If the company is going to charge $15/month, why is Item 1 an unrealistic expectation?
It isn't, necessarily. It's only unrealistic when you combine (a) two or three times as much content as was delivered 10 years ago with b) same time frame and c) same cost.
Remember the development triangle? Good--fast--cheap. Pick any two.
Agreed. It just seems that nowhere else in our purchasing decisions do we find this remotely acceptable, but with MMOs we often accept it without question. That's why that first item seems odd to me, as it is a rather realistic expectation with everything else we buy.
Most other things we buy do not continue to improve after we buy them.
Cable TV service and Cell Phones firmware/features are the first two that come to mind, however, as consumers, the promise of future unknown content should not affect at all the price of the service we are paying for right now.
Because that is what these are - services, not products. If you put any two competing services side by side and the monthly fee was the same for both but one offered a fraction of the other, would you find "That one just came out" to be a reasonable response to questions about why one costs the same but offers less?
I'm talking about this strictly from a consumer standpoint. Maybe new MMOs need to charge less or - if they offer equivalent content to WOW, EQ, EVE etc. - maybe even charge a higher monthly fee. Whatever the case, it is a reasonable expectation for comparatively priced services to offer similar levels of quality or content.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I think the issue is the time spent talking about one compared to the other. 90% of the threads I read here seem to focus on the bad over and over. I rarely see anyone stating what they do like or what they'd like to see in place of this or that.
Stating what you don't like is one thing, giving it all focus over what you do really doesn't help in anyway to form a consensus on what would be better.
This is only my opinion but i don't think many care about that, they seemingly just like sensationalizing issues for the sake of viral marketing, word of mouth, and all that jazz. If there were more of what I highlighted at the beginning of this post, I wouldn't have such an opinion.
Coming up with good features takes a lot of time and thought. The kind that doesn't merit posting on a forum. If it were that easy we would all be game designers.
Noticing what doesn't work for you is easy because you notice it as soon as it affects you.
Like I said pointing out what you don't like is fine, but like I also said it's one thing to do that, and quite another to continually go on and on about that dislike. The latter just looks like viral marketing to me (keep in mind that's just my opinion).
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
If they just keep their mouth shut from the begining we wouldnt even be aware that its happening, let alone how long.
Marketing would love that idea. Not only will it directly cost revenue, but also shut down most forms of venture capital investment.
my statement is going under the assumption that release dates are missed because of bad planning which I happen to think they are not. I think they are done on purpose to keep intrest up.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I don't understand the mentality that staying quiet will help this floundering genre.
I don't understand the mentality that makes you believe you're helping. Is it just hubris?
If enough people voice their displeasure - which mainly should be done with their wallets,but it also doesnt hurt to come here and voice your opinion in case anyone in the industry is listening - then yes,it does help.if the current formula is becoming stale(which I believe it is) then the industry needs to know about it and then proceed back to the drawing board.
OP: if features have already been out in past MMOs then yes,I expect those features to be ready to go in a AAA release.people are spending their money,if companies want it from us then they're going to have to step it up and deliver.In terms of a themepark MMO release like ToR,they had so much canvas to draw from with the past 10 years of the same ol sh*t and yet the game has bare minimum features.Today,you won't be keeping customers doing that.
I don't understand the mentality that staying quiet will help this floundering genre.
I don't understand the mentality that makes you believe you're helping. Is it just hubris?
If enough people voice their displeasure - which mainly should be done with their wallets,but it also doesnt hurt to come here and voice your opinion in case anyone in the industry is listening - then yes,it does help.if the current formula is becoming stale(which I believe it is) then the industry needs to know about it and then proceed back to the drawing board. OP: if features have already been out in past MMOs then yes,I expect those features to be ready to go in a AAA release.people are spending their money,if companies want it from us then they're going to have to step it up and deliver.In terms of a themepark MMO release like ToR,they had so much canvas to draw from with the past 10 years of the same ol sh*t and yet the game has bare minimum features.Today,you won't be keeping customers doing that.
See... that right there just isn't true in regards to SWTOR. Do you really expect developers to take anyone on this site seriously when they say things like that? Honestly, if I were an MMO developer, I would not come to this site for anything. All you find here is negativity. You have to literally dig through hundreds and hundreds of hate posts before you find any real constructive criticism.
The problem is that everybody expects their dream MMO to already be made. I am willing to cope with the fact that my dream MMO will not be made in at least 20 years (because of what it would take to make it), so I'm holding on for tomorrow.
See... that right there just isn't true in regards to SWTOR. Do you really expect developers to take anyone on this site seriously when they say things like that? Honestly, if I were an MMO developer, I would not come to this site for anything. All you find here is negativity. You have to literally dig through hundreds and hundreds of hate posts before you find any real constructive criticism.
Plus, information here is not that accurate anyway. A few people are much louder in dissing anyone.
A big game like TOR would have plenty of data. What players like to do in game? What they complain about? What ist he churn rate? Why do players leave?
That data is 10000x more useful than anything said here. I would not listen to forum like this (may be even official forums) if i am a developer.
Most other things we buy do not continue to improve after we buy them.
Unless you're talking about Guild Wars 2, you never stop buying MMOs, even after you've purchased the box. For something I have to keep feeding or it'll drop dead, the damn things better improve.
You pretty much nailed the unrealistic expectation. On the other hand developers are releasing buggy glitchy games with a minimum of content and then expect people to pay a premium price for it, plus a sub-fee, plus a cash shop, plus buy DLC in the form of expansions every year. If a sub fee really covered all that stuff or if a game was truly F2P then maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
I disagree to some level. Though some may argue...a $15 sub fee for WOW gets you way more today then it did in 2004. Even if you just play the basic box. Same goes for any mmo that's been out for a time. So why not give others the same opportunity? Many seem to feel that since other mmos have all these features (which , in total, took them years to test and implement) then all new mmos should have them at launch. Which would basically mean all new mmos would take 10 years to make. Ridiculous.
Most other things we buy do not continue to improve after we buy them.
Unless you're talking about Guild Wars 2, you never stop buying MMOs, even after you've purchased the box. For something I have to keep feeding or it'll drop dead, the damn things better improve.
Can't say much about GW2, but for GW1 to largely improve over time you had to keep buying it as well, I doubt GW2 will be much different in that respect, they also need a return on their further development.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Most other things we buy do not continue to improve after we buy them.
Example A: You buy a house that comes with 2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms and a master bedroom, living room, dinning room, kitchen, and a finished basement. Upon enter your new house you walk into your bathroom to find their are no toilets in your house. You call the contractor and ask him where are your toilets. He states that they will be put in at a later date because they didn't have time to put them in.
Does this buyer not have the right to be pissed off for not getting what they paid for? They now have to wait for an unknown timeframe for their house which they paid for already to be completed. In the plans for the house which they were shown, they clearly pointed out all bathrooms have toilets, showers, and sinks.
Example B:You buy an MMO that is shown with stunning 3d graphics and said to have great replayability among many other things. Upon recieving your box and installing/launching the game you find out that the graphics you were shown are not the ones you will be seeing ingame. They were only used for ads and in cutscenes ingame. You contact that developer and ask where are they stunning 3d graphics you showed me before i bought the game? They state that the graphics were only meant to showcase the game and not intended for actual gameplay and that they may or may not put them back in at a later date.
Does the buyer not have the right to be pissed off for not getting what they paid for? Stunning graphics in combat within a vast and open world but in reality they got a series of 100 caves with very sub par graphics.
You can think of this however you like. When you buy a brand new car, it is not okay for it to be leaking oil. When you buy a brand new MMO, it is not okay for it to be lagging controllably after 3 years of testing.
There are people that ask too much in this world but there are also people that are just too willing to accept anything they are given.
Buyer has all rights to be pissed in both cases. Only difference is bathrooms are required and necessary when buying a home. Ultimate pretty is not required to have fun playing an MMO.
In both examples there is deceipt but it would be more comparable if the MMO was released without a chat option. You could still play the game but it is hardly an MMO without chat as a house is hardly a home without a bathroom.( I am of course speaking in a general sense based on my culture and have no intent on insulting other cultures or 3rd world nations that might not have bathrooms as we are discussing)
In thread after thread in every forum on this site, I hear complaint after complaint about pretty much every game that is released. Every developer apparently does nothing right when designing games. They are also not due any time or leeway to remedy the problems in their game. It is either all or nothing.
Unless I am missing something, people on this site want a game like this:
Quantity of content on-par with games that have been out for nearly 10 years
0 bugs
0 lag
Pefectly balanced
AAA realistic graphics
Perfect performance (even on crap computers)
No unforseen problems with PvP
No other unforseen problems of any kind
Anything that falls short of these expectations is torn apart on the forums. Do people really believe these are realistic expectations? Especially from new games? It seems like expectations are really getting out of control these days. I have worked in the software industry for a long time and I have to tell you that it is virtually impossible to release something as complicated as an MMO with 0 problems...
I'd have to say that this is an unfair representation of the reasonable people on these forums which is the majority btw, who wish their game to not have any logical and reasonable problems and for game developers to actually learn from the mistakes of other said developers from the past when releasing a game. (i.e. Bioware didn't learn a single thing from the mmo industry's history)
So in reflection here's the real list of what people expect:
Quantity of content enough to play for at least six months non-stop without having gaps at the end game giving devs time to repair their bugs and enter new content. Too often people just decide it's okay that their game lasted only a month, this is sad. $60 for a single month of content is not a good thing, ever.
bugs that aren't obvious or exploits, there's a reason there is an alpha, beta1, beta2, beta3, beta4 for games and when they don't catch obvious and exploitable bugs in their games and they decide that somehow it's the players fault for finding/reporting them there's something seriously wrong with that management style.
games will have lag, however complicating the lag and making it worse with a 12 year old pve fighting design that caused not one but two AAA mmo's grief is not progress so yes expect criticism.
balance has always been an issue for ever mmo but not learning from the mistakes of every pvp/pve mmo out there by not providing a solution that would solve the balance problems quickly and easily is just lazy. For example, the simplest thing they could ever do in a game that has both to balance pvp is to separate the pve and pvp skills, make them two sets of code. If they had done that they would have made it easier on the people who are paying them to play.
turning off high rez textures because you failed to fix it a bug they should have caught in multiple betas is no excuse, so yes expect criticism because it was poorly managed, there is no excuse.
yes some of us don't have the best rigs to play games, however, problems like abilities not firing off at all should never happen on any game and isn't due to the best graphics card not being present it's due to poor coding, when you click on an ability 12 times and it never fires during pvp or pve matches there's something seriously wrong with the way the game is coded because the signal never reaches the server not even in a laggy capacity. I'm used to using lower settings however I also strongly believe in getting what you pay for, $60 is too much to ask someone if you're game isn't complete.
there will be some slight problems with pvp, but the fundamentals had better work by launch. if you are running around and you run outside and the sky makes you lag i can see that being an unforeseen issue, if you are clicking an ability 12 times and the ability never fires, that's not acceptable, combat should always work and it's a reflection on the laziness of the management team when these things happen. They should be criticized for being lazy.
this one is not what people posting are about, people do have reasonable expectations on these forums or they get shot down quickly. What's frightening to me is the general malaise that people saying statements like these are causing. If we all gathered our forces together here on ther interweb and demanded better quality on these games with the threaten of unsubing for those games that require subing, then maybe we wouldn't get steaming piles of shined up turds as launches. It's sad that people who claim (oh well it could never have been perfect) are the reasons why management of said games that launch know that they can get away with being lazy for millions of dollars and still make lots of money because people aren't demanding better, especially for IP titles.
All in all, people don't demand perfection, what the majority of us demand are products that a: don't have obvious problems that should have been fixed in testing long before launch and b: are complete, in that there aren't obvious features missing for the title to be called an mmo, laziness breeds bad products and corporations are well known to be lazy in the managerial positions especially when it comes to entertainment titles with an IP that would sell no matter what they did.
It seems that software is the only products, where it's allowed to be released in a half finished bug ridden state and having the masses making excuses for it. Weird world we live in. I find it amazing that they can charge full price for a half finished job and then have you the gamer defending it. I think i want to go into the mmorpg business. Can't ask for better and more gullible customers in any other line of business
Most other things we buy do not continue to improve after we buy them.
Example A: You buy a house that comes with 2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms and a master bedroom, living room, dinning room, kitchen, and a finished basement. Upon enter your new house you walk into your bathroom to find their are no toilets in your house. You call the contractor and ask him where are your toilets. He states that they will be put in at a later date because they didn't have time to put them in.
Does this buyer not have the right to be pissed off for not getting what they paid for? They now have to wait for an unknown timeframe for their house which they paid for already to be completed. In the plans for the house which they were shown, they clearly pointed out all bathrooms have toilets, showers, and sinks.
But you're making quantitative judgements (easy) instead of qualitative ones (MMOs).
What we're doing, in essence, is buying the 20,000 shack and then wondering why it isn't as tricked out as the Spelling mansion (or a more exacting analogy, the Winchester House). All of those features added post-purchase, those should all be cost-free, and automatically included in all future home purchases, at base cost...and at the same price homes sold for in 1997.
Does this buyer not have the right to be pissed off for not getting what they paid for? They now have to wait for an unknown timeframe for their house which they paid for already to be completed. In the plans for the house which they were shown, they clearly pointed out all bathrooms have toilets, showers, and sinks.
In the case of a New MMO, features are rarely "missing". They are often assumed by the customers (who failed to read the contract)--not quite the same thing as a promise not kept. Or they're simply not up to the customer's expectations, quite common.
Do you have any idea how many posts we've seen hating because some sandbox feature isn't present? Were you told it ever would be?
Or the SWG players looking for SWG2 (and not getting it). You weren't lied to; the space combat isn't there, but no one ever said it would be.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Most other things we buy do not continue to improve after we buy them.
Unless you're talking about Guild Wars 2, you never stop buying MMOs, even after you've purchased the box. For something I have to keep feeding or it'll drop dead, the damn things better improve.
Can't say much about GW2, but for GW1 to largely improve over time you had to keep buying it as well, I doubt GW2 will be much different in that respect, they also need a return on their further development.
I actually like the process of buying expansions in a game that is b2p because you aren't paying them extra money monthly that never goes anywhere & buying the expansions at the same time. because of no subing every month you end up with a better product because people will have more control over what devs do. It's games like the freemium models and the sub only models where the buyer pretty much loses in the end because they have to spend enormous amounts of money just to login, and the expansions can be anything. i.e. World of Pokemon, seriously?
Can't ask for better and more gullible customers in any other line of business
No? Would you like me to read your future in this crystal ball?
Oh, wait, we believe in those on this message board.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Most other things we buy do not continue to improve after we buy them.
Example A: You buy a house that comes with 2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms and a master bedroom, living room, dinning room, kitchen, and a finished basement. Upon enter your new house you walk into your bathroom to find their are no toilets in your house. You call the contractor and ask him where are your toilets. He states that they will be put in at a later date because they didn't have time to put them in.
Does this buyer not have the right to be pissed off for not getting what they paid for? They now have to wait for an unknown timeframe for their house which they paid for already to be completed. In the plans for the house which they were shown, they clearly pointed out all bathrooms have toilets, showers, and sinks.
But you're making quantitative judgements (easy) instead of qualitative ones (MMOs).
What we're doing, in essence, is buying the 20,000 shack and then wondering why it isn't as tricked out as the Spelling mansion (or a more exacting analogy, the Winchester House). All of those features added post-purchase, those should all be cost-free, and automatically included in all future home purchases, at base cost...and at the same price homes sold for in 1997.
Does this buyer not have the right to be pissed off for not getting what they paid for? They now have to wait for an unknown timeframe for their house which they paid for already to be completed. In the plans for the house which they were shown, they clearly pointed out all bathrooms have toilets, showers, and sinks.
In the case of a New MMO, features are rarely "missing". They are often assumed by the customers (who failed to read the contract)--not quite the same thing as a promise not kept. Or they're simply not up to the customer's expectations, quite common.
Do you have any idea how many posts we've seen hating because some sandbox feature isn't present? Were you told it ever would be?
Or the SWG players looking for SWG2 (and not getting it). You weren't lied to; the space combat isn't there, but no one ever said it would be.
Actually no they did say it would be implemented "later" for the space content. However, your point about features being missing and not being promised is moot when it comes to features that every mmo has to have to be considered an mmo. Such as an auction house, mailing system, storage for guilds, guild perks (which everyone uses now), dungeon finder (even lotro converted to this one) the list goes on. So to claim that just because they didn't say these things would be in a game is a copout and a logical fallacy because of how features that are all too common place in mmo's were left out of titles that were released in modern times. It means basically that every house should come with a bathroom, but because the contracter didn't think it needed one and they put it into the fine print that it wouldn't have one that everyone should be okay with that. Nope sorry, see the fallacy there? And by bathroom i don't mean space combat i mean all the meriad of other things that were left out of a single title most recently as an example of what's wrong with that thought process.
and not being promised is moot when it comes to features that every mmo has to have to be considered an mmo.
Such as an auction house, mailing system, storage for guilds, guild perks (which everyone uses now), dungeon finder (even lotro converted to this one) the list goes on.
Please, go on. I'd love to hear more about what you assume is a minimum-release necessity. Because it ties into a lot of what's already been said; our ever-increasing demands vs. a fixed pricing model.
It's fascinating.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
and not being promised is moot when it comes to features that every mmo has to have to be considered an mmo.
Such as an auction house, mailing system, storage for guilds, guild perks (which everyone uses now), dungeon finder (even lotro converted to this one) the list goes on.
Please, go on. I'd love to hear more about what you assume is a minimum-release necessity. Because it ties into a lot of what's already been said; our ever-increasing demands vs. a fixed pricing model.
It's fascinating.
Usually the complaints go the other way on these forums. Games are accused of not being MMORPGs specificly becasue they INCLUDE these features.
"So let me get this straight..." the 2 things that have been done any different with this genre are:
a. "MORE VOICEOVERS!12!!!!@!L?@" ala SWTOR. So, instead of reading text that the game wants me to gather 20 boar tusks, there is an overpayed voice actor telling me to gather 20 boar tusks. Okayyyy...
b. F2P: Just another scam of snaking money out of you, though they flaunt the word "free" to do so.
Those are the 2 things that this genre has done fresh or different (I wouldn't call them improvements, but I guess some like it) in the last several years. Heh, small wonder why the MMORPG genre is one big smoking pile of dungheap.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Usually the complaints go the other way on these forums. Games are accused of not being MMORPGs specificly becasue they INCLUDE these features.
No, I'd really like to hear what he believes are unspoken promises to gamers.
At least one of his "minimum necessary" demands, I noted, would be almost certain to drive some other players away from the game. How does his list of "minimum promised" features differ from another player's list?
And who gets to decide?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
"So let me get this straight..." the 2 things that have been done any different with this genre are:
a. "MORE VOICEOVERS!12!!!!@!L?@" ala SWTOR. So, instead of reading text that the game wants me to gather 20 boar tusks, there is an overpayed voice actor telling me to gather 20 boar tusks. Okayyyy...
b. F2P: Just another scam of snaking money out of you, though they flaunt the word "free" to do so.
Those are the 2 things that this genre has done fresh or different (I wouldn't call them improvements, but I guess some like it) in the last several years. Heh, small wonder why the MMORPG genre is one big smoking pile of dungheap.
classic!
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
In thread after thread in every forum on this site, I hear complaint after complaint about pretty much every game that is released. Every developer apparently does nothing right when designing games. They are also not due any time or leeway to remedy the problems in their game. It is either all or nothing.
Unless I am missing something, people on this site want a game like this:
Quantity of content on-par with games that have been out for nearly 10 years
0 bugs
0 lag
Pefectly balanced
AAA realistic graphics
Perfect performance (even on crap computers)
No unforseen problems with PvP
No other unforseen problems of any kind
Anything that falls short of these expectations is torn apart on the forums. Do people really believe these are realistic expectations? Especially from new games? It seems like expectations are really getting out of control these days. I have worked in the software industry for a long time and I have to tell you that it is virtually impossible to release something as complicated as an MMO with 0 problems...
Good thread. The thing is, you have a working knowledge of software development. You understand that there will be glitches, etc...that you wouldn't have even dreamed to test for. Most people aren't in the business and can't comprehend it. If their bag didn't open then it's time to flame the game all over the internet as crap. If they stayed up 5 days straight to be the first person to max level, then the game is crap and should be flamed (as having no substance) non-stop because it only took them "5 days" to get to max level.
Comments
Cable TV service and Cell Phones firmware/features are the first two that come to mind, however, as consumers, the promise of future unknown content should not affect at all the price of the service we are paying for right now.
Because that is what these are - services, not products. If you put any two competing services side by side and the monthly fee was the same for both but one offered a fraction of the other, would you find "That one just came out" to be a reasonable response to questions about why one costs the same but offers less?
I'm talking about this strictly from a consumer standpoint. Maybe new MMOs need to charge less or - if they offer equivalent content to WOW, EQ, EVE etc. - maybe even charge a higher monthly fee. Whatever the case, it is a reasonable expectation for comparatively priced services to offer similar levels of quality or content.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Like I said pointing out what you don't like is fine, but like I also said it's one thing to do that, and quite another to continually go on and on about that dislike. The latter just looks like viral marketing to me (keep in mind that's just my opinion).
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
my statement is going under the assumption that release dates are missed because of bad planning which I happen to think they are not. I think they are done on purpose to keep intrest up.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I don't understand the mentality that makes you believe you're helping. Is it just hubris?
If enough people voice their displeasure - which mainly should be done with their wallets,but it also doesnt hurt to come here and voice your opinion in case anyone in the industry is listening - then yes,it does help.if the current formula is becoming stale(which I believe it is) then the industry needs to know about it and then proceed back to the drawing board.OP: if features have already been out in past MMOs then yes,I expect those features to be ready to go in a AAA release.people are spending their money,if companies want it from us then they're going to have to step it up and deliver.In terms of a themepark MMO release like ToR,they had so much canvas to draw from with the past 10 years of the same ol sh*t and yet the game has bare minimum features.Today,you won't be keeping customers doing that.
See... that right there just isn't true in regards to SWTOR. Do you really expect developers to take anyone on this site seriously when they say things like that? Honestly, if I were an MMO developer, I would not come to this site for anything. All you find here is negativity. You have to literally dig through hundreds and hundreds of hate posts before you find any real constructive criticism.
Welcome to the internet!
Yes the world sucks, especially the virtual one.
The problem is that everybody expects their dream MMO to already be made. I am willing to cope with the fact that my dream MMO will not be made in at least 20 years (because of what it would take to make it), so I'm holding on for tomorrow.
Plus, information here is not that accurate anyway. A few people are much louder in dissing anyone.
A big game like TOR would have plenty of data. What players like to do in game? What they complain about? What ist he churn rate? Why do players leave?
That data is 10000x more useful than anything said here. I would not listen to forum like this (may be even official forums) if i am a developer.
Unless you're talking about Guild Wars 2, you never stop buying MMOs, even after you've purchased the box. For something I have to keep feeding or it'll drop dead, the damn things better improve.
I disagree to some level. Though some may argue...a $15 sub fee for WOW gets you way more today then it did in 2004. Even if you just play the basic box. Same goes for any mmo that's been out for a time. So why not give others the same opportunity? Many seem to feel that since other mmos have all these features (which , in total, took them years to test and implement) then all new mmos should have them at launch. Which would basically mean all new mmos would take 10 years to make. Ridiculous.
Can't say much about GW2, but for GW1 to largely improve over time you had to keep buying it as well, I doubt GW2 will be much different in that respect, they also need a return on their further development.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Example A: You buy a house that comes with 2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms and a master bedroom, living room, dinning room, kitchen, and a finished basement. Upon enter your new house you walk into your bathroom to find their are no toilets in your house. You call the contractor and ask him where are your toilets. He states that they will be put in at a later date because they didn't have time to put them in.
Does this buyer not have the right to be pissed off for not getting what they paid for? They now have to wait for an unknown timeframe for their house which they paid for already to be completed. In the plans for the house which they were shown, they clearly pointed out all bathrooms have toilets, showers, and sinks.
Example B:You buy an MMO that is shown with stunning 3d graphics and said to have great replayability among many other things. Upon recieving your box and installing/launching the game you find out that the graphics you were shown are not the ones you will be seeing ingame. They were only used for ads and in cutscenes ingame. You contact that developer and ask where are they stunning 3d graphics you showed me before i bought the game? They state that the graphics were only meant to showcase the game and not intended for actual gameplay and that they may or may not put them back in at a later date.
Does the buyer not have the right to be pissed off for not getting what they paid for? Stunning graphics in combat within a vast and open world but in reality they got a series of 100 caves with very sub par graphics.
You can think of this however you like. When you buy a brand new car, it is not okay for it to be leaking oil. When you buy a brand new MMO, it is not okay for it to be lagging controllably after 3 years of testing.
There are people that ask too much in this world but there are also people that are just too willing to accept anything they are given.
Buyer has all rights to be pissed in both cases. Only difference is bathrooms are required and necessary when buying a home. Ultimate pretty is not required to have fun playing an MMO.
In both examples there is deceipt but it would be more comparable if the MMO was released without a chat option. You could still play the game but it is hardly an MMO without chat as a house is hardly a home without a bathroom.( I am of course speaking in a general sense based on my culture and have no intent on insulting other cultures or 3rd world nations that might not have bathrooms as we are discussing)
I'd have to say that this is an unfair representation of the reasonable people on these forums which is the majority btw, who wish their game to not have any logical and reasonable problems and for game developers to actually learn from the mistakes of other said developers from the past when releasing a game. (i.e. Bioware didn't learn a single thing from the mmo industry's history)
So in reflection here's the real list of what people expect:
Quantity of content enough to play for at least six months non-stop without having gaps at the end game giving devs time to repair their bugs and enter new content. Too often people just decide it's okay that their game lasted only a month, this is sad. $60 for a single month of content is not a good thing, ever.
bugs that aren't obvious or exploits, there's a reason there is an alpha, beta1, beta2, beta3, beta4 for games and when they don't catch obvious and exploitable bugs in their games and they decide that somehow it's the players fault for finding/reporting them there's something seriously wrong with that management style.
games will have lag, however complicating the lag and making it worse with a 12 year old pve fighting design that caused not one but two AAA mmo's grief is not progress so yes expect criticism.
balance has always been an issue for ever mmo but not learning from the mistakes of every pvp/pve mmo out there by not providing a solution that would solve the balance problems quickly and easily is just lazy. For example, the simplest thing they could ever do in a game that has both to balance pvp is to separate the pve and pvp skills, make them two sets of code. If they had done that they would have made it easier on the people who are paying them to play.
turning off high rez textures because you failed to fix it a bug they should have caught in multiple betas is no excuse, so yes expect criticism because it was poorly managed, there is no excuse.
yes some of us don't have the best rigs to play games, however, problems like abilities not firing off at all should never happen on any game and isn't due to the best graphics card not being present it's due to poor coding, when you click on an ability 12 times and it never fires during pvp or pve matches there's something seriously wrong with the way the game is coded because the signal never reaches the server not even in a laggy capacity. I'm used to using lower settings however I also strongly believe in getting what you pay for, $60 is too much to ask someone if you're game isn't complete.
there will be some slight problems with pvp, but the fundamentals had better work by launch. if you are running around and you run outside and the sky makes you lag i can see that being an unforeseen issue, if you are clicking an ability 12 times and the ability never fires, that's not acceptable, combat should always work and it's a reflection on the laziness of the management team when these things happen. They should be criticized for being lazy.
this one is not what people posting are about, people do have reasonable expectations on these forums or they get shot down quickly. What's frightening to me is the general malaise that people saying statements like these are causing. If we all gathered our forces together here on ther interweb and demanded better quality on these games with the threaten of unsubing for those games that require subing, then maybe we wouldn't get steaming piles of shined up turds as launches. It's sad that people who claim (oh well it could never have been perfect) are the reasons why management of said games that launch know that they can get away with being lazy for millions of dollars and still make lots of money because people aren't demanding better, especially for IP titles.
All in all, people don't demand perfection, what the majority of us demand are products that a: don't have obvious problems that should have been fixed in testing long before launch and b: are complete, in that there aren't obvious features missing for the title to be called an mmo, laziness breeds bad products and corporations are well known to be lazy in the managerial positions especially when it comes to entertainment titles with an IP that would sell no matter what they did.
It seems that software is the only products, where it's allowed to be released in a half finished bug ridden state and having the masses making excuses for it. Weird world we live in. I find it amazing that they can charge full price for a half finished job and then have you the gamer defending it. I think i want to go into the mmorpg business. Can't ask for better and more gullible customers in any other line of business
But you're making quantitative judgements (easy) instead of qualitative ones (MMOs).
What we're doing, in essence, is buying the 20,000 shack and then wondering why it isn't as tricked out as the Spelling mansion (or a more exacting analogy, the Winchester House). All of those features added post-purchase, those should all be cost-free, and automatically included in all future home purchases, at base cost...and at the same price homes sold for in 1997.
Does this buyer not have the right to be pissed off for not getting what they paid for? They now have to wait for an unknown timeframe for their house which they paid for already to be completed. In the plans for the house which they were shown, they clearly pointed out all bathrooms have toilets, showers, and sinks.
In the case of a New MMO, features are rarely "missing". They are often assumed by the customers (who failed to read the contract)--not quite the same thing as a promise not kept. Or they're simply not up to the customer's expectations, quite common.
Do you have any idea how many posts we've seen hating because some sandbox feature isn't present? Were you told it ever would be?
Or the SWG players looking for SWG2 (and not getting it). You weren't lied to; the space combat isn't there, but no one ever said it would be.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I actually like the process of buying expansions in a game that is b2p because you aren't paying them extra money monthly that never goes anywhere & buying the expansions at the same time. because of no subing every month you end up with a better product because people will have more control over what devs do. It's games like the freemium models and the sub only models where the buyer pretty much loses in the end because they have to spend enormous amounts of money just to login, and the expansions can be anything. i.e. World of Pokemon, seriously?
No? Would you like me to read your future in this crystal ball?
Oh, wait, we believe in those on this message board.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Actually no they did say it would be implemented "later" for the space content. However, your point about features being missing and not being promised is moot when it comes to features that every mmo has to have to be considered an mmo. Such as an auction house, mailing system, storage for guilds, guild perks (which everyone uses now), dungeon finder (even lotro converted to this one) the list goes on. So to claim that just because they didn't say these things would be in a game is a copout and a logical fallacy because of how features that are all too common place in mmo's were left out of titles that were released in modern times. It means basically that every house should come with a bathroom, but because the contracter didn't think it needed one and they put it into the fine print that it wouldn't have one that everyone should be okay with that. Nope sorry, see the fallacy there? And by bathroom i don't mean space combat i mean all the meriad of other things that were left out of a single title most recently as an example of what's wrong with that thought process.
Please, go on. I'd love to hear more about what you assume is a minimum-release necessity. Because it ties into a lot of what's already been said; our ever-increasing demands vs. a fixed pricing model.
It's fascinating.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Usually the complaints go the other way on these forums. Games are accused of not being MMORPGs specificly becasue they INCLUDE these features.
"So let me get this straight..." the 2 things that have been done any different with this genre are:
a. "MORE VOICEOVERS!12!!!!@!L?@" ala SWTOR. So, instead of reading text that the game wants me to gather 20 boar tusks, there is an overpayed voice actor telling me to gather 20 boar tusks. Okayyyy...
b. F2P: Just another scam of snaking money out of you, though they flaunt the word "free" to do so.
Those are the 2 things that this genre has done fresh or different (I wouldn't call them improvements, but I guess some like it) in the last several years. Heh, small wonder why the MMORPG genre is one big smoking pile of dungheap.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
No, I'd really like to hear what he believes are unspoken promises to gamers.
At least one of his "minimum necessary" demands, I noted, would be almost certain to drive some other players away from the game. How does his list of "minimum promised" features differ from another player's list?
And who gets to decide?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
classic!
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Good thread. The thing is, you have a working knowledge of software development. You understand that there will be glitches, etc...that you wouldn't have even dreamed to test for. Most people aren't in the business and can't comprehend it. If their bag didn't open then it's time to flame the game all over the internet as crap. If they stayed up 5 days straight to be the first person to max level, then the game is crap and should be flamed (as having no substance) non-stop because it only took them "5 days" to get to max level.
It's the world we live in.