things to. Gamers talk constantly everywhere about what they like and don't like and what they think needs to be changed. Feedback already exists. In copious amounts. Devs and publishers would only need to spend a week on this forum alone to see what people are saying, never mind actually bothering to read the forums for their own games. They already get lots of feedback. Over and over again, and people are always saying the same thing.
But what we are getting from the game companies is more of the same, less features (in spite of their claims) and cool graphics while everything else is being ignored. We can't even get in game maps that players can write on (something that has been begged from game creators for at least ten years. The closest anyone has ever come to a proper map is one created by a player for use with EQ2 called EQ2maps, and even that isn't really what people want), never mind major changes like a more involved crafting system than any company has so far proposed (even SWG didn't go nearly as far as it could have).
Now it's too late: cows are definitively gone! I weas starting similar things 3/4 years ago: high dev costs, small market (for mostly players MMO=WoW, no other games allowed), futile beta periods, no customers listening and, overall, no innovation, and many other problems killed this genre.
You can find some nice games, but are WoW copies: no new ideas, hard to looking back to the MMO golden age (EQ, DAoC, FFXI, etc). Mostly... all publishers, for a long log time, despite every logical prediction, waned to create the perfect WoW-killer.
Well: WoW is still alive, mostly of those MMO are ranted and others are closed. Developers lost years for a stupid and impossible chimera looked by publishers.
And mostly players quitted a lot of stupid and badly developed ideas in order to come back to WoW or, simply, to real life.
This genre will revive if:
1) publishers understand that only Blizzard can beat itself
2) when Titan will gone gold
Otherwise: RIP MMO genre
My blog about (no more)MMORPG Addicted - a bog about videogames, cinema, politics and other things (in Italian)
The industry is headed back to hardcore as a means to have leverage against its playerbase as free to play takes hold. Guild Wars 2 has no problem having limited time special events to try to get players to play the game and or buy items from the cash shop for these events. It is this type of aversion of loss, typical sales pitches, sales etc. "ACT NOW", bombardment coupled with the promise of the ability to do this without paying anything that is driving the new age of "casual" gameplay. It is not going anywhere soon.
What the industry needs to do otherwise is accept that they are not going to make another 12 million subscriber game like WoW. Under 1 million susbcribers is the norm and games are very niche. Embrace that and you can have a long lasting franchise like Everquest, which is still brutal and un-soloable by most classes without a mercenary.
Once one realizes that MMOs have psychologists on staff under the guise of making sure their game is not too addictive, that it has been thought about enough that it warrants hiring a PhD, then one sees that there is potential to switching that over to a complicit PhD just around the corner. This understanding of human nature has driven sales and marketing and advertising departments since the advent of the golden age of advertising in the late 50's and early 60s.
It is no longer a means to sell the game, it is integrated into the game. It IS the game. And it is hardcore.