67 replies to this topic

[Xmith]

Ilfi, on 27 December 2018 - 03:21 AM, said:

Not saying the game absolutely needs it, but I am saying the above combination of settings was one of the most popular server types in MechWarrior 3 and 4, if not the most popular. Just seems weird to still not have it as an option in Solaris, and to be forced into team last man standing all the time.

The heat servers were fun as well. Just hardly any around.

HLA servers were just as fun. But the idea dealing out hugh alphas was more enticing in my case. Not to say it was easy. The alphas may have been big, you still had to know how to use it. It really isn't much difference to what we play today in terms of different levels of skill sets.

Another problem with NHUA is the limited use of different weapon types. Players tend to gravitate only to the weapons that will deal the most damage. Most other weapons may never be used because of this.

I doubt armor values would be increased to match the added firepower. Mechs could go down pretty fast. So, that will require, respawns instead.

[Bombast]

Anjian, on 27 December 2018 - 06:05 PM, said:

Rationality of players are not relevant. Games are for the irrational in the first place. Seeking fun is an irrational action.

Everything you just said wasn't worth responding to, but this... this is so dumb I just had to point it out. Seeking entertainment and fun is not an irrational action. Games are not irrational constructs. The only people who would think what you say is true is people who haven't thought about basic biology, animal behavior and Darwinian Evolution since the 8th grade.

[Anjian]

Bombast, on 27 December 2018 - 06:38 PM, said:

Everything you just said wasn't worth responding to, but this... this is so dumb I just had to point it out. Seeking entertainment and fun is not an irrational action. Games are not irrational constructs. The only people who would think what you say is true is people who haven't thought about basic biology, animal behavior and Darwinian Evolution since the 8th grade.

What's irrational is pointing the irrelevance of the behavior of players in relation to the overall success of the game. Maybe the LoL community is a sh*tty community, does not change the fact that LoL is one of the most successful online PvP games out there, that has been well managed, well envisoned, and still going strong year after year. The only thing that can disrupt LoL needs to be a platform disruption event, aka, the recent enormous explosion of mobile MOBAs.

[Bombast]

Anjian, on 27 December 2018 - 06:58 PM, said:

What's irrational is pointing the irrelevance of the behavior of players in relation to the overall success of the game. Maybe the LoL community is a sh*tty community, does not change the fact that LoL is one of the most successful online PvP games out there, that has been well managed, well envisoned, and still going strong year after year. The only thing that can disrupt LoL needs to be a platform disruption event, aka, the recent enormous explosion of mobile MOBAs.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the context in which LoL and DOTA were brought up here.

[Y E O N N E]

Anjian, on 27 December 2018 - 05:51 PM, said:

You jack up the price and less people will play it less.

Strictly speaking, player count is immaterial to experience if you can still consistently get a population to fill a match. Price jacking is also immaterial if people still pay you enough to make the profit you want.

You are trying to make a soft correlation between population and profit out as a concrete link. It is a very strong correlation, but it is not concrete. You can design your monetization model in other ways.

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Less people buying it, means potentially less profit either.

Now there's an honest reply, even if you attempted to bury it.

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There is always a downward pressure for games to cost lower despite the costs of developing the game may have gone higher. That's because of the affordability of the customer, and because of competition.

You do realize that it's up to the producers to shape consumer expectations, yes?

Game developers have, largely, done little to shape consumer expectations in the direction of quality over quantity. Everybody always wants more for less, but people also tend to not know what they want until they get it. Companies like Apple, Ferrari, etc. have made a killing by making things that are incredibly desirable despite them not actually being all that impressive in terms of capability for the price. This extends to name-brand vs. non-name-brand drugs, clothes, and even services (i.e. cellular). People are eminently willing to pay less for more if you make them feel like it's worth it.

If you aren't delivering an experience that users feel justifies the price, they will likely not buy unless you have a cornered market. PGI has a cornered market.

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A product with a higher cost would have to attract customers with more features, better quality and so on. But this requires a higher development cost, which in turns need to be shared to the customer. As costs spiral, the smaller your customer base size will be.

See above.

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The less players it has, the lower the quality of experience as a player.

This only matters for multiplayer games, and even then it does not have to be true. Historically, it hasn't been for other games. Matchmaker and first-party servers are not necessary for a positive experience.

Going back to managing expectations...

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WoW has lasted much longer and it has its ups and downs. Its not a downward spiral, more like a graph that resembles the stock market.

Because they've successfully managed player expectations. It's been down for awhile, with a recent up-swing because Blizzard has been trying things to increase interest.

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Warframe has a graph that goes upward in general trend, with periodic ups and downs.

League of Legends, DoTA2, CSGO, even Pokemon Go has shown sustainable numbers.

CS: GO and Warframe are going strong. Dota 2 is on an overall 2-year decline.

Pokémon Go doesn't even really require other players to deliver most of its entertainment and is not particularly comparable.

[Anjian]

Yeonne Greene, on 27 December 2018 - 07:07 PM, said:

Strictly speaking, player count is immaterial to experience if you can still consistently get a population to fill a match. Price jacking is also immaterial if people still pay you enough to make the profit you want.

And then it matters when you don't get a player population to fill a match.

Player population also matters for the quality of the matches, when you can fill all 24 slots with top league players, instead of a mix of vets and potatoes.

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You are trying to make a soft correlation between population and profit out as a concrete link. It is a very strong correlation, but it is not concrete. You can design your monetization model in other ways.

Nonetheless, there is an indisputable strong correlation compared to none at all.

How are you going to design monetization "other ways" without population? P2Win? Of all monetization efforts, non P2W methods, e.g. cosmetic, are the most sensitive to population. With packaged games, you can't sell higher than the competition and is directly correlated with sales and popularity. Traditional subscription is directly correlated with population.

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Now there's an honest reply, even if you attempted to bury it.

So you are somehow thinking that MWO can get AAA game revenues with the player base it has?

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You do realize that it's up to the producers to shape consumer expectations, yes?

You do realize that the consumers have choices. And with the games industry, there are a lot of choices.

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Game developers have, largely, done little to shape consumer expectations in the direction of quality over quantity. Everybody always wants more for less, but people also tend to not know what they want until they get it. Companies like Apple, Ferrari, etc. have made a killing by making things that are incredibly desirable despite them not actually being all that impressive in terms of capability for the price. This extends to name-brand vs. non-name-brand drugs, clothes, and even services (i.e. cellular). People are eminently willing to pay less for more if you make them feel like it's worth it.

How is this relevant? MWO isn't Apple or Ferrari. It lacks the careful attention to detail that you would expect for a top rated product. It lacks the development dollars to put behind the product or service.

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If you aren't delivering an experience that users feel justifies the price, they will likely not buy unless you have a cornered market. PGI has a cornered market.

What market? The robot shooter market? The vehicular shooter market? If its vehicular shooters, Wargaming has this licked.

The cornered market theory doesn't work because you have a declining player base. Which means the players who played this game are able to find other substitutes, and among them are other vehicular shooter games.

If you want to see what a cornered market looks like, its this game.





Its been able to get away with murder because there is nothing like it in its respective platforms. The difference between something truly able to corner the market is its ability to raise prices and see how much of its player base will remain. MWO cannot afford this risk, because losing even more brings it to non returnable spiral, call it the Point of No Return. War Robots has a large player population, and despite all the competition, it outranks almost everyone but one (Battle of Titans) in sheer quality, and has range of content way superior over all competition. So its literally the Apple of its genre, and ripping off people with the same gusto.

WR does shove dollars into development, refining the app, constantly getting new content that players want them to slow down. The game introduces a new map just for a three day event. A new map for a 3 day event is pretty luxurious.

Of course, nothing stopping players being leaked into PUBG, which is an indication that cornering is never perfect. At least PGI realizes this, which is why they don't act like a monopolist, and you should not act like one when in fact, you don't.

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This only matters for multiplayer games, and even then it does not have to be true. Historically, it hasn't been for other games. Matchmaker and first-party servers are not necessary for a positive experience.

I think you truly underestimate the player queue quality when it comes to matchmaking. Wargaming puts a lot of thought and effort on its player queues and that is an important foundation to their success.

One the other hand, player leakage, thanks to players disgusted with P2W tactics, there is some deterioration in player quality in the lop leagues of War Robots, as lower leagued players are shoved up to face upper league players just to fill the matchmaking. So people do notice that, especially at the high level. Especially at the high level of play, even where the whales are, who in turn will complain, that player experience has dropped which will put the whales one step out of the door.

Edited by Anjian, 27 December 2018 - 07:53 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Anjian, on 27 December 2018 - 07:47 PM, said:

And then it matters when you don't get a player population to fill a match.

If your game is multiplayer-only.

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Player population also matters for the quality of the matches, when you can fill all 24 slots with top league players, instead of a mix of vets and potatoes.

No game ever fills its popular matches with like-rated players, not even something as populous as Overwatch. Across the entire industry, the holy grail of an "adequate matchmaker" remains exactly that. You only ever get properly good match-ups in competitive queues (and often not even then), but competitive dies when the main body that feeds it dies (case in point: MWO...also HotS).

MWO's problems are far deeper than an inadequate matchmaker.

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Nonetheless, there is an indisputable strong correlation compared to none at all.

So there's no correlation between profit and margins? That's an interesting take, good luck convincing anybody on that one.

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How are you going to design monetization "other ways" without population? P2Win? Of all monetization efforts, non P2W methods, e.g. cosmetic, are the most sensitive to population. With packaged games, you can't sell higher than the competition and is directly correlated with sales and popularity. Traditional subscription is directly correlated with population.

Why do I need to spell this out to you?

A game (or any product, really) is more than the sum of its parts. I will pay money for a quality, well-made product that gives me the impression that the money I spent is worth it. I will pay more money for more quality. No quality, no money. I will not pay for earnestly made cheap garbage. You flood the market with garbage, everybody chases the highest-grossing garbage and then eventually they all lose the inevitable race to the bottom. See also: 1983 video game market crash. We're honestly overdue for another one, should've happened 5 years ago.

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So you are somehow thinking that MWO can get AAA game revenues with the player base it has?

I'm not talking about MWO, I'm just calling out your original argument because you are lording around one half of the economic equation as if it is gospel when it is demonstrably not.

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You do realize that the consumers have choices. And with the games industry, there are a lot of choices.

That is not at all a rebuttal to what I said, that is a dodge to avoid addressing the point.

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How is this relevant? MWO isn't Apple or Ferrari. It lacks the careful attention to detail that you would expect for a top rated product. It lacks the development dollars to put behind the product or service.

Dude. That is exactly my point. Re-read what I wrote, re-read this part of your reply, connect the dots, and become enlightened on how you don't need strict quantity of buyers to make a profit.

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What market? The robot shooter market? The vehicular shooter market? If its vehicular shooters, Wargaming has this licked.

They have the MechWarrior market cornered. Whether or not you think that's particularly valuable is immaterial, because the entire point of this debate is that you don't necessarily need a gigantic user base to make money.

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The cornered market theory doesn't work because you have a declining player base. Which means the players who played this game are able to find other substitutes, and among them are other vehicular shooter games.

It does still work there, though, until players eventually feel like they aren't getting what they want out of the game. There is no requirement for it to work indefinitely for it to work at all.

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So its literally the Apple of its genre, and ripping off people with the same gusto.

Apple doesn't have a cornered market for anything except their brand; they offer MacOS as an alternative to Windows and iOS as an alternative to Android. What Apple has that its competitors typically don't is perceived quality and a reserve of positive brand cachet that they continue to draw on even if their products are really quite mediocre.

It is the fact that the brand itself both moves units and increases the margins on those units that is the key and what you seem to be missing.

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WR does shove dollars into development, refining the app, constantly getting new content that players want them to slow down. The game introduces a new map just for a three day event. A new map for a 3 day event is pretty luxurious.

Hey, look, you are making my argument for me again! They are shaping customer expectations, and as long as those expectations are met they aren't hemorrhaging players.

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I think you truly underestimate the player queue quality when it comes to matchmaking. Wargaming puts a lot of thought and effort on its player queues and that is an important foundation to their success.

You missed the point; matchmaking is itself superfluous. You can lean on it, or you can craft your game to not need it. You think Battlefield has a matchmaker? Do you think it has ever had a matchmaker? The game still makes EA plenty of money, even when they completely screw up an entry. It doesn't need one because it gives players of every skill level something to do and ways to feel successful even if they blow at the combat elements.

Game design matters, who knew?

[Anjian]

Yeonne Greene, on 27 December 2018 - 09:46 PM, said:

If your game is multiplayer-only.

Of course. The most popular games right now on PC and mobile are multiplayer.

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No game ever fills its popular matches with like-rated players, not even something as populous as Overwatch. Across the entire industry, the holy grail of an "adequate matchmaker" remains exactly that. You only ever get properly good match-ups in competitive queues (and often not even then), but competitive dies when the main body that feeds it dies (case in point: MWO...also HotS).

Overwatch uses a league system, and no Overwatch will take a long long time before it reaches to the same point as MWO. You should not the two in the same sentence.

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MWO's problems are far deeper than an inadequate matchmaker.

Of course. But all these problems are also interrelated. Bad game leads to small population which leads to bad matchmaking which leads to smaller population which leads to ever less revenue to refine the game further.

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So there's no correlation between profit and margins? That's an interesting take, good luck convincing anybody on that one.

Gross revenue is what you need to look at. Profit goes to the stock holders, while revenue is used to cover development costs, which is used to further improve the game.

Game with poor gross revenue isn't going anywhere further in development.

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Why do I need to spell this out to you?

A game (or any product, really) is more than the sum of its parts. I will pay money for a quality, well-made product that gives me the impression that the money I spent is worth it. I will pay more money for more quality. No quality, no money. I will not pay for earnestly made cheap garbage. You flood the market with garbage, everybody chases the highest-grossing garbage and then eventually they all lose the inevitable race to the bottom. See also: 1983 video game market crash. We're honestly overdue for another one, should've happened 5 years ago.

Let me spell this out to you. You buy whatever you want. But you alone isn't going to make a game survive. And please don't confuse games as a product and as a service. Once you are a massive multiplayer online, you are paying for games as a service. You are not just buying a smartphone, you are also buying the service contract behind it, and the service behind it will matter as much as the product itself.

The game crash is likely expected for the console and the PC side because of stagnation and platform disruption, but don't expect that to the mobile side where the market is growing where it is expected to reach 60% of all total gaming revenue.

Don't expect titles like LoL, WoT or Warframe to crash either. They have strong solid player bases and in the case of games like LoL and DoTA, a solid esports market.

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I'm not talking about MWO, I'm just calling out your original argument because you are lording around one half of the economic equation as if it is gospel when it is demonstrably not.

You keep on trying to disrelate population with a game's fortunes, and you cannot demonstrate that it is not.

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That is not at all a rebuttal to what I said, that is a dodge to avoid addressing the point.

Avoid what point?

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Dude. That is exactly my point. Re-read what I wrote, re-read this part of your reply, connect the dots, and become enlightened on how you don't need strict quantity of buyers to make a profit.

BS. I will call you on that. You do need a good quantity of buyers to make a profit in the first place. And why do you talk about profit? Gross Revenue is what you need to talk about. Profit is the money that goes to the stock holders. This means nothing in terms of development money. Gross Revenue is what is necessary for developing the game further. Profit is the substraction of everything else used to operate the business and is the surplus given to the owners and stockholders. A company might be in the red (Square Enix reported a loss for example of 33 million dollars) but that says nothing about the ton of games it is still developing.

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They have the MechWarrior market cornered. Whether or not you think that's particularly valuable is immaterial, because the entire point of this debate is that you don't necessarily need a gigantic user base to make money.

They have a tiny market cornered. Other people are playing it because they want a robot or a vehicular shooter. You have an IP cornered. You don't have a genre cornered.

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It does still work there, though, until players eventually feel like they aren't getting what they want out of the game. There is no requirement for it to work indefinitely for it to work at all.

A monopolist can dictate prices until the player base is so dissed with it and cannot afford it. I don't think that is the case of MWO. It does not act or price like a monopolist. In fact, its F2P isn't costly and quite affordable.

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Apple doesn't have a cornered market for anything except their brand; they offer MacOS as an alternative to Windows and iOS as an alternative to Android. What Apple has that its competitors typically don't is perceived quality and a reserve of positive brand cachet that they continue to draw on even if their products are really quite mediocre.

Apple has a corner on the perception of quality, until the competitors have raised their own perception, which is happening soon enough. But in the meantime, Apple likes to overcharge, like certain F2P games.

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It is the fact that the brand itself both moves units and increases the margins on those units that is the key and what you seem to be missing.

The brand also has to bring in new players and works hard to bring them in, through advertisement and marketing. Which I have to say is also true to some F2P games, where gross revenue is constantly recycled for both marketing and into development.

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Hey, look, you are making my argument for me again! They are shaping customer expectations, and as long as those expectations are met they aren't hemorrhaging players.

Mobile app companies are more transparent in their revenues due to analytics. WR has certainly lost some, they are way off their peak.

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You missed the point; matchmaking is itself superfluous. You can lean on it, or you can craft your game to not need it. You think Battlefield has a matchmaker? Do you think it has ever had a matchmaker? The game still makes EA plenty of money, even when they completely screw up an entry. It doesn't need one because it gives players of every skill level something to do and ways to feel successful even if they blow at the combat elements.

Game design matters, who knew?

I do believe matchmaking is crucial. There is a difference in experience when you have teams of top players take on each other, than mixed teams with cherries and potatoes.

I don't consider Battlefield or any EA product, as competitive as esports minded games like WoT and LoL. And this is where massive multiplayer games are going.