When There’s Nothing to Lose

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Massively may not be the best place to read about MMO “news” but it tends to have a decent touch on the gaming pulse.  Eliot may not be the strongest writer but he tends to have a more realistic approach on all his posts.  They aren’t optimistic or pessimistic, just grey.

So when he write about the TESO beta being ho hum – adequate but nothing special – the comments start flooding in.  I will say that keeping expectations in check, that TESO isn’t trying to revolutionize the MMO world, just expand on it, is a solid message.  It should temper expectations a bit.

That said, the kicker in all of this is that the NDA is still up for non-gaming press.  Opinion pieces have to be gated by Zenimax/Bethesda before being posted.  Players, in the beta and not, have no such limits and it’s next to impossible to moderate all of them.  You essentially have a forum for 800 people to say whatever they want, semi-anonymously, and no one can really attack or defend any given point with proof.

If you break the NDA, as a gamer, the worse that happens is that your beta access is revoked and likely your TESO account.  If you aren’t planning on playing more beta or getting the game, then there’s absolutely nothing lost.  Those that like the game and want to continue in the beta (or get into more than just weekends) can’t do much without risking getting booted.

That said, TESO apparently is selling well enough.  It’s #2 in the Canadian Amazon listing and #7 in the US.  The value of the latter is questionable if Path of Exile is #1…  Any way you look at it, there are a lot of people with a vested interest in this game.  That’s a lot of potential positive spin.

Skill Gap

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In every game designed, there is always a threshold of skill required to complete a given task.  In PvE games, that bar tends to be rather low as it’s a static bar for all players.  For example, the leveling portion in nearly all MMOs is rather simple and hard to have issue with.  PvE end-game, different story we’ll get into.  PvP games are a different beast as player skill is extremely dynamic and can be influenced by many factors.  I’ll use StarCraft 2 as an example.

SC2 campaign is a PvE single player game, with a relatively low default skill threshold.  Nearly everyone should be able to complete each mission, given enough time.  SC2 vs bots (or training) has a much higher skill level, where your actions per minute (APM) need to be above a certain level to compete – round about 100 or so.  PvP has all sorts of levels of skill but the truly elite are around 400-500 APM.  So think about how people play on the normal campaign and that they’d need to be 4-5x faster in order to be elite.  That’s a skill curve – just with a concentration at the lower end.  You find people at all levels of skill but most are under the 100APM.

Skill gaps occur mostly in PvE content, where there is a gating mechanism of some sort for progress.  Patchwerk in WoW (Vanilla first) was like this, where the only hurdle was getting your DPS number high enough.  Too low of a skilled player (much more so than gear at the time) and you couldn’t progress.  This far, no further.  Oddly enough, later in the same raid we had a second type of skill test.

Heigan was a nightmare for many players as movement was not required by any class other than tanks at the time.  Ranged attackers could rarely move and attack, melee just stuck to a boss’ butt and barely looked around.  This one battle could be completed with absolutely zero DPS skill but needed pretty damn good movement coordination to complete.  Keyboard turners (those that use WASD to move) hit a massive skill wall and progress ended for a while for a lot of people.

I’m not sure if people remember but the Firelands raid had some extremely interesting progress statistics and pushed the launch of LFR.  Most guild cleared the first 2 bosses, then there was a massive drop of progress.  Heroic Ragnaros had a <1% completion rate a full 5 months after being made available.  LFR came out with a super low skill level and today you can clear all of MoP’s content in a week or 2.

RIFT went back to a more aggressive situational awareness, SWTOR did a bit with it but let it drop due to a low top-end skill. FF14 decided that AE attacks were going to be tough again.  A single dragon breath could knock off 90% of your health.  Each Titan battle has a single part of the fight that if not executed properly guarantees death.  I’ve mentioned a few times how I thought that was an ingenious way to retain players but pushing others away.

If the players who reach max level have been through multiple skill trials, then odds are they are more likely to integrate into the high end skilled events.  Quick compare.  My 3 year old could level up to max in WoW.  She would be unable to do anything once there, outside of pet battles.  Assuming ALL skilled gamers have tried WoW by now, the only available new market are people like my daughter.  FF14 my daughter wouldn’t be able to hit level 10.

When I look at TESO and WildStar I really start to wonder.  TESO, in my limited experience and the videos we’ve seen, has a rather low skill level requirement.  PvP is perhaps (hopefully) different.  WildStar however, what with the twitchy OCD mechanics appears to have a rather large skill level requirement from the start.  How this translates to later content is a mystery.  PvP has some interesting implications though, in that understanding circle-strafing is important.  The game really does not seem to favor keyboard turners.

In the end, this would seem to give TESO the larger broad appeal.  Lower skill level means more people can play and progress.  WildStar already turned some people off with the art, and the combat appears to favor an uncommon skill level.  I personally think that the former is not sustainable from a vision/resource perspective, unless they actively communicate their developers intent.  SWTOR is a fairly good example of how this can go wrong.  WildStar, with an admittedly (and oft communicated) focus on a more skilled game, will necessarily attract less people but likely retain more.

But that’s just my opinion.

NDAs vs Betas

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To continue my thread of NDA discussion, and related to the comments those posts generated, a few more thoughts come to mind.  First, a dev quote relating to why more people aren’t in the WildStar beta.

Some quick answers:

a) We’d rather have the game be as ready as possible before most people see it. Now, it’s pretty ready in many ways, but we still have work to do: Overhauling UIs, elder game testing, etc. etc.

b) The pent up demand is pretty extreme, honestly. I won’t mention signup numbers in case we want to do a press release or something, but: Big. We don’t have anything like the hardware ready to handle it yet.

c) We’ll open up more mass exposure and testing during different phases of beta going forwards as well – we need the 24/6* testing everyone’s getting now . Why? So we can have people legitimately make it all the way through the levelling content and test the elder games with context. But not every stage needs to be like that; some will be aimed more at giving people a taste of the game so they can buy it or not with full info.

(*we shut down the servers on Mondays to incent everyone to come talk with devs on the forums)

Still here?  Good.

NDA’s protect assets that are unfinished.  While betas provide access to unfinished material, they do so gradually.  Pre-alpha is usually the devs, alpha is a closed knit of testers, beta is a significantly larger pool who “stress test” a particular feature to find balance/bugs and provide metrics to the developers.  Open beta is nearly always around final polish and stress testing.

Taking that into consideration, at which point is a developer comfortable opening the kimono?  If a vendor has an NDA and they are offering a collector’s edition and few specs around their product, a veteran player is going to be skeptical.  EQ:L sales are going to be indicative of what a NDA/pre-buy combination looks like.  I would expect sales to increase now that the NDA has dropped.  TESO has likely hit critical mass when it comes to pre-orders, until the NDA drops, when a new spike occurs.

If the NDA only drops a few weeks before launch, does that not cause a rather large lull in potential sales and a super spike at launch?  It certainly makes it difficult to plan server capacity for launch day if you’re unable to judge interest.  I understand this problem from the past, what with box sales dominating.  Today’s Steam mentality, where you can buy digital copies should provide more than enough metrics to accommodate launch.

Having and NDA makes sense if there are parts of your product that are under design review.  You want to control expectations.  Lowering the NDA means that you’re likely in polish mode for that feature.  It provides positive (hopefully) hype for your game and will likely drive sales.  Staging beta by features also makes sense.  MMOs are massive and opening the entire thing to the world early on doesn’t provide a whole lot of useful feedback.

I am arguing that the timing of an NDA drop, relative to Beta status and release window is a significant indication of the health and quality of a product.  The longer that curtain is up, the more pessimistic people become.  The timing of the drop is important, so that the positive spin and hype can be ridden right up until launch.

Space is Big

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Pre-amble.  When I met my wife, she said to me that stars were essentially space rocks that reflected light from our sun.  I laughed and then I realized she was serious.  Astronomy gets too little attention compared to astronomy.  I’ve been trying to explain the cosmos to my eldest daughter, just shy of 4.  My goal is to have her have a passion for the sciences rather than a fear.  The absolutely hardest part of explaining space, is the actual space between the things.

You’re thinking, what does this have to do with gaming?  Well I’m here to tell you.

Sid Meier has stated that “a game is a series of interesting choices”.  I would expand that to say that the pacing of said choices has a large impact on quality.  If I gave you a bunch of interesting choices, every 10 seconds or a game that gave you the same choices over a week’s span, your experience would be vastly different.  D&D exemplifies this where combat can take a few hours, where if it were digitized, it could take a few minutes.  The path between those choices, shortened, provides a different experience.

I played Earth and Beyond with a few friends back in the day.  I would venture to say that it was a pre-cursor to EvE, in terms of particular design elements (namely the social/trade aspects).  E&B was big, very big in the day.  EvE is even bigger.  Wilhelm has stated a few times that there’s more time (and fun) getting to places that actually being in places.  Star Trek Online provides a smaller space, a compartmentalized one at that.  But you still spend more time travelling that you do in other games.

intensity

This “waiting” or travelling period provides a lull in content.  Sort of like the camps in EQ where you waited on a spawn, or using a griffon to travel in Vanilla WoW.  If everything is on fire, then nothing is really on fire.  A good example is XCOM vs Battlefield.  The former spend a lot of time in the travel space, waiting to unlock a battle, or strategically placing your players.  The actual act of taking a shot is less than setting up the shot.  Battlefield is the near opposite, where it’s shoot the bullets with more bullets.  The type of player, and I am speaking generally here, that enjoys a steady stream of action vs one who prefers a nuanced experience is massive.

I want a world to feel big, that the space has meaning and purpose.  I don’t want it to be a highway to the next decision.  I want to be able to finish a decision and then just be amazed at the world around me.  To remove tunnel vision and say “look at that!”.  That’s why devs are putting all the time and money into it, right?

 

I Gave Cryptic Money

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No surprise here, I think Neverwinter is a great game.  Many people don’t and that’s great too.  I comment a fair bit that it’s amazing that we’re in a time where there are more games for more flavors than just a few years ago and the WoW-clone-a-thon.

Neverwinter’s F2P model is slightly different in the MMO space as it was designed with two things in mind.  First, it’s a western MMO, where combat is an integral part of the game with a relatively small social toolset.  Second, it was designed as F2P from the start, based on a lot of experience from Champions Online and Star Trek Online.  The only knock I have against their model is the constant spam about people “winning” items from lockboxes.  Peer pressure and all that I guess.

You can play Neverwinter from start to finish without dropping a dime.  Your experience is not diminished in the least.  You can play the end-game content without money too.  The auction house works with Astral Diamonds, which are fairly simple to acquire.  Zen (the unified Cryptic currency for real cash) allows you to purchase player customizations, such as respec tokens, other companions and mounts.  Oh, you can also trade Astral Diamonds for Zen.

Respec tokens are useful but not something required to play.  Pick a spec and have fun.  You shouldn’t really be swapping between choices all that much, given the large “point padding” provided.  You can get most skills you would need pretty easily.  Plus, if there’s a patch with significant balance changes, free respec!

Companions are a bit different.  For leveling are the start of end game, they are relatively bland choices and have not much impact. If you want to do top-tier gaming, then a zen-cost companion does have some benefit.  Not much mind you, maybe a 5% difference, so only the min-maxers really care.

If you want to fool around with costumes, then Zen comes into play and that’s super.  Player customization is entirely optional.  Mounts too, since each zone is relatively compact and the difference between a basic 60% and a 90% mount is pretty negligible on the whole.

So what did I spend?  I put in $30 for 3,000 Zen.  It gave me a new character slot and some customization.  If this had been a sub game, I would have spent a lot more than $30.  This way, I can come and go and feel that I am the one deciding where to put my money and when I can play.  Would I have subscribed if that option was available?  If that would have unlocked everything and there was no store, most definitely.  However, even games with a hybrid model offer a store, which drastically reduces my enjoyment.  SWTORs non-sub hurdles are notoriously bad, as an example.

So yes, I support Cryptic’s F2P model for Neverwinter.  I think it’s one of the most “fair” implementations I have found in any online game.  Marvel Heroes follows a similar model, in terms of lack of real restrictions.  I’m kind of hoping that this style takes a hold across more games.

NDA’s Are Bad

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Let’s say you have a new product coming to market.  You budget about 10% of your overall budget to PR.  That’s a fair chunk of change on a $100 million project.  Now let’s say you realize later on a few things.  You have something that exceeded your expectations and you think there’s solid interest.  You also realize that your PR budget allocation wasn’t well allocated, in that what you spent didn’t really get you much or that you spent the money elsewhere.

Today’s internet is exponentially more interconnected and fast than 5 years ago.  I get a dozen tweets a day, multiple facebook posts, tons of feedly, a sub-Reddit and then the old school emails.  I can watch a stream on twitch or a series on youtube, with voice commentary.  What a team of 10 can do for a company pales in comparison to what 1 person with social skills and a solid social network can do (e.g. the Lazy Gamer comes to mind).

You know what NDA’s do?  They protect assets from espionage (no really, that’s what they are for).  The end result is that any word of mouth becomes basement driven and usually negative.  People are much more willing to be skeptical than trusting, certainly without evidence.  One post that says “stay far away” without content to back it up will do more damage than a PR video showing combat.

NDA’s today serve a single purpose in the minds of gamers.  They hide bad games from the masses until launch.  Aliens – Colonial Marines is a prime example.  Movies that do not have critic screenings are the same (R.I.P.D. is a recent example).  You either are confident in your product when you allow people to test it or you are not.

That brings me to the elephant in the room.  EQ Landmark dropped their NDA yesterday upon launch of alpha.  Alpha is before beta and always lacking polish.  But given that it cost $60 to get into alpha, they know everyone wants to have a good experience, so they are likely to talk about it in a positive light, even if there are bugs.  This is a really smart move because you now have a few thousand people talking about your game and generating hype. WildStar is driving me mad with their player streams because it looks just like the game I’ve wanted to play for years.

If TESO doesn’t open the doors this coming week, or Bethesda doesn’t start with a massive PR blitz, I have a strong feeling that they are going to get swept under the rug.  My Feedly on that game is near dry right now, and you know it’s going to fill up with EQ:L soon.

The Mobile Basement May Not Yet Be Found

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Not making this up, but this post appeared in my feed. Video has profanity.

Related to my previous post, the video and post quite accurately highlights the problem with high profile F2P mobile games.  It’s really quite sad.

I would be highly curious as to who in their right mind would pay for the “value price” for gems/coins/mushrooms/whatever.  Are there really that many people who would pay money for that sort of thing?  Apparently the answer is yes as games like this get made.

The final quote is pretty solid.  You can either spend that money on a full price game, with no sales, say BioShock Infinite, or you can destroy 56 blocks in a mobile game.  Hell of a choice.

Dungeon Keeper and Gamification

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Last told, I installed Dungeon Keeper on my tablet to give it to the man.  The man being EA.  DK is in the same vein as all the other Clash of Clans clones – though I’m not sure anymore which came first.

Anyhow, the premise is simple.  You have a base, you can build things on the base to increase your offense and your defense.   You can summon a squad of monsters to attack other players (offline PvP).  Everything is managed through 2 main resources.  Gold and some alternate.  In DK, this is stone.  All items can be upgraded, which takes time and a minion of sorts.  You buy more minions with real cash.  Most games start with 2, then give you a 3rd one after a few weeks of play through alternate means.

Upgrades are the meat and potatoes of this game and where the real world cash impact occurs.  An upgrade can take 5 minutes or 2 days, and you can speed it up.  You should be spending money for time not for anything else.  At least, that’s the defacto model for these types of games.

The other resources work on a balance approach.  You can harvest them on the base, typically at a decent enough rate to pay for a low level upgrade in an hour or so.  The start of the game is usually pretty quick, to get you into the meat of it all.  You can attack other players, but that’s usually not forced for the first 2 days.  Raiding others typically returns enough materials to equate to 10 or so harvesting hours.  You just have to be strategic of your targets and your minions.

EA being EA, they went a different route.  There’s a tutorial (in all of these games) that lays out the basics and sends you on your way.  Typically after the tutorial, you can play for a solid hour tinkering around and then come back every 30 minutes to tweak some upgrades.  It keeps you interested.  EA decided to end the tutorial against a money wall.  You harvest ~100 resources per hour and the first upgrade is 5,000.  The second is 15,000 and the third is 50,000.  My harvesting spots are at their current maximum level without upgrading the “heart” of the base.  They take 10 hours to make 1,500 resource each and the upgrade in the middle is 50,000.  That works out to 60 hours of waiting.

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Raiding other bases doesn’t work much either, since they are in the same boat.  A solid 90% of the bases are under 1,500 resources each.  It costs me about 1,000 resource to get those.  At best I make 500.  Out of 50,000.

And I won’t get into base redesign, where the largest and most important part of your base cannot be moved.

I think it’s pretty funny that they could have taken a direct copy of any of the dozens of Clash of Clans clones, used the exact same mechanics and provided a better game.  I mean literally, cut and paste the system but change the art.  Zynga would not have messed this up.

Way to keep up the good work EA.

Driven to Fail

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It should be no secret that I have a rather large dislike towards EA.  I think that their business practices are predatory and abusive, that they are supremely out of touch with their user base and that their games are, by and large, a massive waste of 1s and 0s.

FYI – did you know that Lucy Bradshaw, the person responsible for Sim City and probably the largest launch failure in gaming history, was promoted to Senior VP? I think that speaks volumes on the executive atmosphere running shop.

Back to point!  I have not paid for an EA game since SWTOR (and that was somewhat free, given online work paid for it).  I read about them.  I enjoy watching the company stumble. I do not like the human impact (job losses) from clearly un-accountable management.  I think F2P gamess can help here.

So, I can play an EA F2P game since there’s no money going their way from my pocket.  This gives the devs some positive feedback on their game (if there is any to give) and doesn’t give the executive their pay bonus for hitting an ARPU milestone.

Dungeon Keeper launched a few days ago.  I really loved that series and the re-incarnations.  Overlord and Evil Genius are still two of my favorite games.  Maybe I just like being bad?  Anyhow, DK is a F2P game in the same vein as Clash of Clans.  Build a fort, upgrade it, defend it and raid others.  It is extremely poorly paced compared to its competition, and therefore really pushes for their cash-only gems to be spent to move through faster.  Still, I’m driven here to play to see EA fail.  It’s a really refreshing motivator, very meta.

Setting Expectations

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Jewel has a post on the apparently bad vibes on the TESO Collector’s Edition.  I put in a few comments and that got my wheels spinning for my own post. Related to that original post, know that I never by a CE. I haven’t bought a box for a PC game in nearly 5 years.

I mention the project I’m on from time to time.  500,000 users are there so setting expectations is so vitally important for success that I would say it’s above and beyond anything else.  If you promise the BMW and deliver a Ford, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Absolutely every single product goes through this cycle.  The only difference is how high the peaks and valleys become and how long you stay there.  iOS is in a valley right now, android in a peak.  WoW, at the tail of of an expansion is in productivity mode but WoD news is restarting the cycle on the way up to a peak.

First, a flashback to 3 previous big name games.  Star Trek Online, Rift and Star Wars TOR.

Star Trek Online

Had a closed beta, massive NDA up until a month before launch.  Stress tests and open betas meant the game was largely unplayable for the masses before launch.  The hype machine was on though, so most people were at a peak when the game launched.  A month later, the valley appeared.

Rift

This had no PR for a long time (and a name change) then it decided to do a near 3 month open beta.  Word of mouth was extremely positive and the peak was sustained well after launch. I know I bought a year’s sub because of that beta and the positive hype from other players.  People were able to explain the Rifts, dungeons and player customizations to other players.  You knew what you were buying.

Star Wars

Super hype machine here.  Remember those videos?  Super closed beta (I was in it), massive character wipes, very little word of mouth on the game.  The game launched at least 2 months early, hit the peak in the first couple weeks and then hit the valley.  They had an over 90% server consolidation before month 6.  No one who bought the game really had a clue as to what they were getting into, other than Star Wars!!1!

Now for the two next ones.

The Elder Scrolls

There is no hype machine here.  If anything, word of mouth and community engagement has been abysmal.  The recent grouping video aside, what has anyone seen that would say “I want to play that”.  Beta is ongoing, many people did the stress test.  There’s a huge NDA and the game is launching in 2 months.  There doesn’t seem to be a peak for this game and that’s a real shame.  There’s a bunch of new ideas, new playstyles but the general vibe is so darn negative and Bethesda has done next to nothing to fix that.  If you asked me what there was to do in the game, I would be very hard pressed to say anything other than PvP right now, because I haven’t heard or seen anything else.

WildStar

Pretty decent hype machine here.  Up until the holidays, there was a weekly reveal with video.  Now it’s more sporadic.  Closed beta is active but the NDA only covers 15+, so it’s easy to find a stream of the game or data.  General player vibe is very positive.  There are AMAs, discussions with the developers, integration into a bunch of fan sites which is doing a decent job of hype.  I know there’s going to be guilds (with a different set of mechanics), dungeons, raids, PvP, housing, warplots, costumes, character diversity, 4 alternative paths…I can do these things from start to finish.’

 

Clearly, I am aiming more for WildStar to succeed here because I have a better understanding of expectations and people playing the beta are having fun.  TESO still has time to turn things around.  Drop that NDA, get people playing, get the videos out, get the AMAs.  Do something people, there’s a tremendous opportunity here.