Category: MMO Design (Page 2 of 36)

I’m all for innovating inside of the monetization space for games, but innovation implies better, and I’m not sure this applies.

Black Gold Online’s file save mode will record your playtime data, showing all materials and equipment looted in that specific timeframe. Players will be given a choice to purchase that specific “save” if you wish to acquire all of those items… This system aims only at paying for rare materials and high level equipments: Basic materials and equipments can be looted immediately without purchase.

I believe this translates to “you have to pay us for the right to actually keep any rare loot that you’ve found.”  Doing this on some level isn’t unusual: SWTOR and Dungeon Runners limit the ability to equip epic items you find (one purchase unlocked the right to equip those items in both games), and Team Fortress 2 and Guild Wars 2 will drop chests that can only be opened with microtransactioned keys.

Of course, it’s difficult to tell for sure, since I’ve read it 3 times and, even with the helpful examples, am not exactly sure that I’ve gotten it right. That being said, anytime a customer base doesn’t UNDERSTAND your business model, they’re going to be extremely reluctant to give you their credit card information.

This was forwarded to me not too long ago.

Game developers often release PVE content that is like a Coral Reef, i.e. it’s relevant for a period of time (e.g. for some part of an expansion), but eventually with vertical progression (levels and/or gear), players outgrow that content and it’s essentially dead. By the next expansion, the previous expansion’s zones are ghost towns and only visited by those people leveling new characters through them. Over time, what you have is a world where 80% of the zones are no longer relevant, and only 20% is. That is, you have PVE content that evolves like a Coral Reef, and this is primarily due to the unsustainable nature of vertical scaling.

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The primary problem with the concept of Permadeath in MMOs has always been in a vast disparity between the emotional connection that different kinds of players have towards their characters.  For hardcore roleplayers, their characters are a work of art and passion, personas built over hours, days or months of collaborative playtime with their peers.  For the type of cold-blooded murderer who likes to bathe in the pixellated blood of noobs, though, their avatars aren’t very important.  They are a tools, a means to an end, a hammer in the toolbox used to bash in the hopes and dreams of the innocent.  PK them?  OK, we’ll just make another. Continue reading