Tag Archives: design

In Defense of Subscriptions

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I like Gamasutra, there are some solid articles about the business side of the industry. Ramin and Isaac are on my reading list not so much because I agree with them but because they expose a side that we rarely see.

Ramin is more of an internal systems designer with strength in economic systems – auction house, crafting and so on. I am guessing he’s working on one of the two Big MMOS coming around the bend.  Isaac is a service guy, looking more to the economic systems outside the game – support models, client interactions and whatnot.  Both of their fields intertwine but I consider the above their specialties.

Isaac’s latest post attempts to support the subscription model along 3 main issues. First, subscriptions push people to get value for money by rushing content. Second, development of said content needs to follow and be of quality. Third, companies cannot price discriminate as everyone has the same fee.

While conceptually I think he has some strong arguments I think there are some flaws and realities that are unaccounted. Let’s say his baseline is accurate for playerbase – 30 to 40, kids, working, no huge time available. Yes they sink less time but they are hyper-aware of dollar per smile economics. Subscriptions drop when similar services are available for less cost, that’s why F2P works.  The math is simple enough.  I have X dollars to spend per month, where can I get value for that money?

Two, content delivery must meet player expectations in terms of volume and quality. Iceberg Blizzard has paid massively for their schedule. SWTOR’s 4th pillar destroyed their ability to quickly iterate and expand (voice acting).  This bleeds a bit into the first topic.  2 months after launch, the content that was there was consumed at a rate far exceeding expectations and what was left lacked value for money.

Three, price discrimination is a red herring. All games have internal metrics to see what is consumed and for how long. WoW saw that their moneysink – raids – were only hitting 1% of the userbase in Cataclysm. That brought us LFR, and now Flex Raids. DDO only offers what sells, same with NeverWinter. Companies know exactly how to nickle and dime. There is no other reason for lockboxes.

Are subscriptions bad? No, they provide a baseline income that investors can see and development can project. They are however, an easily accounted for expense for players to compare to other games. The argument simply becomes “can I spend 15$ or less in another game for the same or more fun?”. The answer, today, is a yes and that bodes extremely poorly for Wildstar and TESO.  They must “out content” all other MMOs (not really seeing this as possible), provide an iterative schedule faster than what is offered by competition (everyone is better than WoW, few are better than Rift) and somehow target their material/pricing to bring in the most dollars/effort possible – without existing metrics.  One heck of a tough road.

F2P – Baseline Forward

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There’s enough hullabaloo (I don’t get to use that word often) about F2P in the blogs today.  I don’t necessarily get the fervor so much but I suppose with RIFT swapping and Neverwinter “officially” launching, we’ve got new competition.  Here’s a thought for the day.

The theory is that in an open market, the market itself self-regulates.  This has a dependence on there actually being an open market, so no collusion (banks and gas) and no monopolies (Windows, Internet Explorer).  Movies are an almost an open market in that the price of tickets from theater to theater is relatively the same.  Cars are similar, since you can do an apples to apples comparison of features and price match between dealers.  Games are close too, since the upper cap for any game is going to be $60 and anything below that seems to be seen as “budget” title.

The new variants to this are the mobile space, DLC and F2P games.  Mobile space has 3 price points – free, 99c and $4.99.  Anything outside of that is an outlier.  DLC is seen as $5 as a price point for any given package, regardless of quality.  This makes season passes effective in that you pay 20$ for the promise of 5 packages (or more).   These prices are set because of market saturation and competition.  Why spend $7 here when I can get the same item for $5 there.  Subscriptions above $15 have never worked.

F2P games are approaching a baseline price model for various features.  For a long time only the East had a model and everyone on this side of the pond basically stuck their thumb in the air and guessed at a price.  Allods is the poster child for how pricing structures can destroy a product.  Up until a few years ago, we basically had Zynga & friends telling us the price for F2P.  DDO swapped with a decent package, then LOTRO, STO, AoC, EQ 1&2 and now a few more.  The market is still somewhat fresh and expectations for pricing points are still somewhat in flux.  That being said, I think we’re hitting the point of what’s acceptable.

A mount at $10 is acceptable.  Costumes and customization at $5.  DLC expansions at $10-$20.  The market is going to decide what is acceptable if you give enough similar choice.  RIFT, Neverwinter, LOTRO, EQ and SWTOR all offer extremely similar services.  Any new gamer looking at the field is going to try to find value for their dollar and right now, RIFT and Neverwinter are setting a heck of an example.  EQ recently (a few months back) increased what was available to the masses.

At the end of the day, each developer needs to make money to pay for servers and staff.  It does not get any simpler than that.  In order to make money, they have to sell something.  Consumers are now in a better position to compare products and value, and invest where they see fit.  This is going to drive the market moving forward.  Voting with your wallet works and is the only true way to make sure something changes.

XBONE – Sad Face

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Here’s a link to an anonymous Microsoft employee (allegedly) explaining what they gave up when they rolled back their DRM strategy.  I’ll go over a few parts I find worth discussing.

We didn’t do a good enough job explaining all the benefits that came with this new model.  We spent too much of our time fighting against the negative impressions that many people in the media formed.

Extremely accurate.  There was not an ounce of positive spin for anything MS was pushing.   Quite the opposite.

Many will argue the development system is broken, and I disagree.  The development system is near broken, it’s used gaming that is broken…

“Many” being actual developers themselves.  If selling over 1 million copies at full price is a loss (Amalaur), it is not used games sales that’s the problem.  Used games are a symptom of the problem, pricing and value.

First is family sharing …  The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library.  Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world.  … When your family member accesses any of your games, they’re placed into a special demo mode. This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a 15-45 minute timer and in some cases an hour.  This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to.

First, not anywhere in the world, only a place with online access to XBOX Live and an account active.  Second, I do this today by handing a copy to my brother and he has an unlimited demo.  Third, many games today have demos or videos to show how the game is played.  Do people really buy games blindly?

I stand by the belief that Playstation 4 is Xbox 360 part 2, while Xbox One is trying to revolutionize entertainment consumption.  For people who don’t want these amazing additions, like Don said we have a console for that and it’s called Xbox 360.

And this is really the crux of the matter and where I think there is the largest disconnect between the audience and the provider.  The XBOX (and the Playstation) are gaming platforms.  Gaming platforms have existed “as a thing” for nearly 40 years and have had only minor changes over that time.  The core process is the same though there have been additional services layered on top.  I have a game, I have a controller, I have a TV, I have a couch.  I can bring the console on road trips.  I can play my friends games when he comes over.  I can play with headphones on when my S/O is in the other room.

The XBONE broke all of that and didn’t sell an upside.  Here’s what could have helped.

The family program would have been great if they had access to your games without a timer.  DRM would have been acceptable if prices were lower.  DRM would have been excellent if there was a digital used game marketplace.  DRM would have been OK if you only needed to check in at first install.  DRM would have been OK if you only lost multi-player functions while offline.  DRM would have been acceptable if you provides 2-3 use case examples.  DRM would have been fine without region restrictions.  Kinect would have been acceptable if you could turn the thing off completely.

None of those features existed.  Whatever benefits the console may have had, each one of these items combined to make it a deal breaker for the general gaming population.  A revolution happens when there is a need for it.  When things are desperately bad.  You don’t impose a revolution.  If you try to, then you get exactly what Microsoft has been getting for a year (including Windows 8) massive and un-ending backlash and perhaps a revolution you didn’t want.

XBox One Eighty

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So news here, here and here.

Before I get into what this means, let’s refresh our memories a bit here.

Can’t get online?  Too bad, buy a 360.

We can’t just flip a switch to turn off DRM.

This is the same company that said we had to live with the fact that there was a new paradigm and no amount of complaining by the public would make it change course…

And here we are.  Today’s announcement that the XBONE has removed nearly every single DRM function from their system.  There is but a fraction of a degree between what they’ve done and a true 180.  To summarize:

  • No need to be always online
  • You DO need to be online to register the game initially
  • No check-ins every 24 hours
  • Discs work similar to the 360, in that they need to be in the console to play
  • Downloaded games work offline or off
  • You can rent, trade, exchange games as you do today
  • Works in all regions (AUS games in US)

What are you exchanging for this?  The ability to play games wholely from the cloud, meaning you didn’t need a disc in the console.

So after taking what by most accounts is the most massive pounding in gaming history, completing denying reality, telling gamers to basically smeg-off, flipping the bird to the used game industry (GameFly & Gamestop), losing a VP for trying to push always online and still selling games for the same price as the PS4 they decided to turn tail.

Can you imagine being inside the Microsoft offices the past few weeks? It must have been like a madhouse of scrambling from a PR side, trying to spin the “future” of gaming.  Even Major Nelson had a hell of a time trying to pitch it.

Still, this is good for Microsoft.  With ~4 months to go, they’ve removed a massive barrier to sales.  Sure, you still have a camera that’s always one.  Sure you still need to have internet access to initially launch a game.  Sure, it’s still $100 more than the PS4.

At least the playing field is a bit more equal.

The Crash of 2015

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Pure speculation post incoming.

By the end of this calendar year, all the new consoles will be on the market.  The 2013 holidays will see the “hardcore” gamers buy either a PS4 or XBone. True market penetration won’t really occur until the fall of 2014.  It’s cyclical, happens with most any product.  I would hedge my bet on a particular brand but that doesn’t really matter much for this topic.

What does matter is the cost structure of said consoles and games.  Microsoft has stated that their first-party games will be $60.  Sony has said the same.  I’m disappointed in the former since one of the main draws is the reduction in pirating/used game sales, therefore companies should be making a lot more money.  You’d think the prices would be lower.  It’s  a bit more expensive than today’s games and the dev costs should be lower since the architecture between PC, PS4 and XBone are near identical.  Game prices are part 1 of the problem.

Free to Play (buy to play, freemium, cash stops) is a still relatively new financial model that no one really has a good grasp on.  A company can get 1-2 years tops out of a cash stop before devolving into lockboxes.  There comes a point where there is simply nothing left to buy and the company still needs money to operate.  There are more games that fail this particular step than succeed (waiting on Marvel Heroes to discuss this point).  Part 2 of the problem.

DLC is bleeding between the line between core play, additional content and value.  Gone are the days of horse armor but here are the days of Protheans.  While Skyrim DLC can prove to add value to the entire game, the prevelance of in-media-res DLC (like Deus Ex) is disturbing.  Entire chunks of the game are missing.  Part 3 of the problem.

Micro/macro-transactions have yet to find a floor or ceiling.  LOTRO horses, EvE monocles, sparkle-ponies are in a class of their own.  Paying for crafting material in Dead Space 3, or simply having a cash stop button on every screen, regardless of the underlying payment model, is garish.  Paying for XBox Live and still getting ads is ridiculous.  Part 4 of the problem.

Disconnect with the core audience.  Back in the day, the core audience was 18 year olds sitting in a basement.  They still exist but the core spenders are older, those with more disposable income yet conversely less time.  An older person has a better understanding of value for service yet there is a growing divide between AAA developers and consumers.  Ni No Kuni, Tomb Raider, BioShock and The Last of Us are supreme examples of quality and sold extremely well.  Gears of War and God of War are cash grabs that are bleeding companies.  Part 5 of the problem.

Independent developers are the future.  It’s not a question anymore, it’s simple reality.  They cost structures are lower, they aren’t jaded, they target their games to a specific market and have lowered expectations.  The gate to entry is small (especially on PS) but the market itself is becoming saturated.  This makes it hard for a new indie game to reach the spotlight, outside of word of mouth.  Part 6.

A crash occurs when a bubble bursts.  A bubble occurs when reality is artificially inflated up to expectations, in order to turn a profit.  Gaming today seems to be heading farther and farther away from reality and more into slide decks for quarterly reports.  Looking from the outside, it seems more like a head scratching exercise of “did they really think that would work?”  The market is heavily saturated with the same product on every corner, with less features and more cost per iteration.  There are only so many SWTORs that can launch and fail before bankrupting a company (see THQ).  You can’t spend $100 million to develop a game that sells 100K copies or only provides income for 3 months.

The gaming paradigm that exists today is doomed for failure as it is simply not sustainable.  There’s no one single problem to fix, it’s a plethora of systematic failures driven by a core concept – getting more money out of gamer’s pockets.  We’re nearing the edge and it’s a hell of a fall on the other side.

Patch Day!

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Both Marvel Heroes and Neverwinter are having kitchen sink patches today.  Well, maybe a bit less on the former.

Marvel Heroes, as I’ve mentioned in the past, has some problems with core mechanics and less to do with balancing.  Patch notes try to address a bit of that.  I don’t get why you need to login to see patch notes…  Anyhoot, they are upping the drop rate of heroes and costumes (I’ve seen a total of zero in about 60 hours, even though I’ve played the entire game with +drop gear), fixing some rather large combat bugs and adding more grouping to end-game content.  1) is cool.  2) is badly needed. 3) doesn’t even come close to addressing the problem of longevity.

Remember DCUO when it launched?  Everyone could reach max level in a day or two, then had nothing to do (raids were sort of in but broken).  Well, Marvel Heroes is the same except you’re not at max level.  You can complete all the content in what seems like 5-6 hours and get to level 25 or so.  With a max level of 60, you’re looking at about an extra 100 hours of grinding the same content (about a dozen dungeons) and no rewards from it, because itemization is more or less broken past level 30.  Yay?  There’s a tremendous, massive, gaping lack of incentive to keep playing as there’s no tangible progress.  I don’t change my appearance, I haven’t changed items in over 10 levels (I’m at 37 now), I haven’t had a new skill in 7 levels either.  The most “optimal” run for me right now gives me 5% of a level in about 7 minutes of work.  And I have 23 more levels of this to go.  Eh…there’s just no real carrot.  And honestly, 20$ for another character, which is basically another skin, is crazy pricing.

Neverwinter on the other hand has content a plenty but lacked balance.  This patch is a true kitchen sink.  Grouping is being fixed, threat, class balance, enemy difficulty, bugs, crafting, display… you name it.  I had tried a fair amount of Tier 1/2 dungeons, with friends and random folk.  As a Cleric, I just simply died after 5 seconds of combat due to threat mechanics.  Not only is that changing but the tank class is getting an across the board boost of 35% to threat plus a few more tools.  Maybe the game will actually have a trinity rather than just the current damage/healer paradigm.  If they get it right, I think it could be seen as the standard for F2P games from now on since it’s the only one that I know of that hasn’t been retro-actively made F2P but instead designed that way from the start.  Fingers crossed on this one!

PS.  For those looking for a decent ARPG, free to play, massive amounts of depth and challenge, try Path of Exile.  They are open beta, they are taking money but it feels more like Minecraft open beta than anything else.  I think it’s one of the best ARPGs out there, personally.  Here’s a picture of the skill tree, no joke.

Path of Exile Skill Tree

Path of Exile Skill Tree

Console Wars – Cart Firmly Ahead of Horse

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Did you know that America’s Funniest Home Videos (or AMV now) is the longest running reality TV show?  I think it has to do with the idea that you know something is going to happen but you want to see it anyways.  I mean, who doesn’t want to see more of “ball hits crotch”?  You know half the episode is going to have that but you still watch it.  It’s a comedy of errors really.

I feel like Microsoft is in the same boat.  How many years now have companies tried to put in draconian DRM into media?  Remember when Sony put rootkits into their CDs?  Ubisoft gave up on the “always on cloud” DRM when the servers simply could not handle it.  SimCity had probably the most disastrous launch in gaming history, enough to lose a CEO.  Even the lead up to the XBONE reveal had it’s share of PR problems.  I don’t understand how a multi-billion dollar company did not think that they were going to have a problem on their hands.  Every single sign, every single trend said that they were heading into a storm.

And when the big reveal came about, they didn’t have detailed answers for a completely new way of operating.  I  mean, you know you’re going to cause a heck of a storm in PR.  You’re going to break some companies’ business models (Gamestop).  You are surely going to light a massive fire in the pits of gaming.  And your answer is 2 weeks of silence? Maybe they were hoping Sony would come onboard, then it would have put the ball in their court.

I mean, I get the want to move outside gaming.  There are more people who watch TV (streaming or not) than there are who play games.  The price point for that market is around $100 right now, not $500.  The only people willing to pay that price are the hardcore gamers, you know, the niche of gamers who have been royally ticked off since the initial reveal?

I get questions about why Steam is excluded from this discussion, given that you can’t trade games.  There are a few reasons for this and foremost is that Steam provides a service while Microsoft provides a platform.  I can play Steam offline for a trip to the cottage.  I can install the game on another computer a near unlimited amount of times.  It has access to many more games.  Prices on said games reach astronomically low prices.  Every single choice Steam has made has been with the consumer in mind.  Consumers, in turn, have accepted the service terms because it meets their needs.

Sony seems to have won E3 but there are many months to go before system launch.  The irony is that Sony didn’t do anything different than what they did in the past.  How do you get accolades for offering vanilla ice cream?  I expect that Microsoft HQ is going to go into silent mode for the next few weeks and re-jig their PR plan.  This cannot have gone anywhere close to what they had expected, even though every sign I could read said it turned out exactly like expected.

I think this past month will be reviewed for years to come in marketing classes and the lessons learned will have a major impact in all future technology launches.  There are simply too many gaffes and gaps in logic to not merit further scrutiny.

Neverwinter – Kitchen Sink

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Holy cow Batman, what a patch! Cryptic is officially launching Neverwinter on the 20th of June. That means it’s “super mega patch” time!

I really like the game but there are some significant issues that need addressing. Threat is seriously broken for both healing and tanks.  The grouping system doesn’t pick the right balance of characters and if someone drops, it’s impossible to add a new person.  The auction house UI needs some serious work to actually find anything. Enemy difficulty is all over the map, but mostly it’s boss encounters that need tweaking. I can’t say the systems themselves are broken, just in need of some serious balancing.  You know, exactly what a beta is for.

Well, it looks like Cryptic got the memo because the patch notes are out in a new blog post and they are massive. I’m talking MMO expansion pack massive. Obviously there’s a lot of future testing needed but the overall message is clearly “we heard you”.  It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen a dev even bother to address half the things Cryptic is aiming for. /hats off

I’ll be waiting for it to hit the live servers before taking another dive but if this patch addresses the concerns listed above, it might just be my go-to MMO for a long while.

Consequences and Challenge

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Death in Marvel Heroes is an odd thing.  It happens through mostly lag up until you’re done the main missions, so a lot of people will never really see it – and if they do, people around them have 3 minutes to revive them.  That part makes sense to me.  Neverwinter puts a debuff on you once you get revived that way, the timer is shorter too.

If you play alone however, say in the mission terminals at the end, death is a different beast.  Scaling here reminds me a bit of Rift, where the mechanics of the game prevent you from doing content too far above your level.  3+ and you get an experience, damage intake and damage output penalty, starting at 20%.  You will get 1-shot.  Dying does two things.

First, it brings you back to the last checkpoint.  Sometimes this is the door to the zone, sometimes (like in Castle Doom), it’s invisible markings on the map since the map is so darn big.  Second, if leaves every enemy at the state they were when you died.  Boss at 60% hp when you died?  He will be when you get back.

Doctor Doom last night was 4 levels above me, took 5 minutes to kill and he killed me 8 times.  While I was happy to beat him, there was missing that “perfect run” feel that you get in other ARPGs.  Could I have done him in a clean run?  Maybe not last night due to skill lag but it certainly felt possible.  I remember trying to kill Belial in Diablo 3 for a few days in Inferno.  It was extremely frustrating.  Dying here had a repair cost plus a full reset of the boss himself.  Finally I got lucky and he died and I never wanted to see his face again.  The consequences here were such that I never wanted to play that part again.

I will be trying Doctor Doom again, hoping to improve.  It becomes an analog test with varying degrees of success.  I can improve on that.  Belial on the other hand, I was ready to punch through the screen.  When I beat him, it felt more like a digital switch – either I won or I didn’t.  When I did, I never felt an ounce of challenge in him again nor a desire to even attempt it.

I find it a difficult balance to show people “hey, this is tough but when you get through it’ll be worth it” and “hey this is tough, let’s pull out your hair”.

 

Filler versus Fuller

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I remember in the vanilla version of World of Warcraft, green gear was awesome and each class had a preference for a given set.  You either used Strength, Agility or Intellect for damage and you picked up Stamina if you needed an HP boost.  This made Rogues happy with Monkey (AGI/STA) or Tiger (STR/AGI) gear.  Still, that left over half the combinations sub-optimal and I can’t remember anyone who ever wore a piece of the Boar on purpose.

People would should “but this is green gear, it should be at least useful“.  And their laments were ignored for many a year.  Burning Crusade took a first pass at fixing this making it much more complex but forgiving at the same time.  There simply was no more bad gear for you, simply sub-optimal.  MMOs since then have learned this lesson.  Rift, GW2, Neverwinter all have a logical set of stats on gear.  If it isn’t clearly marked as vendor trash, it should be useful.

Blizzard also learned something from this when they launched Diablo 3, since all the stats were harmonized.  You just couldn’t equip a piece of gear with stats that made you bad (say strength on a Wizard piece).  And the world rejoiced!  Well, when they could log in that is.

And now we get to the meat of it all, Marvel Heroes.  I finished the last boss, Doctor Doom at about level 25 (of 60).  You replay individual missions past that – sort of. It’s a long slog.  Anyways, the gear issue.

There are certain types of bonuses on gear, right?  You can have offensive stats, defensive stats and power stats.  Offensive you have simple +damage, crit and attack speed.  There are others but those are the only ones that really count.  Offensive stats are cool and mostly practical.  Some skills don’t crit and +damage works weird with some skills but that’s tweaking.

Defensively you have dodge, defense and health regeneration.  Defense is broken after you finish the main quest line, it caps at a numerical number rather than a % number.  So you block 1000 damage let’s say but the enemy does more and more each time, like 5000 on one boss attack.  Right now, defensive stats other than dodge are pretty useless.

Power stats are the really cool part.  Just like Diablo 2, you can get power boosts – like +2 fireball – or you can get power tree boosts – like 5% attack speed for fire tree.  Some stats only work until a certain rank, others add to your existing rank.  Some trees have no attacks, which makes bonuses to those trees, other than a flat +1, useless.  In the end, you’ll be aiming for 2-3 powers being boosted and the rest sort of falls into place.

All this combined to say that gear can have a lot of variables on it.  Unfortunately, due to balancing/design, some of these stat groups are useless.  100 defense + 5% attack speed to a passive tree are examples.  It’s not that they are sub-optimal, it’s that they provide no bonus at all and are more or less the same as not wearing any gear in the first place.

While the game officially launched a few days ago, there is still missing what I call a “final beta balance patch”.  Neverwinter is also missing this but they have recently posted that a a “kitchen sink” patch for their open beta is forthcoming.

Marvel Heroes is fun.  Still, it is in dire need of a core systems patch to make their “end game” viable.