Nerfbat: Readers’ Choice!
If you come here frequently, you’ve certainly noticed a dearth of posts. But, you can help me remedy that! Reply to this post with a topic (or question), and I might run with it in a future post (note: Don’t ask about 38 Studios or Copernicus… I won’t/can’t talk about that stuff). Anything (else) goes, including things I’ve talked about in the past if you want to hear more of my thoughts on the subject.
Why do companies – like Sony with the new PSP GO – continue to try to pursue a business plan that is customer unfriendly and expect better results?
Answered: http://www.nerfbat.com/2009/10/19/readers-choice-psp-go-customer-unfriendly/
Where are my pants?
Answered: http://www.nerfbat.com/2009/10/20/readers-choice-where-are-cyanbanes-pants/
Your thoughts on when has a big developer/publisher buying up a small one been a good thing for the gamer in the medium/long term?
Answered: http://www.nerfbat.com/2009/10/24/readers-choice-big-publishers-small-buyouts/
How will the ‘battle of the business models’ turn out? Free-to-play-with-item-shops wins the day or is it buy-the-game-pay-by-the-month?
OK a few questions:
I’d like to hear your thoughts on the ‘death of space sims’. With Jumpgate evolution and Star Trek online about to come out (maybe… ) and Eve online seeing (or at least it was) steady growth – do these up and comers have a chance or is the market already saturated with these ‘niche’ titles? I’ve been a huge fan of the genre ever since Elite, which I played on my Commodore 64. However, at least in the single player arena, we have seen nothing truly great for many years. Is it that the audience isn’t there or is that good games in the genre aren’t being made, some unholy combination of these?
Answered: http://www.nerfbat.com/2009/12/08/readers-choice-battle-of-the-business-models/
You mentioned a while ago that you’d started playing Darkfall, are you still playing it? What are you thoughts on it now? Does this kind of game make it harder for late newcomers to get up to speed (ie: having to compete with experienced PvPers which much better skills and equipment )? How would you handle that?
Speaking of ‘indy’ MMO’s what are your thoughts on the current crop (Darkfall, Falled Earth, Love, Infinity etc)? Are there any aspects of these that more ‘mainstream’ MMO developers should be paying attention to?
I’ve been playing a bit of Fable 2 of late and I like the idea of your avatars appearance changing over time based on your behaviour or what you eat (and the NPC’s react to these aspects as well as your general renown), and the idea of a pet being more than just an off tank, healer or some other ‘power’ replication. Do you see any place for some of these ideas in an MMO?
The untapped genre of MMO with the highest potential, what is it?
Answered: http://www.nerfbat.com/2009/12/14/readers-choice-untapped-mmo-genre/
What are your feelings on what CCP is trying to do with Eve Online and Dust514, in terms of its inter connectivity and how one title will influence the other? Do you think we will see a trend of something like this in the future? Or is it just a “gimmicky” feature that won’t catch on?
Answered: http://www.nerfbat.com/2010/01/19/readers-choice-eve-dust-514/
If you were to make a MMO that was just like Copernicus but not Copernicus, what would it be like?
I’ve got nothing.
I’ve been thinking that the ‘freemium’ model (free to play with item store) is an attempt (recently, DDO) to get players in a WoW dominated market; without the psycological commitment of x$/month, players will consider dabbling in such a game as a 2nd MMO. As MMOs need a certain population density, the presence of ‘freeloaders’ is beneficial to the players who pay the bills… they need others to play with, after all!
I’d like to hear your thoughts on the subject of free-to-play, item stores, and monthly subscription models.
Awesome ideas so far. I have at least a few posts already swimming in my head ready to get typed!
Google recently anounced they are opening up their cloud. Allowing users to move their data off Google’s cloud if they so chose. MMO’s can quite easily be considered cloud gaming. Do you forsee MMO’s getting to the point where a player will be able to “download their characters” and take them to other games. I’m not necessarily talking about other MMO’s, but other types of games. This could bring in some new “lan party” style games as well as very story centric single player games though allowing you to play with a character/class you’re already familiar with. Thoughts?
I’d love to hear about how existing games journalism sucks.
1) Get exclusive from publisher.
2) Post exlusive and get viewers.
3) Charge publisher for viewers.
4) Direct viewers to publisher.
Really, is this it, has games journalism died, or is it only the product of a business venture? Then provide links to real games journalism.
Thoughts on ‘destroying’ old content as a MMO ages to reuse that space for something new vs. letting it sit there vs. finding a way to integrate the old & new? Or more generally – how comfortable/ how consistent should the environment be day in & out for a player? Something that’s been unsettling to me as I see some of Blizzard’s plans for WOW’s next expansion that is set to destroy Orgrimmar. (Orcs 4 lyfe!)
How important is it to have a mapped out – at least at a high level – lore scheme to avoid Lore(lol) trip-ups? Different from the first point as a city can be sacked and the people are displaced — that’s lore evolution. This focuses on how closely should a game match the ‘base-lore’ from release date to when it fades out? Can major breaks in lore can cause games to fail, or do people care less about lore as they move away from the early D&D/ MUD roots and move more into the main stream? Another thing bouncing around my head as Blizzard allows any race be any class in the next expansion (wru 5 years ago when I had to stare at a cow’s ass to play my dr00d
)
Swimming and aerial combat (basically, using another dimension to fight). What’s the future of this in MMOs? Swimming was always tedious (as a caster being easily interrupted) – it seems in a EQ2/ WOW type game, there’s untapped potential.
Vald
Do you ever see MMOs evolving for those of us who have responsibilities, jobs, etc. Currently in order to experience content at the high end of a game it requires a major time investment. Even keeping up with content once you are at the ‘top end’ requires lots of time. Do you think the game companies will ever evolve out of the model where time investment is the key to game advancement?
I’d like to hear more theory about economy chains … For example: we know what happens when there are insufficient gold drains in the economy, we know what happens when high level characters are able to earn gold faster than low level characters (but still need low level mats to level professions), but what would the negative effects be if there were more gold drains than gold supplies? What would happen if dungeons dropped crafting mats instead of gear? Would it be possible to build a game with no fungible currency – just bartering?
[...] “Why do companies – like Sony with the new PSP GO – continue to try to pursue a business plan that is customer unfriendly and expect better results?” – Genda. Answer: They think they are being customer-friendly by offering their system in an all-digital format. It’s more convenient to the customer to not have to lug around hard copies of games. Unfortunately, they didn’t come up with a way to convert your existing games to digital format, so it turned out to be unintentionally unfriendly to customers. Want me to comment on something here at Nerfbat? Ask/provoke me in the Readers’ Choice post. [...]
Why do MMORPG’s force regions? It seems like EQ/EQ2 are the only ones left who allow users to choose whether they wish to play on a UK or US server. Playtimes are very personal and being able to join with your friends (where-ever they may be) is a big part of gameplay. And I’ve still not recovered from LOTRO banning Europeans from even *looking* at their US website and not being able to take part in the community wiki.
It doesn’t appear to be marketing deals – is this another case of companies feeling they are being customer-friendly? Because to a lot of us, it feels like they are worried foreigners might sully their US servers
[...] “Where are my pants?” – Cyanbane. Trick question. Knowing you, you don’t actually own any pants. It’s your upbringing, I suppose, to refuse to wear pants. That said, the world would appreciate it if you covered up your chicken legs. So, the answer to your question is, your pants are hanging on a rack at the clothing store. Want me to comment on something here at Nerfbat? Ask/provoke me in the Readers’ Choice post. [...]
Why don’t more MMOs use single server designs, instead forcing players to pay to move, start over, or just suck it up and be stuck playing where they are?
I don’t know about other people, but I find that I fairly regularly meet new people, and surprisingly more and more of those new people are playing MMOs, but I can’t play with them because I’m on the “wrong” server.
[...] “Your thoughts on when has a big developer/publisher buying up a small one been a good thing for the gamer in the medium/long term?” – Frawd. Generally, when a big publisher/developer buys out a small one instead of negotiates a publishing deal, it’s often because the small one has to be bought out. If there’s no buyout, the company is probably gone completely. So, I’d generally say in the medium and long term, things are better for the gamer because the small company gets to exist. Whether the bigger company is at fault when the small company’s game ends up below expectations is up for debate, but at least they get to put out any product at all. Want me to comment on something here at Nerfbat? Ask/provoke me in the Readers’ Choice post. [...]
Will we ever again have dungeons in a game like Sebilis, Chardok, Guk etc, great challenging group content and rare items you can be proud of and will remember the names of 10 years later because it was so special obtaining it?
[...] Want me to comment on something here at Nerfbat? Ask/provoke me in the Readers’ Choice post. [...]
Approximately what year will half of the American population have more friends they have never met in real life vs friends they have met in real life?
[...] Want me to comment on something here at Nerfbat? Ask/provoke me in the Readers’ Choice post. [...]
I am curious about your thoughts on the use of Phasing in MMOG’s? Blizzard recently started using this new system to allow players to change the world around them based on their actions alone. For me this is one of things game designers have wanted to be able to do for a long time. Do you think this will take off similar to how instancing did when it first appeared in mmog’s?
[...] Want me to comment on something here at Nerfbat? Ask/provoke me in the Readers’ Choice post. [...]
[...] Want me to comment on something here at Nerfbat? Ask/provoke me in the Readers’ Choice post. [...]