This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I have been following this industry since the early nineties. So very much has changed.
I was at the Tokyo Game Show 2016 on Sunday. Microsoft and Nintendo were nowhere to be found, but neither did they seem to be missed. VR was a major theme this year with dozens of companies large and small offering both hardware and games. I must have seen a dozen different styles of headset. Mobile gaming was also a huge part of the show, despite frequent news reports to the contrary. Many of the indie publishers who were there were supplying promotional materials and walkthroughs for mobile games rather than console games or PC games.
The most popular booths among attendees were Mobile Strike, Wargaming.net, Final Fantasy XV, and the hundreds of games featuring female anime characters in various styles of unrealistic yet very seductive armor and robes. Sega was a popular booth with a new yakuza themed title, and of course, Resident Evil was packed solid all day long. A VR game called, "Circle of Saviors", offered by a smaller company called PD Tokyo, was also extremely popular among attendees.
The only game in the entire show that might qualify as a MMORPG was Final Fantasy. Many of the MMORPG-style games based here in Japan that were expected to be present with new material were nowhere to be found. World of Warcraft had a booth, but the emphasis of Blizzard seemed to be on their mobile apps rather than the stalwart and aging MMORPG. The booth was nearly empty all three times I went by it. Many of the new games that are seeking to capitalize on the massively-multiplayer portion of the market were not roleplaying games at all. They were either FPS style games or battle arenas in various flavors with bits of social tools tacked on.
Before Sunday, I was not convinced that VR would actually be able to find a market. Now, I'm beginning to question that assumption. All of those offerings clearly imply that companies both major and minor are expecting most of us to be donning headsets within the next year or so. Likewise, interest among attendees was through the roof. All of VR experience opportunities had stopped taking reservations within half an hour of the doors opening. Every single one, even the most minor indie studios.
Now I realize that MWM is not planning to get rich off of City of Titans (although I'm sure no one would object if it happened). And, I must add, City of Titans will not be City of Heroes reborn, regardless of how many of us are hoping it will be. This is going to be a completely different gaming experience, in many ways it will be far better than City of Heroes could ever dream of being. Nonetheless, a lot of work is going into developing this game. In order for those on the development team to reap some kind of genuine financial reward, a new market model is going to have to be developed. The entire gaming history is leaping forward into VR and AR. It does not matter how any of us personally feel about this shift, it is real, it is happening right before our eyes, and it is going to accelerate relentlessly as hardware and software advance to meet the rising demand.
My proposal, which has been met with disbelief and (in a few cases) ridicule, is for MWM to not bother offering a public server. Hardware maintenance and bandwidth costs are not cheap and are unlikely to decline in the coming years since both are labor-based cost figures. (Yes, real people work tirelessly to maintain the infrastructure that makes the internet possible and those people expect to be paid.) Off-loading that cost onto the users through establishing a gateway for private servers with public access rather than an official public server seems to me the simplest, most straight-forward solution. Authentication is provided through the gateway, but the bandwidth is the responsibility of the private server administrator. Since a full suite of UGC tools is being developed along the game itself, it is very likely that over time each of these private servers would take on a unique, highly individualized character.
A base package (the initial game) with a basic game environment, server environment, UGC tools, and some form of documentation would remain the core product. To generate additional revenue MWM would offer expansion packages with additional enemy groups, locations, buildings, props, complete costume sets, and so on. Private server admins would purchase the ones they felt best improved their unique, individualized game environment. Under this concept, MWM is no longer responsible for designing storylines and quest trees in future expansions, but rather with providing the assets which private server admins use to create their own storylines and quest scenarios. Naturally, if they wanted to, there would nothing stopping them from offering expansion packs with new storylines and quests. I'm merely suggesting that it would not be expected in the way it has been with past MMORPGs. MWM could also generate revenue through official licensing (such as the publishing venture they just started). Offering all of this content through digital downloads and digital markets rather than as a box, book, disk package would help keep costs down and distribution high.
But this is just my suggestion. In the future, smaller is going to be better. At least, that is how I see the market moving forward.
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"My proposal, which has been met with disbelief and (in a few cases) ridicule..."
I for one not only believe you, I think it will go further. For instance desktop v/s mobile v/s AR v/s VR will eventually be irrelevant much like almost no relevant website is totally desktop browser v/s responsive design (mobile optimized). Gamers will eventually expect to play a given game on all platforms in all modes. Certainly AR on a desktop might be a bit of a stretch, but the mobile clients better support it, and there better be mobile clients. As far as distributing the server load to the clients I think it is somewhat inevitable. Someone will try it sooner or later for a game. It is doable and will cost less than providing a massive game server. How well it works is another story. I also think that player generated content properly harnessed can create the most massive and captivating amounts of content. This too is inevitable.
All that being said, I suspect that for now MWM needs to focus on building a good desktop client perhaps with these future possibilities in mind.
"THE TITANS ARE COMING!!! THE TITANS ARE COMING!!!"
I understand where you are coming from. And I don't think there is anything wrong with what you purpose. I think it was stated in the kickstarter that some of the things you are looking for are their goals. I think there is a plan in place to release the server side to the general population so that in the event that the game has to be shuttered you'll be able to find a private server. I think the direction you are going is not prohibitive of MWM hosting their own server.
It takes a lot less than you might think. Some rough math tells me a game with as few as 20,000 active accounts (activity meaning average $5/month contribution) could still be a functional and maybe even profitable with an operating budget of over 1million a year. COT has shown over the past 3 years of development that they can manage their cash. Of the initial ~600k they are only now approaching the bottom of the barrel. Obviously this "volunteer development mode" and their "active game mode" are going to be different beasts but even at only 10,000 active accounts that gives them the same budget as their kickstarter over the course of a single year. Success doesn't have to be measured in millions or even 100's of thousands of active accounts.
I'd rather see MWM run than game under a single server umbrella than have to choose one of dozens of servers scattered across the globe. We are a small community to begin with breaking up that community over multiple servers is going to be to our detriment, and also anyone running servers. With fewer people playing on a given server the game world will feel less alive and people wont feel like sticking around. The games community will scatter to the wind again.
Give MWM their chance, if it's clear they can't maintain the game at an acceptable level they can change tact and try another way.
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I'm not against people having their mobile games, but it does seem a little inappropriate to discuss them on the development forums for a desktop game. Still, this is 'General', so it's the best place for doing so. I do object to any implication that the developers and fans of a desktop game are wasting their time and money, because the only way to profit is to invest in mobile games.
Yes, it's true, I'm one of those neo-luddites who does not own, or want to own, a smart-phone. I could see owning a tablet, for access to Google. I'm perfectly happy with my flip-phone, which is a very good phone and doesn't try to be anything else.
Maybe it's due to my hearing-impairment, but I have trouble with anything that reduces my contact with reality. So I don't wear headphones and have no interest in virtual reality - I wouldn't be able to hear my mother calling for help, or the truck that's about to flatten me.
I do think it would be great for certain aspects of a MMO to be available in a 'non-game' package. Character/Costume builder and Player Market, for instance. These could exist as stand-alone platforms and even as mobile apps, as they take place outside of game-play and outside of social relations with other players.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I wouldn't mind if players from the Open World maps, which run from one main MWM Server, would be transferred to dedicated servers when doing Missions, TF's, etc... anything that's instanced.
This would probably lighten the load from the one main MWM server. Of course, things like Maximum XP obtainable from a maximum number of spawnable Foes and such would be calculated by the main MWM Server, and verified after the Dedicated Instancing server transfers its data back to the MWM Main Server. Just in case of any hacking.
As much as i like to think one main MWM server will be adequate to handle 30,000 players at one time... i just have some doubts. :p
Like was said before, if WMW isn't able to afford to run a MegaServer at some distant future time (Con Edison doesn't allow for so many rackmounts on the same circuit breaker), community members can donate their bandwidth by running Mission, TF, etc.. Instancing versions of the Linux game client as a server. Just worried. I don't know anything about managing servers. :)
I still think this is stupid and you're overreacting Greyhawk. Just because WoW is finally dying like it was going to eventually because that game is ancient and there wasn't much stuff for MMOs at a single gaming convention in Japan doesn't mean MMOs or console or PC games are dying. Mobile games might be a big thing right now, but I don't think they'll kill other types of gaming any time soon. The market has room for all of it. CoT would just be shooting themselves in the foot if they did what you're suggesting.
Japanese gaming market != American gaming market
Furthermore, ANY sort of MMORPG is an absolutely massive undertaking. Years. Gobs of money. They're also "risky" as investments that might not pan out (not all games that start development ever get finished). And so on and so forth.
The Japanese market has become somewhat notoriously RISK AVERSE. You see this in anime these days, where almost everything has to be a light novel or a manga FIRST before they'll make an anime for it. Everything needs to have a proven audience for it, a proven customer base, before someone is going to pony up the cash to make it happen. The result is substantially a "regurgitation" of the old standbys that "worked" previously. If something was successful, they'll do another (or do it again), but there isn't a whole lot of daring or pushing of the boundaries.
To put it mildly, making ENTIRE WORLDS and filling them with content (especially One Off Content!) is something which is seen as high cost and low return. But an FPS game? That's relatively cheap, by comparison. You don't need a whole lot of "story" behind something like Counterstrike or Team Fortress 2. The content is mainly just the geometry of the map, and then turning Players loose to tear each other apart. That's a whole other order of scale of development needed versus the content of a typical MMORPG (as opposed to a MMOFPS).
So in many ways, I'm not all that surprised that you didn't see a whole lot of MMORPGs at the Tokyo Game Show.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
MMORPG have ever been a niche market. Even WoW was niche. I don't think anyone's expectations are that they will compete with FPS or MOBA. To set those expectations would be setting yourself up for disappointment.
The roots of MMORPG have been the ability to take a pen n paper RPG and make it massively multiplayer. The intended market has ever been the people who would play pen n paper RPG. Now that the market has existed for 20 years, it has its own precedent upon which all endeavors are measured and has expanded its market to include PvP interests and more. There have been a lot of attempts to be the next big thing, but now developers realize they don't need to be the next big thing, because if you just do your own thing and do it well, you will be successful. Successful beats unsuccessful any day.
That's all we ask of MWM. Do superheroes and do them well and you will be successful. Make a phenomenal character creation system and there will be a whole new generation of players wanting to try it out because they heard so much about City of Heroes. A good investment in marketing some killer interviews and playtests by the Twitch elite, MMORPG.com and MMOHuts and it will be a snowball of free advertising.
Have some faith in this kickass development team.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
In other words ... this ...
[img]http://cityoftitans.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-18206-1466691214.png[/img]
... meets this ...
[youtube]ncbEucjsNFU[/youtube]
Guess where I'm putting my money (and I have!) ...? ^_~
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yeah, like Redlynne said, this is America, not Japan. Anyone who's been paying attention has known for years that Portable Systems and Mobile Games trump consoles and PC games over there. That's why Smash 4 came out on both Wii U and 3Ds, among other things and why Nintendo's finally dipping their toes in the mobile game market. Mobile games are picking up steam over here, but they're still not as big as Consoles and PC games or even portables. And we just want a good superhero MMO that's not part of an already established comic universe to play in. Superhero MMOs aren't as common as Sci Fi or Fantasy, so that means the game's got plenty potential to be unique and superheroes have been more mainstream lately because of the Marvel and DC movies, so I'm sure there's plenty people who'd like to play a new superhero MMO, if it's marketed right. It'll be fine.
One of my favorite movies of all time! I'm loving you more each day! --I jest, Red, I jest--
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
One of the other things to figure into the calculation (of the Japanese market) is that in Japan cell phones are for all intents and purposes "practically required" for almost everyone, by social convention/agreement. This means that [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_mobile_phone_culture]keitai denwa[/url] (携帯電話) pervades almost everyone's lives on a daily basis. So what happens when EVERYONE is carrying around what amounts to a "pocket computer" all day long? Duh ... people start developing stuff for those devices to provide entertainment and diversions. Why? Because "everyone" has a keitai, so the market is broad and deep.
We aren't quite there yet in the US, although we're working on it. Cell phones (particularly iPhones and Androids) are starting to become ubiquitous among people in the States, but there are still plenty of people who don't have one (or don't WANT one).
The upshot of all this is something of a "land rush" to carve up the new territory of cell phone gaming and lock in a segment of that vast new market for yourself ... and that makes perfect sense for the Japanese market to be so heavily oriented in that direction, as demonstrated at the Tokyo Game Show.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
One thing I guess I need to reinforce is that conflating the various types of PC-based online games into a single market demographic is entirely unrealistic. When I say, "MMORPG", I am referring to one type of game that has several salient characteristics:
1. Story-based progression: as the player-character progresses they encounter new stories or more indepth understandings of ongoing stories, in either case, progress through the game is tied directly into the narrative content.
2. A full-scale world that includes some kind of merchandise-based economy, NPCs with specific agendas, transportation systems, an ingame economy that is player-centered but includes extensive interaction with NPC merchants, and so on. Some parts of the world may be instanced, but by and large, whenever the servers are operating there is at least one large location featuring some kind of simulated overall society, culture, and economy.
3. This full-scale world is a shared world that all player characters who are not in instances inhabit together. Clear, easy to use communication channels exist between the players including as a minimum some sort of widespread "broadcast" channel alongside private channels shared between individuals.
It probably seems redundant to most of us, but some people are still conflating "PC-game" with "MMORPG". Although it is far from trivial, it is possible to have a MMORPG on any modern platform including smartphones, game consoles with internet access, and PCs. Some MMORPGs have tried moving into the mobile phone market. A few of them have met with some limited success. There will be more of them available on smartphones in the future, possibly in the very near future. Even so, the MMORPG market continues to shrink as different playstyles and different socialization styles move out of MMORPGs into games, programs, and mobile apps more suited to their preferred style of interaction. The era where MMORPGs became a catchall for a widely diverse number of participants is over and is never coming back. It had a good run, but now it's ending.
Many people have pointed out that developing a MMORPG is a huge endeavor fraught with risk while overlooking that this is one of the main reasons so many of them have failed and so few of them are being developed. The risk/profit analysis is failing even as the market is declining. This is a no-win scenario. That sucks, but it is still real. City of Titans will launch as PC-based MMORPG. There is no doubt about that. With each passing day I am finding many of the concerns being expressed in the forums to be ever more trivial. I'm not saying people should stop discussing whatever their heart desires. I am saying perhaps all of us need to take a moment to re-evaluate our priorities and expectations in light of the simple fact that it is entirely possible I and the 7 people who responded here will make up the core of the community once the game launches. We could easily find ourselves in a virtual world with more developers participating in it than players!
It's just us. How many of us are there? 600? a thousand?
Maybe instead of heated arguments over body physics and sexual stereotypes we should be seeking out ways to play together peacefully after the game launches?
The team at MWM is going to produce the best game they can. There is no doubt about that. And there is every indication it's going to be a great one. However, the danger of all of us finding ourselves using the best buggy whips ever imagined in a world commanded by personal jets and flying cars is growing ever more realistic with every passing day. Using those buggy whips on one another is not going to make for an enjoyable ingame community.
(Yes, that last bit's an analogy.)
(Oh, and a footnote for Redlynne: The Japanese MMORPG market and the American MMORPG market is not as dissimilar as you might think. They play different titles, but they are still looking for the same kind of shared world experiences. After twenty years playing in both communities simultaneously, I can attest to this from firsthand experience.)
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One thing Greyhawk did not comment upon with regard to the nature of MMORPG is the amount of commands involved with MMORPG that are not found in nearly any other genre. From the vast amount of skills and inventory management to the customization of UI and information awareness, the MMORPG genre lends itself almost exclusively to the PC market.
Many recent games have expanded MMORPG into the console market, with limited success. Doing so creates two communities within the games. The console community and the PC community. The primary reason for this is social. Console gamers just do not, and can not use the chat window effectively. This makes communication difficult without a headset.
The second reason console introduction is not fully successful is the simplification of controls that results. TERA online, FFXIV and DCUO are three successful games that have both console and PC users, but all three have had to simplify their controls in order to engage the console market. There are only so many buttons that can be pressed with a console controller, so workarounds and ability limits are universally applied to both PC clients and console clients to accommodate the least common denominator.
In short, until such a day as the amount of control can be duplicated on a portable, the PC will continue to be the platform of choice for MMORPG. Whether the MMORPG will be a viable offering in the future is another question altoghether, but this futurist does not see it going away any time soon. And if MMORPG do become scarce as they fight over a smaller and smaller market into the 21st century, perhaps it will drive roleplayers into other ways to play their roleplaying games over distance, or even massively.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
You can add Star Trek Online to the MMORPGs that started on PC and and diversified into Consoles. Needless to say, they had to do something with their PC control scheme to make it possible to function on Consoles, since Space combat allowed you to have trays with up to 60 hotkeys visible and up to 100 hotkeys defined. Ground combat lets you have up to 30 hotkeys visible and up to 100 hotkeys defined. So ... yeah ... they had to do something about that.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
True. Let's all be realistic - City of Titans is a "[I]LABOUR OF LOVE[/I]" from a VERY indie development group. It was founded so that fans of an incredible old game can have at least a measure of that back - as well as new experiences and adventures.
Now, does this mean, even with this humble (but ambitious) intent, that we can't aspire to be more? No. If we can get more people to jump on board and create new fans of this new IP and game? That would be awesome. If/when the game is released it will probably be up to us to spread the word about the game, both to old CoH fans who have no idea about the development about this game, and to new potential players. Of course this isn't going to be the next WOW - that game was an anomaly. And even that game can't match the playerbase of something like a Call of Duty. But there is still plenty of room in the PC marketplace for a supers RPG I feel.
Like I posted in another thread, PC games make over 30 billion a year and is rising. There is little indication that mobile gaming specifically has significantly detracted from this because, like Red pointed out - mobile is like a new continent that has opened up. It's less that a stable, static population of gamers are now moving over to mobile, it's more that gaming has opened up to a new population of gamers, who might not otherwise go out and get a console or PC. The growth of mobile gaming does not automatically mean the withering of other types of gaming. Will there be some population shifts? Sure, but that can go both ways. It's not all doom and gloom.
Basically - I typed all that out to say - "Greyhawk, you are worrying too much. If the devs make a solid game and we all do our best to spread the word, there will be a population. Of course it won't have the huge population that WOW had, and we may indeed start off small, but you don't need millions of player to have fun. You just have to temper your expectations but hope for the best."
AND from what I'm seeing--unless I'm misinterpreting things--MWM doesn't seem to be counting on huge revinue from CoT (though they also seem to be preparing just in case there is a bigger response than they expect), and they seem to be at least considering developing other things after CoT is afloat and stable.
If those things are so, that is all good news for the game's longevity whatever happens.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I don't think the Tokyo GFame Show is by and large representative of the Gaming community all over the world. Needs a bigger sampling size and less anecdotal evidence.
On top of that, I do not believe AR and VR are real threats to gaming as we know it. THe current interest in the technology is a snapshot. People realise it's possible to stand inside a virtual world and get thrilled about it, that was ana ctual staple of sci fi since like, what, the 80s? But they'll soon enough realise that it comes with its own downsides too and is nothing like it looks like in SciFi movies where you organically move within and interact with another environment as if all of it was real, and that it is in fact a very poor replacement. The gameplay capabilities of VR will be very limited for years to come, and AR likewise. 3D was the shit too a few years ago, look where that went. Does anyone here play or watch movie sin 3D? Interest will taper down and they will just be two more of many alternative technologies we got now.
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Simple point: Innovation
Innovation doesn't happen by committee.. It does not happen in the post production.. innovation is the second most telling reason for why businesses are successful. When the gaming industry stopped innovating before, it failed to release good products.. HARD
Games can't just pick up the torch.. it has to raise the bar.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I have owned a smartphone for like 10 years or more now. I play zero mobile games. Not even Angry Birds. I played it, then deleted it. I deleted my Fantasy Football phone app too. I play Guild Wars 2, on my desktop, currently. All of that said, I'm over 40 years old and possibly not the main demographic for CoT.
Most people still own a desktop or laptop PC that they could play CoT on if they wanted to, and some consoles allow you to plug a keyboard and mouse into them right?
In any event, I have no interest in strapping a VR headset on my face and having to pantomime my toon's every power in combat. That sounds exhausting. Also, flying might look and feel cool in VR, but the novelty probably wears off pretty fast, and then your face just sweats more and more and fogs the thing up on the inside until you have to take the thing off and wash it. No thanks. Anyone who is going to devote 1-8 hours in a given day to playing a game will want to be comfortable, be able to get up and get a drink, snack, etc.. Heck, I'm considering buying a new computer chair to replace the fairly new one I now have since it gets uncomfortable to sit in after a few hours.
In the beginning, there were arcades, which largely had pinball machines. Then Pac-Man happened and they got coin-operated video games. Then there was the dedicated home game console. I had an Atari 2600 when I was like 12, hooked up to a black and white TV with no remote control, with knobs you had to turn to change channels and adjust volume, and which had two screws in the back that you had to connect the Atari to as if it were an aerial antenna (remember UHF and VHF channels?). Some time around the release of the game "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial" the Atari "died" and as such the console game as a thing was "dead". People still own them, they're called X-Boxes now. Then the personal computer found its way into everyone's home, ostensibly to allow the kids to type up reports for high school and college classes, but more often than not they were used to play games like Zork and Wing Commander. Then modems became a thing, and your computer could communicate with other people's computers over the phone, when nobody was using it. This allowed people to charge ongoing subscription fees for allowing users to log into a server to play games. That also "died" when people found out how lucrative it was and wanted to cash in, thus creating a lot of economic competition for gamers subs, and driving such prices down to practically zero. Now cell phone apps are supposedly going to replace everything.
To me, the fact that people still own consoles and desktop PCs in addition to smart phones only proves that the next big thing is not necessarily the ONLY thing.
I wish my local mall still had an arcade. The movie theater has some games in a game room, but they're mostly Dance Dance Revolution or some kind of Skill Crane thing that claims you could lift a plushy out of it with the three-pronged claw which has zero grip, in reality. There's also a 4-player version of Pac-Man which has a competitive mode of some kind. Also, the local town where I live sells tokens for the parking meters, which tokens have the Chuck E. Cheese logo on them, in many cases.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising