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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Targeting Niche a good idea? "Old School"
myth1
Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I'm a Kickstarter participant, and I enjoy the game; however, I have some feedback regarding niche targeting.
What I mean by niche targeting is focusing on a specific group of players who prefer certain gameplay styles, whether that be more PvP over PvE, or vice versa, or more "grindy" versus less "grindy." The list goes on and on.
TL;DR: The old-school approach seems to target older audiences, who are often in their parenting years. We lack time and wish we didn’t. Targeting a niche reduces the overall audience. Massive multiplayer experiences can. Targeting a niche may not be as healthy for a game as one might think. It’s difficult to enjoy a game—regardless of personal opinion—if it’s not sustainable, as resources cost money.
In the interview today (the one with PirateSoftware), the "old-school approach" came up. While I appreciate the uniqueness of separating from the general modern-day game development approach where games are designed for a wider audience (or at least attempted to be) I find that those games tend to be less successful than ones targeting the majority. To me, "old school" tends to appeal to those who are 30 years old or older. I don’t have any statistics, but from my personal experience, we are often in our parenting years at that age, so old-school MMO gaming where you can spend an extremely large amount of time progressing through systems may not be as appealing due to time constraints. I wish I had all the time in the world to play a fantasy MMO for days and weeks on end, but sometimes that isn’t feasible. When Steven refers to "MMO" and reiterates what it means, I feel that the massive aspect might be more oriented toward the size of the game rather than the number of people involved. While a massive world is great, it won’t feel like an MMO with too few players. I know many people will disagree with this, as is often the case, but when you target niche players, you really have to ask yourself are we still capable of engaging at the level of gameplay we experienced growing up.
I also understand Steven’s point that if it’s not your target game, you shouldn’t play it (a common counterargument). However, when someone invests as much money and passion into the game as he and his team have and places significant faith in a specific group rather than diversifying you have to ask why.
Why target a niche group rather than diversifying?
Will the game be sustainable?
I hope so. Thank you.
What I mean by niche targeting is focusing on a specific group of players who prefer certain gameplay styles, whether that be more PvP over PvE, or vice versa, or more "grindy" versus less "grindy." The list goes on and on.
TL;DR: The old-school approach seems to target older audiences, who are often in their parenting years. We lack time and wish we didn’t. Targeting a niche reduces the overall audience. Massive multiplayer experiences can. Targeting a niche may not be as healthy for a game as one might think. It’s difficult to enjoy a game—regardless of personal opinion—if it’s not sustainable, as resources cost money.
In the interview today (the one with PirateSoftware), the "old-school approach" came up. While I appreciate the uniqueness of separating from the general modern-day game development approach where games are designed for a wider audience (or at least attempted to be) I find that those games tend to be less successful than ones targeting the majority. To me, "old school" tends to appeal to those who are 30 years old or older. I don’t have any statistics, but from my personal experience, we are often in our parenting years at that age, so old-school MMO gaming where you can spend an extremely large amount of time progressing through systems may not be as appealing due to time constraints. I wish I had all the time in the world to play a fantasy MMO for days and weeks on end, but sometimes that isn’t feasible. When Steven refers to "MMO" and reiterates what it means, I feel that the massive aspect might be more oriented toward the size of the game rather than the number of people involved. While a massive world is great, it won’t feel like an MMO with too few players. I know many people will disagree with this, as is often the case, but when you target niche players, you really have to ask yourself are we still capable of engaging at the level of gameplay we experienced growing up.
I also understand Steven’s point that if it’s not your target game, you shouldn’t play it (a common counterargument). However, when someone invests as much money and passion into the game as he and his team have and places significant faith in a specific group rather than diversifying you have to ask why.
Why target a niche group rather than diversifying?
Will the game be sustainable?
I hope so. Thank you.
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Comments
I specifically remember him saying about the game being a commercial success something to the effect of "it would be great if it is, but as long as it is the game I want to play, I don't mind if it isn't. I'll keep the servers up as long as I can afford to do so for those like me that want to play this game".
Now, things may have changed since then, I don't know. However, this was his stance.
The issue is also adopting all the bad things about oldschool mmos that made them awful sometimes.
what needs to happen is a cutting the wheat from the chaff of period adhesion and pan out the golden nuggets that made those games work.
As for targeting a niche, there's probably a portion of new players that have no idea what classic MMOs were like and they might feel liberated from the last decade of corporate game publishing...
Newworld shows that trying to please everyone pleases nobody...
So finding a potentially successful niche in today's slop and drivel of "Modern audience" Gaming might be exactly what gamers have been crying out for, but have been disappointed so many times by false promises before they are jaded...
So far I am appreciating the combat/group dynamic and the tangible impact of leveling up so far...
The rest of the issues i have I'm just formally accepting as Alpha teething issues...
Meanwhile, Ashes is creating a different sort of "classic"-feeling MMO that big companies aren't interested in building. While the pie Ashes is going for might not be as large overall as the Modern Themepark MMO pie, they can have their pie all to themselves, they're not dividing it or sharing it with any other game, thus meaning they'll actually have a bigger pie than a lot of the Themepark MMOs if they build it well.
Passion for the niche itself.
There are so many games outside of the niche to play. If you love the niche right now you have nothing but private servers and dated graphics and combat.
It would be a shame to see the vision of Ashes compromised to make it more like the games outside of the niche.
Yes, and it can even bring in new fans of the niche.
I did not wake up one morning and decide games would be more fun for me with open world PvP where I can lose a lot of work real quick. I had to get suckered into Lineage 2 and learn to love it.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Fortunately we're seeing them pull back on some parts of that in recent months, and I'm sure they will nail their specific target audience before too long, and they have nearly no competition in the exact space they seem to be trending towards.
If Ashes was too niche to even exist, TL would not be doing anywhere near as well as it still is (even if you don't consider the current numbers for that game to be great, or think that the falloff will be steeper than most similar games, Ashes would still probably have enough players to keep up one functional server per geographic region, even with the sub cost).
tl;dr - once they work out the kinks of 'which things their main audience can endure' and get into their stride in later Phases, I think they will see the commonly(?) expected level of success for this subgenre.
that's all
I specifically remember him saying about the game being a commercial success something to the effect of "it would be great if it is, but as long as it is the game I want to play, I don't mind if it isn't. I'll keep the servers up as long as I can afford to do so for those like me that want to play this game".
Now, things may have changed since then, I don't know. However, this was his stance."
I was unaware he said this. Interesting and all the best to his dream for sure. Unfortunate part about this is it takes an extreme amount of money per year to keep MMO's up and running. Even more so if new content will be added in future.
Regardless I love the game so far and look forward to 10+ years of it.
I'm sure that mindset has changed since or most definitely will change as it's not a responsible mindset when you have staff who rely on you to keep the game a success so they can keep their jobs. Building a game for yourself, if it doesn't succeed or hit YoY targets, won't pay for staff in the long-run and to keep expanding Verra with DLCs/Expansions. Everyone wants/needs job security in a very uncertain world.
Just saying
I've seen so many videos on YT already talking about the poor experience to new players in Alpha. And the worries over slow experience gain, how it will end up alienating new and casual players, like OP is speaking of. So I hope they are taking that feedback and implementing ways to create a better experience here.
There are two paths that needs equally as much focus.
- New players: Creating a great introduction to the game and giving them a great player experience. If joining years into launch, that player needs an easier way to catch up or they will drop out and unsub. Last note goes same for casuals. A great new player experience will turn them into below.
- VIPs: Engaging already existing players with content and keeping them subscribed = Creating longterm revenue.
RINSE & REPEAT.I don't think it's fair to say that the mindset has to charge or will change.
I would be flabbergasted to learn that anyone at Intrepid was offered or accepted their job without a mutual understanding of the vision of the project.
When you accept a job you are also accepting the risk that the job may not be as secure as other opportunities.
Steven is under no obligation to anyone to compromise on his vision.
I don't think he bankrolled his vision to create and maintain jobs for a few hundred people. There are much more wise ways to create sustainable jobs if that was Stevens goal.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Yaaaa.... In the nicest way, i think there's a lot of delusion and fantasy world living on this forum. It's just not how a business works. But I'm excited to be proved wrong
I appreciate you being nice.
I can only imagine how I would feel in Stevens position.
If I had spent 8+ years and 40k+ on my dream project. I think I would do all in on the vision. Especially if there has not been an interview with me where I have not talked about loving "Risk vs Reward"
That's just how I imagine how I would react. This could all be delusion.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
"Quod mens laeva vetat suadendo animusque sinister / Hoc saltim cupiant implere timore coacti"
I've been saying for years now that Ashes is goingto be a niche game, and with the server capacity as it is now, I see no space for more than 3 servers world wide (the notion of an AU server for this game kind of makes me laugh, it won't end well).
However, this game was concieved as a niche game, so we can't really go about saying "if you don't do this thing, this game will not attract a large audience".
My understanding of the staff issue you mention is that most MMORPG developers in general don't expect to maintain their role once the game goes live, or at least not for long after that. Expansions require far fewer staff than building the game.
Yes game fun.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I would encourage you to listen to Thors interview with Steven this last weekend.
There is a part where Steven explicitly explains that Ashes is personal project not a company project and how he doesn't want to cast a wider net.
I can only take the man who is investing his whole life into a niche at face value since there are so few people actually doing that.
To me this is all very refreshing to hear after seeing threads that call for adjusting the core pillars of the game.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Take my retweet.