Thread: Monthly sub FPS?

Like Blacklight Retribution?

Sent via highly charged bolt of electricity.

Originally Posted by CivilWars

I was reading Game Informer last night, and pondered if this might be the answer to the issues plaguing PC FPS titles. I know when you first hear it you cringe, much like I did, but give it a few minutes to marinate, and I think you might agree it could be viable, IF done correctly. Let's examine the variables:

Q. What does the publisher want?
A. Money, and stacks of it. They want the up front cash of a new title, they want the residual cash of multiple DLCs, and they want to repeat this process often. They don't truly care how long you play a game, as long as it is long enough to buy the new Hello Kitty backpack skin, and long enough to desire the next release.

Q. What does the teamplayer want?
A. I think most of us would agree that we want a game we can play for 3+ years and enjoy. We want enough complexity/difficulty to keep our interest, but not so much that it feels like a simulator. We also don't want to have to worry about a few new weapons/skins/maps dividing the player base of people we know and love.

Q. How do we both get what we want?
A. Imagine if instead of paying $50-60 for BF2 you paid $10/month. Now imagine if SF, AF, EF were all just additions to the base game that EVERYONE paying the $10/month received. No different servers, no players with extra maps, and others without them, etc. Imagine if the upgrade to Frostbite, and Frostbite X.0, were just game updates to Battlefield, and not a whole new game that some people have and others don't. I have now played a couple of MMOs, and I think the business model, if done correctly, could work for FPSes as well, but the billion dollar question is would/could anyone be trusted to do it right?

I, too, have been frustrated with the path so many new titles have taken. Like you, I've wondered if there weren't better possibilities.

I like some of the proposals. Different revenue models aren't something I'd be against in principle.

The update model is similar to thoughts I've had. In general, I like those ideas.

One thing you'd have trouble with are game-engine updates. As far as I know, all games have had to stick with the original hardware spec throughout their evolution/upgrade process. Everything you mention works to keep the community unified (which is a good thing), but at some point you run into a hardware barrier. Even if you don't require a hardware upgrade, giving advantages to those who do buy a new hardware will divide the community. I can't imagine how pissed off I'd be if one day the game company that had been charging my credit card every month suddenly decided to move the game beyond my video card.

Still, you cite a 3+ year window. That seems reasonable.

I have wondered for years (like, way more than a decade) why companies haven't tried to do more of this. People build enormous value into the identity of their game characters. They LOVE them. They remember the names, and the equipment they had, and the epic battles. I have no idea why game companies don't try to build on that.

How cool would it be if, tomorrow, you could start playing Diablo 3 with one of the personae you had in Diablo 2? It's been a long time, and the new game obviously won't support all those old items. But you could still do a few things, and even a nod to the old vets would be cool.

So, like, for BF3: what if you could have signed up for BF3 with your old BF2 account? Maybe each carry-over player gets in-game mention of the rank they held "in the last war", and they get to bring with them one weapon from the BF2 days - like an extra unlock. That gives a nod to all the old - loyal - players (that is: customers). It doesn't unbalance the game, and it doesn't give bonus items to noobs who pay for it up-front.

Valve does something like this in TF2. There are items which were only available before a certain date. They have zero effect on your game play, but people still keep or wear them. They do it to say: "Yeah, I was there. I did that."

Anyway, glad you posted your thoughts Civil.

Cheers,


AetheLove

Originally Posted by AetheLove

One thing you'd have trouble with are game-engine updates. As far as I know, all games have had to stick with the original hardware spec throughout their evolution/upgrade process. Everything you mention works to keep the community unified (which is a good thing), but at some point you run into a hardware barrier. Even if you don't require a hardware upgrade, giving advantages to those who do buy a new hardware will divide the community. I can't imagine how pissed off I'd be if one day the game company that had been charging my credit card every month suddenly decided to move the game beyond my video card.

CCP has managed to build in an engine upgrade into EVE Online pretty seamlessly
Eve Online - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and have continued to age out older hardware through very measured introductions of Dx updates. Case in point, my old laptop used to be able to run the game with its Intel IGP (old old one though) but after SM3.0 became the standard that laptop ceased to run the client.

I am still able to run it (dual boxing) on my kids computer though with an old AMD 3500+ and nVidia 7800Gt PC so it's still pretty forgiving to older technology.

Originally Posted by CivilWars

Good points. I will specifically address 2.

1. Game versions. Why does there have to be a Diablo 2, 3, or 4? Why a BC2, BF2, BF3, etc? Why not just EVE, or WoW? Instead of transferring a character from BF2 to BF3 just have BF3 be BF2-Frostbite. New features/items could be implemented every 6 months or so, and just added as an update.

There doesn't have to be a 2, 3, or 4. But incremental upgrades are much less exciting than a major release. So "need" is at least partly a marketing issue. I don't want to say that such a thing doesn't matter. It does matter. It's out own fault (well, maybe not my fault, but definitely yours). This isn't a new thing in the software world. Sometimes forsaking the existing version is the only way to make major improvements. That truth doesn't mean your idea is unworkable. WoW (and EVE) are good examples.

I'd like to see more of the continuity that those games have, and I'm quite sure that FPS publishers would very much like to see the continuous deluge of money that WoW generates.

There are limits though. The FPS genre is particularly demanding because it's the most dependant on real-time interaction. If my latency in WoW is a bit higher, or my graphics look more or less shiny, that doesn't affect the game much. Fairness in a FPS is very much tied to the presumption that all players see pretty much the same thing.

Originally Posted by CivilWars

2. Graphics. Most games, at least with low settings, are a step or two behind state of the art technology. Plus if there were going to be a major update say to the Frostbite 2.0 engine it would be known well in advance. In the big picture it is not a whole lot different than the release of BF3 from BF2. Yes, I know you can still play BF2 after the BF3 release, but we can all see how drastically the numbers dropped. Most people move on to the latest and greatest, ESPECIALLY if it is done right, which BF3 was not, IMO.

Well I guess you've identified the problem right there: Most People.

Most of the money in gaming is with Most People.

I don't want to blame Most People though. I found my way to TTP because so may people had BF2. I didn't get it because it was popular, but its popularity absolutely figured into why I got it - and it was through a popular game that I found the server I liked. TPGs BF2 server was the best for us; but clearly wasn't the best for Most People.

Cheers,


AetheLove