"Finished" is far different than "beta". No one is arguing that MMO's should not evolve over time, but there are plenty of finished products. WoW, EQ, UO, EVE all come to mind as solid, finished products that continued to develop as all MMO's continue to develop.
If game/service is still in production in terms of new content, patches etc. then it's not finished. If you ask MMO developers they always think in terms of never ending beta.
What about old MMO's? WoW is old. EQ is older than that, and you can go further back. D3, while not technically an MMO, would have had a very complex production as well.
The old gen console comparison isn't a valid one, but the point remains the same that NW should not have been released in the state that is was, and more importantly if they wanted beta testers to help test their game and find bugs, they should not have been charging for things like power respecs.
Even old MMO's like WoW are hundred times more complex then any Sonic ever created.
I don't agree with you on NW state. NW is one of the most polished new MMO's on the market, even with all those exploits during Open Beta. Try Dragon's Prophet, that's an example of too early release.
The article is spot on, I'm waiting for well formed arguments. But I fear it's just going to be more NW fanboys with their blinders on
All online games tweak, patch, update, balance, adjust, and nerf over time...in that sense, all online games are still 'pre launch', and always will be. Even games that are single player, like Kerbal Space Program, are getting in on the action. For good reason....it obviously makes good business sense to do so.
Lastly, your empty headed, and vacuous straw man "fanboy" preemptive whinge is both misplaced, and predictable. It's the mark of someone who can't otherwise participate in a conversation with those who's views differ from theirs.
In all that you really haven't driven home many points. Ambi's absolutely right. If you are calling Cryptic a "scam", where exactly is the fraud? If there is no fraud going on here, then your point is moot in relation to Neverwinter. The mmorpg article is rubbish, plain and simple.
Competent programmer? Show me a programmer that will guarantee his/her code can not be cracked or circumvented. Companies absolutely have a right to offer a "soft launch" if they so desire or feel the need as long as they arent breaking any laws. Cryptic has lived up to its contract obligations, and tries its best to play nice with the jurisdictions it does business in. Its a big world out there.
Now as far as the IRS goes, this is the only point to me you've made that sticks. I don't think you'd get much disagreement from Ambi on it either. I'm looking forward to a crackdown, but we still are years away. There's a lot of politics in the way... both here in the US and internationally. No question RMT, micro-transactions, monthly fees, expansion income will be taxable. But taxing the internet transactions is only a few years old. It took em two decades to get this far. It will be many years before we see a progress and no guarantee it will change the ethical behavior of any company.
As long as they are honest, and communicate, and stick to their contractual obligations Cryptic will be fine. This is what Ive seen thusfar, and this comes from one of the loudest voices on these forums against lockboxes and other marketing decisions make by PWE and Cryptic.
Complexity is really not a issue for talented programmers. As for content, please, do you think we're all just idiots out here? Most content save for new systems in a game (crafting additions, new classes, etc to name a couple) are done using design development systems. Hell some companies SELL their content development system. Check around, they aren't obscure or hard to find. Bottom line? It's not so "complex" as you'd like to make it out to be, and the complexity that IS involved, is not beyond a competent programmer's capacity to interpret and navigate successfully.
Would be nice if some of these armchair programmers actually worked on an MMO before they start talking about an industry they clearly know nothing about...
Until folks actually understand what beta means I will enjoy reading the gnashing teeth posts while I sit at work.
Cryptic is on track and delivering quality entertainment both in game and in forums.
Kudos.
P.S. Andre - I was a kid watching you fight midgets in the ring. O.o
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cho83Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
edited June 2013
1000 ppl 1000 different opinions ...some can agree with each other some cant .
People ,for example, say Microsoft is bad and they still use their products ,shot them down and God knows how many ppl will lose their jobs ....
Blizzard released World of Warcraft in beta testing and it was full of bugs'n'exploits + they didn't even dream that they will gain millions of "customers" over the Globe .... lot of people in Blizzard made their dreams come true and lot of ppl around the Globe that they got to play their favorite Warcraft Saga on-line with their friends and family and HAVE FUN because games are made for providing entertainment to people causing it mainly to HAVE FUN ....
I mentioned Blizzard's WOW coz it was a "Stepping Stone" in mmorpg gaming industry that give inspiration to many developers to realize their dreams and favorite Sagas ....
*If you wana go to some amusement park and wana ride at some roller coaster you need to pay coz maintenance (fixing ,cleaning etc.) is needed to keep that machine working + for salary for ppl who works there ....*
No one is forcing you to pay for anything in this game ,some ppl say it's "pay to win" ...win what exactly ? FUN?
Btw Nintendo,Sega etc. released their games full of bugs and as I remember you needed to BUY them so you can play ....Ok piracy provided that free but retail ,originals call it what ever you want needed to be purchased so you can enjoy them ....
Paying for some " Beta testing " game is a players choice ! Beta testing Key was provided to anyone who can obtain it and try testing the game !
Players suffering how exactly and for what? Coz of the game? If some one can suffer because of the game then how can they manage to survive and live in real life where "suffering" is a common thing ...
Then good number of players is spoiled people "that want it all and want it all NOW" and all that for FREE
The game is free to play and if you take away pay shops etc. the game will be shoot down pretty quick coz I don't know what fool will continue "doing their job" for FREE
Paying for this game is a choice ....
PS: What the hell is wrong with this 1h patching thing !? Cryptic YOU SUX !
I know it does kind of suck but at the same time nothing has changed. I remember when wow released, that is 'released' it was like playing a beta anyway. Servers were down a ton and lag was horendous. They went through sooo many server upgrades. And that was 10 years ago.
This. "Open Beta" is just a label. Neverwinter, buggy as it was/is, was significantly better than the "release" of most of the games in the so-called "Golden Era."
Wow: loot lag, anybody remember that?
DAoC: Smooth, but almost no content
Shadowbane: framerate of -1...
EQ1: over-population to the point of crashes and lag worse than anything you see now in "Open Beta..."
I could go on. I'm no fan boy, Neverwinter has flaws and I'm not a fan of the micro-transaction model, but this is simply a question of economics. If people will pay for it, it will be sold.
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sasheriaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 1Arc User
Would be nice if some of these armchair programmers actually worked on an MMO before they start talking about an industry they clearly know nothing about...
I have friends who program and when you look in MMO, it is actually pretty hard. There are so many parts broken down for each department to work on. Sometimes intentions may work one way, the coder never realized a player may do something totally left field. You can't quite code against everything.
now on the flip side, there are some "basic" fail safe that shouldn't happen in the first place like negative number (AH issue) there should have been a check when entering a price. Or a skill that can't go beyond a certain number (negative damage bug on other game)
1) There is NOT single finished MMO on the market. All of them are in "beta" in terms of constant evolving content, patches and game play tweaks. You can't compare this to single player or even to simple multiplayer games. MMO's are agile service, ever evolving, never finished.
2) You can't compare old games to any current MMO on the market. That's silly. The production of MMO is much more complicated than Sonic.
It's clear, that author of that article doesn't understand that simply, coz he is journalist, not a developer.
I agree with these statements, if you are considering "old games" to be super mario style console games... And yet why is it that games nowadays have not progressed in feature depth further than the earliest mmos, and instead are released as more of the same shallow HAMSTER every time? Everquest one had most of the features of most current mmos, and although it wasn't 3d, ultima online had 10x the depth and interactivity of any current mmo. Adding one more dimension does not mean you can leave out the rest of the game. When will developers stop pushing this trash out the door for a quick score instead of making a truely interactive world with depth, a game that might actually last and finally give wow the old heave ho?
Neverwinter gave us a somewhat nifty foundry system, but left the rest of the game as bare bones as it possibly could be. Narrow tiny zones in which even the outdoor zones are pretty much hallways repainted to look like outdoors. None of the depth that games 15 years ago (UO) had in spades. Shallow classes. Neverwinter really went backwards in class specialization. 7 hotkeys. As a wizard I am most effective using the first 7 spells I got. What the HAMSTER how do these publishers think that they will not fail, except for with a few obsessive & semi HAMSTER super fans?
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mooglebMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 3Arc User
If game/service is still in production in terms of new content, patches etc. then it's not finished. If you ask MMO developers they always think in terms of never ending beta.
We're saying the same thing here, just using different terminology. In terms of software cycles, beta is not a finished/retail stage. It's a work in progress where bugs are still being ironed out. Sure, new bugs come with new content drops in MMO's and MMO's are constantly changing, but there's a difference between an MMO being in a beta stage where they are specifically looking for new news and having users report them versus an MMO being in a completed/retail stage and just working on new content/patches.
Even old MMO's like WoW are hundred times more complex then any Sonic ever created.
Miscommunication there. What I meant was comparing current MMO production versus older MMO production. Again, there will be some slight changes. Most definitely it's not fair to compare an old gen console game like Sonic versus an MMO, as there are so many different factors like bandwidth, netcode, server infrastructure etc.
I don't agree with you on NW state. NW is one of the most polished new MMO's on the market, even with all those exploits during Open Beta. Try Dragon's Prophet, that's an example of too early release.
NW has a very polished engine, there's no arguing that. But their problem lies with the mechanics of the game and the content.
They had no end game content which is a shame since it didn't take long to his max level. You could argue the foundry was the end game content, but then you're relying on players to generate said content and there were no fixed loot tables, just random draws. It's one thing to hope a specific item drops of a named, it's another to hope you hit the lotto on a 100% random loot roll. That's not a proper end game solution.
Some of the class powers/feats just flat out didn't work, and weren't fixed for months. Again, not an issue in a Beta as that's what you're asking players to test, but then they are charging for power respecs so who the hell wants to change their spec and test skills? I haven't looked in a while, but when I stopped playing 2/3 of the feats weren't even open (I forget the name, oracle trees or something?).
NW is actually a fun game and has some solid design behind it. But it's certainly not a polished/complete title and the types of microtransactions they have in it are an indication of their end goal.
As for Dragon's prophet, I haven't played that but I was a beta tester for Vanguard, so I've seen some terrible beta's/launches
All online games tweak, patch, update, balance, adjust, and nerf over time...in that sense, all online games are still 'pre launch', and always will be. Even games that are single player, like Kerbal Space Program, are getting in on the action. For good reason....it obviously makes good business sense to do so.
Lastly, your empty headed, and vacuous straw man "fanboy" preemptive whinge is both misplaced, and predictable. It's the mark of someone who can't otherwise participate in a conversation with those who's views differ from theirs.
I assure you I can carry on a conversation just fine.
You simply don't have a firm grasp on terms "pre launch" and "post launch but still evolving" nearly every product in the market evolves now a days. You update windows, consoles, phone etc; anything that connects to the internet pretty much constantly evolves in one manner or another. So you cannot say anything that receives updates is in beta.
BETA - means unfinished, needs testing and is not fit for paying customers at this point due to potentially poor experience.
RELEASE - means finished and polished; does not contain a ton of customer impacting bugs and is ready for mass consumption.
NW has a lot of unfinished edges: talent specs not done, bugs remain in talents, bugs remain in pvp, there is 0 balance in pvp, there's no content to really speak of. At 60 you've nothing to do but farm T2 then spend your money on enchants and pvp. There is literally nothing to do; and there's no exploration at all - sorry but this just isn't an MMO it simply lacks way too much to call it that. Single player grind to 60 with grouping options and then 5 man content at 60 that's uninspired and the same HAMSTER rehashed over and over. Instead of being vague why not explain how that's *NOT* true? is it perhaps because you can't?
Insult me all you like but the fact remains this game at 60 is pathetic; there's just nothing worth doing. You can crawl thru dungeons that are all full of the exact same stuff; or you can pvp and mostly get rolled by people who've spent more money than you. This is coming from someone who's ran VERY competitive pvp teams in WoW; I'm not a bad player I assure you. But I refuse to throw money at a game for gear/upgrades that should be obtainable via the game it's self.
Even games that are single player, like Kerbal Space Program, are getting in on the action. For good reason....it obviously makes good business sense to do so.
Right, it makes sense for them to get in on the action because gamers now a days will pay money to get ahead, people pay cryptic daily to buy gear and what are they essentially doing. Paying to SKIP content this tells me the game isn't very good because if you'd rather throw money than play thru it well... =| (that and lets face it, a reasonable portion of gamers today lack patience and want it NOW NOW NOW). Naturally companies are going to cash in if they can, that doesn't mean I have to sit here and say it's fine. I think it's a very bad omen for gamers in general; I'm tired of these half baked releases. If the game is so bad you'd rather pay to skip content than consume it that should really tell you something.
As for my "fanboy whinge" you'll need to be a lot more specific. My opinion is that Neverwinter has a good combat engine but beyond that there's not much to it, an MMO needs more than this. The game seriously lacks depth, and it's a real bad cash grab. You didn't bother to present an argument of any sort - just belittle mine with words that make you feel big and smart.
I agree with the article in the most important point it attempts to make. WE, the customer base, have allowed this to happen. It's OUR fault, and only WE can make it right again.
I agree with the article in the most important point it attempts to make. WE, the customer base, have allowed this to happen. It's OUR fault, and only WE can make it right again.
And the article also gives the instant solution at the end:
"At the moment, players have a choice: stop paying for games that aren't finished, or stop complaining about games being unfinished yet equipped with fully functional cash shops and "early adopter" payment tiers.
As a casual player, I have to say that none of this bothers me. I've been playing MMOs since... well, before they were MMOs, and it's always been common knowledge that you should wait at least six months after release if you really want the game to be working right. For someone like me, who plays a few hours a week, it's no big deal, as I crawl around the low levels while everyone else is raging about the lack of end-game and broken classes for min-maxing I don't have time for or interest in.
So my path is to not complain about it. If something is too broke for me, I don't play it till it gets better, I don't rage about it.
In all that you really haven't driven home many points. Ambi's absolutely right. If you are calling Cryptic a "scam", where exactly is the fraud? If there is no fraud going on here, then your point is moot in relation to Neverwinter. The mmorpg article is rubbish, plain and simple.
Competent programmer? Show me a programmer that will guarantee his/her code can not be cracked or circumvented. Companies absolutely have a right to offer a "soft launch" if they so desire or feel the need as long as they arent breaking any laws. Cryptic has lived up to its contract obligations, and tries its best to play nice with the jurisdictions it does business in. Its a big world out there.
Its not a matter of living up to contract obligations or not, nor is it a matter of legality. Its about one thing and one thing only. Economics. As long as enough people are willing to pay for unfinished product, companies will continue to release unfinished product.
Competence in this situation =/= guarantee that it cant be cracked. Competence = having contingencies in place for when it is cracked, which are very limited after a company begins taking money for the product. Had they not done so, there would not have been this insane level of debate about whether or not the server should be wiped in a BETA - something the pundits continually insist on calling the unfinished environment we play in. This type of manipulation gives the company the best of both worlds - money in the bank same as they would have after a live launch, and the beta excuse for when all hell breaks loose for which they obviously had minimal contingencies in place for.
its a short term gain for a long term loss though.
they gain in the short term from the whales, but in the long term the games generally get reputations as being poor, broken, and so on and people move on.
that is how most people operate in todays world though. 5$ today is better than 50$ next month.
1) There is NOT single finished MMO on the market. All of them are in "beta" in terms of constant evolving content, patches and game play tweaks. You can't compare this to single player or even to simple multiplayer games. MMO's are agile service, ever evolving, never finished.
Implying that "constantly evolving" is the same is "not ready for retail release" is as specious an argument as you can make.
Its not a matter of living up to contract obligations or not, nor is it a matter of legality. Its about one thing and one thing only. Economics. As long as enough people are willing to pay for unfinished product, companies will continue to release unfinished product.
And how is it a bad thing to release "an unfinished product?" If you haven't noticed in your other internet life, DDO is STILL unfinished 7 years after they released it!
It is up to the publisher/developer to make these decisions, and many of us have had a chance to contribute to this product.
This has saved Cryptic countless hours of development time, and just because you haven't invested in a pack, means nothing. Many community members found/find real value not only offering their time but their money as well.
The way I look at it, if you have played this game, for one second, you owe a debt of gratitude to PWE /Cryptic for allowing you to use their product and service at no charge. If you did pay forward, you purchased an inventory of digital items, supported the developers, ensured the release of the product, and pretty much guaranteed there are now funds to help pay the people responsible for designing and testing this game.
People don't work for free, and there's an enormous amount of overhead that goes into creating and maintaining an MMO like this. Most people I bump into in this community that have paid forward are happy they did and are looking forward to future development.
The way I look at it, if you have played this game, for one second, you owe a debt of gratitude to PWE /Cryptic for allowing you to use their product and service at no charge.
That's way over the top. PWE/Cryptic doesn't allow people to play for free out of charity, they do it because they know that enough people, given the opportunity to play, will pay. There's nothing altruistic about it - it's just business. If someone gives me a free sample in the grocery store, I don't feel a debt of gratitude either for someone allowing me to sample their product at no charge. They're doing so in the hopes that I'll buy something.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
That's way over the top. PWE/Cryptic doesn't allow people to play for free out of charity, they do it because they know that enough people, given the opportunity to play, will pay. There's nothing altruistic about it - it's just business. If someone gives me a free sample in the grocery store, I don't feel a debt of gratitude either for someone allowing me to sample their product at no charge. They're doing so in the hopes that I'll buy something.
Indeed, they also (hopefully) realize that free players are content.
its a short term gain for a long term loss though.
they gain in the short term from the whales, but in the long term the games generally get reputations as being poor, broken, and so on and people move on.
that is how most people operate in todays world though. 5$ today is better than 50$ next month.
Ive been suspecting that this has become the plan the entire time, not solely with NW, but with the entire MMO industry as a whole. Social gaming has proven that with a small percentage of whales, you can make more of a short term profit than with a large number of subscribers paying a set fee. If the project stops generating enough money to keep the lights on in the long term, shut'er down.
What will likely happen is we will stop hearing about all these old MMOs which still hang around 14 years after launch, and start hearing more about the shops closing after ~5 years or so, give or take, depending on how long the defenders stay in denial and hang around the ghost towns. This is already starting to happen in many first gen f2p games.
And how is it a bad thing to release "an unfinished product?" If you haven't noticed in your other internet life, DDO is STILL UNFINISHED.
There's a difference between 'unfinished' and broken. When you make a game that revolves entirely around the economy- and this game does rely entirely on the economy, hence why you can get everything in the game by either spending money or playing the economy (or exploiting), but you cannot get very much by simply playing the game (outside of economy)- you can't grind out a mount/pets/enchants- you have to either wait for months (to get a cat, which is pretty much necessary, just through playing the game- ie dailies- it'd take you, even maxing out AD for the day, about a month and a half- add on a full speed mount and you're talking almost half a year- and that doesn't even touch the cost of enchants)- you must use the economy to purchase just about everything outside of gear, and even then, since gear is all boe, you have a very low chance of earning your gear the traditional way either (ie- killing bosses).
Things that are unfinished, and thus in an excusable state to release the game, would either not be directly involved in what the game entirely revolves around- ie- the economy- or have to be things that have very little effect on it.
For example- normally, bugs in bosses and dungeons that allow people to skip content or make it trivial, those are acceptable, even in games where dungeons are the main attraction in the game- because when gear in bop it has no other effect, and new content will render any ill gotten gains mute.
Missing content- like Gauntlgrym, or content that doesn't work- like dailies not registering or not being completable or how skirmishes never count towards the daily they're meant to- those are temporary inconveniences, that may effect AD flow now, but don't have a long term effect.
Numerous exploits that were poorly tracked, and that allowed hundreds of players to grind out billions of currency, which was then dispersed to mule accounts in anticipation of the exploiting account being banned- for weeks, after months of alpha/beta testing where these exploits were found, brought up on the forums and in tickets, and promptly deleted and ignored. That's not unfinished, that's broken. Having a patch that'll fix exploits that are giving a select few who are cheating domination of the economy, which again- is the center of this game- but not putting that patch into effect for weeks while you wait for the next big patch to put it all together- that's broken, and purposefully so.
The problem isn't that the game was unfinished at launch- all mmos are unfinished at launch, that's inevitable... the problem here is, you've made a pay to win game, where BiS items cost the equivilant of literally years of daily play (without using the economy)- so you've said essentially that, you must use the economy at endgame, the economy IS endgame... and then you just ignore dozens of massive exploits.
And every aspect of the economy has been exploited- from gear gotten through 5 minute cheat dungeon runs, to bot pvp gear, to infinite cats, to infinite AD, to infinite runes and enchants, to no fail fusings- and those are only the ones I've heard of in global chat- I can't even imagine how many more are out there.
When you base a game around one thing- and that one thing is completely broken. It's not an unfinished launch- it's a broken one.
And that's what this game is going to be remembered for.
And how is it a bad thing to release "an unfinished product?" If you haven't noticed in your other internet life, DDO is STILL unfinished 7 years after they released it!
It is up to the publisher/developer to make these decisions, and many of us have had a chance to contribute to this product.
This has saved Cryptic countless hours of development time, and just because you haven't invested in a pack, means nothing. Many community members found/find real value not only offering their time but their money as well.
The way I look at it, if you have played this game, for one second, you owe a debt of gratitude to PWE /Cryptic for allowing you to use their product and service at no charge. If you did pay forward, you purchased an inventory of digital items, supported the developers, ensured the release of the product, and pretty much guaranteed there are now funds to help pay the people responsible for designing and testing this game.
People don't work for free, and there's an enormous amount of overhead that goes into creating and maintaining an MMO like this. Most people I bump into in this community that have paid forward are happy they did and are looking forward to future development.
Thats completely backward. The customer is always the most important person in the equation. The customer is not an interruption of the companies process, they are the entire reason the company exists. The reason companies allow people to play for free is because they cant get the same number of people to pay, but they can get a smaller number of people to pay more than the average player pays in a sub game. Whales dont like to log into ghost towns. The free players keep the game fully populated, and players will be at the ready to group with those who do pay, keeping them there longer. Also, the longer free players play, and the more effort the company puts in to make their product a quality product, the higher the chance that the free player will eventually pay into the system. Showing them a quality product is what earns their money, not carrying on about how they somehow owe the company a debt of gratitude for allowing them to play.
Thats completely backward. The customer is always the most important person in the equation. The customer is not an interruption of the companies process, they are the entire reason the company exists. The reason companies allow people to play for free is because they cant get the same number of people to pay, but they can get a smaller number of people to pay more than the average player pays in a sub game. Whales dont like to log into ghost towns. The free players keep the game fully populated, and players will be at the ready to group with those who do pay, keeping them there longer. Also, the longer free players play, and the more effort the company puts in to make their product a quality product, the higher the chance that the free player will eventually pay into the system. Showing them a quality product is what earns their money, not carrying on about how they somehow owe the company a debt of gratitude for allowing them to play.
There's a difference between 'unfinished' and broken.
Of course the game was unfinished, thats why it is still in beta.
The "economy" is important to every mmo. If it werent, the mmo would die.
You blame a game designer, not cheaters for....... cheating.
Lots of words, labels. Meaningless.
Look at all the mmos around you. Most deal with the same type of cheaters. Free games are all like that. Cheaters go from one free mmo game to the next. Most never plan to ever spend a red cent. Theres ALWAYS AN EXCUSE not to pay.
I found hundreds of players to play with that never cheat. I found a game thats allowed me to play for free while testing it. I've invested time and money. And I got more then I paid for.
Is the game finished? Of course not. The game is not dead, or dying. Its not breaking or broken. I'll meet you back on these forums in five years. Write it down. PM me. I'll tell ya again if you'd like to hear it.
Play the game or don't. Why play a game or even talk about it, if it doesnt suit you? Because there's things you like about it? Because it has potential? Because you like it?
Find likeminded folk and play the game. it's young. Much more to go....
Thats completely backward. The customer is always the most important person in the equation. The customer is not an interruption of the companies process, they are the entire reason the company exists. The reason companies allow people to play for free is because they cant get the same number of people to pay, but they can get a smaller number of people to pay more than the average player pays in a sub game. Whales dont like to log into ghost towns. The free players keep the game fully populated, and players will be at the ready to group with those who do pay, keeping them there longer. Also, the longer free players play, and the more effort the company puts in to make their product a quality product, the higher the chance that the free player will eventually pay into the system. Showing them a quality product is what earns their money, not carrying on about how they somehow owe the company a debt of gratitude for allowing them to play.
The customer is always the most important. Indeed. The rest of what you said is malarkey. Most of them are busy playing the game as we speak, not whining and carrying on about whales and ghost towns on the forum here!
They have produced a heck of a patch, and delivered it 7 days early. Coincidentally, much of the data came about because of this live open beta.... or soft launch... all because a much larger sample of people have been allowed to play.
Collectively.. Cryptic and the playerbase (US) made the game better... CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT!?
Thats completely backward. The customer is always the most important person in the equation. The customer is not an interruption of the companies process, they are the entire reason the company exists. The reason companies allow people to play for free is because they cant get the same number of people to pay, but they can get a smaller number of people to pay more than the average player pays in a sub game. Whales dont like to log into ghost towns. The free players keep the game fully populated, and players will be at the ready to group with those who do pay, keeping them there longer. Also, the longer free players play, and the more effort the company puts in to make their product a quality product, the higher the chance that the free player will eventually pay into the system. Showing them a quality product is what earns their money, not carrying on about how they somehow owe the company a debt of gratitude for allowing them to play.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
The customer is always the most important. Indeed. The rest of what you said is malarkey. Most of them are busy playing the game as we speak, not whining and carrying on about whales and ghost towns on the forum here!
They have produced a heck of a patch, and delivered it 7 days early. Coincidentally, much of the data came about because of this live open beta.... or soft launch... all because a much larger sample of people have been allowed to play.
Collectively.. Cryptic and the playerbase (US) made the game better... CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT!?
The rest of what I said is absolutely correct, and comes right back to the customers, as I already outlined. I'm not the one whining here however, as you are trying to accuse - you are carrying on about how customers owe the company a debt of gratitude, when its 100% the other way around. Without the company we would still be here. Without the users the company would not still be here. While some are willing to blindly spend money on the product, even in an unfinished state, the smart ones wait for the product to be proven to be something worth spending money on.
Comments
If game/service is still in production in terms of new content, patches etc. then it's not finished. If you ask MMO developers they always think in terms of never ending beta.
Even old MMO's like WoW are hundred times more complex then any Sonic ever created.
I don't agree with you on NW state. NW is one of the most polished new MMO's on the market, even with all those exploits during Open Beta. Try Dragon's Prophet, that's an example of too early release.
All online games tweak, patch, update, balance, adjust, and nerf over time...in that sense, all online games are still 'pre launch', and always will be. Even games that are single player, like Kerbal Space Program, are getting in on the action. For good reason....it obviously makes good business sense to do so.
Lastly, your empty headed, and vacuous straw man "fanboy" preemptive whinge is both misplaced, and predictable. It's the mark of someone who can't otherwise participate in a conversation with those who's views differ from theirs.
In all that you really haven't driven home many points. Ambi's absolutely right. If you are calling Cryptic a "scam", where exactly is the fraud? If there is no fraud going on here, then your point is moot in relation to Neverwinter. The mmorpg article is rubbish, plain and simple.
Competent programmer? Show me a programmer that will guarantee his/her code can not be cracked or circumvented. Companies absolutely have a right to offer a "soft launch" if they so desire or feel the need as long as they arent breaking any laws. Cryptic has lived up to its contract obligations, and tries its best to play nice with the jurisdictions it does business in. Its a big world out there.
Now as far as the IRS goes, this is the only point to me you've made that sticks. I don't think you'd get much disagreement from Ambi on it either. I'm looking forward to a crackdown, but we still are years away. There's a lot of politics in the way... both here in the US and internationally. No question RMT, micro-transactions, monthly fees, expansion income will be taxable. But taxing the internet transactions is only a few years old. It took em two decades to get this far. It will be many years before we see a progress and no guarantee it will change the ethical behavior of any company.
As long as they are honest, and communicate, and stick to their contractual obligations Cryptic will be fine. This is what Ive seen thusfar, and this comes from one of the loudest voices on these forums against lockboxes and other marketing decisions make by PWE and Cryptic.
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Would be nice if some of these armchair programmers actually worked on an MMO before they start talking about an industry they clearly know nothing about...
Burninator of Wasabiburn, Maker of Dreamz, Breaker of Heartz
Closed beta -> open beta -> launch.
Until folks actually understand what beta means I will enjoy reading the gnashing teeth posts while I sit at work.
Cryptic is on track and delivering quality entertainment both in game and in forums.
Kudos.
P.S. Andre - I was a kid watching you fight midgets in the ring. O.o
People ,for example, say Microsoft is bad and they still use their products ,shot them down and God knows how many ppl will lose their jobs ....
Blizzard released World of Warcraft in beta testing and it was full of bugs'n'exploits + they didn't even dream that they will gain millions of "customers" over the Globe .... lot of people in Blizzard made their dreams come true and lot of ppl around the Globe that they got to play their favorite Warcraft Saga on-line with their friends and family and HAVE FUN because games are made for providing entertainment to people causing it mainly to HAVE FUN ....
I mentioned Blizzard's WOW coz it was a "Stepping Stone" in mmorpg gaming industry that give inspiration to many developers to realize their dreams and favorite Sagas ....
*If you wana go to some amusement park and wana ride at some roller coaster you need to pay coz maintenance (fixing ,cleaning etc.) is needed to keep that machine working + for salary for ppl who works there ....*
No one is forcing you to pay for anything in this game ,some ppl say it's "pay to win" ...win what exactly ? FUN?
Btw Nintendo,Sega etc. released their games full of bugs and as I remember you needed to BUY them so you can play ....Ok piracy provided that free but retail ,originals call it what ever you want needed to be purchased so you can enjoy them ....
Paying for some " Beta testing " game is a players choice ! Beta testing Key was provided to anyone who can obtain it and try testing the game !
Players suffering how exactly and for what? Coz of the game? If some one can suffer because of the game then how can they manage to survive and live in real life where "suffering" is a common thing ...
Then good number of players is spoiled people "that want it all and want it all NOW" and all that for FREE
The game is free to play and if you take away pay shops etc. the game will be shoot down pretty quick coz I don't know what fool will continue "doing their job" for FREE
Paying for this game is a choice ....
PS: What the hell is wrong with this 1h patching thing !? Cryptic YOU SUX !
This. "Open Beta" is just a label. Neverwinter, buggy as it was/is, was significantly better than the "release" of most of the games in the so-called "Golden Era."
Wow: loot lag, anybody remember that?
DAoC: Smooth, but almost no content
Shadowbane: framerate of -1...
EQ1: over-population to the point of crashes and lag worse than anything you see now in "Open Beta..."
I could go on. I'm no fan boy, Neverwinter has flaws and I'm not a fan of the micro-transaction model, but this is simply a question of economics. If people will pay for it, it will be sold.
I have friends who program and when you look in MMO, it is actually pretty hard. There are so many parts broken down for each department to work on. Sometimes intentions may work one way, the coder never realized a player may do something totally left field. You can't quite code against everything.
now on the flip side, there are some "basic" fail safe that shouldn't happen in the first place like negative number (AH issue) there should have been a check when entering a price. Or a skill that can't go beyond a certain number (negative damage bug on other game)
Please review my campaign and I'll return the favor.
I agree with these statements, if you are considering "old games" to be super mario style console games... And yet why is it that games nowadays have not progressed in feature depth further than the earliest mmos, and instead are released as more of the same shallow HAMSTER every time? Everquest one had most of the features of most current mmos, and although it wasn't 3d, ultima online had 10x the depth and interactivity of any current mmo. Adding one more dimension does not mean you can leave out the rest of the game. When will developers stop pushing this trash out the door for a quick score instead of making a truely interactive world with depth, a game that might actually last and finally give wow the old heave ho?
Neverwinter gave us a somewhat nifty foundry system, but left the rest of the game as bare bones as it possibly could be. Narrow tiny zones in which even the outdoor zones are pretty much hallways repainted to look like outdoors. None of the depth that games 15 years ago (UO) had in spades. Shallow classes. Neverwinter really went backwards in class specialization. 7 hotkeys. As a wizard I am most effective using the first 7 spells I got. What the HAMSTER how do these publishers think that they will not fail, except for with a few obsessive & semi HAMSTER super fans?
We're saying the same thing here, just using different terminology. In terms of software cycles, beta is not a finished/retail stage. It's a work in progress where bugs are still being ironed out. Sure, new bugs come with new content drops in MMO's and MMO's are constantly changing, but there's a difference between an MMO being in a beta stage where they are specifically looking for new news and having users report them versus an MMO being in a completed/retail stage and just working on new content/patches.
Miscommunication there. What I meant was comparing current MMO production versus older MMO production. Again, there will be some slight changes. Most definitely it's not fair to compare an old gen console game like Sonic versus an MMO, as there are so many different factors like bandwidth, netcode, server infrastructure etc.
NW has a very polished engine, there's no arguing that. But their problem lies with the mechanics of the game and the content.
They had no end game content which is a shame since it didn't take long to his max level. You could argue the foundry was the end game content, but then you're relying on players to generate said content and there were no fixed loot tables, just random draws. It's one thing to hope a specific item drops of a named, it's another to hope you hit the lotto on a 100% random loot roll. That's not a proper end game solution.
Some of the class powers/feats just flat out didn't work, and weren't fixed for months. Again, not an issue in a Beta as that's what you're asking players to test, but then they are charging for power respecs so who the hell wants to change their spec and test skills? I haven't looked in a while, but when I stopped playing 2/3 of the feats weren't even open (I forget the name, oracle trees or something?).
NW is actually a fun game and has some solid design behind it. But it's certainly not a polished/complete title and the types of microtransactions they have in it are an indication of their end goal.
As for Dragon's prophet, I haven't played that but I was a beta tester for Vanguard, so I've seen some terrible beta's/launches
I assure you I can carry on a conversation just fine.
You simply don't have a firm grasp on terms "pre launch" and "post launch but still evolving" nearly every product in the market evolves now a days. You update windows, consoles, phone etc; anything that connects to the internet pretty much constantly evolves in one manner or another. So you cannot say anything that receives updates is in beta.
BETA - means unfinished, needs testing and is not fit for paying customers at this point due to potentially poor experience.
RELEASE - means finished and polished; does not contain a ton of customer impacting bugs and is ready for mass consumption.
NW has a lot of unfinished edges: talent specs not done, bugs remain in talents, bugs remain in pvp, there is 0 balance in pvp, there's no content to really speak of. At 60 you've nothing to do but farm T2 then spend your money on enchants and pvp. There is literally nothing to do; and there's no exploration at all - sorry but this just isn't an MMO it simply lacks way too much to call it that. Single player grind to 60 with grouping options and then 5 man content at 60 that's uninspired and the same HAMSTER rehashed over and over. Instead of being vague why not explain how that's *NOT* true? is it perhaps because you can't?
Insult me all you like but the fact remains this game at 60 is pathetic; there's just nothing worth doing. You can crawl thru dungeons that are all full of the exact same stuff; or you can pvp and mostly get rolled by people who've spent more money than you. This is coming from someone who's ran VERY competitive pvp teams in WoW; I'm not a bad player I assure you. But I refuse to throw money at a game for gear/upgrades that should be obtainable via the game it's self.
Right, it makes sense for them to get in on the action because gamers now a days will pay money to get ahead, people pay cryptic daily to buy gear and what are they essentially doing. Paying to SKIP content this tells me the game isn't very good because if you'd rather throw money than play thru it well... =| (that and lets face it, a reasonable portion of gamers today lack patience and want it NOW NOW NOW). Naturally companies are going to cash in if they can, that doesn't mean I have to sit here and say it's fine. I think it's a very bad omen for gamers in general; I'm tired of these half baked releases. If the game is so bad you'd rather pay to skip content than consume it that should really tell you something.
As for my "fanboy whinge" you'll need to be a lot more specific. My opinion is that Neverwinter has a good combat engine but beyond that there's not much to it, an MMO needs more than this. The game seriously lacks depth, and it's a real bad cash grab. You didn't bother to present an argument of any sort - just belittle mine with words that make you feel big and smart.
your post, like this game - has no substance.
Occam's Razor makes the cutting clean.
And the article also gives the instant solution at the end:
Couldn't have put it better myself.
So my path is to not complain about it. If something is too broke for me, I don't play it till it gets better, I don't rage about it.
Its not a matter of living up to contract obligations or not, nor is it a matter of legality. Its about one thing and one thing only. Economics. As long as enough people are willing to pay for unfinished product, companies will continue to release unfinished product.
Competence in this situation =/= guarantee that it cant be cracked. Competence = having contingencies in place for when it is cracked, which are very limited after a company begins taking money for the product. Had they not done so, there would not have been this insane level of debate about whether or not the server should be wiped in a BETA - something the pundits continually insist on calling the unfinished environment we play in. This type of manipulation gives the company the best of both worlds - money in the bank same as they would have after a live launch, and the beta excuse for when all hell breaks loose for which they obviously had minimal contingencies in place for.
they gain in the short term from the whales, but in the long term the games generally get reputations as being poor, broken, and so on and people move on.
that is how most people operate in todays world though. 5$ today is better than 50$ next month.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
Implying that "constantly evolving" is the same is "not ready for retail release" is as specious an argument as you can make.
And how is it a bad thing to release "an unfinished product?" If you haven't noticed in your other internet life, DDO is STILL unfinished 7 years after they released it!
It is up to the publisher/developer to make these decisions, and many of us have had a chance to contribute to this product.
This has saved Cryptic countless hours of development time, and just because you haven't invested in a pack, means nothing. Many community members found/find real value not only offering their time but their money as well.
The way I look at it, if you have played this game, for one second, you owe a debt of gratitude to PWE /Cryptic for allowing you to use their product and service at no charge. If you did pay forward, you purchased an inventory of digital items, supported the developers, ensured the release of the product, and pretty much guaranteed there are now funds to help pay the people responsible for designing and testing this game.
People don't work for free, and there's an enormous amount of overhead that goes into creating and maintaining an MMO like this. Most people I bump into in this community that have paid forward are happy they did and are looking forward to future development.
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That's way over the top. PWE/Cryptic doesn't allow people to play for free out of charity, they do it because they know that enough people, given the opportunity to play, will pay. There's nothing altruistic about it - it's just business. If someone gives me a free sample in the grocery store, I don't feel a debt of gratitude either for someone allowing me to sample their product at no charge. They're doing so in the hopes that I'll buy something.
Indeed, they also (hopefully) realize that free players are content.
Ive been suspecting that this has become the plan the entire time, not solely with NW, but with the entire MMO industry as a whole. Social gaming has proven that with a small percentage of whales, you can make more of a short term profit than with a large number of subscribers paying a set fee. If the project stops generating enough money to keep the lights on in the long term, shut'er down.
What will likely happen is we will stop hearing about all these old MMOs which still hang around 14 years after launch, and start hearing more about the shops closing after ~5 years or so, give or take, depending on how long the defenders stay in denial and hang around the ghost towns. This is already starting to happen in many first gen f2p games.
There's a difference between 'unfinished' and broken. When you make a game that revolves entirely around the economy- and this game does rely entirely on the economy, hence why you can get everything in the game by either spending money or playing the economy (or exploiting), but you cannot get very much by simply playing the game (outside of economy)- you can't grind out a mount/pets/enchants- you have to either wait for months (to get a cat, which is pretty much necessary, just through playing the game- ie dailies- it'd take you, even maxing out AD for the day, about a month and a half- add on a full speed mount and you're talking almost half a year- and that doesn't even touch the cost of enchants)- you must use the economy to purchase just about everything outside of gear, and even then, since gear is all boe, you have a very low chance of earning your gear the traditional way either (ie- killing bosses).
Things that are unfinished, and thus in an excusable state to release the game, would either not be directly involved in what the game entirely revolves around- ie- the economy- or have to be things that have very little effect on it.
For example- normally, bugs in bosses and dungeons that allow people to skip content or make it trivial, those are acceptable, even in games where dungeons are the main attraction in the game- because when gear in bop it has no other effect, and new content will render any ill gotten gains mute.
Missing content- like Gauntlgrym, or content that doesn't work- like dailies not registering or not being completable or how skirmishes never count towards the daily they're meant to- those are temporary inconveniences, that may effect AD flow now, but don't have a long term effect.
Numerous exploits that were poorly tracked, and that allowed hundreds of players to grind out billions of currency, which was then dispersed to mule accounts in anticipation of the exploiting account being banned- for weeks, after months of alpha/beta testing where these exploits were found, brought up on the forums and in tickets, and promptly deleted and ignored. That's not unfinished, that's broken. Having a patch that'll fix exploits that are giving a select few who are cheating domination of the economy, which again- is the center of this game- but not putting that patch into effect for weeks while you wait for the next big patch to put it all together- that's broken, and purposefully so.
The problem isn't that the game was unfinished at launch- all mmos are unfinished at launch, that's inevitable... the problem here is, you've made a pay to win game, where BiS items cost the equivilant of literally years of daily play (without using the economy)- so you've said essentially that, you must use the economy at endgame, the economy IS endgame... and then you just ignore dozens of massive exploits.
And every aspect of the economy has been exploited- from gear gotten through 5 minute cheat dungeon runs, to bot pvp gear, to infinite cats, to infinite AD, to infinite runes and enchants, to no fail fusings- and those are only the ones I've heard of in global chat- I can't even imagine how many more are out there.
When you base a game around one thing- and that one thing is completely broken. It's not an unfinished launch- it's a broken one.
And that's what this game is going to be remembered for.
Thats completely backward. The customer is always the most important person in the equation. The customer is not an interruption of the companies process, they are the entire reason the company exists. The reason companies allow people to play for free is because they cant get the same number of people to pay, but they can get a smaller number of people to pay more than the average player pays in a sub game. Whales dont like to log into ghost towns. The free players keep the game fully populated, and players will be at the ready to group with those who do pay, keeping them there longer. Also, the longer free players play, and the more effort the company puts in to make their product a quality product, the higher the chance that the free player will eventually pay into the system. Showing them a quality product is what earns their money, not carrying on about how they somehow owe the company a debt of gratitude for allowing them to play.
Well said.
Of course the game was unfinished, thats why it is still in beta.
The "economy" is important to every mmo. If it werent, the mmo would die.
You blame a game designer, not cheaters for....... cheating.
Lots of words, labels. Meaningless.
Look at all the mmos around you. Most deal with the same type of cheaters. Free games are all like that. Cheaters go from one free mmo game to the next. Most never plan to ever spend a red cent. Theres ALWAYS AN EXCUSE not to pay.
I found hundreds of players to play with that never cheat. I found a game thats allowed me to play for free while testing it. I've invested time and money. And I got more then I paid for.
Is the game finished? Of course not. The game is not dead, or dying. Its not breaking or broken. I'll meet you back on these forums in five years. Write it down. PM me. I'll tell ya again if you'd like to hear it.
Play the game or don't. Why play a game or even talk about it, if it doesnt suit you? Because there's things you like about it? Because it has potential? Because you like it?
Find likeminded folk and play the game. it's young. Much more to go....
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The customer is always the most important. Indeed. The rest of what you said is malarkey. Most of them are busy playing the game as we speak, not whining and carrying on about whales and ghost towns on the forum here!
They have produced a heck of a patch, and delivered it 7 days early. Coincidentally, much of the data came about because of this live open beta.... or soft launch... all because a much larger sample of people have been allowed to play.
Collectively.. Cryptic and the playerbase (US) made the game better... CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT!?
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QFE /10char
The rest of what I said is absolutely correct, and comes right back to the customers, as I already outlined. I'm not the one whining here however, as you are trying to accuse - you are carrying on about how customers owe the company a debt of gratitude, when its 100% the other way around. Without the company we would still be here. Without the users the company would not still be here. While some are willing to blindly spend money on the product, even in an unfinished state, the smart ones wait for the product to be proven to be something worth spending money on.