All of those games you named had hundreds of thousands, to many millions of unique players. They were different games and just because they existed in the same period of time doesn't mean future audiences necessarily overlap.
Past tense. These games *had* hundreds of thousands of players. (Maybe not as unique as you may believe due to second accounts and the proliferation of alts). Yes, the second accounts may have generated additional revenue from the same player, but it didn't really become commonplace (in EQ, anyway) until after the 2004-2005 era, and the general downsizing of the population base.
My concern is that attrition has hit this 1st gen player base severely, making me question the validity of basing companies' financial futures on this as a core market. People left the 1st gen games for perfectly valid reasons at the time and simply may not return to a game which may or may not still feature mechanisms that produced that 'bored of this' feeling. The improved game experience (i.e., WoW and later games) may prove to be more popular.
Am I lumping all the players of UO, EQ1, AC and DAoC into one category? Absolutely. I feel that this group, taken as a whole, is far smaller than believed. Even I played all four of these games briefly, so subtract 3 from the count of unique players. That doesn't make that a universal fact; it's an unsubstantiated opinion which may not be directly observable. The general hypothesis of 'the 1st gen player base is smaller' seems to fit the available data, observations, and conjecture.
As I said earlier in this thread, proof of the viability of this as a market segment will only occur after a suitable period, 6 months or a year. Several companies are betting their future on it.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
For the record, I fail to understand what "slow pacing" has to do with MUDs.
MUDs, that was many hours spending on a place on which you knew what you wanted to do, but couldnt find the correct syntax.
And then finding out that the game designers have been native englishspeakers who intentionally made the syntax especially obscure and hard to guess. While you're a non-native englishspeaker.
Thats not slow pacing. Thats just a huge PITA.
I was so happy when I first played a CRPG that wasnt a MUD. Because suddenly I could actually solve quests easily.
drivendawn said:
Not only that but this is an indie game they won't be paying 10's of millions of dollars and there for don't have to shoot for at least 350k to 500k players just to stay a float.
I think you are very underestimating how even few tens of thousands of subs(for sake of simplicity) is difficult to achieve.
How many of those "old-school lovers" do you really think there is out there? 100k? 200k?
drivendawn said:
Not only that but this is an indie game they won't be paying 10's of millions of dollars and there for don't have to shoot for at least 350k to 500k players just to stay a float.
I think you are very underestimating how even few tens of thousands of subs(for sake of simplicity) is difficult to achieve.
How many of those "old-school lovers" do you really think there is out there? 100k? 200k?
Yes and the team already told the community that they believe they can run the game with 50k subs over on the OF.
I am of the opinion that the target audience for Pantheon is likely to be smaller than 50k, especially when multiple games start competing for that very same niche population. It is very likely that the market for 'old-school' games will be saturated, depending on the actual delivery dates. The second challenge will be when those players run into the same issues that drove them away from the first gen games in the first place. What they found to be 'boring' then hasn't really changed, it seems to be an active goal of these old-school games. Harsh death penalties, corpse runs, no fast travel, 'looking at the book' to meditate and other 'features' which were discarded for the sake of convenience.
Just because something is familiar, doesn't mean a player is going to like it. Pantheon states that they 'can run the game with 50k subs'. Is the 50k sub mark a break-even point? Does it describe a healthy game, or just another game facing constant closure? I've seen statements where Pantheon admits they don't know exactly the size of this niche population. (from 2014 and 2015). They, like Crowfall, CoE, and others hoping to ride this nostalgia wave, are merely hoping that they are right. I don't know either, but I'd rather base my businesses future on something a little more solid than 'hope'.
I expect that we will see claims of success (by fans, press and company officials), with the initial glut of curious players flocking to these games, but the real test of the viability of this market is going to be at the 6th+ month mark.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
drivendawn said:
Yes and the team already told the community that they believe they can run the game with 50k subs over on the OF.
Think of this.
There are mainstream titles that focus on player base of several millions, yet they manage to get 1 or 2M players at launch just to lose about 80% of their playerbase within couple following months. That is nothing bad, it is natural.
Those titles are high profile, very polished games delivering the most popular features and mechanics. They are examples of the best scenario you can get.
Now, consider indy MMO with limited budget and let's say 150k potential player base, doing something very niche, how many will be still there after initial surge and excitement wears off?
Not so bright prospects, huh?
People think going indy is somewhat "beneficial" - ha!, you don't need that big numbers!, but they do not realize that getting those big numbers, in a sense, is easier than getting small player base of several thousands.
Afterall, that is why big studios go after "big numbers" - it is safer investment.
I think one of the assumptions about this game that will be invalidated is that old school game mechanics will somehow put off younger gamers, who for no explainable reason will be overcome by them? "I have to retrieve my corpse. Oh noes!" /ragequit
That strikes me as pure nonsense. Today's video gamers have grown up on video games. They have played a lot more games than I had ever been able to play when I began EQ. They have seen and done a lot more.
Whatever the mechanics are, today's gamers will face and overcome them. In fact, they probably will blow right past old folks like me (and some of you) like we were sitting still lol.
The issue in my opinion isn't simply the mechanics. The issue is do they like the game? If Terminus seems like an interesting and engaging place to them - which I believe it will - then they will continue to explore and adapt to whatever mechanics there are. If Terminus is unappealing to them, then they may quit.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
They, like Crowfall, CoE, and others hoping to ride this nostalgia wave, are merely hoping that they are right. I don't know either, but I'd rather base my businesses future on something a little more solid than 'hope'.
Crowfall sounds like a rehash of WAR and is PvP-centric action RPG, IIRC. CoE is also a completely different game from the looks of it, focusing more on player interaction and world building than PvE content with no PvE servers from what Ive gather. There are few games really going after that 'niche' classical MMO player that Pantheon is going for... Saga of Lucimia and maybe Project Gorgon.
Regardless, I dont think 50k is a stretch by any means unless the game is utter garbage. Yeah its a throwback to older, challenging, less forgiving games but that doesnt meant itll only attract those players or that itll be a rehash of the same 20 year old game with prettier graphics. A game that doesnt guide you every step of the way, and actually tries to kill you constantly all the while punishing you for failing doesnt automatically make it a bad or unpopular game. Just look at Dark Souls.
I am of the opinion that the target audience for Pantheon is likely to
be smaller than 50k, especially when multiple games start competing for
that very same niche population.
Say what ? I am not aware of any compareable project at this point in time.
None of the things you describe have been this way in the MUDs I played back then.
MUDs are just that, textbased games. They can be done all kinds of ways.
"Can be," but were they? Which MUDs were these, exactly? More importantly, when?
--
Not that it matters; you objected to my characterization of MUDs as slow paced and then you outright ignored it.
Soft Cap: An x.p. slope that's technically not impossible for the determined two-percenter, but practically infeasible without botting? That time-to-cap measured in years?
"When" matters here, too. Just as it matters to all EQ discussions.
I expect another over-promised, under-delivered Brad McQuaid game that is banking on player nostalgia being great enough to overcome outdated game design concepts that don't appeal to people who have since matured both as people, as players, and as gamers in general.
...................... Glad you won't be playing then, might as well get rid of the likes of you now.
The idea that Pantheon will only appeal to first gen players is silly. If I were to guess first gen players will be the minority. Just look at the people playing any game dubbed oldschool.
Someone stated a good point that I haven't even thought of.
The new nerds of today will most likely run circles around us old nerds in a game like Pantheon. The new technical savvy kids of today will be expecting a deep and hard mmo !
I just hope the servers can handle it......Really !!!
Someone stated a good point that I haven't even thought of.
The new nerds of today will most likely run circles around us old nerds in a game like Pantheon. The new technical savvy kids of today will be expecting a deep and hard mmo !
I just hope the servers can handle it......Really !!!
more importantly, they generally will have more time to sink into the game than most of us older folk.
Why hasn't EQ1 captured this enormous audience of gamers eager to experience the reactionary renaissance?
i'm playing one one of their progression servers right now, it's one of their most populated servers.
They are just about to open a new type progression server. On quarm the server is birthed with a goal to be the first guild to accomplish a major task. When that target is killed everyone gets moved off the server and the server starts over with a new goal. EQ is still going for sure. You just dont sink that kind of dev dollars into a game that is "on its last legs".
Comments
My concern is that attrition has hit this 1st gen player base severely, making me question the validity of basing companies' financial futures on this as a core market. People left the 1st gen games for perfectly valid reasons at the time and simply may not return to a game which may or may not still feature mechanisms that produced that 'bored of this' feeling. The improved game experience (i.e., WoW and later games) may prove to be more popular.
Am I lumping all the players of UO, EQ1, AC and DAoC into one category? Absolutely. I feel that this group, taken as a whole, is far smaller than believed. Even I played all four of these games briefly, so subtract 3 from the count of unique players. That doesn't make that a universal fact; it's an unsubstantiated opinion which may not be directly observable. The general hypothesis of 'the 1st gen player base is smaller' seems to fit the available data, observations, and conjecture.
As I said earlier in this thread, proof of the viability of this as a market segment will only occur after a suitable period, 6 months or a year. Several companies are betting their future on it.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
MUDs, that was many hours spending on a place on which you knew what you wanted to do, but couldnt find the correct syntax.
And then finding out that the game designers have been native englishspeakers who intentionally made the syntax especially obscure and hard to guess. While you're a non-native englishspeaker.
Thats not slow pacing. Thats just a huge PITA.
I was so happy when I first played a CRPG that wasnt a MUD. Because suddenly I could actually solve quests easily.
No quest x.p.
Log acceleration x.p. curves. (Lev 2, 150xp needed. Lev 20, 425,000 x.p. Lev 40 1,245,000 Lev 60 200,000,000. Lev 80 4.5 billion. (etc.)
X.p. per kill increases linearly.
These xp curves were very common in games published throughout the 80s, including PnP games like D&D and Runescape (where they were first seen).
Time-to-cap measured in years of physical play time spent "hunting", not in hours.
This have been a good conversation
How many of those "old-school lovers" do you really think there is out there? 100k? 200k?
MUDs are just that, textbased games. They can be done all kinds of ways.
I have. I had a great deal of fun with several of them
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Just because something is familiar, doesn't mean a player is going to like it. Pantheon states that they 'can run the game with 50k subs'. Is the 50k sub mark a break-even point? Does it describe a healthy game, or just another game facing constant closure? I've seen statements where Pantheon admits they don't know exactly the size of this niche population. (from 2014 and 2015). They, like Crowfall, CoE, and others hoping to ride this nostalgia wave, are merely hoping that they are right. I don't know either, but I'd rather base my businesses future on something a little more solid than 'hope'.
I expect that we will see claims of success (by fans, press and company officials), with the initial glut of curious players flocking to these games, but the real test of the viability of this market is going to be at the 6th+ month mark.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
That's a bit different from hundreds of thousands though.
There are mainstream titles that focus on player base of several millions, yet they manage to get 1 or 2M players at launch just to lose about 80% of their playerbase within couple following months. That is nothing bad, it is natural.
Those titles are high profile, very polished games delivering the most popular features and mechanics. They are examples of the best scenario you can get.
Now, consider indy MMO with limited budget and let's say 150k potential player base, doing something very niche, how many will be still there after initial surge and excitement wears off? Not so bright prospects, huh?
People think going indy is somewhat "beneficial" - ha!, you don't need that big numbers!, but they do not realize that getting those big numbers, in a sense, is easier than getting small player base of several thousands.
Afterall, that is why big studios go after "big numbers" - it is safer investment.
That strikes me as pure nonsense. Today's video gamers have grown up on video games. They have played a lot more games than I had ever been able to play when I began EQ. They have seen and done a lot more.
Whatever the mechanics are, today's gamers will face and overcome them. In fact, they probably will blow right past old folks like me (and some of you) like we were sitting still lol.
The issue in my opinion isn't simply the mechanics. The issue is do they like the game? If Terminus seems like an interesting and engaging place to them - which I believe it will - then they will continue to explore and adapt to whatever mechanics there are. If Terminus is unappealing to them, then they may quit.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Regardless, I dont think 50k is a stretch by any means unless the game is utter garbage. Yeah its a throwback to older, challenging, less forgiving games but that doesnt meant itll only attract those players or that itll be a rehash of the same 20 year old game with prettier graphics. A game that doesnt guide you every step of the way, and actually tries to kill you constantly all the while punishing you for failing doesnt automatically make it a bad or unpopular game. Just look at Dark Souls.
--
Not that it matters; you objected to my characterization of MUDs as slow paced and then you outright ignored it.
Soft Cap: An x.p. slope that's technically not impossible for the determined two-percenter, but practically infeasible without botting? That time-to-cap measured in years?
"When" matters here, too. Just as it matters to all EQ discussions.
Someone stated a good point that I haven't even thought of.
The new nerds of today will most likely run circles around us old nerds in a game like Pantheon. The new technical savvy kids of today will be expecting a deep and hard mmo !
I just hope the servers can handle it......Really !!!
Is it impossible to imagine that players would want to experience a new game with gameplay similar to EQ with new lore/content etc.?
Bingo !!!!
This is the ultimate answer. Now all we need is the minor fixes of modern graphic's, animation's, and UI.
Nothing crazy, and no auto everything.........In other words, we need a real world to live in