Ashes of Creation
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only thing of note from that AMA is he expects, at minimum, 1 million concurrent players. Now maybe he means 1 million subs, which is not quite but well, could be a stretch, but if he means actually concurrent he's expecting at minimum WoW at its prime numbers, like 4-5mil subs (real subs, US + euro. china is whatev)
Xerge
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I havent watched the AMA yet but we were chatting about it on discord today. I agree it does feel awful to be questing and suddenly either out level the area or quest line, however I have a feeling thats not happening in AoC - elderscrolls online was a nice world experience where you could jump on and do anything in a non-linear fashionPrimary Leveling System: I hope he elaborates on this more. Have you heard anything in detail about this,Xerge
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Daidraco
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I dont know why you think one million concurrent players online would be that big of a deal. New World had almost that figure, just cratered within weeks. A 40 dollar box cost that was a lot higher than a single 15 dollar sub alone. Lost Ark had ~1.3 million concurrent at peak with its F2P launch. With a peak of somewhere around 725k concurrent for Pre-release where people had to spend at minimum 20 or 25 bucks to play.
You bring up 4-5 million subscribers from WOTLK peak - but a million concurrent users on launch does not mean AOC has in total 4-5 million subscribers. If we used that math, then New World made fucking bank at launch and "this forum" largely thinks that kind of estimate is unrealistic. I somewhat agree with that. But this forum also struggles with the definitions behind "peak players" and "concurrent players" which is just being obtuse.
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Given that you only need a subscription to play, and there's no upfront box cost, I can see them having well over a million on launch and for a few months following.
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Cinge
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A million concurrent users at launch is easy(first 1-2 weeks). Sustaining that is where almost everyone fails. A million subs will be easy , since its monthly, so they will get the first 30 days as a gimme and most possibly into 2nd month(people enjoying it, and people forgetting they have a sub). After that will be where we see if they are successful. Keeping people around after the "new" wears off. Concurrent numbers will almost always drop just from people playing less after rushing launch. Subs are easier to maintain.
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Cybsled
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IMO they need to do the following to make sure subscribers stay subscribed:
1) The honeymoon period with travel times/mechanics in these types of games is fairly limited. You've got maybe 1-2 months before tedious travel becomes a burden to enjoying the game. Running from Town A to Town B the first dozen times can be exciting. It becomes a chore when you've done it 100 times.
2) They really need to tone down the loss on death, because shitty balance will cause the forums to go ballistic. Even if someone has the stomach to risk loss on PVP death, even those types of players will have an extremely limited tolerance if they perceive their loss due to bad balancing (either their class is underpowered, or another is overpowered). Anything with cheesy stunlock or insta-gib mechanics will become the early meta, as gankers look to enrich themselves at the expense of other players, who will be more likely to quit as a result
3) They need to tone down the loss for town citizens in event of a war - I presume this won't be an immediate issue, but once the various powers get situated, it will quickly become an issue. PVErs in these games hate it when they lose their hard work due to PVP. I'm sure the regular PVP crowd will be "dur dur, pvp game, f off carebear". But the truth of the matter is PVErs tend to be the most stable MMO population type. PVErs tend to quit once they get dunked on enough in the game. If you shit on the PVErs, you're shitting on a large paying playerbase.
1) The honeymoon period with travel times/mechanics in these types of games is fairly limited. You've got maybe 1-2 months before tedious travel becomes a burden to enjoying the game. Running from Town A to Town B the first dozen times can be exciting. It becomes a chore when you've done it 100 times.
2) They really need to tone down the loss on death, because shitty balance will cause the forums to go ballistic. Even if someone has the stomach to risk loss on PVP death, even those types of players will have an extremely limited tolerance if they perceive their loss due to bad balancing (either their class is underpowered, or another is overpowered). Anything with cheesy stunlock or insta-gib mechanics will become the early meta, as gankers look to enrich themselves at the expense of other players, who will be more likely to quit as a result
3) They need to tone down the loss for town citizens in event of a war - I presume this won't be an immediate issue, but once the various powers get situated, it will quickly become an issue. PVErs in these games hate it when they lose their hard work due to PVP. I'm sure the regular PVP crowd will be "dur dur, pvp game, f off carebear". But the truth of the matter is PVErs tend to be the most stable MMO population type. PVErs tend to quit once they get dunked on enough in the game. If you shit on the PVErs, you're shitting on a large paying playerbase.
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You don't know why an indie kickstarter game that is the spiritual successor to Archage, a game with 150k players, would struggle to beat Amazon's extremely expensive, fully advertised and marketed, completely glowly reviewed bought and paid for gaming media, and super hyped game? seriously?
You think this game will easily do as well as a F2P diablo clone published and marketed by the same (amazon)? are you fucking serious or just trolling?
And yes, all MMO data suggests that at most 20-25% of your player base is ever active at the same time (peak, concurrent). so 4-5mil subs would get you around 1mil concurrent users. And we did use that math, and New World still failed epically. Actually amazon game studios were claiming something like 16mil boxes sold, but only had at most 900k concurrent, which is how we know that number was bullshit. They sold about 4-5mil boxes, which doesn't even cover the last year of their 5 year dev cycle. feel free to peruse the New World thread we already did this my man.
I think a million total subs is within the realm of possible but optimistic. A mix of newer actiony style combat but also a bit of old school grinding and exploration. But it's an indie crowd funded game. That track record is batting 1.000 for failure.
Daidraco
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I would try to respond to you, but its like someone shit in your cheerios and you're trying to eat around it. Never mind the fact that you called me out, acted as if I was a retard for stating its possible and then, within the same post, admit that its possible. Holy fuck is it too early for that kind of shit.
Steven indirectly makes fun of New World all of the time for the decisions they make. So I dont think we'll be repeating too many of those idiotic decisions. I think my fear of travel is going to fall apart when I actually start playing the game. Seeing how much we'll stay around particular nodes. The fact that we'll have ground mounts pretty early. The idea that nodes will get to tier 3 pretty early, etc.
The loss on death and town thing is a pretty hard pill to swallow and I dont know enough about it to really make any kind of assumption. I do know that AOC is going to have a huge flock of PVE only players and if Steven wants them to stay for any length of time - he cant make them feel like sheep.
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Cinge
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Based on what I can find, new world hit 900k concurrent and that was on steam only. So a million is easily believable.
And sure they had a ton more to throw at their game, but I would say this one isn't as "indie" as you think. They have millions and a work force of 100+(I think the article said 120). Pretty far from "indie". Will it do just as well, who knows. But given the current abscence of any MMOs , especially new ones, atm. Really depends on when they launch, and how well they handle infrastructure.
Also I am sure you can find box sales for new world. Just find some earnings call. They had to report on it eventually and can't really lie(well you can, but you can get in trouble for it) to your stockholders. I'd guess its probably in the 5-10m range, maybe more. I can find a article that it was 5 million just for the first month(Does that count pre-orders? I dunno).
And sure they had a ton more to throw at their game, but I would say this one isn't as "indie" as you think. They have millions and a work force of 100+(I think the article said 120). Pretty far from "indie". Will it do just as well, who knows. But given the current abscence of any MMOs , especially new ones, atm. Really depends on when they launch, and how well they handle infrastructure.
Also I am sure you can find box sales for new world. Just find some earnings call. They had to report on it eventually and can't really lie(well you can, but you can get in trouble for it) to your stockholders. I'd guess its probably in the 5-10m range, maybe more. I can find a article that it was 5 million just for the first month(Does that count pre-orders? I dunno).
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Cybsled
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I suspect his fond thoughts of guild battles over illegal tree farms and stealing packs in Archeage has tainted his concepts of what is acceptable to a wider MMO population.
For those not familiar, in Archeage you could plant trees and crops to harvest pretty much anywhere in the world, but they were only protected if you planted them on your own land. There was a rare chance that your tree could become 'thunderstruck", which turned it into a very rare material that was needed to make many of the vehicles in the game. Trees also took up a lot of space, so you were throttled in how many trees you could harvest on your own land realistically.
So what some players did is they used "creative" glider mechanics to try to find -really- out of the way spots that were hard to access to plant giant forests of harvestable trees. When these got discovered, usually there was a rush by rival guilds to try to harvest the trees (and possible thunderstrucks) the moment they became harvestable (you could see a timer on the trees). This frequently led to some PVP, as guilds tried to both harvest the trees while simultaneously fighting each other.
In my opinion, that is an "unintended" mechanic that was actually quite enjoyable: A player planted things with full knowledge they would be FFA to anyone who found it, and if people did find it, you'd get some hotspot for PVP fighting. It doesn't punish PVE folks really and made for good PVP content.
Regarding packs, in Archeage the longer the distance between where the pack was made and where you sold the pack, the greater the profit. This typically meant that packs made and sold in PVP zones were the most valuable. However, PVP zones could be pushed into war and then there was a peace period where PVP was turned off completely. Guess when the most packs got moved? Peace time. The price would get tanked because of the sheer volume. Sometimes guilds would organize pack caravans.
Sounds nice on paper, but the real problem with packs in Archeage is there were very little legitimate options for making gold in-game. You either ran packs or fished (which was basically just a different kind of pack). Or you sold shit you bought for real money off the cash shop. So in order to make money, you typically had to run packs. Because the returns on pack running were somewhat low, it wasn't unheard of for people to run multiple accounts and just have your alts /follow and you made your own caravans. It was also boring as fuck. If you had a sports car, you could speed run packs. Then Trion normalized sports car speeds, making it so you couldn't be more efficient than a tractor. And tractors were slow as fuck. Pack runs were some of the most tedious fucking things in that game. Bots did this x100 and some even used teleportation to turn in packs.
My other concern is he is probably thinking "man, guild pack runs sure were fun!", but ignoring the fact they became insanely tedious and most of the server typically only ran them during times of low PVP risk because the fantasy of "hiring mercs to protect your runs" was just that - if you're already running razor thin margins of profit on your pack runs, where is this "merc money" coming from?
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Xerge
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look maybe i'll give him the benefit of the doubt and he meant total subs instead of concurrent players when he said concurrent players. 1 million total subs is doable, bit of a stretch but doable. What's the ceiling on forced PVP games anyway? last I checked it was around 500-800k was the most any forced PVP, faction warfare game could muster. The overlap of MMO players and PVP enthusiasts isn't as large of a slice of the pie as people like to think. And whats the ceiling on crowdfunded player bases? again not nearly as large as people think. could he break both records and hit 1mil? sure, it's possible.
but if he actually meant concurrent when he said concurrent, and is at a minimum, expecting 5 million subs? fucking insane. I don't care how many people he has working for him. Expecting, at a minimum, to do as well as the most successful MMO ever made?? and that game was a success by such a large margin that it nearly destroyed the industry it exists in, to the point that it's still reigning champ nearly 20 years later? expecting that, as a minimum, to determine if your kickstarter game is a success is fucking insane to me.
Outside of this forum i've seen nothing on this game. It may as well be ember's adrift for as much as the wider game playing audience is concerned. And when it falls off the front page it goes weeks without being mentioned again. outside of the sox.exe debug session which was half the posts in this thread it's basically just something people are keeping an eye out for, definitely back burner.
but if he actually meant concurrent when he said concurrent, and is at a minimum, expecting 5 million subs? fucking insane. I don't care how many people he has working for him. Expecting, at a minimum, to do as well as the most successful MMO ever made?? and that game was a success by such a large margin that it nearly destroyed the industry it exists in, to the point that it's still reigning champ nearly 20 years later? expecting that, as a minimum, to determine if your kickstarter game is a success is fucking insane to me.
Outside of this forum i've seen nothing on this game. It may as well be ember's adrift for as much as the wider game playing audience is concerned. And when it falls off the front page it goes weeks without being mentioned again. outside of the sox.exe debug session which was half the posts in this thread it's basically just something people are keeping an eye out for, definitely back burner.
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Daidraco
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Anyways...
Isnt the lightning tree thing he dealt with, where he was basically a wallet warrior and still lost, something people have been contributing to why he started this project in the first place? lol
Cinge
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AA had a lot of fun aspects, more so if you were in a guild of people you liked. I loved pack runs, but we also had a sizeable amount defending. Solo pack runs were dangerous, as was solo fishing.
The big problem with AA and hopefully it doesn't come here, was paying for power. Higher chances of success, the huge one in buying labor pots, etc. And remember AA basically had a sub, if you wanted to do anything at all because of labor regen(and you used alt accounts to chop trees/make mass sub combines with their passive, low, no sub regen). That was the huge issue, especially in a game with so much open pvp going on. People just quit in droves, no one likes being sheep for long. Doesn't help that there really wasn't much to do pve wise if you didn't want to pvp(BDO had/has the same problem outside lifeskills).
P2w is my biggest concern about this game and given who is making it, doesn't quiet those concerns at all. Just makes them more viable in my eyes. Do they care about logevity or just getting it out and making that "launch" money. Time will tell.
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