Deathlike, on 18 March 2016 - 03:53 PM, said:
While in a sense true.. on the other hand, it's also false.
If any game that is F2P or whatever decided "we need to stop active development for a year, in order to provide you a better/new game after that period" (servers would still be up of course), the question you would ask yourself is this... would that game survive?
In the case of MWO, the answer is NO.
There are many games... including F2P games that can last such a transition. Even a game as popular as Counterstrike (classic) has survived that.. sure it won't have the playerbase than its more popular/updated version, but there would be people and a community to keep things alive... however faint that may be.
For this game, you would literally see people disappear.. and while it won't be the majority... just understand that this game for many of its veterans plays very much the same ultimately as it did back in Beta and having an already crippled CW that still has yet to have actual information (why this has escaped the more recent town halls is amazing to me) and by the time we'll get it like we did Domination... I'm not sure you can continue to give PGI the benefit of the doubt when it took literally a year after UI 2.0 to acknowledge the mechlab needed to stop being complete garbage.
Ironically, you mentioned Path of Exile in your example... and when I don't play MWO.. I play it almost religiously (and it's not even my main game, which MWO happens to be). If the devs doing POE decided to do what I was proposing (1 year of no updates for an engine upgrade)... while I wouldn't be playing at the same rate (because it's all about the leagues), I would have no problem amusing myself playing in the base game, knowing that there will be no further content. The game would still be "complete" despite having obvious missing lore elements/conclusions, but the game is fully functional... and wouldn't be considered "a beta" like MWO would be to many people still playing it. People would still be throwing money at it.
I don't see people throwing money at this game even if you trusted PGI or guaranteed that after a year that a "miracle engine update" would somehow save this game while little to no progress of existing content (like actually improving gamemodes and CW) would even keep this sieve operational. It's unrealistic an expectation.
There's so much to fix in this game that goes beyond the obvious gripes... that expecting greatness when consistent mediocrity is provided in return is lunacy.
POE should be what every other rpg f2p should look up to. FPS f2p games can without a doubt take a few hints from them BUT they are so different you can't completely compare both. POE is a role playing game with solo/coop rather than a multiplayer game. POE has a story so you can call it finished at any point and no one will refute that. POE also has lots of content but it's a hell lot easier to create content when all you have to do is write a story and create items that are forever stronger. I do get tired of that much more than a fps that i can play obsessively for much longer periods of time but leagues can get me interested for a few months at times. RPGs nature mean anyone can play the game again completely differently and for different reason because rpgs are like that and you can get invested in them differently than in a fps.
POE also give all it's game content for free, you only pay for vanity items, visual customisation and storage space and if you really wanted you could create alt account for free and never spend a dime and still play THE WHOLE GAME. If you had to pay for each class and then pay for each ascendancy class the game would be in a state similar to MWO but
you wouldnt notice because it's not multiplayer and you don't need anyone to play. If you were to create multiple account in mwo to use the rookie cash to get mech faster you wouldnt be able to trade gear between them.
Whether i like it or not, MWO can be considered complete in this state because it's a fps, it has lots of maps and more battlemech anyone sane can hope to own and actually play and enjoy them. But it never will be complete because you cant expect people to keep playing a fps if new things arent implemented every 6 months so in that sense it's not complete. Now if those new things always cost lot's of money it's going to get harder and less interesting for anyone new to join because they will be staring at a mountain of macro-transaction. Then the fans are also going to get burned out and eventually you are going to be left with the "gota catch them all" crowd.
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