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A disgustingly shameless cash grab.
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Mar 12, 2016 07:13
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 18:19 |
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It's a consequence of companies figuring out that they can create microtransaction gambling dens with the patina of a game splashed on them for 1/10th of the cost of an MMO. For an MMO developer to keep making money, they have to spend enormous time and effort in creating content month after month; Puzzle & Dragon merely has to hire an artist to draw ten anime girls and roll a few dice to figure out what stats they'll have and they're raking in millions. FFXIV is a drop of water in the vast ocean of Square-Enix's profits compared to their mobile games division.
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Mar 13, 2016 01:38
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Again, it's just business. MMOs are horrifically expensive to produce, have had marginal returns over time with a small few exceptions (World of Warcraft and Lineage 1 being the big two), and demand a constant team of developers devoting resources to it to maintain the product. If you've got a subscription model, you have to have a hellishly fast turnaround on new content (FFXIV's three month patch rate isn't just for show; they've gone on record saying that subscription numbers drop like a stone a month after a new patch has come out). If you've got microtransaction gambling as your big moneymaker instead, then you can do that at significantly reduced cost and reach out to a larger audience with mobile games like Puzzle & Dragon or Clash of Clans. Even if you really want to make some kind of PC game, you're better off making something in a genre that doesn't require quite as many resources and which doesn't have as much complexity as an MMO. League of Legends is successful today in no small part to the fact that the most you've really got to devote in terms of resources (beyond balance designers and character creation) is reskins and splash art. You don't need teams of people trying to come up with two interesting dungeons and a mechanically intensive raid every three months, and the basic nature of the gameplay itself (which relies on player competition, keeping the gameplay fresh with each game you play) keeps people coming back and willing to purchase microtransaction skins. Vermain fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Mar 13, 2016 |
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Mar 13, 2016 19:41
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DeathSandwich posted:Kind of a shame, it could of been something interesting (if not necessarily what one would consider good) if a finished game came out with what they were promising. The actual Everquest Next game design didn't seem like anything except a big "wouldn't this be neat" list of things poorly suited to an MMO. Dynamic ecosystems? Really?
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Jan 7, 2017 23:24
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