I myself prefer leveling would never end. The moment leveling ends it turns from an RPG to an action game for me.
I thought I was the only person who has it this way. I mean the end of leveling / progression = end of RPG part of the game.
It is why I have difficulties calling the new breed of MMOs built around endgame where you progress to max level within a week MMORPGs.
I have to completely disagree with this, Role-play simply means you're playing a role. I didn't feel the RP ended once I hit a full skill build in SWG. I felt it just started as you had just fully come into playing that role. It didn't become an action game then. It also didn't take very long to finish a build, especially after learning the ropes. Many including myself could completely re-role inside of a week, unless it was BH or something which took just a bit longer. The group I played with was very much into RP, setting up RP events pretty much weekly which usually involved many large guilds.
RP is about imagination, suspension of disbelief, immersion, it's not about hitting arbitrary numbers and milestones.
Post edited by Distopia on
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Some people will try and play 24/7 and level fast and so what. If they get to max level first and get bored and leave well who cares. High level buffs on a lower level well that is easy to control as many other games have done already. Someone pays lots of in game cash for some item, if they are stupid enough to do that then so what. If its an item for the players level range then it should not be so powerful that it unbalances the game. Power leveling low level players by high level players is not hard to control if they want to control it. Being first on the server to finish XYZ raid zone or kill some super mob is very over rated. I guess you may get a few minutes of fame but that is about it. Of course its hard to get away from the walkthroughs for various raids if you are not first as someone in your guild will always read such. Not much way to get away from that but if the raids are design good enough they may not mean that much.
How do you build memories in a short 3 week game ?
Why would you build your own community of friends in a 3 week mmo ?
How do you REALLY define and fine tune your character in a 3 week mmo ?
Why even call it an mmo in a 3 week game and not just a video game ?
How fun is making an alt that may be needed by your Guild if you play the exact same content over ?
Why craft in a 3 week game >
Well, by reading all the replies it seems the majority don't like short 3 week games anyway. This topic is really not needed.........However, I guess it needs to be mentioned to show developers to make mmos for us instead of their quick cash hit and run games !!!!
One reason I like Pantheon is that I have total faith in this development team
what you are completely failing to take into account is the typical F2P player will come back at some point - as the game is zero cost - so with patches, expansions etc... F2P players come back to play for a few more weeks.
it's not like - hey I'll play this game for 3 weeks and that's it. A good % do come back and keep coming back, because there is no fee to come back.
So the way it looks in F2P games - it's constant churn - launch population spike, then decline as players move on 2-6 weeks later... then you have a content patch, another (smaller) spike... then players leave again etc...
Now in a pure subscription model - you lose a player, it's a lot harder to "win" them back because even if they want to check out that new patch for 5minutes - they have to pay a full month price, which makes many say - no thanks.
Dude, you've been talking this crap for the past few years, and all we have gotten out of the genre is just that....crap. If you build a great game people will want to stay and play it for more than a few weeks. Also with a sub there is more of an investment in it. Show me a legit stat that shows people come back to free to play games more than they do sub games. Because even when I have gone back to a non-sub game like ESO, I still pay the sub. People that don't want to pay subs don't pay crap anyway. Why cater to freeloaders?
You are a minority representing view of a minority.
What stats do I need to show you - just look how pretty much every MMO in existence has transitioned from P2P to F2P/B2P
Pure P2P has ceased to exist.
Why?
Because players DONT STAY anymore like they did 17 years ago.
Instead of handful MMO to choose from back in 1999-2003, now there are 100s.
Also now we have a ton of other stuff to do like Netflix, Social media, Steam, console online games have taken off - so a modern player has a ton of stuff asking attention - focusing on a single game for months is very rare in majority players.
Pure P2P today is assured failure.
This is like arguing that after fast food became popular in a town, and no new restaurants opened up, that nobody will pay to sit and eat a good meal again.
People play differently because games are made different. Nothing else. There is nothing new under the sun. We had dozens if not hundreds of options for recreation before the online gaming ever existed. People have gravitated towards casual, short-lived games because the industry decided that was where the best money was. Until it wasn't. Now we're left with no alternatives.
Soon as the fine dining experience returns to the genre, so will the players.
This is like arguing that after fast food became popular in a town, and no new restaurants opened up, that nobody will pay to sit and eat a good meal again.
People play differently because games are made different. Nothing else. There is nothing new under the sun. We had dozens if not hundreds of options for recreation before the online gaming ever existed. People have gravitated towards casual, short-lived games because the industry decided that was where the best money was. Until it wasn't. Now we're left with no alternatives.
Soon as the fine dining experience returns to the genre, so will the players.
Generally speaking, I'm pretty sure customers voting with their wallets sets trends more than what industries decide to produce does.
How do you build memories in a short 3 week game ?
Why would you build your own community of friends in a 3 week mmo ?
How do you REALLY define and fine tune your character in a 3 week mmo ?
Why even call it an mmo in a 3 week game and not just a video game ?
How fun is making an alt that may be needed by your Guild if you play the exact same content over ?
Why craft in a 3 week game >
Well, by reading all the replies it seems the majority don't like short 3 week games anyway. This topic is really not needed.........However, I guess it needs to be mentioned to show developers to make mmos for us instead of their quick cash hit and run games !!!!
One reason I like Pantheon is that I have total faith in this development team
what you are completely failing to take into account is the typical F2P player will come back at some point - as the game is zero cost - so with patches, expansions etc... F2P players come back to play for a few more weeks.
it's not like - hey I'll play this game for 3 weeks and that's it. A good % do come back and keep coming back, because there is no fee to come back.
So the way it looks in F2P games - it's constant churn - launch population spike, then decline as players move on 2-6 weeks later... then you have a content patch, another (smaller) spike... then players leave again etc...
Now in a pure subscription model - you lose a player, it's a lot harder to "win" them back because even if they want to check out that new patch for 5minutes - they have to pay a full month price, which makes many say - no thanks.
Dude, you've been talking this crap for the past few years, and all we have gotten out of the genre is just that....crap. If you build a great game people will want to stay and play it for more than a few weeks. Also with a sub there is more of an investment in it. Show me a legit stat that shows people come back to free to play games more than they do sub games. Because even when I have gone back to a non-sub game like ESO, I still pay the sub. People that don't want to pay subs don't pay crap anyway. Why cater to freeloaders?
You are a minority representing view of a minority.
What stats do I need to show you - just look how pretty much every MMO in existence has transitioned from P2P to F2P/B2P
Pure P2P has ceased to exist.
Why?
Because players DONT STAY anymore like they did 17 years ago.
Instead of handful MMO to choose from back in 1999-2003, now there are 100s.
Also now we have a ton of other stuff to do like Netflix, Social media, Steam, console online games have taken off - so a modern player has a ton of stuff asking attention - focusing on a single game for months is very rare in majority players.
Pure P2P today is assured failure.
You make the point yourself. There are hundreds of MMOs (though admittedly only 30ish worth playing) all vying for the same type of player. In order to carve out a place in this industry you need to bring something unique.... then people will be willing to pay for it! What you say above would be true if Pantheon intended to being the same standard model and was proposing a sub. They are not so the prediction is invalid. There is a market for the type of player Pantheon is vying for and it won't be prone to wander as much as you're assuming. I look forward to being right.
Some people will try and play 24/7 and level fast and so what. If they get to max level first and get bored and leave well who cares. High level buffs on a lower level well that is easy to control as many other games have done already. Someone pays lots of in game cash for some item, if they are stupid enough to do that then so what. If its an item for the players level range then it should not be so powerful that it unbalances the game. Power leveling low level players by high level players is not hard to control if they want to control it. Being first on the server to finish XYZ raid zone or kill some super mob is very over rated. I guess you may get a few minutes of fame but that is about it. Of course its hard to get away from the walkthroughs for various raids if you are not first as someone in your guild will always read such. Not much way to get away from that but if the raids are design good enough they may not mean that much.
Usually though, everyone gets to max level rather fast and get bored. The pacing have got out of sync.
You should indeed not pace the game for people playing 16 hour each day but neither should you pace it for people playing 2-3 hours a week as they do today.
How do you build memories in a short 3 week game ?
Why would you build your own community of friends in a 3 week mmo ?
How do you REALLY define and fine tune your character in a 3 week mmo ?
Why even call it an mmo in a 3 week game and not just a video game ?
How fun is making an alt that may be needed by your Guild if you play the exact same content over ?
Why craft in a 3 week game >
Well, by reading all the replies it seems the majority don't like short 3 week games anyway. This topic is really not needed.........However, I guess it needs to be mentioned to show developers to make mmos for us instead of their quick cash hit and run games !!!!
One reason I like Pantheon is that I have total faith in this development team
what you are completely failing to take into account is the typical F2P player will come back at some point - as the game is zero cost - so with patches, expansions etc... F2P players come back to play for a few more weeks.
it's not like - hey I'll play this game for 3 weeks and that's it. A good % do come back and keep coming back, because there is no fee to come back.
So the way it looks in F2P games - it's constant churn - launch population spike, then decline as players move on 2-6 weeks later... then you have a content patch, another (smaller) spike... then players leave again etc...
Now in a pure subscription model - you lose a player, it's a lot harder to "win" them back because even if they want to check out that new patch for 5minutes - they have to pay a full month price, which makes many say - no thanks.
Dude, you've been talking this crap for the past few years, and all we have gotten out of the genre is just that....crap. If you build a great game people will want to stay and play it for more than a few weeks. Also with a sub there is more of an investment in it. Show me a legit stat that shows people come back to free to play games more than they do sub games. Because even when I have gone back to a non-sub game like ESO, I still pay the sub. People that don't want to pay subs don't pay crap anyway. Why cater to freeloaders?
You are a minority representing view of a minority.
What stats do I need to show you - just look how pretty much every MMO in existence has transitioned from P2P to F2P/B2P
Pure P2P has ceased to exist.
Why?
Because players DONT STAY anymore like they did 17 years ago.
Instead of handful MMO to choose from back in 1999-2003, now there are 100s.
Also now we have a ton of other stuff to do like Netflix, Social media, Steam, console online games have taken off - so a modern player has a ton of stuff asking attention - focusing on a single game for months is very rare in majority players.
Pure P2P today is assured failure.
This is like arguing that after fast food became popular in a town, and no new restaurants opened up, that nobody will pay to sit and eat a good meal again.
People play differently because games are made different. Nothing else. There is nothing new under the sun. We had dozens if not hundreds of options for recreation before the online gaming ever existed. People have gravitated towards casual, short-lived games because the industry decided that was where the best money was. Until it wasn't. Now we're left with no alternatives.
Soon as the fine dining experience returns to the genre, so will the players.
Well we dont even know IF Pantheon will turn out to be a fine dining experience.
We dont even know if it will be half as good as vanilla EQ1.
But why industry changed is because players atarted jumping games like locuats as more and more MMOs started comint out.
Players changed how they play and games changed to cater to masses.
How you can know that players didn't do the choosing, is because they didn't make the games. It didn't occur all at once, but gradually changes were made that corporate games thought would best increase their bottom line.
People continue to vote with their wallets because the option is casual games or nothing.
Well we dont even know IF Pantheon will turn out to be a fine dining experience.
We dont even know if it will be half as good as vanilla EQ1.
But why industry changed is because players atarted jumping games like locuats as more and more MMOs started comint out.
Players changed how they play and games changed to cater to masses.
How you can know that players didn't do the choosing, is because they didn't make the games. It didn't occur all at once, but gradually changes were made that corporate games thought would best increase their bottom line.
People continue to vote with their wallets because the option is casual games or nothing.
Couldn't possibly agree more. I get really tired of this assertion that the reason that "old school" games don't exist is because nobody want's to play them.
Kickstarter has allowed this entire idea to be completely shattered. Let's look at Pillars of Eternity. That game literally WOULD NOT have been made had it not been for kickstarter. The risk assessors and the traditional publishers said that this style of game was dead, there was little or no market for it and it would not produce enough sales to be profitable. They were wrong, dead wrong, and it was a resounding success. No, it wasn't the level of something like a new Call of Duty in terms of sales, but it was profitable enough to prove that there is still a market for those types of games.
The problem is the gaming industry has become extremely risk averse. They are not willing to take chances on games because their investors are interested only in what will basically guarantee them an ROI (return on investment). There was a statement by the previous CEO of EA a few years back that they would be witling their portfolio down to the 5 or 6 most profitable franchises, because while some of their games were making money, they weren't making money hand over fist, and therefore they weren't interested in making them. This would be like a book publisher saying that they were only interested in titles that were going to be NY times bestsellers and would only be publishing books from proven authors who are NY times bestsellers. So, what about that new book from Patrick Rothfuss who was a brand new author making a brand new product that went apeshit in sales? In the current gaming market, no publisher would have touched his book because it wasn't a surefire guarantee of sales. The publisher would have suffered due to a lack of potential earnings from this book, and the consumer would have suffered due to not having access to his stories.
Combine the current investor mentality (the risk averseness) with the previous success of world of warcraft, and you can very easily see why the content locust, super casual style of MMO completely took over the genre. It's only now 12 years down the road that we're seeing the end result of this type of MMO that has no staying power (again barring WoW, which the current population is almost purely because of the sunk cost fallacy). This has led to developers incorporating some ridiculous monetization policies that take extreme advantage of human psychology and addictive personality traits by including randomized loot boxes in cash shops (the digital equivalent of pulling the lever on a slot machine in a casino). This is a morally and ethically bankrupt practice in my opinion, and the fact that it is predatory in nature is the only reason it has lasted as long as it has.
To get to Dullahan's point, people like him and I have been forced into the position of voting with our wallets because there is literally nothing on the market that ticks those boxes for us. I've tried to enjoy the best of the best of what is out there, and they've all provided at best 2-3 months of "fun" for me, and I use the term "fun" loosely. Yet, I played P99, and despite the intricacies of that particular community, the fact I had already done almost all of that content for quite literally 1000's of hours before, I still played it for almost a year and had immense fun doing it, and that was content I had already done before, It wasn't "new" like Pantheon would be.
This is why we've been so "gung ho" about this game and our hopes for it are high. Yes, most of us are still sufficiently pessimistic and jaded from our many years in the genre to be blind to reality, but that doesn't mean we can't be optimistic about this game. Could it all go to hell and back? Sure, anything can. But we believe that they have a formula that while may not lead to WoW levels of success, will be profitable enough that Visionary Realms will be able to keep developing their product, pay their employees, do what they love, and we as consumers will finally have a product that we feel is worth paying for.
Literally everybody wins. The ultra casual content locusts can still go play their games, and jump from game to game chasing that ever elusive "fun" (that they always talk about, but seemingly can never pin down) without having to listen to us whine about how shallow the games are. We can go back to ignoring those games because we finally have something that we WANT to play. Win/win.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
How do you build memories in a short 3 week game ?
Why would you build your own community of friends in a 3 week mmo ?
How do you REALLY define and fine tune your character in a 3 week mmo ?
Why even call it an mmo in a 3 week game and not just a video game ?
How fun is making an alt that may be needed by your Guild if you play the exact same content over ?
Why craft in a 3 week game >
Well, by reading all the replies it seems the majority don't like short 3 week games anyway. This topic is really not needed.........However, I guess it needs to be mentioned to show developers to make mmos for us instead of their quick cash hit and run games !!!!
One reason I like Pantheon is that I have total faith in this development team
what you are completely failing to take into account is the typical F2P player will come back at some point - as the game is zero cost - so with patches, expansions etc... F2P players come back to play for a few more weeks.
it's not like - hey I'll play this game for 3 weeks and that's it. A good % do come back and keep coming back, because there is no fee to come back.
So the way it looks in F2P games - it's constant churn - launch population spike, then decline as players move on 2-6 weeks later... then you have a content patch, another (smaller) spike... then players leave again etc...
Now in a pure subscription model - you lose a player, it's a lot harder to "win" them back because even if they want to check out that new patch for 5minutes - they have to pay a full month price, which makes many say - no thanks.
Dude, you've been talking this crap for the past few years, and all we have gotten out of the genre is just that....crap. If you build a great game people will want to stay and play it for more than a few weeks. Also with a sub there is more of an investment in it. Show me a legit stat that shows people come back to free to play games more than they do sub games. Because even when I have gone back to a non-sub game like ESO, I still pay the sub. People that don't want to pay subs don't pay crap anyway. Why cater to freeloaders?
Ya, DMKano has been trying to persuade everyone that everything mmo is rosy, and he ignoring that everyone is complaining....He even go so far to say "no one is complaining"...Go figure.
He clams to have inside info. Maybe he does have some kind of connection but his data source is wrong and no better than us, in fact worst !!!!!!!
A MMO can be fun from the start if it's designed that way. A game like that has no limit to the number of hours it's fun before max level when done right.
Agree. I had some of my best times in EQ at lower levels. Other levels were fun too, but my days in Greater Faydark were always the most special.
A game should be fun at every level. Unless of course the only way you can have fun is to be Captain Awesomesauce. In which case you are doomed to wait for your fun to the very end no matter what the Devs do.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Yes, I hope that the level times will be increased, 15ish hours played would be good for me. In most games today I find myself being pushed to the next zone with unfinished quest due to out leveling the content. If I say and finish then I trivialize the next set of story line/quests. Its hard to balance though. I myself like grinding so I don't mind to finish up my current level that way to be eligible for the next set of quests, however some do.
How do you build memories in a short 3 week game ?
Why would you build your own community of friends in a 3 week mmo ?
How do you REALLY define and fine tune your character in a 3 week mmo ?
Why even call it an mmo in a 3 week game and not just a video game ?
How fun is making an alt that may be needed by your Guild if you play the exact same content over ?
Why craft in a 3 week game >
Well, by reading all the replies it seems the majority don't like short 3 week games anyway. This topic is really not needed.........However, I guess it needs to be mentioned to show developers to make mmos for us instead of their quick cash hit and run games !!!!
One reason I like Pantheon is that I have total faith in this development team
what you are completely failing to take into account is the typical F2P player will come back at some point - as the game is zero cost - so with patches, expansions etc... F2P players come back to play for a few more weeks.
it's not like - hey I'll play this game for 3 weeks and that's it. A good % do come back and keep coming back, because there is no fee to come back.
So the way it looks in F2P games - it's constant churn - launch population spike, then decline as players move on 2-6 weeks later... then you have a content patch, another (smaller) spike... then players leave again etc...
Now in a pure subscription model - you lose a player, it's a lot harder to "win" them back because even if they want to check out that new patch for 5minutes - they have to pay a full month price, which makes many say - no thanks.
Dude, you've been talking this crap for the past few years, and all we have gotten out of the genre is just that....crap. If you build a great game people will want to stay and play it for more than a few weeks. Also with a sub there is more of an investment in it. Show me a legit stat that shows people come back to free to play games more than they do sub games. Because even when I have gone back to a non-sub game like ESO, I still pay the sub. People that don't want to pay subs don't pay crap anyway. Why cater to freeloaders?
Ya, DMKano has been trying to persuade everyone that everything mmo is rosy, and he ignoring that everyone is complaining....He even go so far to say "no one is complaining"...Go figure.
He clams to have inside info. Maybe he does have some kind of connection but his data source is wrong and no better than us, in fact worst !!!!!!!
lmao, soooooooooooooooo @DMKano has been trying to persuade everyone that everything mmo is rosy and you've been trying to convince everyone for an equal amount of time that everything is wrong with MMOs, lol. It's actually quite funny you can't see the irony in your post.
Unfortunately, there isn't even any anecdotal evidence that what you're saying is true, either. Apart from a handful of people who speak very loudly, the anecdotal evidence shows that the games that you APPARENTLY want are closing down, not flourishing, and the games he CLAIMS people want are doing well. Thaaaaat's about as good as the evidence gets, unfortunately.
Mendel said: <snip> To me, it's a problem if the development team doesn't have some idea of how much content their game has and needs, and how fast the progression curve will allow players to reach max levels. At least with that knowledge, the developers can somewhat control some of issues that this unbalanced player base can cause.
The problems only start when you try to control the 5% that rush no matter what the developers do. I will be taking 5 weeks (All of my saved vacation) off when this game launches and will literally lock myself in my house to reach max level with my guild when this game releases. No matter what restrictions are placed upon us we will conquer it in no time flat. By hurting players like myself you only alienate your major player base.
I'm hoping 5 weeks is going to be enough time. But thinking about an average play schedule for each day of 18 hours. 5 weeks (35 days) will give me 630 hours of in-game time. That should be more than enough.
I already see progression obstacles that stand in our way of grinding thru content such as: The acclimation system. Sounds like we will have to break off from grinding and search out items and quests that increase our acclimation to continue onto harder zones (Like Amber Fate). Any hurdle applied to rushers will be conquered immediately. It doesn't matter what it is.
Example= Warframe controls how fast each player can Mastery Rank up thru their forced 24 hour Mastery Rank testing. You can only take one Mastery Rank test per 24 hours. I was still level 13 MR in 13 days. Which is blindingly fast for that game. It was just a nuisance to get to my Tigris Prime. These kinds of "Control" are pointless in the end.
My need to grind out levels and max my first character is a personal goal / issue. Now, I don't do this to cause other players harm or the game harm such as you expressed @Mendel. I truly do it because I want to and that's it. But in the end if VR tries to control this act of rushing they will only hurt the other 95% of the player base that may not have the time I do or those that just choose to take a more casual approach and soak in the fresh air.
Either way of level is not wrong. It is always a choice on how each player chooses to play the game.
P.S. Please don't attack me on my play style. I don't wish to "RUIN" the game for anyone. And before anyone says this is what modern MMO's have taught and ingrained into me as a player. I have done this since I played MUD's before EQ1.
I dont see an issue with your playstyle. Your gaming preferences, your choice.
What does pollute certain games though, is that other people take your achievement and kicks other players in the face with it.
If you lvl in 2 days, people, for what ever reason which is not to be blamed on you, decides to tell others that the content is easy and that everybody can lvl in 2 days if they want.
This then grows more intense to the point, where a group of players who have found out how you did it, will unite on forums and tell the developers that their game sucks, cause its too easy.
Meanwhile the "slow journey" crowd watch their loved game, turn into a pissing contest and ultimately wrecked by new designs made to please the crowd that complains, which hardly anyone who played the game in a moderate pace ever wanted.
So no, your preference is fine, its the people who abuse your way of doing things to destroy games, that can cause issues.
Yep. @Tenting has it right. It's about how other players react to seeing that first few max level characters that is the problem. The fast-leveling character enables other players to indulge in "bad behavior", no matter what the intent is / was.
There are ways to control the rate of progression. For instance, progression might require a specific achievement rather than (or in addition to) a specific number of XP. If it required a character to explore 10 locations (much like a deed in LotRO), plus complete any 10 quests / tasks / bounties, plus kill any one of 5 named bosses to advance from level 1 to level 2, the spawn rate of the bosses will act as a governor on the rate of progression. Each of these 'progression bosses' could have a number of prerequisites, as needed, to slow down expected progression. Just an idea I've been tossing around in response to this specific thread.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
"Anyone else want levels to take a while?" No, not when the parts of the game that I enjoy, i.e. raiding, don't start until max level.
Sometimes leveling is talked about as the part of the game that teaches you your class. I don't need to grind through 50, 60, 80, 100 levels to learn my rotations and class specs, and nevermind that leveling usually also includes skill upgrades or new skills per level, which leads to your end-game rotation not being available until late game anyway. The fact that in a number of games you can buy max-level tokens also undermines this argument.
From the developers point of view, leveling also introduces adverse effects. In the simplest implementation, you create vast amounts of content that your players will go through once per character, to never be set foot in again. Developers have to implement extra features involving extra development effort, like level adjustments, dailies and rep grind, or collectibles, to entice gamers back into old leveling zones.
This line of thinking of course shows that the problem doesn't lie with leveling, but rather the existence of levels and the need for character progression.
Could you imagine a game without levels, where a character starts at the "max level" with all skills and traits and talents and specs? "Progression" would be winning through successively harder parts of the game without making your character more powerful. Your character would change only insofar as the player at the keyboard gets better (better execution of rotations, better raid awareness, less standing in fire) and skills and talents are moved around to match certain challenges (faster interrupt CD, stun resistance, AOE damage reduction).
Something vanguard had to slow down the leveling was an off switch. You could turn off your xp if you wanted to remain at the proper level for the quests/zone you were in.
I myself prefer leveling would never end. The moment leveling ends it turns from an RPG to an action game for me.
I thought I was the only person who has it this way. I mean the end of leveling / progression = end of RPG part of the game.
It is why I have difficulties calling the new breed of MMOs built around endgame where you progress to max level within a week MMORPGs.
I have to completely disagree with this, Role-play simply means you're playing a role. I didn't feel the RP ended once I hit a full skill build in SWG. I felt it just started as you had just fully come into playing that role. It didn't become an action game then. It also didn't take very long to finish a build, especially after learning the ropes. Many including myself could completely re-role inside of a week, unless it was BH or something which took just a bit longer. The group I played with was very much into RP, setting up RP events pretty much weekly which usually involved many large guilds.
RP is about imagination, suspension of disbelief, immersion, it's not about hitting arbitrary numbers and milestones.
and I respect that in spite of my perspective being different.
I understand what you are saying and I have met people who share your view. I am not going to argue which view is the right one. I think there is no correct answer.
I am just wondering what then makes an actual RPG different from a game like Battlefield where you also assume a role (assault, support,...) if you actually "role play" the game. I can also use my imagination and act like I am an actual medic running around healing my brothers in arms all immersed and everything. Am I playing an RPG then? Also, what makes an RPG different from Adventure games which I always, for my own use, "internally" classified as RPGs without progression.
For me, the line between RPGs and other genres has always been a strong focus on progression which is correct for me, but not for others inevitably.
I do not know if your experience is similar, but I have seen many times that gaming media said about certain game that it had "RPG elements" by which they always referred to progression. I am not saying it proves anything, but it indicates that I am not the only person in the world with this perspective.
I dont know...I dont want to sound like I am arguing. Just trying to explain myself.
I get what you're saying, I didn't mean to imply you were wrong either. I just look at RP as a broader context than simply being about progression.
Sure a person can pretty much RP anything in games, I also agree certain adventure titles are very similar to RPGs minus progression. Yet the RPG genre tends to focus more on facilitating the act of roleplaying than most other genres, branching dialogue, a myriad of dialogue/personality choices, worlds that feel more attuned to "living" in them, IE housing, fishing, hunting, ways to make money from those actions, etc...
Even classes and things like that are handled differently than in other genres, at least in good RPGs like CRPGs. Where different classes carry utility skills that set them apart and add functionality to a group dynamic, lock picking, perception, elemental powers that interact with the world, etc... While there are titles that skirt these lines such as GTA, red dead redemption etc..., it's not just progression that sets RPGS apart. Those latter games usually don't go as deep in such functionality, they're more focused on action set pieces and cutscenes.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I don't know. 450 hours to hit max level is a huge investment. If you made it even higher, a lot of people will just quit. Or it will limit mmorpgs to people who only play this genre. I don't play 5 hours every day probably more like 7-10 hours a week. I don't think we need to worry that's much about people who play 24/7. Because if you want to prevent max level characters from showing too early, you will make it so that more casual people will never reach max level before they quit. This will limit who plays at max level and can cause big issues in terms of population at max level.
You guys are still thinking about this all wrong. You're stuck in the mindset that games are only played to be beaten. As if the "real game" only starts at "end game".
A MMO can be fun from the start if it's designed that way. A game like that has no limit to the number of hours it's fun before max level when done right.
It really boggles my mind. I had 4500 hours of playtime on my Paladin in EQ1. that's 10x the amount this guy is complaining about. I have 2000 hours of Dota 2 play time. If a game is good, it's fun.
I really agree with you, so many of the people who play MMO's now were enticed into the genre by developers introducing single player rpg mechanics into an MMO. It had a predictable result, it exploded the playerbase, but none of them stuck around. Why? Because they played them like single player games. Burn through the content and move on to the next game.
It's such a basic cause and effect that it is confusing that to this day there are still suits in offices at game publishers banging their heads against walls as to why they can't retain players. That's like me complaining about not being able to lose weight while I'm eating a 18" double cheese, double pepperoni pizza for dinner every night.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
How do you build memories in a short 3 week game ?
Why would you build your own community of friends in a 3 week mmo ?
How do you REALLY define and fine tune your character in a 3 week mmo ?
Why even call it an mmo in a 3 week game and not just a video game ?
How fun is making an alt that may be needed by your Guild if you play the exact same content over ?
Why craft in a 3 week game >
Well, by reading all the replies it seems the majority don't like short 3 week games anyway. This topic is really not needed.........However, I guess it needs to be mentioned to show developers to make mmos for us instead of their quick cash hit and run games !!!!
One reason I like Pantheon is that I have total faith in this development team
what you are completely failing to take into account is the typical F2P player will come back at some point - as the game is zero cost - so with patches, expansions etc... F2P players come back to play for a few more weeks.
it's not like - hey I'll play this game for 3 weeks and that's it. A good % do come back and keep coming back, because there is no fee to come back.
So the way it looks in F2P games - it's constant churn - launch population spike, then decline as players move on 2-6 weeks later... then you have a content patch, another (smaller) spike... then players leave again etc...
Now in a pure subscription model - you lose a player, it's a lot harder to "win" them back because even if they want to check out that new patch for 5minutes - they have to pay a full month price, which makes many say - no thanks.
Dude, you've been talking this crap for the past few years, and all we have gotten out of the genre is just that....crap. If you build a great game people will want to stay and play it for more than a few weeks. Also with a sub there is more of an investment in it. Show me a legit stat that shows people come back to free to play games more than they do sub games. Because even when I have gone back to a non-sub game like ESO, I still pay the sub. People that don't want to pay subs don't pay crap anyway. Why cater to freeloaders?
You are a minority representing view of a minority.
What stats do I need to show you - just look how pretty much every MMO in existence has transitioned from P2P to F2P/B2P
Pure P2P has ceased to exist.
Why?
Because players DONT STAY anymore like they did 17 years ago.
Instead of handful MMO to choose from back in 1999-2003, now there are 100s.
Also now we have a ton of other stuff to do like Netflix, Social media, Steam, console online games have taken off - so a modern player has a ton of stuff asking attention - focusing on a single game for months is very rare in majority players.
Pure P2P today is assured failure.
You make the point yourself. There are hundreds of MMOs (though admittedly only 30ish worth playing) all vying for the same type of player. In order to carve out a place in this industry you need to bring something unique.... then people will be willing to pay for it! What you say above would be true if Pantheon intended to being the same standard model and was proposing a sub. They are not so the prediction is invalid. There is a market for the type of player Pantheon is vying for and it won't be prone to wander as much as you're assuming. I look forward to being right.
there is a market - I never said there wasn't - it's just a very small market.
I am not assuming anything, I've seen the market research myself as far as player number projections for EQ1 vanilla style game.
I'd be really curious how that particular research was conducted. I think the people claiming 150k as being the pinnacle are being extremely narrow-minded and underestimating the possibilities.
The reality is that a HUGE chunk of the current playerbase has never experienced an old school style game, and all the experience they do have is negative because with younger generations "old = dumb and useless". If the game releases, is good, and people are enjoying it, reviewers are enjoying it, they could end up breaking down and giving it a try, and finding that they enjoy it.
Even something like Vanilla WoW is much closer to Pantheon than it is to modern MMOs. There's still a TON of people who would love to have something more in that vein that what is available now.
I really don't think that having 150k subs is completely an absurd number. Personally I would consider 400-500k a resounding success.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
How do you build memories in a short 3 week game ?
Why would you build your own community of friends in a 3 week mmo ?
How do you REALLY define and fine tune your character in a 3 week mmo ?
Why even call it an mmo in a 3 week game and not just a video game ?
How fun is making an alt that may be needed by your Guild if you play the exact same content over ?
Why craft in a 3 week game >
Well, by reading all the replies it seems the majority don't like short 3 week games anyway. This topic is really not needed.........However, I guess it needs to be mentioned to show developers to make mmos for us instead of their quick cash hit and run games !!!!
One reason I like Pantheon is that I have total faith in this development team
what you are completely failing to take into account is the typical F2P player will come back at some point - as the game is zero cost - so with patches, expansions etc... F2P players come back to play for a few more weeks.
it's not like - hey I'll play this game for 3 weeks and that's it. A good % do come back and keep coming back, because there is no fee to come back.
So the way it looks in F2P games - it's constant churn - launch population spike, then decline as players move on 2-6 weeks later... then you have a content patch, another (smaller) spike... then players leave again etc...
Now in a pure subscription model - you lose a player, it's a lot harder to "win" them back because even if they want to check out that new patch for 5minutes - they have to pay a full month price, which makes many say - no thanks.
Dude, you've been talking this crap for the past few years, and all we have gotten out of the genre is just that....crap. If you build a great game people will want to stay and play it for more than a few weeks. Also with a sub there is more of an investment in it. Show me a legit stat that shows people come back to free to play games more than they do sub games. Because even when I have gone back to a non-sub game like ESO, I still pay the sub. People that don't want to pay subs don't pay crap anyway. Why cater to freeloaders?
You are a minority representing view of a minority.
What stats do I need to show you - just look how pretty much every MMO in existence has transitioned from P2P to F2P/B2P
Pure P2P has ceased to exist.
Why?
Because players DONT STAY anymore like they did 17 years ago.
Instead of handful MMO to choose from back in 1999-2003, now there are 100s.
Also now we have a ton of other stuff to do like Netflix, Social media, Steam, console online games have taken off - so a modern player has a ton of stuff asking attention - focusing on a single game for months is very rare in majority players.
Pure P2P today is assured failure.
You make the point yourself. There are hundreds of MMOs (though admittedly only 30ish worth playing) all vying for the same type of player. In order to carve out a place in this industry you need to bring something unique.... then people will be willing to pay for it! What you say above would be true if Pantheon intended to being the same standard model and was proposing a sub. They are not so the prediction is invalid. There is a market for the type of player Pantheon is vying for and it won't be prone to wander as much as you're assuming. I look forward to being right.
there is a market - I never said there wasn't - it's just a very small market.
I am not assuming anything, I've seen the market research myself as far as player number projections for EQ1 vanilla style game.
I'd be really curious how that particular research was conducted. I think the people claiming 150k as being the pinnacle are being extremely narrow-minded and underestimating the possibilities.
The reality is that a HUGE chunk of the current playerbase has never experienced an old school style game, and all the experience they do have is negative because with younger generations "old = dumb and useless". If the game releases, is good, and people are enjoying it, reviewers are enjoying it, they could end up breaking down and giving it a try, and finding that they enjoy it.
Even something like Vanilla WoW is much closer to Pantheon than it is to modern MMOs. There's still a TON of people who would love to have something more in that vein that what is available now.
I really don't think that having 150k subs is completely an absurd number. Personally I would consider 400-500k a resounding success.
150K at launch for pantheon is possible (jf they really nail the gameplay)- and about 6 months that number would be less than half (most likely around 50K)
This would be both realistic and great for Pantheon.
400-500K is unrealistic as far as any actual numbers I've seen - unless Pantheon changes to something that is very casual and unlike anything they've pitched so far (alienating the original backers completely - i don't think this will happen)
You have to understand that any data you've looked at are estimates. If you looked at the estimates for the playerbase of WoW when it came out, it ended up being horrifically wrong. Now, again, I'm not trying to suggest that Pantheon will be like WoW and have million of players, I'm just saying that you can't put 100% faith in market research. It's very regularly incorrect.
The simple fact is there has not been a game that has this sort of class interdependency, longer leveling times, lack of fast travel, etc, in a very very long time. There are a lot of players who *might* love this that don't know it yet, or won't know it until they try it.
I'm just saying, keep an open mind.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I think levels and level segregation of players is a bane on gaming. You should just be playing doing something fun and involving with the occasional skill advancement being a bonus.
"Anyone else want levels to take a while?" No, not when the parts of the game that I enjoy, i.e. raiding, don't start until max level.
Sometimes leveling is talked about as the part of the game that teaches you your class. I don't need to grind through 50, 60, 80, 100 levels to learn my rotations and class specs, and nevermind that leveling usually also includes skill upgrades or new skills per level, which leads to your end-game rotation not being available until late game anyway. The fact that in a number of games you can buy max-level tokens also undermines this argument.
From the developers point of view, leveling also introduces adverse effects. In the simplest implementation, you create vast amounts of content that your players will go through once per character, to never be set foot in again.Developers have to implement extra features involving extra development effort, like level adjustments, dailies and rep grind, or collectibles, to entice gamers back into old leveling zones.
This line of thinking of course shows that the problem doesn't lie with leveling, but rather the existence of levels and the need for character progression.
Could you imagine a game without levels, where a character starts at the "max level" with all skills and traits and talents and specs? "Progression" would be winning through successively harder parts of the game without making your character more powerful. Your character would change only insofar as the player at the keyboard gets better (better execution of rotations, better raid awareness, less standing in fire) and skills and talents are moved around to match certain challenges (faster interrupt CD, stun resistance, AOE damage reduction).
When i first played Vanila WoW the game was amazing and i loved every minute of it. I loved the exploration, the questing, the dungeons, the socialising and so on. All through Vanila, TBC and most of WotLK i was forever making new characters and loving the leveling experience. If the game had not taken so made bad directions since then i have little doubt in my mind that i would still be making new characters and enjoying the world. I only say this as an example that it can be a worthwhile investment of time and resources if done correctly. Other than that i cant really fault your post.
@DMKano et al 1. Market Share (Unique = Good) While there may be '30-something games worth playing' which you perceive as 'alternatives' and hence 'competition' to Pantheon, you failed to group them by type. In reality, these '30-something' games all follow a fairly narrow sector of F2P models, using fairly comparable levels of 'casualness' and 'Single-player centric' theme-park gameplay. This does allow Pantheon to stand as disctinct on several fronts: predominantly with respect to 'Level of challenge' and 'Socialization/Grouping'. Thus Pantheon is not 'merely 1 of 30 clones' but 'the only game of it's type vs perhaps 4 distinct sets of F2P game models'. This is a good thing.
2. Levelling (Slow = better) There will always be a (small) sub-set of players who power through any game in order to get to 'end level'. These 'Super achievers' (Subset of Bartle's Achievers) make a tiny % of the player-base. Thus, an MMO's levelling curve does not need to address this subset directly. They enjoy the end-game and will happily do so, vying to be the best on their server! The next subset of playerbase to consider are the achievers with either time or ability to climb the levels fairly quickly, but at the expense of all else. These are your 'true' Bartle achievers. This is the subset MMO developers need to be conscious of - since they represent a significant % of the playerbase and are the cause of 'server ageing' (Raising of both mean and mode player level). The gap between this subset and the starters/casual players is the critical area of concern. This is what determines zone populations, starter zone density, MUD-flation impact levels and overall server 'maturity'. For a server to avoid these having an adverse effect, slowing levelling is an important consideration. (a) Have lots of horizontal progression available. (b) Slow the rate of levelling directly (more exp per level needed etc)
In any case, it is critical to get the playerbase to overcome their inherent 'love for all that was bad' about the last MMO they played. (Ref: R.Bartle 'Newbie Induction: How poor design triumphs in Virtual Worlds'). Since this necessarily will include 'casual, themepark, single-player and F2P/P2Win' games, it will be the use of 'newer' media options such as YouTube and Twitch which will likely prove instrumental for whether Pantheon subsists on a core playerbase or increases dramatically as the next generation finally gets to sample the feeling of significant challenge, distinct class roles and true social interaction not seen since 2000.
@DMKano et al 1. Market Share (Unique = Good) While there may be '30-something games worth playing' which you perceive as 'alternatives' and hence 'competition' to Pantheon, you failed to group them by type. In reality, these '30-something' games all follow a fairly narrow sector of F2P models, using fairly comparable levels of 'casualness' and 'Single-player centric' theme-park gameplay. This does allow Pantheon to stand as disctinct on several fronts: predominantly with respect to 'Level of challenge' and 'Socialization/Grouping'. Thus Pantheon is not 'merely 1 of 30 clones' but 'the only game of it's type vs perhaps 4 distinct sets of F2P game models'. This is a good thing.
2. Levelling (Slow = better) There will always be a (small) sub-set of players who power through any game in order to get to 'end level'. These 'Super achievers' (Subset of Bartle's Achievers) make a tiny % of the player-base. Thus, an MMO's levelling curve does not need to address this subset directly. They enjoy the end-game and will happily do so, vying to be the best on their server! The next subset of playerbase to consider are the achievers with either time or ability to climb the levels fairly quickly, but at the expense of all else. These are your 'true' Bartle achievers. This is the subset MMO developers need to be conscious of - since they represent a significant % of the playerbase and are the cause of 'server ageing' (Raising of both mean and mode player level). The gap between this subset and the starters/casual players is the critical area of concern. This is what determines zone populations, starter zone density, MUD-flation impact levels and overall server 'maturity'. For a server to avoid these having an adverse effect, slowing levelling is an important consideration. (a) Have lots of horizontal progression available. (b) Slow the rate of levelling directly (more exp per level needed etc)
In any case, it is critical to get the playerbase to overcome their inherent 'love for all that was bad' about the last MMO they played. (Ref: R.Bartle 'Newbie Induction: How poor design triumphs in Virtual Worlds'). Since this necessarily will include 'casual, themepark, single-player and F2P/P2Win' games, it will be the use of 'newer' media options such as YouTube and Twitch which will likely prove instrumental for whether Pantheon subsists on a core playerbase or increases dramatically as the next generation finally gets to sample the feeling of significant challenge, distinct class roles and true social interaction not seen since 2000.
PS I am biased in favour of Pantheon.
Have you ever tried to get any "new generation" player into P99?
I couldn't get a single one to last more than 3 days.
I think it's delusional when people equate any video game that was made in 1999 as a gauge of 2017 players. JUST YOUTUBE ANYTHING EVERQUEST 1, AND THIS WOULD TURN ANY YOUNGER PLAYRE OFF.
Lets be realistic the game is dated. Without saying anything bad about the depth and fun you can have with EQ1 its OLD, very very old !
I'm very nostalgic to older video games. I'm old, I played pong back in the late 70s. But one day I decided to see what's up with this classic mmo called Everquest 1, its one that I never played.
The Youtube guy made a character and entered the world and walked up to the first NPC and had to type /give me weapon or something like that........I INSTANTLY TURNED IT OFF, AND NEVER LOOKED BACK !...........The game is old !!!!!
This delusional thinking of confusing video game with stick figures from something made for 2017 is just wrong !!!!!
Pantheon is being made to capture that group centric feeling, not a stick figure feeling. At least I hope not, if so it will fail.
I haven't mentioned "old school " once. There's a reason for that:
Most here cant handle that phrase because that sink back to 1999
@DMKano et al 1. Market Share (Unique = Good) While there may be '30-something games worth playing' which you perceive as 'alternatives' and hence 'competition' to Pantheon, you failed to group them by type. In reality, these '30-something' games all follow a fairly narrow sector of F2P models, using fairly comparable levels of 'casualness' and 'Single-player centric' theme-park gameplay. This does allow Pantheon to stand as disctinct on several fronts: predominantly with respect to 'Level of challenge' and 'Socialization/Grouping'. Thus Pantheon is not 'merely 1 of 30 clones' but 'the only game of it's type vs perhaps 4 distinct sets of F2P game models'. This is a good thing.
2. Levelling (Slow = better) There will always be a (small) sub-set of players who power through any game in order to get to 'end level'. These 'Super achievers' (Subset of Bartle's Achievers) make a tiny % of the player-base. Thus, an MMO's levelling curve does not need to address this subset directly. They enjoy the end-game and will happily do so, vying to be the best on their server! The next subset of playerbase to consider are the achievers with either time or ability to climb the levels fairly quickly, but at the expense of all else. These are your 'true' Bartle achievers. This is the subset MMO developers need to be conscious of - since they represent a significant % of the playerbase and are the cause of 'server ageing' (Raising of both mean and mode player level). The gap between this subset and the starters/casual players is the critical area of concern. This is what determines zone populations, starter zone density, MUD-flation impact levels and overall server 'maturity'. For a server to avoid these having an adverse effect, slowing levelling is an important consideration. (a) Have lots of horizontal progression available. (b) Slow the rate of levelling directly (more exp per level needed etc)
In any case, it is critical to get the playerbase to overcome their inherent 'love for all that was bad' about the last MMO they played. (Ref: R.Bartle 'Newbie Induction: How poor design triumphs in Virtual Worlds'). Since this necessarily will include 'casual, themepark, single-player and F2P/P2Win' games, it will be the use of 'newer' media options such as YouTube and Twitch which will likely prove instrumental for whether Pantheon subsists on a core playerbase or increases dramatically as the next generation finally gets to sample the feeling of significant challenge, distinct class roles and true social interaction not seen since 2000.
PS I am biased in favour of Pantheon.
Have you ever tried to get any "new generation" player into P99?
I couldn't get a single one to last more than 3 days.
Strangely my son took up P99 in the last twelve months and lured me back into the game, more than three months so far. I suppose he had played Everquest before, but only for a few days when he was around nine.
Comments
RP is about imagination, suspension of disbelief, immersion, it's not about hitting arbitrary numbers and milestones.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Power leveling low level players by high level players is not hard to control if they want to control it.
Being first on the server to finish XYZ raid zone or kill some super mob is very over rated. I guess you may get a few minutes of fame but that is about it.
Of course its hard to get away from the walkthroughs for various raids if you are not first as someone in your guild will always read such. Not much way to get away from that but if the raids are design good enough they may not mean that much.
I would love to join people in this:)
People play differently because games are made different. Nothing else. There is nothing new under the sun. We had dozens if not hundreds of options for recreation before the online gaming ever existed. People have gravitated towards casual, short-lived games because the industry decided that was where the best money was. Until it wasn't. Now we're left with no alternatives.
Soon as the fine dining experience returns to the genre, so will the players.
You make the point yourself. There are hundreds of MMOs (though admittedly only 30ish worth playing) all vying for the same type of player. In order to carve out a place in this industry you need to bring something unique.... then people will be willing to pay for it! What you say above would be true if Pantheon intended to being the same standard model and was proposing a sub. They are not so the prediction is invalid. There is a market for the type of player Pantheon is vying for and it won't be prone to wander as much as you're assuming. I look forward to being right.
You should indeed not pace the game for people playing 16 hour each day but neither should you pace it for people playing 2-3 hours a week as they do today.
People continue to vote with their wallets because the option is casual games or nothing.
Couldn't possibly agree more. I get really tired of this assertion that the reason that "old school" games don't exist is because nobody want's to play them.
Kickstarter has allowed this entire idea to be completely shattered. Let's look at Pillars of Eternity. That game literally WOULD NOT have been made had it not been for kickstarter. The risk assessors and the traditional publishers said that this style of game was dead, there was little or no market for it and it would not produce enough sales to be profitable. They were wrong, dead wrong, and it was a resounding success. No, it wasn't the level of something like a new Call of Duty in terms of sales, but it was profitable enough to prove that there is still a market for those types of games.
The problem is the gaming industry has become extremely risk averse. They are not willing to take chances on games because their investors are interested only in what will basically guarantee them an ROI (return on investment). There was a statement by the previous CEO of EA a few years back that they would be witling their portfolio down to the 5 or 6 most profitable franchises, because while some of their games were making money, they weren't making money hand over fist, and therefore they weren't interested in making them. This would be like a book publisher saying that they were only interested in titles that were going to be NY times bestsellers and would only be publishing books from proven authors who are NY times bestsellers. So, what about that new book from Patrick Rothfuss who was a brand new author making a brand new product that went apeshit in sales? In the current gaming market, no publisher would have touched his book because it wasn't a surefire guarantee of sales. The publisher would have suffered due to a lack of potential earnings from this book, and the consumer would have suffered due to not having access to his stories.
Combine the current investor mentality (the risk averseness) with the previous success of world of warcraft, and you can very easily see why the content locust, super casual style of MMO completely took over the genre. It's only now 12 years down the road that we're seeing the end result of this type of MMO that has no staying power (again barring WoW, which the current population is almost purely because of the sunk cost fallacy). This has led to developers incorporating some ridiculous monetization policies that take extreme advantage of human psychology and addictive personality traits by including randomized loot boxes in cash shops (the digital equivalent of pulling the lever on a slot machine in a casino). This is a morally and ethically bankrupt practice in my opinion, and the fact that it is predatory in nature is the only reason it has lasted as long as it has.
To get to Dullahan's point, people like him and I have been forced into the position of voting with our wallets because there is literally nothing on the market that ticks those boxes for us. I've tried to enjoy the best of the best of what is out there, and they've all provided at best 2-3 months of "fun" for me, and I use the term "fun" loosely. Yet, I played P99, and despite the intricacies of that particular community, the fact I had already done almost all of that content for quite literally 1000's of hours before, I still played it for almost a year and had immense fun doing it, and that was content I had already done before, It wasn't "new" like Pantheon would be.
This is why we've been so "gung ho" about this game and our hopes for it are high. Yes, most of us are still sufficiently pessimistic and jaded from our many years in the genre to be blind to reality, but that doesn't mean we can't be optimistic about this game. Could it all go to hell and back? Sure, anything can. But we believe that they have a formula that while may not lead to WoW levels of success, will be profitable enough that Visionary Realms will be able to keep developing their product, pay their employees, do what they love, and we as consumers will finally have a product that we feel is worth paying for.
Literally everybody wins. The ultra casual content locusts can still go play their games, and jump from game to game chasing that ever elusive "fun" (that they always talk about, but seemingly can never pin down) without having to listen to us whine about how shallow the games are. We can go back to ignoring those games because we finally have something that we WANT to play. Win/win.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Ya, DMKano has been trying to persuade everyone that everything mmo is rosy, and he ignoring that everyone is complaining....He even go so far to say "no one is complaining"...Go figure.
He clams to have inside info. Maybe he does have some kind of connection but his data source is wrong and no better than us, in fact worst !!!!!!!
A game should be fun at every level. Unless of course the only way you can have fun is to be Captain Awesomesauce. In which case you are doomed to wait for your fun to the very end no matter what the Devs do.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
lmao, soooooooooooooooo @DMKano has been trying to persuade everyone that everything mmo is rosy and you've been trying to convince everyone for an equal amount of time that everything is wrong with MMOs, lol. It's actually quite funny you can't see the irony in your post.
Unfortunately, there isn't even any anecdotal evidence that what you're saying is true, either. Apart from a handful of people who speak very loudly, the anecdotal evidence shows that the games that you APPARENTLY want are closing down, not flourishing, and the games he CLAIMS people want are doing well. Thaaaaat's about as good as the evidence gets, unfortunately.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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There are ways to control the rate of progression. For instance, progression might require a specific achievement rather than (or in addition to) a specific number of XP. If it required a character to explore 10 locations (much like a deed in LotRO), plus complete any 10 quests / tasks / bounties, plus kill any one of 5 named bosses to advance from level 1 to level 2, the spawn rate of the bosses will act as a governor on the rate of progression. Each of these 'progression bosses' could have a number of prerequisites, as needed, to slow down expected progression. Just an idea I've been tossing around in response to this specific thread.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
No, not when the parts of the game that I enjoy, i.e. raiding, don't start until max level.
Sometimes leveling is talked about as the part of the game that teaches you your class. I don't need to grind through 50, 60, 80, 100 levels to learn my rotations and class specs, and nevermind that leveling usually also includes skill upgrades or new skills per level, which leads to your end-game rotation not being available until late game anyway. The fact that in a number of games you can buy max-level tokens also undermines this argument.
From the developers point of view, leveling also introduces adverse effects. In the simplest implementation, you create vast amounts of content that your players will go through once per character, to never be set foot in again. Developers have to implement extra features involving extra development effort, like level adjustments, dailies and rep grind, or collectibles, to entice gamers back into old leveling zones.
This line of thinking of course shows that the problem doesn't lie with leveling, but rather the existence of levels and the need for character progression.
Could you imagine a game without levels, where a character starts at the "max level" with all skills and traits and talents and specs? "Progression" would be winning through successively harder parts of the game without making your character more powerful. Your character would change only insofar as the player at the keyboard gets better (better execution of rotations, better raid awareness, less standing in fire) and skills and talents are moved around to match certain challenges (faster interrupt CD, stun resistance, AOE damage reduction).
Sure a person can pretty much RP anything in games, I also agree certain adventure titles are very similar to RPGs minus progression. Yet the RPG genre tends to focus more on facilitating the act of roleplaying than most other genres, branching dialogue, a myriad of dialogue/personality choices, worlds that feel more attuned to "living" in them, IE housing, fishing, hunting, ways to make money from those actions, etc...
Even classes and things like that are handled differently than in other genres, at least in good RPGs like CRPGs. Where different classes carry utility skills that set them apart and add functionality to a group dynamic, lock picking, perception, elemental powers that interact with the world, etc... While there are titles that skirt these lines such as GTA, red dead redemption etc..., it's not just progression that sets RPGS apart. Those latter games usually don't go as deep in such functionality, they're more focused on action set pieces and cutscenes.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It really boggles my mind. I had 4500 hours of playtime on my Paladin in EQ1. that's 10x the amount this guy is complaining about. I have 2000 hours of Dota 2 play time. If a game is good, it's fun.
I really agree with you, so many of the people who play MMO's now were enticed into the genre by developers introducing single player rpg mechanics into an MMO. It had a predictable result, it exploded the playerbase, but none of them stuck around. Why? Because they played them like single player games. Burn through the content and move on to the next game.
It's such a basic cause and effect that it is confusing that to this day there are still suits in offices at game publishers banging their heads against walls as to why they can't retain players. That's like me complaining about not being able to lose weight while I'm eating a 18" double cheese, double pepperoni pizza for dinner every night.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I'd be really curious how that particular research was conducted. I think the people claiming 150k as being the pinnacle are being extremely narrow-minded and underestimating the possibilities.
The reality is that a HUGE chunk of the current playerbase has never experienced an old school style game, and all the experience they do have is negative because with younger generations "old = dumb and useless". If the game releases, is good, and people are enjoying it, reviewers are enjoying it, they could end up breaking down and giving it a try, and finding that they enjoy it.
Even something like Vanilla WoW is much closer to Pantheon than it is to modern MMOs. There's still a TON of people who would love to have something more in that vein that what is available now.
I really don't think that having 150k subs is completely an absurd number. Personally I would consider 400-500k a resounding success.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
You have to understand that any data you've looked at are estimates. If you looked at the estimates for the playerbase of WoW when it came out, it ended up being horrifically wrong. Now, again, I'm not trying to suggest that Pantheon will be like WoW and have million of players, I'm just saying that you can't put 100% faith in market research. It's very regularly incorrect.
The simple fact is there has not been a game that has this sort of class interdependency, longer leveling times, lack of fast travel, etc, in a very very long time. There are a lot of players who *might* love this that don't know it yet, or won't know it until they try it.
I'm just saying, keep an open mind.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I only say this as an example that it can be a worthwhile investment of time and resources if done correctly.
Other than that i cant really fault your post.
1. Market Share (Unique = Good)
While there may be '30-something games worth playing' which you perceive as 'alternatives' and hence 'competition' to Pantheon, you failed to group them by type. In reality, these '30-something' games all follow a fairly narrow sector of F2P models, using fairly comparable levels of 'casualness' and 'Single-player centric' theme-park gameplay. This does allow Pantheon to stand as disctinct on several fronts: predominantly with respect to 'Level of challenge' and 'Socialization/Grouping'. Thus Pantheon is not 'merely 1 of 30 clones' but 'the only game of it's type vs perhaps 4 distinct sets of F2P game models'.
This is a good thing.
2. Levelling (Slow = better)
There will always be a (small) sub-set of players who power through any game in order to get to 'end level'. These 'Super achievers' (Subset of Bartle's Achievers) make a tiny % of the player-base. Thus, an MMO's levelling curve does not need to address this subset directly. They enjoy the end-game and will happily do so, vying to be the best on their server!
The next subset of playerbase to consider are the achievers with either time or ability to climb the levels fairly quickly, but at the expense of all else. These are your 'true' Bartle achievers. This is the subset MMO developers need to be conscious of - since they represent a significant % of the playerbase and are the cause of 'server ageing' (Raising of both mean and mode player level).
The gap between this subset and the starters/casual players is the critical area of concern. This is what determines zone populations, starter zone density, MUD-flation impact levels and overall server 'maturity'. For a server to avoid these having an adverse effect, slowing levelling is an important consideration.
(a) Have lots of horizontal progression available.
(b) Slow the rate of levelling directly (more exp per level needed etc)
In any case, it is critical to get the playerbase to overcome their inherent 'love for all that was bad' about the last MMO they played. (Ref: R.Bartle 'Newbie Induction: How poor design triumphs in Virtual Worlds'). Since this necessarily will include 'casual, themepark, single-player and F2P/P2Win' games, it will be the use of 'newer' media options such as YouTube and Twitch which will likely prove instrumental for whether Pantheon subsists on a core playerbase or increases dramatically as the next generation finally gets to sample the feeling of significant challenge, distinct class roles and true social interaction not seen since 2000.
PS I am biased in favour of Pantheon.
I think it's delusional when people equate any video game that was made in 1999 as a gauge of 2017 players. JUST YOUTUBE ANYTHING EVERQUEST 1, AND THIS WOULD TURN ANY YOUNGER PLAYRE OFF.
Lets be realistic the game is dated. Without saying anything bad about the depth and fun you can have with EQ1 its OLD, very very old !
I'm very nostalgic to older video games. I'm old, I played pong back in the late 70s. But one day I decided to see what's up with this classic mmo called Everquest 1, its one that I never played.
The Youtube guy made a character and entered the world and walked up to the first NPC and had to type /give me weapon or something like that........I INSTANTLY TURNED IT OFF, AND NEVER LOOKED BACK !...........The game is old !!!!!
This delusional thinking of confusing video game with stick figures from something made for 2017 is just wrong !!!!!
Pantheon is being made to capture that group centric feeling, not a stick figure feeling. At least I hope not, if so it will fail.
I haven't mentioned "old school " once. There's a reason for that:
Most here cant handle that phrase because that sink back to 1999