View Full Forums : Who should EQ developers cater to?


Demasia
05-17-2003, 01:03 PM
Player attitudes aside, the developers need to make a choice or risk losing mass accounts of both the raiding ubers and those who log on for entertainment. Do they choose to create and support more content that grossly rewards raids and insults those who prefer to group and/or solo? Should the developers cater to players who play to beat the game Nintendo style for the Super D Duper equipment upgrade of each expansion? Or should the developers start catering to the players who view EQ as an alternate world for gaming, playing as though the game cannot be beaten?

The PoP expansion catered to raiders and handed out rewards that are ludicrously beyond what can be acquired without raiding. What has been the result? Are the raiders more loyal because of it? How will those raiders express their appreciation once they have "beaten" the expansion and those guilds have farmed all they can use?

The developers need to make a business decision and choose which of the two markets will be more loyal for the longer period. They need to consider who will be sending them dollars over a longer period with the lowest maintenance. When PoP was released, what percent of the players (accounts) were really done with the previous expansions?

There is little doubt in my mind that PoP was a big FU to the vast majority of the players because someone wrongly believed the majority of the players wanted to be in uber raiding guilds and that raiding was perceived by the masses to be a superior form of play to grouping and soloing. Now, every product Sony is releasing is viewed with suspicion and will not enjoy the goodwill of a very large customer base.

The original EQ and Kunark earned and captured a loyal customer base because all of the content was achievable without losing one's family, job or chance to graduate. An individual knew they could eventually accomplish any goal in their own good time. The <em>raidflation</em> that has followed culminates in PoP to the degree that most players view the drops in the elemental planes as gifts to the uber raiding guilds and consider the Plane of Time as another game entirely (entering should be a one way trip). The game was fun for everyone when a good group could achieve enough that a player's regular group was the most important factor to the development of a character. With PoP, character development requires a player to trade the good group in for a large raiding guild or be called a noob by wet behind the ears teenagers with a fraction of the time played.

The developers can continue to snuggle up with those who have benefitted the most from PoP if they really think that market will cover the losses from the rest of the players who leave out of frustration and boredom. I think we all know which of the two markets contributes the most dollars to Sony's coffers.

FyyrLuStorm
05-17-2003, 01:45 PM
<p align="center">
"Cygnus X-1, Book II: Hemispheres"

[I. Prelude]

When our weary world was young
The struggle of the ancients first began
The gods of love and reason
Sought alone to rule the fate of man

They battled through the ages
But still neither force would yield
The people were divided
Every soul a battlefield

[II. Apollo / Dionysus]

[Apollo: Bringer Of Wisdom]
'I bring truth and understanding
I bring wit and wisdom fair
Precious gifts beyond compare
We can build a world of wonder
I can make you all aware
I will find you food and shelter
Show you fire to keep you warm
Through the endless winter storm
You can live in grace and comfort
In the world that you transform'

The people were delighted
Coming forth to claim their prize
They ran to build their cities
And converse among the wise
But one day the streets fell silent
Yet they knew not what was wrong
The urge to build these fine things
Seemed not to be so strong
The wise men were consulted
And the Bridge of Death was crossed
In quest of Dionysus
To find out what they had lost

[Dionysus: Bringer Of Love]
'I bring love to give you solace
In the darkness of the night
In the Heart's eternal light
You need only trust your feelings
Only love can steer you right
I bring laughter, I bring music
I bring joy and I bring tears
I will soothe your primal fears
Throw off those chains of reason
And your prison disappears'

The cities were abandoned
And the forests echoed song
They danced and lived as brothers
They knew love could not be wrong
Food and wine they had aplenty
And they slept beneath the stars
The people were contented
And the gods watched from afar
But the winter fell upon them
And it caught them unprepared
Bringing wolves and cold starvation
And the hearts of men despaired

[III. Armageddon: The Battle Of Heart and Mind]

The universe divided
As the heart and mind collided
With the people left unguided
For so many troubled years
In a cloud of doubts and fears
Their world was torn asunder into hollow
Hemispheres

Some fought themselves, some fought each other
Most just followed one another
Lost and aimless like their brothers
For their hearts were so unclear
And the truth could not appear
Their spirits were divided into blinded
Hemispheres

Some who did not fight
Brought tales of old to light
'My Rocinante sailed by night
On her final flight'
To the heart of Cygnus' fearsome force
We set our course
Spiralled through that timeless space
To this immortal place

[IV. Cygnus: Bringer Of Balance]

I have memory and awareness
But I have no shape or form
As a disembodied spirit
I am dead and yet unborn
I have passed into Olympus
As was told in tales of old
To the city of Immortals
Marble white and purest gold...

I see the gods in battle rage on high...
Thunderbolts across the sky...
I cannot move, I cannot hide...
I feel a silent scream begin inside...

Then all at once the chaos ceased
A stillness fell, a sudden peace
The warriors felt my silent cry
And stayed their struggle, mystified

Apollo was atonished
Dionysus thought me mad
But they heard my story further
And they wondered, and were sad

Looking down from Olympus
On a world of doubt and fear
Its surface splintered
Into sorry Hemispheres

They sat a while in silence
Then they turned at last to me
'We will call you Cygnus
The god of Balance you shall be'

[V. The Sphere: A Kind Of Dream]

We can walk our road together
If our goals are all the same
We can run alone and free
If we pursue a different aim
Let the truth of love be lighted
Let the love of truth shine clear
Sensibility
Armed with sense and liberty
With the heart and mind united in a single
Perfect
Sphere
</p>

Panamah
05-17-2003, 02:30 PM
I think they need to understand the demographics of their players better when designing expansions.

It's ok to devote some of an expansion to the FoH's and AL's and so on, but not the majority of it. No matter how much you do for the top most end, they're pushers. They're going to push and devour that content as fast as they possibly can. Eventually, they've eaten it and they're going to push away from the table and proclaim themselves "done". They have an eating disorder, IMHO. :) They need to regulate their consumption of the content.

So, you give them something to chew on for awhile, but with the realization that it'll never be enough for them.

Then you fill in stuff for the people in all the layers between and put the bulk of stuff in there. Spend the bulk of your time on those zones because that's where the bulk of the people are.

But they really need to understand their player characters and demographics much better to do a better job than they did with PoP and LoY.

BriennaMonk
05-18-2003, 03:12 AM
Woohoo, fellow Rush fan :)

I love that album...

Sorry, nothing to do with the original post, but I had to acknowledge the Hemispheres post :)

KrystofC
05-18-2003, 05:33 AM
<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Woohoo, fellow Rush fan

I love that album...

Sorry, nothing to do with the original post, but I had to acknowledge the Hemispheres post [/quote]

Ditto :)

chenier
05-18-2003, 08:57 AM

FyyrLuStorm
05-18-2003, 09:00 AM
"I love that album"

Album?

1) That tells me that you are old enough to have had it on vinyl.
2) That is the ONLY song, that I know of, that starts on one album and continues on the following.


Paul Harvey once said that great music is not made, it is discovered. Meaning that it was(or is still) always out there, until someone finds it and opens it up. I don't know if that is exactly true or not, but it sure seems that way when I find an artist(s), whose music expresses what I had already fealt and knew was there.

I still remember when a friend suggested buying Moving Pictures. I was all like "ppfftt, who wants to listen to a song about Tom Sawyer?" But after listening to it, and understanding the songs on that album(Red Barchetta), I was "OMFG". When the radio waves back then were filled with Hall and Oats, Commadores, Night Ranger, and Loverboy, finally, FINALLY, I realized that there were artists out there with substance. Even YYZ(which is the code for the Montreal airport), with no lyrics, had complexity that I was unfamiliar with at the time, and was refreshing.

Lalian
05-18-2003, 06:19 PM
The obvious answer is they should cater to both. If they cater to ubers, the masses can look forward to something. That is healthy to the game in moderation.

However, they should also cater to the casual games. Why? Well they are the ones who pay the bills. Uber-types are probably the most costly customers in terms of bandwidth used and content consumed. The casual gamer who logs on a couple of hours a week but still pays the same amount is more profitable, especially when there are many more of them.

Panamah
05-18-2003, 08:35 PM
I disagree that "the masses" want to, or even expect to, see everthing in the game that "the ubers" see. For instance, Plane of Time. Having heard about what all is involved in getting there, I have no interest in it. That's a level of fanaticism that I just don't ever want to have for this game.

Lalian
05-18-2003, 09:32 PM
Panamah,

I must disagree with you. I think that there are many "wanna-bes" who like to see what the ubers are doing. Then there are those in another category who expect to be doing that content a year or two down the line and want to see what it is like. We saw this with Kunark and Vellious content which used to be for the uber of the uber and now many who aren't uber are doing.

Demasia
05-19-2003, 12:12 AM
<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I disagree that "the masses" want to, or even expect to, see everthing in the game that "the ubers" see.[/quote]

While that is true for you, me and many people, it is no longer true for as many as it used to be. PoP's system of rewarding raids has changed the dynamics of the game in such a way that it ironically puts more pressure on Sony to create more content faster. A large number of players were having fun in raid/social guilds, playing primarily with a grouping mindset. Content had a long life when it was approached by groups who couldn't "beat it" in a matter of hours. Now all of those people who have joined the raid every time online community are gobbling up the content and "beating it". They no longer measure their achievements by what they have individually achieved or by what their group has accomplished, but how far along the raid progression their guild has gone. The life of raid content is short and Sony created a monster with a voracious appetite.

BricSummerthorne
05-19-2003, 02:18 PM
What's going on at the FoH boards is very interesting. Furor is pushing WoW, and suddenly...masses of people are interested. In fact, a Blizzard Dev (Gfrazier for you Diablo players) posted a link to the FoH boards.

Blizzard posted a link to a guild board. Amazing.

I will admit to being surprised at the marketing power of an uberguild. Hypothesizing here:

Powerful guilds are of necessity run by charismatic, forceful personalities. If you can convince 80 people to follow your will, during their "play" time, you are essentially a born salesman.

Perhaps is makes good business sense to have these powerful personalities advocating your game. In essence, it's celebrity advertising.

Of course, like all advertising ploys, it has nothing to do with the *quality* of the game. I don't think the game is any more "fun" because Furor and Thott play. It's just a little more credible as a life avocation =).

Panamah
05-19-2003, 07:52 PM
Then again, maybe there's just a certain personality type that tends to ride the waves generated by someone like that. While you may look at the FoH site and see, wow, look at all these people looking at WoW now, you might find that of all the people that read the FoH site, only a small percentage of them are jumping on the band wagon. It's hard to say.

Then again, even I read the description of WoW and I was impressed. Who wouldn't want to ride on the back of a griffin? :)

Yeah, I think SOE is creating a content gobbling monster by forcing people into raid guilds to do anything in the game that isn't just boring exp groups in boring zones.

I think they could reverse that trend if they bring out some good dungeons and work on tradeskills. If they start designing more for the mid-level guilds and casual folks, then there isn't such a huge incentive to burn through the top end stuff.

My guild is still poking through Velious and I'm enjoying NToV more than I've enjoyed any other raiding zone. The encounters challenge us but don't overwhelm us. Then again, we're all almost level 65 and have lots of AA's. So we're not exactly like the level 60's from long ago that first tackled it. But that level of difficulty feels kind of nice. We're not beating our heads against the wall with tons of failures.

Not sure what I'm trying to say other than, I imagine there's a sizeable element of EQ that, if they were aware of what was involved in getting to PoTime would probably just shrug their shoulders and say "no thanks". Probably the population that has jobs, kids, spouses and other obligations.

Kytelae
05-20-2003, 09:41 AM
I'm not interested in playing in the end zones, but I do love the screenshots, the movies, the stories and so on, from guilds who do it. So in that way, having uberguilds makes the game more fun to me. Feels like the world is bigger than I'll ever explore, and I like that.

Accretion
05-20-2003, 09:57 AM
Good point, Bittle. I enjoy checking in on AL/FOH sites for the same reason. It's fun to see what guilds <em>could</em> do given the proper preparation, even if I'm never part of it myself.

<img src="http://sun.he.net/~justin1/eq/sig4.jpg"/>
Magelo Profile (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=562742)

TeriMoon
05-20-2003, 11:15 AM
I've clicked on the FoH board links a few times. To be honest, I left them almost immediately. I can't bear all the cursing. It turns me off. It doesn't take 5 curse words in a 10 word sentence to convey displeasure.

I don't really follow any guild boards, except the guild I might be in (which is none).

BricSummerthorne
05-20-2003, 01:24 PM
I'm not in any way, shape, or form a FoH board fan. I read it so I can understand the game more, but I also take a hot shower afterwards =). That board is disturbing on many levels.

Panamah, I agree you no one can really tell what the marketing impact of an uberguild is. I mean, do any of us know or care who's uber in Anarchy Online? I think the <em>game companies</em> feel there is some marketing impact. Really, Blizzard linking to the FoH boards said a lot.

I would love to sit an SOE dev down and ask "why so much raid orientation??". Is it marketing, ego, challenge, what? Do the DEVs think it's sexier to design a dragon than a dungeon? I dunno.

To Demasia's original point, however, look what a waste the Rathe Encounter was. Only some small fraction of players will see it, and from all accounts they will thereafter avoid it like the plague. Contrast that with classics like OS and Howling Stones. Which was a better use of designer time?

Taylen
05-20-2003, 02:52 PM
When I grow up, I wanna be just like Furor.

Yeah right.