and the moral of the story is: don't believe everything you see on youtube
ask the kirmse's, or any of the original meridian59 development team what they think of his ideas. he may be a good programmer, but not so much with the financial aspect of the industry.
and the moral of the story is: don't believe everything you see on youtube
ask the kirmse's, or any of the original meridian59 development team what they think of his ideas. he may be a good programmer, but not so much with the financial aspect of the industry.
Except that he's actually right. Doesn't a lot of the advice he gives in this video reflect a lot of what many in this community are asking Cryptic to do?
I know his main focus is from the position of one involved in social games, but many elements of social games are born from some sort of MMO origin. And games as a service, be it subscription or microtransaction based, share one thing in common: Customers who seek to be entertained and who will gladly pay if they get what they want.
Mr. Koster's presentation does shed some insight on the business side of things. Many of the sources he cites are no doubt familiar to developers.
And if there is anything that Mr. Koster knows how to do, it's building community-driven gameplay... My regret is that SOE moved him out of SWG's development and placed him in an executive position in their California office. SWG was still in its infancy when it came out, and it was Mr. Koster's brainchild. I don't think that the rest of the SWG team knew what the forward-going plan was. All I know is that they seemed to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off after he was promoted, and after he left SOE, they ended up reinventing the game. What might have Star Wars Galaxies become had he been left in charge of development and allowed to unfold whatever forward-going plan he might have had...
Anyway, the man is not stupid. And he seems to have done his homework on the issues he addressed.
Nice video, should maybe retitle it as "psychological break down of gamers and how to get the most money from them". Guilt? Love? family and friend bound? he sounds like he's talking about emotional exploitation rather than making good games that are fun to play.
I hope Cryptic don't take this sort of stuff onboard, i'm here for the Star Trek not family or friends or for some psychological experiment to see how much can be bleed form me before i unsub.
Nice video, should maybe retitle it as "psychological break down of gamers and how to get the most money from them". Guilt? Love? family and friend bound? he sounds like he's talking about emotional exploitation rather than making good games that are fun to play.
I hope Cryptic don't take this sort of stuff onboard, i'm here for the Star Trek not family or friends or for some psychological experiment to see how much can be bleed form me before i unsub.
He's exploring the elements that drive us to keep coming back. And you will notice he makes it a point to say that we have to WANT them, because we don't NEED them.
You are quick to dismiss him when many of the elements he is talking about are the very things which drive community's passions in the things they ask Cryptic for.
What he is explaining is how those who would market a game as a service can retain as many people as possible. The key to P2P or F2P success is retention. If they stay they will be likely to spend. But they have to WANT what is being offered. And he also explained how lack of retention in F2P games is worse than in P2P because unlike in P2P, when someone quits, there is a clear cut disconnect, while in F2P, they just stop showing up.
You may slam Mr. Koster for his psycobabble, but the truth is thare is a far greater psychological connection between gamer and game than many of us realize or want to admit. Look at the angst on these boards alone. We are psychologically attached to STO. If it was just about money, we'd just unsubscribe when we feel like the product we are paying for isn't being delivered. No. We engage with Cryptic from an emotion-driven expression of thought.
What Cryptic needs to realize is that whether they like it or not, their game is the catalyst that has forged a relationship between their customers and themselves, and they need to focus on making sure that they honor their end. In Mr. Koster's closing statements one of the key things he advised was "Don't lie to them..."
Well, many here feel that they have been lied to. So Cryptic needs to set the record straight and actually start delivering on their promises. They dug themselves into this hole, and only they can dig themselves out. It doesn't matter if Atari was behind a lot of the TRIBBLE that went down. Atari is out of the picture. They cannot skate by on that excuse anymore.
Personally, I think their handling of the KDF is all wrong. I would rather them release a level's worth of content each week until there is enough to level from 1 to 51. There are so many existing art assets in the game that they can create years worth of mission content as it is. And if members of the community can release foundry episodes that put some of Cryptic's own work to shame in a relatively short period of time (which decreases as familiarity with the tools and tricks thereof increases), then so can professionals who are paid to do it.
Anyway... there's a lot of stuff in that video that makes a great deal of sense...
I know what your saying OP, and your right he makes a lot of sense, after all governments and corporations have be doing the same thing to us for centuries, but i can't help being cynical about it. It's funny how he mentions car mechanics using a simliar approach in how they rip us off (which he's cool with because he wants to do the same to his customers and lets face if everyone is doing it why not us devs), but i can think of far worse parts of society that use the same techniques to sell drugs/gambling/prostitution/nicotine and alchol. Here you go kids here's a free pack of cigs get hooked and come back soon, just bring your money next time because you'll need a bigger hit.
Maybe it's just my preception that's skewerd, but taking psychology which was intend to help/treat/understand people who suffer from mental illness and use it as a tool to make personal gains just doesn't sit right with me.
With you on KDF problem, they have been shafted, to much time wasted on pointless skins for pointless ships, plenty of Klingon lore from TOS to TNG for there to be content.
I can't take anything that man says seriously after SWG, even if it sounds good on its face.
And while I agree in the very early days SWG seemed to have its high points, what high points that existed were mostly self-created by the community. The early post-launch 'development' of SWG, starting even before the Holocron Debacle, IMO only exposed that most of the foundation was actually rotten and ill-laid.
*In which the Holocron drops exposed the sheer idiocy of the 'secret' Jedi unlock grind-metric and shattered the organic community and economy that had existed outside of already tight-knit and insular communities.
What game makers are forgetting now. Fun games will keep people playing, subscribing and buying from stores. That's the core of MMO's you make a game that's really fun and people will play it.
There is so much stuff in this game that just isn't fun.
What game makers are forgetting now. Fun games will keep people playing, subscribing and buying from stores. That's the core of MMO's you make a game that's really fun and people will play it.
There is so much stuff in this game that just isn't fun.
Fun is of course important, but that's not all there is to it.
Angry Birds, for example, is a fun game. But you don't continue to play Angry Birds for months or years, you don't buy in-game items.
Cyrptic wants to not only make a fun game, but make a game that you want to continue to come back to time after time.
I know what your saying OP, and your right he makes a lot of sense, after all governments and corporations have be doing the same thing to us for centuries, but i can't help being cynical about it. It's funny how he mentions car mechanics using a simliar approach in how they rip us off (which he's cool with because he wants to do the same to his customers and lets face if everyone is doing it why not us devs),
Actually, if you will re-watch that part of the video and pay attention to the contect, you see he is suggesting that this approach is really not the right one to take. At least that was the viobe I got.
but i can think of far worse parts of society that use the same techniques to sell drugs/gambling/prostitution/nicotine and alchol. Here you go kids here's a free pack of cigs get hooked and come back soon, just bring your money next time because you'll need a bigger hit.
Actually, Pay-to-play MMOs are guilty of this. First month's free and then you're paying for it.
Maybe it's just my preception that's skewerd, but taking psychology which was intend to help/treat/understand people who suffer from mental illness and use it as a tool to make personal gains just doesn't sit right with me.
Psychology is not just for treating/helping/understanding mental illness. It is the science of understanding the way people think. What do you think companies use when building an ad campaign for a product. Psychology. As in what can they put in the ads to manipulate people into wanting to try the product. Everywhere we look, we are being manipulated psychologically by all sorts of sensory stemuli. And it's been going on since the first person who ever sold anything to anyone pitched the product.
In a way, Mr. Koster is defending us. He realizes that we are smart enough to know that we don't need games as services, and that in order for us to buy into those services (which is what any business wants), we have to WANT what is offered. He's trying to get that fact over to those who will be pushing a product.
With you on KDF problem, they have been shafted, to much time wasted on pointless skins for pointless ships, plenty of Klingon lore from TOS to TNG for there to be content.
Well, up until Perfect World took over, they had to prioritize based on where Atari channeled the development funds. That was based strictly on numbers, without any question as to why the numbers were so skewed towards UFP content. Bean counters do not see anything but the numbers. Anyone with their finger on the pulse of this community would have been able to tell them, "they aren't there because there is little or nothing there for them." Maybe they tried to communicate that fact only for it to fall on deaf ears. I don't know. The point is that its a new say with Perfect World. And it is only a matter of time before that those in the community like me who are willing to step back and give them a chance to prove themselves run out of patience. They cannot afford to take months to start getting KDF content out. It's been needed since launch and pushed back and back and back.
I frankly don't care if the KDF missions wind up as being just as shallow as the UFP missions were at the start. As long as there is something there to equalize the imbalance...
It would be nice if they could turn out one new KDF mission per week, as I have suggested elsewhere. They could even parallel the UFP missions. Something along the lines of What might the Klingons be doing while the UFP is doing this. And some missions, those that involve the Klingons, can answer that question by looking at the KDF involvement in them and playing it up...
I can't take anything that man says seriously after SWG, even if it sounds good on its face.
And while I agree in the very early days SWG seemed to have its high points, what high points that existed were mostly self-created by the community. The early post-launch 'development' of SWG, starting even before the Holocron Debacle, IMO only exposed that most of the foundation was actually rotten and ill-laid.
*In which the Holocron drops exposed the sheer idiocy of the 'secret' Jedi unlock grind-metric and shattered the organic community and economy that had existed outside of already tight-knit and insular communities.
Well, had their marketing people not blown it by listing Jedi among the professions you COULD play out of the box, then the Holocron debacle would never have happened. The symbiotic relationship between playstyles would not have been destroyed.
The reason why Jedi was originally an Alpha Class was because it was originally open to being perma-killed. Hence the unlocking of a second character slot so that those who, through exploration of a wide variety of professions, might have a shot at the alpha game challenge. I do not think we were ever intended to KEEP our Jedi character when we unlocked him. That was reflective of the established fact (before Lucas decided to stand fact on its head) that only the Emperor, Vader, Yoda and Luke were the ONLY Jedi around. Anyone else who might have survived the Purge (now referred to as Order 66) would reveal themselves on pain of death...
You refer to the early days of SWG as having a high points that were self-created by the community. That was the intent. Mr. Koster built the players a world and gave them all sorts of things they could do in that world. And that is a good thing. He gave them many ways to do things, but not enough things to do. And he was taken out of the picture relatively early on. The Hologrind was not his idea. We know because it flies in the face of his design philosophy. That was thrown in to appease the Jedi Wannabe Whiners who were only there because of SOE's marketing department TRIBBLE-up.
But this is not about SWG. Whether or not Mr. Koster's design philosophy was at fauilt for SWG's failure, we will never know, because whe was promoted out of development before the real issues went down. But when you listen to what he has to say here, he makes a lot of sense, and it would be in the best interest of every developer who seeks to produce games as services...
What game makers are forgetting now. Fun games will keep people playing, subscribing and buying from stores. That's the core of MMO's you make a game that's really fun and people will play it.
There is so much stuff in this game that just isn't fun.
What is boring to you may be fun to someone else.
What is fun to you may be boring to someone else.
Mr. Koster said in his presentation that those who offer something to as many playstyles as possible will last the longest. Nothing can be more true.
Remember how people were leaving STO early on (or threatening to do so) because the game depicred federation officers going around killing everyone all the time... Civilians in a bar fight. Romulan doctors in a research facility... Unborn babies...
"To seek out new life and new civilizations... and KILL them!"
People were looking for experience that offered alternatives to fighting. We got the diplomatic corpse, but it isn't really much. We've got a crafting system, but it really deosn't offer much in terms of meaningful economic involvement.
There's still not a whole lot to do. and no real endgame to speak of. Cryptic is not engaging with the community in a way that encourages the community to WANT to stick around or keep coming back for more. I'm hoping that this will change soon...
What is boring to you may be fun to someone else.
What is fun to you may be boring to someone else.
Mr. Koster said in his presentation that those who offer something to as many playstyles as possible will last the longest. Nothing can be more true.
Remember how people were leaving STO early on (or threatening to do so) because the game depicred federation officers going around killing everyone all the time... Civilians in a bar fight. Romulan doctors in a research facility... Unborn babies...
"To seek out new life and new civilizations... and KILL them!"
People were looking for experience that offered alternatives to fighting. We got the diplomatic corpse, but it isn't really much. We've got a crafting system, but it really deosn't offer much in terms of meaningful economic involvement.
There's still not a whole lot to do. and no real endgame to speak of. Cryptic is not engaging with the community in a way that encourages the community to WANT to stick around or keep coming back for more. I'm hoping that this will change soon...
That's one of the many problems with STO they made themselves one dimensional. The only option for game play is basically single player quest, they ignored everything but that and c-store.
That's one of the many problems with STO they made themselves one dimensional. The only option for game play is basically single player quest, they ignored everything but that and c-store.
He's exploring the elements that drive us to keep coming back. And you will notice he makes it a point to say that we have to WANT them, because we don't NEED them.
a better term for this is 'psychological manipulation' make people think they want something, then design the game in such a way where they have to have it. I don't like companies that play headgames with people and push buttons to see what happens and how far they can go.
Except that he's actually right. Doesn't a lot of the advice he gives in this video reflect a lot of what many in this community are asking Cryptic to do?
no, he isn't right. what hes describing is dangerously close to psychological manipulation
Mr. Koster's presentation does shed some insight on the business side of things.
remember the first tenant of business: all goal no soul.
You may slam Mr. Koster for his psycobabble, but the truth is thare is a far greater psychological connection between gamer and game than many of us realize or want to admit.
yes there is, and hes talking in subtle terms about how best to exploit that connection
Psychology is not just for treating/helping/understanding mental illness. It is the science of understanding the way people think.
yes and its also the science of manipulating the way people think.
Call it what you will and say what you will. The fact of the matter is that he knows and stresses the fact that ultimately, we the players hold the keys and guard the doors. With one decision on our parts we cut them off from what they both want and need: Our money.
There is not a thing that Mr. Koster spoke about in that video that hasn't been done by every single salesperson or marketing department all along.
You don't think Blizzard uses the methods he talks about? The sheer amount of time people invest in WoW creates the relationship. And as long as Blizard keeps playing to the wants and desires of their customers, they will retain them.
In all the WoW clones that have come out that were supposedly going to kill WoW, How many of them succeeded in making the player really want to play? Those games work a formula. They do not form a relationship between game and gamer.
EverQuest managed it.
UO managed it.
SWG managed it
WoW managed it
SWG is managing it tough it's struggling to do so.
Each of these is still in business. Well, SWG closes its doors in December, but that was a corporate decision so that TOR won't have any competition.
The thing is, I am in control of my thought porcess. And after Ivan-Cryptic's recent "there has been no content drought" statement, I have chosen to act. My STO subscription runs out later this month. I do not plan to subscribe again. I will play when F2P goes into effect. I'll be sure to make use of their server resources and not pay them a dime... Unless they offer what I want. CONTENT!
They must earn my money. If its something I want but cannot be bought in the C-store, I will subscribe to get it. I will then unsub and play out the remaining time. If they want my money the next month, then before my sub runs out, they had better have something new to offer.
Had Ivan not said what he said, I would not be taking this position. I will not just hand money to them or any other developer without something being offered. And as Raph pointed out, ACCESS is not incentive enough.
Raph recognizes that we have the power to make or break a "game as a service". We don't need them. And if we don't want what is offered, then we don't buy into it.
Want an example as to how STO employes psychological manipulation already, and in such a way that we are perfectly fine with it? The Featured Episodes.]
Think about it. Each series is five episodes long, one episode per week. 30 days in a subscription cycle. Is it coincidence that there's only enough time in a sub cycle for 4 episodes? No. It's deliberate. They know we are going to want to see how the plot resolves. They know we want to get that series reward. So no matter what point durring a Featured Episode series a cycle starts, they are going to get a ding off our subscriptions before the series is concluded. And we are practically begging them for more.
Of course, based on the F2P matrix, they will be giving up that psychological advantage, as they have made it clear that Silver players will not be barred from mission content, standard or featured. But what if they disable the reward payout for featured episodes, limiting each episode's reward and the series reward unavailable to silvers?
They will find a way to encourage us to want to give them our money.
Ivan-Cryptic didn't say there was no content drought. He said it was debatable. Gozer is the one who said there was no drought.
And (and we all know that I would never pass up the chance to roast Cryptic for anything they actually said, especially Ivan) the interviewer stated on the forums that that line was his own editorialization, not Ivan speaking.
And (and we all know that I would never pass up the chance to roast Cryptic for anything they actually said, especially Ivan) the interviewer stated on the forums that that line was his own editorialization, not Ivan speaking.
Now Gozer on the other hand...
Don't mince words. This community KNOWS there has been a content drought. And it isn't debatable. BEFORE Gozer or Ivan said anything to the contrary, Dan had already referred to the past few months as a content drought. I have yet to see him retract that position.
What I want out of a game developer that both needs and wants my money is a steady flow of content at a rate that is proportional to how often they hope to get money out of me.
If I am gold and they make monthly revenue from me, then I expect monthly content delivery. If I am silver and they want to make money from me on a regular basis, then they need to put stuff up on the C-store on a regular basis that want.
I'm not trying to diminish responsibility for statements. I do think the context is relevant; it wasn't the marketing guy saying there's no drought. It's the overworked content guy.
And that excuses nothing for us customers... But I think it does shape what we should be asking for. (Ie. more content devs and better prioritization of them.)
Point being, the guy who said there's no drought is the overworked guy whose work really isn't being used efficiently compared to what a lot of the forum users' expectations are and what they regard as content.
It doesn't change the result. It doesn't change that the ball has been dropped in some ways. It does change the statement content thirsty players should be making to Cryptic. That's all.
Don't mince words. This community KNOWS there has been a content drought. And it isn't debatable. BEFORE Gozer or Ivan said anything to the contrary, Dan had already referred to the past few months as a content drought. I have yet to see him retract that position.
What I want out of a game developer that both needs and wants my money is a steady flow of content at a rate that is proportional to how often they hope to get money out of me.
If I am gold and they make monthly revenue from me, then I expect monthly content delivery. If I am silver and they want to make money from me on a regular basis, then they need to put stuff up on the C-store on a regular basis that want.
What words did I mince? I was just pointing out that Ivan didn't actually say that. The interviewer did. Until that misperception was corrected, I was right there reacting with outrage*. That there has in fact been a consistent dropoff in the rate of content production since release, leading to a drought that still isn't really addressed by the little recent sprinkle of new Borg zergfests, is indeed plain to see. And, of course, then Gozer took up the slack in providing contempt of paying customers that Ivan failed to offer.
I'm just saying, it's better to cite out of the bounty of valid reasons to close your wallet to STO than one of the tiny set of invalid ones.
*But not shock, because it's perfectly in line with some of Ivan's prior statements that show utter disregard for public perception of the game and company, despite managing that being his job.
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btw, your signature needs one less line in it. 5, not six.
THERE... ARE... FOUR LINES!!!
ask the kirmse's, or any of the original meridian59 development team what they think of his ideas. he may be a good programmer, but not so much with the financial aspect of the industry.
Except that he's actually right. Doesn't a lot of the advice he gives in this video reflect a lot of what many in this community are asking Cryptic to do?
I know his main focus is from the position of one involved in social games, but many elements of social games are born from some sort of MMO origin. And games as a service, be it subscription or microtransaction based, share one thing in common: Customers who seek to be entertained and who will gladly pay if they get what they want.
Mr. Koster's presentation does shed some insight on the business side of things. Many of the sources he cites are no doubt familiar to developers.
And if there is anything that Mr. Koster knows how to do, it's building community-driven gameplay... My regret is that SOE moved him out of SWG's development and placed him in an executive position in their California office. SWG was still in its infancy when it came out, and it was Mr. Koster's brainchild. I don't think that the rest of the SWG team knew what the forward-going plan was. All I know is that they seemed to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off after he was promoted, and after he left SOE, they ended up reinventing the game. What might have Star Wars Galaxies become had he been left in charge of development and allowed to unfold whatever forward-going plan he might have had...
Anyway, the man is not stupid. And he seems to have done his homework on the issues he addressed.
I hope Cryptic don't take this sort of stuff onboard, i'm here for the Star Trek not family or friends or for some psychological experiment to see how much can be bleed form me before i unsub.
He's exploring the elements that drive us to keep coming back. And you will notice he makes it a point to say that we have to WANT them, because we don't NEED them.
You are quick to dismiss him when many of the elements he is talking about are the very things which drive community's passions in the things they ask Cryptic for.
What he is explaining is how those who would market a game as a service can retain as many people as possible. The key to P2P or F2P success is retention. If they stay they will be likely to spend. But they have to WANT what is being offered. And he also explained how lack of retention in F2P games is worse than in P2P because unlike in P2P, when someone quits, there is a clear cut disconnect, while in F2P, they just stop showing up.
You may slam Mr. Koster for his psycobabble, but the truth is thare is a far greater psychological connection between gamer and game than many of us realize or want to admit. Look at the angst on these boards alone. We are psychologically attached to STO. If it was just about money, we'd just unsubscribe when we feel like the product we are paying for isn't being delivered. No. We engage with Cryptic from an emotion-driven expression of thought.
What Cryptic needs to realize is that whether they like it or not, their game is the catalyst that has forged a relationship between their customers and themselves, and they need to focus on making sure that they honor their end. In Mr. Koster's closing statements one of the key things he advised was "Don't lie to them..."
Well, many here feel that they have been lied to. So Cryptic needs to set the record straight and actually start delivering on their promises. They dug themselves into this hole, and only they can dig themselves out. It doesn't matter if Atari was behind a lot of the TRIBBLE that went down. Atari is out of the picture. They cannot skate by on that excuse anymore.
Personally, I think their handling of the KDF is all wrong. I would rather them release a level's worth of content each week until there is enough to level from 1 to 51. There are so many existing art assets in the game that they can create years worth of mission content as it is. And if members of the community can release foundry episodes that put some of Cryptic's own work to shame in a relatively short period of time (which decreases as familiarity with the tools and tricks thereof increases), then so can professionals who are paid to do it.
Anyway... there's a lot of stuff in that video that makes a great deal of sense...
Maybe it's just my preception that's skewerd, but taking psychology which was intend to help/treat/understand people who suffer from mental illness and use it as a tool to make personal gains just doesn't sit right with me.
With you on KDF problem, they have been shafted, to much time wasted on pointless skins for pointless ships, plenty of Klingon lore from TOS to TNG for there to be content.
And while I agree in the very early days SWG seemed to have its high points, what high points that existed were mostly self-created by the community. The early post-launch 'development' of SWG, starting even before the Holocron Debacle, IMO only exposed that most of the foundation was actually rotten and ill-laid.
*In which the Holocron drops exposed the sheer idiocy of the 'secret' Jedi unlock grind-metric and shattered the organic community and economy that had existed outside of already tight-knit and insular communities.
There is so much stuff in this game that just isn't fun.
<chuckle>
Fun is of course important, but that's not all there is to it.
Angry Birds, for example, is a fun game. But you don't continue to play Angry Birds for months or years, you don't buy in-game items.
Cyrptic wants to not only make a fun game, but make a game that you want to continue to come back to time after time.
Actually, if you will re-watch that part of the video and pay attention to the contect, you see he is suggesting that this approach is really not the right one to take. At least that was the viobe I got.
Actually, Pay-to-play MMOs are guilty of this. First month's free and then you're paying for it.
Psychology is not just for treating/helping/understanding mental illness. It is the science of understanding the way people think. What do you think companies use when building an ad campaign for a product. Psychology. As in what can they put in the ads to manipulate people into wanting to try the product. Everywhere we look, we are being manipulated psychologically by all sorts of sensory stemuli. And it's been going on since the first person who ever sold anything to anyone pitched the product.
In a way, Mr. Koster is defending us. He realizes that we are smart enough to know that we don't need games as services, and that in order for us to buy into those services (which is what any business wants), we have to WANT what is offered. He's trying to get that fact over to those who will be pushing a product.
Well, up until Perfect World took over, they had to prioritize based on where Atari channeled the development funds. That was based strictly on numbers, without any question as to why the numbers were so skewed towards UFP content. Bean counters do not see anything but the numbers. Anyone with their finger on the pulse of this community would have been able to tell them, "they aren't there because there is little or nothing there for them." Maybe they tried to communicate that fact only for it to fall on deaf ears. I don't know. The point is that its a new say with Perfect World. And it is only a matter of time before that those in the community like me who are willing to step back and give them a chance to prove themselves run out of patience. They cannot afford to take months to start getting KDF content out. It's been needed since launch and pushed back and back and back.
I frankly don't care if the KDF missions wind up as being just as shallow as the UFP missions were at the start. As long as there is something there to equalize the imbalance...
It would be nice if they could turn out one new KDF mission per week, as I have suggested elsewhere. They could even parallel the UFP missions. Something along the lines of What might the Klingons be doing while the UFP is doing this. And some missions, those that involve the Klingons, can answer that question by looking at the KDF involvement in them and playing it up...
Well, had their marketing people not blown it by listing Jedi among the professions you COULD play out of the box, then the Holocron debacle would never have happened. The symbiotic relationship between playstyles would not have been destroyed.
The reason why Jedi was originally an Alpha Class was because it was originally open to being perma-killed. Hence the unlocking of a second character slot so that those who, through exploration of a wide variety of professions, might have a shot at the alpha game challenge. I do not think we were ever intended to KEEP our Jedi character when we unlocked him. That was reflective of the established fact (before Lucas decided to stand fact on its head) that only the Emperor, Vader, Yoda and Luke were the ONLY Jedi around. Anyone else who might have survived the Purge (now referred to as Order 66) would reveal themselves on pain of death...
You refer to the early days of SWG as having a high points that were self-created by the community. That was the intent. Mr. Koster built the players a world and gave them all sorts of things they could do in that world. And that is a good thing. He gave them many ways to do things, but not enough things to do. And he was taken out of the picture relatively early on. The Hologrind was not his idea. We know because it flies in the face of his design philosophy. That was thrown in to appease the Jedi Wannabe Whiners who were only there because of SOE's marketing department TRIBBLE-up.
But this is not about SWG. Whether or not Mr. Koster's design philosophy was at fauilt for SWG's failure, we will never know, because whe was promoted out of development before the real issues went down. But when you listen to what he has to say here, he makes a lot of sense, and it would be in the best interest of every developer who seeks to produce games as services...
What is boring to you may be fun to someone else.
What is fun to you may be boring to someone else.
Mr. Koster said in his presentation that those who offer something to as many playstyles as possible will last the longest. Nothing can be more true.
Remember how people were leaving STO early on (or threatening to do so) because the game depicred federation officers going around killing everyone all the time... Civilians in a bar fight. Romulan doctors in a research facility... Unborn babies...
"To seek out new life and new civilizations... and KILL them!"
People were looking for experience that offered alternatives to fighting. We got the diplomatic corpse, but it isn't really much. We've got a crafting system, but it really deosn't offer much in terms of meaningful economic involvement.
There's still not a whole lot to do. and no real endgame to speak of. Cryptic is not engaging with the community in a way that encourages the community to WANT to stick around or keep coming back for more. I'm hoping that this will change soon...
They didn't do either.
That's one of the many problems with STO they made themselves one dimensional. The only option for game play is basically single player quest, they ignored everything but that and c-store.
It's not too late to fix that.
I'm afraid it is to many have divorced STO and are gone for good.
But there are still a lot of people here. And when F2P goes into effect, a lot more will come.
We cannot lose sleep over what has happened. What is done now will shape the future.
So it is not too late.
a better term for this is 'psychological manipulation' make people think they want something, then design the game in such a way where they have to have it. I don't like companies that play headgames with people and push buttons to see what happens and how far they can go.
no, he isn't right. what hes describing is dangerously close to psychological manipulation
remember the first tenant of business: all goal no soul.
yes there is, and hes talking in subtle terms about how best to exploit that connection
yes and its also the science of manipulating the way people think.
There is not a thing that Mr. Koster spoke about in that video that hasn't been done by every single salesperson or marketing department all along.
You don't think Blizzard uses the methods he talks about? The sheer amount of time people invest in WoW creates the relationship. And as long as Blizard keeps playing to the wants and desires of their customers, they will retain them.
In all the WoW clones that have come out that were supposedly going to kill WoW, How many of them succeeded in making the player really want to play? Those games work a formula. They do not form a relationship between game and gamer.
EverQuest managed it.
UO managed it.
SWG managed it
WoW managed it
SWG is managing it tough it's struggling to do so.
Each of these is still in business. Well, SWG closes its doors in December, but that was a corporate decision so that TOR won't have any competition.
The thing is, I am in control of my thought porcess. And after Ivan-Cryptic's recent "there has been no content drought" statement, I have chosen to act. My STO subscription runs out later this month. I do not plan to subscribe again. I will play when F2P goes into effect. I'll be sure to make use of their server resources and not pay them a dime... Unless they offer what I want. CONTENT!
They must earn my money. If its something I want but cannot be bought in the C-store, I will subscribe to get it. I will then unsub and play out the remaining time. If they want my money the next month, then before my sub runs out, they had better have something new to offer.
Had Ivan not said what he said, I would not be taking this position. I will not just hand money to them or any other developer without something being offered. And as Raph pointed out, ACCESS is not incentive enough.
Raph recognizes that we have the power to make or break a "game as a service". We don't need them. And if we don't want what is offered, then we don't buy into it.
Want an example as to how STO employes psychological manipulation already, and in such a way that we are perfectly fine with it? The Featured Episodes.]
Think about it. Each series is five episodes long, one episode per week. 30 days in a subscription cycle. Is it coincidence that there's only enough time in a sub cycle for 4 episodes? No. It's deliberate. They know we are going to want to see how the plot resolves. They know we want to get that series reward. So no matter what point durring a Featured Episode series a cycle starts, they are going to get a ding off our subscriptions before the series is concluded. And we are practically begging them for more.
Of course, based on the F2P matrix, they will be giving up that psychological advantage, as they have made it clear that Silver players will not be barred from mission content, standard or featured. But what if they disable the reward payout for featured episodes, limiting each episode's reward and the series reward unavailable to silvers?
They will find a way to encourage us to want to give them our money.
And (and we all know that I would never pass up the chance to roast Cryptic for anything they actually said, especially Ivan) the interviewer stated on the forums that that line was his own editorialization, not Ivan speaking.
Now Gozer on the other hand...
Don't mince words. This community KNOWS there has been a content drought. And it isn't debatable. BEFORE Gozer or Ivan said anything to the contrary, Dan had already referred to the past few months as a content drought. I have yet to see him retract that position.
What I want out of a game developer that both needs and wants my money is a steady flow of content at a rate that is proportional to how often they hope to get money out of me.
If I am gold and they make monthly revenue from me, then I expect monthly content delivery. If I am silver and they want to make money from me on a regular basis, then they need to put stuff up on the C-store on a regular basis that want.
And that excuses nothing for us customers... But I think it does shape what we should be asking for. (Ie. more content devs and better prioritization of them.)
Point being, the guy who said there's no drought is the overworked guy whose work really isn't being used efficiently compared to what a lot of the forum users' expectations are and what they regard as content.
It doesn't change the result. It doesn't change that the ball has been dropped in some ways. It does change the statement content thirsty players should be making to Cryptic. That's all.
What words did I mince? I was just pointing out that Ivan didn't actually say that. The interviewer did. Until that misperception was corrected, I was right there reacting with outrage*. That there has in fact been a consistent dropoff in the rate of content production since release, leading to a drought that still isn't really addressed by the little recent sprinkle of new Borg zergfests, is indeed plain to see. And, of course, then Gozer took up the slack in providing contempt of paying customers that Ivan failed to offer.
I'm just saying, it's better to cite out of the bounty of valid reasons to close your wallet to STO than one of the tiny set of invalid ones.
*But not shock, because it's perfectly in line with some of Ivan's prior statements that show utter disregard for public perception of the game and company, despite managing that being his job.