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Thread: Monthly Development Update - August 2014

  1. #161
    Yep, that idea sounds nice. At least this could get players doing SL content and leveling some more people to team up.
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  2. #162
    If a new GD with different feelings on the matter allows for a shift in direction (not certain, given Means' post) then tentatively this might be possible Instead of further alienating and dividing players, allowing them to do more together, with differences still plainly visible just not utterly crippling.

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  3. #163
    The problem with decreasing populations in AO throughout the years is not the engine, developers, lacks of content or bugs, because all these things has always been a part of the game since day one.
    I believe the real issue with AO is the paying model is simply out of date, and cant keep up with the mmo market.
    The newly started players dont find the monthly fee attractive, when there is other mmorpg on the market that is free. If Funcom takes the monthly fees away, some new beginners would like to stay and play AO despite its ugliness.
    Last edited by UNIDENTIFIED; Sep 12th, 2014 at 16:59:31.
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  4. #164
    Quote Originally Posted by UNIDENTIFIED View Post
    The problem with decreasing populations in AO throughout the years is not the engine, developers, lacks of content or bugs, because all these things has always been a part of the game since day one.
    I believe the real issue with AO is the paying model is simply out of date, and cant keep up with the mmo market.
    The newly started players dont find the monthly fee attractive, when there is other mmorpg on the market that is free. If Funcom takes the monthly fees away, some new beginners would like to stay and play AO despite its ugliness.
    That and non-existent marketing model. Most players have simply never heard of AO. And if they eventually do and realize how high the subscription cost is they won't even give it a try.

  5. #165
    Quote Originally Posted by Tryptophy View Post
    Yeah, open SL to froobs, that will be hundreds of players with thousands and thousands of man-hours spent filling RK and SL as people take their froobs to 220/0/0 or getting SL gear for their froob twinks. The increase in population alone will make the game more enjoyable for the full paid players, never mind those who might decide to upgrade. Alas this has been suggested before, but perhaps times have changed enough for action.
    Yeah, I can already see the enjoyment at kite hill.
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  6. #166
    (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Tryptophy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Montelukast View Post
    Yeah, I can already see the enjoyment at kite hill.
    I bet there would be more people wanting to level than can fit at the kite spots. Plus there's a small chance they might nerf OSTing.
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  7. #167
    The point has been made above but just want to add my agreement AO will never pull in enough new or old players until it does something about its sub prices. In todays market it is way to expensive. Drop the subs to a level on par with todays MMOs and you will see more folks coming back or joining.

  8. #168
    In my opinion the main factor for a lack of people interested in playing the game is the broken gameplay. Most veterans don't even notice it but a new player has to put up with extremely long hours of extremely tedious gameplay if s/he puts any effort into the toon. Or beg, a lot, for everything.
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  9. #169
    Quote Originally Posted by Lusos101 View Post
    In my opinion the main factor for a lack of people interested in playing the game is the broken gameplay. Most veterans don't even notice it but a new player has to put up with extremely long hours of extremely tedious gameplay if s/he puts any effort into the toon. Or beg, a lot, for everything.
    Not to mention when they see how broken pvp/nw is. "Yes there is pvp but you need at least 6 paid accounts with fully geared toons to stand up"

  10. #170
    Quote Originally Posted by Lusos101 View Post
    In my opinion the main factor for a lack of people interested in playing the game is the broken gameplay. Most veterans don't even notice it but a new player has to put up with extremely long hours of extremely tedious gameplay if s/he puts any effort into the toon. Or beg, a lot, for everything.
    Yeah that's what happens when a game's content is literally never updated. RK missions for example are one of the best leveling experiences I've had across multiple mmos; layouts and appearance are very random, humanoid mobs have varying abilities (and despite the very poor AI could be at least annoying like soldier mobs that use tms, mps with nsd etc.), lots of good chest loot. But exp is bad and SK is impossible. There's very simple solutions to a lot of AO's problems, what is funcom's problem and why they never bothered instead pushed boring new content (like 1 room instances) is an eternal mystery.

  11. #171
    Quote Originally Posted by Lusos101 View Post
    In my opinion the main factor for a lack of people interested in playing the game is the broken gameplay.
    Lots of this has to do with that the game is a incohesive mess of several diferent expansions. As someone else posted; The payment-system could improve. It should be that u are either free or paid (and then get all, sl, ai, le, lox) and then make a more cohesive 'playthrough'. As it is now...it just fails.

  12. #172
    Bugs, tedious gameplay and broken game mechanism has always been a part of AO. Back in the days we had lags, rubber banding and disconnects as well, but all if that didnt stop AO from growing to all time hights in 2008.
    The availability of multi box has been there since the beginning. But since the populations are low today, multi box is the best chance of getting things done, unless you want to waste hours on LFT.

    It can be many reasons why players today are not interested in playing AO, like many frustrations mentioned above.
    However, if AO goes free to play i believe the populations ingame will rise, most of the issues, and frustrations will go away as well. Some people either accept or denies AO, most people dont complains if they have been offered something free.
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  13. #173
    Quote Originally Posted by Sorfix View Post
    In todays market it is way to expensive. Drop the subs to a level on par with todays MMOs and you will see more folks coming back or joining.
    Quote Originally Posted by UNIDENTIFIED View Post
    However, if AO goes free to play i believe the populations ingame will rise, most of the issues, and frustrations will go away as well.
    Have to disagree with this line of thought. AO is on life support as is, who do you think will work on AO for free if no subscriptions are being paid? It's literally what like .50 per day to play? Seriously.
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  14. #174
    Quote Originally Posted by Psikie View Post
    Have to disagree with this line of thought. AO is on life support as is, who do you think will work on AO for free if no subscriptions are being paid? It's literally what like .50 per day to play? Seriously.
    Uh. The cash shop? The fact that FC is already double dipping is dubious enough. On top of having the most expensive subscription of any western MMO, the potential extra revenue from a F2P market buying things from the cash shop would be huge.
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  15. #175
    So let me make sure I get your logic here... People that can't or won't pay $15/month are going to magically decide to spend 20$ in item shop to convert real money into FC currency to buy a bunch of social items to play dress up in a free game? AND these same people are going to spend money in the item shop on a regular basis EVEN AFTER they have the social items/ level boosts they wanted right?

    I don't know how the accountants at FC missed this totally great hypothetical idea. It should be on their bulletin board for ways to create residual income.
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  16. #176
    Quote Originally Posted by Psikie View Post
    So let me make sure I get your logic here... People that can't or won't pay $15/month are going to magically decide to spend 20$ in item shop to convert real money into FC currency to buy a bunch of social items to play dress up in a free game? AND these same people are going to spend money in the item shop on a regular basis EVEN AFTER they have the social items/ level boosts they wanted right?

    I don't know how the accountants at FC missed this totally great hypothetical idea. It should be on their bulletin board for ways to create residual income.
    Simply put. Yes. Or have you not noticed the prevalence of F2P games recently?
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    Tip #743: As noted in Tip #244, tea bags have an infinite variety of uses. However, there's always one jerk who will want to give you crap over drinking tea. Particularly if in a new town, use this as an opportunity to assert yourself. Any drunken idiot can win a bar fight. It takes a real man to win a bar fight while enjoying a cup of Earl Grey.

  17. #177
    I don't think AO can sustain itself on a F2P model though. F2P models generally require large playerbases. And the large playerbases function as fishing nets for the big whales. And the big whales are the big spenders that most of the revenue comes from in F2P games.

    With a small playerbase like AO has and will have, the "fishing net" is small and few big whales will get caught. The amount of smaller whales will be pretty small as well. If we were to play with some theoretical numbers (in a theoretical game that isn't AO, to save myself from having to be accurate with AO's numbers) it would go like this:

    Current theoretical number of players on a 15 euro subscription = 2000. (This includes multiple accounts) Which totals at 30.000 euros.
    Percentage of players spending any money in F2P games = 2.2% (recently reported figure based on a study of 10 million mobile gamers)
    A small portion of those 2.2% pay more than 15 euros per month. An even smaller portion are the "big whales" that spend 50+ euros per month.
    So let's say the average amount spent by those 2.2% of players is 10 euros (average paid in mobile games is less than half that mind you, at 6.5 dollars). The rest pay nothing.

    So to reach 30.000 euros, the F2P model of the game requires like 140.000 players. That's a big increase from the original 2000.

    If PC MMO-gamers generally spend more money on F2P games than mobile gamers do, then we could be generous and say that the F2P model would only need 100.000 players. That's still more than what this theoretical game could ever hope to get.
    Last edited by Wrangeline; Sep 15th, 2014 at 18:15:41.
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  18. #178
    Quote Originally Posted by Wrangeline View Post
    I don't think AO can sustain itself on a F2P model though. F2P models generally require large playerbases. And the large playerbases function as fishing nets for the big whales. And the big whales are the big spenders that most of the revenue comes from in F2P games... <snip>
    Perfection in print. TYVM I rarely have the patience to do common sense explanations like that.
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  19. #179
    Unfortunately time has changed and these are the times of freedom, freedom to choose which mmorpg to play, and freedom to pay. It is not like back in the days where players happily paying monthly fees to play AO, due to lacks of competition on the mmorpg market.

    To me, AO is a entertaining mmorpg but it is not worth the values of its monthly fees, and AO definitely have a place in the free to play market due to its size and different play styles. If it goes free to play i believe new players will enjoy paying extra to avoid having hard time ingame, veterans will enjoy it when there are more players around, populations will rise again.
    When the populations are high enough, it will gives new opportunities to make money, not only from whales or big spendings but from everyone.
    If the population is high enough, and everyone is spitting out alittle bit, it can drowns FC. Most players will spend money to buy the most useless thing ingame for showoff, to make their experiences ingame simplier or just to save time.

    This is survival of the fittest, one must evolve with time to remain competitive and this is where AO fails.
    Last edited by UNIDENTIFIED; Sep 15th, 2014 at 20:42:31.
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  20. #180
    Quote Originally Posted by UNIDENTIFIED View Post
    This is survival of the fittest, one must evolve with time to remain competitive and this is where AO fails.
    To stretch that metaphore a bit further, if AO in its current incarnation were to go into a battle where it's a matter of "survival of the fittest", then that would be like sending a chimp with arthritis and crutches (and some duct tape) into a fistfight with a Gorilla. There are plenty of Gorillas out there on the F2P MMO market these days and many more to come. AO's only advantage is how different it is from the typical fantasy themepark-ride MMO's. That difference may interest people like you and me that already knows what AO has to offer, but it's harder to attract new players. AO would be a typical "niche'" game in the F2P MMO market (due to its age) and as such the game would have to be designed around giving people good reasons to spend money on a regular basis. Niche' games generally don't have big playerbases and so instead of having a small percentage of the playerbase carrying the game with their money, it needs a much bigger percentage of the playerbase spending some money on a month by month basis.

    Generally this means that the majority of the income would have to come from "boosts" of various kinds rather than mostly social stuff. Supporting a game of any kind on mostly social stuff is only really seen in games with huge populations and many new players. Because social items inventory runs out eventually and the big whales quickly run out of things they want to buy. And in a game like AO where you have a social-wear window and where stats are important or even a status-symbol, the need/desire to buy social gear is reduced. This is why these games require a constant stream of new players to refresh the pool of players willing to buy social stuff. Funcom can develop new social stuff to help feed the long term playerbase but this process is too slow to support the game.

    So in a small population MMO like AO (even after the population grows after engine, npe, rebalance and steam), the average player is expected to spend at least something. This in turn limits the potential size of the playerbase even more because most people that play F2P's do so with the expectation of not spending any money ever, no matter what. And this in turn makes it even more important that those that do play the game buys stuff often.

    And this leads to the boosts I mentioned. XP boosts, IP-resets, gear, tokens, VP, faction, levels, character slots, inventory slots, bank slots, guild-specific stuff, cities, housing, vehicles, buffs and so on. We have many of these things already in the item shop and they do generate money already. But if everyone that doesn't use the item-shop got to play AO for free, would they spend the same amount of money they currently spend on subscriptions in the item-shop? In its current incarnation no, I really don't think so. If Funcom were to make the game F2P and hope that the item-shop in its current incarnation would support the game, then I believe it would fail. The game itself would have to be redesigned a bit to make it more desireable to use the item shop than it currently is. Meaning more grinding than we already have and/or much cheaper prices in the item-shop. Cheaper prices for levels and gear will change AO quite a bit I think.

    There is probably a way to balance all these factors so that the game ends up supporting itself on some sort of F2P model, but at that point I simply have to wonder; What if the subscription prices were lowered by a big chunk instead and the rest of the game is kept the way it is. This combined with the game being visible on Steam with its new engine and such. I think it would be a safer bet for Funcom and would ensure that the core of AO remains intact (meaining no F2P'itis in the gameplay-design). It's true that most MMO's these days are F2P but there are also games that aren't. The subscription-based MMO is making a small comeback now and have even been used as a selling point recently. So I think it would be best for Funcom to bring the subscription price down to a lower level where it can compete with these newer subscription MMO's and see how that goes first. The main mistake I can see Funcom making is if they release the game on Steam at current subscription fees. The first impression people get of that is a 14 year old MMO with higher prices than these new "tripple-A" MMO's being released today. The prices absolutely have to be at or lower than all the competition. Only then can the uniqueness of AO get a fair chance in the marketplace.

    Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. I guess all I'm saying, long story short, is that I have big doubts about an old and small game making it in the F2P market, almost no matter what strategy they go for.
    Last edited by Wrangeline; Sep 15th, 2014 at 20:49:15.
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