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Originally Posted by MikeJW
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Originally Posted by XanderF
Maybe, but, surely, you realize that even with half the players lost, the game would still be a WINDFALL for the publisher. Each of the ones they keep, after all, nets them 4 times the profit of the gamer they lost...each year
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No, because not every series is as sucessful as WoW. Frankly I see an MMO sub sim with subscription starting of with a small base that barely covers the servers and only gets smaller. An MMO would limit the modders too. No, I know its hard for MMO fanatics to believe but MMOs are not the end-all-be-all of games. |
FWIW, for perspective, I don't currently subscribe to ANY MMO. I played 'Planetside' (MMOFPS) for about a year a while back, and beta'd 'Guild Wars' and 'Lord of the Rings Online', but even that is a generous term (I got into the beta, tried a day or two, decided it wasn't what I wanted and dropped them). Hardly a 'fanatic'.
That said, I really think SubSims COULD benefit from this arrangement.
As to "the servers" - honestly, that's more optimistic than I would put it. 'Planetside' is a pretty good example of a 'failed' MMO - 3 servers, current max simultaneous population is about 6,000 - 9,000 on each on a good night.
Personally, I think *one* (or two, for our European friends) servers with HALF those numbers each would be the perfect target for an MMO-SubSim.
Your comment about mods is, unfortunately, the only real caveat I see with this. Obviously, no mods would be possible. On the one hand, that CAN be a major killer. On the other, the very format of MMO means that the developers themselves are adding content on nearly a monthly basis.
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Originally Posted by Ducimus
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And how is that different in an MMO?
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Because MMO's tend to be groupcentric. Grouping, unfortunatly is one of the best "tools" of social engineering to encourage players to interact. The whole thing about Massive Mulitplayer Online is player interaction. Everything you do, your whole reason for being, is ultimatly about player interaction. |
Agreed - the basic reason for the game's being WOULD be interaction. This "Silent Hunter: Wolf Packs" idea (for lack of a better title) would very much have that as the focus.
That said, that's not the ONLY thing there is. Even in the most group-centric MMO (and there are definitely some that are more of this than others), there is single-player content.
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Originally Posted by Ducimus
The problem comes that, with that interaction often comes a social obligation. LFG? Nobody wants you around if your just going to be in for 15 minute and bail. Theres sort of an unwritten rule to stick it out for some undertmined lenght of time - otherwise you wont get invited again. Particuarlly in any sort of large or *cough* "epic" encounter. Then, heavan forbid if your of a class or skill subset crucial to the groups survival. And if the group is working something, you can't just go AFK in the middle of the fight - or rather you shouldn't. In group centric games, people who go afk alot, leave early, and are otherwise not focused, do not get invited back very often, and participating in said groups, is crucial to your own advancement. Kind of a bummer huh?
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While GENERALLY true - again, this is different between games. I'll go back to 'Planetside', as that's the only MMO-like game I have any real amount of experience in. In that game, yes, you could belong to an "outfit" (but you didn't have to), and most combat you fought in was with your outfit. However, even with a hundred people in it, they weren't all always on. And I found pretty regularly that you could squad up with others for a continent cap or two with "no obligations" - just fight as best as you can while you are on - and drop out half an hour or so later. You probably wouldn't see those people again, just due to the size of the community, but if you did run into them, they would usually be perfectly willing to invite you to an 'ad-hoc' squad, or to fill out an otherwise outfit-only squad - as long as you fought well last time.
For something like 'WoW' - which relies heavily on grinding, camping MOBs, queueing up for unique item drops, etc - yeah, I can see the "casual gamer" not being very welcome.
I can't fathom why SH:WP would be ANYTHING like that, though. There are no unique items, you aren't levelling. Worst thing that would happen if someone dropped out of your wolfpack halfway through a patrol would be...you are down 1 sub. That's it. Not exactly the end of the world.