Soldato
Yeah
, I used to play it many years ago a fair bit - but it's so old I forgetting it's still going*** Official Elder Scrolls MMO Thread ***
- Thread starter LateX'Dog
- Start date
, I used to play it many years ago a fair bit - but it's so old I forgetting it's still going
Soldato
That's still a problem, some mmos do still have racial starter zones but too many people play it (or played it- gw2 for example) but too many people played it meaning they instanced the zones and that was only on one server out of like 24?. You still can't do that on a single server, if you deciced to merge every MMO that had seperate servers with themselves into one server, you'd be incredibly hard pressed to split people up without having to design lots of starter areas and then subsequent ones.
It's not smart from a development or financial standpoint or a technological one either, it's hard to allow for everyone. Every - single - mmo, ever created that's worth it's salt has a limit, or crapped out in performance and had to account for it.
I hate instances too, but I can't ignore the fact you cannot allow, especially on launch day, 100k, 500k ....a million + depending when they all log on and how good the game is, to spread out amongst a handful of areas.
Even if you had 50 starter zones, they'd have 2000, 10,000 + people in it.
Think about it, MMOs are so popular today and while population does wane, it's still asking a lot. Eve aside, I can't think of many character/scenery based games that allow for lots all the time, starter zone - leveling - dungeons - raids and pvp unless they start having issues.
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There are none - but that has more to do with the fact they were all over-budget, badly managed WoW clones rather than them being sub based.
I truly believe a sub based MMO could carve itself a niche spot in the market. The secret is to aim low. Start small and aim to be profitable from a sub base of say, 300,000-500,000 paying £5 a month. Don't cater to the general crowd, mouth breathers and ADHD kids that have infested the sector since WoW dumbed itself down to what it is today. Make it tough, old UO & EQ tough if needs be and make sure you tell your player base that from the start, so little Timmy has no base when he starts posting about how he can't find his way around without a map, or because he got lost and can't find his corpse.
Soldato
Having being part of the TESO last two beta sessions, and having played DAOC on live between 2002 to 2009 and on Uthgard (DAOC Classic Freeshard) from 2009 to 2012, I strongly believe that TESO actually is DAOC 2.
I have tried most MMOs that came out, except WoW and many of it's clones since they are of no interest to me. Played UO between 1998 and 2002.
No MMO of the rest hold me more than 2 hours, except Darkfall for a month, but that is actually UO before the map split with some quirks.
Having tried TESO over the two last beta sessions, the game is pretty good and the first MMO game since 2002 that I do look forward to.
To describe the game is bit difficult except if that people have played DAOC. Because I could say is DAOC 2 actually.
However if someone hasn't played DAOC then I would say is Skyrim and the war between Imperials & Stormcloaks happens between real players on a big scale.
If someone hasn't played DAOC nor Skyrim, then is it actually the fantasy version of Planetside 1/2 (with PvE aspect if you wish) or a cousin to EvE Online. Maybe a distant cousin to Warhammer Online.
After that, there isn't any other game to explain the RvR/AvA warfare.
Was unfortunate on the last beta session, this weekend, that Cyrodill portal was bugged. Because on the previous session was pretty awesome with plenty of blood spilt on the name of the alliances.
Reminded me DAOC on the good old days when the European servers were almost crashing with 5000 people each and there was a three way relic raid on Friday night, with the battles lasting until well into Saturday morning.
As for TESO as such, the game is really good. The controls same as on Oblivion/Skyrim so you will not get lost as usually on new games. Battles are better than in Skyrim, especially if you apply active styles etc, which of course do require some thinking before you spend your stamina.
Many got stuck on the initial island and didn't progress. Believe me, the moment you move on, the AI is pretty good and not forgiving especially when they are more than one on levels 8+. First time encountered AI trying to strafe you like a real player, while many level 6+ quests, do require group.
Crafting is easy and complicated at the same time. It has reverse engineering like EVE to learn traits on real time (6 hours), spell crafting is an art of it's own and because the "npc" goods is at ridiculous price, forces player driven economy from the start.
Tonnes of exploration, treasure hunting (if you are lucky to find a map) like in UO, quests that are full dialogues with many options to choose their outcome. If someone played Dominion and didn't laugh with Rhaza-gar dialogues, then seriously has no sense of humour.
AvA/RvR on the session before the last one, was pretty good and better than DAOC. (there aren't any OP classes)
And also any level 10 player can join and can beat anyone there if is good enough. You are not one shot/hit either by higher levels.
Other good things, you can train skills faster at Cyrodill (fyi whole Cyrodill map is the warfare map) if someone decides to do the quests or exploration there not only participate on fighting the other alliances or sieges. Ofc only the enemies of your alliance can harm you as players go.
Graphics. While OK, similar to Oblivion/Skyrim without mods, I believe is still beta. Because the only thing that changed between high and ultra was water. And having the draw distance view to maximum improves the visual experience.
However having played the RvR zone with around 170 players last time, do not want to be lagfest with high graphics.
BF4 needs some serious amount of power to render 30 players at 1080p with everything maxed out. Consider the same quality of graphics but with 150-200 players, having spells & arrows flying over. My system (4820K @ 5Ghz and GTX780 @ 1295) pretty much went to it's limits on that session.
And there are people complaining with GTX680 and 3820s by just going into heavy forested areas with 20-30 players in PvE. Others were crying with 9600GT, or on Intel HD3000 by just entering towns. The avg MMO player has a 5+ years old PC and any game should reflect that market area.
However is still beta, and there is the option for add-on mods later on it seems (from the menu options).
Overall good game. Wishing not to go P2W err F2P and stick to P2P model even if it has tens of thousands of subs after the first couple of months on PC.
I know for a fact on XBox and PS cannot go the F2P model due to their contract, so if the PC version goes F2P, going to grab a console. At the end of the day there are many F2P for the rest of the market, and whiners just leave us alone.
After all nobody forces you to play/pay the game. If you believe is good, then pay for it. If not, go somewhere else. Last thing we need is F2P farmer bots queuing the mining nodes selling for real money the iron ingots.
Soldato
Exactly my point, there are none.
The gamers have moved away from that model, the only games which are still successful today with that model, are the ones which have that loyal fan base and don't want to lose what they've earned over the years (EVE and WoW). There are plenty of WoW clones which are successful, but use a F2P model or B2P model with micro transactions. Gaming trends change over time, and P2P is a trend which is fading, companies need to realise and follow suit with what gamers want, else risk losing out.
You wrongly assume that because an MMO has gone f2p, that every player is now a non subscriber - that is not the case. In my travels around Rift for instance, I met a number of players that are paying subscribers, same goes for The Secret World. I would agree that the market has changed vastly though and sub based MMO's are no longer a popular choice.
Perhaps a better opening move for a new MMO would be an optional sub.
Perhaps a better opening move for a new MMO would be an optional sub.
Complete and utter rubbish.
Your saying Sub's failed because the game failed, can you not see how completely flawed that thought process is?
SWTOR failed as a sub, because the GAME failed.
AoC failed as a sub, because the GAME failed.
RIFT failed as a sub, because the GAME failed.
WoW succeeds as a sub, because the GAME succeeded.
See where I'm going. Sub's are perfectly fine, the GAME is the problem.
Soldato
DAOC, UO, EVE do still have subs also.
Soldato
And your logic is flawed if you don't believe that the payment model doesn't have any relevance into whether a game will be successful.
There are lots of sub par games which are a success, why? Because they're not reliant on monthly subs to get money and have an active playerbase who purchase freemium items to give the developers money.
Free games will have a higher turn over rate and generally a higher population too, which translates to a more active community, which leads to more people wanting to try the game and the community growing. If at release your game isn't up to scratch and is P2P then your community will dwindle and the players who leave will snowball from any mention of the games flaws.
Those games you mentioned would have probably been a success of they launched as F2P, because they're were by no means bad games, just games which people wouldn't want to pay monthly for.
Every game that was sub based and went F2P, failed due to gameplay problems that meant a sub was not worth the money. Nothing to do with the sub model being wrong or outdated.
And you are further proving my point, if it was better then sub par then it would be able to charge a sub, because it was below par, it can't get away with it.
Higher pop, sure its bloody free. But a higher turn over rate, EAware mentioned in a investors call that most of there cartel items where being purchased by sub players, then the free to play player base.
I guess GW2 is a great example of this......oh wait its really not.
If i remember correctly Immortals guilds had something like 200 players in the first week or so and after the first month ended up with around 50, now i don't have a clue on there numbers.
LoL a completely free game with a cash shop, has the most toxic and aggressive community ever created. Its horrible.
I completely agree.
Because the GAME was below par as you put it, if the game was above par then the sub would have been fine.
You need to separate this delusion you have with a failing game and a sub payment model. A game fails because its crap, not because of the sub. The sub is generally a sign of a high quality product and if its not, it fails. But that is not the fault of the sub model, its the fault of the game.
So i bet the first thing people would do would be to go to land marks from previous games. Has anyone been and how do they compare to the original games. More interestingly are the developers going to transfer the quests from the old games into the MMO? Would be awesome to play Morrowind again with modern graphics and full speech. I know you can make the graphics much better in Morrowind but the lack of speech made me lose interest
Landmarks maybe, but most of the quests in single player games do not translate well to an MMO environment. I imagine you are just going to see passing lore references and similar environments and creatures populating areas from the single player titles.
Soldato
The quality of people that play F2P is a big enough reason to justify a monthly charge.
GW2 was B2P but apart from some half arsed living story, the game is pretty much the same as it was a year ago. Out of all the people i played GW2 with only about 10% or less still play it, the rest got bored.
GW2 was B2P but apart from some half arsed living story, the game is pretty much the same as it was a year ago. Out of all the people i played GW2 with only about 10% or less still play it, the rest got bored.
Soldato
Oh please, so now we're going on the assumption that all F2P games are sub par, otherwise they would charge a monthly fee if they could? That's ridiculous and you know it. F2P market for games is booming, and there is a reason for this. The P2P model is frowned upon by gamers now-a-days, you may not agree with that, or like it, but it's true. If a game is P2P it will instantly turn off probably over half of the potential customers before they even try or look at the game until the game has been out for x amount of time and is proven to them to be worth their money.
I'll explain why the P2P model doesn't work anymore:
If someone likes MMO games, they have undoubtedly played WoW at some point in time. Any prospecting MMO players will instantly try and compare WoW to the new MMO they want to play, this means they half expect that level of content in the game, even if the game has just been released. There is no way by any stretch of the imagination that any new game will be able to match WoW's content, updates or anything else, because it's had years of development and an absolutely massive budget. People try a P2P game, see that compared to WoW it doesn't deliver the same amount of content or they get "bored" and cancel their sub. Since that was the developers only source of income it's instantly been cut, players see cries of other players and stop their sub "until the game is fixed" and so begins a snowball of quitters, soon the amount of active players drops by half, or even more. When the income from players is cut, the developers can't afford to keep going with a game, no-one else is going to sub into a game which has nothing to do, and the player base falls lower, and lower, and lower.. The updates slow down, everything grinds to a halt which makes more people quit and the game dies.
F2P games don't have this problem, because they're free, the high turn-over rate always introduces more people into the community so it doesn't feel like it's dying a slow, painful death. The freemium items will be bought by the hardcore which can sometimes be £100's each month, and new prospective players always have potential of buying items in the store. It also has the benefit that people will overlook the content because "it's free" and keep playing waiting for updates.
The main way to keep MMO players happy is to not only give them new content, but is also to keep their communities strong, once people sense the communities are dying, then that's it, game over. But there are plenty of good quality, F2P games which are a great success because they've embraced the change in the market. P2P is just not sustainable any longer, and it will take a truly impeccable game to change peoples minds.
I can't fathom how you can't see how the payment model of a game doesn't have an impact of its success, that is one of the biggest factors which drives people into games and keeps the communities alive.
Also just a note, don't compare LoL to an MMO, I've said it many times, MOBA communities are the absolute scummiest you could possibly see, it doesn't matter if they pay for the game or it's free, they're terrible regardless.
Before Titan was cancelled/delayed/whatever one of the strong rumors was that it would be a f2p model, I wonder what they would have done to Latex's brain.
Unfortunately, trying to get him to see sense is impossible as he keeps going round and round his circular argument 'f2p is evil, f2p is evil, f2p is evil'
Unfortunately, trying to get him to see sense is impossible as he keeps going round and round his circular argument 'f2p is evil, f2p is evil, f2p is evil'
Soldato
You both have good points, but he does understand that in terms of financial success, some failed in making the game worth paying for.
I'm not saying it as if it's black and white either, there are so many reasons as to why.
The fact that going from Subscription based to F2P says a lot, they failed in grabbing the players to pay for something, people vote with their wallets.
So the easy choice is to appeal to the nature of most people, vanity - shortcuts, useless junk. Just like people like to spend money hand over fist for designer products or luxuries, the same can be said for people in games.
It's the sole reason F2P works and from what I've personally seen from people I know, they end up spending more in F2P cash shops than if they just paid a sub.
Though, the downsides of sub I see are the "time not played is wasted money" side of things, I don't mind paying if I like the game, chances are if I won't pay a sub for it I won't even play it F2P - and when I want to play MMOs I end up wanting restrictions removed and to go end game, which F2P penalises by having to spend more cash to carry on than just throwing a tenner at it.
I know people who've spent more than a sub just to change name, or buy social armour, or other such. Don't ever think F2P works because of anything else.
It's easier to get money out of people once they've tasted the game for free with small, cheap purchases.
But F2P is great to demo games and like in swtor for example, level up without spending a penny, then subbing for end game.
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Soldato
Err no. I know quite a few who started playing pre-WoW and never touched this ****. Me included.
As for the P2P vs F2P, seems the argument isn't if TESO is a good game, but why is has a sub?
Still none answered to my question.
There are dozens of F2P out there, go play them. Why you do not leave us alone to have a good P2P game? Maybe because actually all F2P aren't that good?
And definitely the game going to get killed, if they make it F2P. Because I foresee all mining & chest nodes to be camped by F2P farmer bots selling for real money the iron ingots, without contributing to the game, other than being a cancer.
Soldato
My take on sub based games are quite simple. If the game is very well constructed has good amount of content including end game AND keep the updates rolling. I am more than willing to pay a sub.
Its why I never questioned playing a sub for WoW before. It’s not because I was loyal, it was simply that it was (for me) the best MMO experience I have had. Blizzard have always kept adding new content (for better or for worse) and kept ironing bugs out rather rapidly.
If a company is willing to put the time into releasing a game that is actually ready for release and include the community keep you subscribers updated. Let them know of planned updates and bug fixes and actually implement them. That is the day another company will get my money on a sub based game.
SWTOR was pretty good at release, the questing and story has been one of the best within an MMO imo. But it failed because of bugs, lack of end game content and the developer just not sticking to their promises. "we are planning to fix X bug" ..... 4 months later still not fixed. It's a lack of respect for your player base if you do things like that you are going to lose people. That all said SWTOR is actually a pretty darn good game now If they had only waited until they had full implementation of things like the Legacy system and made sure they ironed as much of the bugs as possible before release it might have kept a fair amount of its subscribers. But alas the release (first impressions) are what stick to most people’s minds. “SWTOR was turd on release so it must still be turd now”.....
That’s not to say F2P models cannot be good. Marvel Heroes for example I think is amazing. The purchases are mainly cosmetic apart from the characters, but then you can buy these things in game. So in theory you do not need to spend any money at all. Content is constantly being updated and there is already quite a lot of content there to do. Not to mention the vast array of characters to play. I also think the devs and the community in Marvel Heroes is really good. But then again Marvel Heroes is not an "a-typical" MMO.
Its why I never questioned playing a sub for WoW before. It’s not because I was loyal, it was simply that it was (for me) the best MMO experience I have had. Blizzard have always kept adding new content (for better or for worse) and kept ironing bugs out rather rapidly.
If a company is willing to put the time into releasing a game that is actually ready for release and include the community keep you subscribers updated. Let them know of planned updates and bug fixes and actually implement them. That is the day another company will get my money on a sub based game.
SWTOR was pretty good at release, the questing and story has been one of the best within an MMO imo. But it failed because of bugs, lack of end game content and the developer just not sticking to their promises. "we are planning to fix X bug" ..... 4 months later still not fixed. It's a lack of respect for your player base if you do things like that you are going to lose people. That all said SWTOR is actually a pretty darn good game now
If they had only waited until they had full implementation of things like the Legacy system and made sure they ironed as much of the bugs as possible before release it might have kept a fair amount of its subscribers. But alas the release (first impressions) are what stick to most people’s minds. “SWTOR was turd on release so it must still be turd now”.....That’s not to say F2P models cannot be good. Marvel Heroes for example I think is amazing. The purchases are mainly cosmetic apart from the characters, but then you can buy these things in game. So in theory you do not need to spend any money at all. Content is constantly being updated and there is already quite a lot of content there to do. Not to mention the vast array of characters to play. I also think the devs and the community in Marvel Heroes is really good. But then again Marvel Heroes is not an "a-typical" MMO.
