In case you were harboring some form of hope that The Exiled might pull through, you should look at these numbers. A handful of players away from flat line. The developers seemed to actually care about this one, too.
http://steamcharts.com/app/332650
Comments
I hate time limits in games. But even more than hating time limits, are forced resets where you lose ALL your progress.
So the exiles has sandbox PvP which is super niche and in a VERY overcrowded sandbox PvP market...it also has time limits...which most people actually hate time limits...but then! it has the 3rd most infamous thing people hate (especially in an online game)...resets where you lose all your progress and work you did for that entire month
So it has 3 of the most "popular" things the vast majority of people don't like
No wonder it failed lol
Its like those movies that are really good, but then is 100% ruined at the end of "it was just a dream"...instant downvote and no one likes those lol
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
"Game worlds last for up to one month."
That means every month you have to start 100% again. How stupid, that is making a VERY niche genre of MMOs (deathmatch full loot sandbox PvP MMOs, which are a dime a dozen as far as sandbox MMOs go) even vastly more niche. Most gamers don't want to start over and over and over non-stop. They want to progress and keep their characters or at least see actual progression.
And most MMO players actually prefer PVE (with no forced PvP), which is definitely lacking in sandbox MMOs.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
FFS, get a clue...
The typical MMO however does not wipe everyone every month. There isn't a single MMO that does that, except ATITD and that is never even barely talked about anywhere. That makes this game very niche, and unlikely to attract a big audience. Maybe that is the developers intent, is to fill in a niche...though sandbox deathmatch PvP games are pretty niche to begin with compared to the PVE themepark MMOs.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Progression is a pillar of RPGs and MMORPGS and this game wipes every 20 days. It also advertises it has no messy grinding meaning it really has no progression outside of random loot collection.
Is there a market for match based play, surely but this title would likely do far better calling itself a survival game seeing as to how popular those are right now and it is much closer to that genre. (labels really are important)
Don't know what their server limits are, but if it can handle more than 100 to 200 players at a time it could be a major selling point.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
So in expressing a totally selfish sentiment here I don't want games that give me less options for games to play to do well.
In this case though I believe the problem is not the full loot open PvP it is the fact that they reset everything every 20 days. How can anyone get attached to their character or even feel invested in that time for an MMORPG this is a horrible way to design a game. I agree with others here who seem to think it is not one.
A game that doesn't reset thus appeals to the progression folk, and a game that resets really quickly (every match, basically) thus appeals to the fast paced lunch-box folk who don't like month long grinds.
Exiles, meanwhile from what I'm reading, falls into that uncanny valley range ("Uncanny valley" isn't cartoony enough to be a cartoon and isn't realistic enough to be human, and thus falls somewhere in between at which point it's just creepy) where it appeals neither to the long term progression folk (because it resets too quickly. ...or at all) while also not appealing to the short term no-grind fast-paced folk (because a month to reset is a friggin' long time compared to a 10 minute PvP match)
By having month-long resets, it appeals only to the people who somehow like a forced month of progression and no more or no less than that no matter what. And that's.... well, a niche of a niche (and a near microscopic one, apparently).
Or even Crowfall is doing this, but keeping some form of progression.
I'm not saying The Exiles is fun or not, I haven't played it. But you can't issue a verdict for this formula to be doomed forever by any logic. If a game does it right, and a game is actually fun, I bet it can have its own crowd, large enough to support it.
Far as I could interpret from the 5 minutes of research reading forum posts about it after a google search, at least.
So yea, unless that's wrong, I'll keep my verdict. 1 month reset is a niche of a niche, and a microscopic one at that.
What I meant is, new titles are considering this model. So there's a possibility that one title comes through which is polished and really fun and manages to pull it off using this model. Hell freaking Travian has servers which would run for a month or so and they are extremely popular and people spent cash on them like there's no tomorrow.
Even if you are right that people would either want an everlasting game, or an instant reset--which I don't believe is true--when an actual fun game uses this system, it can become more than a niche. Don't forget DOTA was a custom map for WC3, and a pretty niche group played it. Blizzard didn't take such genre seriously and Riot went to the moon with it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just because Conan Exiles was also trying it doesn't mean that it isn't niche. It just means someone else is trying it, which is completely unrelated to whether or not something turns out to be niche. The same goes for your league of legends example. They tried something, and it turned out to not be niche. That doesn't change whether it is niche or whether it is not niche.
More relevant to the argument is "when an actual fun game uses this system". However, considering that Conan Exiles is the same exact game whether it's set to a monthly reset and whether it's set to permanent, yet so many players choose to use the permanent option instead, I'd wager to say that "even if Exiles was a fun game, it still would be niche with monthly resets, at least in comparison to if it was the exact same fun game but with permanence". Because Conan Exiles with monthly resets is the exact same game as Conan Exiles with permanence, yet the majority chooses the latter.
The thing is, if you were (I dunno, maybe you are) playing video games for 35 years, you'd realize ALL genre and styles started as being niche, and with the right title, they stopped being one. I am referring to my memory here not actual research, so I can be wrong.
Anyways, let's agree to disagree.
I feel that if the Exiled wants the prestige/renknown of being a new genre, it's going to need to do more than just add monthly resets to an existing genre. The MOBA genre might have been birthed off of a mod initially, but that mod was way more than just a flip of an option switch to existing gameplay.