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Legends of Aria New Dawn Hits Today, Patch Notes Released
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Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
Legends of Aria New Dawn Hits Today, Patch Notes Released
The next chapter for Legends of Aria has come, as the New Dawn update hits today, along with an extensive list of fixes and changes with Point Release 8.
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They know what kind of game they "want" to be. They just don't know how to make that type of game sustainable from a business standpoint.
I love these type of games and what they are trying to do, but even as someone who loves the genre I can admit it will never be more than a passion project genre. They are already doomed to fail. They marketed themselves towards an audience that self cannibalizes itself in every game tailored to them.
They had the right idea. The FFA Loot on Death style of game cannot exist in an mmorpg persistent world setting the way we imagine. It is only sustainable as an opt-in style of gameplay without content gated behind it. It's something the vast majority of players only want to dabble in, while the full timers cause the dabblers to quit until no sheep exist and the game dies as the wolves turn on each other(while blaming the devs for giving them exactly what they wanted).
We saw the same thing with UO. People like to remember "the good ol days before Trammel" while forgetting the population was on the decline and the game was going to become financially unsustainable unless changes were made. Then also conveniently forget that UO saw it's highest population peaks and highest retention numbers with the introduction of Trammel.
The PvPers were mad because the easy prey was gone, but at the end of the day they still had a game to play.
At some point you have to wonder how so many dev teams fail to see the reality of this game type existing as a sustainable business. I think if they doubled down on STEAM, introduced steam workshop, and put ALL of their effort into those community tools and shards they talked about they could have something financially sustainable while offering the niche they want as well. Imagine if people could download the systems and things they wanted from workshop and put together their own server? People would pay for the hosting to "build" the game they want for their friends, and the LoA team could keep funding their passion servers.
These developers, once again, believed that they could come up with a magical rule set that would make carebears and gankers live happily together on one server. I guess EVE managed it, but I can't think of many others who have.
@MightyUnclean, one of things with EVE and why it works is the vastness of the universe. I don't get a lot of time to play games - and I am sure that's the majority of the gaming population - so I would never deign to think I could visit each system. But there is the rub, it's a galaxy. There's not really much to the "landscape". Any game attempting that scope of an area for a game would take decades to make - all of the landscaping, terrain, etc. This would be impossible to pull off in a game. And that's why EVE works, because it's so vast but isn't bogged down my the "landscape". Sure, there are other reasons it works well, but I think this is a major one.
Dovetailing off of that, I think EVE's system is kind of awesome exactly because of that vastness. And because of territorial conquest. They can make tons of safe spaces, middle-of-the-road spaces, and no-man's land areas with full PvP and no protection other than people you ally with. If LoA could enlarge the landmass and make it so that there is conquest in the full PvP areas, they'd likely have a larger following. From what I remember about EVE, it's was very likely the average player would never come across more than a portion of the entire population. With LoA, it's likely you'll see the same people ganking over and over.
Small studios cannot produce large amounts of content and PVP provides high replaybility.
Both, PVE and PVP needs content but PVP tends to get away easier with smaller amount.
They achieved way more than you can ever dream of and here you are, slinging mud at them...
ROFL-- you don't know anything about me and what I have achieved, so don't presume as such. What I do know, and what my obvious opinion is, is that CS is a poorly run operation that cant even get a patch rolled out properly. Anyways, this article is not accurate, as the patch still hasn't been released, almost a day after server have been down.
LOU, on the other hand, is quite great.
And what do your post counts tell people?
That its likely you just created another peanut butter statue of Arthas and finished the rampart details on your cardboard castle youcall home in your moms basement.
To be real, if you want UO go play on Outlands. It's the best UO experience to date. Better than any era that has existed.