Planetside another Earth and Beyond? - Page 2

Lexington_Steele · 2003-02-10, 12:51 AM

Originally posted by OmnipotentKiwi
They won't ban assholes, assholes pay, same as the rest of us, trust me on this one. They would rather change the game to the assholes can't abuse something, rather then ban their paying asses. :-D

But like I said, if all you want to do is be an asshole why pay $10-$15 a month. You have oppurtunities to be an ass in many non Pay-to-Play games. This won't remove the asshole element, but it will reduce it.

If they are pure team killers, then they will eventually recieve a ban. If they are constantly cursing, they will eventually recieve a ban.

OmnipotentKiwi · 2003-02-10, 01:02 AM

Well if you have played any MMORPG you would know they are still quite present, and in force, and there are even guilds made JUST for annoying others. But you are right, it WILL be less then like CS, maybe.

If they are pure team killers, then they will eventually recieve a ban. If they are constantly cursing, they will eventually recieve a ban.

Team Killers will only get bans through the grief system, that is why they put it in, so CSRs don't have to deal with it. And also, cursing does not recieve a ban, as it is allowed, and why there is a chat filter. The only way language will recieve bans if for being racist, sexist, or against any religion.

Validuz · 2003-02-10, 01:03 AM

There better not be a damn word filter in PS.

OmnipotentKiwi · 2003-02-10, 01:05 AM

There better not be a damn word filter in PS.

There is, but you can turn it off, therefore by having it off you revoke your right to bitch about the language.

SVoyager · 2003-02-10, 02:45 AM

omnipotent, i dont agree with "is it worth the fee" stuff.

to me, it is and by a long shot. First, you have to think about server costs, i work for an isp and i can tell you, it costs a lot. A single dsl customer wich can download max 120k/sec with a limit of 6 gig/month (if the customer uses his 6gig total), the company makes about 1.5-2$/month CAN (about half US) with him, yup that little. Imagine a server that hosts thousands, you have some major bandwith usage on a constant basis. Also you have to pay the coders to help expand the game, have future patches, new features etc etc. Also i pay for the scale, i wont see any other game wich has more than 64 players in it that isnt mmog and doesnt ask a fee, if there is, they are very rare.

I play wwiiol and even if the game isnt the best of the world, the scale is just astonishing and the future dev and the possibilties this game can be is well worth my $$/month. Yes i kinda pay for the devlopement of an alpha game (i refer to wwiiol) but thats something we dont see anywhere else.

Other games suchs bf1942 for example doesnt ask a fee cuz u have 2000000000 million servers with tiny 64 players max (barely runs) with tiny lill worlds. If they wanted to make a big bad world, im sure it would have costed a monthly fee for their servers n all but right now _most_ of the servers are player run. They still run their own servers yes and im sure they are losing bunch of $$ over em but i guess its part of the deal. But bf1942 has minimal devloppement, you will rarely see, if any, new major features (besides expansion packs....).

No i think, my money is well worth it for a game that can last years and years and can have the potential of being a totally new game 1-2 years later. You wont see that in other free games (or exception cases).

Feel free to comment.
.02$

SVoyager · 2003-02-10, 03:09 AM

and to answer vicchio's main subject:

1- i agree some on that point. I agree that the smaller clans will have some more trubble out there, they'll have less impact and will have to rely on the cooperation of the bigger ones. But still, it depends on the type of clan u wanna be, single clan of 10 players maybe could be a bunch of peeps doing covert ops. U dont need 100 players for covert stealthy ops. The smaller clan would specialise more but the bigger ones would be a bit of evrything. But for the main stuff, yup, the big clans will be better, have more impact. Not that bad tho.

2- I think i agree with the others on that point, why just not start over but another thing. I compare to wwiiol but it might not be the case in ps, altho i hope it would be, it depends on how things will turn out. in wwiiol, often people plays for kills n stuff but mostly clan people plays for the land. They want to gain ground, attack and win the towns, then ultimatly win the map. (it wont happen in ps but we might have the same gaining ground need). After a year and a half, im still not tired about it

. PS is a whole different thing, but still, some of these points might still apply.

3- yea bf1942 is the worst ive seen as far as tk and greifing goes. Just their voting system is so crappy i cant beleive they havnt tough about it. To me 1942 wasnt the most well tough out game ever. So far from what ive seen about PS, the greifing system seems to be well tough out and i think it will do a good job. You leave the kids behind while they try to tk and after a few kills they endup not being able to shoot at anything at all cuz the system locked them out, most frustrating for them i can assure u that lol. Also the monthly fee indeed can help _reduce_ it but not kill it of course. At least the kids will have to beg their parents for some $$$ then they will waist it doing nothing cuz their guns will be turned off...

4- unfortunatly i dont apply too much on this one. Im a simulation player, having to wait 45 minute for a good fight i dont mind, he11 i even like it. To me it gives value to your in game life. __you dont want to die__. Other games are just, "woop he got me, bah ill get him in a sec" stuff. minimal strategy and tactics, just rush. Fast paced game does have sometimes tactics and strategy but defenatly not on the same scale as a slow paced one. I see PS being in the middle wich isnt too bad, of course i would have liked slower but its a good trade off for having a good FPS population. Maybe its gonna give the FPS peeps some taste of strategy and major battle planning, they might like it

. Nothing more fun than after having planned a battle for 5 minutes that you endup capping a base and owning your enemy badly because you managed your attack well.

5- well it kinda applies to my #4 answer. to me travel time is direcly related to the pace of the game. the longer, the slower. the shorter the faster. Its not too bad waiting to get to your target, usualy when ur attack is well planned, u actually try to think about how its gonna be, what you will do, what to expect. You come well prepared and you have more time to react to emergency situation. Again it all goes with battle planning. Lone wolfers will not like this simply because they will be those who will mostly like rushing attacks or just simply fight alone. In this case he has nothing to do, nothing to plan, hes just waiting to get dropped off then he will do whatever he wants. But since i always want to promote teamplay, i dont mind too much about them, i only try to recruit them into a squad so they can taste real teamplay, real fun

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again these are my opinions only. .02$

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feel free to add ur comments!!

OmnipotentKiwi · 2003-02-10, 03:16 AM

First, you have to think about server costs

I TOTALLY agree with you there. This, is what I feel I should be paying for, and this is the only thing, which is why the most likely $10-15 fee (if not higher...) I will be paying for is overcharging for this.

Also you have to pay the coders to help expand the game

Yes, that is why games like BF1942 sell expansion packs for $50, and I guarantee they will gut us for that much too on an expansion back considering how many they managed to pump out for EQ, but maybe as little as $30.

have future patches

Patches to fitch bugs should be done, and is, for any game, regardless of monthly fees. Extra content is mentioned as above.

Also i pay for the scale, i wont see any other game wich has more than 64 players in it that isnt mmog and doesnt ask a fee, if there is, they are very rare.

See first comment, that is all server side, don't mind paying for the server costs.

I play wwiiol and even if the game isnt the best of the world, the scale is just astonishing and the future dev and the possibilties this game can be is well worth my $$/month. Yes i kinda pay for the devlopement of an alpha game (i refer to wwiiol) but thats something we dont see anywhere else.

You nailed something right here, that I think reinforces my point. The devs have ALREADY said they aren't building in retention features AT RELEASE. That means my monthly fees, are going to them making something, that should have been in there in the first place to keep me playing, and that has always urked me.

you will rarely see, if any, new major features (besides expansion packs....

Most of the stuff we will see added besides expansion are either:
A. Things that should have been in the game in the first place, and they left out to hurry up and release in time.
B. Stuff they fubared in the first place and we are paying to fix

No i think, my money is well worth it for a game that can last years and years and can have the potential of being a totally new game 1-2 years later.

Here is how I see it, there is one thing that makes it completely different from any other MMO, and that is its total lack of need for any real form of Customer Service Representitives. Yes, they will have them, but mostly they are only responsible for the purest forms of harassment (if you have played ANY MMORPG you know how much someone has to do to actually get in any real trouble, it literally is pretty much sexual, racist, or religious harassment only as long as you have access to a filter and block, you have the ability to get away from the problem.) The grief system is in place, so a CSR almost NEVER has to worry about griefing. Most game-stoppage issues fall in the realm PvE issues, and since this is pure PvP based, there probably won't be much besides bugs, which again aren't a CSR issues. Basically the only other thing besides the type of harassment listed above a CSR should be dealing with is physically being stuck in game. Overall, that and servers are what you pay for an MMO game. Given how much they can lighten the CSR load, this game really should fall in the range of the $5-8 price range of per month fees, not the $10-20 we will be seeing. I am guessing they will hit the price mark at about $13-15 (Everquest is $12.95, same as Dark Ages of Camelot, although I think they are going to press upward to help with SWG as well since Sony is pushing the MMO prices up).

Also, I am still not sure how great this stuff is really going to be, and I think even though I will enjoy it more then CS or something, and on that level alone it will be great, it needs a fully new level since it is online, which I don't think it will ever live up to, making it a mediocare MMO, much like E&B.

SVoyager · 2003-02-10, 04:09 AM

-ok, about the overcharging. i kinda disagree. Ill give you some numbers.

First i expect it, as you also said, to be around 12.95$ like EQ or so, if higher shouldnt be too much more higher.

Ok, where i work, i think we pay close to 5$/month per gig of bandwith, we ask more from our customers but i expect this to be what we are asked for (CAN money). I cant imagine the amount of bandwith the servers of that scale could need /month. Im sure it could go near the hundreds maybe but i have no idea really. Its hard to prove my point but from my perspective i defenatly think it costs more than 5-8$/month as u said to maintain the servers.

-for the expansion packs, yes we know ps will have expansions and i agree eq has some a lot also. the thing is that bf1942 lives with expansion packs. Once they bought it, no more money for the coders, thats it. Im sure ps will have expansions but i dont think it will have as much as some of the games ive seen so far. It helps secure a game yup. To me i would buy only expansions if the game is worth it. I havnt bought BF1942's expansion and i will not buy anything else about bf1942, cuz they just simply dont deserve it from my perspective.

I havnt played EQ but i dunno, maybe the expansions of eq helped secure the fundings for more, new stuff and a future for the game.

Its a tough subject, it depends how often they want to use expansions, and what you get out of them. If i compare to bf1942's expansion, it is worth nothing. Few more maps, few more vehicles. I prefer to get a mod instead wich will get 100 times more than what they gave with their expan. Bf1942's expansion is, to me, just a way for them to make quick money out of nothing.

If ps puts good content in an expansion then it might be worth my money. it depends on how things will play out.

So for the expansions it can be worth our $ but yes they use it to secure some funds for them. I wont mind putting the $ as long as they dont come out with 20 expansions a year with little contents in each of them. Also i think they said that expansions will be optional so you will not be forced to buy them.

-Patches to fix bugs needs to be done indeed, bf1942 will have to or they will have some riot on their hands, i think they already do lol. PS, depends. The first few months it might be for bug fixes, its not fun but its part of an mmog, all of them went tru this. As for content additions, i beleive we will have considerable contents addition without necessarly being an expansion pack. But i could be wrong, only the future will tell. wwiiol has had only bug fixes and feature patches since they opened and no expansion packs ever. So it depends on what side ps will be, if they will want to be money hungry or if they want to keep a big player base long.

-about the game releasing as beta status. Unfortunatly i havnt seen any mmog not being that case. It depends also on the way you see it. wwiiol's release was defenatly alpha, and in a way i think its still not feature complete (well for what it was advertised for). But the way i see other mmog's that pasted their beta stage 2 month after release, i feel i had a full complete game. The rest was additions, of course once you had them you do think you should have had them from the begenning but still you had a ready game when you bought it and you got what was advertised for. If you expected more, then you should have just bought the game a year later when you had the contents that satisfied you in it. But for those that bought it at the begenning, they were well aware of what they had.

Agree it is bad seeing sometimes how bad mmog launches are, but you have to keep in mind that this is a new trend and for most of the games out so far, its been a first in the game industry. You cant expect evrything to go right, i think in a few years from now you will see much more complete mmog's coming out and much better prepared ones, as they will have learned from their past mistakes.

-as for customer support, yup its bad, it will be for a long time. nothing we can do about it, its part of the deal.... but i dont think our money will be spend too much on that. It goes for the dev of the game. I say 85$ of the money we give will go for the servers, the rest will be to give a future to ps (devs). Wich i still think, even considering expansion packs, is worth my money. If PS endsup being a darn good game and my money helps keeping it alive and making it better, then go for it. Else if it were half the price, maybe there would be nothing after the release of ps, maybe bug fixes but once they would call their game stable and you had what you were advertised for, then thats it. They would move on to something else.

Quick example: Allegiance, not mmog but it was microsoft zone run only. Once they put their zone servers free after a year i think, few months later the allegiance link to the microsoft servers were ded and the game was gone. Its not on the same scale but still, im sure that if they had enough paying people and they actually kept their servers paying, the game would still be running today. Of course they had no contents upgrades after a few months so thats what helped the game to die, microsoft prolly cut their fundings and kept the profits for another project altho if the game had enough revenu maybe it could have kept going or maybe we could have seen an allegiance2 (and darn i luved that game). So this is what i think when i ask myself about a monthly fee and a mmog.

I hope that makes sense to you, im not sure it still to me hehe, its 5 am here and im getting darn sleepy cant concentrate anymore. Altho, very good discussion were having here, i like it. Feel free to answer, ill prolly make a stop tmorrow. gnight

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MrVicchio · 2003-02-10, 05:30 AM

Great answers guys! This post was not a slam BTW on Ps, and i am glad everyone so far hasn't asked if I lost love for PS, hehe.

Points 4 and 5 were just long shots, and yeah, I want a penalty to death.

As for the cost of the monthyly fee... I would be SHOCKED if it were under 12.95. This fee pays for not only PS, the servers, and all the things all ready mentioned.. but no one has pointed out the obvious reason behind the fee.... PROFIT. Sounds cold I know, but these games are not made just to amuse us... they are also there to make money. Perhaps it does only cost 8 dollars, and at 12.95 Sony is gonna make about 5 bucks profit off us.. IMHO thats fine, ts capitalisim at work, and ensures we shall see more games in the future.

Zatrais · 2003-02-10, 05:57 AM

The fee, well it really isn't an issue to me because well if you play PS an hour or 2 a day thats alott more entertainment that those 12.95 can get annywhere else.

1.) I don't see the CEP system as flawed because well if you can't get people to follow you you don't deserve the CEPs. I don't think the bigoutfits will steam roll over the smalleroutfits when it comes to capping simply because of the number of bases there are to capture.

2.) I won't touch nr 2 much because what options you have at BR 20 is still blackboxed. You could make a new char whit a new skillset, play on another server on another side or go for CEPs.

3.) Well people are idiots, people suck but those who suck won't pay to get owned. They'll either learn or quit, and the monthly fee + greifing system will cut down the amounts of llamas that TK + players will be self policing. I will shoot a llama if he does something to hinder a base attack. Also playing whit your outfits and it's allies is also a good way to get away from llamas.

4.) I don't think this will be to much of a problem, between the basilisk, HART, AMS, towers and reviving getting back into the fight shouldn't be too hard.

5.) Get a mosquito, use the HART, a basilisk. Theres plenty of travel options. Will there be some waiting and traveltime, sure but i don't see it as a overly large problem... then again i'm used to EQ traveling times so hehe.

Derfud · 2003-02-10, 07:56 AM

12.95 american, is $20 Canadian. That is quite a bit more money for me

Denali · 2003-02-10, 09:35 AM

I agree with all of your fears to a T Mr. Vic, I had the unfortunate experience of playing EQ for 3 1/2 years, without being in an Uber Guild or having a bunch of friends in an Uber Guild you had no chance see some of the neatest areas and monsters in the game. Also, if you weren't in a big Uber Guild it took forever to find groups to hunt with, and most of the times the groups would either be full of stupid people or would only last a few minutes until someone left and you had to start over. I hope clans are really only good for the social aspects, that any player can pick up his trusty gauss, or SMG, or purple plasma slinger, and join the fight without having to look around for a unit to let them in for half an hour...

Sputty · 2003-02-10, 09:50 AM

E&B was crap after you played for awhile. Anyone, download the demo, play for 7 days and explore. Just look at the sights and hear the sounds. There's not much else that's really good. I should've stuck with a traditional fantasy MMORPG maybe. I was so disappointed after a few weeks. Joining a guild made me play a few more days but I generally wasted money. Anyone want an account with one over lvl 50 TR enforcer and about 1.5 million credits? I'm not sure his exact level. Also, I think the fact it'll be playing against people and there'll be skill fighting rather than anything else will help.

Kyonye · 2003-02-10, 10:07 AM

alot goes into making a game. this will not be like E&B. PS will be constant fighting between people. if you've played AoC, you have to go looking for a fight with an animal of sorts. that is also the fighting in E&B. PS will be more like BF42 in the sense that you constantly are fighting with people.

OmnipotentKiwi · 2003-02-10, 10:21 AM

1.) I don't see the CEP system as flawed because well if you can't get people to follow you you don't deserve the CEPs. I don't think the bigoutfits will steam roll over the smalleroutfits when it comes to capping simply because of the number of bases there are to capture.

In the dev shoutcast the other night, he said that he expected battles to rage in the 100-200 player range, or more. If you do the math, if everyone gets into a platoon, that is 7 platoons, and out of those 7 almost full, organized platoons, 1 of them gets any CEP for capping the base which is incredibly stupid. All it will be to get the CEP is the person to get the hacker in first, not who actually led the thing, nor which platoon was the most benificial. Hell, with the system now I could just partner up with one guy, sit in a wraith, wait till there is a whole in the defense when my team is on the final push and rush in there and hack the base. I currently think while the CEP system is very well done as far as known rewards, the actual CEP XP is very stupid.

Ok, where i work, i think we pay close to 5$/month per gig of bandwith, we ask more from our customers but i expect this to be what we are asked for (CAN money). I cant imagine the amount of bandwith the servers of that scale could need /month. Im sure it could go near the hundreds maybe but i have no idea really. Its hard to prove my point but from my perspective i defenatly think it costs more than 5-8$/month as u said to maintain the servers.

Ok, using Dark Ages of Camelot as an example, which I am positive makes less of a profit the Everquest, and they just released an expansion pack which makes it easy too:
Shrouded Isles (The expansion) sold 111,000 copies in the month of December (when it was released) alone, which is, and I quote, "�Almost 90% of Dark Age of Camelot's US-server player base has purchased Shrouded Isles and we look forward to continuing this 'top of the charts' trend as we expand our player base in the US and around the world." Now, we will assume those other 10% of US-PLayers don't exist, just to undercut the numbers.

111,000 players, paying $12.95 a month is $1,437,450 a month. Let's assume that half of this goes JUST to servers, so $6.48 a month, that cuts down the amount of money incoming a month for servers to $718,725. They currently have 20 "servers" in operation in the US for DAoC. So each "server" gets $35,936.25 a MONTH. Each server is really a server cluster, and we will ASSUME that each zone, including dungeons, is a seperate server within itself, then each server cluster is 89 seperate servers, that is $403.78 PER server per month.

Now that may look small, but look at the bigger picture again. $403.78 per server per month. There are 89 servers over 20 clusters, "servers". That is 1780 servers in the US. Between 111,000 people SUBSCRIBED that is 62 people per server, with the server getting $403.78 a month sent to it. Since the data stream is fairly small, considering they are designing this game for a 56k'er, I am pretty sure that money covers it fairly well.