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City Of Heroes Beta Evaluated As Game Goes Gold
Thanks to GamersWithJobs for its detailed impressions of PC-based superhero MMORPG City Of Heroes, given just after the game reached gold master status, with an "official launch [of] April 28", and a (slightly inflationary?) "monthly subscription fee of US$14.99." The preview, from a "long time tester and fan of the game", notes: "When I entered City of Heroes for the first time, one of the things that quickly grabbed my attention was the scale--the towering statues, the twenty story buildings", before discussing the action-oriented gameplay: "Unlike almost every other MMORPG out there, combat in City of Heroes is designed to be fast paced and fun" The author concludes: "It's not a perfect superhero game, but it's a very good superhero MMORPG."
Another MMO game that is crying for PvP (super hero's vs Villans) that doesn't include it. Can someone please do something different than the PvE (player vs enviornment) friendly co-op mode all of these games are coming out in? Some of us want MMORPGs where combat against humans is allowed and maybe even (akk) encouraged.
I'm playing in the Beta and am having a really fun time with the game. I'm impressed with the stability and what has been worked into the game so far, and I'm more than patient to see what other cool things they work into the game in the future. A game can't support everything from the offset, gotta have some room to grow, so I'm not concerned about the lack of PvP and other things that seem to bother a lot of people.
The one thing I am concerned about though is the price. I'm not really interested in dishing out $49.95 for the game (and one month of playtime) and then $14.95 a month thereafter. That's just too much for cash for me to justify. I'm not anywhere close to poverty stricken, I make good money and can afford to spend that much on a game. Unfortunately as much as I'd like to participate I don't see it as *worth* my money. Am I alone in this thinking?
Droping $49.95 and having 3 months worth of online play, that seems worth it in my books (I'm still thinking high, but I'd pay it), but this cash grab just strikes me as unreasonable.
I'm currently playing the online version of the Lord of the Rings CCG. This game does have the unfortunate CCG pricing model (i.e. the more you pay, the better options you have) but it's certainly possible for a player with a good idea of what they want to get a tourney winning quality deck for around $50-70. (This approach requires lots of camping in the trade lobby to find people willing to give you stuff you need for the limited stuff you have, but that time investment is no worse than any other MMO.)
Anyways, the good news to the otherwise somewhat newbie-unfriendly pricing is that there's no mandatory recurring fee to keep the collection that you have. (There's an optional $10 monthly membership that gives you more than $10 worth of stuff and is intended essentially as a loss leader, since members get a 20-40% discount on further purchases, encouraging you to spend more. The membership pays for itself for anyone spending at least $10 a month on the game, but again, is optional if you know you won't be playing for a few months and want to cancel it until you come back or just want to cut yourself off.) This means that I'm not getting significantly worse value for my money dollar for dollar than the people who spend hours and hours playing, as one does in a monthly fee use it or lose it payment scheme.
The CCG model does require a certain resignation that every so often you'll face someone who destroys your puny deck with their massively larger collection. This also, from what I hear, is common on PvP MMO's (LOTRO is PVP only, there are no AI opponents yet, even for tutorial). But at least here once you get started, all that matters is how well the ~70 or so cards you brought to the table work together to win you the game. Not how much time you've spent (though playtesting will help you pick which cards to bring), not how much the 70 cards you have are worth, and DEFINITELY not how much the cards from each of your collections that aren't being used this game are worth. Knowing you've beaten someone who spent 10 times as much as you on the game? Priceless.
Alright then, go ahead and start building a server farm to host the tens (maybe even hundreds) of thousands of users who will be playing online at once. Take over the development necessary to improve gameplay and add new worlds/zones. As the game becomes more popular, pay for even more rack space and servers to load balance the MMORPG. What you don't understand is, all of this requires money. Money to pay for rack space at a Network Operations Center, money for the servers, money for the huge amount of bandwidth, money for the sys admins, money for the developers to improve the game, etc. If you can provide all of that for them, I'm sure they'd be all for no monthly fees.
Well, I'm one of those people you "hate"; I run an online RPG which charges a monthly subscription fee and feel it's a better deal than most other entertianment, games included. But, allow me to point out some fallacies in your argument.
First, let's get the money out of the way. You think $50k profit on 100k users is impressive? That's $6/year per customer. That's a shameful amount for any business. Many companies make at least that much profit off a customer in one visit without the costs of developing an online RPG that can hold 100k subscribers.
But, let's focus on games as you requested. So, let me ask you: when was the last time you negotiated a peaceful agreement between opposing groups in UT2004? What? Never? That's funny, because someone posted about doing that very thing on Meridian 59 just the other week. See, politics is an important force in some online RPGs, and an interesting way to engage in player vs. player competition. The problem with UT2004 is that the lack of persistence means that there is no reason for deeper interactions between players in the context of the game. My only options in UT2004 is to shoot my enemy before s/he shoots me.
It's the persistence that give online RPGs the depth you don't find in other games. Politics is just one thing, but meaningful conflict is another. When I kill a player in Meridian, that player suffers penalties. Those penalties don't go away once the game resets (except for some special events), so that player has a reason to hold a grudge against me. I have to deal with the consequences of my actions, which leads to interesting interactions between players.
In the end, it's that persistence you pay for in a online RPG. You're not just paying for the game, but also for the service that keeps the servers active and available for you to play on, and polices the game for cheaters, etc. This isn't to say that everyone has to love persistence and dealing with the consequences for their actions, but there are a lot of us that really do appreciate this and think that a monthly fee is well worth it.
And, to pimp my own game for a bit, some games are great bargains. Meridian 59 is only $10.95 per month (not $15 like City of Heroes will be), and does not require the purchase of a box or expansions. We keep expanding and improving Meridian; in fact, we're in the middle of a rewrite of the rendering engine to improve the graphics of the game. All as freely downloaded content to the players of the game.
In the end, you'll be hard pressed to find any other form of entertainment, including games, that has as low a buyin as $10.95 and is that cheap per month.
My take on things,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog