steven, is this you?

Depraved

found this old video. i think this was your clan xD funny music haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6kPM9T16VI&t=1s&ab_channel=Sharlanna

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Ludullu

And people say L2 is dead

Depraved

NiKr wrote: »

And people say L2 is dead

biggest private server community of any mmorpg after wow ;3

Ludullu

Btw, one of the members (green icon in the party) of this party is of a lower lvl (or at the very least lower progress lvl) and has a weapon that's several grades below top. But it's a mana/buff support that's nearly irreplaceable in a mage party (which this is, with a Necromancer being the MC of the video).

Just goes to show that when Steven says "lower lvl players will still have an impact in the siege", he speaks from experience and not just from the point of "they'll have a siege weapon to sit in".

Ludullu

That channel has some great old stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8elE73OYAdA

Ludullu

Here's a representation of what sieges of low lvl nodes might look like. This was a lowbie L2 castle (which made it less popular with the big bois), so we have a full party of people ranging from 19lvls below max to 5lvls below it (who's also a summoner btw). And a ton of people in fairly subpar gear, on both sides of the siege. All still playing, enjoying themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvNUgHkuOKo

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

private server

This is why people say L2 is dead.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

This is why people say L2 is dead.

We're not all lucky to have a company that can support a low pop game w/o changing it into an empty shell of its former self that's filled with a cash monster

Dygz

NiKr wrote: »

Btw, one of the members (green icon in the party) of this party is of a lower lvl (or at the very least lower progress lvl) and has a weapon that's several grades below top. But it's a mana/buff support that's nearly irreplaceable in a mage party (which this is, with a Necromancer being the MC of the video).

Just goes to show that when Steven says "lower lvl players will still have an impact in the siege", he speaks from experience and not just from the point of "they'll have a siege weapon to sit in".

Cool.
Helps support what I was saying a few days ago that Sieges and Caravans don’t cater to Max Level Adventurers.
There will be a mix of Levels.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

This is why people say L2 is dead.

We're not all lucky to have a company that can support a low pop game w/o changing it into an empty shell of its former self that's filled with a cash monster

Yeah, instead the developers of L2 have sat and watched it die as an empty shell of it's former self.

Honestly, L2 being more popular on private servers than official servers should serve as a warning to developers - even if your game generates a good amount of nostalgia, attempting to increase your target market will still alienate your existing playerbase.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

even if your game generates a good amount of nostalgia, attempting to increase your target market will still alienate your existing playerbase.

How would devs know this w/o being in the future though? It's usually a lose-lose situation. You either keep doing the same thing and people call the game stagnant and boring (and you keep losing players) or you try to change things and you lose people who dislike change.

Classic servers are popular because all games with classic servers have made a change in their design somewhere along the way, but what exactly made them change? I'd assume it was falling playerbase numbers and revenue values.

This is why I said that not all companies are ready to sustain a game that goes down to the bare minimum core audience that utterly loves the game, but barely keeps the lights on. I tried googling how many players EQ2 has and from what I could find it seems that EQ has more than EQ2, with EQ2 subs at around 20k and EQ's at around 40 (at least back in 2021).

I guess the best way to develop a game is to change as little as possible, while also minimizing your expenses on the development side. That way you can keep making the game indefinitely and catch nostalgia-ridden comeback players. No need for a "classic" version if your current one hasn't changed since the game began, right?

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

even if your game generates a good amount of nostalgia, attempting to increase your target market will still alienate your existing playerbase.

How would devs know this w/o being in the future though? It's usually a lose-lose situation. You either keep doing the same thing and people call the game stagnant and boring (and you keep losing players) or you try to change things and you lose people who dislike change.

How this should be viewed by a developer with an unreleased game is simple - the target audience you aim for at release should be the only audience you ever target. Make sure that audience is large enough to sustain your game for what you want it's life to be. You can make changes to some aspects of your game to attempt to capture (or re-capture) parts of that target audience you either never got or lost (Archeage Unchained is an example of this), but if you make changes to the core of the game, it never goes well (SWG is an example of this).

The thing is, developers don't make changes like this because they think their players want a change, they make these changes to try and attract a segment of the market that was not the games original target. Usually this is because the game needs to bring in more revenue.

Some developers opt to try and change up the core of the game to attract a larger audience and generate more revenue, some develoeprs opt to add in a store to try and generate more revenue from existing players. What I don't get is - why have no developers in the last decade and a half (perhaps 2 decades) simply increased their subscription rate? We've been paying a fairly standard $15 a month for over 20 years, increasing that would go down better with most players than either of the above options.

Also, in regards to EQ and EQ2 population, the only information at all to go by is a one off presentation when Daybreak was purchased in 2020 (which the Wikipedia comment I assume you are talking about is from).

The thing to keep in mind with that though, of all Daybreak titles, EQ2 has the second highest revenue per active user, and the highest conversion rate (essentially return subscriptions). Basically, EQ2 is the stable title, and the other titles Daybreak have all fluctuate a lot.

To be fair, while EQ is well behind on revenue per active user, it was only a little behind EQ2 in terms of conversion rate - although that is due in part to the expansion that was being worked on at the time.

The expansion for EQ leading up to that presentation (as in, the time the data was taken from) was based around Veeshan. That caused a similar jump in numbers to the game that WoW would see if they titled their next expansion "Return of the Lich King". The expansion about to be released for EQ2 at the time was Reign of Shadows - not exactly anything to pull players back. They only had their stable playerbase being represented in that presentation - yet even then the conversion rate was the highest, and revenue per active user was still much higher than EQ's.

Edit; your last point is only correct and accurate from the perspective of some PvP games.

From the perspective of a PvE game, there is always going to be a desire to have progression servers after a few years of your game being live. This isn't necessarily due to any changes to the game (although in some cases it is), it is because PvE obsoletes content to the point where it isn't viable to go back and run it - not even on a new character. The only way to run the content is to be at the appropriate level, and unable to level further.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

From the perspective of a PvE game, there is always going to be a desire to have progression servers after a few years of your game being live. This isn't necessarily due to any changes to the game (although in some cases it is), it is because PvE obsoletes content to the point where it isn't viable to go back and run it - not even on a new character. The only way to run the content is to be at the appropriate level, and unable to level further.

Nah, I meant that in the same way you described here. As in, stick to the same design, and just keep adding the same type of content.

I'd say that in recent years Genshin seemingly succeeded at "increasing the sub cost". They started off with $10/5 battlepass/monthly sub and have shifted up to $12/6. Obviously this is purely optional, but it's effectively a sub that gives you the best benefits in the game for its price.

I think the best way for Ashes to do this would be to announce that their current sub price would only last as long as the highest testing bundle provided. Once that time runs out - they'll go up some amount.

By that time I'm sure people will be more fine with paying more for a game (they kinda already are), especially if the game is good.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

I'd say that in recent years Genshin seemingly succeeded at "increasing the sub cost". They started of with $10/5 battlepass/monthly sub and have shifted up to $12/6.

Does Genshin consider itself to be an MMORPG? Honest question, as I have no idea at all about the game as it is as far away from anything I would consider playing as is possible to be.

While this may seem like semantics, it is an important point. Games-as-a-service have had no issue in raising subscriptions, just as companies like Netflix and YouTube have had no issues raising subscription prices.

It's just MMORPG's that seem to be stuck.

As to how to go about a price increase - what you have said is kind of on point. The timing I don't think matters, what does matter is giving players plenty of advanced warning.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Does Genshin consider itself to be an MMORPG? Honest question, as I have no idea at all about the game as it is as far away from anything I would consider playing as is possible to be.

Nah, it was mistakenly called one back at the start, but it's a single player with possibility of limited 4-player coop.

Noaani wrote: »

While this may seem like semantics, it is an important point. Games-as-a-service have had no issue in raising subscriptions, just as companies like Netflix and YouTube have had no issues raising subscription prices.

It's just MMORPG's that seem to be stuck.

They'll have to learn at some point. I think everyone still relies on WoW when thinking about what they can get away with. And considering how fucking deep WoW has gone down the shitter, while still not increasing the sub - no one else is increasing it either.

Noaani wrote: »

As to how to go about a price increase - what you have said is kind of on point. The timing I don't think matters, what does matter is giving players plenty of advanced warning.

Yeah, I picked the end of bundles simply because that's the logical cutoff point for when it would be "fair" to do. If you do it sooner - people will get angy that oldtimers get a better deal. I doubt that many people would even pay attention to that, but there's no point in risking it.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Does Genshin consider itself to be an MMORPG? Honest question, as I have no idea at all about the game as it is as far away from anything I would consider playing as is possible to be.

Nah, it was mistakenly called one back at the start, but it's a single player with possibility of limited 4-player coop.

So, the correct monthly fee it should be charging is $0...

Even more of a reason to not play it.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

So, the correct monthly fee it should be charging is $0...

Even more of a reason to not play it.

The game is free. The "sub" just gives some benefits, as optional subs do in free mmos.

And I'd definitely say that you're missing out on a great story and enjoyable combat if you don't play

Not really difficult, especially by your standards, but still enjoyable to play.

Depraved

Noaani wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

This is why people say L2 is dead.

We're not all lucky to have a company that can support a low pop game w/o changing it into an empty shell of its former self that's filled with a cash monster

Yeah, instead the developers of L2 have sat and watched it die as an empty shell of it's former self.

Honestly, L2 being more popular on private servers than official servers should serve as a warning to developers - even if your game generates a good amount of nostalgia, attempting to increase your target market will still alienate your existing playerbase.

they didn't increase their target, and they didn't let their game die. it still generates hundreds of millions lol. it just became more p2w...so lots of players from places like latinamerica and russia cant keep up $$$ and play in old patches private servers (or even new versions of the game, like l2 essence, but private servers remove the p2w elements)

you also have publishers in Europe (inova) who add even more p2w xD so yeah...

now when is the game dead, when it has a million players and doesn't generate a lot of money per year, or when it has 10,000 players but generates a billion per year? just a question, how do you consider a game dead, revenue or amount of players?

Jam21

Depraved wrote: »

now when is the game dead, when it has a million players and doesn't generate a lot of money per year, or when it has 10,000 players but generates a billion per year? just a question, how do you consider a game dead, revenue or amount of players?

For players revenue doesn't matter. Game is dead when there are not enough people to fill it. Even if it generates some money off the weirdos who still stick to it.

The big flaw of La2 was the fact that it was run by the players. When there were people everywhere, random fights, random boss farms, doing obscure quests, spoil expeditions, small fort sieges, minor fights between midwar clans for spots/bosses (and not just the top ones) etc etc - this was the best game.
But when people are not enough it is lacking sadly.

Lineage 2 was perhaps the best defitinition of MMO - by the people, for the people. You cannot play it solo, literally (well in late chronicles you can but thats another story - for me La2 died with GoD).

While La2 lore was deep it had no real story, basically the stories of that game were written by players There is literally nothing to do solo or if you play with only few people on server. That is very different from other modern games- e.g. Newerwinter of TESO. There might be 100 people playing on server or 10000 - you will never be able to tell. And honestly you won't even need those people for most content.
In La2 you literally -=FEEL=- when server is full, when it is half empty, and when it is dead/semi-dead.

Noaani

Jam21 wrote: »

For players revenue doesn't matter. Game is dead when there are not enough people to fill it.

This is the answer I was going to give.

This is also in part why PvP games generally die faster than PvE games. In a PvE game, if I have enough people in my guild to raid, and enough people wanting to join that I know we could recruit new people when existing people leave, the game is not dead.

I have the people I play with, and I have the content. The population can drop by 75% and as long as thise above two points remain true, the game is fine from my perspective.

In a PvP game, if you lose 75% of the population, you lose 75% of your content. The game feels dead, feels boring.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

In a PvP game, if you lose 75% of the population, you lose 75% of your content. The game feels dead, feels boring.

This depends on the design of the game. I've played on servers with about 100 people on them, but they were split into 2 guilds and were fighting constantly. All bosses, all sieges, all farming spots - everything was contested. It was really fun.

I expect Ashes to be somewhat similar, because people's activity will siphon them all into 1-2 places and they'll be playing with each other at all times (either with or w/o competition).

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