Debunking some myths regarding PS1 playerbase demise.

[Goldeh]

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

You forgot something that lead to the breaking of the cert system.

Cert bundles.


All the stuff you mention in the OP is SOE chasing the session based players. Session based thinking does not belong in a team based, objective based, persistent game.



Not for the time. No. Not for the Budget. No. Also, it was the only FPS with a subscription requirement. Failure means they did not recoup the development investment. They did, many times over.

Perspective.


Sad thing is, for Planetside 2. Its session based thinking all the way. Coupled with the idea that scale is the only defining feature. They scraped everything else ( to a point ) in the hut for speed. But have thrown many thing out with the bathwater.



You are part of the problem with modern gaming.

Eh, can't really be session based when there is no session it's persistant.. Furthermore, all we've seen so far is gunplay (which is something Hig and the team should really stop with the gunplay streams) and nothing else really. Haven't even got a good look of the multiple bases, some of which have doors, or real vehicle combat.

So ya, it's liking judging a whole mansion by looking through a small window, wait until NDA n' beta to make real judgments.

[Drelam]

Originally Posted by Klockan

PS1 did barely breach 60k subscribers, that is a failure. EVE is a great example of this, it is downright a shitty game. It was the same thing with planetside, it sucked as a game. There were no good mmo games before wow.Think like this, would the game sell as a singleplayer game with the same mechanics(and less grind ofc)? If not then the mmo is a bad game. But yes, you are right, there were good mmo's before wow, just not as good. PS1 had terrible gameplay compared to any big shooter. WoW on the other hand would beat most singleplayer games in the same genre. Neverwinter nights is basically a worse WoW in another setting, WoW is way better than that game PS1 wouldn't had sold if it was packaged in the same style as UT or so. SWG sucked as a game. The problem with people like you is that you can't differentiate between a game you like and a good game. I know that the main reason people hate on music is not because it is bad but because it is in a genre conflicting with what they perceive to be their preferred genre. "Oh look, I am special, I am one of the few who don't like WoW, CoD, BSB and Bieber!!!!", its pathetic really.

[Haro]

Originally Posted by Hunterzen

Of course certain people like Justin Biber and Call of Duty like certain people loved BFR's when they were released, and I never stated my opinions as facts. I put in my 2 cents and was replied with "you people" "pathetic" "laughable" and when someone replies like that it's a waste of time to debate with someone so thick headed and hostile. "Also, please, let's not get caught up in emotions over this." Copy that click reply button under Klockan then click paste and submit comment. "You not liking it doesn't make something bad, just as me or anyone else liking something doesn't necessarily make it good." Repeat steps above. Pretty sure you're replying to wrong person. BTW "I look forward to hopefully shooting you in the face." That's a joke about PS not me being emotional, but since Klockan thinks Planetside one is a crappy game I don't see how he will enjoy Planetside 2. Besides think the playable Panda's and Pokemon system for WoW is coming out soon that seems to be more of his cup of tea.

In that case, I apologize. I guess I read too much into some of your earlier statements.

Also, I wasn't trying to single you out about the whole emotional, rational thing. Klockan needs to chill out, or no one will take his ideas seriously.

Sorry for the disturbance, continue with the argument.

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

I feel like I've said this about this same post somewere else but great post Fig!


I would also like to QFT Bloodworth's post

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

Session based thinking does not belong in a team based, objective based, persistent game.

Sad thing is, for Planetside 2. Its session based thinking all the way. Coupled with the idea that scale is the only defining feature. They scraped everything else ( to a point ) in the hut for speed. But have thrown many thing out with the bathwater.

Originally Posted by fod

WOW is a horrible mmo imo but its easy as hell to play - thats the only reason it got popular i think

If you thought WoW got popular because the early game was easy, you should see it now. They have an "easy mode" for raids now that basically you just walk in and loot the boss without a fight.

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

Originally Posted by Goldeh

So ya, it's liking judging a whole mansion by looking through a small window

What if we have seen everything but a small window?

[vVRedOctoberVv]

Very interesting and informative read. It also does not reek of imagined opinions and craziness Sounds all very "believable". Thank you for the information! I'm a late comer to PlanetSide, but interested in the history of it all. Now I understand better the great dramas people refer to all the time

Originally Posted by Klockan

According to that graph PS1 did barely breach 60k subscribers, that is a failure. Just because it failed even harder later doesn't mean that it wasn't a failure from the start, it just means that their desperate tries to fix the mess didn't work. Gaming companies should learn that if you give the consumers shit then don't touch it, people that actually liked the shit were really desperate for something different which gets ruined by mainstreaming the game and none else will be satisfied by sugarcoated shit.

EVE is a great example of this, it is downright a shitty game. But its concept is really unique and pure which is drawing the attention of gamers looking for something they can't find anywhere else. Eve started out with less players than planetside, but they didn't try to fix that. Instead they continued to build upon what made eve unique and thus the game has had a small but steady growth over the years. If they had tried sugarcoating the game to fit a wider audience it would have died instead since the game is way too terrible to survive any form of competition. Its only saving grace is that it is one of a kind. It was the same thing with planetside, it sucked as a game but was legendary as a concept so when the concept got ruined it died.

Generally speaking, I disagree with your evaluations of the games, but I do agree with the point that people come seeking "something different", and if you don't continue to provide that "something different", then you lose them. If that "something" is the core of what you're offering... Well... Things go down hill quickly from there.

[Runlikethewind]

Just wanted to add my voice to the chorus, nice OP well said.

[Smed]

Originally Posted by igster

Well put Figment.

SOE will do well to take note of previous mistakes and try not to repeat them.

I've never heard a COD or Battlefield player go all gooy eyed about the time that they spent playing their respective games.

I couldn't agree with that sentiment more. Actually you summed up perfectly what i was trying to get across in my blog.

[GhettoPrince]

^ haha wow, the CEO of SOE reads fan forums.

Anyway, I like seeing the infantry fights because thats probably 90% of what we will be doing at low battle ranks, especially if MAX's cost resources, and like OP said, no one else has tried to do something on the scale of planetside. There's nothing to study or improve on, so new base capture mechanics and a replacement for the old lattice system are features they will probably be thinking up from scratch and improving in the beta.

The force field doors are fine, the doors in Planetside meant nothing anyway , since even a BR 1 carried a REK and could hack them, and door fights were even more monotonous and gamey than bridge fights.

[Crator]

Wow Figment, great history writing of PS1 life-cycle!

[Piper]

Was a good read Figment.

From my, personal, rose tinted spec's a few things will always stand out in the way the game evolved over the years.

To my mind all the "big" ideas were just done 'n' coded, they weren't, as far I knew opinion tested ahead of time. Many of them suffered from poor execution, despite sounding okish on paper, BFR's being a prime example. Other "big" ideas were just awful on paper, Super-Soldiers for instance.

One thing I don't think you mentioned was that Core Wombat fudged the code over in some way such that it messed up the game on a lot of peoples systems if you recall. It introduced the "stuttering" which took them months to iron out and it never was quite the same client after that in terms of performance. I suspect it lost a lot of subscribers who never came back after that.

Fourth empiring, due to a badly handled server merge process was the biggest nail in its slow, slow demise however, to me. That took what was a game of three sub-communities and tore it apart. Moving it from a game of genuine and friendly competition between them to rank finger pointing of empire gains achieved by population shifts.

Hacking, and the apparent casual attitude that was taken by SoE at the time really didn't help either, their was if I recall a perception that it was fine to hax because nothing would be done if you were caught.

Away from the "big" ideas there were many small patches and additions that often seldom get remembered that were good. But frankly what kept me playing for the years I did was the core of the game design, essentially how it launched, attempts to improve that mostly helped put me off.

It was, as I've said before, a gem polished into a turd. Despite that it is still the best computer game I've ever played, full stop. For its core design principle, in an MMO age that's all about "owning" stuff and not "doing" stuff. PS1 is still a flare in the murk.

[Syphus]

Originally Posted by Piper

Away from the "big" ideas there were many small patches and additions that often seldom get remembered that were good.

When the Liberator got added, that was one of the best things ever in a patch.

[Piper]

Originally Posted by Syphus

When the Liberator got added, that was one of the best things ever in a patch.

If I recall it was pretty early patch wise, really one of the first biggish ones, went in with the Skyguard (which I developed a late love of driving in my time)? I liked the LLU patch, while I could do without the post bending silly star map, the lattice changes in post Bending* PS1 were an improvement iirc.

Figment touched on a very important point, re-reading the OP, the potential viscous-circle of population decay in a pure PvP game. With no friendly respawning NPC's** to whack-a-mole on, if the server seems a bit empty then no good fights develop perhaps, another person logs out and so on and so on...

...and that of course translates into friends lists as well, less people you know about, less time you spend logged in and you yourself become a casualty on someone elses friend (well we used them to track our favourite prey too ) list.



*Does anyone remember the video launch thing they did with the Bending? It was shockingly awful, the voice over monologue was so comical.

** Which by the way doesn't mean I agree with whatever is being talked about in terms of adding NPC's to PS2. That sounds yuck.

[Klockan]

Originally Posted by Hunterzen

Literally every statement you said about me was an assumption, and every statement you said about various games is again YOUR opinion.

No, I am reading a lot and talking to a lot of people, it isn't my opinion it is my conclusion of "everyone's" opinions including what I know about your opinions. I like playing planetside and EVE, but that doesn't mean that they are good games because I can still see all the flaws that hurts the gameplay experience. Since I started gaming ages ago I can easily look past those flaws since I have played much worse stuff before just because it had some interesting concepts. But for most such flaws can be unbearable, especially if they come in drowes.

Originally Posted by Hunterzen

You've lost my respect, and attention by your extreme ignorance and arrogance, and I look forward to hopefully shooting you in the face.

Good, then we are even

Edit: But the point is that I hate it how fans of small games always "knows" that their game is the best while the popular games are just so much worse. It could be true, of course, but in general it is not, they have just overlooked loads of the flaws of their prefered game while ignoring all the positive points of the title they are criticizing. In many cases my tastes in gaming do not agree with the general consensus but that doesn't mean that I can't accept that my preferred games can be inferior to more popular games in many substantial ways. Usually I can see why a game don't hit it big, just about every low profile game have giant flaws which are really easy to notice. Dwarf fortress is probably one of the most amazing games there is concept wise however there are no graphics and most importantly the UI is so game-breakingly bad that only the most staunch players can muster it which is why its following is really small.

Originally Posted by Hunterzen

Of course certain people like Justin Biber and Call of Duty like certain people loved BFR's when they were released, and I never stated my opinions as facts.

Really? So, what did you imply with this sentence then? Do you got any other way to interpret this than you basically taking it as facts that CoD and Bieber are bad?

Originally Posted by Hunterzen

Popularity doesn't always mean "good" Look at the new Call of Duty games hell look at Justin Bieber.

Edit edit of edits: And as I have said before, if I don't aim for peoples attention then almost none will listen and the discussions will go really slowly. And then when I manage to make people like you angry you really lower your guard and just tries a full on assault which makes it so much easier for me to argue since you leave yourself open, thus it is easier to make people accept my ideas even if they wont necessarily accept me as an individual. But I don't really care what you think about me, I just get annoyed when there are extremely flawed arguments in the local consensus so I just want to shine light on them. The flawed argument in this topic would be that PS1 was really good before they later changed it, I strongly disagree and I know that many others would as well so taking that as a fact seems a bit strange.

End of all edits: To make it clear, I am not saying that PS1 was bad because it had an inventory system or because it had certs or because it hadn't classes. Those are design decisions and I don't consider them at all when I evaluate quality because they just govern what kind of game you are making and not how good said game is since that is mostly a matter of opinion on what is better so no real conclusion can be made. If you ignore design decisions such as those then it isn't hard to see that what you got left sucks.

[IMMentat]

CSHD = Client Side hit Detection.

One of the best features never repeated but really should have been copied en-mass was the controls setup and saving interface.
Best control configuration interface EVER!