On last week's episode of The Multiverse (where they also gave me a rather generous shout-out, thanks guys), Riknas' rant focuses on unknown free to play developers. As he says, some of the smaller - and most successful - free to play games are being made by studios that no one has heard of. Chris adds that, for players, supporting studios that we haven't heard of is the only way to drive real change. I don't disagree with either sentiment, but allow me to play devil's advocate.
Over the weekend, I got an out-of-the-blue apology email from a longtime commenter who felt in hindsight that he'd given me too much of a hard time for my take on his favorite MMO. The email said that he felt that defending the game against blog comments was necessary - i.e. that, if untrue claims were not countered, they could drive off new players and ultimately hurt the success of the game and its ability to continue. Personally, I don't think that any such apology is really needed - comes with the territory of expressing an opinion, especially if you're brave/foolish enough to play as many games as I do. It does drive home the point that the perceived stakes in the word of mouth business can be high. But is that really true?
Beyond the reach of Grassroots?
For those of us who aren't Curt Schilling, the fact is that our individual contributions don't make all that much of a difference in the fate of a game. (Schilling, incidentally, sounds like he's having a bit of buyer's remorse about having tied most of his net worth to his new studio.) A few players here or there, or even all of their friends, aren't going to make or break the success of a game with a multi-million dollar budget (that is to say, almost any game that could credibly deliver "massively multiplayer") in the short to medium term. The product either does or does not deliver, and the majority are going to base their payment decisions on that truth, rather than any matter of principle word of mouth crusades.
The paradox with supporting the studio that no one has heard of is that there is a factor that is correlated to whether the game can deliver - its development budget. No one is that worried about the mystery fourth Blizzard project, the supposed EQ3 at SOE, or the mystery possibly-Harry-Potter project at Turbine because these companies have the money to finish the development job. When you look at some studio that has yet to deliver a working product, like, say, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment or Flagship Studios, it turns out that neither had the resources to actually produce the promised games.
CME's situation was so dire that they went under without ever launching their MMO (though they did try a non-MMO prototype that I'm gathering did not fare so well from the lack of fanfare). Hellgate's legendary launch failure brought down the studio, complete with the more promising Mythos project. Any additional funds that a player sent in the direction of those studios (e.g. purchasing additional copies just to support what the devs were doing) would have ended up in the pockets of creditors when the shops went under.
Is success pre-determined?
So here's a question - when we see a game that launches big and flames out - like, say, Warhammer or the two Cryptic games - versus a game that launches small and builds on positive buzz - perhaps Eve, Wizard 101, Runes of Magic, etc - can we really credit the word of mouth with that success? Or is the positive word of mouth just another effect caused by the games' success? Clearly, you can create a PR disaster bad enough to affect your reputation, but I'm less convinced that the effect in the opposite direction works enough to change outcomes.
Games live and die on their quality, and most of the work on that front isn't really something that can be patched in later because subscription numbers were 10% higher than expected.
Showing posts with label Stargate Worlds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stargate Worlds. Show all posts
Monday, April 12, 2010
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Stargate: Torchlight, the latest solo prototype for an MMORPG
Various sources are reporting that Stargate Worlds will be a single player game before it's an MMORPG. We've already seen one single player Stargate game fail to advance to market after having a prototype that was good enough to use on an episode of the show, but it seems that Cheyenne Mountain has a better chance of pulling off a single player game than an MMORPG given their funding situation.
At this point, I guess we can say that pulling a Torchlight is a legitimate business model - build the game engine first and use the cash from that to finance the network code, testing, and larger amounts of content that players expect in an MMO. The production values on the modern MMORPG are becoming large enough that this may be the only way for a start-up to get into the genre.
That said, it will be interesting to see whether the Torchlight MMO, and Stargate Worlds if it ever happens, will be influenced by having begun their lives as solo games. Will the engine work with large numbers of players, or will there need to be Guild Wars style single party instances? Fans of the single player version are going to be amongst the most likely customers for the MMO, so developers are almost certainly going to be pressured to keep the games solo-friendly at precisely the time when there's real room in the genre for games to hit the non-solo niche. In the end, this development model may have more impact on the end products that anyone realizes at the moment.
(Ironically, Massively has an interview with Runic Games on their work with Torchlight and its MMO offspring just as another studio emulates their business model, albeit as a last resort.)
At this point, I guess we can say that pulling a Torchlight is a legitimate business model - build the game engine first and use the cash from that to finance the network code, testing, and larger amounts of content that players expect in an MMO. The production values on the modern MMORPG are becoming large enough that this may be the only way for a start-up to get into the genre.
That said, it will be interesting to see whether the Torchlight MMO, and Stargate Worlds if it ever happens, will be influenced by having begun their lives as solo games. Will the engine work with large numbers of players, or will there need to be Guild Wars style single party instances? Fans of the single player version are going to be amongst the most likely customers for the MMO, so developers are almost certainly going to be pressured to keep the games solo-friendly at precisely the time when there's real room in the genre for games to hit the non-solo niche. In the end, this development model may have more impact on the end products that anyone realizes at the moment.
(Ironically, Massively has an interview with Runic Games on their work with Torchlight and its MMO offspring just as another studio emulates their business model, albeit as a last resort.)
Monday, September 1, 2008
Why push unfinished content live at launch?
Massively reports that Stargate Worlds will increase their level cap every three months as they roll out episodic content. This exact system probably wouldn't fly in a traditional MMORPG, which tend more towards large chunks of new content at once and more stability at a given level cap for longer. Still, this got me thinking; why is it that, even as developers work insane crunch time, cut a variety of features, and generally launch unfinished, modern MMORPG's insist on launching with their final level cap? Here is a not-so brief case study:
World of Warcraft
WoW launched with more solo PVE content than any other MMORPG that had come before it, including enough material to solo to the level cap. At the same time, it's very clear where the polish lies; in the early game, to impress reviewers and new players, and towards the end, where new dungeons were added in the 50+ range, other content was revamped (e.g. Silithus for the level 58+ crowd).
It's not informative to directly compare the content in the 20-58 area to the 58+ content in the expansion; obviously they had a more mature engine with more features, and more experience making interesting quests. However, there's a real drop in quality there, and it is no longer time efficient for Blizzard to go back and address it now that many players are butting their heads against a level 70 cap. Instead of re-doing the content (which, again, would be time that would never be appreciated by players who have all the alts they want), Blizzard has simply helped players bypass it with faster leveling and better loot.
What if the game had launched with a level cap of 40, and an "endgame" of the Scarlet Monastery? One could picture moving the plot from Strath Live to a raid wing, and patching in zones and level cap increases over time. Perhaps you could have an event where the Argent Dawn mounts an offensive at the Bulwark and Chillwind Camp to break through Scourge defenses and open up the Plaguelands. Of course, you'd have to figure out how to deal with players who prefer raiding and PVP (both of which are disrupted by raising the level cap, though PVP was non-existent at WoW's launch and the raid game really wasn't tested much in beta). There's also the issue of crowding into the new zones as they open. On the other hand, there is time to clear each round of instances as they open up, and balance is easier with fewer levels and skills.
Lord of the Rings Online
I've blogged in the past about how LOTRO suffered from not having enough content at launch. Their level 1-15 experience (available in open beta and widely played by pre-order customers, reviewers, and the general public) was as good as any MMORPG out there, including WoW. The content was not quite as good, but functional from there until level 30 or so of their level 50 launch cap. Soloing past level 30 was a nightmare until the first content update, a month and a half after launch, patched in a crucial missing zone. The level 40+ content was so obviously last-minute placeholder junk that they spent the rest of their first year live gutting and replacing the contents of one of the two zones for level 40+ characters, expanding the other by a good 50%, and adding an entire third zone for the 40-50 crowd around the game's 1-year mark. By the time they'd finished the job, many of us had canceled and gone back to WoW.
What if the game had launched with the level 1-30 content? Instead of putting together boring, grindy and uninteresting junk (e.g. killing generic boars in Angmar, home of the Dreaded Witch King), they could have focused on finishing the stuff players were actually going to encounter first. They could easily have sealed off Angmar (with an event to open it later) and the area east of the Ford of Bruien (say that the flood that killed the Nazgul's horses made the area temporarily impassible). The first content patch could have carried the story onto Rivendell, making it highly anticipated. From there they could have expanded north into the Misty Mountains and so on, finally ending up in Angmar (seemingly the logical place for the game's first story arc to end).
Age of Conan
I've never played this game, so I'll limit my comments to the observation that many people claimed that there simply wasn't enough stuff to do past level 30 or so (which was, no coincidence, further than reviewers were likely to play the game before posting their comments).
Hellgate: London
Well, the devs didn't have more time, and they apparently didn't do much planning with the time they had. The business model (free to play base game, subscribe for perks and new content to be specified at a later date) was not a good idea. Still, could this thing really have been WORSE if they'd launched with some of the current content, perhaps a lower box price, and immediate, documented plans for X money on Y date (instead of the nebulous monthly fee that is charged whether or not anything new is added) gets you the next Act?
Warhammer Online
This game isn't out yet, and there are limits to how much anyone can say on the topic of its endgame since the few closed beta testers that have seen it are still gagged with an NDA. We can, however, say that the devs decided to cut 4 of the planned 24 classes along with four of the six capitol cities. Ironically, this brings Warhammer closer to following my advice.
Most games have all their classes in place for launch. When there is a need to balance the classes, they have to go in and mess with players' live characters. Adding in multiple classes after the game has gone live means that they can balance the existing classes against the NEW classes. For example, if it turns out that tanks are just too hard to kill, the new classes can feature armor penetration and/or debuffs that reduce healing. That's definitely more fun than taking existing classes and nerfing them, while the actually unfinished classes cry in a corner somewhere because they aren't getting the attention they need.
Obviously, Warhammer can get away with this more easily than, say, WoW would be able to; Warhammer still has a lot of classes, and players will spend the majority of their time fighting other players (who will learn to react to new classes) instead of raid bosses (who would need to be re-programmed and balanced to react to new classes). Still, it's better to launch with the classes that are finished than to launch with more classes that require major fixing.
What does this all mean?
To sum up my little tour of current MMORPG's, it seems that developers are more concerned with the APPEARANCE of the game being finished (look, it's technically possible to reach the level cap!) than with the REALITY of whether the gameplay is ready to go. If the game isn't a total failure, they can white-wash the early levels and hope that they will get to the later stuff before people get there, realize the game just isn't done, and quit.
The thing is, let's say you did set your level cap at 30 out of 50 for launch. Some of your players aren't even going to get to level 30 before you finish the content through to level 40. Sure, it might be temporarily annoying for the rest of the gang to be stuck at a level cap, but would people really prefer to push forward into mediocre content? Personally, if it's a game that I like and am confident that I will continue playing, I will be happy to try out whatever the devs have provided (e.g. rep grinds, PVP, group content, fishing) while camped at the level cap. If I haven't liked the game, in particular the part of the game I played MOST RECENTLY since that's freshest in my mind, I'm just going to cancel.
Now sure, there are some downsides. When you're raising the level cap repeatedly in a non-instanced world, you're going to get a lot of crowding every time a new area opens up. In a game with WoW-style item inflation, you're also going to have to offer cosmetic rewards that stays with a character (e.g. titles for killing a level 40 raid boss with no characters above level 40 in the raid), because gear rewards are going to be diminished in value with each increase to the level cap.
And, finally, there is the PR issue of not making it look like you launched your game half-finished at full price. Perhaps a decreased price for the initial box might help off-set that part, while simultaneously reducing the entry barrier for purchasing an MMORPG account that you can't resell on the local used game market if you hate it. Also, a LOT of the work that goes into making a good game is infrastructure stuff (the game engine, server code, network protocols etc) that is going to have to be done upfront regardless of content; players WILL notice if companies respond to a lowered bar by lowering their own standards even further. The real money in the subscription MMORPG market is in the subscription fee, so releasing a bad product is shooting yourself in the foot.
Bottom line? Whatever you're releasing, make sure it's good.
World of Warcraft
WoW launched with more solo PVE content than any other MMORPG that had come before it, including enough material to solo to the level cap. At the same time, it's very clear where the polish lies; in the early game, to impress reviewers and new players, and towards the end, where new dungeons were added in the 50+ range, other content was revamped (e.g. Silithus for the level 58+ crowd).
It's not informative to directly compare the content in the 20-58 area to the 58+ content in the expansion; obviously they had a more mature engine with more features, and more experience making interesting quests. However, there's a real drop in quality there, and it is no longer time efficient for Blizzard to go back and address it now that many players are butting their heads against a level 70 cap. Instead of re-doing the content (which, again, would be time that would never be appreciated by players who have all the alts they want), Blizzard has simply helped players bypass it with faster leveling and better loot.
What if the game had launched with a level cap of 40, and an "endgame" of the Scarlet Monastery? One could picture moving the plot from Strath Live to a raid wing, and patching in zones and level cap increases over time. Perhaps you could have an event where the Argent Dawn mounts an offensive at the Bulwark and Chillwind Camp to break through Scourge defenses and open up the Plaguelands. Of course, you'd have to figure out how to deal with players who prefer raiding and PVP (both of which are disrupted by raising the level cap, though PVP was non-existent at WoW's launch and the raid game really wasn't tested much in beta). There's also the issue of crowding into the new zones as they open. On the other hand, there is time to clear each round of instances as they open up, and balance is easier with fewer levels and skills.
Lord of the Rings Online
I've blogged in the past about how LOTRO suffered from not having enough content at launch. Their level 1-15 experience (available in open beta and widely played by pre-order customers, reviewers, and the general public) was as good as any MMORPG out there, including WoW. The content was not quite as good, but functional from there until level 30 or so of their level 50 launch cap. Soloing past level 30 was a nightmare until the first content update, a month and a half after launch, patched in a crucial missing zone. The level 40+ content was so obviously last-minute placeholder junk that they spent the rest of their first year live gutting and replacing the contents of one of the two zones for level 40+ characters, expanding the other by a good 50%, and adding an entire third zone for the 40-50 crowd around the game's 1-year mark. By the time they'd finished the job, many of us had canceled and gone back to WoW.
What if the game had launched with the level 1-30 content? Instead of putting together boring, grindy and uninteresting junk (e.g. killing generic boars in Angmar, home of the Dreaded Witch King), they could have focused on finishing the stuff players were actually going to encounter first. They could easily have sealed off Angmar (with an event to open it later) and the area east of the Ford of Bruien (say that the flood that killed the Nazgul's horses made the area temporarily impassible). The first content patch could have carried the story onto Rivendell, making it highly anticipated. From there they could have expanded north into the Misty Mountains and so on, finally ending up in Angmar (seemingly the logical place for the game's first story arc to end).
Age of Conan
I've never played this game, so I'll limit my comments to the observation that many people claimed that there simply wasn't enough stuff to do past level 30 or so (which was, no coincidence, further than reviewers were likely to play the game before posting their comments).
Hellgate: London
Well, the devs didn't have more time, and they apparently didn't do much planning with the time they had. The business model (free to play base game, subscribe for perks and new content to be specified at a later date) was not a good idea. Still, could this thing really have been WORSE if they'd launched with some of the current content, perhaps a lower box price, and immediate, documented plans for X money on Y date (instead of the nebulous monthly fee that is charged whether or not anything new is added) gets you the next Act?
Warhammer Online
This game isn't out yet, and there are limits to how much anyone can say on the topic of its endgame since the few closed beta testers that have seen it are still gagged with an NDA. We can, however, say that the devs decided to cut 4 of the planned 24 classes along with four of the six capitol cities. Ironically, this brings Warhammer closer to following my advice.
Most games have all their classes in place for launch. When there is a need to balance the classes, they have to go in and mess with players' live characters. Adding in multiple classes after the game has gone live means that they can balance the existing classes against the NEW classes. For example, if it turns out that tanks are just too hard to kill, the new classes can feature armor penetration and/or debuffs that reduce healing. That's definitely more fun than taking existing classes and nerfing them, while the actually unfinished classes cry in a corner somewhere because they aren't getting the attention they need.
Obviously, Warhammer can get away with this more easily than, say, WoW would be able to; Warhammer still has a lot of classes, and players will spend the majority of their time fighting other players (who will learn to react to new classes) instead of raid bosses (who would need to be re-programmed and balanced to react to new classes). Still, it's better to launch with the classes that are finished than to launch with more classes that require major fixing.
What does this all mean?
To sum up my little tour of current MMORPG's, it seems that developers are more concerned with the APPEARANCE of the game being finished (look, it's technically possible to reach the level cap!) than with the REALITY of whether the gameplay is ready to go. If the game isn't a total failure, they can white-wash the early levels and hope that they will get to the later stuff before people get there, realize the game just isn't done, and quit.
The thing is, let's say you did set your level cap at 30 out of 50 for launch. Some of your players aren't even going to get to level 30 before you finish the content through to level 40. Sure, it might be temporarily annoying for the rest of the gang to be stuck at a level cap, but would people really prefer to push forward into mediocre content? Personally, if it's a game that I like and am confident that I will continue playing, I will be happy to try out whatever the devs have provided (e.g. rep grinds, PVP, group content, fishing) while camped at the level cap. If I haven't liked the game, in particular the part of the game I played MOST RECENTLY since that's freshest in my mind, I'm just going to cancel.
Now sure, there are some downsides. When you're raising the level cap repeatedly in a non-instanced world, you're going to get a lot of crowding every time a new area opens up. In a game with WoW-style item inflation, you're also going to have to offer cosmetic rewards that stays with a character (e.g. titles for killing a level 40 raid boss with no characters above level 40 in the raid), because gear rewards are going to be diminished in value with each increase to the level cap.
And, finally, there is the PR issue of not making it look like you launched your game half-finished at full price. Perhaps a decreased price for the initial box might help off-set that part, while simultaneously reducing the entry barrier for purchasing an MMORPG account that you can't resell on the local used game market if you hate it. Also, a LOT of the work that goes into making a good game is infrastructure stuff (the game engine, server code, network protocols etc) that is going to have to be done upfront regardless of content; players WILL notice if companies respond to a lowered bar by lowering their own standards even further. The real money in the subscription MMORPG market is in the subscription fee, so releasing a bad product is shooting yourself in the foot.
Bottom line? Whatever you're releasing, make sure it's good.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Calling Technical Support
Massively just posted an interview with Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment about the forthcoming MMORPG Stargate Worlds, based on the TV series(es). For those of you who haven't watched the shows, the adventuring team typically includes a scientist and someone who can interpret the local/alien languages and cultures. Of course, being a TV show with a regular weekly cast, these irreplaceable technical experts are handed guns and expected to shoot enemies, but I digress.
(Yes, the show's premise is that the government is keeping a Stargate capable of interstellar travel hidden in an Air Force base under Cheyenne Mountain, and that this gate has been used to fight wars against the Aliens who built the pyramids. Still, I draw the credibility line at the point where the US Air Force is organizing a commando mission vital to Earth's survival, they for some reason refuse to send any more than four people, and they pick the world expert in Stargate technology and the world expert in Alien languages and culture over, I dunno, expendable people who shoot guns for a living. You'd think that I would have gotten used to this aspect of the show after 14 seasons of SG-1 and Atlantis. ;))
Anyways, the MMORPG will include Scientist and Archaeologist as playable character classes. Though they supposedly will be able to play a role in firefights (I'd sigh, but, again, this is consistent with the source material), they're also going to be needed to deal with technical challenges (the example used in the interview is a minigame to open a locked door). Non-combat character classes aren't entirely new to MMORPG's, but what happens if you're in the enemy mothership and you hit a locked door but you don't have a scientist in your party? Apparently you can call other players, who might be back at home base or otherwise not where you are at, and have them hack the door for you remotely (they even get the exp for this).
This is an intriguing concept. I won't go so far as to call it a good idea until I see it in action; the practical consequence might be that everyone has a scientist alt parked in the base so that one member of the party can quick log their alt to solve the puzzles before switching back to the actual character on the mission. There are also various social implications to consider; will players feel that this is a service being provided where in-game currency changes hands (and, if so, who gets paid, the person who gets to go through the now-open door, or the guy who got free exp sitting in town)? Will scientists and archaeologists ever get groups, or will min-maxers prefer to bring all combat specialists, secure in the knowledge that they can call in tech support later? Will there be drama in PUG's over whose alt gets the door-opening exp?
All of which brings me back to my initial comment: "intriguing". In World of Warcraft, there isn't really any way to justify having a Rogue in Ironforge tell you how to pick the lock to Blackrock Spire over the out-of-character chat channel. As a result, there are serious limits to how many locked doors there can be in the world (and all of them have to have keys that can, conveniently enough, be obtained by killing someone or doing something outside of the locked door), how many traps there can be in the dungeon etc. In a modern setting such as Stargate, communications with your home base would actually exist in game, and you could very well take a picture of the Ancient writings you need translated or hook up a laptop with a modem to the door and have someone at the base take care of that for you. (Again, technically this isn't consistent with the setting, because that expert should be following you around where they could be shot and killed, but these are allowances we make for games. ;)) As a result, Stargate Worlds can have puzzles anywhere they feel the puzzles would be required, rather than only in places where they are sure someone present can solve them.
This game has a ways to go, and I will be shocked if they make their supposed 2008 launch date (the interview hints that they know this as well), but it's interesting to hear that someone somewhere is thinking a bit outside the box.
(Yes, the show's premise is that the government is keeping a Stargate capable of interstellar travel hidden in an Air Force base under Cheyenne Mountain, and that this gate has been used to fight wars against the Aliens who built the pyramids. Still, I draw the credibility line at the point where the US Air Force is organizing a commando mission vital to Earth's survival, they for some reason refuse to send any more than four people, and they pick the world expert in Stargate technology and the world expert in Alien languages and culture over, I dunno, expendable people who shoot guns for a living. You'd think that I would have gotten used to this aspect of the show after 14 seasons of SG-1 and Atlantis. ;))
Anyways, the MMORPG will include Scientist and Archaeologist as playable character classes. Though they supposedly will be able to play a role in firefights (I'd sigh, but, again, this is consistent with the source material), they're also going to be needed to deal with technical challenges (the example used in the interview is a minigame to open a locked door). Non-combat character classes aren't entirely new to MMORPG's, but what happens if you're in the enemy mothership and you hit a locked door but you don't have a scientist in your party? Apparently you can call other players, who might be back at home base or otherwise not where you are at, and have them hack the door for you remotely (they even get the exp for this).
This is an intriguing concept. I won't go so far as to call it a good idea until I see it in action; the practical consequence might be that everyone has a scientist alt parked in the base so that one member of the party can quick log their alt to solve the puzzles before switching back to the actual character on the mission. There are also various social implications to consider; will players feel that this is a service being provided where in-game currency changes hands (and, if so, who gets paid, the person who gets to go through the now-open door, or the guy who got free exp sitting in town)? Will scientists and archaeologists ever get groups, or will min-maxers prefer to bring all combat specialists, secure in the knowledge that they can call in tech support later? Will there be drama in PUG's over whose alt gets the door-opening exp?
All of which brings me back to my initial comment: "intriguing". In World of Warcraft, there isn't really any way to justify having a Rogue in Ironforge tell you how to pick the lock to Blackrock Spire over the out-of-character chat channel. As a result, there are serious limits to how many locked doors there can be in the world (and all of them have to have keys that can, conveniently enough, be obtained by killing someone or doing something outside of the locked door), how many traps there can be in the dungeon etc. In a modern setting such as Stargate, communications with your home base would actually exist in game, and you could very well take a picture of the Ancient writings you need translated or hook up a laptop with a modem to the door and have someone at the base take care of that for you. (Again, technically this isn't consistent with the setting, because that expert should be following you around where they could be shot and killed, but these are allowances we make for games. ;)) As a result, Stargate Worlds can have puzzles anywhere they feel the puzzles would be required, rather than only in places where they are sure someone present can solve them.
This game has a ways to go, and I will be shocked if they make their supposed 2008 launch date (the interview hints that they know this as well), but it's interesting to hear that someone somewhere is thinking a bit outside the box.
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