New Lucky Bancho Census 12/1/17

[Ilan]

Well there's WoW: Warlords of Draenor that managed to lose nearly 5 million subscribers in 6 months. Anyone who played then can tell you any feature outside of raiding received criminal levels of neglect.

It is definitely possible to focus too hard on the most visible minority, because within a month over 80% of of players, that is to say the players that weren't interested in even the easiest version of a raid that has a difficulty of easier than an extreme primal, had absolutely nothing to do. WoD lost nearly a million subscribers a month of a good reason.

WoW lost players because the whole content was crap and not because of the raiders. Its completly the fault of Blizzard for release that add on, but they didn't do that for the evil minority.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Well there's WoW: Warlords of Draenor that managed to lose nearly 5 million subscribers in 6 months. Anyone who played then can tell you any feature outside of raiding received criminal levels of neglect.

It is definitely possible to focus too hard on the most visible minority, because within a month over 80% of of players, that is to say the players that weren't interested in even the easiest version of a raid that has a difficulty of easier than an extreme primal, had absolutely nothing to do. WoD lost nearly a million subscribers a month of a good reason.

That's the equivalent of blaming Gordias for the sub crash we witnessed in 3.1 while ignoring the only additional content released in a near eight month span were Thordan EX, Void Ark, Lord of Verminion and Diadem. The devs weren't focusing on raiding to any greater extent. They simply released content no one liked.

[RiyahArp]

You think its the raiders why games died? First of all show us proof of your statement and second of all its the people who whine everytime that everything is to hard who destroy games and make it boring for the majority of players, so they leave if the publisher/developer slices a game down to baby mode.

RitsukoSonoda Sega just doesn't want to change their game for westeners because they are a pretty complicated crowd compared to the asian players and thats why we'll never get a official Pso2 version.

Wildstar showed that hard doesn't save games. That game was really hard, and it died too. There was a brief spike of hard pvp-style games in the mid 2000s that also died, despite trying to reverse the easier thempark model; Darkfall, Mortal Online, Fallen Earth, and more. Heck, back then people even wanted permadeath in MMOs as a mechanic.

As for Sega, they more or less abandoned the western market period some time after the ps3 era. It's not a matter of complicated; they had some excellent games from western developers like Condemned, and a pretty decent western scene. They even crippled that, and all we got was Sonic for the longest time. This was more a trend of JP developers running out of innovative ideas and focusing on the home market, and companies like SNK and Konami declined as well. The PSO 2 thing was a huge burned bridge, honestly; they were one of the most loyal fanbases ever.

[basketofseals]

WoW lost players because the whole content was crap and not because of the raiders. Its completly the fault of Blizzard for release that add on, but they didn't do that for the evil minority.

That's the equivalent of blaming Gordias for the sub crash we witnessed in 3.1 while ignoring the only additional content released in a near eight month span were Thordan EX, Void Ark, Lord of Verminion and Diadem. The devs weren't focusing on raiding to any greater extent. They simply released content no one liked.

I don't understand why I'm being argued against. This is the point I'm also making. I'm not running on insane troll logic and trying to say releasing quality raid content is a bad thing in a vacuum, but focusing on that entirely can be to the detriment to the game as a whole as it's not a feature most of the playerbase has a vested interest in.

[Moonlite]

This is simply nostalgia speaking. FFXI existed when video games were significantly less mainstream. A large portion of the audience where teenagers or younger who could spend hundreds of hours whereas today the highest demographic is 25-35; adults with jobs, college and real life responsibilities.

adapt to a market that simply doesn't have the same time nor desire of a decade prior.

The first part I find weird, while I agree with the second part. It is not like teenagers and young adults stopped existing as we got older and moved on from 11. Their are still age groups with the same if not more time to waste on entertainment/social endeavors. Also mainstream should mean that the pool is much larger to draw people with free time.

Simply 11 and those of us who played it are a relic. Or at least for anecdotal evidence. Kids don't seem to want to play any game that takes to long. Lots of people want lots of info in tiny little segments. I have seen reviews that imply an rpg at 20 hours is long. I remember when less then 40 seemed like a waste.

So agree they have less to pick from, but not due to age. Just a generation raised on 5 mins and less interactions. It makes me kind of sad.

[Sandpark]

The difference is in XI players wanted to raid or do the endgame. The rewards from participation felt powerful and valuable and as such were incredibly desirable. You would blow months Even a couple of years clearing an entire cop storyline and get a single ring at the end if it. But damn that ring was priceless felt so valuable.

This is simply nostalgia speaking. FFXI existed when video games were significantly less mainstream. A large portion of the audience where teenagers or younger who could spend hundreds of hours whereas today the highest demographic is 25-35; adults with jobs, college and real life responsibilities. While one can certainly argue against FFXIV's rapid treadmill pace. Comparing it to its predecessor is disingenuous. Port the enormous time investment and grind associated with FFXI into today's market and it likely wouldn't attract a fraction of its peak subscription count. Even the juggernaut that is WoW had to adapt to a market that simply doesn't have the same time nor desire of a decade prior.

Videogames have been mainstream since the advent of the PS2, the beginning of life for FFXI. The ps2 sold 155 million units, that's not including Nintendo or the original xbox and pc. Now if you mean mmos, those were never mainstream until world of warcraft. Even today there are probably only 1-4 mainstream mmos. WoW just popped that first casual cherry when everyone else was doing hardcore or sandbox.

There is still an audience for hardcore gamers, it wont be mainstream though, even the DS series capped at around 2 million, 2 million isn't mainstream in this day and age. But you don't really have to be mainstream to be successful unless you bow to the will of investors.

Would a brand new spiritual successor of XI hold a 500k player base for 1/2 a decade to a decade? I don't know? Maybe not? But even holding 300k or 400k for longer durations wouldn't be much worse than most mmos nowadays. 800k is not ten million, 300k is not 10 millon.

Every game has 1000 more competitors than it did 14 years ago, every game has to compete with social media, movie apps, music apps, etc. Lots of these things were not as prominent as now.

It is definitely possible to focus too hard on the most visible minority, because within a month over 80% of of players, that is to say the players that weren't interested in even the easiest version of a raid that has a difficulty of easier than an extreme primal, had absolutely nothing to do. WoD lost nearly a million subscribers a month of a good reason.

Mainstream, to some it means success, to others it just a fancy term for streamlining games with a tendency towards dumbing down to reach a larger audience.

I know one thing, anything that becomes harder to do be it actual activity or needing larger and larger groups, or a combination of the two is stepping away from being mainstream. There a center between hello kitty and super savage extreme murder monstrosity<insert x game here>. Dumb it down too much or make rewards too fleeting and most will take that path laid for them, that is until they get bored or the carrot loses it's gold lustre. Make it the most difficult game ever which require 20-50 players moving in 100% harmony, executing to perfection and you already limited your playerbase substantially.

All this million and millions of player talk is nonsense, speaking in terms of active persistent playerbase. Maybe mobas might pull that off but most traditional mmos do not.

The first part I find weird, while I agree with the second part. It is not like teenagers and young adults stopped existing as we got older and moved on from 11. Their are still age groups with the same if not more time to waste on entertainment/social endeavors. Also mainstream should mean that the pool is much larger to draw people with free time.

Simply 11 and those of us who played it are a relic. Or at least for anecdotal evidence. Kids don't seem to want to play any game that takes to long. Lots of people want lots of info in tiny little segments. I have seen reviews that imply an rpg at 20 hours is long. I remember when less then 40 seemed like a waste.

So agree they have less to pick from, but not due to age. Just a generation raised on 5 mins and less interactions. It makes me kind of sad.

One Big pool, or pools within a pool. There's a lot of pools around us now, many like jumping in all of them and for most one big pool is not enough.

Here we have pools within a pool. We have some in the deep pools, and some in the roleplaying pool, and some in the shallow end of the pool, if the deep end of the pool gets to deep it swallows all the other pools, if the shallow end gets to deep those people jump out of the pool due to fear of being drowned in the deep. There is not alot of average depth pools though. Maybe some of us will venture into the water a little deeper than we are comfortable, maybe we will need some floaties for safety. But if we go into the deep and are not a strong swimmer starting out, and sharks bite at our heels for being poor swimmers, the deep pool will eventually flood the whole pool. Or if the expert swimmers run out of the deep water, and are given floaties in the shallow water, they might feel goofy.

And on that note. The largest pools are the shallow pools, that is why everyone and their dog is aiming for that market most of the time. But if the target is everyone's target someone has to get the largest share of that while the other don't do as great. But what is great? Is WoW the greatest mmo of all time for every gamer? No, even though it had a huge playerbase. Choice, we like it for dinner, games, and life.

[Iromi]

Hmm interesting, even tho its not official..its better than nothing Makes me wonder if we actually have over 1M subs.

[basketofseals]

Mainstream, to some it means success, to others it just a fancy term for streamlining games with a tendency towards dumbing down to reach a larger audience.

I know one thing, anything that becomes harder to do be it actual activity or needing larger and larger groups, or a combination of the two is stepping away from being mainstream. There a center between hello kitty and super savage extreme murder monstrosity<insert x game here>. Dumb it down too much or make rewards too fleeting and most will take that path laid for them, that is until they get bored or the carrot loses it's gold lustre. Make it the most difficult game ever which require 20-50 players moving in 100% harmony, executing to perfection and you already limited your playerbase substantially.

All this million and millions of player talk is nonsense, speaking in terms of active persistent playerbase. Maybe mobas might pull that off but most traditional mmos do not.

Are you trying to argue that WoW didn't lose 5 million subscribers in 6 months? If so, then you're just wrong. Blizzard's own self-reported subscriber count tells us what happened. Active playerbase is something that certainly affects us as the players, but from a business perspective it doesn't matter even if they only logged in for an hour once a month. That's still potentially up to half of their revenue just gone.

Also no matter how much you dumb things down, people just don't want to raid. Now this could have changed since I left, but WoW's entry raid level is pretty much as hard as Labyrinth of the Ancients. Most mechanics could be flat out ignored, and I can't recall any mechanic one person can wipe the group with. It still didn't achieve a very high clear rate. I want to say it was around 15%. Of course that's still a good chunk of players which should be developed for, but putting all of your eggs in the raiding basket is ill-advised.

[Sandpark]

Honestly I wasn't saying that. Were some of those losses due to raiding? Probably. But I bet it also had to do with the rise of other mmos like ESO, XIV, Tera, and others.

But yeah most people do not want to raid. Jump in, jump out, raids aren't built like that, if the content is challenging enough that pugs struggle, it becomes a bane to form groups. Even the best games don't stay played forever, eventually most want something new.

[MistakeNot]

Basically this, very loud, a lot of mmos die because of them. Not all are like that but in general devs cater to them. FFXIV is like the only/one of the few mmo that doesn't focus 80% of the development on them.

Games that cater only to raiders - yeah, that can easily cause the game to die. However catering to raiders is not wrong as such, as long as a reasonable amount of resources also go to development of content that non-raiders can do.
While raiders are a small minority of the population, they do tend to be a fairly important and active part of the population so neglecting them can also cause a game to die.